A Need To Kill (DI Matt Barnes) by Michael Kerr Read Free Book Online Page B

above in a denim-blue sky.  A movement caused her to look towards the greenery on the far bank of the stream.  Leaves were rustled and moved, preceding the appearance of a baby deer.  It could have been Bambi.  She held her breath and did not move, to be rewarded by the sight of it nervously moving out to the water’s edge, to lap at the cold water.
    The idyllic setting froze, became fragmented and was gone.  She opened her eyes to the reality of her situation, and to the sight of the naked monster that was once more standing in front of her.  She attempted to withdraw, back into dreams of better times, but could not cajole her brain into evading whatever depraved acts or new mutilations were imminent.
     
    It was time.  He turned on the loft light from the switch on the landing, unhooked the door and pulled the aluminium ladders down.  Climbed up and walked across to where the emaciated whore prisoner – who he had kept in his home for so long – lay asleep on the shit-encrusted lilo.  He would miss having accessible material so readily to hand, but it had now become too used and therefore of little further interest to him.  That he had slowly starved it of late was primarily to make its impending disposal easier.  He had marked it in such an individual and distinctive manner that his work might be recognised if the carcass was recovered, and so he would have to bury it in quicklime or burn it, to eradicate any physical clues that might some day come back to haunt him. Prevention was better than cure.  He would not be party to his own downfall.
    It looked up at him with beseeching eyes.  They were all the same : imperious cunts in need of being taught the error of their ways.  Well, he certainly did that.  They had met their match the day he selected them to pay for the misery he had been through.
    There was little more to be done, save for ending whatever constituted life in the creature that was voiding its bladder in abject fear at the sight of him.  Though the power he held over it still caused him to grow hard.
    He knelt down on the plastic sheeting that covered the chipboard floor and spoke to it for only the second time since he had initially abducted and brought it into his home.
    “Can you hear me?” he asked.
    She nodded and began to cry.
    “Good.  I want you to know that you have given me a great deal of pleasure.  But it’s over now.  I’m going to set you free.”
    Janice could hardly believe that not only was he speaking to her, but was telling her that he intended to let her go.  But why was he holding a pair of tights in his hand?
    He moved over her, and though hardly able, she managed to roll on to her back and open her legs to accommodate him.
    It was only when he looped the tights around her neck and began to strangle her with them that Janice understood.  The freedom he had spoken of was purely in the spiritual sense.  Even though the deep-seated will to survive generated a feeble and short-lived struggle, she quickly succumbed and was already still and lifeless as he spent himself in the skeletal earthly remains of a victim now beyond suffering.
    He lifted the corpse up by an ankle, dragged it across to the open hatch and dropped it down to career off the ladders onto the landing carpet.  Within less than half an hour he was ready to transport the now bagged remains to where he had decided to dispose of them.
    The body was in the back of the van in a large potato sack, along with the deflated lilo and the plastic sheets that had protected the floor from being contaminated by the faeces and urine.  Some seepage had stained the boards, but it was nothing that a scrubbing brush, bleach and a little elbow grease would not remove .
    Going back into the house, he made himself a cup of tea and settled to wait.  He employed the darkness as a cloak to conceal his iniquitous conduct from the eyes of the world.  It was his ally; a friend that aided and abetted him.
    Funny.  He