Stark Contrasts (An Adam Stark novel Book 1) (4 page)

I am watching.

My flame is burning.

I move with the shadows, an apparition, a phantom.

Silent stealth.

All my preparations are in place and things will run as smoothly as I intended them to. Nothing left to chance. No tolerance for error.

He doesn't hear my approach and later, when it's all over, he doesn't hear my departure.

8. A Concerned Citizen

“Yep, same sicko as before, sir!” said Katz, shaking her head a fraction as she did so.

Stark surveyed the scene. The sky mercifully retained its moisture within a blanket of cloud. Rain would be a most unwelcome guest at this party. Blue and red lights flashed through the night like someone set up an emergency disco, but without music.

The truck ploughed into the back of the van with significant force - the two vehicles locked together in what turned out to be a deadly embrace.

“The guy strapped to the front of the truck is Ernie Martin. Aged fifty eight, married. He was supposed to be driving the truck but our guy tied him to the front and squashed him up against the van like a bug. In fact, the van is Ernie's too.”

Stark looked at Katz with a mixture of desire and discomfort that he found strangely pleasing.

“So, is it the same as before? He's a nobody? No ties to organised crime or any such obvious reason for being turned into the filling in a vehicular sandwich?”

“Nope, as far as we can tell, he's just a working Joe, sir. A couple of tickets for minor offences but that's pretty standard amongst guys who drive for a living.”

“Where's the note?”

Katz handed him a plastic evidence bag with a plain piece of paper in it.

To whom it may concern,

Sometimes enough really is enough. Ernie was warned more than once about driving too close to the car in front but he didn't want to listen. He's like so many these days - content to do as he likes, happy to risk the lives of others with his selfishness and boorish attitude.

Well, no more.

Just like Dwayne, he's an example, a warning. He won't be the last.

Yours,

A concerned citizen taking action

“He killed him for tailgating? Holy shit, whoever this guy is, he's a grade-A fruitcake!”

“Yeah, but he's clearly well educated and clever. The note is lucid and grammatically sound. There's been nothing for forensics to work with at either scene. Granted, this one's just underway but we got nothing from Dwayne - no prints, no blood, no fibres...diddly squat!”

This perturbed Stark because Katz was right. Despite the truly disproportionate response to the 'crimes' perpetrated by the two victims so far, the killer showed all the hallmarks of a sociopath. But, what kind of sociopath has a social conscience? The whole thing unsettled him; puzzling, bizarre and exactly the kind of case an ambitious detective longs to solve and add to their CV.

“Did Dwayne say much to you once he came round?”

“No, he refused point blank to speak to me. The doctor's reckon it might be some kind of post-traumatic thing. I'm not so sure. Seemed more like a fuck-you-copper kind of thing to me.” Katz looked at her feet and then took Stark's gaze. “Did you get anywhere with his family or friends, sir?”

“Not really. I got the impression his Mum was tired of him bringing trouble to her door. She looked and sounded exasperated. I got the standard, half-hearted defence about him being misunderstood and she couldn't think why anyone would want to do such a thing to him. No enemies she knew of. I think she was trying to convince herself he hadn't been up to something dodgy, more than she was trying to convince me. His friends were even less cooperative. I tend to agree with you about the the fuck-you-copper thing. In the circles he moves in, you just don't help the cops, no matter what.”

One of the forensic team gestured to them to come over to the truck.

“What's up, Carl?” asked Stark.

The investigator squatted down and pointed to the mashed face of the dead man.

“It's just the weirdest thing, DI Stark. I know his head's been crushed pretty badly, but his eyelids have been sliced off. The crash could never have caused that. It looks like the twisted bastard did this so he had no choice but to watch what was going to happen to him!”

***

The pathologist's office was neat and tidy. Sparsely furnished, with unremarkable fitments and plainly decorated. A few certificates hung on the wall indicating various medical qualifications, but Stark didn't see any photos on display. A large yucca plant with dusty, drooping leaves stood in one corner. It was doing a valiant job of oxygenating the stuffy little space it found itself parked in; despite the obvious lack of tlc being received in return.

Whenever Stark visited the Coroner's Office it reminded him of a favourite TV show when he was a kid - Quincy M.E. At one time, he harboured ambitions to follow in the great man's footsteps. However, in the end, a lack of the required academic rigour, combined with the lure of policing, saw him move in a different direction. Bizarrely, he once shook Jack Klugman's hand (all the time with mouth agape), after a chance encounter outside a Glasgow restaurant, when his TV hero was on a private vacation. He still loved watching re-runs of the show.

Doctor Sadie Watkins seemed a little harassed when she came into the office. Stark's smile and proffered handshake were both reciprocated rather tepidly.

“Hello, it's Detective Stark isn't it?” she asked and stated simultaneously.

“Aye, Detective Inspector, actually,” he replied, instinctively taking out his warrant card and holding it up.

“Oh, sorry, they don't usually send the senior officers down to see me. You're here about the truck sandwich I presume?”

Already, everyone was referring to the case in this way and ergo it was how they were referring to Ernie Martin. It's a sad fact that working in the kind of environment cops and pathologist's were obliged to endure on a daily basis, led to the dehumanisation of  victims and a totally unsentimental attitude to death.

“Yeah. I wondered if you'd done the post mortem and whether you found anything I can use?”

Stark considered Dr Watkins a good looking woman in an unconventional way. A short, choppy haircut leant her an almost pixie-like air. Prematurely grey but making no attempt to hide the fact, sculpted cheekbones and a face untroubled by make up as far as he could tell. But without doubt, her eyes were her most striking feature: diamond blue and fierce. Not tall, but lithe and muscular looking. Some form of fitness regime being followed rather than some radical diet. She was certainly no Jack Klugman.

“I did it this morning but I don't think there's much to tell. You knew about the eyelids thing, right?”

He nodded.

“Very neatly done, probably under anaesthetic, as there are traces of it still in his system, along with some alcohol. Below the legal limit, but only just. Otherwise, lots of broken bones, internal bleeding and so on from the impact. No other injuries that I could ascertain were inflicted before the squashing, but it would be almost impossible to tell if there were.”

There was a slight pause and she seemed to momentarily drift off before snapping back to attention.

“Did you get anything from forensics at the scene?” she enquired.

“No, not so far. It seems our guy is very careful. Ah, well. Thanks for the update, Dr Watkins. Please let me know if anything else occurs to you while you're compiling your report.”

She looked at him rather curiously.

“So, can you tell me, Detective, is it true that whoever did this, did it out of revenge?”

Stark was taken a little off guard by this. He'd been trying very hard to keep the note quiet for now. How had she known? Something in her delivery gave him the distinct impression her repeated demotion of him was no accidental slip of the tongue. He was not warming to this pixie pathologist - unconventionally good looking or not.

“Sorry, Dr Watkins, what makes you ask?”

She shrugged and flashed a sneering smile. An expression that said 'Look buddy, we both know our respective departments are like sieves as far as information goes, so just spill, ok?'.

“One of the forensic team mentioned a note to me in the passing. Something about taking revenge on the guy for tailgating. I thought it was some kind of wind-up. So, was it?”

Stark couldn't decide whether he should indulge her with an answer or not. It was interesting  she'd spoken to someone from forensics, therefore knew what evidence was available, but still asked him first. It was almost as if she was testing him in some way; teasing him even. Still, she had spent the last few hours slicing and dicing the victim, so he could understand her curiosity. He did need to be a little guarded though; you never could tell who might have a penchant for spilling their guts to the media.

“Well, it's true there was a note, and it does seems as though our killer has some issues with certain members of society. The thing is though, Doc. I'd appreciate it if you kept this stuff to yourself for now. You know how these things can spiral out of control.”

There was a glimmer of a smile and a shrug.

“Oh well, with one less arsehole on the road, my insurance renewal might come down a bit!”

Ah, the gallows humour of those who spend unhealthy amounts of time with corpses. Stark was as toughened to death as any other cop but rarely encouraged these sort of jokes by laughing at them.

After another apathetic handshake, he closed the door behind himself and headed back toward the car.

***

Stark's television flickered and murmured in the corner of the room, but he had no idea what programmes had been vying for his attention since he'd switched it on. Almost as soon as he sat down on the couch, three hours ago, his mind started wandering.

He'd been in London for five years now. The promotion and the chance to join the Met seemed too good an opportunity to pass up. It came just in time to rescue him from his suffocating guilt; bodily removing him from being around the memories that plagued his days and nights. London held out its hand and offered him possible redemption, a chance to start afresh. The guilt gradually receded to sit within his gut like a smouldering ember. He slowly learnt how to avoid it bursting into flame, but every now and again it would lick upwards and scorch his thoughts.

Born in Alloa, central Scotland, his upbringing was a roller coaster of good and bad. He grew up on a tough estate, known locally as the Bottom End. Like all such places, it faced issues related to drugs, gang violence, poverty and deprivation. However, as with all such places (and contrary to popular, middle-class belief), it wasn't entirely inhabited by antisocial yobs and benefit scroungers. There were plenty of good folks; hard working and morally grounded. They may have been lacking many things but ambition and decency were not among them. His parents were two such people. His mum was a school dinner lady and his dad a factory worker. They never fulfilled their own potential academically, but that only seemed to drive them even harder to want more for their kids.  

Alloa was not a place he deliberately ran from but neither was it a place he pined for. Sure, he harboured fond memories of school, and some of the people, but the town itself, not so much. In his formative years, he became embroiled in several incidents involving gangs. He never actually joined one himself, but they could still prove hard to avoid. Indeed, one of his front teeth was transformed from enamel to denture thanks to a particularly nasty beating he received around the time of his fifteenth birthday. Still, giving almost as good as he got during that incident, led to the boys involved turning their spotlight on easier targets afterwards.

Thanks to his parents prompting and support, he did well at school without being one of the top four or five students in his year. But, the inescapable pull of the police force reduced academia's importance. If his hankering to follow in Quincy's footsteps had been stronger, things would've been different. Part of his fascination with becoming a policeman (or a fuckin polis as his Dad's next door neighbour liked to call them) sprang from a desire to help people like his Mum and Dad, or his younger self. To try to make life more bearable for the good folks in bad places and do something about the bad folks making good places bad.

Stark attended Tulliallan police college for his basic training. It sat on the outskirts of the small, provincial town of Clackmannan, which was fiscally and geographically convenient as he could live with his folks and not have to lash out a fortune on rent.  

It was apparent right away that he possessed a natural talent for police work. He worked hard, solved plenty of crimes, and did all the right courses. Before he knew it, he was thirty-one and being offered a job in London with the Murder Investigation Team or MIT as it was known. He enjoyed the work but he wasn't so keen on London.

London was big - huge in fact - and several times bigger than Scotland's biggest city of Glasgow, where Stark first made his name. The fume-filled, grubby streets and the oppressive, incessant noise were hard to cope with. Worse still, its size ensured respite from these irritants could only be achieved after enduring a journey of several hours.

Like so many Scots, he disliked how impersonal and unfriendly it could be. He was used to saying hello to strangers for no other reason than they were within earshot. Similarly, his sense of humour regularly misfired and left English colleagues baffled or even affronted on occasion. The Scottish wont for relentless piss-taking of oneself and ones friends was not always taken in the spirit intended.

Without consciously being aware of it happening, he began modulating his accent in order to be understood, which made him the butt of many a joke back home. Some of his pals even took to calling him Sheena: in honour of the singer Sheena Easton, famously bottled off stage in Glasgow after addressing the audience with a transatlantic twang rather than her native Bellshill brogue. He'd actually have preferred a bottling to having one of his pals shout 'Get us a drink Sheena!' while he waited to be served in a Glasgow bar. No matter how many times they said it, his friends never seemed to find it anything less than hysterical.