A Deadly Compulsion

by Michael Kerr

  It was in therapy – after he had walked away from it all – that he had been able to look in from the outside and detach himself from that dark place. He found that he could talk through the pain and grief that his ability had brought knocking at the door, and eventually make the first faltering steps towards rehabilitation and a new beginning. The despair had slowly dispersed like a tropical depression moving on, its fury spent and clear skies brightening the horizon. With the light, he had started to care if he took another breath; had stopped relying on booze and sleeping pills, to become less fragile and insecure. But the years of trying to think himself into the minds of homicidal psychopaths and sociopaths had taken its toll; chased out the optimism and light-hearted spirit of youth to leave an open sore of fatalism that ulcerated in the depths of his psyche, stubborn to heal, but now dormant; no longer active. To his chagrin, he found a part of him, that he despised, still missed the hunt and the ultimate satisfaction of closing in and shutting down the operations of crazed human beings, whose mission was to snuff out members of the society that they lived among. Jim now had the same kind of problem as an alcoholic, who would always be one, even though not drinking. He knew that it would only take a single shot to put him back to square one; just a tempting cocktail of files, photographs and the methods employed by a killer to be placed in front of him, and he would slip into the mode that had almost fused his mind.

  He had fought the urge, and his depression. With time, and from the ashes of indifference had risen a faltering flame of hope; one that he wanted to nurture, not extinguish.

  After recovering from what he had come to accept as being a minor breakdown, friends in London had cajoled Jim into flying across the pond for a change of scene. The intended short break in the UK had not only been an aid to his convalescence, but had also given him new direction and purpose. Over a decade later, he was still in Britain, which he now considered to be his home. How he had fallen into his current line of work was just pure luck. But he was making big bucks, or pounds, so wasn’t complaining.

  Jim was now a PR man, spin doctor and image-maker all rolled into one. He stayed anonymous, consciously avoiding the rub-off celebrity status, not courting fame as other guys like Max Clifford had , and seemed to thrive on, until they themselves were put under the microscope and found wanting. He turned individuals and companies around, finding the edge that they needed to realise a greater success in their respective areas of endeavour, over the competition. It was a shallow but safe harbour, in which he had established an outlet for his unique powers of understanding the human condition.

  The trill of the phone snapped him from his reverie. He stared at it as though it was road kill, but did not move, content to let the answering machine take the call: ‘Hi, this is Jim Elliott. I’m tied up at the moment, but if you leave your name and number, or a message, I’ll get back to you’, his recorded voice said to the caller.

  “Jim, it’s Laura…Laura Scott. I need to talk to you. You have my York number. It’s important. Please call me. Bye.”

  “Laura,” Jim whispered, now looking at the phone as if it was a work of art; a rendering that might have been fashioned by Da Vinci.

  Ten minutes later, with a freshly brewed mug of coffee to hand, Jim was next to the phone, replaying the message for a fourth time. Laura’s voice was tense, with a raw edge cutting through the controlled cadence. Its rhythm and intonation was slightly clipped, guarded, and holding a note of desperation and urgency that was either measured for effect, or an unconscious but nonetheless compelling ploy to get his attention. She had implied nothing and yet everything, and he knew that when, not if he called her back, he would regret it. The icy tendrils that snaked through his mind and tightened around his brain were a warning that contacting her might lead him into a place he did not want to go. He reached for the phone, rested his hand on it, then pulled back, to stand up again and walk barefoot across to the open door and out once more onto the balcony. The warm breeze caught the bottom of the silk dressing gown he wore, flapping it up against his muscular thighs. And the sun’s heat on the concrete was now almost too hot on the soles of his feet. He squinted across at the castellated rim of the tower, sipping absently at the coffee, running through his options.

  Laura’s call was business. And it didn’t take Sherlock Holmes to know what that business was. There had been speculation in the media of a serial killer on the rampage up in Yorkshire, but he had avoided the details, hit the remote and switched channels if it was mentioned on the news. He had no intention of allowing his profiler’s thought processes to kick in and begin to overwhelm him again. Goddammit to hell! There were no options to mull over. Laura was going to ask him to help, and he couldn’t...wouldn’t. She had no right to expect anything of him. Anger swept through him briefly like a bush fire, but was almost instantly smothered as Laura’s face – with winsome smile and magnetic brown eyes – materialised in his mind. He stared into his cooling coffee and recalled the nearness of her; the sweet smell of her hair, and the alluring scent of the perfume she wore.

  “I’ll put you through, sir,” a slightly bored sounding female voice said. He waited, ten, then twenty seconds, his stomach in freefall mode.

  “Hi, Jim,” Laura’s voice said, breaking through a background thrum of static. “Thanks for calling. I thought you might not.”

  He absorbed each syllable greedily, one at a time. Their texture was crushed velvet, and he realised just how much he missed Laura Scott.

  “It’s been too long,” he replied. “How’re you keeping, Laura?”

  “I’m fine. You?”

  “I was okay. Why the call?”

  He heard the intake of breath and knew that her mind was racing, searching for the right words to broach what she knew would be a taboo subject.

  “This isn’t easy, Jim,” she began. “But I need your help, advice...anything you can give me.”

  So there it was, as he had expected. This had been what had stopped their relationship from blossoming into more than just a six month fling. Jim had loved her, and maybe he still did. But the police work came between them, chafing his still raw nerves. He had recoiled from the sordid side of life that he had run away from; the side that Laura still embraced and was seemingly so passionately involved with.

  “I know what you want, Laura. You have a big problem up there. But it’s your problem. It goes with the patch.”

  “I know that, Jim. I haven’t forgotten how you feel, believe me. But I want to save lives. If I don’t get a handle on this killer...well, we’ll be up to our ears in dead teenage girls, and you know it.”

  “Don’t try sending me on a guilt trip, Laura. You have good people of your own. Why don’t you go through the official list of capable criminal psychologists who will be available to consult and work up a profile for you?”

  “Because they’re not Jim Elliott.”

  “I’m sorry, Laura, but that life’s behind me, and flattery will get you nowhere. You know it never ends. At the present time there are maybe a couple of hundred active serial killers in the States, probably treble that, who knows? If I wanted to be involved, I would have all the work I could handle back there.”

  “Just advice, Jim, for Christ’s sake, that’s all I’m asking for. Let me send you some stuff to look at. Give me your thoughts on it off the record, will you?”

  “You are one pushy broad, but the answer is still no.”

  “Have you still got that old fax machine?”

  “Yeah, but―”

  “I’ll fax it anyway. Nothing ventured, eh? And don’t let’s leave it so long next time. If I remember rightly you owe me a meal.”

  She hung up before he could reply, and the short conversation had not been enough. It had been an appetiser that left him unfulfilled, hungry for an entrée.

  The ‘meet’ and round of golf at Wentworth was rewarding. Jim bonded immediately with his prospective client. The guy was a fading pop star, only remembered because of a handful of min
or hits from the late eighties and early nineties. And then only by the middle-aged, who were reminded of him by the odd ‘golden oldie’ that got aired once in a blue moon on Radio 2, and the release of his now dated hits, available at cut-price on CD. He needed reinventing. Jim gave him an outline of what he would try to do. He explained that it would be more than a makeover; that it would be the whole nine yards. The singer needed to shed two stone, his present manager, and his habit. Jim assessed the old rocker as still being hungry, and wanting to be back in the limelight. He had been performing in second-rate venues for over twenty years, tooting coke as he spiralled ever downward into obscurity. Unbeknown to the singer, Jim had caught his act at a pub in Hounslow, and had been impressed. He could still hold a tune, and play an audience, and so deserved to be doing better.

  Golf is a good yardstick of character and personality. Jim blew the guy off the course, and admired the grit and determination that his opponent displayed, fighting all the way to the eighteenth, even when he knew that he could not win. He had control, composure, and most importantly, hated defeat. He still had the potential to make it happen, with Jim’s help, and was taken on as a client as they left the course and headed for the locker room.

  Jim did not consider himself a PR supremo. He didn’t like labels. He was just good at recognising what was needed to boost a client’s fortunes. His last major success had been with an MP of outward mediocrity. All that had been needed was a change of hairstyle, a new tailor, and good press over a fortuitous incident during which the politician had given roadside assistance to a badly injured teenager who’d managed to steer his motorcycle into an oncoming lorry. That the youngster was black and survived the accident, was a bonus. It made good copy. The MP was now a junior cabinet minister, and would probably rise even higher. All he had needed was a push in the right direction, and Jim had given it to him.

  Returning to the flat, Jim stashed his golf clubs in the hall and walked through to the lounge. Good as her word, Laura had faxed him a sheaf of stuff, which he ignored as he passed it by and headed for the bedroom. He stripped off his sweaty clothes and slid a Joe Cocker CD into the player, cranking up the volume so that he would be able to hear it in the shower. As Cocker croaked out Delta Lady, Jim decided that he would not even look at the information that lay taunting him in the fax tray. At some point he would feed it to the shredder and then bin it. He was not going to be sucked in, and that was cut-and-dried.

  It was past midnight when he finally hit the sack. He had been out for an Italian meal at Luigi’s on the Staines road with an ex-client who was now fronting a popular TV quiz show, and had become a household name. He had also become one of Jim’s best friends.

  At two a.m., Jim was still awake. And it wasn’t the muggy heat that held sleep at bay. It was the fucking faxes that Laura had sent, calling out to him, chiselling at his mind, demanding him to be aware of their horrific content and of the patterns and motives that would be woven into the fabric of the details. A part of him wanted, craved the challenge. The old electrical charge that used to surge through his veins was back with a vengeance.

  It was three a.m. when his resolve broke and deserted him like rats from a sinking ship. He had no clear recollection of getting out of bed, or of walking through to the lounge to take the stack of paper across to the table at which he was now sitting. He began reading, and after just two pages was suddenly pushing the chair back, rising, running to the bathroom to throw-up in the toilet bowl. He was shaking, felt faint, and his heart was spiked by a sharp, freezing icicle of unbridled fear. It was a reaction to facing a situation that his subconscious rebelled against. It reminded him of exactly how he had felt on boarding a plane at Dulles airport, west of Washington D.C., back in the winter of two thousand and three. Eight weeks prior to that flight, he had been involved in a crash landing that resulted in over half of the passengers being cremated in the fire that ensued. The chartered DC-10 had fallen the final few feet like a shot goose, crumpling the landing gear, tilting and spinning out of control as one wing struck the ground before merging with the unforgiving runway and exploding. Amid the choking black smoke and the screaming of injured and frightened passengers, he had somehow helped an attendant to open a door, and assisted dozens of survivors to escape down the billowing yellow slide to safety. Only when a blinding ball of flame streaked through the fuselage, did he throw himself down the chute, in no doubt that he would be the last living person to reach the tarmac.

  Facing the beginning of Laura’s reports had caused the same reaction as when he had flown again for the first time after that incident. It was not an irrational fear. Planes did crash. There was no guarantee that you would survive a flight. The odds were heavily on the side of safe arrival at your destination, but after one close call the statistics and percentages had lost a lot of their power to boost Jim’s confidence.

  It was fifteen minutes later, after rinsing his face with cold water and having poured himself a large measure of Jack Daniel’s that Jim tentatively returned to the table. The printed words drew him with the power of a siren luring a seafarer onto an accursed, rocky shore with enchanting song that could not be ignored or resisted.

  He started reading, opening and entering a door in his mind that he had kept firmly locked for years.

  Laura had been reluctant to contact Jim. She knew how much he had been affected by his years with the bureau, and of the events that had ended his career. She didn’t want to hurt him; still cared for him, and was scared that approaching him with this would ruin their friendship. But as per usual she had suppressed personal concerns by reminding herself that the body count was rising, and that a sick individual was on the loose, out of control: a killer who would not stop until he was hunted down and captured. Jim Elliott was – or had been – the most successful profiler on the planet. That was a fact. He had a unique gift; one that could not be matched. If she was able to prise even a few pointers from him, then she would, and to hell with the consequences. That he had refused to even discuss the case was, to say the least, disappointing. She wanted to respect his decision, but was gutted by his lack of altruism. Faxing the files, including crime scene and autopsy photographs, was a blatant transgression. But if she knew Jim at all, then he would not be able to resist looking at them, and if he did, then who knew? He might just get interested.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  HE remembered. Was back there with clarity of mind that imbued an aura of reality. All his senses combined to recreate the events. He was a young boy again and…

  …This was a moment that he always dreaded with a fear that was irrational, but no less real for knowing that he was in no danger and would survive the ordeal. His fingers were cold, stiff and painful with cramp as he clutched the bolt that held the door tightly closed in its jamb; a barrier between him and them. He continued to stand transfixed, heart thudding in his narrow chest with the ferocity of how he imagined a wild animal may slam against the bars of its cage in a futile bid to escape captivity.

  The sullen, leaden sky was full of boiling thunderheads that promised rain. And the chill wind cut through his cotton shirt and jeans. Still, he hesitated, putting off what had to be done. With bated breath he finally eased the steel bolt from its staple and pulled back the rough, planked door, pausing as several earwigs dropped writhing from the inside of the frame to scurry into the straw that covered the shed’s floor. He stepped over the threshold into the gloomy interior, almost gagging as the acidic smell of fresh droppings and the stale heat from confined bodies combined to sear his nostrils. Wings stretched, unfurled and flapped about him as the two dozen chickens became restless on their perches and in the laying boxes that were fitted to the sides of the hen house. With a trembling hand, he started to collect the eggs, placing each carefully in the large wicker basket that he cradled in the crook of his right arm. He hurried to complete the task as the fowl began to mill about, pecking at his legs and pulling at the laces of his Nikes with their blunted, stabbing, darting bea
ks.

  He hated chickens with a passion that was only equalled by his fear of them. Each morning he hoped that a fox might have successfully gained entry and torn the bony, feathered, brainless creatures apart. But the defences were formidable. His father had dug a three-foot deep trench around the structure, and then sunk galvanised wire mesh into it, before back-filling, packing down the soil and nailing the top of the vermin-proof net to the shed under wooden batons. Then of course there was Duke, their Staffordshire bull terrier; his night quarters a kennel in sight of the mangy birds’ shelter. No, his hope of the hens becoming fox food was no more than a pipe-dream.

  Halfway back to the house, he stopped, the basket of eggs still held tightly but forgotten in his hands. With his head cocked slightly to one side, he listened to the distant racing of a tractor’s engine, and knew that something was wrong.

  The west field dropped away steeply. It had to be negotiated with extreme caution and at the right angles. Cutting corners and trying to turn too sharply could result in machinery tipping over; it had happened before.

  The oily blue smoke was being blown towards him as he began walking down the partly ploughed field. He didn’t rush, being more curious than concerned as he topped the brow and saw the green John Deere on its side, bellowing mechanically, analogous in his mind to a giant Jurassic beast lying mortally injured, unable to regain its feet.