A Deadly Compulsion (18 page)

A few minutes later she heard the distant sound of a car start up, and waited until the engine noise had completely faded before setting to work assembling a makeshift weapon.  She determined not to just acquiesce to whatever fate he had planned for her.  She had suffered too much at his hands to just meekly allow him to slaughter her like an animal.  Somewhere deep within her was an as yet unfound reserve of strength that was rising up, to aid her in what would be a last ditch effort to survive.

HE
pulled the Jeep off the road, through a gap in the decaying split-wood stake fencing, cutting the lights as he manoeuvred the vehicle uphill and swung it into high bracken between the trunks of mature firs.  After turning off the ignition, he lit a cheroot, happy to smoke in the stolen vehicle; a practise that was taboo in his sweet-smelling Mondeo.  Only Laura had got away with lighting up inside it.  Now, sitting in the darkness and listening to the tink of hot metal as the engine began to cool, he visualised his impending actions, mentally rehearsing what he regarded to be a delicate mission, that he would rather not have been forced into executing.

It was twelve-fifty a.m., and he was maybe five minutes on foot away from Laura’s place. Moonlight filtered through thin cloud cover, giving him enough ambient light to pick his way through the forest to the solitary cottage.  He was dressed in black from the Balaclava that he wore pulled down over his face, to the trainers on his feet.

Stopping at the edge of the tree line behind a fallen and rotted pine, he looked through the screen of evergreen foliage that separated him from the dark silhouette of Laura’s retreat.  He listened to the night, but heard nothing, save for the soft sigh of the breeze that whispered through the needled branches, and to the fast thud of his heart beating in his ears as the adrenaline level rose in anticipation of the deed he was about to carry out.

Sitting on the decaying tree trunk, he swung his legs over it and stopped again as his foot snapped a dry branch, resulting in a loud pistol-shot crack that echoed through the darkness.  Shit!  He waited awhile, and then moved on, a shadow among shadows, seeming to glide over the small lawn at the rear of the cottage to the kitchen door.

The window next to the door was open an inch, and the blade of his knife quickly slipped the antiquated arm loose from the metal post that was screwed to the wood frame securing it.  Was Laura stupid?  Being a cop, she should know better than to go to bed without locking everything.  No one was safe in this day and age.  Burglars were like vermin, skulking in the night, ever ready to take advantage of easy pickings.  One had even broken into the farmhouse eighteen months ago.  The creak of a stair had roused him, and he had waited, standing behind the bedroom door, to let the intruder enter the room and shine a torch around it, before grasping the guy by the back of his overlong, greasy hair and jerking him backwards off his feet.  Two hard blows from his fist had knocked the trespasser unconscious.

Ronnie Smithers had come to in the barn, naked and chained to the concrete block.

Hugh wasn’t even angry.  All’s well that ends well.  He spent over two hours with Ronnie; talked to the young man, to partly get to know the individual that he had decided to punish, after first confirming that he was working alone, and being told where he had parked his vehicle.  He pointed out the error of Ronnie’s ways, and explained that he was to be made an example of.

Before having his lips stapled together, Jimmy had cried a lot and begged to be released.  But as Hugh had told him, you had to be prepared to face the consequences for your actions in life.

Ronnie’s threshold to pain had proved to be very low.  And the fear that he exuded in invisible waves was as tangible as the smell of his sour sweat and strong-smelling waste.  He had passed out several times under the ministrations of the knife, before blood loss eventually sapped the life from him.  Hugh had buried the partly flayed corpse in the barn, then driven the late Ronnie’s beat-up old Cortina to a flooded sand pit and committed it to the murky depths, on the bottom of which all manner of discarded junk was rotting and rusting away.  Hugh reasoned that crime would be dramatically reduced, if not wholly eradicated, if all wrongdoers were subjected to his harsh but effective form of justice.  The law needed to get real and stop mollycoddling the shit of the Earth.

Enough reminiscing.  He donned latex gloves and pulled the Balaclava back up to his forehead before easing himself up and through the open window, moving a vase of cut flowers farther along the sill before slipping over and dropping lightly to the vinyl-covered floor.  It was an entry without any fear of the unexpected.  He knew that Laura had no pets, and that she lived by herself.  No Doberman was waiting, muscles bunched, its body quivering as it tensed to leap at him from the black wedges of shadow that filled the room.  And no cat would trip him, or howl with pain as he inadvertently stood on its tail or a paw.

The cottage was silent, save for the hum of a fridge, and an old wood-cased clock, its resonant tick-tock calming, soothing; a measured cadence that lowered his heart rate.

He moved to the spiral staircase, the soles of his trainers noiseless on the iron treads as he ascended with all due care.  He knew the layout well, having been inside on several occasions; the last time less than a month ago, to pick Laura up for duty when her car was off the road.  He had once even stayed the night, and not even tried to get his leg over.  She had been well-oiled, but he had too much respect for her to try it on.  It would also have complicated their working relationship; a negative move, so he had kept the status quo.  It had not been that he did not find her alluring.  He did.  She was a very attractive and intelligent woman.  But sometimes it was prudent to keep business and pleasure completely separate from one another.  He had known that there could be no future in getting involved romantically with Laura.  Although it crossed his mind that being with someone like her may annul the need he felt to kill and kill again.  To fall in love may dispel the systematic, deadly compulsion he had to punish his mother.  But should he ever find someone with the qualities to effect a modification in his personality, it would not be Laura.  He had seen how she looked at the Yank.  There was history between them.  He recognised that she still felt something for the man.

Pausing on the landing, he drew his knife and then moved unhurriedly to the open door of her bedroom.

The sudden loud trill of a telephone pierced the syrup-thick silence.  He flattened himself to the wall, not breathing, heart racing again like a jackhammer.  As she stirred, he slipped into the room.  He had his night vision and could make out her shape.  She was propped up on one elbow, holding the receiver and talking with the slur of sleep.  He waited, and as she reached for the bedside lamp, her call finished, he moved to her and pressed the flat, cold side of the blade against her throat.

Laura couldn’t breathe.  Sudden shock and fear coursed through her entire body.  She was paralysed, unable to move, her lungs and muscles cramping.  She felt the sensation of her chest expanding to the point of bursting like an over inflated balloon.

She had become almost paralysed, and had to consciously force herself to take air in small snatches, her mouth opening and closing like that of a fish out of water.  She wanted to jerk back from whatever was touching her skin, to kick out against the presence that she could now feel as a solid form in what should have been an empty space.  Messages from her brain demanded that she act, but her body was less responsive than a frozen carcass hung in the frosty air of a butcher’s walk-in cold room.

“Go on, boss, turn on the light, I won’t bite,” Hugh’s disembodied voice said from the murk, so close that she could feel his warm breath on the rim of her ear.

It was funny how the mind reacted to unexpected intimidation.  She was at once twelve again, sitting by herself in the local flea pit; the Gaumont.  She had often gone to the cinema unaccompanied during school holidays, to enjoy the solitude and the awe-inspiring magic of the movie stars on the giant silver screen.  As a youngster, going to the pictures and reading books were her chosen avenues of escape from the less than exciting reality of day-to-day life.  She didn’t just watch the films or read the books, but was absorbed by them; to almost become one of the fictional lead characters.

Sucked back through the years, Laura gazed at the giant, patched screen, engrossed and entranced by the much larger-than-life images and the booming soundtrack.  She was unaware of the middle-aged man who had walked the full length of a row of seats that only she occupied, to sit next to her in the ill-lit stalls.

She had felt a slight tickle on her right leg, just below the hem of her pleated skirt, and had scratched absently, squirming a little on the maroon, velveteen seat covering.  A few seconds passed, and the tickle was back, higher up, under the material on the inside of her thigh.  Sudden comprehension of what was happening had frozen her solid. She could not move as trembling fingers stroked the front of her panties, and the heavy breathing of the man who was molesting her, quickened.  A hot digit slid under the elastic and searched out her centre, and she had remained rigid, incapable of any action.  While one clammy hand invaded her, the other took her hand and gently guided it to his lap, to place it on something warm, firm, smooth and...and sticky, like the paper glue she used to paste pictures of pop stars she had cut from magazines into her scrapbook.  The shock-sensation of touching something unseen yet throbbing with life, gave her the jolt needed to break the spell.  Pulling away, she half fell into the aisle, stumbled to the exit at the rear of the cinema, and broke free into the brightly lit foyer.  Without once looking behind her, she had fled the theatre and run all the way home.

That singular experience at the Gaumont stole a part of her childhood, and left her with a dislike for cinemas that still persisted.  She had not mentioned what had happened to anyone, feeling ashamed, as though she had in some way been partly to blame for the assault; not just the innocent victim of a paedophile.  And now, all these years later, she was transfixed again, back in the dark stalls of the cinema, unable to speak and numb with fearful expectation.  This was now only the second time in her life that she had found herself unable to react against someone who was intimidating her.

JIM’S
eyes snapped open.  He stared into the gloom with the face from his dream still vivid in his mind.  He leapt from the bed, glancing at the glaring, green display on his alarm clock: 1:50 A.M.  He ran through to the lounge, picked up the phone, tapped in Laura’s number and listened impatiently to the ringing tone as he gathered his thoughts.

It had not just been a dream that had drawn him from the rim of troubled sleep.  His mind had been sifting through and filing information, collating all the facts of the Tacker case and piecing them together as he dozed.  The conclusion that his subconscious mind had woken him with was a numbing revelation: Hugh Parfitt, Laura’s DS, was the killer.

Jim replayed his brief meeting with the young cop and remembered the stony, fleeting gaze that had quickly been masked by a bland expression; a mask coating the cop’s face and softening the look in his piercing blue eyes.

It all fitted.  Parfitt was the right height, right colouring, and had been in a prime inside position to have selected suspects in the area that Jim had targeted.  He had no doubt that the detective had planted the rope in Cox’s garage.  Not only was he positive that it was a cop now, he
knew
which cop.  Closing his eyes, he reran the encounter, flicking through every word that he had exchanged with Hugh in the York pub, pausing, freeze-framing each moment with near photographic memory.  ‘Once a cop, always a cop’, Parfitt had said, before turning and walking off towards the bar.  He had done something else; he had reached into his trouser pocket, presumably for cash.  It had been his left-hand pocket, ergo, he was left-handed.

With no capacity to consider coincidence, Jim put it all together, and was certain that Detective Sergeant Hugh Parfitt was the serial killer whom they sought.

‘Hi.  I can’t get to the phone at this moment, but please leave your name, number or a message after the tone and I’ll call you back’. Laura’s sultry, taped voice answered.

“Pick up, Laura, it’s Jim,” he said, then waited, to be answered by a beep and mind-numbing static, and so he left a message, “Phone me on my mobile number.  It’s urgent.”  He then rang her mobile.  No answer.  He phoned the police station in York, to be advised that she was off duty.

He quickly dressed: Blue chambray shirt, beige chinos and crème loafers. Snatched up his car keys and holdall and left the flat on the run, to rocket down the six flights of stairs to the ground floor – too impatient to summon and wait for the lift – and out of the rear of the building to the car park.  Less than fifteen minutes after waking he was on the road, ignoring speed limits, but keeping a watchful eye out for police patrol cars.  His only concern was to reach Laura, knowing that if she managed to look beyond her close working relationship with Hugh and put it together, then she would be in mortal danger if she handled it wrong and put him on his guard.

By the time he reached the M1 he was wound too tight, almost on the edge of panic, his hands aching from the vicelike grip he had on the steering wheel.  He fought to relax, turned on the radio for distraction and tuned into a night-caller style of programme, its fodder; the bitching of phone-ins from insomniacs, bored shift workers and borderline crazies, mixed with middle-of-the-road music to sustain them through till dawn.  It was instantly forgettable fare of the kind which was vomited over the airways world-wide.  People were people with the same hang-ups and problems, whatever the country or language.  After thirty minutes of listening to the puerile remarks of the callers, he could understand from their comments why they were without love, hope or friendship.  In his opinion, only sad bastards rang radio stations to bare their souls to total strangers.  Unable to stomach any more, he changed station, running through the preset buttons and finally settling for Radio 4 and the World Service.

All being well, he expected to be at Laura’s by five-thirty a.m., and was already anticipating hammering on her door and seeing her look out through the bedroom window, before rushing down to let him in, bleary-eyed, but hopefully pleasantly surprised.  He was sure that once he could get her to think outside the box and view her sergeant with professional detachment, then she would have to agree that Hugh at least merited checking out.  They would have to scrutinise his past, and turn over every stone.  Should he be found to be whiter than white, then nothing would have been lost, though Jim expected a trail of pointers from his childhood that would expose his personality disorder and prove him to be the killer.  He had glimpsed the alter ego behind the facade of normality; should have recognised the psycho who dwelt within the mind of Hugh Parfitt.

It should be easy to wrap up.  Hugh would be unsuspecting and in the lion’s den; apprehended in the police station as he pretended to investigate the crimes that he was guilty of committing.  But nothing in life ever seemed to pan out as expected.  Bitter experience told Jim that very few things went down as planned.  The art was to try and be prepared for all possible connotations and complications; to appreciate that if it could go wrong, then as sure as night followed day, it would.  The bonus in this case was that Parfitt was on the inside, feeling secure in the belief that he was in control, leading the team away from himself.

Jim slowed as the Cherokee’s headlights bounced back at him from a hovering white wall of luminescence, and drove – eyes straining – for the next half hour at less than twenty miles an hour through low banks of fog that were sitting at irregular intervals across the six lanes of the motorway.  It was as if it had been sent, a nefarious obstacle, to keep him at bay; a manifestation to show him from the outset that he was in danger of being thwarted in his mission.

Ceding to fatigue and conditions that could result in a multi-vehicle pileup Jim stopped at Woodall service area near Sheffield.  His bladder was throbbing to be relieved, and he needed caffeine in the form of black coffee to give him a jolt and wake him up.  The concentration of driving through the early morning summer fog had given him a headache, and threatened to lull him to sleep.

As he sat in the almost empty cafeteria, drinking expensive but low quality coffee, he tried Laura’s number yet again, having already attempted to contact her four times as he had driven north.  He slammed his Nokia onto the tabletop in frustration as her recorded message once more talked at him impersonally.  A waitress and the few customers turned to stare at him.  He glowered at each in turn until they looked away.

The coffee scalded his mouth and brought tears to his eyes as he drank it too fast, eager to set off on the last leg of his journey, now running late.  It was still only four-forty-five, but fully light.

The fog had magically dispersed as he pulled back out onto the M1 and accelerated smoothly up to ninety.  He was trembling with an unshakeable presentiment of doom, which manifested itself in what felt like cold fingers wrapped around and squeezing his intestines.  It was the same gut-churning fear that overcame him every time he arrived at an airport terminal to catch a flight; a sickening, sinking, leg-weakening sensation that sapped his strength and reduced him to a quaking mound of Jell-O.  He knew that the unexpected may be waiting for him; a sudden catastrophe that could not be reckoned on, and which he was powerless to deal with appropriately.  A lot of what life threw at you was from out of left field, catching you completely by surprise and bowling you over like a ninepin.

Daydreaming as he drove, Jim journeyed back in time to relive an early experience of how a planned and professional operation could turn into a major-league fuck-up.

The incident now seemed a lifetime ago, but he could recall every heart-stopping second as if it had only taken place yesterday...

...As a rookie field agent back in Arizona, with brush cut hairstyle, brand new charcoal-grey suit, and full to bursting with pride and the need to prove himself, Jim had been on his first case; the junior member of a team that were approaching a remote timber-frame bungalow in the shadow of the Sauceda Mountains, halfway between Gila Bend and Ajo.  They had parked the off-roaders well back, behind tumbles of time and wind-shaped sandstone over a hundred yards from the property, then donned Kevlar vests under the black jackets that were stencilled FBI in large white letters on the front and back.  He had been armed with a pump-action Mossberg shotgun and a holstered Smith & Wesson 38 Special.  They had moved carefully through the saguaro and rock-strewn landscape, to take up positions around the bleached, sagging building, that looked as though it would collapse under the next strong gust of hot, desert wind.

Jim was bathed in sweat by the time the snipers were in position and the stage was set to commence the operation.  He was on a high, ready to follow orders and prove himself worthy of the shiny new bureau badge that was now his most treasured possession and seemed to burn against his ribs through the leather wallet it was seated in.  He felt invulnerable; justice and might on his side.  He was an agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the fidelity, bravery and integrity that the letters also stood for filled him with pride, and a false sense of security.

An attempted bank robbery at a First National location in Tucson had turned into a blood bath.  Three raiders had disarmed the security guard and subsequently ordered him, the tellers and the sixteen customers present to lie face down on the floor.  The bank guard was an ex-cop and carried a backup piece in an ankle holster.  He had, stupidly, drawn it and managed to shoot one of the trio in the throat, and another in the leg, before the third opened fire with an AK-47, killing both him and a teenage boy who had unwittingly made the fatal mistake of lying next to him.

The two surviving would-be robbers aborted the raid and fled, taking a middle-aged female customer as hostage and quitting the scene in a stolen Chevy Tahoe.

The State Police had given chase, calling the bureau as a matter of course, due to the kidnap of the woman being a federal offence.

There must have been eighty cops gathered, waiting for the action as Agent In Charge, Curtis Baur stood and faced the bungalow, a bullhorn to his mouth, about to start the negotiation procedure.

It had been then that reality in all its sudden inequitable, unforgiving and indiscriminate purposelessness hit Jim with the force of an eighteen-wheeler.

A bullet ploughed through the AIC’s forehead, causing a strangled, amplified grunt to be emitted from the hand-held speaker.  A baseball-sized hole opened up in the back of the agent’s head, and Jim – who had been knelt behind Curtis – fell back on his ass as a spout of blood and steaming brains covered him, followed by the full weight of the twitching but already dead body of the late negotiator.  All professionalism died with Curtis Baur.  A deafening staccato of return fire split the arid air, peppering the house, shattering the windows and reducing the one-storey building to match wood.  With no concern for the plight of the hostage, just a bloodlust and determination to exact swift retribution, the gathering of law enforcement officers expended enough ammunition to decimate the population of a small town.

After what seemed an eternity, the firing ceased.  No one moved, and for long seconds the only sound came from the groaning of splintered timbers, which were losing their battle to hold up the cedar-shingled roof.

As they stood transfixed, the remains of the door swung open.  One of the kidnappers appeared, hands held high, waving to show that he was unarmed.  He walked forward hesitantly, out into the bright sun with his eyes narrowed to slits, squinting against the dazzling light.

Jim pushed the corpse of the team commander off him and rose to his knees, just in time to see the execution of the now defenceless felon.  A hail of bullets caused the less than able robber to dance like a marionette in the control of a demented puppeteer.  Bright red florets blossomed from his shirt and pants as hot lead crashed into his body, turning him into a bloody rag doll; spinning him, driving him back into the doorway that he had just exited from.

They moved in, fingers on triggers, ready to open fire again at the least sign of movement.  In the bungalow’s living room, among the bullet-riddled furniture and fittings, the two fugitives lay side by side, staring blankly at the ceiling, no longer a threat to anyone.  The hostage was in the bedroom, curled up on a mattress as though asleep, with a single bullet hole in her temple, which would later – thank Christ! – be found to be from one of the killer’s guns.  The paperwork that was subsequently cooked up between the state and bureau somehow made the foul-up look more like the taking of Iwo Jima, and Jim had quickly come to terms with the reality that however well-trained and prepared, anything could and did happen.  The best laid plans of mice and men, and especially men, when adversity and guns were involved, often turned to shit when human nature in all its unpredictability was involved.

The reverie, though depressing, had helped eat up the miles.  Jim cut the engine and stepped out, his butt numb and neck aching.  The first thing he noticed was that Laura’s car was missing from its usual spot at the front of the cottage.

He rushed to the front door.  It was locked, and his knocking, shouting, and even the throwing of gravel up at her bedroom window brought no response.  He ran around to the back and found the kitchen door also locked, but the window next to it open.  A damp chill pervaded him, as though embalming fluid had been injected into a vein, to be circulated through every part of his being by a labouring heart that was now full of icy liquid dispelling his blood.