Without Conscience

by Michael Kerr

  He was wide awake, his mind a swirling vortex of disjointed thoughts, to be transported back to his youth on the family ranch in Colorado, almost able to smell his mother’s freshly baked pecan pies, that stood cooling on the counter in front of the open kitchen window. Only as an adult could he look back and truly appreciate the childhood he had enjoyed; the small things that had made his youth such a rich and wonderful time. He recalled a melange of many fond memories, and imagined trotting down the wide porch steps with Red, his mongrel dog, at his heels. The mountain air was sweet and clear, devoid of pollution, and with a fishing pole and a sandwich box, he and Red had had fine old times, fishing for brown trout down on the banks of the South Platte River.

  Back in the present, in self-imposed confinement, and with a chair wedged under the already double-locked and chained door of the flat, he had never felt so out of control of a situation. This killer was not running scared, but had turned like a wild and wounded animal, and was now at his most dangerous, still intent on carrying out his mindless mission. He was out there, scheming, with his next move known only to himself. Mark would have felt better with the comforting weight of a Smith & Wesson pistol in his hand to protect Amy with, should, against all odds, Cain managed to get to them.

  Lifting Amy’s arm from his stomach, he slid slowly out of the bed, so that her head was gently transferred on to the pillow, and watched as she turned onto her back without waking. God, she was so beautiful. Outside, clouds parted as if on cue, and soft, yellow moonlight pierced the gaps in the Venetian blinds to paint her naked upper body in slats of light and dark, creating a sensuous and abstract living work of art. He studied the contours of her firm breasts, tipped with nipples which cast their own thumb tip shadows. Her tummy was a smooth valley, and the old bullet wound scar on it was highlighted; a small, many-pointed star that enhanced the perfection around it. Shivering a little, he leaned over and pulled the duvet up to her shoulders, and then kissed her smooth brow, before putting on his robe and heading for the kitchen.

  Switching on the coffeemaker, Mark ran through what he determined would be Cain’s immediate priorities, and the order in which he might attempt to execute them. After a while he poured the fresh brew, and went to sit at the table, armed with a pencil and notepad to make a short list of what Cain might do:

  1. Abort plans and fully concern himself with avoiding capture.

  2. Follow up his murder of Larry by attempting to kill Amy/me.

  3. Find and deal with original and primary target: Caroline Sellars.

  Taking the offender’s twisted aims into consideration, I will be left till last.

  What would I do? I AM HIM...

  Mark stopped writing, closed his eyes and withdrew into a room in his mind that had always offered a measure of enlightenment. In it, he let the imagined voice of the killer talk for him: ‘I will kill Caroline under their noses. Demonstrate that they are powerless to stop me. Gloat over their ineptitude to protect her from me. And then I will take Amy Egan, which will destroy Ross, to punish him for his unforgivable insults. Do a ‘Larry’ on the woman he loves and save the manhunter till last, and...

  “What are you doing, Mark?” Amy said, appearing at the kitchen door, now wearing one of his towelling robes, that was oversize and simultaneously made her look both comical and childlike.

  Her unexpected voice made him jump as his eyes snapped open. And the point of his pencil snapped off as it dug into the notepad.

  “I couldn’t sleep. You want coffee?” he said, his heart racing.

  “I’ll get it, but caffeine won’t help you to sleep. What were you writing?”

  “Just putting thoughts on paper. I need to figure out some course of action. Cain has taken full control of the situation, and that’s getting to me.”

  “He’s up shit creek,” Amy said, pouring herself a coffee, and freshening Mark’s before sitting down across from him, to cradle the steaming ceramic mug in both hands.

  “Maybe, but the bastard still has a paddle.”

  “He’s out in the cold, Mark. We know who he is, and what he intended to do. He’ll be digging a deep hole somewhere and trying to bury himself in it.”

  “No, Amy. That’s what he knows we’ll expect him to do. This is a man who has allowed his festering inner feelings free rein. He won’t be able to stop. He’s snapped like a broken twig. The person that he was, who worked, paid his bills and functioned in society within acceptable parameters, has stepped out. What is in control now is a man at odds with the world, bursting with accumulated anger, hatred, and an iron will to mete out his own warped conception of justice on anyone who he deems guilty of acting against him in word or deed.”

  “What do you think his next move is likely to be, then? You’re the expert.”

  “He’ll want to show that he can’t be stopped or swayed from carrying out what to him has become an obsessive undertaking. He’ll find Caroline, and kill her.”

  “You really think that he’s mad enough to try and get past armed police?”

  “Yeah. It’ll be a challenge to him that he won’t be able to resist. And he’ll know that they won’t expect him. He will have the element of surprise on his side.”

  “There’s nothing that we can do, Mark. All we can hope for is that he gets caught before anyone else is murdered.”

  “That’s what kept me awake, knowing that I can’t do anything. I’ll call Barney again in a few hours’ and talk it through.”

  “Let’s finish our coffee and go back to bed,” Amy said. “Start in on it fresh, later, huh?”

  He nodded and closed the notepad. He didn’t want her to know just how scared he was for her safety.

  Officers in a patrol car only a couple of minutes from Dorothy’s address were instructed to check out the anonymous report of her being bound and gagged in her flat.

  “Most likely some kid making a hoax call,” PC Dennis McAvoy said, climbing out of the car and putting his cap on.

  “Should bring back the bloody birch,” PC Norman Bates – who was likely to take a swing at anyone who made any reference to the Psycho movies, after a lifetime of being subjected to moronic, tasteless jokes – said. “Soon sort out all the muggin’ stabbin’ and car theft. A lot of kids today have no respect and no discipline, just a fuckin’ habit to feed. When I was at school there were no bloody drugs. And no one beat up pensioners for a few quid. Smokin’ behind the bike sheds, and maybe coppin’ the odd feel of a girl’s tits on the back row at the flicks was about as bad as it got. Nowadays, rape doesn’t even rate headlines like it used to. And murder is rife.”

  “Those days are gone forever, Norm,” Dennis said, leading the way up the stairs to the old woman’s flat, to walk along the landing and knock at the door.

  “Yeah, thanks to liberal elite snowflakes who decide on what’s best for a population who in the main are so sick of politicians’ lies and double-dealin’ that they don’t even turn out to bleedin’ vote anymore. It’s not apathy, it’s a statement of resentment and mistrust. The bastards take billions off us in fuckin’ taxes and then make a pig’s ear of everythin’, and have the bloody front to come back for even more soddin’ money.”

  “Do we break in, or try to find out who the landlord is and get him here with a key?” Dennis said, giving up trying to raise anyone, and determined not to get embroiled in a political argument with Norm.

  Norman took a step back and kicked out. The door flew open with a loud splintering crack as the wood disintegrated around the lock.

  “I guess that answers my question,” Dennis said, entering the darkness and running his hand up the wall to locate the light switch and illuminate their surroundings.

  Norman entered the bedroom to find Dorothy on the bed. He reached into a side pocket of his uniform jacket for the penknife he always carried, and carefully cut through the tape, before helping the old woman up into a sitting position.

  Dennis went into the kitchen, switched on the light and was faced with somethi
ng that his mind could not immediately comprehend.

  Stretched and clinging to a large, round cabbage – that had been placed at the centre of the Formica-topped table – was what at first appeared to be a joke shop rubber mask. Only the drying blood prompted Dennis to step nearer, to lean forward and examine it more closely. He saw stubble on the cheeks, chin and upper lip; eyelashes sprouting from drooping lids, and nasal hair protruding from the narrow, pinched nostrils. It wasn’t a mask. It was a real face.

  “Norm. Nooorm!” he shouted, drawing his baton as he backed away from the obscene human remnant. “You won’t believe what I’ve just fucking found.”

  Later, sitting by the window and drinking hot tea, having refused to go to the hospital for a check up, Dorothy answered Barney’s questions as best she could.

  “I knew he’d done something terrible,” she said, nodding to confirm that her visitor had indeed been the man who now stared back at her from the flyer that Barney held out for her to see. “I made him a cup of tea, and he sat by the window, in this very chair, and watched all the goings-on in the street. He chuckled a lot, as though he found it all very amusing. Then he took me through to the bedroom and left me trussed up, just how your nice constable found me. He was very gentle, though, and told me that he would make a call and tell the police to come and release me.”

  “Is there anything else that you can remember about him?” Barney said.

  “He was in some pain. He was limping. I think he must have hurt his leg. And he had a large bag with him, but I don’t know what was in it. Oh, and he called me grandma. I think he was a little confused.”

  “Did he say where he was going, or anything else that might help us to find him?”

  Dorothy gave it some thought before shaking her head. “I’m sorry, no, he didn’t tell me anything.”

  “Okay, Dorothy, thank you,” Barney said, leaving her with a WPC. They had a description of what Cain had been wearing, and confirmation that his leg was damaged. Nothing else.

  “The bugger’s got some neck,” Barney said to Mike. “He stayed here, right under our bloody noses and watched us from a front row seat. He sat tight, even when they did a door-to-door. Then, after we’d left, he scarpered.”

  “He must have lifted a car. I can’t see him walking far if his leg is banged-up,” Mike said. “I’ll get Louise to check on all vehicles reported stolen in the area.”

  Barney sighed. “If he nicked one, then it might not be reported missed until morning. But it’s worth a shot.”

  “Where do we go from here, boss?” Mike said.

  “I wish I knew. He could be anywhere. He knows that we’re on to him, so he’ll have gone somewhere he thinks is safe to lie low. We’ve lost the advantage. All we can do is wait for him to surface, and hope that we get lucky.”

  “You don’t think that he’ll still make a play for the Sellars woman, do you?”

  Barney started rubbing-twisting-pulling at his wedding band. “If Mark Ross is right, then we can’t outguess him. Nothing about this bastard is predictable.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  At four a.m. Bobby was awake, staring up into the gloom. He loved the darkness. He remembered being a little boy and then a teenager in his small box bedroom. It had been his private place. He even resented his mother cleaning it. She would mop the paisley patterned linoleum, dust every surface and change his sheets and pillowcase once a week on a Monday, which was washing day, when the lines in the neighbourhood back yards and small gardens would be festooned with breeze-blown curtains, bedding and clothing.

  That small room had afforded him a window out on to a view that had imprinted itself indelibly on his mind. Through that thin pane of glass, he had been a watcher from behind the net curtain; an unseen voyeur on the people that lived within his sight. He would study the bras and panties that swung to and fro on the lines, and sometimes he would open the window an inch to shoot pigeons from the ridge tiles of the terrace roofs that were within range of his old Diana air rifle. But it was the nights that enthralled him. The young woman opposite would take a bath on a Friday evening, unaware that he could see her fuzzy naked shape through the frosted glass as she stepped into the tub, and again when she climbed out and dried herself. And couples would sometimes stop in the alley and have it off against the wall of old Mrs Carson’s yard. He missed being a boy. Youth was so much more of an adventure than adulthood; more carefree, and without the tribulations that age and responsibility brought. He felt so alone at times. Everyone that had been close to him had died. His grandparents, parents, and his favourite aunt, Cordelia, were all gone. His life was like a book with missing pages. He wanted everything to be as it was; wanted time to have stood still at a point when everything was just perfect. He had kept his toys, comics, annuals, and all the bric-a-brac of those wonder-filled days. He even had his parents’ spectacles, most of their clothes, his fathers old Ronson lighter, and his mother’s dentures. If he could not return to the house, then even the material residue of his past would be lost to him. He felt so alone and downtrodden, but would regroup, achieve his objectives, and turn his life around. Next year would be a new beginning. Everything would be just wonderful again.

  He let the darkness soothe him for a while longer, then left the unit and made his way back to the car, through an early morning fog that clung; a white undulating blanket swirling around his feet. He thought of it as Cloudwalking. He was refreshed, hyper, and eager to meet the new day, and Caroline. The swelling around his knee had reduced, and although still painful, he could bear more weight on it.

  It was easy to imagine the scale of the manhunt. But neither the police nor the Yank would have the foggiest idea where to begin looking for him, or be able to outguess his next move. It was odds on that they would assume he would run and hide. The last thing that they would expect would be a daring assault on the safe house. And knowing who he was would be of no help to them. All they had was a name, and the picture of a face that could be altered. He could blend in and be anonymous. No one could get inside his head. He was a law unto himself, and they were powerless to stop him from doing whatever he wanted to. He felt in total control again, without any doubts or fears. Maybe he should feel nervous or paranoid; after all, everybody was after him. But in fact, he felt incredibly buoyant. He would be calm, careful, and would triumph. He was invincible against an enemy that could not fathom out what drove him. It was emancipating to act on impulse and turn fantasy into reality.

  Stopping at a garage, he left the car parked in shadow, away from the brightly lit forecourt that would be covered by CCTV. Pulling the bill of his cap well down, he entered the shop, picked up a large bar of fruit and nut chocolate, paid the dopey looking bird behind the counter and then went over to the drinks machine and selected coffee, black and sweet. Back in the car, he ate all the chocolate and drank the hot, gritty coffee, before heading for his destination.

  He parked in the avenue running parallel and behind the road that the bungalow was situated on, after first doing a drive-by to fix the geography of the immediate area in his mind. He was almost convinced that the now dead copper had not lied to him. But it was more prudent to keep an open mind. ‘Trust no one’ was a very sensible saying.

  A footpath between houses brought him to within sixty feet of the safe house, which was becoming – unbeknown to its occupants – less safe by the second. He kept low against fencing and privet hedging as he approached.

  The wrought-iron rear gate was standing partially open. He turned sideways and slipped through the gap, stepped off the flagged path and ducked behind the garden shed, that he knew was far from being as innocuous as its exterior suggested. This structure was a temporary home to more than rusting tools and perhaps a mower hibernating until spring incited the dormant grass to grow and once more give the machine purpose for its existence.

  A sudden rush of adrenaline almost overcame his caution. He put his ear to the thin tongue and groove cladding and could hear the light snoring
of its lone occupant inside. He breathed in deeply through his nose to calm and steady himself, and relished the piquant fumes of creosote, that he found almost as stimulating as the smell of petrol, burning rubber, and a woman’s sex and blood.

  With total confidence and purpose, he walked around to the side door, opened it, took two steps forward and plunged the blade of his knife up under the ribcage and into the heart of the seated copper, who came awake fast, but far too slow to save his complacent skin.

  “Bad career choice, pal,” Bobby said, standing back to watch as the young guy took one last wheezing, pain-filled intake of breath and clawed at his chest before slumping forward and falling to the floor.

  On an upturned wooden crate, next to the now vacated plastic contour chair lay: a paperback book, a large pump-action thermos flask, two-way radio, and a real prize; a matt-black pistol with an extension to the muzzle, which was a silencer.

  “Thoughtful,” Bobby said to the body at his feet. “You didn’t want to wake the neighbours up when you took pot-shots at me, right?”

  As if in answer, a red bubble popped on the dead man’s lips, to be followed by a thin stream of blood that ran down from the slack mouth, to be hungrily absorbed by the parched wooden boards beneath his head.

  Bobby paused, pumped some of the coffee out into the cop’s plastic cup, and drank it. Less haste, more speed. This was his game, his rules. He was in absolute control.

  Keeping to the solid darkness of night shadow provided by a mature row of thirty-feet-high conifers screening the back garden from the view of neighbours, he reached the bungalow and stepped over to the kitchen window. Streaks of light shone out on to the small patio through narrow gaps between the slats of the blind. Looking in, he could see both of Caroline’s woefully inadequate bodyguards. They were facing each other across a small table in a dining nook, playing cards and armed with handguns that hung from shoulder holsters. He supposed that they no doubt believed that there was far more chance of winning the lotto than being paid a pre-dawn visit by death in human form.