A Deadly Compulsion

by Michael Kerr

JIM knocked at the door, took a step back and waited. It was six-forty-five a.m. He had been given Parfitt’s address by Clem Nash, who’d been on duty when Jim called in at police headquarters. Clem had been introduced to him by Laura on his previous visit, and the young DC gave up his colleague’s address with little reluctance, although he wondered why the American couldn’t wait, pointing out that Hugh would be in at eight o’ clock.

  “He’s away on holiday,” a harsh voice called out as Jim once more rapped on the door with his knuckles. He turned and was faced by an elderly woman. She was standing at the partly open door of the next flat, her blue-rinsed hair in rollers, and a large ginger cat gripped to her matronly breasts, claws tearing at the quilted housecoat she wore as it tried to escape her grasp.

  “I said, Mr Parfitt is away, young man. He won’t be back for a fortnight.”

  “When did you last see him?” Jim asked, not moving towards the old woman, sure that she would shut the door in his face if he approached her.

  “Teatime, yesterday. And who might be asking?”

  “I’m a friend, Jim Elliott. I’m up from London on business and just called on the off chance that Hugh might be in.”

  “American, are you?” she said with a derisive edge to her voice, before coughing wetly to clear lungs that were as smoked as kippers, due to sixty years of being addicted to unfiltered cigarettes.

  “That’s right,” Jim said, forcing a smile to cover his mild revulsion at the liquid sound of phlegm being brought up and then swallowed. “Do you know Hugh well?”

  “No. He keeps pretty much to himself. In fact he’s hardly here at all. Just drops by to collect his mail. He very rarely stays over.”

  “Do you happen to know where he’s gone?”

  “As a matter of fact, yes, I do. Florida. Is that where you hail from?”

  “Er, no, I was born and raised in Arizona, Mrs...”

  “Harriman...Nancy Harriman.”

  “Well, thanks for your help, Mrs Harriman. I’ll give him a call when he gets back.”

  “You’d have more chance writing. Do you want me to give him a message?”

  “No need, it’s nothing urgent,” Jim said, walking past her towards the stairs, stifling a chuckle as the displeased cat finally wrenched free from her liver-spotted hands, scrambled over her shoulder and went down her back, growling as it leapt to the floor at a dead run and vanished along the hallway.

  “Now look what you’ve done! You’ve frightened poor Marmalade,” Nancy shouted after him, before slamming her door shut.

  Jim found a small back street café adjacent to the River Ouse, ordered black coffee and asked to borrow the establishment’s copy of the Yellow Pages. The sallow-faced Italian waiter seemed disturbed at being asked for something that was not on the menu, and could not therefore be charged for, but returned with the bulky directory and placed it before Jim as though it were a tagliatelle or spaghetti dish, before retreating to the rear of the cafe. Thumbing through the grimy, out of date tome, Jim found the section he needed, but was faced with little choice. There were very few private investigators in the York area. He plumped for one situated nearby which was advertised as being a specialist in missing persons, or traces as Jim called them.

  It was a one man outfit with a seedy office located over an antiquarian book shop on Micklegate. Threadbare carpet led up a narrow stairwell onto an equally narrow landing. The black lettering on the cracked, frosted glass panel of the solitary door read, Talbot Investigations. Jim could imagine the interior of the office to be a ‘Mike Hammer’ scene of worn furnishings; a picture of hand to mouth existence bordering on insolvency.

  “Yeah, come on in, it’s open,” a stony voice called out after Jim had tapped lightly on the glass.

  The office was almost exactly as Jim had envisaged it would be; dowdy and functional, but not what he would deem inspiring to any prospective client. The PI – who in the book was advertised as being an ex-police Detective Inspector with over thirty years experience – was pouring boiling water into a mug.

  “You’re an early bird,” Leo Talbot said, giving Jim what appeared to be a cursory glance, but which Jim recognised as being a professional once over that took in more than the average person would see in a month. “Coffee?”

  Jim nodded. “Black, no sugar.”

  “Take a seat and tell me what you need doing that you can’t handle yourself,” Leo said, dropping a sweetener into his own stained mug and stirring the brew vigorously.

  Jim immediately felt that he had made a good choice. The guy had an aura of hard-assed capability. He was mid-fifties, with short, steel-grey hair and a checkerboard-lined face that was testament to a wealth of experience and a lifetime of incident. He was bulky, maybe five-ten, but looked strong and able. His eyes were sharp and clear, studying Jim as he placed the steaming mugs on the cluttered desktop. Jim had the unsettling feeling that his life had been read like an open book by the down-at-heel-looking ex-cop. As the PI sat and stared across at him with raised eyebrows, waiting to be given details, Jim couldn’t help but notice his striking resemblance to the late American actor, Richard Boone, who had, among many parts, starred as Paladin in the old TV western series Have Gun Will Travel. His laconic, laid-back attitude and even the husky voice reinforced the illusion. It was only the Yorkshire accent that broke the spell.

  “I need background on a serving cop. Everything you can dig up, and then some. And I need it yesterday. Can you do that for me?” Jim said.

  “Yank, eh?” Leo said, turning away from a dusty, dented and squeaking desk fan – blades sluggishly cutting through the warm air – and sheltering the flame of his lighter from it as he fired up a cigarette, prior to reaching for a pencil and notepad.

  “Yeah, but I’ll be paying up front in sterling, not bucks.”

  “As an ex-copper myself, I’d need a good reason to start digging around in a serving officer’s life? Is he in trouble?”

  “This cop is trouble. I haven’t time to feed you crap. His name is Hugh Parfitt, a local DS. And there’s every possibility that he’s a serial killer who has at least one woman stashed away in the York area. We’re talking about life or death here, with no bullshit exaggeration.”

  “What’s your involvement?” Leo said, talking through a haze of cigarette smoke that the crippled fan was having trouble dispersing.

  Jim gave the PI a thumbnail sketch of the case, of his connection, and of his fear for Laura’s life.

  “Fuck me!” Leo said. “This would make a good movie; retired FBI profiler helping to nail a serial killer in the UK.”

  “So you’ll join the cast, uh?”

  “Yeah. Give me a bell in about an hour, and I should have some basic details on Parfitt.”

  Jim took five twenty pound notes from his wallet and handed them across the desk. “Will that hold you till I can get to an ATM?”

  “No sweat. We’ll worry about fees when the lady… or ladies are safe.”

  Jim shook the gumshoe’s hand and left, already feeling better for having Leo Talbot on the case.

  Parking the Cherokee in an official slot outside the police station, Jim went in and asked the cop at the counter if he could speak to Clem Nash.

  Clem came through to the foyer, a worried man with a frown on his flushed face. “Over there,” he said, pointing towards a green vinyl-covered bench seat that ran the length of the rear wall. “You’d better tell me what the hell is going on, Mr Elliott?”

  They sat out of earshot of the uniformed sergeant and WPC who were manning the front desk. “Hugh is upstairs,” Clem said. And he seemed less than happy when I told him that you were looking for him.”

  “Clem, listen to me for sixty seconds with an open mind,” Jim said. “The Tacker is a cop, and the cop is Parfitt. He’s abducted Laura. I have no solid proof, yet, but it’s him for sure. Will you work with me on this?”

  Clem was speechless. He replayed what the Yank had said, running it through his mind and evaluating the i
mplications of what he had just been told. He had little time for Parfitt; thought that he was a smug bastard, but found it impossible to imagine Hugh as a psycho serial killer.

  “Convince me,” he said to Jim after a long pause. “Give me something to stop me thinking that you’re dealing with a short deck.”

  “Okay,” Jim began; knowing that how he sold this to the young cop could prove critical in saving Laura’s life – if she was still alive – and nailing Parfitt. “Only a cop could have known to plant that rope on a likely suspect in the area that was targeted. And it was Hugh that came up with Cox...so he did it. Also, Laura got Larry Hannigan over in odontology to do a comparison between teeth impressions in a partly eaten pork pie that she had got somewhere yesterday when she went to lunch, and the bite marks on two of the dead girls. They were a match, so―”

  “Holy shit!” Clem said. “The boss went for a pub lunch with Hugh yesterday.”

  Jim looked on as an expression of stunned amazement settled into one of growing acceptance on the DC’s face. He said nothing more, just waited for Clem to assimilate what he had been told.

  After a long pause. “What do you want me to do?” Clem said.

  “Nothing yet, I don’t want him spooked. If he thinks that we’re on to him, then we might never see Laura again. I want him to feel snug as a bug in a rug. I need to see him, and convince him that he’s not under suspicion.”

  Clem waved to the desk sergeant, who hit the button that unlocked the door to allow them through into the station proper. Upstairs in the squad room, Hugh was busily wading through computer printouts. Jim noted the dark smudges under his eyes, which contrasted sharply with his paler than usual complexion. He also wondered what had caused the need for the large plaster taped to his cheek.

  “Jim,” Hugh said, rising, pushing the papers to one side and offering his hand. “Good to see you, again. Where’s the boss?”

  Jim shook his hand with false enthusiasm, reached into his pocket and withdrew the note from the cottage and handed it to the DS. “I was hoping you might know, Hugh. Read this. She’s done a runner, and I haven’t got a clue where to start looking for her.”

  “Why would she do this?” Hugh said, shaking his head in measured, mock surprise as he read the note that he had dictated just a few hours’ earlier.

  “God knows. She’s still fragile. She hides it well, but hasn’t been able to come to terms with her daughter’s death. She’s been on the edge since it happened, holding herself together with little more than spit. I think that this case; the murder of these girls, has put her back to square one. There’s a chance that she’ll do something stupid if I don’t find her.”

  Hugh’s shoulders slumped and he manufactured a suitably concerned expression. “She seemed fine yesterday, Jim. Where do you intend to start looking? I want to help.”

  “Thanks, Hugh, I appreciate that. But I think she’ll have headed back down south. London is her home ground. I’ll make some phone calls, but I doubt it will do any good. Knowing Laura, she’ll have found somewhere to be alone, to feed on her low self esteem and wallow in the guilt that she’ll be feeling for running away from responsibility. Her depression will have probably put her back on the bottle. I’ll stay at her place tonight, and then head back down south in the morning.”

  Hugh placed his hand firmly on Jim’s shoulder. “Jim, if there’s anything that I can do...anything at all. I don’t just work with Laura, we’re a team. And I care for her a lot.”

  “I realise that, Hugh,” Jim said. “If I get lucky, then you’ll be the first to know. That’s a promise.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CLEM accompanied Jim back down to the main entrance of the station. They took the stairs instead of the lift and stopped on the first floor landing to talk. Jim gave Clem his mobile phone number.

  “Hugh seemed genuinely concerned,” Clem said. “And he thinks the world of the boss. Are you sure that―?”

  “Forget that he’s a cop, Clem,” Jim said. “People from all walks of life can be killers. Look at that Manchester doctor, Shipman. They still don’t know how many patients he murdered. The tally was up in the hundreds. But until he was caught he was just a nonentity; a low-profile, middle-aged GP. No one knew that he was playing God and taking life as and when he saw fit. Don’t look for rationality or sound reasons for these sickos’ actions. Just try to accept that they are totally unpredictable, and that the Hugh who you think you know is just a veneer that covers a damaged, malformed personality. He’s driven by sexual and homicidal lust that in the right conditions will make you nothing more than prey. Don’t underestimate him. Killing you would be as easy for him to do as standing on a bug.”

  Before going back upstairs to keep a close eye on Hugh, and still finding it hard to imagine him as the Tacker, even with evidence that seemed irrefutable, Clem went into the gents, took a leak and rinsed his face with cold water. He let what Jim Elliott had told him rattle around his brain, and tried to make sense of it. The American had said that Hugh was basically two people, and that the side of him that was a savage ritual murderer would not hesitate to kill anyone that threatened his freedom.

  A shiver ran up the length of Clem’s spine as he re-entered the incident room and saw Hugh sitting at his desk, drinking coffee and ostensibly looking through printouts that might lead to the killer.

  “You and Elliott buddies?” Hugh asked Clem.

  “I don’t have buddies,” Clem said with a straight face. “And if I had, a full of shit Yank profiler wouldn’t make it to my Christmas card list.”

  Jim left the Cherokee in the NCP car park next to the Railway Museum. Rented a Sierra from Herz; a precaution in case he had to tail Hugh, who would recognise the 4x4 on sight. He then gave Leo Talbot a call on the off chance that the PI had made some headway, not expecting to be given information that slotted neatly into place and confirmed his worst fears with chilling clarity.

  When Jim had gone, Leo settled in front of the one piece of equipment in his office that was state-of-the-art, and that he was an expert user of. His PC saved much time and shoe leather, reaching out for him to garner information in minutes, that without the technology would have taken many hours or even days to procure; though Leo preferred fieldwork, which on some cases was still the only way to operate. Matrimonial and surveillance for insurance fraud and the like – with the additional requirement of photographic or video evidence – essentially involved long hours’ of staking people out, sometimes for days, and occasionally even weeks or months. But nearly all background assignments could be done with his arse firmly seated in front of his desktop. He could hack into agencies and extract information, be it within or outside the public domain.

  The registrar’s and council offices databases gave up everything that he initially needed on Hugh Parfitt; a potted history.

  Hugh had been born to Samuel Parfitt, a farmer, and Jennifer Parfitt née Bowman. Their address had been Westwood Manor Farm, Escrick. Samuel had died in ’93, and Jennifer just five years later, when Hugh was nineteen. A little more digging showed that neither of Hugh’s parents had died from natural causes. Samuel had been crushed under a tractor, and Jennifer had been killed in a car crash that made the front pages of the local rags, due to her being in a car with a married man, who also happened to be a local councillor and high profile businessman in the area. An interesting find was that Hugh paid council tax on two addresses: a city centre flat, and also the family farm that he still owned.

  The phone rang and Leo picked up, not surprised that it was the American on the line.

  “Leo?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Anything?”

  “A little. Well, more than a little. Are you close by?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Call in. I’ll have some fresh coffee brewed.”

  “I’ll be with you in ten minutes,” Jim said, ending the call and starting up the Sierra.

  Clem found it impossible to engage Hugh in conversatio
n, and was glad of his own reputation for being uncommunicative and never using two words when one would suffice. His laconism was coming to his aid.

  Hugh got up, unrolled his shirt sleeves, buttoned the cuffs and slipped his jacket on. “I’ve got to go to the bank, Clem,” he said. “Then I might just call in at the hospital and have my face looked at,” he added, fingering the Elastoplast. “I turned around too quick and smacked it on the edge of a kitchen cupboard I’d left open. I think I could have fractured my cheekbone.”

  “Will you be coming back?” Clem asked him in as casual and not give a damn tone as he could muster.

  “I’ll give you a bell if I’m not going to. I feel crap, so I might just call it a day.”

  As Hugh left the station, Clem followed at what he hoped was a safe distance, knowing that he could not afford to be seen and arouse suspicion.

  Across town, Jim had parked the car. He was jogging down Micklegate to Leo’s office, hardly able to contain himself from breaking into a dead run. He had felt urgency many times in his former career, but only once that bordered on the near panic he felt now. He vividly remembered the capture of the Blue Ridge Killer, and the race to save his last victim, who they knew had been buried alive in the mountains of western Virginia.

  Lloyd Purvis had been waylaying and raping females at various points along the Blue Ridge Parkway for over four years. He was a strange individual, who had an aversion to blood and death that was almost as strong as his dark compulsion to obtain sex from unwilling strangers.

  Married with two teenage boys, Lloyd was a garage owner and lay preacher; a popular guy in Laurelburg, which was a small township six miles west of Culpeper; a town that would later be widely known as being the location where the late actor Christopher Reeve suffered the catastrophic riding accident in ’95, that was to paralyse and confine him to a wheelchair for the rest of his life.

  Lloyd was forty-five, rugged and dependable looking, with honest open features and a winning smile. Had his wife, Melinda, seen fit to make out with him more than once a month, or had shown more response to his lovemaking than he would have expected from screwing a knothole in a plank of ponderosa pine, then he most likely would not have resorted to the actions that ultimately led to his being a serial killer, high on the FBI’s most wanted list.