Текст книги "Scent of a Killer"

Автор книги: Kevin Lewis

Соавторы: Kevin Lewis
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Текущая страница: 17 (всего у книги 20 страниц)

Matthews read on, flushed with excitement at the images flooding through her head. She learned that, so common was the notion of arousal by the sight of death during these times, it was said the best way for an Englishman to break down a woman’s resistance or scruples was simply to get her to attend a public execution. It was rated even more highly than wine.

She discovered that similar scenes were witnessed during Roman times. Their mass games, which included battles to the death between noble gladiators and desperate slaves, also included all manner of sexual shenanigans, followed by the mutilation and murder of those involved. The Empresses Messalina and Theodora routinely masturbated and had sex in the stands while watching these events.

From there Matthews read up on sexual deviation and decided she had developed necrosadism, a powerful fetish in which corpses led to sexual arousal. Her fetish was unusual, that was for sure, but, having discovered it, she realized that she had found the perfect way to service it at no risk to others. So long as she remained in the medical professional and had regular access to corpses, her needs would be satisfied and she would want for nothing more. Or so she thought.

It was around this same time that Matthews started seeing her first serious boyfriend, James Gilbert. Ten years her senior and working as a teacher, Gilbert had a reputation as a bit of a ladies’ man and liked to treat his women roughly. He and Matthews experimented with a vast range of fetishes and perversions; she desperately wanted to find something that gave her the same level of satisfaction that she had felt when she cut into that first body. Nothing even came close and after less than a year together the couple split.

As time went by, the thrill of cutting into a long dead, cold body faded more quickly that she could ever have imagined. Like a drug addict, she realized that she needed a more powerful high, a more intense hit, if she was ever going to re-create that first beautiful moment. She would need to witness the moment of death itself.

She began seeking out snuff movies – an extreme form of pornographic film in which the performers are allegedly killed on camera. Matthews soon learned that such films were little more than an urban legend and, a few poorly made fakes aside, did not exist. The closest she came to true snuff were dozens of so-called ‘crush’ videos in which small animals were tortured and killed on film.

Her favourite began with a close-up of a guinea pig lying spread-eagled on the floor, each of its tiny legs fastened in place by sticky tape. The camera slowly pulled back to show a woman, seen only from the knees down, pacing around the stricken creature in bright red stilettos. Her voice was soft and low: ‘You are my victim. Are you frightened, little man? You know that your destiny is under my heels …’ Squeals of pain rang out as the sharp point of one stiletto was brought down on each leg in turn, shattering the bones. Next, the creature’s back was crushed under a toe, cigarettes were stubbed out on its fur, and hip and shoulder bones were systematically trampled and broken, until, finally, the woman killed it by driving her heel through its skull. The torture lasted almost thirty minutes.

For Matthews the film was an interesting diversion, but she knew that she needed something involving real people, not just animals.

Once more, she discovered she was not alone. Her research soon threw up the fact that several murderers had recorded their acts on video, and she sought out the results. In the early 1980s Charles Ng and Leonard Lake videotaped their torture of the women they would later kill. Serial killers Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka had videotaped some of their sex crimes in the early 1990s. Time and time again she was led to believe she had finally tracked down the footage, only to be disappointed.

The rise of the internet, combined with the war in Iraq, proved to be her saviour. Again and again she watched gruesome videos depicting actual murders and deaths, but still felt removed from the activity. Before too long, she realized she would have to get more involved herself.

Then she came across the case of Alexander Pichushkin, an unassuming supermarket worker from Russia. He would offer passers-by in a southern Moscow park a shot of vodka or beer. Sometimes he offered to show them his dog’s grave. Or he would invite them to a game of chess. Then, without any warning, he would bludgeon them to death with a hammer. He would record each murder by marking each one on the square of a chessboard. He had been caught after one of his intended victims escaped. Arrested, he instantly confessed to what he had done and claimed to have murdered at least forty-eight people.

In a televised confession after his arrest Pichushkin told his interviewer: ‘For me, a life without murder is like a life without food for you. I felt like the father of all these people, since it was I who opened the door for them to another world. I never would have stopped, never. They saved a lot of lives by catching me. For me, the act of killing was a perpetual orgasm.’

There was little doubt about what Matthews had to do. Becoming a serial killer opened up a whole new world of sensation and pleasure. She learned that spontaneous orgasms at the moment of death were common among serial killers. Matthews desperately wanted to experience that for herself.

But how to choose her victims, how to avoid being caught? One obvious answer was to pursue pathology as her speciality. That would bring her into regular contact with police and other law enforcement authorities and keep her one step ahead of them and their techniques.

Having studied the work of others in the field, Matthews also decided that her victims had to be people that no one would care that much about, people no one would look too hard to find if they vanished. Deciding what to do with the bodies would be the most important part of her work. Without a body, it was unlikely that a murder case would ever begin and there would be nothing to point the finger of suspicion at her.

It was around this time that she bumped into her old boyfriend, James Gilbert, once more. He was depressed and contemplating a move abroad. He had threatened to expose a paedophile ring at the school where he had been teaching. He told Matthews – far too insistently, she thought – that he himself had not been involved in the abuse but that several of the guilty men had said they would name him if they were themselves exposed.

The couple briefly reconciled. But this did little to lift Gilbert out of his increasingly deep depression at the prospect of having to come forward and testify against the paedophile ring. And that’s when Matthews realized he would be her perfect first victim.

Unable to provide her with sexual satisfaction in life, he would make amends in death.

Matthews planned the crime carefully. With access to corpses and cadavers all day long at work, she had perfected her technique long before she came to kill for the first time. And she instantly knew that her first time would not be her last.

In the space of thirty-six hours – the time that had elapsed since she had gone on the run to avoid being arrested – Jessica Matthews had seen it all. She had watched Collins rise first thing in the morning and then go out jogging. Collins had returned home half an hour later, via the paper shop, and cooked breakfast. At around eight fifteen she had climbed into her car to take her daughter to school. From there she had driven directly to the incident room. The routine had differed slightly the day before.

Since Matthews had disappeared, Collins had spent increasing amounts of her time interviewing family members, friends and colleagues in order to build up a picture of what the pathologist was really like, in an attempt to discover her hiding place.

Matthews wasn’t at all concerned by any of this. She knew that there was no one out there who would be able to do anything to lead them to her. She was as safe as safe could be. And in the meantime she was free to continue stalking her prey. Eager to know every little thing about the woman who was pursuing her, she logged her daily movements, her clothes and even went as far as to learn what she ate for lunch.

Once she was convinced that Collins had seen her but it turned out to be a false alarm. The disguise that she had chosen was extremely effective. So much so that Collins could almost have run into her with a supermarket trolley and been none the wiser.

Matthews hadn’t quite decided how she felt about Stacey Collins. She was by far the cleverest of the officers on the murder squad. She had seen her work her magic in previous cases and known what a thrill and challenge it would be to go up against her head to head.

She had to admit she was surprised when she got the early morning call when Collins had clearly begun to suspect her. She knew she had been taking an enormous chance when it came to meeting up with Collins for dinner and slipping little clues into the conversation. She knew too she had been taking an enormous chance when it came to helping Collins along, giving her the information about the possibility of the bodies being frozen and about the tattoo. But it had been worth it. The thrills she had felt as a result had been so completely and utterly delicious.

She already knew a great deal about Collins from the time they had spent working together and she had gathered a great deal of information since then, but she wanted to know much, much more. She wanted to know absolutely everything.

Two weeks earlier, long before Collins had had any suspicions about her, Matthews had applied for a birth certificate in Collins’s own name. The document had arrived in the post after a few days and had made fascinating reading.

Matthews made her way to the branch of Mail Boxes Etc. where her post was being forwarded.

There were several envelopes there but the one that caught her eye was thin and white and had no stamp. She picked it up with a huge smile on her face. She ripped it open and pulled out a cheque from Stacey Collins for twenty pounds. Collins had responded to the fake charity mailing that Matthews had set up, just as she knew she would. Once she found out all about her father being confined to a wheelchair during their last dinner together, she knew exactly how to pluck at the woman’s heartstrings. The cheque was a godsend. She now had Stacey’s bank details, and her signature. It was time to move on to the next phase of her operation.

She picked up the phone and dialled a number.

‘Hello, I just wanted to check the balance on my account.’

‘Certainly. What’s the account number?’

Matthews reeled it off from memory, followed by the branch sort code.

‘Okay,’ said the woman at the other end of the line, ‘and for security I just need your date of birth, your full name and your mother’s maiden name.’

‘Of course. My date of birth is 15 August 1972. My full name is Stacey Elizabeth Collins and my mother’s maiden name is Mason.’

Three more phone calls and thirty minutes on the internet later, Jessica Matthews had all the information on Detective Inspector Stacey Collins she would ever need. She already knew her home address but through a combination of knowing where to look, a few shady sources, social engineering and an awful lot of front she had managed to get the lot.

There was something extremely odd about watching Collins closely, intensely. There was a certain humour in knowing that Collins was working so hard to find someone who was so close to her the whole time.

She had not yet decided what she wanted to do. One thing was certain, however: the urge to kill was building up inside her once again. She knew only too well the depression that followed a murder. It was part of a cycle of extreme emotions that she had been through more times than she could count. There was only one way for her to feel completely normal again. She would have to find another victim, commit another murder.

23

On a bench in a quiet corner of Gladstone Park, Sophie Collins looked at the display on her mobile phone briefly before tucking it back into her bag.

‘Who is it?’ asked Jack.

‘Mum.’

‘Shouldn’t you take it, just in case she gets suspicious?’

‘I don’t want to talk to her.’

‘Are you sure?’

Sophie nodded. ‘I’ve got nothing to say to her.’

‘She is your mother, you know.’

‘That’s what everyone says. But that’s not the point. You can’t force your children to love you; you have to earn it. If you break the contract, if you don’t do a good-enough job, then you risk losing that love. And that’s what she’s doing. And the worst part is she doesn’t even seem to care.’

Sophie’s face was screwed up tightly as she fought against the tears that were welling up in the corners of her eyes. But it was a battle she was always going to lose and within a few seconds she had begun sobbing uncontrollably.

‘Come here.’

Jack held out his arms and Sophie melted into him. It felt good to be wrapped up in his strong embrace. Once more she felt protected, as if nothing bad could ever happen to her when Jack was around.

‘You know what I wish,’ she said softly, still sobbing, ‘I wish I could live with you. I wish I could stay with you all the time.’

‘So do I, love, so do I.’

From her vantage point in the bushes a few yards back from the bench, Jessica Matthews saw the embrace too. Only to her it looked like anything but the loving and caring embrace it actually was. The man with the young girl was no better than the other perverts she had spent so long tracking down.

When she peered into the soul of the man in the park, she saw nothing but evil. She saw nothing but the face of a man who deserved to die. His body language spoke volumes, as did his choice of location. His kind always wanted to get together in secluded areas of parks, away from prying eyes, away from anyone who might go for help.

His posture and position said that he was concerned that they might be being watched, that he was not relaxed, that he was constantly on the lookout for trouble. It would not help him. Matthews had learned her art from the best. She could walk across a tiled floor in stilettos and still not make a sound.

She knew exactly the sort of man who preyed on those kinds of emotions: the sort who could spot girls with that sort of vulnerability a mile off and home in on them like a missile; the sort who knew the right words and phrases to use to get them to open up; the sort who would seem to be everything the girl was looking for, only to vanish and then leave them hurt and embittered.

And she knew exactly what she had to do in order to stop it.

It took a few more minutes for the sobbing to subside before Jack Stanley lifted one of his arms in order to look at his watch.

‘Oh God, not yet, please not yet,’ moaned Sophie.

‘I’m sorry, love. If we don’t leave now she’s going to be suspicious. And that might mean the end of all these meetings. You don’t want that. I certainly don’t want that.’

Sophie was reluctant to let go. She held on to her father more tightly than ever for a few moments and then relaxed and leaned back. The pair smiled at each other, then Jack stood up, took her small hand in his and started walking towards the gate on the edge of the park.

‘So when am I going to see you again?’

‘Won’t be until next week now.’

‘Next week? How come?’

‘Oh come on, Sophie, don’t make me feel bad about it. For one thing I have to make a living. For another if we keep doing this too often someone is bound to spot us or get suspicious. I mean, suppose all those rumours flying around the school about you having an older boyfriend get back to your mum?’

‘They won’t. And even if they do she’d never believe it. She knows I’m not interested in boys.’

‘And long may it stay that way.’

‘Well, there is this one boy at school.’

‘Tell me his name so I can kill him.’

‘He’s really cool. He’s in a band.’

‘No way, absolutely no way. Just forget it. No musicians. Not now, not ever.’

‘What’s wrong with musicians?’

‘You’ll find out. And don’t think you’re going to be bringing anyone back to my house. Not unless you want them leaving in a wooden box.’

‘What about bringing back some of my girlfriends?’

‘Oh, I’d have no problem with that.’

‘I bet you wouldn’t, you dirty old man. That’s what you are you know, a dirty old man.’

Sophie smiled and snuggled into the hook of Jack’s shoulder as they reached the gate. He pulled her towards him and gave her a little squeeze before leaving her to open it. Then, all of a sudden, he made a quick movement and let out a cry of alarm.

‘Dad, what is it?’

As Sophie watched in horror, Jack collapsed to one knee, his hand clutching at his chest.

‘Oh my God, Dad, Dad, are you all right?’

Sophie was convinced Jack was having a heart attack or maybe a stroke. She had studied first aid at school and knew she had only minutes to react. She racked her brain to try to remember what she knew. She had to raise his legs, but nothing seemed to happen. There was nothing to put them on, no way of getting them above his chest.

She closed her eyes, forcing back the tears. What else? There was no need to check his breathing: she could hear him gasping.

Sophie was still wondering what to do when she saw movement for the first time just behind where Jack was lying. Until then her entire focus had been on her father, but now she realized that there was someone else there too.

Any thoughts that someone might be there to help were dashed instantly when she saw the deranged face of Jessica Matthews bearing down on her. In her hands she held a syringe and a taser gun.

Matthew’s mind was racing. This wasn’t some pervert; this was Sophie’s father. The man she thought was no longer around. Collins had lied to her and she had not realized it.

The woman stepped over Jack’s convulsing body and advanced on her. Sophie Collins opened her mouth and screamed.

24

Stacey Collins was totally lost in the world of Jessica Matthews. She was rereading every statement and interview with anyone who had ever known Matthews in an effort to get inside her mind, to understand her better than anyone in the hope of finding the clue that would assist in tracking her down.

Dr Jacques Bernard had been very clear about criminals, and psychopaths in particular, using established patterns of behaviour. They would do everything for a reason. There would be conscious decisions behind every seemingly minor detail. Nothing would be a coincidence, nothing would be without thought. Dumping a body down a quiet country lane said more than wanting to hide it for a while; it would speak of a place known as a child or in the past. More often than not there would be strong and powerful associations of time and place.

Collins scanned the pages again and again. There had to be something she was missing, something she was not picking up on. There had to be a clue to exactly where Matthews might be hiding, where she might have carried out the killings. Matthews needed somewhere where she could work in absolute privacy, somewhere the smell and sight of blood would not cause alarm, somewhere with access to a cold-storage facility.

Then there was the question of the heads. They had not been found and it was all too likely that Matthews had kept them as trophies. She needed to know where they were.

Her eyes danced across the pages as she flicked through them. She was concentrating so hard that at first she did not even notice that the phone on her desk was ringing. It was only when one of the DCs on night duty called out her name and said he was putting a call through that she picked it up immediately.

It was after seven and the rest of the day team had already left for the evening, leaving only Collins and a couple of DCs on night duty to man the office.

The voice on the other end of the line was slurred and quiet. At first she thought there was some kind of fault on the phone but then all at once something in the voice became eerily familiar.

‘Jack?’

The sound he made in reply was somewhere between a gurgle and a splutter. She felt her hackles rising immediately. She turned her face away from her colleagues and whispered into the receiver, her voice taut with anger.

‘You’re drunk. You fucking idiot, I can’t believe you’re calling me at work, let alone doing it when you’re pissed up. Is this some kind of a joke?’

‘Sophie …’ he gasped.

‘Just forget about her, Jack, just forget you ever had a daughter. It’s over. It was a mistake to ever introduce her to you.’

‘You don’t understand … not drunk. Sophie … gone.’

This time his voice was a little clearer, a little louder. His breathing was hard and laboured. And now Stacey wasn’t quite so sure that he was drunk after all.

‘What the hell’s going on?’

She could hear him gulping in great big breaths, trying to steady himself.

In the call box on the edge of the park, Jack braced himself against the side of the booth. He had to make her understand, but he was so tired. So much had happened and his mind was still spinning with the effort of it all.

That woman, that mad crazy woman, whoever she was, had appeared out of nowhere and jumped towards him. She had caught him by surprise but it had taken only a few seconds for him to compose himself. His rule about not hitting women did not apply to those who were in the process of attacking him. This in particular was a special case. As soon as he saw her, he knew she was there to kill him. She had clearly been sent by the Albanian gang to assassinate him. He had heard rumours about such gangs using women for these tasks and now he was going to experience it first-hand.

He could not hesitate, he could not delay. The natural reluctance to fight with a member of the opposite sex had to be overcome if he was going to survive this. There was another reason to fight too. Experience had taught him that gangs from this part of the world had none of the usual reluctance when it came to killing women and children. Their philosophy was one of leaving no eyewitnesses. If he did not survive this encounter, then Sophie too would be dead.

He had drawn back his right arm, ready to deliver a blow to her head, when he suddenly felt like a balloon with a leak. It was as if all the air, all the energy, was seeping out of him.

There had been a flash in her hands and all too late Stanley realized that she was holding a stun gun. The voltage shot through his body and felt like … his body froze and his mind went numb. He started to fall to the ground. He realized he had been tasered. As he lay there, eyes open and unable to move, the woman advanced on him. He felt a pin prick of pain in the side of his arm. Sophie’s screams were in the background. She had injected him.

He saw the woman, her mad eyes flashing with excitement. Sophie started screaming, but it seemed as though time had slowed down. Her scream was of a much lower and deeper pitch than usual. It was like a record being played at the wrong speed. Time seemed to be dragging.

The woman was saying something, but he couldn’t really hear her words properly at all. All the strength was seeping out of him. As he started to lose consciousness he saw for the first time the syringe in the woman’s hand. He knew he had been injected with something but he had no idea what. And then everything faded to black …

When Stanley came round he had no idea how much time had passed. He was certain his eyes were open but he could not see anything. It was as if he was in the dark. Then, slowly, his eyes began to adjust. Sophie and the woman were nowhere to be seen. His mobile phone had been taken along with his wallet. All he had left were just a few coins in his pocket.

When he tried to stand up his legs collapsed as though they were made of rubber. He felt around him and soon realized he was still in the park, behind a bench. He held on to the back of it and tried to drag himself to his feet. The effort made him sweat. Whatever had been injected into him was still affecting him deeply. But none of that mattered. He knew what he had to do. He had to find Sophie. And fast.

Who had the woman been, what had she wanted? At first he was certain that she had been after him. He assumed that she was an assassin hired by the Albanian gang. He had been wrong.

He had expected to wake up in the back of some van, blindfolded and off to meet his death. Instead Sophie had been taken away.

What was it the woman had called him? A pervert? Then Sophie had started screaming over and over: Dad, Dad, Dad. In the past he had always enjoyed hearing her use that word. It had meant so much to him, it had been so moving, but this time the anguish in her voice made it painful to hear.

He made his way, limping, staggering, towards the gate of the park and the nearest exit.

His body felt as if it did not belong to him; he could feel his legs wobbling beneath him. It was like being completely drunk, only his mind was fully functioning – it was just his body that would not respond in the way he wanted it to.

He tried to flag down a car. When he spoke his mouth and lips were numb, like having had an injection at the dentist. His arms flailed around uselessly. A couple of cars slowed down, but as soon as they heard him speak and saw his jerky, uncoordinated movements, they decided he was a drunk and wouldn’t risk opening their doors to him.

Jack was close to giving up when he spotted the phone box on the other side of the street. He staggered across, narrowly avoiding being struck by a speeding vehicle, to reach it.

Without his mobile he had no idea of Stacey’s mobile number and could not call her on that. Like most people of his age, he had lost the ability to remember numbers long ago. Most of the time he could not even remember his own number without writing it down.

His first call to directory inquiries got the number of the main police station in her area. He hoped to be able to leave an urgent message for her but was surprised to get through directly.

Now he was having trouble speaking but somehow he had to force her to understand the urgency of the situation.

‘It’s Sophie,’ he said, his voice becoming clear at last. ‘Someone’s taken her.’

Less than three minutes later Stacey Collins and two other officers were in a patrol car, blues and twos blazing, as they made their way to the park. Other uniformed teams were already on their way.

She knew exactly what had happened. She asked Jack for a description of his attacker and knew immediately that Jessica Matthews was behind the abduction – but what on earth did she want with Sophie?

By the time she arrived at the park Jack had almost fully recovered from his drug ordeal; he was now suffering from the guilt that had descended on him for failing to protect Sophie.

She instructed him to say nothing. As far as the officers at the scene were concerned, Stanley was merely an eyewitness. He had seen the girl being taken away and was able to describe the woman. No one knew it was his daughter. He was just a man in the wrong place at the wrong time. The girl had clearly been taken against her will.

‘What the hell’s going on, Stacey? Who was that woman?’

Jack Stanley’s face was twisted with pain and distress.

‘She’s the killer we’ve been looking for.’

‘Why did she take Sophie?’

‘To get to me.’

‘Jesus.’

The irony of the situation did not escape her. She had wanted Sophie to stop seeing Jack because of the problems it would cause for her at work, but also because it was too dangerous, because she was worried about him being attacked while Sophie was around. She did not want her daughter to get hurt because of something Jack had done. Rival gangs might try to kidnap or snatch Sophie in order to extract leverage from Jack.

But here they were, and the fact was it was her fault that Sophie had been taken; it was her actions that had led to her daughter’s being put into jeopardy.

She called Anderson. ‘She’s taken Sophie, my daughter.’

‘Who has?’

‘Jessica Matthews. She’s taken my daughter. I don’t know where.’

‘Why? Why would she do that? It doesn’t make any sense. It doesn’t follow any of the patterns of behaviour that we’ve experienced so far.’

‘For fuck’s sake, sir. We’re talking about a woman who kills people by taking out their organs while they’re still awake, who gets off on dead bodies big time, who pretends to be normal during her daily working life. What the hell makes you think she’s going to be rational? She’s a fucking lunatic. Nothing she does makes any sense. Why would it? All I know is that she’s got my daughter and I have to get her back. She just likes killing people. It makes her happy. There’s nothing more to it than that.

‘Of course it doesn’t make sense. It isn’t supposed to make sense. She had bodies safely hidden away for years and no one knew anything about what she had been getting up to. And then she exposes herself by dumping them in a car in the middle of town, inviting all the police and public attention that would never have existed if she hadn’t done so. She keeps their heads and does God knows what to their internal organs. And all the time she’s playing at being the competent professional with the very people who are trying to track her down. Why? Because she’s a fucking nutter. No matter how much fancy psycho babble you want to attach to it, that’s what it comes down to. The woman is insane, so why should anything she does make any sense?’

‘Why would she go after your daughter?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t care why. That’s not important. We just need to do something. I need to get my little girl back.’

‘Come on, Collins. I need you to focus. I need you to do your job. That’s the only way we’re going to get anywhere with this.’

Collins bit her lip and counted to five. ‘I guess she sees this as personal. She blames me for exposing her. I guess I was the one who realized she was behind the killings. Now that the net is closing in, she’s trying to get revenge.’