Psycho Alley

SATURDAY
Twenty

Alone in the darkness, he was aware of the sound of his breathing, the beat of his heart, even the noise of his eyelids coming together as he blinked. All magnified, all giving away his position, or so it seemed.

He looked around the living room, his eyes now well adjusted to the dark, the heavy curtains cutting out most of the illumination from the street outside. It was a normal room. Three-piece suite, TV, DVD, pictures on the walls. A normal room in a normal house in a normal street in Blackpool — a far from normal town. But hadn’t 25 Cromwell Street been a normal address? Yet what had Fred West’s home revealed? A trail of multiple murder stretching back over many years.

At least this house had only had its current owner in for two years. There would not be a legacy of lifetime killing here, just that of forty-eight months. What Trent could have achieved in that length of time was pretty terrifying, though. Three corpses in the basement for starters. Would more be found?

Sitting there, one floor above, Henry was certain that more bodies would be discovered.

A scraping noise made him stop breathing, listen intently.

Nothing. It was nothing.

As much as he could, he relaxed in that normal room.

His thoughts stayed with those bodies, the remnants of three young girls, murdered by the hands of Louis Vernon Trent and probably George Uren. Their terrible fate made Henry surge with anger. Kidnapped, abused, probably filmed, kept alive for how long? Months, possibly. Then murdered. His eyes moistened as his imagination ran riot. They had been given no chance and no hope. Plucked from the streets, from surroundings they knew well, felt safe and comfortable in. But in an area in which two ruthless predators swooped to survive; firstly by targeting old people, stealing from them, terrifying them and destroying their lives in the process; then pouncing on the young and ending theirs just to feed their perversion.

Henry knew he was the last hope for all those victims. If he missed Trent this time, he would never see him again, of that he was certain. He had disappeared for several years once already, but then come home to build a lair in which he lived with impunity. If he could do it on his home soil, he could do it anywhere. He would learn by his mistakes and would never be found again, and he would still go on living at the expense of the defenceless.

A car drove by. Its headlights sent brief rods of light through the chinks in the curtain.

Henry stayed still, checked his watch. It was a few minutes after midnight, into a new day, and although he had been there for less than an hour, he felt that the chances of Trent returning were ebbing away. Part of him believed Trent would not show, because he was a feral animal with highly developed senses that kept him one step ahead of the game. If he hadn’t already gone, Henry was sure he would intuitively know that his lair had been invaded and would not come back.

Henry had bustled everyone off the property, got the joiner in to do a quick repair to the front door, and the house was back to square one, on the face of it — with the exception that Henry was sitting in the living room, and everyone else, including a bleating Karl Donaldson, had been withdrawn. Henry had been insistent with Donaldson, who said it was foolish just to have only one person in the house. He and Henry had almost had a stand-up row about it, before Henry agreed to a suggestion made by the American which was a bit of a compromise. The nearest plain police car was at least a quarter of a mile away. Others were even further away. Their personal radios were all on a single talk group and ordered not to transmit anything unless urgent.

Another hastily-devised plan, Henry thought, leaving him exposed and a little nervous. He was prepared to give it until daylight. If Trent had not returned by then, it would be all hands to a manhunt.

To Henry, the return seemed unlikely, but it was worth a try.

The time passed on. Henry settled in for the wait, yawned. His earpiece fell out. He replaced it, screwing it in. Sometimes he thought his ears were not the right shape for anything other than good quality headphones.

‘DCI Christie — contact call,’ Henry whispered over his PR.

‘Received,’ comms answered.

He settled back. His stab vest was not the best thing for comfort, especially with the covert cuff/baton/CS harness hanging under his left armpit.

Twenty minutes later he found himself nodding off, the toil of the long hours beginning to play on him. He struggled to keep his eyes open.

‘Shit.’ He took some deep breaths. ‘Not good.’ He sat up and urged himself to keep going. He went ten more minutes before his head fell forwards, the earpiece came out, and he jerked his head upright, rubbed his eyes hard.

Then he sensed something dreadful, but before he could react, his head was yanked backwards and a knife placed across his throat.

‘Long time, no see,’ Louis Vernon Trent whispered into Henry’s ear. ‘If you move, I’ll slit your throat.’

He could feel the narrow, fiercely sharp blade digging into his skin, not quite cutting the surface. Trent was standing behind him, leaning forward so that his head rested on Henry’s right shoulder. Trent’s breath was warm on his ear, the man’s left hand on Henry’s forehead, holding his head back.

‘This is a good trap,’ Trent said.

‘Yeah, I scream, they all come running.’

‘They being?’

‘Lots of cops.’

Trent thought about this and pressed the knife harder into Henry’s skin. ‘Do you know how long it takes to slit a throat? Before they come, that’s how long it takes … and actually, it’s not that good a trap.’ His voice was quiet, no more than a whisper. He seemed calm and relaxed. In control.

‘Good enough for you.’

‘What, you alone in this house? I don’t think so.’

‘How do you know I’m alone?’

‘Watched you all coming and going. I have a friend next door, nice old lady, until she saw you lot and asked me why all you nasty policemen were raiding my house. Now she’s a dead old friend.’

‘Why come back?’ Henry asked. ‘If you knew we were here?’

‘Need to get my money before leaving. And I knew you were here. Couldn’t resist one last chance to kill you, could I, Henry? I always wanted it to be Danny, but she came to another sticky end, so that’s all right. Just had to have the last word with you.’

‘Ego,’ Henry said.

Trent adjusted his stance slightly, getting a better hold on Henry’s head, the knife digging deeper. It felt sharp and deadly. Henry’s nostrils flared. Just one cut — zip — and he was dead, or at least bleeding to death. ‘Ego?’ he laughed. ‘You’re the one with the ego problem, if you think you can catch me all by yourself, with the nearest help, what, three minutes away. You’ll be dead, I’ll be gone by the time they land, when they realize you haven’t made that last contact call.’

Trent’s face was right next to Henry’s. He could feel the skin of the man’s face next to his. He could smell him.

Henry moved his right hand a fraction.

‘So where’ve you been?’ Henry needed to keep him talking.

‘Around … left a trail behind me … such memories.’

‘Including a cop in Florida?’

‘He was getting too close.’

‘That why you came home?’

‘Where the heart is … now I have to uproot again, and it was going so well.’ Trent stiffened, the knife at Henry’s throat cutting in now. Henry gasped as a trickle of blood dribbled down his neck. Trent relaxed, and the knife came off. ‘Time for me to go, Henry. Don’t want to look a gift horse in the mouth.’

‘So you kill me, set me on fire, is that it?’

‘Could be.’

‘Where’d the incendiaries come from?’

‘America — small-time white supremacists. Idiots, but their hearts are in the right places, I guess.’ He twisted the knife and scraped it across Henry’s skin. ‘I’ll make sure you die quickly, Henry … sort of.’ He stuck the point of the blade into the soft fleshy part underneath Henry’s chin. ‘It’ll go behind the Adam’s apple, right through, and I’ll dig around, and blood’ll fly everywhere.’

‘Thanks for that — just like George, eh? Why kill your buddy?’ Henry’s right hand moved an inch more as he slid it across his stomach towards his left arm.

‘He panicked. It was obvious you wanted him and I knew he’d crack if caught. A weak man. I had to shout at him to run you down, and then he didn’t do it well … he would have crumbled, and that would have been the end of my quiet life, occasionally fulfilling my desires and making recordings for posterity.’ He was speaking in a cold, matter-of-fact way about filming his killings. The voice of a psychopath, a man whose beat was Psycho Alley, who could see nothing wrong in the way he lived.

‘How many desires did you fulfil?’

‘Since coming home? Maybe ten, twelve. Lost count. Don’t keep a tally. Most of them are downstairs in the walls.’

‘And Kerry Figgis, where is she?’

‘How should I know?’ He pulled Henry’s head further back, stretching and exposing his neck further. ‘As soon as I saw you in Fleetwood, I knew you’d come to me sooner rather than later. You’re the only one capable, I think. All the rest are idiots. So you have to die, Henry, then I truly believe the police will never, ever catch me again.’

‘Why the texts, though?’ Henry gasped.

‘What texts?

Henry’s right hand edged under his jacket.

The point of the knife pressed into his neck.

‘I like this part,’ Trent said.

‘You’re fuckin’ bonkers.’ Henry’s fingers had got as far as touching the base of the CS canister held in the covert harness.

Trent’s face was side by side with his, cheek to cheek. He pushed the knife in a little further, pricking the skin. Henry jerked. Trent chuckled. ‘That was nothing. Just imagine the knife plunging into your neck.’

He raised his head away from Henry, obvious that he was steadying himself for that thrust into Henry’s neck, to end his life once and for all.

‘One more thing,’ Henry said urgently, his voice desperate. ‘Just one thing.’ His hand was now wrapped around the CS canister.

‘What?’

‘What did you do with Jodie Greaves between kidnapping her and me stumbling on you?’

‘Henry,’ he said patronizingly, ‘you truly do not want to know, other than that she was lovely. She would have been a star.’

‘Bastard,’ Henry said.

On that word, the light came on in the room as Karl Donaldson stepped through the door. Trent looked up and saw what looked like a space-age ray gun in Donaldson’s right hand. At the same moment, Henry snatched the CS canister out of the harness, twisted away from the knife as far as he could and, trying not to spray himself, aimed where he thought Trent’s face might be and pressed the spray button. Donaldson aimed the weapon at Trent and pulled the trigger. But it was no gun: it was a taser. Two hooks shot across the room, attached to minutely thin wires, and snagged into to Trent’s clothing. Fifty thousand volts of electricity arced across his body at the same time as the spray from Henry’s CS hit him full in the face.

The joint effect was stunning.

The charge sent Trent writhing across the room with an unworldly shriek and floored him like he’d been hit by a demolition ball, the knife flying out of his hand. The CS took immediate effect, eating like acid into his eyes and nose, making him scream and claw at his face.

Henry leapt to his feet, and staggered across to the fireplace which he used to hold himself up.

‘I love it when a plan comes together,’ Donaldson beamed.

‘Fuck me, Karl,’ Henry said, ‘he nearly slit my throat. Fuckin’ Yanks, always leavin’ it to the last minute.’

‘Pal,’ Donaldson said soothingly, ‘a miss is as good as a mile.’

One of the cruel hands of fate Henry believed he had been dealt in life was that he was useless at golf. No matter how he tried — and he had tried — throughout his life, he had failed humiliatingly. He thought he had a good, easy swing, but the problem was when that little white, bastard of a ball was placed in front of him, it all went, as his colleagues say, ‘shit-shaped’. His attempts at the game were so disastrous that in order to compute his score, he always used the following equation: think of a par, double it and add two and, without fail, Henry’s score could be fairly accurately estimated.

It was this equation that he applied to, yet amended, in relation to Louis Vernon Trent, for the benefit of the custody officer. ‘Think Hannibal Lecter times two, add a dash of Ian Brady, then a smidgen of Jeffrey Dahmer and you’ll be somewhere in the region of how Trent operates.’ Henry dabbed a piece of tissue on the nick Trent had cut into his throat; he could still feel the line of the blade where Trent had held the knife across his windpipe. In his imagination, he felt it tearing his throat out. ‘He’ll kill you, or rip off your face, at the drop of a hat, so never deal with him unaccompanied.’

The burly sergeant seemed contemptuously unimpressed.

‘I mean it,’ Henry said mildly.

‘OK, boss.’

Right now, Trent was in a cell. The door to it was wedged open and two strapping PCs sat outside in the corridor next to each other on chairs positioned directly opposite the door. They kept a constant vigil on him — suicide watch — as per force instructions regarding murder suspects. Trent had been stripped and every orifice had been searched. The police were as sure as they could be that he had nothing secreted in his mouth, nose, ears or arsehole that he could use to harm either himself or anyone else. He had been given a paper suit and slippers before being marched down to trap one, the nearest cell to the custody office door. He had acquiesced to everything in a muted, but resentful way, which made Henry worry slightly.

Henry had questioned him — off the record and highly illegally — during his recovery from the horrible effects of CS, firing him questions about the whereabouts of Kerry Figgis, but Trent refused to talk and Henry wanted to spray him again, but realized that torture would get him nowhere. The only thing Trent said was that he wanted a solicitor and a doctor. It annoyed Henry that both requests were being complied with. The doctor would be half an hour, the solicitor one hour.

In the meantime, Henry debated whether or not to get a superintendent’s authorization under PACE to conduct an urgent interview. This could take place without a solicitor for the purpose of saving life.

Would it achieve anything, he was wondering. He looked thoughtfully at Donaldson, who had taken a back seat as Trent was processed through the custody system.

The American sidled up to Henry. ‘How are we going to explain me and the taser, H?’

Henry shrugged. That would be a bureaucratic nightmare of bullshit at the very least, and he didn’t want to think about it just now. ‘Minor matter,’ he said, brushing the issue aside for the moment. ‘We’ll think of something.’

‘Still, can’t argue it was a good idea me sneaking back into the house to hide in the kitchen. You’d be dead otherwise.’

‘Yeah, I’m glad I thought of it,’ he said tiredly, remembering Donaldson’s insistence. ‘As brave as I am, I didn’t really want to be all alone in the house with those bodies in the basement and the possibility of him showing up — even if you obviously fell asleep under the kitchen table,’ Henry admonished.

Donaldson sniffed resentfully. ‘He was a sneaky son of a bitch himself. It’s no wonder the firearms guys missed the hole in the wall.’

On a further, more detailed search of the house following Trent’s arrest, officers had discovered that a hole had been made in the brickwork in the attic wall which divided Trent’s house from next door, a hole just wide enough to allow a grown man to clamber through easily enough. A stack of cardboard boxes had hidden the hole from cursory inspection. As the firearms team had initially been searching for a man, they had missed the hole during their brief attic search. They had also found a bundle of Bank of England notes totalling thirty-five thousand pounds, proceeds of Trent’s crime spree against old people, and four passports in different names. Unfortunately, they had also found the old lady dead next door, stabbed innumerable times.

‘He must have been watching our every move from next door,’ Henry said. ‘Saw us come and go and set up our little sting. If he hadn’t been so greedy, he could’ve walked.’ Donaldson nodded. ‘But he needed the dosh to set up somewhere else … and he couldn’t resist getting one over on me, one of the few people who’ve stood in his way and lived, I guess. This one’s for Danny Furness.’ Henry sighed, reflecting a second.

‘It’s a pity he saw fit to kill the old lady next door,’ Donaldson said. ‘You know — I think I’ll apply for an extradition order for this guy back to the States to stand trial for Mark Tapperman’s murder when you’ve finished with him. Florida is a pleasant little state which still fries its killers. Now there’s one execution I would go and see.’

Henry regarded Donaldson pensively. ‘You’re a bit of an enigma, aren’t you Karl?’

‘Hell, why?’

‘Well, big old friendly Karl, yet you sneak about like a ninja.’ Henry’s eyes narrowed. ‘More to you than meets they eye, isn’t there?’

‘Don’t push it, Henry.’ Donaldson said uncomfortably.

The English detective gave a short titter. ‘I won’t. I probably don’t want to know …’ His mobile phone rang, breaking the slight tension between the two. Henry answered it and within moments his face had darkened, all thoughts about the clandestine activities of his pal gone from his mind. ‘OK, OK … stay there … I’ll be with you in five.’ He finished the call.

‘Problem?’

‘Need a motor.’ Henry looked round and saw PC Fawcett strolling unsuspectingly into the custody office. ‘You still got a plain car?’ Henry pounced.

‘Uh, yeah.’

‘Come on — I need you.’ To Donaldson he said, ‘You too, job on.’

‘Look, I don’t know, I don’t know — it could be summat, it could be nowt. It’s just weird, that’s all.’ The words were spoken by a harassed Troy Costain. ‘You asked me to check out Callum Rourke and that’s what I’ve done, and I’ve ended up followin’ him here, doin’ your dirty work.’

‘OK, well done. Now tell me what happened.’

They were on Shoreside, having met up with Costain following the hurried phone call he’d made a few minutes earlier. They were outside the grounds of the primary school on the perimeter of the estate, a complex of low-rise buildings surrounded by high, anti-vandal painted walls and railings. Henry was talking to Costain in a huddle, the other two, Donaldson and Fawcett, still in the unmarked police car.

‘Uh, well, I don’t know the twat that well, other than the bit o’ smack I’ve dealt him, so I asked about, unobtrusively, like, but no one else seemed to know much about him either.’

‘Just hit the nail on the head, Troy. It’s freezing out here.’

‘Yeah, well, I went and sat outside his house, well down the road a bit, wonderin’ how t’get something on him, y’know — just to please you, because I’d robbed your mum. Then, I dunno, about half an hour ago, there’s no lights on in the house and the front door opens and he sneaks out and starts walking. I think, odd, so I follow him, y’know, in and out of the bushes and all that crap. Dead jumpy he was, always looking back. Could tell he was upta no good … but I like an enigma, and I stick with him and follow him here.’

‘Where is here?’ Henry looked round.

‘Just on the other side o’ the school’s like a little cul-de-sac of lock-up garages. Half of ’em are derelict, but some still have doors on and are used. He went to one which was padlocked, unlocks it, goes in, pulls the door down behind him.’

‘What’s he doing?’

‘No bleedin’ idea, but I think it’s sus. This time o’ night? This is a pretty dodgy estate, this.’

‘Tell me about it. Have you had a listen?’

‘Didn’t want to get spotted, so I called you, like you said — any time.’

‘Show me.’ Henry jerked his head at his companions for them to get out of the car and tag along. Costain led the way around the perimeter of the school, up a back alley, then down a narrow ginnel which led out on to a colony of garages. In the past, they had been allocated to houses in adjacent streets, but over time they had become neglected. Now, though still owned by the council, they were only used by anyone who could be bothered sticking a lock on them. Henry had been here before. He had once found a stolen Land Rover in one; another time he’d discovered four pedigree poodles which had been stolen from a woman in Cheshire.

‘It’s that one,’ Costain pointed. ‘Third along.’

Henry glanced at Donaldson and Fawcett, did a quick explanation, which drew a wide-eyed response from Fawcett, who looked first at Costain and then in awe at Henry, putting two and two together. Henry clocked Fawcett’s response and whispered a warning in his ear. ‘You say fuck all — understand?’ To have Costain revealed as a source would be damaging to both Henry and Troy if the wrong people found out. Henry because he would end up being chewed up and spat out for committing a major disciplinary offence, and Costain because he might end up dead for being a grass.

He told Costain to stay put, then indicated for the other two to follow him towards the identified garage. As with all the others, it was single, just about wide enough and long enough to accommodate a medium-sized saloon and little else. There was a light showing under the door and Henry could hear an engine running and thought he could also make out the sound of muffled music. He waved for Troy to join them. ‘What’s at the back of the garage?’ he whispered. ‘Is there any way out?’

‘Just a brick wall, as far as I know.’

Henry assessed the garage door. A common-or-garden metal up-and-over door, nothing special. It had a handle in its centre about two-thirds of the way up, and extra security was provided by a padlock on one edge of the door, which had obviously been removed to allow Callum to get in. He was contemplating how difficult it would be to rip the thing open if it was locked from the inside. With four pairs of strong hands, he sussed it would be pretty easy. Even if it was locked, they would be able to twist and wrench it open, he was sure. He guessed that, at best, it was secured with only a flimsy latch.

He turned the handle slowly and pushed the door, found it to be unlocked. It moved easily and with one more heave, he opened it.

There was a car inside with its engine on — a silver-grey Toyota — parked nose in. Two people were inside on the front seats. Immediately Henry noticed the hose coming out of the exhaust pipe, fed into the interior of the car through the rear side window. The inside of the car was clogged with dense exhaust fumes and there was music playing, that old funeral favourite, ‘Angels’ by Robbie Williams.

‘Driver’s side!’ Henry yelled at Fawcett, whilst he himself dashed to the front passenger door and yanked it open, hoping he wasn’t too late. He had dealt with this type of suicide before and it always surprised him just how quickly the fumes killed.

‘Shit,’ he cursed. He wafted away the pungent smoke and plunged his head and shoulders into the car, grabbing the seemingly lifeless, naked, and trussed-up body of Kerry Figgis. Her wrists and ankles were bound by parcel tape.

At the same time, from the opposite side, PC Fawcett had opened the driver’s door and was trying to manhandle Callum Rourke, the boyfriend of Kerry’s mum, Tina, out of the car. He had been affected by the fumes, but put up a fight and tried to punch Fawcett. Donaldson came in behind the young cop and helped subdue the man.

Meanwhile, Henry eased his arms under and round Kerry’s naked body, her head flopping worryingly against her chest and his shoulder. He manoeuvred her carefully out of the car and down the side of the garage into the fresh air, where she started to cough horribly across his clothes, but he did not care, because the only thing that mattered to him at that moment in time was that Kerry was alive.

‘It’s OK, it’s OK,’ he said gently to her, then caught Troy Costain’s eye. They regarded each other with expressions on their faces that defied words.

‘Nice one,’ Henry said to him.