A Deadly Compulsion

by Michael Kerr

  His father was at the far side of the tractor, pinned by it, with only his head and shoulders protruding from under the cab. He appeared to be flattened into the soft ruts of earth; just a partly buried alabaster bust, covered in a mixture of damp soil and blood.

  “Don’t ju…just fucking stand there, boy, get help,” his father wheezed, bright crimson bubbles popping from his grey lips with every rasping word.

  He looked down at the eggs. They were a uniform light coffee-brown. Some had pieces of straw stuck to them. Others were smeared with specks of blood, and small downy feathers that curled and quivered in the wind; a few escaping to spiral up fleetingly into the light rain, only to be beaten back down, sodden and limp.

  “Die...Die...Please die!” he murmured, keeping his eyes on the eggs, as though they might magically disappear if he let his gaze drift away from them for even a second. He tuned out his father’s frantic, weakening, pleading voice, which had at first held anger, but was now a begging, sobbing whine that both amused and pleased him. The droning voice began to sound like the television in the house did, as he lay in his bed at night. It was just an unintelligible and faraway background noise.

  A furtive glance showed that his dad – who now seemed a stranger to him – was turning blue in the face. He was no longer making demands. His eyes had rolled back in their sockets and were oblivious to the raindrops that bounced off their red-veined surfaces.

  He waited until the liquid breathing finally stopped, and then walked slowly across and knelt down beside the still figure, satisfying himself that it was lifeless before directing a gob of spittle onto the corpse’s forehead.

  Humming tunelessly, he walked back up the hill to the house, around to the rear, where he removed his clay-caked trainers at the kitchen door, entered and placed the eggs in boxes and then filled the kettle. He was suddenly very thirsty, in need of a cup of tea. This, he mused, was without any question or doubt at all the very best day of his life. The fat, no-good, foul-smelling drunkard would never lay into him with his belt again, or strike his mother, or pull her by her corn-blonde hair, to cause her china-blue eyes to shed tears of fear and pain. The old bastard would never do anything ever again, apart from rot under and contaminate the earth, where his now cooling body belonged.

  He was almost thirteen, and his mother was not yet thirty, having had him when she was just sixteen. He recalled that there had been little love or even affection between his parents. His father had been many years older than his mother, and treated her as almost a slave on the farm. All her love had been directed towards him.

  As he sat at the kitchen table, he brought to mind the first time that their love had transcended normal boundaries. His mother had been bathing him in the old, discoloured cast-iron bath, sponging his back with hot, soapy water. It was then that his penis broke the surface, bigger and stiffer than he had ever seen it before; a pink periscope rising from a submerged submarine.

  “Let me see, sweetheart,” his mother had said as, too late, he tried to cover it with his hands and a thick drift of suds. He was eleven, and she touched and caressed him in a way that made him feel as weak as jelly; boneless and yet wonderfully excited. She kissed him...down there; put her mouth over him and caused almost unbearable sensations that made him moan aloud with pleasure. And just when he thought he might explode, she stopped, undressed and climbed into the tub with him.

  Since that bath time baptism, he and his mum had enjoyed sex regularly. It was their secret, she had said, and no one else – especially his father – must ever know about it.

  What had been a dislike for his ageing father quickly turned to smouldering hatred. When the old man was drunk, which was more often than not, he would beat his wife for the smallest imagined indiscretion, then aroused by the violence, take her to his bed.

  Lying in the next room, in the darkness, there was no way to blot out the shriek of rusted bedsprings rhythmically scraping together. He would cry himself to sleep, pillow over his head to dampen the noise, knowing exactly what was taking place and picturing his mother pinned to the mattress, enduring all that was being done to her. The loathing for his father had blossomed and grown like a black, thorny bush within him.

  After his father’s death, up until he was eighteen, everything was absolutely perfect. And then his mother met Tom Brannon – a local councillor – and brought their long-standing incestuous relationship to an abrupt end. He was devastated. He pleaded with her, threatened her, and even raped her. It broke his heart that she would want to abandon him. But what had been between them was over. She was infatuated with Brannon, his money and his shiny silver BMW.

  The crash had made the front pages of the local newspapers. Not least because the councillor had been driving with his trousers and underpants down to his thighs, and that the blonde who was with him was a local widow, not his wife. The car had left the road at speed and hit an unyielding brick wall, killing both occupants instantly as the engine block was pushed back to meld steel and flesh in uneasy union.

  Due to the fact that both driver and passenger had been drinking, and were believed to have been engaged in some lewd sexual act at the time of impact, the vehicle was only given a cursory check. Had it been inspected more thoroughly, then the loose coupling on the steering rack may have instigated further and more rigorous investigation.

  The coroner’s verdict of death by misadventure closed the door on what should have been a murder inquiry.

  He missed her so much, even though she had betrayed him and forsaken him for another. He loved her and hated her with equal zeal; his confused emotions torturing him and psychologically ripping him apart. He had killed her body and mind, destroyed her for spurning him, but still needed and wanted her. Somehow she must be made to pay an even higher price for the suffering that he had to endure because of her actions.

  With the untenable, gnawing need came the will. And with the will came the way to ease the crushing pain, and the ability to recreate her again...and again.

  Now, many years later, he sat in the gloom with just the flickering light from the television illuminating his naked body in stuttering, strobe-like relief. He stared at the screen, unblinking, glaring at the image of the presenter, hating the smug bitch as she spouted verbal diarrhoea through a mouth that could shift from flashing, pearly smile of insincerity to tight-lipped pseudo grief faster than a chameleon could change its colour. She, Trish Pearson, was showing photographs of the sluts he had disposed of. Photos of them smiling, fresh-faced and carefree. Photos that had been garnered from the walls, mantelpieces and sideboards of what had been their homes, to show uncaring viewers, who would forget the images as soon as the next item whisked them off to the latest act of terrorism, famine in some barren African cesspool, or bombarded them with the news of a six-year-old who was, thanks to sponsored walks and parachute jumps, now undergoing lifesaving surgery in Pittsburgh or Katmanfuckingdu. He had photographs; Polaroid’s of the bitches which were scattered at his feet. Frozen moments in time that showed how they had looked at various stages of his ministrations, and in the final poses he had left them in to be reclaimed.

  Pressing the mute button on the hand set, he watched the blonde talking head mime for a few seconds, then closed his eyes and replayed his latest exploit through his mind with more clarity than if it had been on DVD with surround sound. He was reliving it with perfect recall. Every moment flooding back as though it was just taking place.

  He had been standing in the recessed doorway, hidden by the night, black-on-black, hands thrust deep in pockets as he watched the teenagers entering and leaving The Wired Warehouse, a night-club adjacent to the silky, grey ribbon of the River Ouse. The water shimmered under reflected light from buildings that crowded both sides of its concrete and brick banks. Groups and couples came and went on foot and by taxi.

  He stiffened and pressed farther back as a lone figure clipped up the ill-lit side street that led to the brighter and more populated main thoroughfares. As she ne
ared him, he relaxed. She was a scrawny brunette, unsuitable and repugnant to him, not conforming to any of the strict requirements that he adhered to when selecting prey.

  It was almost midnight when the blonde appeared from the glowing rectangle of the club’s doorway, alone, to hurry along the pavement towards him, unsuspecting. As she passed, he stepped out and followed, overtaking her in three strides, to turn and stand in front of her. She stopped abruptly, startled, unknowingly only three feet away from his black Mondeo, which was parked at the kerb beside her. She looked at him quizzically, her blue eyes wide with apprehension. He smiled at her, before lashing out with his fist to hit her on the temple with enough force to stun and knock her to the ground. Moving quickly, he gripped her under the armpits and dragged her to the rear of the car. Within seconds he had bundled her into the boot and wrapped two-inch-wide duct tape around her head, covering her mouth but being careful not to obscure her nostrils and asphyxiate her. He also bound her wrists behind her back and her ankles together with the tape, before closing the lid and looking up and down the deserted street to ensure that no one had witnessed the abduction in progress.

  Back at the farmhouse, he carried her from the car to the barn, placed her on the ground and showed her the knife. He also held a piece of card in front of her to read. He had never spoken to any of his victims. Talk would individualise them and ruin the illusion. COMPLY OR DIE, the simple message in large block capital letters stated. It always worked, giving them false hope that made them more user-friendly. He preferred them to be compliant and malleable, not animated and rebellious.

  He cut the clothes from her, apart from the panties, which he removed carefully and put to one side after freeing her ankles. She watched him as he then undressed, her eyes following his every move. And then he began, working under the soft glow of a single hurricane lamp that hung from a nail driven into a sturdy oak post. He caressed her trembling body, exploring every curve and crevice, running his fingers through the shiny tresses of her hair, after first checking her pubic curls to confirm that she was a natural blonde.

  The only equipment that he needed lay on the earthen floor beside him: a Polaroid camera, pack of condoms, industrial staple gun and his knife, its long blade narrow from years of being honed to razor sharpness.

  It was over an hour later when he left the barn, walking back to the house with the coating of blood on his body a black sheen in the moonlight. Behind him, the girl swung gently from a rope in the darkness, bleeding out on to the soil that lay six inches beneath her still twitching body.

  Issuing a low moan, his consciousness snapped back to the present. He reached for the box of Kleenex on the arm of the chair, pulled a tissue free and wiped the warm, pooling liquid from his stomach, before collecting up the photographs and going upstairs to his bedroom. He placed the Polaroids in a drawer, on top of many pairs of panties, which were his treasured souvenirs of good times had. In the bathroom, he turned on the shower, whistling as he looked forward to the next hunt. His mother would keep paying for her sins. The grave had not saved her from his wrath. Each time he raped, mutilated and killed, it was her face, her shining fair hair, and her beseeching lapis lazuli eyes that were beneath him. It was her body that shook with fear, and her nasal screams that rewarded his efforts to make her suffer repeatedly for beguiling him with her charms, using him, and then fornicating with another.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  AT Heather Cullen’s funeral, the late girl’s mother was in a state of near collapse and had to be supported by her husband to stop her from actually falling down. Her red-rimmed eyes were riveted to the coffin that held her daughter’s body. Only now did she begin to accept that Heather was gone, and that her mortal remains were lying in the pitch-black confines of the polished wooden box that pallbearers were now lowering into the ground. Denial dissipated as the pine lid with its shiny brass plate and fittings vanished into the dank hole in the earth.

  Brenda Cullen was now a desolate husk, unrecognisable as the cheerful, outgoing woman she had been up until this travesty of all her dreams and expectations had so swiftly and forever blighted her existence. She still loved Ron, and felt a burden of guilt – on some inconsequential level – for drawing away from him and everything else that had seemed to matter so much. But now, like a sufferer of autism, she was somehow trapped in a world that she could not break free of; locked into a morbid state of mind that inhibited and prevented her from responding normally to her environment. The constant waves of grief that pounded her mind with relentless, increasing force had eroded her sanity with the same inevitability that the coastline acquiesced to the constant pummelling of the ocean. Brenda could not come to terms with the loss of her daughter. It was somehow wrong and unnatural that she should still be here, alive, when her little girl, who she had given birth to and nurtured, was gone. It was unacceptable to outlive her offspring; an abomination of all that was wholesome and normal. Heather had had so much to live for. She had been taking a degree in anthropology, and had been invited to join a team that were flying out to Brazil in just three weeks time to study the cultural contamination of an Indian tribe, who were only just emerging from hermetic jungle seclusion, to undoubtedly be transformed into westernised caricatures of their former selves.

  Brenda did not want to be alive and have to adjust to a world from which her child had been ripped from her so brutally. She could not contemplate a future now, and was incapable of and lacking the fibre necessary to overcome the all consuming anguish, and move forward. Her heartbreak was beyond reconciliation, as terminal as if she had been riddled with malignant tumours that could not be excised and did not respond to therapy.

  Ron functioned. He went through the motions and dealt with the loss in his own stolid way. Standing at the graveside, his lined face as impassive as scored concrete, he held his wife close and stared straight ahead, not once casting an eye on the gleaming casket; his remoteness somehow unhealthy and disconcerting.

  “Cold fish, eh, boss?” Hugh said, eyeing the bereaved prison officer with a calculating look, as though the man’s hard exterior somehow implied guilt.

  “No, Hugh,” Laura said, studying the man’s face and admiring his strength, knowing to a degree through personal experience how he must be feeling. “He’s just holding it all in, smothering it. If he didn’t, he would fall apart at the seams.”

  “He’s still a suspect though, isn’t he?” Hugh said.

  “Officially, yes. But he didn’t do it. I’d put my pension on it. He’s a casualty, Hugh. He didn’t torture, rape and kill his own daughter.”

  Ron was back on duty less than a week after Heather’s funeral. Brenda’s widowed sister, Margaret, had moved in for awhile and was running the house and trying to break through Brenda’s wall of grief, with no discernible success.

  Now, back on the landings, Ron had become monosyllabic. His colleagues were nervous around him, and had no idea what to say, knowing that platitudes were of no help. Most of them just let him know that if there was anything that they could do, he only had to ask.

  Ron was of the old school. He had joined the Prison Service back when many screws had been ex-forces and had swapped one uniform for another. It was a job that had provided quarters to live in, and a way of life that was still, to their minds, apart from Civvie Street. It had been a good service, with ranks, and a code of conduct and discipline for both cons and staff. In those days, the job had been clear-cut, black and white. Cons were not molly-coddled. They were expected to do as they were told, obey orders and do their ‘bird’. Being inside was rough, tough, and not for the faint-hearted. Prison was a world apart from a society that lived in comparative freedom outside the walls. The life was, in essence, fair but firm. If a con didn’t rock the boat, then he had nothing to worry about, from the staff. There was an invisible line that the majority of screws and cons did not cross. When they did, violence often resulted.

  Nowadays, Ron was a dinosaur; one of a dwindling number of older scre
ws that were nearing retirement and just counting down the months by way of pay days. Ron still believed in saying no, when it was called for, and did not back down to cons’ demands. The system had become one of escalating prisoners’ rights, and committees of inmates that met with management to discuss all conditions and restrictions, chipping away at the rules and regulations, continually hedging for more privileges. No one at the top seemed to realise that eventually you still had to say no, and that could, and in many instances did result in the cons reverting to type and kicking off. With lower manning levels and a more relaxed system, a lot of the younger screws, sadly, turned a blind eye to many breaches of acceptable behaviour.

  Ron remembered an old screw – back when he had first joined up and was under training at Armley Jail in Leeds – who gave him advice that had served him well throughout his career.

  “Listen lad,” George Parker had said. “Most cons are shit. They’re not in here for being honest, upright citizens. They’re in here doing bird because they cheat, rob, rape and kill people on the out. Most of them are recidivists who look on doing time as an acceptable risk. They might appear reasonable, but if they do it’s because they’re after something. Don’t ever start believing that they like you, because they don’t, they hate your fuckin guts. If you stand up to them they think that you’re a no good fuckin screw, and if you back down to them you’re a soft twat. Remember that some might be better than others, but they’re still just shit. Give them all they’re entitled to; no more, no less. And be fair but firm. Start off right or you’ll just make a rod for your own back. And leave the job at the gate, lad, don’t take it home with you, or you’ll end up divorced, an alcoholic, or both.”