Deadly Obsession Read online

  Two coffees and three cigarettes later, he went to the bathroom, shaved, showered and found himself with his hands flat against the tiled wall, crying his eyes out, missing people, his childhood, and a past that had rushed by and left him in limbo, with nothing to show for its passing but melancholy.

  It was almost eight a.m. when Jack arrived at the Yard. He went up to Ken’s office, knocked once on the door and was halfway through it before his governor shouted, “Come.”

  The office was small, dingy, and in desperate need of refurbishment. One wall was lined with battleship-grey file cabinets topped with mountains of fat manila folders stacked unevenly, only defying gravity by leaning against each other for support. Maybe they would reach the yellowed ceiling without collapsing and causing a paper avalanche that would undoubtedly bury Ken, Jack thought. The grubby Venetian blinds were still closed against the grey cityscape, and Ken was sitting behind an old utilitarian desk that might have seen service at the Yard’s old address on the Embankment. The computer on its scarred top looked out of time and place.

  “Coffee?” Ken said, inclining his head towards the small table under the window, where a kettle and all the makings were located. When Jack nodded, Ken held out his own empty mug for a refill. “Now that Frank Robinson is out of the picture, we need to see where our priorities lay, Jack,” Ken observed, squaring off a dozen files and patting the top cover with his hand. “We can put more resources onto the Lewis case. The press are running with it, shouting racism and ripping us to pieces with over-the-top headlines. The suits’ upstairs want it solved, and fast.”

  Jack put the two steaming mugs down on a blotter that might have been advertising blurb for a tattoo parlour. Ken’s doodles were miniature works of art, light years away from boxes, triangles, match stick figures, whorls and noughts and crosses.

  “Joey Lewis was a lowlife junkie who got in debt and tried to do a runner,” Jack said. “It was an execution, not a racist killing. Randy Gant made an example of him.”

  Ken hiked his shoulders. “Whatever. We need to prove it. The only witness is a woman by the name of Kelly Davis, and she swears that she saw three white guys lift the kid.”

  “The wit is hooking for Gant,” Jack said. “And AMIP are handling the case. It’s not our baby.”

  “It’s every hand to the pump now. Liaise with DI Doug Taylor. Until we make a collar, the tabloids are going with Davis’s story. It sells copy. We need to get the word on Gant.”

  Jack paced the worn carpet, reviewing the Lewis case. The youth had been found on a building site, face down in the dirt with his wrists taped together behind him. The shotgun blasts to the back of his neck had all but decapitated him. There had been no trace evidence worth spit. And the prostitute who’d come forward was sticking to the well-rehearsed story she’d been fed. They couldn’t break the lie. The police weren’t her friends, and the knowledge of what Gant could do with a Stanley knife was all the incentive she needed to literally swear that black was white.

  “I’ll put a couple of the lads on it full-time,” Jack said. “But I think we’re pissing into a force ten gale. If the hotshots in the Area Major Investigation Pool can’t close Gant down, then―”

  “This isn’t a debate, Jack. Let’s just cover all the bases. I’m doing a joint press gig with AMIP this afternoon. We’ll reiterate the fact that Lewis was a user with previous of drug related offences, and that the word on the street is, he got in too deep and owed too much to people who aren’t known for their qualities of patience and goodwill.

  “Now pull up a chair, for Christ’s sake. You’re making me dizzy, padding around like a caged lion.”

  Jack slumped into the swivel chair in front of Ken’s desk. Like everything else in the office – including the jaded-looking chief inspector – it was past its prime, a little frayed at the edges; still functional and well able to serve its purpose, but looking clapped-out and ready for the knackers yard.

  Jack sipped at the own brand supermarket coffee and winced. He looked across at Ken. Studied the other man’s face. Stress had carved deep lines in his worn features. Given enough time, rain, frost, heat and the passing of countless seasons can fracture and erode the hardest rock, and Ken was not as granite-hard as he had spent most of his life purporting to be. He still stood tall, though the years had marginally stooped his lanky frame. His eyes were also lacklustre, not sparkling with a love for the challenge of life he had once embraced. His hair was thick and now gone to grey. Age had also conferred on him a blossoming gift of arthritis that had sunk its sharp, hot fangs into his hands and knees; the crippling venom slowing him up some, but not stopping him. A lifetime of trying to make a difference had finally caught up with him, and was pulling him down into a mire of disenchantment. He was just going through the motions now, on the rundown to being a part of all his own yesterdays.

  Jack felt a stab of sadness. Ken reminded him of his late father; was on the same one-way route. And in turn, Jack was aware of what could well be his own future. Another twenty years and he might be buckling under the pressure, wishing his life away, or pissing it down the toilet, courtesy of the Jim Beam he relied on to steel his heart against all tribulations.

  “What?” Ken said.

  Jack cleared his head and centred his thoughts on the here and now. “Uh, nothing. I was just wondering why I keep drinking your coffee. It’s crap.”

  “You want gratis java, don’t complain. If it’s that bad, go to Starbucks and pay through the nose for it.”

  “So what’s the next big one, boss?” Detective Sergeant Mike Hewson asked Jack as he ambled into the squad room.

  “Get me a decent cup of coffee and I’ll give you the bad news,” Jack said, shrugging off his jacket and dropping it over the back of a chair.

  The few detectives in the room were quiet, subdued, still a little stunned at the sudden demise of Frank Robinson. Not one of them was sorry that he’d been gunned down, but the thousands of man hours’ invested in gathering Intel on him seemed squandered.

  “Listen up, people,” Jack said after Mike handed him a mug of strong, black coffee. “You all did a first class job on the Robinson case. What we put together is far-reaching and will put a lot of scumbags inside. Now we move on. The chief wants us to work with AMIP and get a quick result over the Lewis slaying.”

  DC Phil Jennings groaned.

  Jack forced a smile and said, “I know, Phil. They think they’re the cat’s whiskers. If they were chocolate, they’d eat themselves. But we need to squeeze our arse cheeks and make the best of it. The case is a stick of sweating dynamite, politically. I want for us to find the pricks that topped the kid, put it to bed, and get back to bigger fish. Think of it as a chance to show the so-called top guns of law enforcement that we’re numero uno. Okay?”

  The mood in the room changed. It was as if a tropical depression had lifted. There was a new sense of purpose in the air. Busy fingers worked keyboards and picked up phones. The white boards that had been cleared of everything pertaining to Frank Robinson would soon be adorned with photographs of Joey Lewis, Randy Gant, and all the drug dealer’s muscle. Investigative avenues would be written up in black marker pen. It was a well-oiled machine, now up and running and gathering momentum again.

  Jack made a call.

  “Yeah, Taylor.”

  “It’s Jack Ryder, Doug. I take it you’ve been given the good news.”

  Doug sighed audibly. “I’ve been asked to cooperate with your mob, Ryder. But I want you to know that I don’t see what you can contribute. We’re on top of it. You’ll just be along for the ride.”

  “Let’s make it a short ride, then. But until we put it to bed, I’d appreciate everything you’ve got; the whole package. My team’s raring to go.”

  “We don’t have too much, yet. We’ve been building a case on Gant. The Lewis murder is just a side issue that’s been blown up out of all proportion.”

  “You got a pen? You can dump what little you have in my email ba
sket. Who knows, it might be worth reading?”

  “You’ve got a bad attitude, Ryder.”

  “You bring out the worst in me, Taylor. I haven’t got the time or the inclination to be subtle. Neither of us wants to hold hands on this, so let’s just get it done with.”

  The line went dead. Jack felt a little better. He’d rattled the arrogant young DI, who had entered AMIP by way of brown-nosing and accelerated promotion.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  IT was the second of December when Jack got pulled off the Lewis killing. Ken had been given a case that overrode all others they were currently investigating.

  Jack took his own caffeine fix up to Ken’s office.

  “Look at these,” Ken said, pushing a sheaf of 8x10 colour prints across his desktop with the tips of his fingers, in a way that suggested the photographs were infected with some contagious disease.

  Jack put his mug down, picked up the photos and went through them as he would peruse holiday snaps, slipping one behind the other until he’d seen the full set.

  The crime scene was a bathroom. The corpse was that of a woman laid face down with her head inclined to the right, arms beneath her, not visible. There was a lot of blood on her cheek and chin, on the floor, side of the bath and the toilet seat. And she had obviously been dead for days. The naked body was a little bloated looking, and the eye that he could see was glazed with a milky caul. Jack’s memory of being present at dozens of other similar scenes triggered an imagined smell associated with human corruption. He reached in a pocket for his cigarettes. Offered Ken one. Neither was too concerned with the fiercely enforced No Smoking policy. What were the ‘cigarette police’ going to do if they caught them in the act…arrest them?

  “See the knife?” Ken said.

  Jack nodded. In the long shots, it could have been excreta poking out from between the victim’s buttocks. The close-up showed the thick brown wooden handle of a large knife, and a glint of blade. He sorted through the photos again. There was one of the bathroom mirror. Written on it in dark, dried blood was: My Devilish Kitchen.

  “Is the knife embedded?” Jack said.

  Ken shook his head. “No. It’s bisecting her vagina. She’s been positioned on the blade. You could say she’s riding it.”

  “Why have we got the case?”

  Ken drew another set of prints from an envelope. “Check these out. What we’ve got is a repeater, Jack.”

  Setting the first batch of horrific crime scene photos on the desk, Jack took the new ones and started to look through them. The setting was a bedroom. The body of a dark-haired young woman was spread-eagled on the bed. She had been gagged with a pair of tights, and her hands were bound to the upright rails of the brass bedstead. The duvet beneath her was heavily stained with blood, and both of the corpse’s feet were missing. One of the other photos show a dressing table, and on the central mirror was another message in scarlet: The Final Decree.

  “What happened to her feet?” Jack said.

  “Keep going,” Ken said. “You’ll come to them.”

  The close-up was a hellish vision; one that scarred the mind. The acts of maniacs were not uncommon, but some went that extra yard, to make the gorge rise at the outrage committed. The scene was now the kitchen. On one of the cooker’s burners sat a large wok, and within it was a pair of partially fried feet. It made no sense. Only a depraved and highly disturbed individual, with an as yet unfathomable agenda, could carry out such a sick act.

  Jack handed the photographs back to Ken. “Okay, you’ve got my full attention,” he said, now feeling the rush; the buzz; the urgent itch that coalesced into a need to hunt the offender down. The photos had already sparked an anger and obsession to find the perpetrator. All personal woes were instantly negated. He was totally focused. “Tell me the story.”

  “I’ll summarise,” Ken said. “And then you can take copies of officers-at-scene accounts, autopsy photos and forensic and the pathologist’s reports.

  “The corpse on the bed was one Emily Wallace, aged twenty-one and single. The crime scene is a first-floor flat in Harringay where she lived with another nurse. They both worked at the Middlesex Hospital. The other girl got home just before midnight on the ninth of September and found her. Emily had only been dead for a couple of hours. To date the investigation has come up blank. There’s no known motive, no suspect, and there was no trace left at the scene, apart from condom lubricant. Everybody that could be linked to her was interviewed and given a clean bill.”

  “Raped?” Jack said.

  “I don’t know if rape is the right word. Necrophilia springs to mind. She was dead before penetration. He took her post-mortem. Cause of death was asphyxia, due to manual compression of the larynx.”

  “And then the sick bastard cut her feet off and cooked them.”

  “Yeah. He used a blunt instrument to break the bones, then a serrated kitchen knife to saw through the soft tissue.”

  “Jesus!”

  “The discovery of Christine Adams got us involved.”

  “Who found her?”

  “A doctor; Robert Hooper. He was her boss at a pharmaceutical research centre at Hendon. When she didn’t turn in for work or call in sick, he tried to phone her but got no reply. It was apparently out of character for her to go AWOL. She was one hundred percent reliable. That was on Monday. On Wednesday he called round to her semi at Finchley to check her out. There was no answer, and the curtains were still closed. He tried the kitchen door and it was unlocked. He took one step inside and the stink hit him.”

  “How did she buy it?” Jack said.

  “Same as the first one, if it was the first. She’d been manually strangled, after first suffering trauma to her face on the toilet seat. Her jaw was fractured in three places, and a few teeth were broken.”

  “Raped?”

  “As per Emily Wallace. Then the knife was placed like a prop. The perpetrator is communicating. We just don’t know what his message is, yet.”

  “We need to find out if there are others,” Jack said. “The Wallace girl might have been his first victim, but could be one of many.”

  “Get to it then, Jack. And give Lisa Norton a bell. This is right up her street.”

  “You think we need a shrink in on this, before―?”

  “She’s a tool, Jack. A criminal psychologist with an first-rate track record, who understands what motivates sociopathic sexual predators. We’re lucky to have her on the consult list. She specialises in the pathology of these crimes. We know that he’ll keep going, so let’s see if she can get inside whatever constitutes a brain in this sicko’s skull.”

  “I’m on it. I’ll need two full packages of everything we have on the Adams and Wallace murders. The good doctor will want her own file to take away and work with. She isn’t a team player. In fact I don’t think she has much time for the police.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “Her apparent disdain. She comes across as aloof; an imperious and ice-cold bitch. Reminds me of a science teacher I had, who thought the male of the species was somehow subnormal; retarded. She talked at us boys, not to us, and never missed a chance to humiliate us in front of the girls.”

  Ken smiled. “A science teacher you had?” he said.

  Jack grinned. “Behave. You know what I meant.”

  Ken shrugged. “Lisa isn’t a man-hater, just preoccupied. She immerses herself totally in her work. If she wasn’t a woman, you wouldn’t think twice about it. And did you know that she was once married to a DCI?”

  Jack’s eyebrows lifted. “Who?”

  “Alan Carter, CID. Rumour has it that she caught him in the back of his car with a court stenographer, and that was it. Goodbye, Al. That could have prejudiced her against us a little, I suppose.”

  “When was this?”

  “A few years back. She reverted to using her maiden name after the divorce. Why’re you asking, Jack? Fancy her?”

  “I don’t know her that well. Our paths only cr
ossed once.”

  “You don’t need to know her, to want to get inside her knickers.”

  “Meaning that you do?”

  “God, no! I just look these days. And she’s good on the eye. I’m happy to go home to Sheila at the end of every shift.”

  “How long have you two been married, Ken?”

  “Thirty-six years. Where does time go?”

  “I wish to Christ I knew.”

  Jack went back into the squad room with more purpose. He had a significant case for the team to break. The adrenaline was ripping through his system. They had an active repeat killer to find, and were on the clock. As sure as eggs were eggs, this Looney Tune was going to keep going until he was stopped.

  “Mike,” he called to his DS, who was pecking two-fingered at a keyboard. “Come take a look at this.”

  Jack officially shared a small office next door with DI John Roach, – who was on sick leave after breaking a leg and his wrist in a multi vehicle pile-up on the M25 – but chose to man a desk in the squad room, so as not to distance him from the team.

  Mike sauntered over.

  “Take a pew,” Jack said, handing Mike the innocuous looking document wallet that he had stuffed the reports and photographs into. “I’ll get the coffee.”

  Mike concentrated first on the crime scene photos. He stared at each in turn, his whole body tensing up at the sharply defined images of death. His hands trembled a little. This was more than murder. It was barbarism.

  Jack took his time. He had a word with DC Eddie McBride over the Joey Lewis case. Nothing new. When he went back to the desk with the coffee, Mike was almost through reading the reports.

  Jack said nothing, just pulled up a chair, sipped at his coffee and waited. It was a while before Mike leant back and nodded.

  “We’ve got a serial killer, right?” Mike said, stating the obvious.

  “Looks that way,” Jack said. “A real flake with a problem that he’s working out on young, single women.”