by Michael Kerr
For Joan, Lorraine, Sarah and Matt.
A DEADLY COMPULSION
By
Michael Kerr
Copyright © 2016 Michael Kerr
Discover other Titles by Michael Kerr at MichaelKerr.org
Kindle Edition, License Notes
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Disclaimer
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Also By Michael Kerr
DI Matt Barnes Series
A REASON TO KILL
LETHAL INTENT
A NEED TO KILL
CHOSEN TO KILL
A PASSION TO KILL
The Joe Logan Series
AFTERMATH
ATONEMENT
ABSOLUTION
ALLEGIANCE
Other Crime Thrillers
DEADLY REPRISAL
DEADLY REQUITAL
BLACK ROCK BAY
A HUNGER WITHIN
THE SNAKE PIT
A DEADLY STATE OF MIND
TAKEN BY FORCE
DARK NEEDS AND EVIL DEEDS
Science Fiction / Horror
WAITING
CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE STRANGE KIND
RE_EMERGENCE
Children’s Fiction
Adventures in Otherworld
PART ONE – THE CHALICE OF HOPE
PART TWO – THE FAIRY CROWN
Monsters are not always recognised for what they are.
Some walk among us and the apparent normality they
present is no more than a skin-deep layer of deception,
employed to mask their deadly compulsions.
~ MK
“Even when she was dead she was still bitching at me.
I couldn’t get her to shut up.”
~ Edmund Kemper
(Serial killer)
CHAPTER ONE
TIME and tide...as the saying goes. He had to be on his way, about his business. And although Sharon looked absolutely stunning, staring up at him with such a beguiling and beseeching expression in her cornflower-blue eyes, he needed to be somewhere else.
He pulled the plastic shower cap down at a jaunty angle over her forehead, so that it covered the top of her right ear. It looked like a beret. She could have been mimicking a French onion seller. Just wearing that one item of attire made her even more sensual and provocative, if that were possible.
Leaning over, he kissed her shoulder, neck and mouth, and then said goodbye and hurried away before he could be tempted to weaken, strip off and climb in the tub with her.
Driving home, he savoured the thought of all that he and Sharon had done together. She was one foxy young lady. He could still smell the mellow hint of apple blossom that had wafted from her thick, sun-kissed, flaxen hair. And in his mind’s eye he could see her pert breasts, flat stomach, and the downy triangular patch, that to his fingers had felt as soft as a rabbit’s scut.
His pulse was racing. He could hear it beating in his ears, almost loud enough to drown out the nondescript voice of Kylie, Jaylo, or whoever the hell it was whining over the airwaves. It was a distraction. He turned off the radio and made plans. Life was so sublime. No one had the slightest idea who he really was. The world truly was his oyster...or oysters, which equated to women. They were his to collect; to prise open and extract the exquisite pearls from within their warm centres. There was nothing that he could not do. He was a hunter, picking off his human prey with the same expertise as a wolf singles out a weak, old or wounded member of a herd. Though he harvested the fit, young and strong; those that conformed specifically to his particular needs.
Back at the house, he showered, went through to the bedroom and spent a long time admiring his muscular body in the full-length wardrobe mirror, before slipping on a robe and going down to the kitchen. He was ravenous, and although it was late, he felt wide awake. His stomach was growling. Sex always gave him an enormous appetite. It would be impossible to sleep just yet. Not until he had come down from the natural high he was on. Had he not to be at work so early, then he would probably have stayed up to greet the dawn.
He ate a stack of ham sandwiches with lashings of mustard and drank a pint of milk, straight from the container. He still felt excited as he stealthily climbed the stairs again, stepping over the ninth tread, which had creaked for as long as he could remember. Silence was golden, as his mother would always preach. He tiptoed into the bedroom like a thief in the night. He needed to crash out and get some well-earned rest.
With thoughts of the lovely Sharon, and the mental picture of her pouting mouth, firm rosebud-tipped breasts and shapely legs parted, he fell into a deep slumber.
Laura shuffled papers together, tapped and squared them on the desktop and sank back on the swivel chair, yawning and stretching, closing her eyes momentarily against the harsh glare from the fluorescent tube that hummed overhead. As the breeze from the blades of the fan hit her she felt cold and so lowered her arms, conscious of the patches of perspiration at her armpits. She picked up the Styrofoam cup and winced at the bitter taste of now lukewarm, machine-brewed coffee, and then opened the top drawer of her desk and fumbled a cigarette from the pack hidden there; firing up with a cheap throwaway lighter, silently promising to quit the habit, yet again, once this present mess was sorted.
“We’ve got another one, boss,” Detective Sergeant Hugh Parfitt said, rapping his knuckles on the frosted glass partition of the door and sauntering in.
“Shit!” Laura said, frowning, crushing the now empty cup and tossing it into the waste bin next to her desk. “You sure?”
“Identical MO. It has to be the same guy.”
“Well, don’t just stand there, Hugh,” she said, nodding to the only other chair in the office. “Take the weight off, for Christ’s sake.”
Detective Inspector Laura Scott was having a terrible month. This was the third gruesome murder in as many weeks. Not just three unrelated random killings, which would have been bad enough, but the work of the same sick individual, who had now butchered three young women and left their bodies in plain sight at various locations around the city. The media were having a field day with it, and as OIC – Officer in Charge – of the case, she was being showered with the brown stuff, as it hit the fan and flew off in her direction.
Laura had been in post at York for almost two years. And up until this had started she had felt like the cat that’d got the cream, having escaped the Met and moved up to Yorkshire. She had said good-bye to riots, murders by the bucketful and the general feeling that life was just a conveyer belt of violent crime; much of it drug related. The move had also got her away from London, which had been a constant reminder of personal tragedy. The relocation was a much needed fresh start. Now, in the Vale of York, amid country pubs, beautiful scenery and village life, she had the makings of another fucking ‘Ripper’ on her doorstep. Whoever had passed this case down to her was far from stupid. It could make or break her. If the team made a swift arrest, then she would come out smelling of roses. If not, she would be a handy scapegoat, and would more than likely end up demoted, probably back down to DC for the rest of her career. Sexism was still alive and well, but practised far more surrept
itiously these days.
Laura hated the term ‘serial killer’, but that was what they appeared to be dealing with. It was obvious that some psycho out there had short circuited and was getting his rocks off by slaughtering teenage girls in a ritualistic and barbaric manner. It made her physically shiver. She felt as if the temperature in the office nose-dived ten degrees as her sergeant gave a thumbnail sketch of the latest atrocity.
“So let’s go, Hugh. Bring me up to speed on the way,” Laura said, rising and pulling on her jacket, almost reaching the door before turning back to collect her cigarettes and lighter from the drawer. Smoking was verboten in the station, but rules were made to be broken.
“Two lads found the body,” Hugh said as he drove out of the city heading north towards Strensall. “They were tooled-up with air rifles, shooting rats at a landfill site. She, er, the body was in an old plastic bath. The bastard had even put a shower cap on her head. He left her handbag complete with contents so that we could identify her.”
Laura lit a cigarette, unfazed by Hugh’s quick look of annoyance as he hit the button and lowered his side window six inches.
“When did they find her?” Laura said as she exhaled twin columns of blue smoke through her nostrils.
“About an hour ago. They went to the site office and reported it to the old guy that oversees the place. He rang us. The forensic team should already be there, and the area is sealed off.”
There was a uniform stationed at the gate. He checked their IDs and waved them through, past the bottle banks and skips that were for public use; out through a second set of gates reserved for council trucks to access the large landfill site beyond.
Hugh drove along the rutted track and parked on a large area of compacted earth, next to one of several police vehicles.
Climbing out of the car, Laura could see the fluttering blue and white tape that cordoned off the now tented crime scene. Gulls screeched and whirled overhead as she picked her way carefully across the rubbish-strewn ground, ducked under the tape and entered the Incitent with Hugh at her heels.
Sharon Holder had been sixteen, an intelligent and good looking blue-eyed blonde. She had been a devoted 1D (One Direction) fan, a vegetarian, and had still attended high school. She was like most other girls of her age. But unlike most other girls, Sharon had not made it home from a night out. Her mother, Lisa, was divorced and had only the vaguest Scotch-fogged idea of what Sharon and her elder brother, Paul, did, or where either of them happened to be at any particular time, day or night. Sharon had been a latchkey kid for years, ever since her dad had waltzed off with a tart half his age, never to be heard from again. At the time her body was found, Sharon had not even been missed. If she had ever needed her mother urgently, she had always known which city pubs to phone.
“Jesus!” Hugh said, turning away from the tub, hand over his nose and mouth.
“It’s the heat,” said Brian Morris, the Home Office pathologist, as he examined the corpse amid the hustle and bustle of the forensic team as they photographed, dusted, and carried out a fingertip search of the scene. “And the rats,” he added, nodding to Laura in greeting as he spoke. “The tip is teeming with them. They’ve been feeding off her for a while.”
The body had been badly bitten. The stomach gnawed open to reveal a coil of chewed, purplish-grey intestine, which had been dragged out to hang down between her legs like a surreal Giger-like painting. Her eyes had also been taken, and the hand that Laura could see was missing the ends of at least three fingers.
“How long has she been dead, Brian?” Laura asked, hunkering down next to him, ignoring the stench. “Just a guesstimate,” she added as he raised an eyebrow in reply.
“At least seventy-two hours. Rigor has passed. The cause of death appears to be the same as the other two. Her throat has been cut, just deep enough to open the right carotid and jugular. She was bled out at another location, then cleaned up and dumped here.”
“Thanks, Brian,” Laura said, unable to avert her eyes from the corpse. The girl’s mouth was stapled shut, and two blue-rimmed craters topped the small breasts where her nipples should have been. They too had been bitten off, but not by rats.
“I’ll know more when I get her on the table,” Brian said, straightening up with a grunt as his left hip complained.
Laura also rose, turned and hurried out of the tent as Hugh held the flap aside for her. They walked back across the littered and uneven ground towards the car, noting the large white van – an outside broadcast unit – that was being held at bay by a harried constable. Laura thought of the media as jackals and vultures; scavengers drawn by the smell of blood to a recent kill. A metallic-blue Scorpio appeared and parked up next to the van, and one of Laura’s least favourite people climbed out and strode purposefully up to the policeman manning the gate; her attendant camera and sound crew trotting along in her wake. The imperious blonde bitch was Trish Pearson, one of the anchors of a local TV news show. She had latched on to this case and was taking a personal interest in it. It was high profile. The sort of fodder that hit her spot and turned the cool cow on.
“I’ll be in the car, Hugh. You can give her the standard brush off. I think if she stuck that microphone in front of my face at this minute, I’d have to tell her where to ram it...sideways.”
The mortuary was a cold and soulless place. An old, time-weathered building that had, in Victorian times, been an orphanage.
“Anything new?” Laura said to Brian, watching him walk over to the sink, peel off his stained latex gloves and deposit them into a custard-yellow biohazard bin.
The pathologist liked Laura, or maybe fancied her would be a more honest description of his feelings towards the slim, good looking DI with short dark hair, umber come-to-bed eyes and slightly melancholy smile.
Brian was a stocky fifty-six-year-old, with thinning grey hair and matching goatee beard. His gold rimmed glasses perched precariously on the end of his snub nose, and he jabbed them up absently and habitually, only for them to immediately slip back down again. He was married with three adult children, but that didn’t stop him lusting, and the object of his covert lust was Laura Scott. Whereas most other case officers were given short thrift and gruffly advised to wait for a written report, Laura was an exception to the rule. She enjoyed special consideration, and knew it.
“Same as the other two,” he said, scrubbing his arms and hands under hot water at the large double sink; the smell of antiseptic and lye soap failing to mask the stink of corruption. Behind him on one of the aluminium tables, the dissected body of Sharon Holder leaked its fluids into the collecting pan beneath. She was now an even more disfigured and hollow vessel with her organs removed, weighed and sectioned; just so much offal. Laura clenched her teeth as she experienced a heartfelt surge of sympathy for the poor girl, who had suffered so much violation, albeit that this particular procedure had been post mortem and carried out to confirm the cause of death.
“The hypostasis in her feet and legs show―”
“Hold it, Brian. Give it to me in layman’s terms,” Laura said, dragging her eyes away from the cadaver. “Remember, I’m just a copper, not a medical student.”
“Uh, sorry. I tend to forget that everyone isn’t a pathologist. The bottom line is, that this girl died hard. She was initially struck across the right temple with enough force to probably daze or render her unconscious. Her mouth – as you saw at the scene – was stapled shut. And she had been raped and sodomised. Her nipples were removed by human bite, which will give odontology a good chance of coming up with an impression of the offender’s teeth. It’s the first useful forensic evidence we’ve had.
“All this was done ante mortem, before he cut her. The serotonin and free histamine levels will bear that out. He then hung her up. There are rope burns to the neck. She bled out and was left hanging for several hours, which explains the hypost...er, the blood settling to her lower legs and feet. There is also a residue of adhesive around her mouth, wrists and ankles, w
hich I have no doubt will prove to be from insulation tape, the same as with the others. If it runs true to form, we won’t get much more. He wore a condom previously, and he meticulously cleans the bodies before he transports them to the location he leaves them to be found. Oh, and the throat was cut from right to left again. He’s a lefty, unless he uses his left hand just to try and throw us.”
“So he sticks to the same pattern?” Laura said.
“Apart from, in this case, the nipples, yes. He’s methodical. He leaves no prints or DNA, so is aware of what forensics can do. The only foreign matter that we’ve found is a small fragment of plastic material that was snagged under a toenail. I won’t be surprised if it turns out to be from a sack of some sort. Once he’s cleaned them with surgical spirit, he doesn’t risk contamination. He knows what can be obtained from carpet fibres and hairs. He may be a lot of things, but stupid isn’t one of them.”
“He’s a fucking maniac, Brian, that’s what he is,” Laura said, taking a last look at the forlorn and desecrated remains of the girl, whose head was slightly raised on a wooden block, giving the impression that she was looking down with empty eye sockets at her eviscerated torso.
Thanking the pathologist, Laura left. The paperwork with all the mind-boggling medical jargon would follow.
CHAPTER TWO
IT was a little past midnight when Laura finally arrived home. She kicked off her shoes in the hall, went through to the kitchen and poured a large brandy, needing a jolt of alcohol to help her to unwind and clear her mind a little before even contemplating sleep. The brandy was both French and expensive; one of the few extravagances she allowed herself. The smooth, mellow liquor warmed her, and went a long way to relaxing and unfrazzling nerves that felt frayed and raw from the tension and horror of all that had filled her long day. She draped her jacket over the back of a chair, then unzipped her skirt and let it fall to the floor, now too creased to wear again without being washed and ironed. A pleasure almost as gratifying as the brandy, was the shedding of her clinging black tights. Surely no snake or lizard could know the same joy in sloughing its skin as she experienced by ridding herself of the hot, encompassing denier, which she had been sheathed in for almost seventeen hours.