A Need To Kill (DI Matt Barnes) (8 page)

“
I thought he was going to have a heart attack on the job,” Errol said.

Pete grinned. 
“Wishful thinking, Errol.  Although I can think of a thousand worse ways to go.”

“
Did you notice if he was wearing a ring?” Errol said.  “I was too busy watching the action.”

“
He was wearing nothing but a smile,” Pete replied.

“
Are we gonna get a beer and popcorn and watch the lot, then?  Or give the boss a bell and let him see Marsha earning her daily bread?”

“
I’ll give him the good news.  The punters in her address book will have a hard time denying their involvement, if they’ve been caught on candid camera.”

After Pete switched off the video and put it back in the bag, they went into the bedroom and quickly found the space on a shelf in the wardrobe where the camera had been set up to capture all that took place on top of the duvet.  Only an inch gap between two of the mirror-faced doors would have been necessary to take the footage.

Pete sat on the edge of the bed and punched up Matt’s number on his mobile phone.

“
Yeah, Pete?”

“
We got some great home movies to watch, boss.  The resolution of this stuff is unbelievable.  You can see the hairs on―”

“
I get the picture.  Meet me back at base in a couple of hours and we’ll go through it.”

Matt
had been about to phone Airscape and set up an interview with Colin Westin, who was entered in Marsha’s address-come-appointment book as being due to see her on the night that she had died.  The call from Pete decided him to hold fire.  Westin would most likely be on video, and would without doubt be more approachable if he knew there was photographic evidence linking them.  Matt decided to have another coffee and maybe take it downstairs, where he could go outside and enjoy a smoke with it.  It crossed his mind that he might quit the coffin nails.  Only one of his team, Dave Brent, smoked. It was getting that he felt like a bloody criminal when he lit up.  There was a stigma attached to it now.  Maybe he only still indulged because it was an almost taboo practise.  There was a perverse pleasure in bucking the system.  Beth would read a lot into that.  She always looked for the thinking behind the reason for any action.  And maybe he was just pretty shallow.  He took it one day at a time as a rule, and didn’t worry too much about a future he would only see a limited amount of.  He wished Beth could loosen up a tad.  She spent too much time looking for problems that might or might not exist.  Best to negate them one at a time when they arose.

The phone on the desk next to him rang, startling him out of thoughts that would no doubt have soured his mood for the rest of the day.

“Barnes.”

“
My office, now,”  Tom said with an urgency implying that all was not well; that the fan was on high speed, and about to be hit by a large amount of the brown stuff.

“
I was about to step out for a smoke,” Matt said, testing the water.

“
Don’t even think about it,” Tom came back, his words loaded with unspoken threat.

Matt
killed two birds with one stone.  Instead of taking the lift, he walked past it, out through the fire door into the stairwell.  Fired up a cigarette as he mounted the stairs.  His leg was complaining.  He ignored it, refused to limp, ground out the cigarette on a step and walked out into a corridor that had a higher grade of carpet than the one on his floor.

“
Sit down and listen up,” Tom said as Matt strolled into his office.

Matt
dropped into a chair.  “Okay, shoot,” he said to the cop who was not only his boss, but one of his very few real friends.

Tom looked at his wristwatch. 
“In exactly two minutes, Grizzly Adams is going to march through the door.  He wants to talk to you personally about this case.”

“
You mean he’s seen the book and knows that his name is in it?”

“
You got it.”

“
Don’t expect me to bury it, Tom.  If he tells me to mess with the facts, then I’ll go for broke and try to have him suspended, due to the fact that he is a suspect in a murder inquiry.”

“
Easy.  He wanted you on this case.  And remember, he has the clout to put you back on the beat.”

“
That wouldn’t happen.  I could still put in for a medical and walk with a pension of sorts.  I only know one way to get things done.  You know that.”

Detective Chief Superintendent Clive Adams appeared at the door.  He was in his late fifties but had a youthful, vigorous look.  Could have been a game show host.  He wore a dark grey, well-fitting suit with hand stitched lapels, and his tan was of the sun bed variety.  Hadn
’t he read the stuff on how too much time under them could give you skin cancer?  Matt still couldn’t decide whether his thick, black hair was dyed or not.

“
I’ll take it from here,” Clive said, addressing Tom as both of his subordinates got to their feet.

Tom nodded and left the office.

“Don’t stand on ceremony, Barnes,” Clive said.  “Sit back down.  This will only take a minute of my time.”

Matt
retook his seat and watched the DCS stride around the desk and sit on Tom’s swivel chair.

“
I’m a busy man,” Clive said, tenting his fingers together on the blotter.  The nails were professionally manicured.  It crossed Matt’s mind that Grizzly had enough time on his hands to have them regularly tended to, and spend hours building his tan, when not visiting overpriced whores and being available for fittings at a Savile Row tailors.

“
So am I, sir,” Matt said.

“
Then we won’t shadow box.  You have an address book with my name in it.  You need to eliminate me as a suspect.  Right?”

Matt
locked eyes with the man and nodded.

Clive withdrew a single sheet of folded paper from the inside breast pocket of his jacket and pushed it across the desk to him.

“You’ll find details of where I was and who I was with on both of the dates that the murders took place.  I would appreciate you being discreet.  Anything you feel you need to ask me, ask it now.  I want this case to move forward without any unnecessary delay.”

Matt
opened up the sheet and saw that Adams had given a full account of his supposed whereabouts for a period of twenty-four hours either side of each murder.  It gave times, places and names.  On the evening that Marsha had been slain, he had been at a Masonic function in the company of – among others – the Assistant Police Commissioner.

“
Well?” Clive said, his renowned temper hardly contained, augmenting his surname to merit the tag, Grizzly, in that he was large and prone to be fierce.

“
We have video footage of Marsha Freeman with her...clients, sir.  I would expect that you’ll be featured.”

Clive pinched the bridge of his nose between finger and thumb.  When he let go, the skin was white and took a second or two to return to its former
‘Dale Winton’ bronze colour.

“
I wanted you heading up this case because you have a proven record of clearing this sort of crime, Barnes,” he said.  “Ray Preston once told me that you are the best there is at hunting head cases like this down. You will have already come to the conclusion that the killer is a maniac who targets prostitutes.  The book and videos are an aside; a record kept by a slut who lacked the propriety expected of her.”

Matt
wished that DCI Ray Preston was still heading up the unit.  Ray had been a cop’s cop, who had earned the respect of all his men.  He had been another casualty of the killer, Paul Sutton, who had abducted his teenage daughter, Laura, and murdered her.  Years back, Ray had been the arresting officer who brought in Sutton’s stepfather, Ted Roberts, for rape.  Roberts had served his time, but left prison with terminal cancer and died shortly afterwards.  Something in Sutton’s brain fused, and he decided to declare war on everyone who had played any part in his stepfather being incarcerated.

Matt
had eventually ended up in a shoot-out with Sutton, which the multiple killer did not survive.  Shortly after that, Ray had put his papers in and retired.  Matt knew that some things could not be got past.  Ray and his wife had sold their house and moved away from the area, to no doubt try and start anew in surroundings that would not remind them of Laura every second of every day.  Trouble was, in Matt’s opinion, you couldn’t run away from your own memories.  Good or bad, they haunted you for the duration.

“
The missing pages might have been taken by the killer, sir,” Matt said, emptying his mind of thoughts that were not pertinent to the here and now.  “Any punters who are on film, but whose names are missing from the book, need to be chased down and interviewed.  Another scenario is that if, for example, you had done the deed, then to remove a few pages and leave your own name in the book would be a clever way to shift the direction of the investigation.”

“
And what scenario do you subscribe to, Barnes?”

“
I keep an open mind, sir.”

“
Bullshit!  Talk straight.  I’m not here to ask you to cover anything up that is relevant to the case.  But like it or not, that book and these videos you mentioned are highly sensitive material.  In the wrong hands they could cause chaos and instability. The public’s perception is important.”

Matt
knew he was up on the moral high ground and could be blunt.  He didn’t like Adams, and gave a response that could have been more measured.  “As I told Tom Bartlett, I don’t do politics.  My only concern is working the case and getting a result.  I’m a street cop who doesn’t need you or any other suit from the top floor to tell me how to conduct an investigation.  The only people apart from me who will see the tapes and have access to the address book are Tom and any of my team that I think need to.  And as for what scenario I subscribe to; my instinct tells me that some maniac is on the warpath.  He specifically targets redheaded prostitutes who remind him of someone who he hates with a vengeance.  Maybe he flipped through the book, recognised the name of someone he knew and ripped a few pages out on the spur of the moment.  I’d rather believe that it was someone known to Marsha who had done it, but I don’t think it was.  Anyone who paid a grand a night to float his boat wouldn’t have bothered with the likes of Kelly Lindon.  And the one thing that is definite, is that the same person killed both of them.”

Clive nodded. 
“Good.  I prefer people to shoot from the hip.  Don’t think that because I spend most of my time behind a desk, that I don’t keep a finger on the pulse, Barnes.  You’re a driven man.  You seem to like being out on the edge.  I admire that, to a degree.  Trouble is, men like you burn out quickly or self-destruct.  I know where you’re coming from.  I liken you to a Wild West gunslinger carrying memories that haunt him.  Maybe if you could get beyond using the past as a blunt instrument to beat yourself up with, then you wouldn’t be the cop you are.  You’re a junkie.  You need conflict to feed off.”

They had come to some sort of understanding. 
Adams got up and left the office, and Matt realised that there was a lot more to the man than met the eye.  He had come up through the ranks, playing a game that had taken him to a cushy office at the top of the building.  It crossed Matt’s mind that this was not a man who you would want as an enemy.  And anyway, the tan stretched to the tips of his fingers, encompassing them.  There was no telltale white strip that might have implied that he usually wore a large ring. Hopefully the video tapes would disclose some guy wearing the ring, but it was long shot.

Back in the squad room,
Matt gave Errol the job of phoning the mortuary for any update he could get on Marsha’s autopsy, and to then confirm whether her father’s business trip at the time of the killing was on the level.

Pete
cabled up the video camera to a monitor in Matt’s office, while Matt poured them both coffee and then closed the Venetian blinds at the large window that faced the squad room.  He saw no need for anyone else to view what were in reality no less than pornographic home movies.

It took time, even though they fast forwarded to find a clear view of each punter
’s hands.  Not one of Marsha’s partners wore a ring that matched the imprint found on the victims.

“
What does that tell us, boss?” Pete said, removing the last tape, switching the camera and monitor off and disconnecting the cables.

“
That if the killer wears his ring to commit murder, then I don’t see him taking it off to make love.”

“
So you don’t think we’ve just had the pleasure of seeing our boy on screen?”

“
I think it highly unlikely.  I’ve got the feeling we’re going through the motions.  The only clue we have is the ring.”

“
Why not feed it to the press?  Someone out there will know if a friend, workmate or partner wears a bloody big ring with a wolf or some animal’s head on it.”

“
We might do that, Pete, but not yet.  I don’t want him to go to ground or feel in danger.  We still have to run down some of Marsha’s contacts; ex-boyfriends and people who she worked with and for as a model.  And I want to talk to her best friend, whoever that might be.  All women have another female friend who they confide in.  And when the funeral takes place, we need to be there.  Maybe the killer will turn up wearing a black suit and a wolf head ring.”