Son of a Serial Killer (16 page)

49

Summers and Kite had edged closer to the house, careful to stay out of sight. They listened in as Mrs Green admitted, although not conclusively, that she was The Phantom. This was recorded, and also the single biggest break-through any officer’s had made in the case.

When they heard the scream of Natalie, they had a
split second to make a decision, wait for the back-up that was due any moment, or go in and maybe save the life of an apparently innocent party. Kite called for back-up again and made sure an ambulance would arrive as well, reiterating the need for speed from all parties.

They
tried forcing the front door first but to no avail, then made their way around the side of the property, finally entering the garden to find the kitchen door wide open.

They weren’t normally armed, but Kite had a truncheon in the boot of his car and
had done the gentlemanly thing and offered it to Summers, unsure as to what they were to come across inside the property. She took the weapon without hesitation.

Kite
made his way into the kitchen, and saw that there was nobody in the room but a young, attractive woman, who had been stabbed in the body with a large kitchen knife that still stuck out from her chest.

Summers approached Natalie and checked for a pulse, although seeing the amount of blood covering her body and clothing and even the floor, she knew it would be fruitless.
She shook her head silently at Kite to give him the news he had already assumed. There was no pulse. She was gone.

Kite moved towards the back of the kitchen to the only door into the rest of the house,
Summers followed, feeling uneasy in the deafening silence, the smell of death invading her nostrils. They made their way along the corridor. Kite stepped into the front room, and checked behind the sofas, nobody there. Summers tried opening the door to the red room but found it locked.

‘
Open the door, Ben, we know you’re in there,’ she called out, whilst knocking her fist on the door.

She looked to Kite and gestured for him to open the door.
He obliged by kicking it once, twice, and then on the third time the door flew open and crashed into the wall behind. Summers and Kite slowly edged inside, only a desk and a couple of chairs were in sight. Before they got to search the ugly red room properly, before noticing the pictures and stories of death covering the walls, they heard a movement upstairs.

‘
Let’s go,’ said Kite.

They left the room and Kite walked briskly up the stairs, Summers followed but turned to see an older
woman running into the kitchen, Mrs Green had been hiding behind the desk, and thought she could make her escape whilst the police were looking for Ben upstairs.

‘
Kite,’ Summers yelled up the stairs, but he was gone and she heard him shout ‘don’t do it,’ to someone, but Summers had to leave him to it, she wasn’t willing to let this woman escape. If she was The Phantom, she wasn’t going anywhere.

She ran to the end of the corridor and peered into the kitche
n, the truncheon raised head-height and ready to be used if necessary. She tip-toed in and passed the corpse. Something had changed. What had changed? The knife had gone!

Behind her she heard a scuffle of feet on the floor and turned to see
Mrs Green lunging at her with the bloodied-knife aiming right for her throat.

Summers threw herself to the side but
caught the blade in the shoulder, forcing her to drop the truncheon and squeal in pain. She held tightly onto the arm of Mrs Green as she fell back onto the floor, the old lady falling on top of her.

Summers couldn’t believe how strong this old
er woman was, and cursed at herself for drinking too much instead of training at the gym more often.

Mrs Green twisted the knife, carving up the muscle in Summers’ shoulder, then yanked it out and stabbed it straight back in.

Summers couldn’t feel her arm, let alone move it. She lashed out with her other elbow, lightly catching her attacker in the face but The Phantom, who Summers now had no doubt was the woman on top of her, just shrugged off the blow and smiled down at her victim.

The detective was scared. She grabbed
both of The Phantom’s hands, those strong hands that were wrapped around the knife that stuck into her upper chest, and clung on for dear life, thinking that as long as the knife stayed inside her shoulder, it couldn’t be forced into her again to create another wound elsewhere. But she couldn’t hold on, the strength of The Phantom seemingly increased with every second that passed, Summers the contrary.

The Phantom
yanked the knife upward and out of Summers reach, raising it above her head, screaming as she did so, saliva dripping from her open mouth and into Summers’ face, then she brought down the knife, aiming for the heart. Summers kicked out against the floor and pushed herself along a few inches, forcing her would-be-killer to miss her target.

The knife sank into Summers’ stomach.

Summer cried in pain and out of fear. This was the end, it was clear now. After years of working as a police officer, to finally get to the position where she could hunt down the killer of her father, she had found The Phantom, but lost the fight.

Mrs Green raised the knife above her head once more, staring down at the defenceless Summers,
feebly trying to shield her body with the one arm that still functioned properly.

‘
You killed my father,’ she stated, having given up hope and staring into the eyes of her enemy; a half-hearted beg for compassion.

‘
And now you,’ replied The Phantom. ‘Die!’ she yelled, as she used all her energy to bring the knife down and into her latest victim.

But the knife didn’t move.

Kite had grabbed the handle of the knife and wrestled it out of the killer’s hands. Mrs Green looked shocked as she turned to see the truncheon swinging through the air towards her head.

CRACK

The truncheon rendered her unconscious instantly.

Kite pulled her off of his boss’ body and handcuffed her hands together behind her back, then used Summers’ handcuffs to attach her to the table. He wasn’t taking a
ny chances with this mean bitch.

Finally some good fortune arrived,
as the back-up made its belated entrance into the kitchen via the back door.

‘
Is the ambulance here yet?’ Kite asked his colleague.

‘
Yes, sir,’ came the reply from the uniformed officer, before calling an out of sight colleague to get the medics.

The officer and Kite applied pressure to the wounds of Summers until the ambulance crew were inside and ready to take over.
She was losing blood fast, but holding on.

Her pulse was weak, but steady.

50

TWO WEEKS LATER

Summers sat upright on the hospital bed as the nurse applied the finishing touches to the sling that would keep her arm restrained, limiting any movement that could dislodge the stitches that were still in place, holding together the area in her shoulder that had been torn to shreds by her attacker.

Normally, stitches over main joints could be removed around the fourteen day mark, but the
extent of the damage inflicted meant the doctor preferred to leave them in for another three or four days.

The wound in Summers’ stomach was even more
serious.

Kite had held her hand as she lay unconscious in the back of the ambulance, fighting for her life as the paramedic did his best to stem the bleeding until she was into the emergency surgery room and handed over to the team of surgeons who took over and did the necessary.

She
was in and out of consciousness for days, mainly due to the medication that was being dripped into her system to ease the pain.

After a week she was stable and fully compos mentis, and had received visits from colleagues and friends, who all praised her strength for pulling through such an horrific attack, and also her amazing work as a police officer, tracking down and putting into custody the most elusive serial killer the current generation were likely to s
ee or hear of in their lifetime.

Privately, Summers felt all the praise was too much. She had only spoken to Kite about
this. Ever since he saved her life she felt an overwhelming bond with him. One would imagine this is normal. He told her that everything she had said and thought about this case was correct.

‘
But we got lucky,’ she would say.

‘
You make your own luck,’ he would argue.

He reminded her that finding Ben Green was down to her instinct, and her persistence led them directly to his mother, Mrs Green, aka
The Phantom.

Watts
had visited Summers once, telling her that she was in absolutely no hurry to come back to work and that she should take as much time as necessary to recover fully. He was very happy that the case of The Phantom had been solved, and had to try hard not to smile too much in front of his star detective, as she was still clearly in pain and traumatised by the preceding events.

Kite had kept Summers up to date with how things were going with the case against Mrs Green, which was looking good in respect of her never being free to harm anyone again.

Mrs Green had at first tried to deny any involvement in the crimes, then she heard the tape that had been recorded of her and Ben discussing the murders. Kite was relentless in the interview room and eventually broke her down.

She
admitted to all the twelve murders that occurred in the crime hot spot, plus the murder of Charles Peacock. She adamantly denied knowing anything about the other murders in the five other cases, so Watts would have to admit defeat with these and send them off to the cold case department for the time being. How truthful she was being was hard to judge, as her mental health had seriously deteriorated.

Kite had managed to get a signed confession from his suspect, but on the advice from her lawyer, she wou
ld plead her case of insanity. He knew it was true, she was mad, how can anyone take the lives of others and be labelled as sane?

Summers
had asked Kite what happened when he went upstairs at the house.

Kite explained that he followed the noise and saw Ben
with a rope around his neck. He had turned to the detective as Kite entered the bedroom, tears streaming down his face and he mouthed the word, ‘sorry.’

‘D
on’t do it,’ Kite had yelled, but it was too late. The troubled Ben Green had jumped out of the window and killed himself. The rope around his neck had snapped numerous bones and Ben died instantly.

Kite had frantically pulled him back inside
the bedroom, only to see he had the dead body of a multiple murderer in his arms. Kite had wiped the tears from the deceased face and had to wipe his own eyes, which had begun to fill with drops of sadness. He had seen many dead bodies before, but to see someone alive, hear them say sorry and then to have them dead in your arms moments later, there was no police training to prepare you for that.

Summers had read a copy of Ben’s suicide note, a mixture of confession, explanation and
hopes of forgiveness. He had confessed to the murders of Ricky Robinson, Alexia White and last but not, his fiancée, Natalie.

Something that struck both Summers and Kite was the fact that Ben had confessed to the murder of Natalie before it had taken place.
Of course, this was a premeditated murder, but the belief that Ben had, that she was pregnant with his child, a child who would no doubt carry the same destructive gene that he and his mother had been inflicted with, gave the impression that Ben had truly believed he was doing the right thing.

What a twisted world we live in.

Kite confirmed to Summers that Natalie had not in fact been pregnant, which led them to the conclusion that she had lied to Ben, for what reason they would never know, although it was clear that in this way she had been directly involved with the reason for her death, even if she was oblivious to the terrible things that were happening around her fiancée and his family.

Summers had felt sorry for her, be it only briefly, as Kite had something to say regarding Natalie.
Nobody had yet claimed responsibility for the murder of David Reynolds, who was so closely linked to recent events that Kite had refused to believe his murder was just coincidence.

As it turned
out, Natalie and David had exchanged numerous text messages and phone calls over the last year or so. Also, a routine search of the home of Ben and Natalie lead to the finding of a metal bin in the garden, with remnants of a females clothing, which in turn had traces of blood on them. The blood was from David Reynolds, and part of the sweatshirt appeared to match one that Natalie wore in a photo hanging on the wall in their front room. This was good evidence, and had been put forward to superiors to decide whether it was enough to close the case.

‘Good work, detective,’ Summers had said to Kite.
‘Everything seems to have been tied up nicely.’

‘Not quite
,’ he had replied.

Ben had left a letter to Eve, and a cheque, leaving
her his inheritance money. The envelope hadn’t yet been given to her, as Kite remembered Summers was asked to deliver it personally. Also he thought that she may want to do the last task related to the case before it could be firmly shut forever, as she was the one who solved it, even if a bit of luck was involved.

The nurse finished with the sling and tidied up all the materials she had used and left, passing the arriving Kite as he walked into Summers’ room.

‘
Are you ready?’ he asked.

Summers was happy to be leaving
the hospital, to get outside and breathe some fresh air, stretch her legs and so forth. But what she really looked forward to, was putting this whole episode behind her and moving on, which would begin when she had given Eve the letter from Ben.

S
he grabbed her bag of medication, which consisted of painkillers and sleeping tablets, and gestured for Kite to pick up the rest of her things. He did so with a smile.

‘W
elcome back, boss,’ he said.