A Deadly Compulsion (4 page)

Returning to the flat, Jim stashed his golf clubs in the hall and walked through to the lounge.  Good as her word, Laura had faxed him a sheaf of stuff, which he ignored as he passed it by and headed for the bedroom.  He stripped off his sweaty clothes and slid a Joe Cocker CD into the player, cranking up the volume so that he would be able to hear it in the shower.  As Cocker croaked out
Delta Lady
, Jim decided that he would not even look at the information that lay taunting him in the fax tray.  At some point he would feed it to the shredder and then bin it.  He was not going to be sucked in, and that was cut-and-dried.

It was past midnight when he finally hit the sack.  He had been out for an Italian meal at Luigi’s on the Staines road with an ex-client who was now fronting a popular TV quiz show, and had become a household name.  He had also become one of Jim’s best friends.

At two a.m., Jim was still awake.  And it wasn’t the muggy heat that held sleep at bay.  It was the fucking faxes that Laura had sent, calling out to him, chiselling at his mind, demanding him to be aware of their horrific content and of the patterns and motives that would be woven into the fabric of the details.  A part of him wanted,
craved
the challenge.  The old electrical charge that used to surge through his veins was back with a vengeance.

It was three a.m. when his resolve broke and deserted him like rats from a sinking ship.  He had no clear recollection of getting out of bed, or of walking through to the lounge to take the stack of paper across to the table at which he was now sitting.  He began reading, and after just two pages was suddenly pushing the chair back, rising, running to the bathroom to throw-up in the toilet bowl.  He was shaking, felt faint, and his heart was spiked by a sharp, freezing icicle of unbridled fear.  It was a reaction to facing a situation that his subconscious rebelled against.  It reminded him of exactly how he had felt on boarding a plane at Dulles airport, west of Washington D.C., back in the winter of two thousand and three.  Eight weeks prior to that flight, he had been involved in a crash landing that resulted in over half of the passengers being cremated in the fire that ensued.  The chartered DC-10 had fallen the final few feet like a shot goose, crumpling the landing gear, tilting and spinning out of control as one wing struck the ground before merging with the unforgiving runway and exploding.  Amid the choking black smoke and the screaming of injured and frightened passengers, he had somehow helped an attendant to open a door, and assisted dozens of survivors to escape down the billowing yellow slide to safety.  Only when a blinding ball of flame streaked through the fuselage, did he throw himself down the chute, in no doubt that he would be the last living person to reach the tarmac.

Facing the beginning of Laura’s reports had caused the same reaction as when he had flown again for the first time after that incident.  It was not an irrational fear.  Planes
did
crash.  There was no guarantee that you would survive a flight.  The odds were heavily on the side of safe arrival at your destination, but after one close call the statistics and percentages had lost a lot of their power to boost Jim’s confidence.

It was fifteen minutes later, after rinsing his face with cold water and having poured himself a large measure of Jack Daniel’s that Jim tentatively returned to the table.  The printed words drew him with the power of a siren luring a seafarer onto an accursed, rocky shore with enchanting song that could not be ignored or resisted.

He started reading, opening and entering a door in his mind that he had kept firmly locked for years.

Laura had been reluctant to contact Jim.  She knew how much he had been affected by his years with the bureau, and of the events that had ended his career.  She didn’t want to hurt him; still cared for him, and was scared that approaching him with this would ruin their friendship.  But as per usual she had suppressed personal concerns by reminding herself that the body count was rising, and that a sick individual was on the loose, out of control: a killer who would not stop until he was hunted down and captured.  Jim Elliott was – or had been – the most successful profiler on the planet.  That was a fact.  He had a unique gift; one that could not be matched.  If she was able to prise even a few pointers from him, then she would, and to hell with the consequences.  That he had refused to even discuss the case was, to say the least, disappointing.  She wanted to respect his decision, but was gutted by his lack of altruism.  Faxing the files, including crime scene and autopsy photographs, was a blatant transgression.  But if she knew Jim at all, then he would not be able to resist looking at them, and if he did, then who knew?  He might just get interested.

HE
remembered.  Was back there with clarity of mind that imbued an aura of reality. All his senses combined to recreate the events.  He was a young boy again and…

…This was a moment that he always dreaded with a fear that was irrational, but no less real for knowing that he was in no danger and would survive the ordeal.  His fingers were cold, stiff and painful with cramp as he clutched the bolt that held the door tightly closed in its jamb; a barrier between him and them.  He continued to stand transfixed, heart thudding in his narrow chest with the ferocity of how he imagined a wild animal may slam against the bars of its cage in a futile bid to escape captivity.

The sullen, leaden sky was full of boiling thunderheads that promised rain.  And the chill wind cut through his cotton shirt and jeans.  Still, he hesitated, putting off what had to be done.  With bated breath he finally eased the steel bolt from its staple and pulled back the rough, planked door, pausing as several earwigs dropped writhing from the inside of the frame to scurry into the straw that covered the shed’s floor.  He stepped over the threshold into the gloomy interior, almost gagging as the acidic smell of fresh droppings and the stale heat from confined bodies combined to sear his nostrils.  Wings stretched, unfurled and flapped about him as the two dozen chickens became restless on their perches and in the laying boxes that were fitted to the sides of the hen house. With a trembling hand, he started to collect the eggs, placing each carefully in the large wicker basket that he cradled in the crook of his right arm.  He hurried to complete the task as the fowl began to mill about, pecking at his legs and pulling at the laces of his Nikes with their blunted, stabbing, darting beaks.

He hated chickens with a passion that was only equalled by his fear of them.  Each morning he hoped that a fox might have successfully gained entry and torn the bony, feathered, brainless creatures apart.  But the defences were formidable.  His father had dug a three-foot deep trench around the structure, and then sunk galvanised wire mesh into it, before back-filling, packing down the soil and nailing the top of the vermin-proof net to the shed under wooden batons.  Then of course there was Duke, their Staffordshire bull terrier; his night quarters a kennel in sight of the mangy birds’ shelter.  No, his hope of the hens becoming fox food was no more than a pipe-dream.

Halfway back to the house, he stopped, the basket of eggs still held tightly but forgotten in his hands.  With his head cocked slightly to one side, he listened to the distant racing of a tractor’s engine, and knew that something was wrong.

The west field dropped away steeply.  It had to be negotiated with extreme caution and at the right angles.  Cutting corners and trying to turn too sharply could result in machinery tipping over; it had happened before.

The oily blue smoke was being blown towards him as he began walking down the partly ploughed field.  He didn’t rush, being more curious than concerned as he topped the brow and saw the green John Deere on its side, bellowing mechanically, analogous in his mind to a giant Jurassic beast lying mortally injured, unable to regain its feet.

His father was at the far side of the tractor, pinned by it, with only his head and shoulders protruding from under the cab.  He appeared to be flattened into the soft ruts of earth; just a partly buried alabaster bust, covered in a mixture of damp soil and blood.

“Don’t ju…just fucking stand there, boy, get help,” his father wheezed, bright crimson bubbles popping from his grey lips with every rasping word.

He looked down at the eggs.  They were a uniform light coffee-brown.  Some had pieces of straw stuck to them.  Others were smeared with specks of blood, and small downy feathers that curled and quivered in the wind; a few escaping to spiral up fleetingly into the light rain, only to be beaten back down, sodden and limp.

“Die...Die...Please die!” he murmured, keeping his eyes on the eggs, as though they might magically disappear if he let his gaze drift away from them for even a second.  He tuned out his father’s frantic, weakening, pleading voice, which had at first held anger, but was now a begging, sobbing whine that both amused and pleased him.  The droning voice began to sound like the television in the house did, as he lay in his bed at night.  It was just an unintelligible and faraway background noise.

A furtive glance showed that his dad – who now seemed a stranger to him – was turning blue in the face.  He was no longer making demands.  His eyes had rolled back in their sockets and were oblivious to the raindrops that bounced off their red-veined surfaces.

He waited until the liquid breathing finally stopped, and then walked slowly across and knelt down beside the still figure, satisfying himself that it was lifeless before directing a gob of spittle onto the corpse’s forehead.

Humming tunelessly, he walked back up the hill to the house, around to the rear, where he removed his clay-caked trainers at the kitchen door, entered and placed the eggs in boxes and then filled the kettle.  He was suddenly very thirsty, in need of a cup of tea.  This, he mused, was without any question or doubt at all the very best day of his life.  The fat, no-good, foul-smelling drunkard would never lay into him with his belt again, or strike his mother, or pull her by her corn-blonde hair, to cause her china-blue eyes to shed tears of fear and pain.  The old bastard would never do anything ever again, apart from rot under and contaminate the earth, where his now cooling body belonged.

He was almost thirteen, and his mother was not yet thirty, having had him when she was just sixteen.  He recalled that there had been little love or even affection between his parents.  His father had been many years older than his mother, and treated her as almost a slave on the farm.  All her love had been directed towards him.

As he sat at the kitchen table, he brought to mind the first time that their love had transcended normal boundaries.  His mother had been bathing him in the old, discoloured cast-iron bath, sponging his back with hot, soapy water.  It was then that his penis broke the surface, bigger and stiffer than he had ever seen it before; a pink periscope rising from a submerged submarine.

“Let me see, sweetheart,” his mother had said as, too late, he tried to cover it with his hands and a thick drift of suds.  He was eleven, and she touched and caressed him in a way that made him feel as weak as jelly; boneless and yet wonderfully excited.  She kissed him...down there; put her mouth over him and caused almost unbearable sensations that made him moan aloud with pleasure.  And just when he thought he might explode, she stopped, undressed and climbed into the tub with him.

Since that bath time baptism, he and his mum had enjoyed sex regularly.  It was their secret, she had said, and no one else – especially his father – must ever know about it.

What had been a dislike for his ageing father quickly turned to smouldering hatred. When the old man was drunk, which was more often than not, he would beat his wife for the smallest imagined indiscretion, then aroused by the violence, take her to his bed.

Lying in the next room, in the darkness, there was no way to blot out the shriek of rusted bedsprings rhythmically scraping together.  He would cry himself to sleep, pillow over his head to dampen the noise, knowing exactly what was taking place and picturing his mother pinned to the mattress, enduring all that was being done to her.  The loathing for his father had blossomed and grown like a black, thorny bush within him.

After his father’s death, up until he was eighteen, everything was absolutely perfect. And then his mother met Tom Brannon – a local councillor – and brought their long-standing incestuous relationship to an abrupt end.  He was devastated.  He pleaded with her, threatened her, and even raped her.  It broke his heart that she would want to abandon him.  But what had been between them was over.  She was infatuated with Brannon, his money and his shiny silver BMW.

The crash had made the front pages of the local newspapers.  Not least because the councillor had been driving with his trousers and underpants down to his thighs, and that the blonde who was with him was a local widow, not his wife.  The car had left the road at speed and hit an unyielding brick wall, killing both occupants instantly as the engine block was pushed back to meld steel and flesh in uneasy union.

Due to the fact that both driver and passenger had been drinking, and were believed to have been engaged in some lewd sexual act at the time of impact, the vehicle was only given a cursory check.  Had it been inspected more thoroughly, then the loose coupling on the steering rack may have instigated further and more rigorous investigation.

The coroner’s verdict of death by misadventure closed the door on what should have been a murder inquiry.

He missed her so much, even though she had betrayed him and forsaken him for another.  He loved her and hated her with equal zeal; his confused emotions torturing him and psychologically ripping him apart.  He had killed her body and mind, destroyed her for spurning him, but still needed and wanted her.  Somehow she must be made to pay an even higher price for the suffering that he had to endure because of her actions.

With the untenable, gnawing need came the will.  And with the will came the way to ease the crushing pain, and the ability to recreate her again...and again.

Now, many years later, he sat in the gloom with just the flickering light from the television illuminating his naked body in stuttering, strobe-like relief.  He stared at the screen, unblinking, glaring at the image of the presenter, hating the smug bitch as she spouted verbal diarrhoea through a mouth that could shift from flashing, pearly smile of insincerity to tight-lipped pseudo grief faster than a chameleon could change its colour.  She, Trish Pearson, was showing photographs of the sluts he had disposed of. Photos of them smiling, fresh-faced and carefree.  Photos that had been garnered from the walls, mantelpieces and sideboards of what had been their homes, to show uncaring viewers, who would forget the images as soon as the next item whisked them off to the latest act of terrorism, famine in some barren African cesspool, or bombarded them with the news of a six-year-old who was, thanks to sponsored walks and parachute jumps, now undergoing lifesaving surgery in Pittsburgh or Katmanfuckingdu. 
He
had photographs; Polaroid’s of the bitches which were scattered at his feet.  Frozen moments in time that showed how they had looked at various stages of his ministrations, and in the final poses he had left them in to be reclaimed.

Pressing the mute button on the hand set, he watched the blonde talking head mime for a few seconds, then closed his eyes and replayed his latest exploit through his mind with more clarity than if it had been on DVD with surround sound.  He was reliving it with perfect recall.  Every moment flooding back as though it was just taking place.

He had been standing in the recessed doorway, hidden by the night, black-on-black, hands thrust deep in pockets as he watched the teenagers entering and leaving The Wired Warehouse, a night-club adjacent to the silky, grey ribbon of the River Ouse.  The water shimmered under reflected light from buildings that crowded both sides of its concrete and brick banks.  Groups and couples came and went on foot and by taxi.

He stiffened and pressed farther back as a lone figure clipped up the ill-lit side street that led to the brighter and more populated main thoroughfares.  As she neared him, he relaxed.  She was a scrawny brunette, unsuitable and repugnant to him, not conforming to any of the strict requirements that he adhered to when selecting prey.

It was almost midnight when the blonde appeared from the glowing rectangle of the club’s doorway, alone, to hurry along the pavement towards him, unsuspecting.  As she passed, he stepped out and followed, overtaking her in three strides, to turn and stand in front of her.  She stopped abruptly, startled, unknowingly only three feet away from his black Mondeo, which was parked at the kerb beside her.  She looked at him quizzically, her blue eyes wide with apprehension.  He smiled at her, before lashing out with his fist to hit her on the temple with enough force to stun and knock her to the ground.  Moving quickly, he gripped her under the armpits and dragged her to the rear of the car.  Within seconds he had bundled her into the boot and wrapped two-inch-wide duct tape around her head, covering her mouth but being careful not to obscure her nostrils and asphyxiate her. He also bound her wrists behind her back and her ankles together with the tape, before closing the lid and looking up and down the deserted street to ensure that no one had witnessed the abduction in progress.

Back at the farmhouse, he carried her from the car to the barn, placed her on the ground and showed her the knife.  He also held a piece of card in front of her to read.  He had never spoken to any of his victims. Talk would individualise them and ruin the illusion.  COMPLY OR DIE, the simple message in large block capital letters stated.  It always worked, giving them false hope that made them more user-friendly.  He preferred them to be compliant and malleable, not animated and rebellious.

He cut the clothes from her, apart from the panties, which he removed carefully and put to one side after freeing her ankles.  She watched him as he then undressed, her eyes following his every move.  And then he began, working under the soft glow of a single hurricane lamp that hung from a nail driven into a sturdy oak post.  He caressed her trembling body, exploring every curve and crevice, running his fingers through the shiny tresses of her hair, after first checking her pubic curls to confirm that she was a natural blonde.