by Michael Kerr
“You got any leads on this scumbag who the papers are calling the Wolf?” Reg said, looking from Tom to Matt.
“We’ve got leads that don’t take us to his door, yet,” Matt said. “Why, Reg, have you been looking at the case?”
“I like to keep the grey cells sparking. I look at all the ongoing murder cases and try to put myself in the position of still being part of the investigating team.”
“And what do you make of this one?” Tom asked the old man, who he had always respected as being a good, honest and hardworking officer.
“That the hook is this tattoo angle.”
“It’s one line of enquiry,” Matt said. “We’ve had officers door-stepping every parlour and studio. So far we haven’t had a hit.”
“A little bird told me that the skin samples you recovered have got nothing but highly individual Celtic stuff on them.”
“You hear a lot for a postman, Reg,” Tom said.
“I might just waltz round delivering the internal mail these days, Tom, but that doesn’t mean that I’ve forgotten everything I learned. You don’t stop being a cop just because they retire you. You still think like one.”
“What would you do, Reg?” Matt said.
“He has a thing for redheads who sell their favours. Get a female cop to go in any tattooists that aren’t above suspicion. She can be wired with backup nearby, and show interest in having an original Celtic skin-pic. Something specifically similar to one that was done on the burned vic.”
Matt liked it. Beth had focused his mind on the killer being a tattoo artist. They were still looking at Marsha Freeman’s video tapes and computer records, and eliminating punters who used, or were used by her. But he didn’t see it leading anywhere. Reg was on the mark with his assessment and gut feeling.
“I better get going,” Reg said. “I don’t want to be late for my coffee break.” He fished in his satchel and came up with a white banker envelope. “Just the one for you, Matt. Marked personal.”
Matt did not get personal mail at the Yard. When Reg had left, he rummaged in a filing cabinet and found a pair of cellophane gloves. Slipped them on and carefully slit the envelope open with a paperknife and withdrew a folded sheet of notepaper.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Lucas fed and watered Julie. Gave her cold leftovers of a Chinese take away he had brought home the night before, and a plastic tumbler full of milk that was on the turn.
Sitting naked and cross-legged on the floor of the loft, he watched her pick up the congealed lumps of sweet and sour sauce-coated chicken and lumpy egg fried rice with her fingers. She knew that he only gave her five or six minutes to finish up before removing the meal.
This black plastic-lined roof space was his playground. Michael Jackson had had Neverland. Elvis had had Graceland. Los Angeles, Orlando, Tokyo and Paris had Disney parks. And he had Wolfland: a place where his dreams really did come true. It was apart from the world outside it. A chamber in which he could carry out any depraved act that his heart desired and his mind conjured up. And no one knew of its existence, apart from him and his current prisoner. Awesome! While life moved by like a river just yards from him, he could secretly perform any atrocity with total immunity.
Her skin had a buttermilk complexion. She was well formed and of pleasing proportions, although her left breast was if anything slightly larger than the right one. No one was physically faultless. Symmetry did not exist in nature. There were always imperfections to mar true beauty; one ear or eye higher…or lower than the other. Two halves of anything was never identical. The blueprint of life was second-rate with built-in flaws. If it was perfect, then there would be no abnormalities, no cancers, and no ageing. Sad fact was that everything was beginning to deteriorate from the moment it popped out of its mother’s belly, hatched from an egg, or germinated from a seed. If life was the product of some almighty architect, then He had done a piss-poor job. And the materials he’d used were substandard. Flesh and blood and fragile organs were not robust enough. They fell prey to so many diverse diseases as they aged and began to malfunction. Seemed a waste of brain power. What was the point of learning and growing, when by the time you had started to become wise, the rug got pulled? In the main, people worked and slept and idled away their pointless existence without seeming to grab life by the short and curlies and live it to the full. He was different. Knew that all that mattered was the pursuit of personal pleasure at any expense. What he did was foreshorten that which was already decaying with every breath. How could killing someone who was already under nature’s sentence of death be a crime? It was a topsy-turvy world, but an exciting one that he was glad to be a fleeting part of.
Julie pushed the paper plate away and sucked the grease and sauce from the fingers of her uninjured hand. The finger that he had removed the nail from was still pounding in time with her heartbeat. And she kept accidentally banging it, causing fresh waves of pain to make her feel nauseous. What else would he do to her? She was just his plaything. An object to amuse himself with. How many others had suffered at his hands? She had to somehow survive the ordeal. Could not entertain and sustain the thought of being murdered in this nightmare room.
He took the paper plate away, only to return soon after with a newspaper and a Polaroid camera.
He was aroused. Julie could not avert her eyes from the navy-blue ink bands of circular knotwork around his large, turgid member.
Lucas handed her the newspaper. “Hold it up in front of yourself, open your legs, and look suitably scared,” he said.
That was easy. She was absolutely fucking terrified.
“Lower it a little. I want a nice clear view of your tits, Julie. And stop shaking. It needs to be in focus.
She lowered the tabloid. Somehow willed her hands to stop trembling, and saw twin red suns as the flash burned into her eyes.
Lucas removed the photograph, tore the backing from it and watched as it developed. Perfect. She looked the vulnerable and cowed creature that she was. He put the camera down, retrieved the newspaper and tossed it aside. Shuffled across the plastic on his knees and backhanded her hard across the face, causing her to fall back with her legs folded beneath her. He moved forward and was in her in seconds, thrusting and making a low, keening sound.
The noise he made froze her blood. She clamped her eyes shut and accepted him passively at first, until a thought crossed her mind. She needed to respond, to pleasure him; not just be a warm socket for him to plug his hard-on into. She began to move; to grind against him and moan. Disentangled her legs and locked her heels around the top of his thighs and grimaced as though wracked by pleasure. She reached down, underneath them, and cupped his testicles as she grazed his chin with her teeth. He quickened his pace, and she tightened her pelvic muscles to exert pressure on his pulsing cock.
“Yes...Yes!” she cried, and he bellowed like a beast in reply, jerked spastically, and then became still, rigid, his muscles tensed and hard. She squeezed his heavy scrotum, wanting to twist it and crush his balls, but not daring to, knowing that he might enjoy the pain, and that even if she could temporarily incapacitate him, without a key to remove the cuff from her ankle it would be a suicidal ploy.
Lucas drew away from her and collapsed onto his back. Sweat filmed his body, and he felt fully spent and serene. He was surprised that she had become so animated. You couldn’t outguess women. He looked across at her. She was laid with her knees bent and legs spread. Her breasts heaved as she panted. There was no self consciousness on her part. She was becoming used to them being together without clothing or the need to be coy. Before long she would be totally subjugated; his in every sense, and happy to be free of the constrictions and demands that life put upon people. He had liberated her from the drudgery of dull routine. He knew that she was scared, but a certain level of fear was intoxicating. She was constantly in the same frame of mind that a first-time parachutist must experience before leaping out of an aircraft. That she had been unable to contain her desire for h
im was invigorating. He went to her again, sat astride her with his limp penis between her breasts. She took him into her mouth. Used her lips and tongue to bring him back to full erection. He closed his eyes and fondled her as she brought him to a second explosive climax.
He decided to bestow on this one a measure of humanity. He was capable of being kind. And she was not a surrogate for his mother. He removed the cheap red wig from her head. She gasped as the adhesive tape ripped free.
“Better?” he said.
She nodded. “Yes, Wolf. Thank you. It was hot and itchy.”
“That’s not all that was hot and itchy, was it?”
She felt herself redden. “No. I needed that,” she lied.
He reached behind him and ran his fingers through her wet cleft. “Then we shall have to do it often. Would you like to take a shower or soak in a hot bath?”
“Please.”
“Which?”
“I’d love a bath.”
“Then so be it. I’m not going to blindfold you. You’ve probably worked out that you are in a specially adapted loft, right?”
“I guessed as much.”
“We’ll go down to the bathroom. You will be on trust, Julie. Behave and you will enjoy more freedom as time passes. Abuse my faith in you, and you’ll never see outside this loft again...ever. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Wolf.”
He believed her. Although having never fully trusted anyone in his entire life, he would hold on to the thought that she might be too smart for her own good. If she disappointed him, then her time with him would be hell on earth. He had once had a puppy and loved it, and was repaid by it sinking its teeth into him for no reason. That it had bitten the hand that fed it was unforgivable. He had taken it to some wasteland, cut its paws off with garden shears and watched as it died a very noisy and bloody death.
Unshackled, Julie followed him down the ladder to the landing. He showed her into the bathroom. She looked at the frosted and whitewashed glass window.
“It’s double glazed and locked, Julie,” he said in the way a tour guide might point out a feature in a stately home. “I shall give you a few minutes privacy to use the toilet. Do not leave the bathroom or shut the door. Okay?”
She nodded.
“And you will find that there are nail scissors and safety razors in the top drawer of the cabinet. Nothing suitable to inflict mortal injuries to me with. Just use your head and don’t be tempted to do anything that would spoil everything.”
Spoil everything! Was he mad? Yes, that was the problem. She had been abducted by a raving lunatic.
She used the toilet. It was a luxury. Ran the bath and noted that the water was hot, but not hot enough to scald him with. Looked for bleach. There was none. There was not even a fresh air spray or any other kind of aerosol that she might have been able to squirt in his eyes. And even if there had been, she did not believe that she would have risked employing it. The more compliant she was, the more likely that a single moment would present itself when the odds of her escaping were worth taking.
Finding a bottle of Radox, she poured some of it into the bathwater and climbed in. A little of the built-up tension melted away. She decided that she had time. He seemed to want her alive, to use her to tattoo and fuck. She had to be more than just a body to him. She thought that his defences were weakening. He was calling her Julie instead of bitch. And this measure of freedom was a step in the right direction. Could she hope that he might become infatuated with her? No. To expect any mercy from him would be false optimism. She had to keep in mind that he was a self-confessed killer, and that he could never let her go because she had seen him.
She jerked up and coughed out a hot stream of the juniper-scented water. Gagged and retched against the liquid that had entered her mouth and nostrils to flood her throat. She had dozed off and sunk below the surface. Stupid cow! Almost drowned and robbed Wolfie of his pleasure.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Lucas said, rushing into the steam-filled room.
“I...I fell asleep,” she rasped, wiping strings of frothy spittle from her mouth.
Lucas grinned. She was like a little girl. His little girl. He leant forward and planted a kiss on her forehead.
“Come on,” he said, helping her up. “Let’s get you dried, and then we’ll have a nice cup of coffee.”
He was feeling better than he had for a long, long time. Maybe the best he had ever felt. The photograph and fingernail were on their way to Barnes by express delivery. That would give the cop something to think about. He had done a check on the DI. Logged on the ’net and pulled up several hits on Detective Inspector Matt Barnes. He was a manhunter; some kind of specialist at winkling out serial killers. Newspaper articles made him out to be a Supercop; a British answer to the fictional Dirty Harry. He got things done, and was not above putting himself in the firing line. He had been in at the kill of at least two ritual murderers, and had almost died in a shooting in Finchley last year. By all accounts he and other cops were protecting a grass. A psycho hitman had whacked the snitch and all the coppers apart from Barnes, who had taken two slugs himself but survived and was instrumental in hunting down the killer.
Lucas nodded to himself. He had seen the steel in Barnes’s eyes that day at the Natural History Museum. Certain individuals, including himself, exuded a propensity to meet the worst scenarios imaginable without flinching. Barnes was dangerous, which was a challenge. He wanted to humble him. Cause him aggravation and illustrate graphically that the SCU was not such a big deal. No one wins them all. He was better than anyone that the hotshot cop had come up against. Maybe it would be fun to jerk him around for a while.
Matt opened the folded sheet and saw the fingernail taped to the foot of it. The blood was dark and dry. Not fresh. He removed the loose Polaroid photograph and studied it. The woman was posed, looked to be petrified, and was holding up a copy of The Sun. He could see the date. It was yesterday’s. He passed the photo to Tom and read the separate note that had been produced on a computer in caps:
BARNES,
HOW’S THIS FOR AN ATTENTION-GETTER, EH?
JULIE IS JUST FINE, AND MIGHT STAY THAT WAY
IF YOU COME THROUGH WITH MY MONEY.
I’VE READ ALL ABOUT YOU. YOU THINK
YOU CAN SAVE THE WORLD, BUT ALAS
YOU CAN’T. IT’S A LOST CAUSE, PAL.
I’LL GIVE YOU A BELL SOON, SO HAVE THE
CASH AND MY RING READY TO GO.
WOLF.
Matt passed the note to Tom and took the photograph back. Studied it carefully for clues that might give some pointers to where the woman was being held. There was nothing. Julie was sitting on what appeared to be black plastic, and the backdrop was the same. Just a myriad points of reflected flashlight glinted like diamonds on the shiny Delphic surfaces. There was absolutely nothing else in the shot to give the slightest intimation of her whereabouts.
“He’s getting off on involving us,” Tom said. “I’ll get a DNA profile worked up on this nail, and have a comparison made with samples from Julie’s home.”
“The callous bastard,” Matt said, looking at the photo again, and the bandaged finger curling round the edge of the newspaper. “We’ll get nothing from the note paper, tape or envelope, it’ll all be generic. He isn’t going to make it easy for us.”
Tom ran fingers through his rapidly thinning hair. “Maybe not. But everyone makes mistakes. We’ll stick to procedure and hope that he isn’t as clever as he’d like us to believe.”
“If he was clever, he wouldn’t be interacting with us. His conceit is his worst enemy. He’s like all homicidal sociopaths; doesn’t give us enough credit.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
He decided to give it twenty-four hours and then phone Barnes and send him on a fool’s errand. There was no way he would let them follow the money to him. They would employ all the tricks of their sneaky trade to lift him, to no avail. They may have the technology, but that wouldn’t help them. He
was just playing with them.
Three punters came into the studio that day. One retard wanted a dotted line tattooed around his neck with the illustration of a pair of scissors and the instructions: ‘cut here’. He had told him to fuck off. He was an artist, and wouldn’t demean himself by doing inane work. The second person to walk in off the street was an old biker wearing full leathers. He had a grey, nicotine-stained walrus moustache, wore his yellow-white hair drawn back and fixed in a single thick braid that hung down to the middle of his back, and had the look of someone who had been born for trouble, though not in the same league as Lucas.
“You did some good work on a coupla friends of mine, man,” the ageing Hell’s Angel said. “I want something original on the backs of my hands.”
Lucas showed him some drawings from one of the portfolios he kept on a shelf at the back of the studio. Garth Harmon, as the burly biker introduced himself, selected two different Celtic circle designs, and settled in the chair for Lucas to reproduce them on his hands. With one completed, Lucas made an appointment for Garth to return the following week.
The third prospective customer to breeze in was a woman in her forties. She had a Mohican haircut, dyed green. The shaven sides of her skull were tattooed with simple stars. She had at least ten silver rings in each ear, and a large stud in her tongue that caused her to lisp. She was slim and angular. Looked twenty from the neck down, but her lined face appeared unused to smiling. She wore a short top and hipster cargo jeans that left her flat stomach bare to display the piercing in her navel. She was an over-the-hill punk, refusing to let the passage of time compromise her credo, and would not have been out of place on the pillion of Garth the Biker’s Harley.