by Michael Kerr
He went into the bungalow, showered, put a dressing gown and his slippers on and went back through to the kitchen to make a pot of tea. He was exhausted. The disease was sapping his stamina. He was running on empty and needed to sleep for a few hours. Early the next morning would be soon enough to start in on Ian Peterson. Let him come to his senses in the dark garage and be freezing cold and petrified till dawn.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
IT was a little after nine a.m. when Matt arranged for Shelley Carmichael to be brought to the interview room again.
“Take a seat,” Matt said. “I trust we can talk to you without having to cuff you to the table?”
Shelley said nothing, but sat down and stared at the door through the gap between Matt and Marci.
Matt put two new audiotapes in the machine on the desk, started them running and stated the time, date, place and who was present.
“We believe that you murdered Danielle Cooper, Jeffrey Goodwin and Dominic Wilson, Ms Carmichael,” Matt said. “Do you have anything you’d like to say to that?”
Shelley closed her eyes and appeared to be giving it some thought. Being locked up overnight in the police cell had been the worst experience of her life. She had slept fitfully for just a few minutes at a time, her brain racing as she considered the strong evidence against her: the CCTV stills she had been shown, and the fact that they were in possession of the parka that she had been stupid to keep. The mark or stain on it had matched the photos, and so she would never be able to convince a jury that she was innocent. The female cop had probably been right in suggesting that she plead insanity. A few years in a secure hospital would be far better than life in prison.
It had been a little before dawn, in the cold and stinking cell, that Shelley had slept and slipped into a vivid dream. In it she parked a few streets away and walked to the apartment block where Danielle lived. With the baseball cap pulled down, and wearing jeans and a bulky parka, and with the false moustache, she felt invisible. Any security camera would show a tall man ambling up to the main door. And she had a key card to swipe in the slot of the lock, and a key to Danielle’s apartment. She had borrowed both from Rhonda’s purse. Danielle had given Rhonda copies of both, so that she could drop off paperwork and also keep an eye on the place when Danielle was away for any length of time. And perhaps Rhonda had been cheating on her with the bitch on the side.
She went up the stairs, opened the door with gloved hands, walked in and could hear music playing. Checking every door off the hallway, she entered the kitchen, found the cutlery drawer and withdrew a wood-handled steak knife from it.
It was in the bathroom that she found Danielle. She could see the blurry pink shape of her through the frosted panel of the screen that was pulled partway across.
Retreating out of the room, she took off the parka, jeans, blouse and work boots that she was wearing and left them outside the bedroom door, then went back in wearing only her bra, pants and gloves.
Pulling the screen back, she smiled as Danielle drew back in fright to hit the back of her head on the tiled wall. What a sight she must be: an almost naked women with a thick moustache, holding a knife in her gloved hand.
Danielle gasped and said, “Shelley?”
She nodded as she admired Danielle’s firm breasts. It would have been nice to slip off her underwear, climb into the bath with her and fool around, but that was not what she was here for.
Danielle grasped the sides of the boxed-in bath and attempted to lever herself up.
“Stay just where you are, you cunt,” Shelley said. “Or I’ll stab you.”
“Why are―”
“Shut up, you treacherous fucking bitch. You’ve broken my Rhonda’s heart. She worked hard to get you where you are. But you started thinking that you were somebody special and that you could do better by finding new representation.”
“I have every right to―”
“No, Danielle, you have no rights anymore. Did you really believe that Goodwin committed suicide? I pushed him off the roof, and now I’m going to kill you.”
Danielle almost leapt out of the bath, but was knocked back in it by the heel of Shelley’s hand to her forehead, to slip and go under the surface of the hot water.
Taking a towel from the rail next to her, Shelley held her under and plunged the blade of the knife into her arm at the elbow joint, to drag it in a zigzag path to her wrist. The blood spurted out to lash the tiles, and although Danielle managed to push her face above the surface once, Shelley pushed her back down and used the serrated blade on the other arm in the same way, then dropped it in the bath. There was a lot of blood, but that just turned Shelley on. The struggle for life was futile. Danielle lost consciousness and bled out.
Shelley ran water in the hand basin and washed the blood off her face and body. She would have to burn her bra and pants later.
Out in the hall, she took her gloves off and put her clothes back on and left the apartment.
Now, awake and being quizzed, she knew that keeping the parka had been her downfall. She believed that the mark on it would prove her guilt.
“I asked you a question,” Matt said, his voice loud and clear in the small room, and the words broke through her gory reverie. “Have you anything to say in mitigation before we charge you?”
Shelley’s face was impassive, but tears leaked out from her eyes. “I don’t remember a lot of it,” she said. “It’s like a bad dream. I know that I killed them, but it was as if someone else took over and did it.”
That was all Matt needed. He was surprised that she had confessed so quickly, but inside he was in something near to seventh heaven. The case was closed. All that was left to do was go through each murder with her. It would all be on tape, and also recorded on video by the camera bracketed to the wall in the corner of the room. The so-called Suicide Killer case was a wrap.
He woke at six a.m. in a world of pain. He had stomach cramps and a crippling ache in his chest. His lungs were hurting, and it was an effort to breathe. Just sitting up proved to be an exertion. He sat with his hands on the edge of the bed for five minutes, coughed up a lot of phlegm into his mouth and spat it into a wad of tissue, hardly surprised to see streaks of blood in the greasy spittle. Reaching out and taking the bottle of what he thought of as liquid elixir from the bedside cabinet, he shook it before removing the safety cap, to drink a mouthful of the thick, sweet potion that would not extend his life by one second, but would subdue the pain and allow him to function almost normally for a while.
Twenty minutes passed before the full effect of the painkiller gave him the illusion of being well. He went through to the bathroom to wash and shave, then put on old overalls and a pair of almost worn out trainers.
With Radio 4 on in the kitchen, he brewed tea and even felt well enough to toast two slices of bread, which he spread thinly with butter and managed to eat.
It was time. He left the kitchen and walked down the garden to the workshop, to switch on the heater and make ready, before going to the garage and entering it by the side door near the rear.
Ian Peterson was more like a frightened little boy who had come face to face with the monster he had once believed lived in his wardrobe, than a grown man. He had been crying for much of the night and his eyes were red-rimmed. And his head was splitting from the blows that had put him out, although he had no idea of how long he had been unconscious. His neck was sore; chafed from his vain attempts to loosen the rope noose that had if anything tightened as he twisted his head back and forth. And the pain in his left foot was pounding. He felt nauseous.
“Sleep well?” Gabriel said, standing in front of his prisoner and staring down at him.
With the tape over his mouth, Ian could not answer and plead for mercy.
“I had a dog that had the same sad look in his eyes that you do,” Gabriel continued. “But he had nothing to worry about because I cared for him, a lot. But you on the other hand have a lot to worry about, because I despise you for what y
ou did.”
Ian grunted, was trying to speak, but Gabriel didn’t need to listen to anything he had to say.
Drawing a Stanley knife from a pocket of the overalls, Gabriel hunkered down and cut through the tape binding Ian’s ankles together. He then worked the noose loose and pulled it up over the man’s head.
“Get up on your feet,” Gabriel said.
Ian was freezing cold, and any movement of his left foot was agonising. It was swollen against his trainer and throbbing. It took him a while, but he somehow managed to get up, using his right leg and keeping his back to the breezeblock wall for support.
“Out of the door, turn left and go into the workshop,” Gabriel said. “Once inside, lay down on the plastic sheeting.”
Ian needed to do something, but could do nothing. He had no choice but to obey the man. He tried to hop across the grass to the path in front of the door, but the jarring to his wounded foot caused so much pain that he fell forward onto his knees.
“Crawl,” Gabriel said, cutting through the tape that held Ian’s wrists together behind his back.
A chance, Ian thought. With his hands free he could put up a fight. The other man looked wiry, but was smaller than him and at least thirty years older. He turned and raised his fists.
Gabriel smiled, thumbed the blade back into the metal casing of the knife and pocketed it. Took two quick steps to the side of Ian and kicked him in the ribs with enough force to send him sprawling. He then knelt next to him and punched him several times in his already swollen and bruised left temple.
When Ian regained his senses he was bound again, laying on his front on a large sheet of black plastic. And he was naked.
The door was shut. Gabriel had dragged Ian into the workshop and cut his clothes from him before using fresh tape to secure his wrists and ankles, and ‘preparing’ him with a bung and strip of cord to prevent avoidable mess and odour.
“Ah, nice to see that you’re back with the programme,” Gabriel said. “Now we can get on with it.” The tape in the cassette deck of the old radio was playing the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra’s version of Richard Strauss’s Also Sprach Zarathustra, which Gabriel thought to be ideal music to torture and kill by.
Sitting on Ian’s lower back with one leg either side of his waist, Gabriel once more employed the Stanley knife, this time to carve letters into flesh.
Ian attempted to come up off the floor as his screams were muffled by the tape. The cutting was deep, and the pain was unendurable, yet had to be suffered.
The forty seconds that it took to fashion the words seemed an eternity, to Ian. His mind could hardly absorb the agony. It felt as if the blade was penetrating to his lungs, to in all probability cut them out of his living body.
Gabriel rested. He could feel the man’s naked buttocks trembling and twitching beneath his own, and just closed his eyes for a minute and readied himself to convert life to death.
Ready. He ripped the tape away from Ian’s mouth, got up and exchanged the Stanley knife for his hunting knife, which was on the bench top, before once more straddling Ian, to place his left hand across his forehead and pull his head back so that the skin on his throat was taut.
Ian wanted to beg for his life, but the combination of pain and abject terror seemed to have frozen his voice. He could not properly think to form words and speak.
Gabriel did not slash arteries or purposely cut through the windpipe this time. He pushed the point of the blade slowly and deeply into the hollow beneath the laryngeal prominence, commonly referred to as the Adam’s apple, and then twisted the knife in his hand forty-five degrees to the right and withdrew it, to get to his feet and sit in a chair in front of Ian to watch what transpired. It was ghoulish entertainment.
Ian was not aware of what had been done. The razor-sharp blade had not caused any undue pain on top of his other suffering. He just felt as though there was a blockage in his throat and so coughed to clear it. Blood spurted from both his mouth and punctured throat to create a gleaming abstract of crimson and black on the plastic sheet that was about to become his shroud.
Looking up, he gazed into the smiling face of the man who had tortured him. He attempted to cough again, but couldn’t, and the volume of blood running back into his gullet was preventing him from taking a breath. Blind panic caused him to thrash and flop as he gasped, gulped and sucked noisily, but he was unable to draw in even a fraction of the air needed to stay alive.
After Ian Peterson had become still and his face had relaxed into an expression of total indifference, Gabriel sighed. It had been a fitting end for the murderer, and so he was without any remorse for what he had done. Many decent men, women, children and even babies died every day, and they had not deserved to. The men that he had disposed of had.
The cleaning up didn’t take too long. He used a lot of disinfectant in very hot water to remove all traces of blood from the sheet and body, and the small amount of it that had run off onto the floor. Taking a break, he went back inside the bungalow and had a cup of strong coffee instead of tea, and sat at the table to let the past hour’s events replay in his mind.
Twenty minutes later he returned to the workshop holding a tough, blank Papier Mache face mask. It was one of only two he had left from a pack of twelve that he had purchased over ten years ago to decorate for a Halloween party that he and Lisa had attended. He had painted each one individually, and somewhere in an album was a photo he had taken of them being worn by old friends.
Standing with the mask in his hand, Gabriel wondered what might have been if Lisa had not died. But that was a total waste of thought. She was part of the past; just a memory, but one that still resonated like thunder and could send him into a state of abysmal depression. You couldn’t change one damn thing that was now behind you. He wished that he had faith; that he could believe in God and heaven, and look forward to being reunited with his beloved wife again, but he was an atheist, with no doubt whatsoever that dead was dead and beyond it was nothing.
The mask was fitted with elastic, and so he placed it over the corpse’s head. It was white, and like the face behind it, totally expressionless. He wrapped the plastic sheet around the body and taped it securely. All that was left to do now was tow it over to the garage and manhandle it into the boot of his car. He would decide where to dump it over the next few hours and dispose of it when darkness fell.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
BETH was on her midmorning break, so took her coffee and sketchpad into the dayroom and sat by one of the picture windows. There were several of the children talking and giggling and generally enjoying each others’ company, but Martin was sitting alone, doing the same as Beth, drawing.
It was less than five minutes later that Martin walked hesitantly over to Beth, held out his sketchpad and said, “I thought you might like to see what I’ve been drawing, Doctor Beth.”
“I’d love to,” Beth said, smiling as she reached out to take the pad, noting that Martin kept his distance.
Opening the cover, Beth was truly amazed by the sketch of trees around the pond in the grounds. It was done in pencil, but the way he had caught the light and shadow was remarkable. And sitting on a bench facing the pond was a woman and small boy. That told Beth a lot. Martin was graphically illustrating something that he did not have; a mother’s love.
“This is really beautiful,” Beth said to Martin. “May I look at what else you’ve drawn?”
Martin smiled and nodded, and actually moved closer to Beth, to be standing just a couple of feet from her.
Beth carefully turned the pages, to truly be amazed by Martin’s talent. She asked him about the drawings, praised him, and said that she hoped that he would pursue a career in art.
Fifteen minutes later, Martin was standing next to the chair Beth was sitting on, just inches away from her. He was in closer proximity to an adult than he had chosen to be since being admitted to Morning Star.
“You think I could be a proper artist?” Martin said.
When Martin returned to class, Beth sat for another few minutes and took pleasure in the fact that she had made a significant breakthrough. The young boy was hopefully going to be fine. Matt had shown her a way of connecting with troubled children by finding common ground with them. He was much more than just a cop, but would never admit to it if the subject was broached.
It was after lunch that Matt rang the bell of the locked office door. Rhonda Gould opened it a minute later. She looked flustered.
“What now, Inspector?” she asked.
“I thought you would be interested in what will soon be breaking news,” Matt said as he stepped inside the reception area with Pete behind him.
“Meaning?” Rhonda said as she closed the door and turned to face the two detectives.
Matt smiled. “That we caught the killer of Jeff, Danielle and Dominic.”
“Why would you feel the need to call and tell me?”
“What’s missing from this room?” Matt said in answer, looking around as he spoke.
Rhonda frowned.
“Your receptionist,” Matt continued. “Shelley Carmichael.”
“She didn’t turn up for work today,” Rhonda said. “And as yet I’ve not been able to contact her.”
“That’s because she is in custody. She has admitted to being what the press tagged as the Suicide Killer.”
The shock to Rhonda was palpable. Her eyes widened and her mouth dropped open as she slowly shook her head in denial. “That is the most idiotic thing I’ve ever heard,” she said. “What possible reason would Shelley have to commit murder?”