Without Conscience

by Michael Kerr

  Shedding the bulky blouson, she stepped into the river and waded out around the side of the houseboat with one hand resting on the edge of the deck for balance, with the other now holding the gun above the water’s surface; water so cold that it penetrated her bones and sapped all feeling from her legs. Clinging mud sucked both of her trainers off after just three steps. She pushed on, then lost her footing and slipped back, down under the surface. The frigid water took her breath away. She regained her feet and fought against the urge to cough and splutter aloud.

  Low, muffled male voices carried through the cabin’s wall, but the words were unintelligible. Mark would not be talking to Cain in the dark. The only explanation was that Mark was in trouble, and that Cain had got the better of him.

  Another few laboured steps and Amy came to an opening in the railing that edged the deck. The houseboat sat low in the water, and although awkward, she managed to ease herself up on to it, turn, swing her legs inboard, and then stand without causing any noticeable movement to the substantial floating home. Creeping forward, she was consumed by self doubt. Could she gain entry, identify Cain in the murk and shoot him without risk to Mark? Should she back off now, call Barney and wait for the cavalry to arrive? And what if Cain killed Mark in the meantime? The bottom line was that she had no alternative but to go it alone. She would have to draw on the ruthless side of her personality and rely on her basic instincts. She could not afford to let emotion get in the way. Cain was injured. She had faced him once and outsmarted him. And now she had the gun, and would not hesitate to use it this time. Pumping herself up, she visualised what was about to take place. She would enter fast and low, search out the shape of Cain, who was smaller and broader than Mark, and empty the magazine into him.

  On three, she thought, hand now on the handle of the tempered glass door, which was open a couple of inches. One...two...

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  “We’ve got two possibilities, boss,” Mike said as he strode into the office brandishing a single sheet of paper.

  “What?” Barney said, tossing a file that they had compiled on Cain to one side.

  “A fellow producer at the Beeb, Marsha Reynolds, is an old friend of Caroline’s. She owns a holiday cottage outside the village of Bank in the New Forest. She says that Caroline has visited it several times in the past and spent weekends there.”

  “What else?”

  “The boyfriend, Simon Payne.”

  “Christ, I’d almost forgotten he existed.”

  “He has a houseboat on the river at Laleham. Eddie gave him a call, and Payne asked if the left hand knew what the right was doing. He said that DS Mike Cook had phoned him earlier, asking him if he owned property near water, or had a boat. And I didn’t phone him.”

  “Who would...? Ross would,” Barney said, answering his own question as it took shape in his mind. “It has to have been Mark Ross. Why in God’s name would he elect to go after Cain by himself?”

  Mike shrugged.

  “Get on the blower to Hampshire CID, Mike. Give them the address of that cottage, and tell them who might be there, and all relevant details. Then give Amy Egan a bell. If you can’t get hold of her, have the nearest unit check out her address. I’ll try to locate Ross.”

  “You think―”

  “I think Cain’s on the houseboat. I’ll jack up some firepower, and we’ll go find out. I also have a bad feeling about Amy. Ross wouldn’t have gone it alone without a damn good reason.”

  Barney and Mike worked the phones. They couldn’t contact Mark or Amy. When he was almost set to head for Laleham, Barney gave Pearce a call, to bring him up to speed and tell him what he intended to do.

  “You’re implying that you may be faced with a multiple hostage scenario, am I right?” Clive said.

  “Yes. I think that it’s as bad as it gets. Cain may be holding Caroline Sellars, Amy Egan, and possibly Mark Ross. He could have already killed them all. I can’t contact Mark or Amy.”

  “What’s our best chance of salvaging something out of this, Barney?”

  “Initially, I’m putting the houseboat under surveillance. We can use a laser mike to ascertain who, if anybody, is on board.”

  “Then?”

  “Make contact and try to negotiate, if Cain is on board and holding hostages. I also intend to give the ARU team leader the green light to take Cain out the second an opportunity presents itself. We’re dealing with a maniac who is now in possession of a handgun. And we know exactly what he’s capable of doing.”

  “You don’t think he might have gone to ground at the Hampshire address, then?”

  “No. All my money is on the Laleham location.”

  “And you expect casualties?”

  “With any luck, just one.”

  “Okay. I want to know what you know, five seconds after it happens.”

  “I’ll keep you briefed,” Barney said before hanging up.

  “We’ve got a probable crime scene at Richmond, boss,” Mike said after taking a call from the Surrey constabulary. “Someone broke into Ms Egan’s house. There was plenty of blood, but no body. And they found the name of Payne’s houseboat scribbled on a notepad.”

  “Let’s hope we can get there in time. And that when we do, we can make a difference,” Barney said as he frantically twisted his wedding band.

  They left the office on the run, coats flapping in their slipstream; shades of Batman and Robin in civvies.

  Mark’s consciousness returned slowly. He was face down against the carpeting, and he was gasping for breath, with pressure still around his neck.

  “Try not to move too much, Dr Mark,” a voice said from somewhere behind him. “There’s a rope from your neck to your ankles. I’m sure you get the picture. If you try to straighten your legs, you’ll top yourself. Understand?”

  “Yeah. Not very original, but effective,” Mark croaked, gauging the tension of the rope as a hand withdrew from his ankles and he felt the noose tighten. He transferred his weight and fell over on to his side, letting the floor assist in keeping his legs drawn up in a position that afforded a certain amount of slack in the rope.

  In the semi-darkness he could see Caroline. She was crouched under a table, attached to it by handcuffs. Looking up, to her left, he saw Cain for the first time. The man was sitting on an upholstered bench seat, leaning forward with his forearms on his knees. A wicked looking knife dangled loosely from one hand. He stared back at Mark; the large, black irises of his eyes as reflective as mirrored sunglasses, showing nothing of the spirit or state of mind that lurked behind them.

  “Where’s Amy?” Mark said, ignoring the painful sensation of broken glass in his throat that talking generated.

  “Good question,” Bobby said. “But you’re the smart-aleck profiler. You tell me.”

  “I found her blood, you―”

  “You found my fucking blood, Yank. Your bitch went berserk and almost fucking killed me,” Bobby raved. He leapt to his feet, took a step forward and kicked Mark viciously in the stomach.

  Mark’s cry died in his throat as his legs jerked involuntarily, causing the noose to bite deep, robbing him of his lifeline to air.

  The knife blade flashed, cut through the strands and opened a shallow two-inch long gash in Mark’s neck as the rope parted.

  Gasping, Mark straightened out on the floor. His ankles were still bound, as were his wrists, behind him, but he was no longer totally helpless. A ray of hope shone through the dark clouds of despair.

  “Don’t move a muscle, you insignificant, small-minded wanker,” Bobby said. “You’ll die soon enough, without rushing it. Tell me how you found out that I was here.”

  “It was easy. I just followed the raw smell of sewage, and here I am,” Mark said, hoping that Cain would attack him again; ready to kick out and take his chances against the knife. Doing nothing wouldn’t save himself or Caroline. He had to somehow disconcert and throw his enemy off balance.

  Bobby smiled, before ducking down and
running the blade of his knife along Caroline’s arm, shallowly slitting it from just below the shoulder to the wrist. Blood seeped through the flimsy material of her Kimono and dripped on to the carpet. She gasped in pain, and tears glittered in her eyes.

  “Wrong answer, dickhead,” Bobby said. “Try again, and bear in mind that Caroline gets to lose an ear next, if you get comical or call me names.”

  Mark had just lost another psychological round on points, and knew it.

  “I worked out that you hadn’t planned on having to run. And that being a fucking sociopath; a loner with no friends, you wouldn’t have anywhere to go,” he said. “It seemed logical that you might ask Caroline if she knew somewhere that would be safe. I gave her boyfriend a call, and he told me that he owned this houseboat.”

  “Who else knows about it?” Bobby said.

  Mark could have lied and said that the police knew, and that they were on their way. But that might just panic Cain and bring things to a head too quickly. He needed to buy as much time as possible in an attempt to try to turn things around. All that was in his favour was Cain’s contempt for everyone, and his need to flaunt what he thought to be a superior intellect. The guy needed an audience to play to, whether he realised it or not.

  “No one,” Mark said. “I thought you had Amy as well as Caroline. I didn’t want to risk their lives by having half the Met joining the party.”

  Bobby chuckled. “You thought you would just be able to sneak up and blind side me, huh? You didn’t give me any credit or respect, Ross. You overestimated your piss-poor capabilities, and now you get to suffer and die for your amour propre.”

  “Your time will come, Cain, and soon.”

  “Death doesn’t hold any fear for me. I find a certain degree of solace at the thought of nonexistence, with no awareness. It’s life that is the vexation. Take it away and you remove all misery, pain, regrets, unfulfilled dreams, and the sadness of shattered expectations. Death is a release from suffering; a door to oblivion. Being born is the punishment; the beginning of a long, hard struggle along a road strewn with rocks.”

  “Very eloquent, Cain. I take it you don’t believe in a final judgement? You have some smart-ass way of knowing that you won’t be condemned to eternal purgatory for the unforgivable, barbaric acts that you’ve committed?”

  “Shut the fuck up.”

  “No, Cain. Why should I? You can’t threaten a dead man. You’re going to torture and kill Caroline and me whatever I say. I bet you pulled wings off flies, and then graduated to mutilating neighbourhood pets when you were a kid. You’re a sad, brain-damaged little fucker, who has never known love. You can’t…”

  “SHUT UP! SHUT UP!”

  “...stand to be in a world where other people can find a happiness that you haven’t the power to tap in to. You should have been stillborn for your own and everyone else’s sake. You’re a disease, Cain; one that has the ability to kill, but is itself condemned by its own malignance.”

  Bobby felt the blood throbbing at his temples as the psychologist reviled him. He allowed hate in its purest form to bubble up and fill his brain. He would gag Ross, then make his last minutes of life an experience of heretofore unrivalled agony. The man would suffer unimaginable fear and pain before he finally died.

  Mark saw that Cain was readying himself to attack. The knife shook in his white-knuckled grip, and a tic in his swollen left eyelid was reminiscent of the exaggerated wink of a kerbside whore.

  Blink.

  Something was wrong.

  All expression instantly drained from Cain’s face. He became totally calm and impassive. His eyes were still fixed on Mark’s, wide open now, and flat, glazed looking. It was as if he had entered a state of serenity and composure that a Tibetan monk might spend a lifetime attempting to achieve. He appeared to be unfazed, in total control of his emotions. But it was no more than an illusion. To dispel it, his mouth gaped open, his head fell forward, and it became apparent that something was very off beam.

  “He...he’s having some sort of seizure,” Caroline whispered. “He’s like a television set on standby.”

  “Can you hear me?” Mark said to Cain.

  No reply. The man was inert, reminding him of a lizard basking on a rock in the morning sun; needing to warm its sluggish blood before it could function properly.

  Mark eased himself up on to his knees and then shuffled across the floor to the table and ducked under it, turning so that his bound wrists faced Caroline. She reached forward, as far as the cuffs would allow, and began to pick at the knot without needing to be asked.

  Her tongue curled out over her bottom lip as she squinted at the intertwining tangle of rope and concentrated fully on which part of it should be worked on to loosen it. And as she frantically worked at the assemblage, breaking fingernails on the tough sisal, Mark looked up from underneath the table, his attention wholly on their captor. There was movement. Cain was flicking the blade of his knife back and forth across the back of his left hand, striping it with superficial cuts that flowed with blood as he unconsciously mutilated himself.

  “Yesss!” Caroline said in a triumphant whisper. The rope loosened, and Mark pulled his hands free. He could not risk taking more time to untie his ankles. Rolling away from Caroline and standing up, he looked around for a weapon. A small fire extinguisher was clipped to a wall bracket that was screwed to the side of a unit. With his feet still pinioned together, he hopped over to it, amazed that even in such a dangerous situation a part of him could feel foolish at his lame-assed ‘Skippy the bush kangaroo’ impression. Pulling the extinguisher free, he turned...to find Cain lurching to his feet, in the same instant that Caroline cried, “Look out!”

  He had planned to hit Cain over the head full force with the heavy metal cylinder, to brain the bastard and not worry unduly as to how much physical damage he might inflict. But now, as his adversary lumbered towards him, he pulled the locking pin free and depressed the lever as he aimed the extinguisher’s nozzle directly at Cain’s face.

  The white, chemical stream found its mark, but not in time to stop the blade of the knife from sinking into Mark’s side. He felt the steel grate against his ribs, and the piercing barb of pain made him double up, to lose balance and crash forward over the table, before rolling off it to impact with the floor.

  Bobby was temporarily blinded and began to retch, fighting for breath as the poisonous mix of chemicals filled his open mouth and was inhaled into his lungs. He lashed out with the knife, sweeping the blade back and forth in every direction, unable to see Mark or anything else, but still hoping to connect with flesh and bone as he blinked frantically and rubbed at his sore eyes with his free hand.

  Caroline saw a small window of opportunity open as Cain fell back against the sink unit, gagging and wiping at the mass of foam that swathed his head. As Mark hit the tabletop, the handcuff keys were dislodged. They fell to the carpet in front of her. Using her right foot, she dragged them to within reach of her hands, and with shaking, fumbling fingers, managed to find the small keyhole and release her wrists from the ratcheted cuffs.

  Glancing at Mark, Caroline saw a trickle of blood running down his face from a gash on his temple. He was moaning and badly dazed, having caught his head on the corner of the walnut frame that the seat and back cushions of the bench were affixed to.

  “Wake up, please wake up...Help me,” she pleaded, shaking Mark, then pulling her hand back from his jacket as warm blood coated her hand. She was on her own. Mark had been stabbed and was wounded; maybe even dying.

  “You bitch,” Bobby wheezed, now able to see the blurry, distorted image of Caroline crawling out from beneath the table. “It’s over. I’m going to cut your rotten heart out and hold it in front of your eyes. It will be the last thing you see before you die.”

  Gripping her by the hair, he pulled backwards, so that she fell, to lay face up, legs trapped under her. For a few seconds, as the kimono fell open, Bobby blinked rapidly, and though his sight was still
impaired, he studied the indistinct, exquisite body beneath him, and looked into her fear-filled eyes to feel an overpowering sadness at the sense of loss he knew would overwhelm him when she was gone. The dream of what might have been was over before it had begun.

  Tears of sorrow further misted his vision as he drew back the knife.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  “Stop,” Barney said as he spotted the rear ends of the vehicles protruding out of the foliage.

  Mike braked, pulled up on to the wide grass verge and skidded to a halt just inches from the Cherokee. The innocuous looking Transit van, that had been following, parked behind him, and several black-clad figures emerged from its side; stubby automatic rifles held close to their Kevlar-protected bodies.

  “Those cars belong to Ross and Egan,” Barney informed the team leader, who then nodded to two of his men, prompting them to move in and check the Jeep Cherokee and Nissan. Using a lock gun, they entered both vehicles, satisfied themselves that they were unoccupied, then signalled ‘all clear’ and withdrew.

  A few minutes later the Pandora was covered on all but the river side by the Armed Response Unit.

  “It always sends a shiver up my spine to see these guys at work,” Mike said to Barney, following him to a position under the cover of trees at the far side of the lane. “It’s like a Darth Vader convention, all tooled-up with Heckler & Koch’s instead of light sabres.”

  The team – wearing infrared night sight goggles – operated in total silence, using hand signals to communicate as they closed in on the houseboat. The officers had been given a description of Cain and Mark Ross. The plan was simple. Once in position, they would throw a flash grenade into the dark cabin to blind anyone on board, and then storm the craft and shoot Cain on sight.