Deadly Obsession

  DEADLY OBSESSION

  By

  MICHAEL KERR

  Copyright © 2017 Michael Kerr

  Discover other Titles by Michael Kerr at MichaelKerr.org

  Kindle Edition, License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Amazon and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this Author.

  Disclaimer

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Also By Michael Kerr

  DI Matt Barnes Series

  A REASON TO KILL

  LETHAL INTENT

  A NEED TO KILL

  CHOSEN TO KILL

  A PASSION TO KILL

  RAISED TO KILL(Sample at end)

  The Joe Logan Series

  AFTERMATH

  ATONEMENT

  ABSOLUTION

  ALLEGIANCE

  ABDUCTION

  The Laura Scott Series

  A DEADLY COMPULSION

  THE SIGN OF FEAR

  Other Crime Thrillers

  DEADLY REPRISAL

  DEADLY REQUITAL

  BLACK ROCK BAY

  A HUNGER WITHIN

  THE SNAKE PIT

  A DEADLY STATE OF MIND

  TAKEN BY FORCE

  DARK NEEDS AND EVIL DEEDS

  Science Fiction / Horror

  WAITING

  CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE STRANGE KIND

  RE-EMERGENCE

  Children’s Fiction

  Adventures in Otherworld

  PART ONE – THE CHALICE OF HOPE

  PART TWO – THE FAIRY CROWN

  “I’m not insane…I’m just emotional.”

  “I have an obsession with the unattainable…I have to eliminate what I cannot attain.”

  Robert Bardo

  Convicted stalker/killer

  “I hate women with a passion…

  …they always played mind games with my head.”

  Harvey Louis Carignan

  Convicted serial killer

  PROLOGUE

  ALMOST dark.

  He parked in the space between two other vehicles less than twenty yards away from the house. Turned off the engine and lights, lit a cigarette and waited.

  He should have cruised around until the brief period of twilight had passed. The sun was not yet far enough below the horizon to afford him the gloom in which he felt most comfortable operating in. The night was his friend; an ally that cloaked him from quick eyes and suspicious minds. In daylight he blended, hiding his true nature from those he came into contact with.

  It was so easy, now. He had learned to fit in and feign empathy for other people’s feelings. He reacted in a suitable manner to their emotions by manufacturing an acceptable personality. He could respond and express himself. To intermix with society and appear to be a part of it was essential, but draining. At times he even socialised: played the game. The art of it was body language. It was imperative that he be keenly aware of and be able to recognise the subtle nuances of others, if he was to behave appropriately.

  He laughed at jokes he did not properly understand, though being erudite he used his rounded knowledge to engage in what he thought of as banal conversation, when and if required. His subterfuge was complete. He had grown into the part, as an actor in a long running West End play will. The affable, likeable character he portrayed could be slipped on with the ease of grease paint; a pliable mask.

  He sighed, wound the window down a couple of inches and flicked the cigarette end out of the window. The darkness had now come, to crowd in and swaddle the imperfect world from his sight. Only the lights from households and the glow of street lamps dimly repelled the murk.

  He waited, and much later the bathroom window at the side of the house became a dazzling yellow square. She had gone upstairs. He clutched the steering wheel until his hands and the muscles of his forearms ached. He had been in that small room. Had lifted the wooden toilet seat to take a piss in the avocado-coloured bowl, then flushed, lowered the seat to sit on, and masturbated as he imagined Christine’s firm buttocks in the selfsame place. Wearing latex gloves, he had spent over two hours carefully examining her possessions, her clothes, and everything that disclosed her taste, personality and secrets, so that he could better know what made her tick.

  The bathroom light went out.

  Exiting the car, he walked along the pavement with purpose, so as not to appear furtive and arouse suspicion, should some night jogger or dog walker pass by.

  Most of the semidetached houses were in darkness. He looked about in a casual manner as he reached her gate. The coast was clear. Five seconds later he was in the small front garden, hidden from sight by the tall beech hedge that afforded him total privacy. Without hesitation he made his way around the side of the house and across the back lawn to enter the garden shed, from where he could look out through a grimy window pane, up to her bedroom.

  Hands shaking, he took a stolen mobile phone from his fleece pocket and tapped in her number.

  He could hardly breathe. His heart was thudding, and he felt dizzy with the overwhelming sense of anticipation. The current object of his obsession was about to speak to him. This feeling of power was without equal. He was manipulating her life, dominating and controlling her, and the only weapon he utilised was his voice.

  “Hello.”

  “It’s me, Jerry. Don’t hang up, Christine. You know the rules. Just take a couple of deep breaths, relax and talk to me.”

  CHAPTER ONE

  IT was late. Detective Inspector Jack Ryder was standing next to the silver Mercedes, pissed off by the fact that a case he’d been working for several months was now closed.

  With his hands on his knees, Jack lowered his head to look inside the open front passenger door at the corpse.

  Frank Robinson was beyond the long arm of the law now.

  The smell of blood, urine, cigarette smoke, expensive cologne and cordite amalgamated to assail his nose in the confined space. Jack was glad that he hadn’t eaten all day. He surveyed the damage; pictured what had gone down. It was a professional hit, of that he had no doubt. Two head shots, through and through. Robinson had pulled in to the kerb, and the shooter or shooters were either waiting for him or had driven by, stopping momentarily to cap him. One bullet had entered Robinson’s right eye, and the other had drilled a hole through the centre of his forehead. The inside of the passenger door and the seat were laced with blood and brain tissue.

  “He was facing the shooter,” Detective Chief Inspector Ken Maynard said. “So at least he knew what was about to happen to him.”

  Jack shrugged and said, “That’s a bonus. I’d rather he’d rotted in prison, though. I wonder who arranged the hit.”

  “A rival. Arseholes like Robinson have a lot more enemies than friends,” Ken said, turning at the sound of a car engine to see the duty Home Office pathologist pulling up fifty feet away from the scene.

  “Hi, guys,” Jane Keating said as she walked towards them. “How many?”

  Jack smiled. “Just the one,” he said. “And a seriously messed up motor. It’ll need full valeting, and new front side windows.”

  The CSC ambled over. It was DS Don Francis, an officer who was designated Crime Scene Coordinator on a regular basis. He was an unflappable character
, stood an impressive six-three, and was built like a prop forward. Crime scenes were his babies. No one did squat without his okay. Jack knew him well, nodded and smiled. The big man’s white Tyvek overalls were too tight around his waist and a little short in the sleeves and legs.

  “What can you tell us, Don?” Ken said.

  “So far, apart from a couple of shell casings from a nine millimetre pistol, what you see is all that we’ve got. A witness says he saw a dark saloon speed off after the shooting, with its lights off. He didn’t get the reg. Thinks there were at least two people inside the vehicle, but couldn’t swear to it. About as useful as a chocolate fireguard.”

  Jack took one last glance at the dead gangster, who was partially obscured by Jane Keating. His gaze drifted from what he could see of Robinson’s ruined face to the pathologist’s jumpsuit-clad figure. She was petite, attractive, maybe thirty-five, and was hunkered down with her shapely bottom stretching the one-piece garment. Had she not been in a relationship, and didn’t cut up cadavers for a living, he would most likely have hit on her. Funny, but the thought of her hands on him after a day slicing and dicing at the mortuary was a turn-off.

  “I’m calling it a night, Ken,” Jack said.

  “Me too, it’s been a long day.”

  They walked side by side back to their cars, past six marked area vehicles, the pathologist’s Astra, and the two white Ford Transit vans that the SOCOs had arrived in. Under the arc lights that had been rigged-up, a good part of the street was as bright as high noon on a summer’s day.

  “We’ve got uniforms going door-to-door,” Ken said, ducking under the yellow crime scene tape that fluttered like a strand of bunting in the breeze. Some party!

  Jack managed a weary smile. “This is the fucking Bermondsey Triangle, Ken. No one’s going to talk to us.”

  Jack climbed into his Sierra. “I’ll be in at eight,” he said. “Unless something else hits the fan.”

  “How did it go today?” Ken said before Jack could close the door.

  “A funeral’s a funeral, Ken. What can I say. My sister was a mess. She cried so loud we could hardly hear the eulogies. It took a tape of Dire Straits singing ‘Brothers in Arms’ to drown her out.” He shut the door, started the car and drove off. Ken meant well, and he appreciated his boss’s concern, but ‘how did it go?’ was a clumsy way to ask him what it had been like to attend his mother’s funeral. It had gone like shit. It was an ending of yet another chapter of his life; an event that underlined the innate pointlessness he felt about everything in general. He could vividly recall his parents looking young, making plans and being full of optimism, believing that it was somehow important to pick the right wallpaper for the lounge, watch the soaps, and do all the mundane little things that supposedly gave purpose and meaning to each new day. Bollocks!

  Tears pricked his eyes, but he blinked them back and swallowed hard. His throat felt as though a rock was stuck in it. Fuck! Think about the job. About the demise of the most powerful gangster in south London.

  Frankie Robinson had died as he’d lived― violently. To have reached the age of sixty-seven was no mean feat in the grim world of organised crime. His file at the Yard was the best part of nine inches thick, like an old London telephone directory. He had been questioned over seventeen murders and dozens of serious armed robberies down the years. It was known that he controlled the drug trade and much of the prostitution south of the river, but like Teflon, nothing ever stuck to him. And now it didn’t matter. He was history, like the Krays, George Francis, and so many of his late friends and peers.

  Pulling in to the small rear car park of the two-story building in Holland Park that housed ten flats, Jack switched off the engine and sat for a couple of minutes and tried unsuccessfully to clear his mind of the funeral, and of all the man hours’ invested in trying to bring a case against a piece of lowlife who was now as dead as his mother. It didn’t work. The mind followed its own course. Exiting the car, he trudged wearily across to the door, slashed his card-key through the slot and went in. This was where he retreated to, to recharge his batteries and regroup. He didn’t think of it as home, just a place. It was bricks and mortar. Somewhere to crash. He thumbed the kitchen light on, checked the phone; one message on the machine. He shrugged his leather bomber jacket off and draped it over the back of a wooden chair before going over to a wall unit and taking out a bottle of Jim Beam and a tumbler. He then got ice from the freezer, made a stiff drink, swirled it round and took a large gulp. The liquor hit his empty stomach and burned up some of the tension. He played the phone message: ‘Jack, it’s me...Susan. Pick up, please, I need to talk to you. Gordon and the girls are asleep’. There followed a long pause. Just the hiss of static, then, ‘I just can’t bear the thought of mum being gone. Jack...Jack. Are you there? Fuck you! You’re never there. You don’t give a shit about anything. Just your pathetic job’.

  Jesus wept! He didn’t want to call her, but knew that he should, and would. She was in a stale marriage with a boring, insensitive husband, and had two teenage daughters that might have been from another planet for all they had in common with their parents.

  He drained the glass and added another two fingers of bourbon to the hardly melted ice. Drank half of it and felt simultaneously mellow and crap as he punched up Sue’s number and took a deep breath.

  “Jack?”

  “Yeah, Sue. I just got in.”

  “Sorry I slagged you off earlier when I got the answer machine. I’m screwed up. I can’t handle it.”

  She was slurring her words. It wasn’t just him who looked for solace packaged in labelled glass. “You can, Sue,” he said. “Mum’s at peace. She had a bad time of it, but now it’s over. You’ve got to think of the good times. Live one day at a time, sis.”

  “I don’t need placating fucking platitudes, Jack. There’s a mile-deep hole in my life where she should be. Doesn’t it affect you?”

  “Of course it bloody well does. I just get on with what is. I’m glad she isn’t suffering anymore, that’s all. She never got over Dad dying so suddenly. She was lost without him, and you know it.”

  There was some sobbing, and then, “I’m not functioning too well...”

  It was forty minutes later when he hung up. She’d calmed down a little, told him that she loved him, and made him promise to phone her soon. There were a lot of things to sort out. He was shaking. Had another drink, went through to the bedroom, took his boots off, stripped and climbed into bed. He went to sleep with a jumble of images climbing over each other in his brain: Frankie Robinson’s bullet-riddled head, Jane Keating’s firm arse, and his mother’s pine wood coffin atop a bier with its cheap gold-effect handles glinting. What a totally shit day.

  CHAPTER TWO

  “WHY are you doing this?” Christine said.

  “I’ve told you, Chrissie. I love how you look, how you move, and the sound of your voice, which is like honey and velvet. You turn me on and press all the right buttons.”

  “You’re a―”

  “Careful my angel, don’t badmouth me or hang up. We’ve been through all this before. I’ll keep it strictly to phone calls if you behave. Remember, this is between you and me. If you contact the police, I’ll know. I might even be a copper. You need to keep me sweet. That way I’m no threat to you. Do you understand?”

  “Yes,” she whispered. But it had gone too far. She was terrified of him and needed to somehow break free of his control. Her life was no longer her own. Surely if she changed her phone number or reported the calls to the police, then he would back off and pick on someone else. That was a selfish thought, to wish this monster on some other poor woman. But that was how desperate she felt.

  “You’re too quiet. What are you thinking? That I’m just some perv that you can get rid of? I know everything about you, Chrissie. Where you work, where you shop, and all your favourite haunts. And I can’t be found. I use a different stolen mobile every time I phone you, and then ditch it. Believe me, angel, the on
ly way you can be safe is to humour me. Do you realise that?”

  “Y...Yes.”

  “Good girl. What are you doing, now?”

  Same verbal foreplay as usual. “I was asleep.”

  “You’re lying. You’ve only just gone to bed. Were you reading?”

  Oh dear God, he was watching the house. “Yes.”

  “What?”

  “A Patricia Cornwell novel.”

  “Ah, the adventures of the delectable Medical Examiner, Kate Scarpetta. Am I right?”

  “Yes.”

  “What are you wearing, Chrissie? And don’t lie to me.”

  “A T-shirt.”

  She was annoying him. “Be more specific, for Christ’s sake. Talk to me. Don’t just answer my questions.”

  “Okay, I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s a long, black T-shirt with Minnie Mouse on the front.”

  “Where did you buy it?”

  “In Florida, at the Magic Kingdom.”

  “Of course. You went there for two weeks in August four years ago.”

  Her heart seemed to clench. It actually hurt for a second. How could he have known that?

  “Hello! Hello! Cat got your tongue?”

  “No. I just wondered how you could know that.”

  “Because I’ve been inside your house, Chrissie. I looked through your photo albums. In fact I looked through everything. I know you better than you know yourself. Ask me a question about Christine Adams. Something I couldn’t possibly know.”

  This was surreal. This wasn’t an Internet chat room. She had no anonymity. He knew too much. She believed that he did know everything about her.

  “When I was fourteen, I―”

  “You had peritonitis and nearly died. It’s all in the diary you’ve kept since you were twelve. I’ve read every word of it.”