The Art of Killing, page 26
He crashed through the door in time to see a cream Vauxhall van speeding off down a single-track side road then turn onto Berkeley Street.
He ran back in time to see Keaton exiting the shop, her face pasty white and anaemic.
‘Call it in,’ he shouted. ‘Get uniform down here as quick as possible to secure the premises, I’ll run and get the car.’ He set off, then stopped mid-flight to turn back. ‘Try to see if there are any keys lying around to lock the place up, we don’t want a member of the public wandering in and finding that fucking mess!’ he said, walking backwards towards where he’d parked the Saab. ‘I’ll pick you up out here. Be quick. I’ll call McWilliams, see if we’ve got an address for this psycho!’
He set off for the car again, sprinting for all he was worth. It was only 150 yards away but it felt like a mile. He slowed long enough to scroll to McWilliams’ number and dab it, then continued his sprint.
The phone rang once, then answered. ‘Ian! It’s Gutteridge. I need an address for this O’Leary guy. He’s running!’
The line hung silent for a beat, until the silence was broken to the tune of a Glaswegian accent steeped in disbelief. ‘You’re fucking shitting me! It’s never him?’
‘Yes! It’s him. He’s running. Get me an address, any fucking address, and quick, before we lose him!’ he puffed, his voice jarring to the thump of his urgent footfall.
‘I’m sure I came across what must be his home address while I was searching? I’ll text it to you, give me five minutes.’
‘You’ve got two!’ Gutteridge insisted. ‘As quick as you can!’
The line rang off just as Gutteridge reached his car. He fired at it frantically with the fob on his keyring until it flashed awake. He popped the door and leapt inside, sliding the key in the ignition and turning it in one swift motion. The engine fired. He checked the mirrors, threw it in gear, and sped off up the pedestrian-only zone to collect Keaton.
Disgruntled shoppers shot disapproving looks his way as they leapt aside to avoid being hit. Keaton padded around at the top of the rise in readiness for his arrival. The car juddered to a halt, the anti-lock brakes thrumming through Gutteridge’s vice-like grip on the wheel.
Keaton dropped inside and shut the door just as both their phones sang out simultaneously. The same message flashed up on both their phones. An address…
‘Farley’s End!’ Keaton barked, as she clipped into her seatbelt. ‘Make for Over Farm, then drop down on the A48 towards Calcott’s Green. I’ll direct you from there.’
Gutteridge punched the throttle, and the car began reeling in the horizon.
‘Call the station, tell them we need an armed response unit sent to that location, and tell them it’s urgent!’
‘I’m on it.’
‘And phone Bryant, let him know what’s happening. But call armed response first… Did you get through to uniform?’
‘I did. They’re sending cars over now. I told them just to secure the scene, but not to go inside.’
‘Good!’ said Gutteridge, drifting onto the road towards the Over Roundabout junction, which led onto the A40. The back wheels clawed for grip. He gunned it!
Gutteridge leaned into the wheel, foot flat to the floor. ‘The glovebox. Open it,’ he said.
Keaton complied, struggling to grasp the lock in the violent swaying of the car. She popped the catch and it fell open.
‘Take all that crap out,’ Gutteridge said, nodding towards the eclectic mix of junk spilling out of the unit. ‘Just throw it on the floor. There’s a false bottom in the glovebox with a tab at the front; lift it,’ he said.
Keaton frowned at what he’d said, then began scooping the detritus from years of ownership onto the floor: maps; tissues; pens and CDs rained into the footwell, until she saw a tab made from a folded length of ribbon poking from a gap at the front. She pulled it… ‘Holy shit!’ she said, looking down at a Glock 17M semi-automatic pistol stowed in a secret compartment. ‘You’ve got a gun!’
As team leader, Gutteridge had to choose his explanation with care. ‘Officially, I am an Authorised Firearms Officer. But I shouldn’t really have that, not in here, not like that, but I’m fucked if I’m following this lunatic without it, not after the last time. Not after…’ he choked, ‘after losing… Cynthia.’
Keaton scrolled through her Rolodex of their previous conversations but could recall no mention of a ‘Cynthia’. ‘Cynthia?’ she asked.
Gutteridge turned placid within the clamour of the screaming engine. ‘She was my wife, many years ago, before I moved to Gloucester. I lost her…’
‘You lost her? How?’
‘A guy called Jerry killed her.’
Keaton turned to her side window to aid thought, then returned her fascinated gaze to Gutteridge. ‘You mean, Jerry Masterson? The killer in the Masterson case? The one you were instrumental in solving?’
‘Yeah, the one I solved – for my sins. And not a day goes by when I wish I hadn’t.’
Keaton had only loosely browsed the Masterson case notes during her time in training. It suddenly occurred to her that his last victim’s surname was also Gutteridge. ‘But… why?’
Gutteridge’s whole demeanour turned ironic. ‘Revenge. For working out it was him.’
‘Jeeeeesus! I’m so sorry, Pat. I had no idea.’
Gutteridge thundered onto the slip road that bypassed the Over Roundabout and drifted the car onto the A40. The rear end caught again and he floored it. ‘That’s okay. It’s in the past now. I think people at the station try not to gossip about it out of some bizarre form of respect?’
Keaton sat uncomfortably in the howl of the engine. She now understood his need for Eve, and maybe even his fascination with her – such that it was – even if it was just for her lips and her body – lips and a body she’d been more than happy to relinquish for their single night of shared ecstasy.
‘Take a left here!’ she barked, nearly missing the junction, lost in her thoughts. ‘The A48.’ She braced herself for the bend, then placed a comforting hand gently on his thigh. She smiled across at him apologetically. ‘You’re not alone, Pat… you’ve got Eve now. And you’ve got me…’
FORTY-ONE
‘YOUR DESTINATION IS ON THE RIGHT,’ announced the app on Keaton’s phone, the soothing, female voice sounding jarringly passive in the midst of the considerable excitement.
They both sighted the house 150 yards ahead, semi-hidden by a thick cluster of trees. Gutteridge pulled the car off to the side of the road and parked in the entrance to an adjoining field.
They both exited the car, serenaded by the ticks and pops of an overexerted engine cooling.
‘Be vigilant,’ Gutteridge said, stowing the pistol in his belt and removing his jacket. He tossed it onto the back seat and quietly nudged the door shut with his hip. Keaton followed suit, copying him.
‘Stay close, but keep behind,’ he said, trotting to a break in the hedgerow where the gravel driveway started.
Two sweeping dunes of pebbles fanned into the road indicated a vehicle had entered at speed, and by the fact the gravel in the road hadn’t been displaced by a succession of passing tyres, Gutteridge assessed it must have been recent.
He peeked around the corner, using a rogue fan of leaves to hide his presence. There was a red-brick farmhouse sitting roughly seventy yards back from the street, the door hanging off its hinges.
‘The door’s been kicked in!’ he whispered.
Keaton leaned in to look, then extended her arm displaying a weighty bunch of keys hanging from her index finger. ‘These are what I used to lock up with. I found them by the side of the till. He must’ve had his van keys on a separate fob? Probably couldn’t fit them all in his pocket,’ she said, jiggling her discovery’s considerable mass. ‘I bet the keys to that house are on here.’
‘You’re probably right,’ Gutteridge agreed, lunging a fleeting look further down the drive. He saw the cream van abandoned outside of a run-down outbuilding, the door left wide open. ‘He’s here!’ he hissed. ‘I see his van…’
He rolled a look back to Keaton. ‘Where the fuck are Armed Response?! How long does it fucking take?’
Keaton raised empathetic shoulders, sharing in his frustration.
Gutteridge leaned back in and studied the windows, burning each one in succession for signs of life, but could see no movement – except the peripheral trips fuelled by his growing paranoia.
Half of the windows he could see had the curtains drawn closed, with no obvious signs of twitching.
He took to a knee, flitting eyes studying the ground beneath him, stewing in his frustration for a moment, then broke from it with iron resolve. ‘I’m going in!’
‘You’re what?’ Keaton fizzed. ‘But you’re not even wearing a vest! Why take the risk? What would you be gaining over just waiting for ARU to arrive?’
Gutteridge stood again and spun to face her objections. ‘But we’re so close, so near to ending this! And what if he’s in there destroying evidence? Or worse still, committing suicide!’
Keaton threw him a dismissive scowl. ‘So what? Let the fucker die!’ she stabbed.
Gutteridge reeled at the honesty of her response. ‘That wouldn’t be right, he should be paying for what he’s done, not allowed to take the easy way out! And what if he’s abducted another child, one that we don’t know about yet, and is in there with it now? I don’t think either of us could live with the knowledge that we could have saved a life, and did nothing, could we? So, no. I’m going in!’
Keaton sagged, unable to find a solid argument against his reasoning. ‘Okay. But it’s we. We’re going in – together,’ she insisted. ‘You lead, I’ll follow close behind. I can keep an eye out for blind spots, watch your back – so to speak. And before you argue, I won’t take no for an answer.’ She fixed him with an insistent stare. ‘I’m your partner, Pat, like it or not, so let’s do this.’
Reluctantly, he nodded, looking strangely thrilled, but appreciative of the support.
He peered through the unkempt foliage one last time to check the coast was clear, taking the gun from his belt and dropping the clip out; it was full. He pulled back the slide to check the chamber was empty, then snapped the magazine back into the grip and shuttled the slide to load the chamber. He took a deep, calming breath to pacify the jitter in his gut, and slid the safety off.
‘Come on,’ he whispered, urging her to follow with an arcing toss of the head.
She complied, stooping behind his considerable frame as he sprinted for the shattered door, the muzzle of his Glock aimed at the ground as he crunched across the no-man’s-land of gravel.
Keaton was desperately trying to recall her training, and secretly hoped ARU would suddenly arrive and take over. But she too had a fizzle of excitement coursing through her whole body like the initial pulsating rush of an orgasm, and she felt alive to her own mortality.
They reached what remained of the door, which had been kicked with considerable force. Way more force than either of them would have estimated the physique of the man they’d encountered could exert. Whoever kicked this, wasn’t alive to their own perceivable limitations, and that unsettled them.
Gutteridge wasn’t sure if he should make their presence known or continue inside unannounced. Looking down at the component parts of the door lying at his feet, he came down on the side of ‘unannounced’.
‘Ready?’ he mouthed to Keaton. She nodded, her eyes ablaze with perverted excitement.
Gutteridge sank to knee level, then flicked a look around the doorless frame. The coast looked clear.
He rose again and rolled in through the opening, tiptoeing around the fragments of panelling, straightened arms holding the muzzle of the Glock to the ground, occasionally lifting it to address blind corners.
Keaton followed close behind, double-checking every cleared corner, crevice and doorway as they moved methodically through the building.
The decor surprised her: unexpectedly tasteful. Again, not the decrepit grief-hole of a psychotically deluded monster she was expecting. A feminine touch to the detailing that made her think that the woman lying in one of the polished steel drawers back at the morgue at one time lived here.
She gripped the back of Gutteridge’s shirt tightly, ready to pull him clear of anything she saw that his sweeping gaze failed to see.
She could feel the tepid perspiration soaking the fibres of the cloth, reminding her of the night they were weak, relenting to their shared desires, gifting themselves to each other in a sweat-soaked haze of liberated expectation.
Gutteridge entered the living room, addressing every nook and corner with the muzzle of the gun. He darted looks behind the couch and the curtains while Keaton kept watch at the door. The room looked clear.
He assumed his position at the head of the procession again and nodded two pistoled fingers at Keaton to continue the sweep.
They both moved down the hallway back to back and slid into the kitchen. It was neat and tidy, save for one drawer that had been ripped from its cabinet, spilling its contents across the floor like a rainbow of polished steel.
It looked to be mostly cutlery, and Gutteridge stood for a moment examining what was there: knives; forks; spoons; potato peelers; cob-holders; three fruit knives; a bread knife; a cheese knife; four butter knives; and a wooden-handled ceramic rolling pin that was now cracked. He looked over by the sink, and then scanned the countertops.
‘He’s armed,’ Gutteridge whispered. ‘He’s got a knife!’
‘How do you know?’
‘There are no chef’s knives,’ he replied, lifting a chin towards the drawer’s arc of detritus. ‘At least we know he doesn’t have a gun.’
‘He might?’
‘If he had a gun, why would he need a knife?’
Once again, the feeling of inadequacy returned to Keaton. She nodded.
There was a woody thud from above that shook the ceiling. They both shied from the sound and backed towards the perimeter of the room. ‘He’s upstairs!’ Keaton mouthed.
Gutteridge nodded, the gut-knotting anxiety showing in his face. ‘Come on,’ he said.
He lunged for the door and spied the base of the staircase ten yards ahead at the far end of the passage. It looked to have a thick-pile carpet running its entire length, held in place with polished brass stair rods that Gutteridge thought would be effective in silencing their approach, a tasteful Mario Buatta-esque design he reckoned would suit his own cottage.
He took a breath, and rushed across the divide, eyes and muzzle locked on the stairwell as he approached it.
There was another muffled thump from the floor above, and by the lack of stealth, Gutteridge thought it a fair bet O’Leary wasn’t yet alive to their presence.
He squatted by the base of the staircase, eyes turned to the top of the ascent through the upright rows of barley-twist spindles.
Keaton darted across to join his side. They could hear multiple voices emanating from one of the rooms above, but had to assume they were being made by the same mouth. The speech was far too quiet to discern what was being said, but the agitation in the voices was palpable.
‘What are you thinking?’ Keaton asked.
‘I’m thinking this guy’s fucking mental!’ He knelt in contemplation of his options, half expecting O’Leary to arrive at the top of the stairs at any moment. ‘I’m going up,’ he whispered with conviction, already standing to do so, brow beaded with sweat.
He darted across to the wall side of the staircase and began slowly making his way up, one step at a time, trying to place each foot as close to the outsides of each tread as possible to avoid making sound.
As he reached halfway, he could begin to make out snippets of the conversation, something about being caught, and martyrdom…?
The next tread Gutteridge stepped onto groaned under his weight, a sharp, woody crack that cut through the tension.
The conversation upstairs ceased, and the house fell into an eery, leaden silence you could have sliced with a knife.
Gutteridge held his position, raising the sight of his gun to the head of the stairwell. He knew he’d been heard and was being listened for. The chance that one of the other treads would emit a sound was high, and he froze.
Gutteridge stared at the wall at the top of the rise through the sights of the Glock. ‘O’Leary,’ he called, his voice echoing around the well of the staircase, ‘stay where you are. We’re armed, but we mean you no harm.’
Sounds of panicked movement echoed down the stairwell. Keaton placed a primed foot onto the bottom step in readiness…
Gutteridge set off in the direction of the voices. Keaton followed, covering the ascent two treads at a time.
She rejoined Gutteridge’s rear and re-gripped his shirt as they edged methodically through a long, door-lined landing area, Gutteridge swinging the gun into every room he encountered, until he reached the last door on the left just past an ornate Elizabethan side table and froze…
Gutteridge began to shake; Keaton could feel it through his back. She watched the grip on the pistol softening, along with his resolve.
‘Oh God! P-Please! No! You– You don’t want to do this!’ Gutteridge said, lowering the weapon, then hesitating, before cautiously stuttering into the room.
Keaton stepped in and peered around the doorframe… O’Leary was standing over by the window, the glare of the sun behind bleeding around his silhouette, making him look like he was immolating. His arm was held out to his side, holding a polished metal object that looked like a gun, but that wasn’t a gun – not in the ordinary sense.
The end of the device was being held to the head of a woman, a woman Keaton had seen before, watching through the bedroom window of Gutteridge’s home. It was Eve! Gaffer-taped to a chair and looking as petrified as those watching.
