Extinction

by Carol Anne Davis

Damn, was he really that obvious? There again, his landlord was a shrink.

  ‘I’d also like some more work.’

  ‘Wouldn’t we all!’

  ‘At least you’re paid well per hour,’ John said wearily. Personal trainers were ten-a-penny so he had to keep his charges low.

  ‘You could branch out a bit, maybe teach a course on healthy eating? Or the glycaemic index or whatever is the latest trend.’

  It was a good idea, John thought, as he walked, mini-gym strapped to his back, to meet his first client of the day. Hopefully, by the time that he’d been on that motivational weekend, he’d have come up with other plans of his own and found the confidence to follow them through, start to find his true potential. Maybe, in time, he’d become more like Adam and lead the perfect life.

  FOUR

  They’d had to draft in officers from neighbouring forces to investigate Hannah Reid’s murder, but everyone was working well and they already had several significant leads. Entering the Major Incident Room – or Murder Room as it was more colloquially known – Detective Superintendent Bill Winston spoke, in turn, to several of his inquiry team officers.

  Every relevant piece of information was being logged into their computerized investigation system. He watched with quiet satisfaction as his indexers typed industriously away, inputting the data, whilst a team of readers studied the incoming information and statements and identified which actions needed to be taken next. A dedicated exhibits officer was dealing with the cigarette ends, drinks bottles and other detritus taken from the woods, which might have been discarded by Hannah’s killer, could have traces of his DNA. They knew that the killer was a man as she’d had abrasions indicative of rape and sodomy, but unfortunately he’d worn a condom, was forensically aware. On the upside, even the most careful of murderers sometimes left a handkerchief behind after it fell out of their pocket, particularly if they were trying to roll a body down an uneven slope, wrestling with the undergrowth in a darkened wood.

  Bill Winston knew that having the right personnel was vital to this murder enquiry. And he had something that he’d had to work hard to convince the authorities that he needed – an undercover cop.

  Most of the violence that he’d investigated here in Weston had been relatively straightforward, usually involving one drunken or drugged male friend beating another. The police were called to certain streets, where drug addicts and alcoholics lived, again and again. Only the skill of the local surgeons prevented many of these stabbings from resulting in a murder charge: instead the culprit was charged with GBH. The few murders were equally straightforward, caused when one substance-abusing man fell out with his equally mad mate and kicked him to death.

  But everything pointed to the fact that Hannah hadn’t been killed by a friend or relative. She’d led a peaceful life, enjoyed good relationships with family members and hadn’t indulged in any risky behaviour. She was single, and her last three boyfriends had cast iron alibis. Her next-door neighbour had been able to give them masses of information about her social activities, as had the other women with whom she’d worked alongside. No, it was showing all of the hallmarks of a stranger murder, Category A.

  But the killer wasn’t a stranger now, at least not to the force. No, they thought they knew who he was, just had to prove it. One day, hopefully in the near future, he would arrest Hannah’s killer and see him brought to trial.

  FIVE

  It had been a trying eight weeks, what with the police constantly making new pleas to the public to help them catch Hannah Reid’s killer, but, at last, things were getting back to normal. He’d scrubbed the soft furnishings and carpet in his study, polished the furniture and successfully rid the room of that slightly sweet, decomposing scent. Two of his female clients had even commented on how spic and span the place was looking so he’d been careful not to do further housework – if the police came round, he wanted the place to look normal rather than deep-cleansed. Last night he’d deliberately left a couple of opened beer cans – his and John’s – on the coffee table, so that the place seemed more like a typical bachelor pad.

  That said, he had a hell of a lot less money than most bachelors in professional jobs. He’d lost heavily again at the casino last night and had done badly last month with spread betting. His late wife had often begged him to stop gambling, but where was the fun in that? He needed the excitement of the big win, the possibility that tonight could be the night when everyone else at the blackjack table was in awe of him. And what were the social options? He didn’t want to pick up a new girl every single night, not now that he’d turned forty, and propping up the bar with a male mate had never appealed to him. He also found spectator sport moronic and he was bored senseless by most modern theatre and films.

  He ideally needed a few more clients but it was hard persuading people to take the first step into psychotherapy. They saw asking for help as a weakness when it was really a strength. He’d tried to counter this with an advert in the local version of the Yellow Pages, emphasizing that everyone had the right to enjoy life despite having a difficult start.

  His own start had been beyond bad, with a heavy-drinking mother and a recently-imprisoned father; it was a textbook example of parental neglect. But he’d been fostered at six months by the Neaves, the couple who eventually adopted him before going on to have Nicholas, their biological son.

  Nicholas had quickly proven himself to be the good brother, the one who brought home stray animals and fed them, the child who was always given the class guinea pig to take home for the school holidays. Despite being two years younger, Nicholas had always completed his homework on time whereas he, Adam, copied from the brightest or most bribe-inducible kid in class. Fortunately he was more ideas-orientated than his more plodding contemporaries, had been able to play catch up before the exams.

  Nicholas – probably on account of being such a home-based bookworm – hadn’t started dating until he was seventeen, and had gone on to marry his first girlfriend, Jill. In contrast, he, Adam, had lost his virginity at twelve and had fucked hundreds of girls since then.

  There had been Mummy Neave, Daddy Neave and little Nicky Neave, the three musketeers, carved from the same altruistic stone, in thrall to the god of good causes. He’d been the outsider, hewn from a different flint, always on the periphery, looking in.

  What the hell – he liked who he was, wouldn’t change it. Having principles just held you back. He simply pretended that he had some, had been delighted to accept voluntary work at the bereavement centre because of the obvious perks. First, it made him look generous with his time and that would impress both his fellow colleagues in the psychology field and the general public. Second, it gave him a doorway to the world of the newly widowed, one of society’s most vulnerable groups. How many men had access to tranquillized, partnerless women? How many men would love to be in his handmade leather shoes?

  Adam flicked through his half-empty appointments book. His next client was Brandon Petrie, a sixteen-year-old schoolboy with ADHD, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. He was one of the easiest of his young patients to deal with now that he was on sustained medication which made him less jumpy and allowed him to concentrate on one task, or one concept, at a time. Brandon was highly intelligent and precocious so Adam quite enjoyed their sessions. The boy was like the son that he’d never had – and would never want to have. What was it about most people that made them think their DNA was so special? Why did they insist on further cluttering up an already overpopulated world? Ironically, Brandon, too, was adopted, though he’d been taken on at birth by his adoptive family. Many of his, Adam’s, clients, hadn’t been rescued from their biological parents until they were toddlers or even older, had endured years of abuse or neglect.

  He answered the door to the boy and waved to his mother who was parked at the end of the drive. She sped off and he said, ‘Come in, Brandon. Can I get you a soda?’ It was soda water which he served as the youth had to avoid soft drinks which were full
of additives. Research, admittedly controversial, had linked cola with obesity, mood swings and energy slumps so he was keen to keep Brandon on a purer diet, especially when his parents were paying him fifty pounds an hour.

  ‘No,’ Brandon said.

  ‘Remember what we talked about last time?’

  ‘No, thanks,’ Brandon corrected with the world-weary air of an old man.

  ‘Tea, then?’

  ‘No . . . no thanks.’

  ‘It’s like fake it until you make it, pal. Being polite keeps the oldsters happy. Save your battles for the big issues – don’t sweat the small stuff, as they say.’

  ‘Sometimes I just forget,’ Brandon said, throwing himself on the couch.

  ‘I used to forget too – but it gets easier with practice.’

  The kid looked really small on the settee, more like twelve rather than his actual sixteen. He’d been brought here straight from school so was still wearing his uniform, a dark-coloured outfit which made him look sallow and thin.

  ‘They’re all so small-minded,’ he muttered, picking up one of the new cushions and turning it over and over in his hands.

  ‘They are, but it’s easier to play the system than try to beat it. Just act nice and everyone around you will back off, leaving you alone with your thoughts.’

  ‘I wish I had a lock on my bedroom door.’

  ‘Hey, two years from now you could have your own place in a student pad at university.’

  ‘But my folks keep interrupting me!’

  ‘They’ve been scared because of the times that you’ve threatened to hurt yourself.’

  ‘It was only threats. I haven’t done it.’ He held out his thin arms, presumably to show that they were unscarred.

  ‘I know – but when you talk about throwing yourself out of the window if you don’t get your own way, your parents understandably fear the worst.’

  Brandon, he thought, was easy to counsel because he was a kindred spirit, a freedom-lover. The kid probably wished that he, Adam, was his father or at least his older brother. They were both much brighter than most of their contemporaries, a state of being that could lead to you being ostracized. They’d probably both been spawned by wild, hedonistic free spirits, only to be raised in safe but dull family groups.

  By the time that the teenager was collected by his over-anxious mother, he was comparatively mellow.

  ‘I don’t know what we’d do without you, Mr Neave,’ the woman said.

  ‘Call me Adam,’ he murmured pleasantly as he did every week. It didn’t hurt to be mildly flirtatious towards females who were paying his fees. Not that he’d ever want to take it further with her type: she looked frigid and as if she’d been born old.

  ‘Same time, same place?’ she asked, checking her woefully-empty diary.

  No, I thought we’d schedule the next session in Nairobi.

  ‘It’s a date,’ he said and gave both mother and son his best smile.

  Good, they’d gone and now he had this place to himself as John was on that motivational weekend. He’d been talking about it for ages, was convinced that it would change his life. He, Adam, wasn’t so sure – after all, some people bought self-help book after self-help book. The people who were screwed up to begin with tended to remain that way. It would take more than a few seminars to cure most neurotics of their character flaws, fears and obsessions. He’d had some clients who had stayed with him for years. His wife had gone into therapy after she married him, though he’d only found out about her deception later. Fortunately her time with the psychiatrist – time in which to criticize her husband – had been limited as it was on the NHS.

  But now it was time to eat, drink and be merry. At 9 p.m., he got himself a chicken madras and a pineapple rice from the takeaway and ate half of it. He wanted to be fuelled up as he was going to Bristol to get himself a girl.

  Excited for the first time since Hannah’s murder, Adam began to put his rape kit together. He always kept everything separate, between date rapes, in case the police searched his house. Now, he gathered together duct tape, handcuffs (a new pair – he’d thrown away the ones that he’d used on Hannah), a gag, a knife and his pièce de résistance, the date rape drug Rohypnol. He was a psychologist rather than a psychiatrist so wasn’t medically qualified or allowed to prescribe such medication, but was able to buy the pills on the black market in various pubs. He could have bought them more cheaply online, of course, but that would have meant leaving a paper trail . . .

  A couple of hours from now, some pretty vacant girlie was going to regret acting so cheap. He’d have a lot of fun with her then leave her house before she regained consciousness. He always gave them a false name and lied about every aspect of his life, plus he used a condom, so was really hard to trace.

  He was so looking forward to penetrating new flesh that he made the fifty-minute journey to Bristol in thirty-five minutes. That was foolish, he reminded himself as he entered the overpriced car park of a central nightclub: if he’d earned a speeding ticket it would be proof that he’d been here in the city rather than at home in Weston-super-Mare.

  It was late when he arrived at the club – intentionally so. Some girls thought they’d failed if they didn’t find a guy to walk them home and, as the night progressed, they became more and more desperate. They were also more drunk, less able to make careful choices or to resist. His ideal date was a twenty-five-year-old who had recently been chucked by her boyfriend; she was temporarily vulnerable and keen to hook up with someone, was young enough to still have a fit body but old enough to know that a jury wouldn’t necessarily regard her with sympathy.

  Opening the door, he was hit by a wall of sound and winced visibly. Why did you face deafness nowadays when you wanted to get laid? On the upside, it made conversation difficult so he wouldn’t have to come up with too many evasions and outright lies. Lying could be tiring, especially at night when the mind wanted to let go of the stresses of the day.

  He paid his entrance fee (a street walker would have charged less for a hand job; he used them occasionally for variety) and walked into the disco, casually scanning the legs, butts, breasts and, lastly, faces. He wanted someone who was showing off a lot of skin. Unfortunately the fashion was for longer tops and leggings – or jeggings if they were made of denim – but he persevered until he saw an inexpensively dressed but respectable thirty-something sitting on her own.

  ‘Lost your friends?’ he asked – well, shouted – and was rewarded by her look of gratitude.

  ‘We’ve fallen out,’ she yelled back.

  ‘Their loss.’

  ‘Thanks.’ She sounded working class and not particularly well-educated, the type that needed a man to complete her. In other words, she was perfect for his plans.

  ‘Care to dance?’

  She staggered slightly as she rose to her feet. Better and better. She was wearing high heels which would make it harder for her to run away. Why did young women essentially cripple themselves with stilettos and cheap cocktails? Had they no sense of pride?

  As they reached the dance floor, the music changed to a slower beat and the singer wailed about lost love. He held out his arms and she went eagerly into them.

  ‘Been here before?’ he asked.

  ‘No. You?’

  ‘My first time,’ he said honestly. ‘Do you live around here?’

  ‘Uh huh – St Pauls.’ She named an area of Bristol which was often in the news for drugs and crime.

  ‘I’m from Fishponds,’ he lied, naming another region of the city. ‘Do you work locally too?’

  He had to sound like a potential new boyfriend, someone in her league.

  She named a tacky fashion store and he pretended to be impressed.

  ‘Can you get me staff discount?’

  She giggled. ‘I can get you anything.’ They danced for another moment, his hands firmly on her waist, before she added, ‘What do you do?’

  ‘Personal trainer.’ He always stole John’s identity at tim
es like this. People thought that they knew what a fitness instructor did so they didn’t ask too many questions. It also saved him from inventing an office or regular workplace – he just said that he went to the client’s house or to the nearest gym.

  ‘You’re fit then,’ she slurred.

  Fit enough to fuck you into the middle of next week. She was so easy that it wasn’t really a challenge. Still, he loved the next bit, when the girl slid into unconsciousness and he could do exactly as he wished.

  The slow dance ended and he steered her to the bar.

  ‘What can I get you?’

  ‘A gin and tonic.’

  ‘Two gin and tonics, bartender,’ he said.

  ‘You mean you drink that too?’ She obviously thought that it was karma.

  ‘That or lager,’ he said, not wanting to appear too obvious.

  He carried the drinks towards the table nearest the door, managed to slip the little white pill into one of them.

  ‘Left hand,’ he repeated to himself again and again, determined not to serve himself the spiked drink.

  ‘Makes you thirsty, all that dancing,’ she murmured and downed a third of the doctored gin. He sipped his and watched her covertly. In ten minutes she’d start to feel confused and dizzy, so he wanted her out of here in five. When she started to shiver – going hot and cold was another potential side-effect – he put his arm around her and helped her to her feet.

  ‘Time that I walked you home. Where do you live?’

  She told him the name of her street. ‘Oh, I have a client there. Which number are you in?’

  ‘237,’ she said woozily.

  ‘Alright, sweetheart, let’s get you safely back.’

  He steered her out into the car park, manoeuvred her carefully into the front seat of his intentionally-nondescript vehicle. By now, he could see that her motor skills were impaired and he had to put on her seat belt for her. She started a sentence but gave up after attempting a few barely-coherent phrases, slumped back in her chair and stared glassily through the windscreen. He programmed his satnav but remained alert as he drove, determined not to get waylaid in some muddy lane or cul de sac. So far he’d managed not to draw attention to himself or to her and he was hell-bent on keeping it that way.