Deadly Obsession

by Michael Kerr

  It was a laundry room. Shelves were stacked with neatly squared blankets, sheets and pillowcases. He found a bin full to the brim with dirty linen, including white coats. Donning one that was not too creased, though was short in the sleeves and a little snug, he opened the door and looked both ways down a long corridor. There was no one to be seen. He knew that very few staff would be on night duty. Almost opposite was a door with the word STAIRS stencilled on it. He went through it and made his way up to the second floor.

  Looking through the small, square, wired-glass window of the stairwell door, he could see a plainclothes cop sitting on a plastic chair outside room 213. He was reading a paperback.

  Lloyd drew his Browning Hi-Power nine-millimetre pistol and screwed a silencer onto the muzzle.

  DC Chris Dexter looked up as the man in the white coat came through the stairwell door and walked casually in his direction. The guy nodded and smiled at Chris. He was in his forties, clean-shaven, wore expensive-looking glasses with no discernible frames, and walked quickly with his hands stuffed in the coat’s pockets.

  “Good book?” Lloyd asked in a soft voice, hardly more than a whisper.

  Chris held it up to show the doctor the cover. It was an old Stephen King book: ’Salem’s Lot.

  “There are far worse things in life than vampires,” Lloyd said, smoothly drawing the Browning and putting a slug in the dead centre of the copper’s forehead.

  The shot could have been a patient coughing in another room. Chris’s head snapped back to collide with the wall, and the single, last sound he made was similar to that of someone dragging phlegm from the back of his throat. His slack hands dropped the book, and he slumped down in the chair as if asleep.

  Kelly sat up. Something had woken her. She wanted to believe she was safe, but knew that Randy was as smart as the cops. She was a nervous wreck.

  Shit! the female cop sitting in an easy chair at the other side of the room was asleep.

  “Ey,” Kelly said. “Ey, cop, wake up for fuck’s sake, I think I ’eard somethin’.”

  DC Diane Railsback grunted and blinked her eyes. Sleeping on witness protection duty was unforgivable. She had just been thinking about Darren, her boyfriend, and the fact that she was so much in love with the hunky IT consultant. She should be at home in bed with him. Thoughts of straddling him, and the awesome pleasure she got from their lovemaking had somehow carried her into a doze; not fully asleep or awake, but in the twilight world that lay between the two.

  “Uh, what?” she said, looking across at Kelly’s disfigured face.

  “I thought I ’eard―”

  The two soft blats were accompanied by the sound of splintering wood and the harsh smack of metal on metal. The lock gave, and the door opened to reveal a man in a doctor’s coat, holding a gun.

  Diane reacted and reached for her holstered Glock as she tried to get to her feet. She wanted to scream out. Wanted to live, but knew that however fast she was, it would be too slow. She didn’t want to die, but was in no doubt that she would.

  A fleeting bright light flared inside her head, but there was no pain.

  Lloyd watched the female cop fall backwards. She hit the floor with a dull thud and her legs shot up into the air. For an instant he saw a flash of white, trembling thighs, before he pulled the trigger again to make sure that she was dead.

  “No, please, noooo!” Kelly spluttered, holding her hands up in front of her face.

  Lloyd tracked round with the extended barrel, to point it at her shaking palms. What on earth did the stupid cow think she was doing?

  Kelly began to wet the bed, with no knowledge of the fear-induced act.

  Without saying a word, Lloyd walked over to her, placed the smoking muzzle to her left temple and squeezed the trigger. The head was jerked sideways by the impact, and the pillow became awash with its expelled contents. He leaned over and put a second bullet through her left eye. Double-tapping was a tried and tested method to ensure that they were history.

  Footsteps. He could hear someone approaching.

  Even as Nurse Marsha Crosby saw that the policeman was crumpled up on the chair in an unnatural position, a man came through the doorway with a gun in his hand.

  Marsha had heard a noise and thought that the old man in 211 had somehow half-climbed, half-fallen out of bed again, and so had left the nurses’ station to go and investigate.

  Lloyd walked straight up to the nurse, who had stopped dead in her tracks and was staring at the gun in his hand. He gripped her by the throat and pressed the hot end of the silencer against her forehead.

  He asked: “Are you the only nurse on this floor?”

  Marsha nodded as best she could. She couldn’t breathe.

  “When are you expecting to see anyone?” he said, relaxing his grip so that she could answer.

  “The sister will be doing her rounds in about half an hour.”

  That gave him plenty of time. He didn’t shoot her. Just renewed his vicelike grip on her larynx. Forced her back and down on to the floor, sat across her breasts and manually strangled her to death. He enjoyed close-up and personal stuff. He liked to feel them struggle and writhe, and watch as the frantic fight for life was lost. Her eyes filled with pinpoint haemorrhages, became fixed, and her body went slack as small bones in her throat fractured.

  Lloyd retraced his tracks and left the clinic. Back in his car he drove leisurely towards the city, parked and left the vehicle unlocked on a council estate – where it was a given that it would be stolen within the hour – and walked for fifteen minutes before hailing a passing cab.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  JACK was in the squad room when Eddie took the call. The news that Eddie relayed sickened him, and made him feel even more vulnerable, if that were possible. The clinic where Kelly Davis had supposedly been safe from harm had been hit. Kelly, two WP – witness protection – officers and a nurse had been murdered. That in itself was a catastrophe, but the implications were far-reaching. Gant had found out where she was, and very few people had known. It came down to clinic staff or, God forbid, one of his team. The thought of one of his own squad being in the gangster’s pocket was intolerable, but not beyond possibility. He found himself looking at the one’s who were in the room, as though a physical sign like that of a brand on a steer might burst into flame on their foreheads and reveal them. Could one of the men or women he trusted be on Gant’s payroll? The answer was, yes. Most people could be leaned on and sucked in if the incentive was big enough. It wasn’t a straightforward matter of cash for inside information. Threat of violence to a loved one could do the trick. Jack now knew all too well what emotions came into play when someone made it personal. There were no rules. When you cornered a rat, it would attack and fight tooth and claw to survive. Humans were no different. And lowlifes would use extreme measures to protect both their freedom and lifestyle.

  “You going to the scene, boss?” Eddie said.

  Jack shook his head and went over to refill his mug with coffee. “No, Eddie. You go with Phil. This was a professional hit. Gant somehow got the word and had it done.”

  “That means somebody at the clinic talked,” Eddie said. “Or...”

  Jack saw the thought form in Eddie’s eyes.

  “That’s right, Eddie. Let’s hope it was one of the staff at the clinic, because if it wasn’t, then it had to have been a cop. Check everyone out, from the director down to the maintenance man.”

  “Where’s Mike got to?” Eddie said.

  “Making sure that my son and ex are hundreds of miles away from here. Even I don’t know exactly where they’re going.”

  After Eddie and Phil left, Jack phoned Lisa and told her what had happened.

  “Why don’t you give the Gant case back to AMIP?” Lisa said. “You know that all you’ve got now is Tyrell and his buddy, Foster. And when they find out what happened to Kelly, they’ll suddenly develop amnesia.”

  “Too late for them to have a change of heart, Lisa. They
gave Gant up. Whatever they do now, they know he’ll have them capped if he can arrange it. All I have to do is make sure that they remain alive until after the trial.”

  “That could be months.”

  “Tell me something I don’t know.”

  “I’ve got a bottle of JB in and I miss you, Ryder.”

  “Are you trying to bribe me with booze, you harlot?”

  “I cannot lie. Yes.”

  “You want me to pick up a takeaway?”

  “So you’re going to leave the helm and drop by?”

  “Yeah. I’ll be there in an hour. What do you fancy?”

  “Chinese and you, but not necessarily in that order.”

  Lisa ate. Jack couldn’t face more than a couple of mouthfuls. Kelly’s death was weighing heavy. Later, they both drank a little too much of Jack’s favourite tipple, went to bed and made love, and then lay in the darkness and talked.

  “This is getting too complicated,” Jack said.

  “What is, us?” Lisa said, sensing that he had begun to feel trapped in an increasingly heavy relationship.

  “No way. You’re probably all that’s keeping me sane at the moment. I mean the cases. The Mimic is running rings round us and has made it personal. And I’ve got a bad feeling that Gant will walk. I really believed I could keep Kelly Davis safe; that she would get a chance to start a new life. And all I succeeded in doing was getting her and the people guarding her killed.”

  “You’re not Atlas, Ryder. Don’t try to carry the weight of the world on your shoulders. I thought you’d accepted that life was shit, and then you die. What happened to that macho man you’ve cultured over the years?”

  “Macho?”

  Lisa smiled. “Maybe a bad choice of labels.”

  “Damn right it is. I’m just a copper, not a wannabe Schwarzenegger, or a John McClane type.”

  “John who?”

  “McClane. The NYPD cop that Bruce Willis played in the Die Hard movies.”

  “But on one level you think that you can put the world to rights. There’s a streak running through you that believes you can overcome all adversity. And what’s happening now is hard for you to swallow. You aren’t in control of the situation.”

  “Do you charge by the hour? Or is this a free introductory session?”

  “It’ll cost you time out to come on holiday with me, when the Mimic is safely tucked up in prison.”

  “That might be a long time in coming. Arresting bad guys is what I’m good at. But I’m not big on trying to get into the thought processes of psychos, or pretend to know what led them down the path they follow.”

  “You underestimate yourself, Ryder. You outmanoeuvre offenders by detection, which involves understanding how they think. It’s a method of seeing patterns over and over again, and being able to get a handle on the type who would be most likely to commit a particular crime. Now that this one has latched on to you, we need to come up with a proactive plan to bring him in. He’s like a shark following a trail of blood behind a boat. If you stick something tasty on a hook and throw it in, he’ll bite.”

  “I hope you’re right,” Jack said as he slipped out of bed. “I’m going for a leak, but don’t move...I’ll be back.”

  “Missing you already, Arnie.”

  The break came just two days before Christmas. In the meantime nothing had happened to suggest that the Mimic was still active. There had been no further violent attacks or murders bearing his signature.

  Anita Brewster was on the mend, and Jack, accompanied by Lisa, had interviewed her only seventy-two hours after she had been mutilated and left for dead. She couldn’t speak, but had given written answers to their questions. She had confirmed Dave Cornell’s story; that they’d had sex on the night of the attack, and that the scratches on his back had been inflicted at a rather delicate moment. She had blushed as they read her statement back to her, but she had needed them to know that Dave was not responsible for what had happened to her later that same night. She remembered being confronted in her bedroom, fleeing down the stairs and unlocking and opening the kitchen door, but nothing else. She wrote down that her assailant was of medium build, wore a black ski mask or Balaclava, and was about five foot ten tall. That was it. She had no recollection of the pain and horror that being sodomised and having part of her tongue removed must have engendered. The only semen recovered from her had been Dave’s. Her attacker had obviously worn a condom to commit his act of degradation on her. As previously, only lubricant from the sheath was retrieved.

  Tyrell and Foster were still on ice, and Gant was trying to cut himself a deal. Jack had handed the case back to Doug Taylor, having decided to let AMIP mop up. He was happy to have done what was needed to put Gant behind bars. If Taylor fucked-up and couldn’t keep the witnesses alive and sweet, then he didn’t really care. He was still trying to square his conscience over Kelly Davis being hit. And it was eating at him that whoever had given her location away was still out there. None of the clinic’s staff looked good for it, which left him with the knowledge that there might indeed be a rogue cop to worry about.

  Sharon and Danny were in York. Only he and Mike knew their location. Sharon was phoning him at least once a day now, pissed at being stuck up north, but sensible enough to know that until he told her it was safe to return home, she would have to make the best of a bad deal.

  Jack and Lisa were very much in love. Funny how it seemed they had been lovers for years, not just a few weeks. They now spent three or four nights a week together, always at Lisa’s. Since the break-in and the grisly find, Jack was justifiably paranoid, believing that the Mimic could well be keeping him under surveillance. He took a different route to the cottage on the Heath every time, using all avoidance techniques in the manual, and then some, to ensure beyond any doubt that he had not been followed. And he parked in a different spot a few minutes’ walk from Lisa’s every time.

  They were finding balance in their lives. Work was still an important, integral part of who they were, but not to the obsessive level it had been. They had found a reason strong enough to give them the incentive to take time out and switch off.

  It was nine-forty p.m. on the twenty-third of December. He strolled past the front of Ogilvy House before making his way down a side street, to double back up another to the car park behind the apartment block. It looked safe. He ducked into thick cover of a landscaped triangle-shaped patch next to the path adjacent to the rear of the building that was planted with a variety of evergreens. He hunkered down on the layer of weed-suppressing wood chips and just waited for over half an hour. A security guard eventually ambled into view around the corner of the building and stopped within four feet of him. He stayed still, muscles tensed, ready to attack or run, and then relaxed as he heard the steady stream. The guard was taking a piss. When the guy zipped up and moved off, he watched him until he vanished from sight, before moving out of his hiding place and, without hesitation, scaling the drainpipe, to climb over the first floor balcony’s rail and kneel down outside the glass door.

  He knew that Dawn was out; appearing in some poxy play at a theatre in the West End. He took a wallet from the inside of his black leather jacket, selected the appropriate tools and picked the lock in less than twenty seconds.

  Inching the door open, he entered, parted the heavy, velvet-soft curtains and was in the bedroom. He acclimatised to his surroundings. The silence was as thick as the darkness. He smiled to himself. This was a piece of cake...

  …And then the room came alive. A small, blinding sun materialised in front of his eyes, and an instant later a blow folded his legs at the knees and he was forced face down onto the carpet. The hard, cold pressure against the back of his neck could have been anything, but he knew it was the muzzle of a gun.

  DCs Nick Reece and Jay Cox could hardly believe their luck. They were in the apartment watching the News at Ten when the call came from DC Mal Murray, who was stationed in the car park inside a nondescript van.

  Mal h
ad watched the unknown subject step off the walkway and hide in the bushes, and almost opened the door and shouted as the security guard appeared and stopped to take a leak, but held off. When the guard had moved on, he gave Nick a running commentary on his mobile as to the suspect’s actions, and left the van, gun drawn, when the figure broke into the apartment.

  Nick and Jay were already in the bedroom. They could hear the lock being picked, and just held their breath and waited. Nick was kneeling at the far side of the bed, and Jay was next to the balcony door when the figure slid through the curtains.

  Nick stood up and switched on the torch as Jay made his move.

  “Hands behind your back, NOW,” Jay ordered, after putting the side of his shoe behind the trespasser’s knees and exerted enough pressure to bring him down.

  Nick kept the torch beam on the scene until he switched on the light. Jay frisked their prisoner, but found no weapons.

  “Talk,” Jay said after cuffing the guy and roughly pulling him up into a kneeling position.

  No reply.

  “Listen, pal,” Nick said, pushing the muzzle of his pistol up against the man’s mouth with enough force to part his lips and rattle his front teeth. “Silence is not golden. Talk to us or I’ll throw you off the fucking balcony.”

  “You can’t―”

  “Do you know who we are, you sad piece of shit?” Jay said from behind him.

  More silence.

  “Thought not,” Jay continued. “We’re going to have a little question and answer session. And if I even think you’re lying, then you take a header on to the concrete while attempting to escape. Get the picture?”

  “You’re the police. You’ve got no right to―”

  Nick drew his gun back, lowered it, and punched the muzzle into the man’s stomach with enough force to fold him up and wind him.

  “We’ve got all the right we need, dummy,” Jay said, pulling him back up. “You broke in here and left all your rights outside the door. Make a choice. Talk or take a fall.”