Deadly Obsession

by Michael Kerr

  She took a shower, put her thickest, warmest robe on and went downstairs. Turned the kettle back on and tried to find some composure. The day had passed in a blur. Even Ed Kotechi, the head of her department, had asked if she was okay. She’d frowned at him and said yes, too quickly to fool him. But he’d let it go, just giving her a raised eyebrow, as if to say, ‘don’t try to kid a kidder, girl’.

  Switching on the small screen TV in the kitchen, Lisa made tea and wondered if Jack felt anything like she did. He was someone whom she didn’t really even know yet: a hardened cop who had come on to her. Or had she come on to him? Maybe she’d been too easy. Would he think that she jumped into bed with passing strangers on a regular basis? She had not been able to translate his body language or read anything in his impassive blue eyes; eyes that drilled through all defences, seeking out...what? The truth? She sensed that it had been special to him. And yet when he’d left early that morning she thought he had seemed a little detached and cool towards her. Maybe he regretted getting too close. They had nothing in common, apart from a penchant for the same reading material. He was a divorcee with a son, who lived and breathed the case he was working. He was like a road traffic accident waiting up ahead to shatter her life. Now was the time to get back on line, put the incident down to experience and pull back before she got hurt. Was that the bottom line? Was she scared of opening up and risking all? Being a psychologist didn’t protect you from your own mind, and the powerful emotions generated in that mysterious organic computer seated and protected within the confines of the skull. She specialised in understanding other people’s personalities, their disorders, motivational urges, aberrations and peculiarities, but could not look inward and analyse her own basic feelings. She knew a lot of theory, had read the books, including: The Divided Self, which had inspired her to contemplate the concept of diverse personalities unconsciously existing integrally. Was conscience the other tenant? No matter, it was just one of many facets of the mind that may never be within the grasp of human understanding. The parameters that she and other professionals operated within were very limited. She would have to work with what she’d got, look at pros and cons, then jump one way or the other with Ryder, and to hell with the consequences. Life and much of what you do as you muddle through it is a gamble. Sometimes you win and sometimes you lose.

  The phone rang at eleven, waking her up with a crick in her neck. She had fallen asleep on the settee. Call it sixth sense, but she knew it would be Ryder. It was the same as humming a tune, before turning on the radio to hear it playing.

  “How was your day?” Jack asked her.

  “Run of the mill. Yours?”

  “Disappointing. We interviewed a guy over the murders. He looked good for them, but it was a goose chase.”

  “You sure?”

  “Positive. He’s a Bosch fanatic, has an old molestation rap, and works in a funeral parlour. But he’s as queer as a nine pound note. Women don’t do it for him. We’re checking out an alibi he came up with for the night Emily Wallace was murdered, but I’m sure it’ll hold up. I’ve all but eliminated him from the investigation. I believe the messages and symbolic crap are just the methodology and pathology the killer uses as camouflage. He’s pulling our strings.”

  “Have you any other suspects?”

  “No. And forensic hasn’t come up with anything we can run with. The guy’s a ghost.”

  “Wrong,” Lisa said. “He’s just flesh and blood. He’ll make a mistake, if he hasn’t already. I’m convinced that he’s been victimising some particular woman long-term. Maybe if you go public with the details of what he has done so far, then it will ring a bell. Holding back on his MO might be aiding him to remain anonymous.”

  “That might be jumping the gun. It could drive him under. I choose to believe he is an intelligent and organised killer, not some head case who is so delusional that he can’t back off and change direction.”

  “Don’t give him too much credit, Ryder. These types are like guided missiles. Once the coordinates have been programmed in and they’re fired, they keep going. You either blow them out of the sky, or they reach their target and detonate. We have a lot of background on sexual predators and understand what motivates some of them.

  “These are men with traits that all have a common thread. Sex, control, manipulation and domination are the governing factors, even if their individual actions may seem very diverse. Each employs unique methodology that is generated by personal aberrations. And yet the underlying compulsions are rooted in the same irresistible impulses. Remember that they haven’t got an off switch.”

  “So whatever our response is, he’ll keep on killing?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Can you drop by in the morning? I need your help to sell this to Ken. He’ll take your professional opinion on board. It goes against policy to release too much to the Fourth Estate. They sensationalise every morsel, and don’t let a lack of facts get in the way of a good story.”

  “I’ll be there about nine. Is that okay?”

  “Fine.”

  Lisa sensed that the conversation was winding up. Why had he phoned? He’d asked about her day, and then the case had got in the way. Should she push, or leave it be?

  She pushed. “Why did you call at this time of night, Ryder? Just about the case, or about us?”

  There was an agonising silence. She had the feeling he might hang up.

  “I rushed off this morning without saying...well, what I mean is, I’m not very good at expressing myself,” he said.

  “You could have fooled me. I thought you expressed yourself admirably last night.”

  “Yeah, well, I don’t want you to think it was something that happens with every good-looking psychologist I meet.”

  “You meet many?”

  “No. They must be a little thin on the ground.”

  “And I’ve avoided getting involved with coppers, Ryder. I’ve been there before, once, and it was an experience on a par with having a tooth pulled without the benefit of Novocain.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “That you need to know I’m not looking for some loser who only wants to show up when it suits, or has a problem with commitment. I don’t need private patients. Last night was great. I’m glad it happened. But I’m not a commodity. I―”

  “Hold it right there, lady,” Jack said. “I know you were married to Carter. I also know his reputation. But you should know better than to assume that all cops are tarred by the same brush. What happened last night was uncommon for me. I’ve spent all day thinking that it might have been the same for you. I want to see you again, Lisa.”

  “You will, first thing in the morning.”

  “Does that mean I’ll wake up next to you?”

  “Where are you?”

  “Home.”

  “Bring your friend, Jim Beam,” she said. “And, Ryder, I’m sorry if I sounded paranoid or clingy. I guess I’m still a little wary and smarting.”

  “Never apologise. It can be habit forming,” Jack said. “I’m on my way.”

  His feelings for Lisa gave him insight as to what compulsion and obsession meant in reality. She was becoming his ruling passion. It felt far too quick. There had been no slow escalation of deepening feelings. It had just hit him like a sucker punch; a bolt from the blue. He wanted to share experiences with Lisa; lock up his suitcase of memories and all the bad experiences that seemed to have weighed him down, and put it in a part of his mind’s attic, to gather dust and moulder.

  Putting a thick car coat on over a crew neck Arran sweater before leaving the flat, Jack walked to his car across ground that sparkled with an early December frost that crunched beneath his feet. His breath was like smoke in the chill air. Maybe this Christmas would be better than the last few that he had totally ignored.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  HE needed to take a shower.

  Jesus wept! He had felt possessed. It was as if some deranged demon had entered him and used hi
s body to commit the terrible acts as he had stood back and looked on, little more than a passive spectator.

  Fuck! There was blood everywhere, soaking into what had been a biscuit coloured shag pile rug, lacing the wall, dribbling down over the skirting board, and covering the corpse from head to foot. His clothing was sodden. The pounding of his heart was an almost deafening drumbeat in his ears. He had truly lost the plot and allowed whatever motivated him to escape from the dark depths of his soul, to run amok.

  Dropping the knife and the obscenity that was clutched in his other hand, he shuffled back on his knees and took deep breaths. Everything is fine…Do not fucking panic...Clean up…Search the flat, and then leave.

  He closed his eyes and counted back slowly from one hundred in a whisper. Reached sixty-four and stopped. Normal service was restored. He went across to the dressing table, scrawled a message on the mirror for the plods to find, searched in every place that the bitch might have hidden the letters she’d said she had burned, then stripped and showered. The diluted blood ran the length of the white-enamelled bath and swirled away down the plug hole. He paused; could actually see Janet Leigh grip the plastic curtain, to rip it down as the rings that held it to the rail pulled through the material. She – Janet – slumped naked on the bottom of the bath, eyes wide open, staring fixedly into the camera lens. That scene from Hitchcock’s masterpiece, Psycho, was his favourite. Old Hitch had captured the act of mindless killing perfectly. The sudden knife attack on Leigh and the shrieking background noise accompanying each stabbing thrust of the long blade were in some way a life-altering spectacle for all those who had watched the classic old movie. The now late Janet Leigh had stated that she had not taken a shower since. Did anyone feel truly safe, naked and vulnerable behind a shower curtain or steamed up screen, with the noise of water drowning out any untoward sound of real or imagined danger?

  He put his blood-soaked clothes back on. They were cold and tacky. He opened the flat door, peeked both ways. No one about. He left the door ajar and hurried down the stairs and out into the night.

  Jack walked in, closed the door behind him, put his free arm around Lisa and placed his hand at the hollow of her back as he pulled her gently to him and kissed her. She looped her hands around his neck and linked her fingers. Kissed him back. It was the most natural thing she thought she had ever done. It amazed her how you could know some people for a lifetime and never feel this close.

  “You want to fool around in the hall all night, Ryder? Or shall we get comfortable?” she said.

  “Ryder,” he said, letting her go. “You always call me by my surname. I think I like that.”

  “Okay, Ryder, let’s go and make a dent in this bottle you brought.”

  “I didn’t know you drank bourbon?”

  “There’s an awful lot you don’t know about me, yet. But take away all the mystique and the attraction might wane.”

  “I doubt it. As for me, what you see is what you get, warts and all. It’s too much like hard work to try and be something or someone I’m not.”

  “You seem defensive.”

  “That’s because you deal with psychos every day; people who have a lot to hide.”

  “Not true,” Lisa said, taking the bottle from him and going into the kitchen, where she put crescent slices of ice into her best crystal tumblers and poured two fingers of the whiskey over them. “Most of them are braggarts. They enjoy talking about what they did, once you’ve established a relationship with them. Although I only deal with those that are considered legally insane.”

  “How do you personally differentiate mad from bad?” Jack said.

  “By the model used in most civilised countries these days. The premise is that a person is not responsible for criminal conduct if at the time of such conduct, as a result of mental disease or defect, he or she lacks substantial capacity either to appreciate the wrongfulness of his or her actions, or to conform to the requirements of the law.

  “The test is, did he or she know that what they did was wrong, or was their psychosis so profound that their emotional understanding was impaired to the extent that it was impossible to control their behaviour. Sometimes it can be a hard call.”

  Lisa took her drink through to the lounge, set it down on the coffee table and went over to the bookcase. She traced the spines with her finger, located the book she wanted, plucked it out and flipped through the pages.

  “You’re familiar with Dennis Nilsen and his crimes, aren’t you?” she said.

  Jack nodded. “Yeah. He was a uniformed copper for a while.”

  “He murdered at least a dozen men. And I presume you know what he did to them.”

  Jack nodded. He’d read all about the gay serial murderer who’d been tagged The Muswell Hill Killer.

  Lisa continued. “This is something Nilsen subsequently wrote in a journal he started in prison: ‘I am always surprised and truly amazed that anyone can be attracted by the macabre. The population at large is neither ‘ordinary’ nor ‘normal’. They seem to be bound together by a collective ignorance of themselves and what they are. They have, every one of them, got their deep dark thoughts with many a skeleton rattling in their secret cupboards. Their fascination with ‘types’ (rare types) like myself, plagues them with the mystery of why and how a living person can actually do things which may be only those dark images and acts secretly within them. I believe they can identify with these ‘dark images and acts’ and loathe anything which reminds them of this dark side of themselves. The usual reaction is a flood of popular self-righteous condemnations, but a willingness to, with friends and acquaintances, talk over and over again the appropriate bits of the case’.”

  “And the moral to his befuddled raving is?” Jack said.

  “There isn’t one. I cannot understand his actions properly, but know precisely what he means; where he was coming from. He was...is aware of the faint ripple of unborn race memory that inhabits all of us. He believes that we are all tainted with original sin. If you stand too near the edge of the pit, you might well be drawn down into it. Looking at evil is a perilous occupation. It looks back at you.”

  Jack half emptied his glass. It was remarkable to him that the icy bourbon could generate such warmth as it burned a path down to his stomach. “Give that to me in layman’s terms,” he said to Lisa.

  “You’ve been a copper for a long time. Can you, with hand on heart, swear that you have never abused your authority? Never beaten the shit out of a suspect who you believed deserved it? Never intimidated someone beyond the point that you knew was lawful? Have you ever used fire to fight fire?”

  “Let him without evil cast the first stone is not a dictum I have any respect for, Lisa. Sometimes you have to meet force with force, and be pre-emptive. I’ve done things that needed doing. I’m not proud of them all, but neither do they keep me awake at night.”

  Jack recalled an incident from when he had been a detective sergeant in CID, several years ago. He had been standing in front of the crumpled form of Carl Gorton, who was lying on the concrete landing outside the door of his fourteenth floor flat in Bermondsey.

  Gorton had raped six women over a period of twelve months. He had frequented country settings: parks, small woods, picnic areas and riverside and canal footpaths. Females of all ages were at risk. He didn’t differentiate between a teenage jogger and a pensioner taking her dog for a walk. His attacks were brutal, leaving the victims traumatised and beaten mercilessly. That none had died from his sustained and vicious onslaughts was almost a miracle. One forty-three year old schoolteacher had been in a coma for a month, to be left wheelchair bound, paralysed down her entire right side.

  Gorton had used her head as a football.

  While being arrested, Gorton ‒ high on PCP ‒ had spat at Jack; just coughed up a mouthful of phlegm and propelled it out between his yellow, cavity-ridden teeth. The thick, viscous fluid splattered on Jack’s forehead and ran down into his left eye. He reacted to the assault, and in the ensuin
g scuffle, Gorton managed to latch on to Jack’s little finger with his mouth and bite down. Jack remembered trying everything to dislodge him; had punched him in the face half a dozen times with his fisted free hand, and then lodged two fingers in the man’s nostrils and almost ripped his nose off, to no avail. He had even ground a knuckle in one of Gorton’s eyes.

  The two DCs with Jack had weighed in, and separated the two struggling figures. Jack had felt an overwhelming surge of relief. He was much taller than Gorton, at least two stones heavier, but had felt that he was brawling with a live eel.

  Only when Gorton was cuffed and heaved to his feet, had Jack and the two other officers noticed that he was chewing on something.

  “Jesus, guv, your hand,” DC Rob Parfitt had said.

  It was as if seeing the blood flow and the ragged stump incited the pain. Jack looked at where his little finger had been, clenched the remaining three fingers of his right hand, and drove his fist into the rapist’s face, to be rewarded with an audible crack as the jaw fractured. Gorton was catapulted backwards, to rebound off the wall next to his flat’s door, only to be met by a barrage of blows from Jack, who had let his rage coalesce and consume him.

  Subsequently, only the loss of Jack’s finger had saved him from being adjudged to have used excessive force. The two DCs had conspired to embellish the facts and produce reports to the effect that Jack had been fighting for his life against a drug-crazed rapist who was resisting arrest.

  Gorton had got eighteen years. Jack’s only regret was that he hadn’t thrown the bastard over the balcony of the high-rise flats. Society would be better served if his type were put down; in the way you would a dog that savaged a member of the public for no good reason.

  “A penny for them.” Lisa said.

  “Uh?”

  “Your thoughts.”

  His missing finger ached, even after all this time. A part of his brain seemed to hold stubbornly on to the mistaken belief that the digit was still there, to the point that he could feel the phantom pain.