A Need To Kill (DI Matt Barnes) (52 page)

“
Why should I listen to you?” Lucas said.  “It’s you who made me like this.  If you’d cared for me, then I would have been a different person.  It’s you who is ultimately responsible for everything I’ve ever done.”

Julie thought that he was talking to her.

“I don’t know what you mean...Nick,” she said.

“
Why did you beat me and burn me and hate me?  I didn’t ask to be fucking born. You had no right to punish me for your own sins, you cheap, worthless cocksucker.”

‘
Stop whining.  That’s all you did as a snotty-nosed little brat.  I didn’t love you because you were a noisy, messy inconvenience.  I may have overreacted sometimes, but you have to remember, I was an addict, out of my skull most of the time.  What do you want me to do, apologise?’

“
No, Mam.  What I want is for you to stay dead, get out of my head and leave me alone.”

Julie dared to hope that he had
completely and irrevocably lost the plot.  He did not mentally inhabit the same world as her at that moment.  He was having a conversation with his dead mother, and could obviously hear her.  With any luck he would not break out of the state he was in, and she would be able to just walk out of the door and be free of him at last.

Lucas opened his eyes and drew back until his back was against the wall.  His mother was standing only six feet away, looking exactly as she had when he had been a
young boy.  Her red hair shone under the light; her green eyes sparkled with mischief, and a stream of blood cascaded from the gaping crescent gash in her throat.

‘
Look what you did to me, son.  I didn’t deserve it’.

He allowed the suffering he had endured at her hands to manifest; felt the cigarette ends searing his firm, young flesh, disfiguring him for life.
He remembered the nights and days he was locked in the coal cellar, and the endless torrent of demeaning abuse that had robbed him of all self respect.  Only by slaying her had he been able to move on and have any kind of life.

“
What I did to you was too little, too late.  You deserved so much more.  That’s why I need to kill again and again.  I imagine that it is you having to suffer what I do.”

The apparition
began to laugh.  The sound turned to a cackle, and the figment of Lucas’s imagination began to shrink and stoop with age, to become a withered, white-haired corpse, before fading away completely.

He became aware of his surroundings again.

“Did you hear her?” Lucas said to Julie.  “Did you see her, Sam?”

“
No.  But I felt her presence,” Julie answered, hoping that her lie would suffice.

The thuds from inside the freezer had diminished, then stopped.

“You may just be right about Marjory,” he said.  “She needs to be on our team. Maybe she’ll feel different about things now.”

He climbed down from the freezer and opened the lid.

“You don’t look so grand, now,” he said to Marjory.  “In fact you look like the cold-hearted cow you are.  Blue suits you.”

Marjory could not answer.  Her teeth were chattering, and her body was shivering violently.  Being enclosed in the chill darkness with
Norman’s body had been an experience that she might never fully recover from.

“
Tell me, Auntie,” Lucas said, grinning as he lifted her up.  “Does the little light go out when the lid is shut?”

Matt parked the Discovery outside the church in Cinderford.  They had plenty of time to go for a bite to eat.  Pete had phoned Phil.  He and Errol were approximately an hour from their location.

They entered the first pub they came to. 
Matt ordered a large JD for himself, a pint for Pete, and an Irish coffee for Beth.  The blackboard on the wall behind the counter had a list of bar meals chalked up.  Matt was not hungry.  Beth plumped for the Lasagne, and Pete ordered a steak pie and chips.

“
You got precise directions to Marjory’s little refuge, right?” Matt said to Pete.

“
Yeah, boss.  Ethel did us a little drawing.  She came down here when Marjory first bought it, to help her clean the place up.”

Pete passed
Matt the sheet of note paper.  It had a diagram, with the name of both the side road and lane that led to their target from the B4234.  An X marked the spot where Matt was convinced they would find Downey.

It was seven p.m when Phil pulled the Mondeo up onto thick grass and parked close to the rear of the Discovery.

Phil and Errol had made good time, met up with the others in Cinderford, and were now within five or six hundred yards of the cottage.

The five of them huddled together in the cold, evening air.

“What’s the plan, boss?” Phil said.

“
Simple,” Matt said.  “We approach the cottage, study the lie of the land and decide how to take him without any other casualties.”

“
Sounds like a walk in the park,” Errol said, drawing his pistol and jacking a round into the chamber, before returning the weapon to its shoulder holster.

“
You think he’ll be armed, boss?” Pete said.

“
Maybe not with a firearm.  But treat him with extreme caution.  Be aware that given the chance, he
will
kill anyone who he considers to be a threat to him.  And only shoot as a last resort.  Not on sight.”

“
And make sure we don’t take each other out in the crossfire,” Pete said.

Matt
put an arm around Beth’s shoulder and led her away from the others, out of earshot.

“
This is as far as you go, Beth,” he said.  “I want you to stay in the car and wait.”

Beth shook her head. 
“That’s impractical, Matt.  What if Downey is skulking around the woods?  Remember, he’s a raving paranoiac.  He won’t feel safe.  Part of him will be half-expecting trouble.  Do you want to get back here and find―”

“
Okay! Okay, Doctor, you’ve made your point.  I should have left you in Cinderford.”

“
Don’t treat me as if I’m a liability, Matt.  I’ll stay out of the way when you go in.  And if Marjory and Julie are still alive, they may need another woman to talk to.  Who knows what state they might be in?”

It was
only a few minutes later when they approached the building from the side, stopping in the trees to survey the immediate area.

It might have been uninhabited.  Thick curtains were drawn at every window, preventing any light from escaping.  And it wasn
’t a cottage, per se; rather a large timber-built chalet that looked Scandinavian in design.

“
You think we should just contain the area and call in the cavalry?” Pete whispered to Matt.

“
And have some negotiator shouting through a bullhorn, letting Downey know that it’s all over for him?  You think he might release the women and just trot out with his hands on his head and say, ‘fair cop, guv?’ ”

“
No, boss, I reckon not.”

Matt
’s plan was basic.  He and Pete would take the front; Phil and Errol the rear. Beth would stay well back, under cover and hunkered down in the darkness, to wait for the all clear.

The moonlight was their enemy.  They moved into place as surreptitiously as was possible, hoping that the night shadows
that they cast were not being observed.  There was no reason for Downey to be overly anxious, or suspect that anyone had the slightest idea of his current whereabouts.

Lucas
could not settle.  He had bound Julie and Marjorie together face-to-face in an embrace.  Arms around each other and tied at the wrists.  Feet also tethered together.

Marjory was positive that she had not been followed.  There was no reason for him to believe that she had been, but he was now unsure of how safe he was here.  His instinct told him to run. 
Just get in the car and take off.  Maybe follow his mother’s advice and go it alone.  He needed to be by himself again.  It was less complicated.  Problem was, he actually cared for Julie.  She had given him a new sense of purpose.

Naked, h
e roamed the house, upstairs and down, moving the curtains aside a fraction at every window, looking for the slightest movement.  Each passing minute filled him with a growing perturbation.  He could not help but think that he may be a sitting target.

This was all Marjory
’s fault.  He went back to where she was hog-tied to Julie on the kitchen floor.  They looked like two lovers locked together.  Julie had her back to him, with her head next to Marjory’s.  Could have been nuzzling her ear.  Some of the finest work he had ever done was displayed on Julie’s back and buttocks.  She was his living masterpiece, which had yet to be completed.

Marjory was facing him over Julie
’s left shoulder.  She had warmed up a little, and was now able to think straight, having somehow recovered from her ordeal, and being too much in fear for her own life to let Norman’s fate overly concern her.  She could not weigh up what Lucas might do.  He was unbalanced and appeared to be steadily becoming more agitated with every second that passed.

He knelt next to them, untied the twine
and then secured Julie again, before grabbing Marjory by an ankle and dragging her into the middle of the floor.

The first heavy blow of his fist broke two ribs and sent a jagged end
of one into her left lung, to puncture it.

Marjory screamed and tried to curl up in a ball.

Lucas stomped on her head and face with his foot, grunting with the effort as she writhed and cried out beneath him.  He rained dozens of blows down on her, only stopping when she was too injured to respond.  There was little pleasure to be had from punching and kicking a body that did not react.

Marjory looked up at him with pleading
eyes.  Tried to beg for her life, but could only produce bright red frothy blood from her mouth, not words.

“
This is it, bitch,” Lucas gasped.  “You get to leave this world as naked and bloody as you popped into it.

He straddled her soft belly.  Gently placed his hands around her neck, positioned his thumbs either side of her larynx and began exerting pressure.  It was a sublime exercise in hands-on killing
; a highly rewarding act that resulted in him growing stiff and ejaculating as his aunt’s heels drummed on the hard quarry tiles, and the capillaries in her bulging eyes burst into small red starbursts.

Even after the mysterious state that was sentient life had ceased to exist in the mind and body of the slack corpse, Lucas needed more from it.  He climbed to his feet, went to the cutlery drawer and selected a steak knife.  Marjory was going back in the freezer, but this time it would be in small, less cumbersome pieces.  He was on a different plane now, totally absorbed in what he was doing, oblivious to even Julie
’s presence.

By the time he had removed the head and held it aloft by the hair, he was covered in sweat and blood.

Julie had turned away, and kept her eyes tightly closed.  If her hands had been free, then she would have put her fingers into her ears, to keep out the sickening sounds of human dismemberment.

Lucas lost interest after removing the pouches of silicone from the now flat breasts.  His appetite for blood was sated.  He opened the lid of the freezer and tossed the head in, then scooped up the torso and forced it down on top of the other bodies.

“All done and dusted,” he said, smiling at Julie.  “You can look now.  Auntie is back in cold storage.”

Julie stared up at the bloody figure
that was standing in front of her.  His arms hung loose at his sides, and he still held a dripping, serrated knife in his right hand.

“
Here’s the plan, Sam.  I’ll go take a shower.  Then we’ll get dressed and leave in much better transport than we arrived,” he said.  “It was good of auntie to bring us the Merc.”

Standing under the hot needle jets, he watched the blood being flushed from his legs, to swirl around the plug hole and gurgle away down the waste pipe. 
He wondered why liquid always went down a plug hole in a clockwise direction.  Was it something to do with the Earth’s gravity?  He couldn’t remember.  He had read somewhere that it went anticlockwise in Australia.  Maybe when he had got the necessary documentation in the name of Nick Edwards, then he would start afresh in the antipodes.  The weather there was a great deal better than in Britain.  And Oz was so big that he would be able to get lost in the vastness of the place.

He towelled himself, went through to the bedroom and, without switching on the light, peeped out through a chink in the curtain.

Saw a fleeting shadow move across the drive below him.

He froze.  What had made it?  Maybe a deer, or badger, or fox. 
Or a man!

R
etrieving the knife, he crept naked down the stairs.  Went into the kitchen, turned off the light and silently unlocked the door.  He then helped Julie to her feet and took up position against the wall, with her directly in front of him.  If someone was out there and planning to enter, then they would get a hell of a lot more than they bargained for.