Concrete Evidence (19 page)

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              “The suspect is on the move!” The lieutenant hissed as Stirling left the van and struggled into his body armour. “All units standby,” he ordered over the comms. “If you’re going to call him out, now is the time.”

              Stirling nodded his agreement and signalled for the armed unit to follow him to the front door. He fiddled with his earpiece as he walked down the path. The lights in the hallway came on illuminating three fan shaped glass panels on the front door. “Suspect has moved into the hallway,” the comms crackled.

‘I wonder how he fathomed that, Amazing technology,’ Stirling thought. Heat signatures were one thing but a light bulb being switched on was equally revealing.

“I know what you’re thinking, Detective,” the lieutenant added. “That was for the benefit of the officers at the rear.”

              Stirling chuckled to himself inside, ‘take the pole from up your arse, soldier boy,’ he thought. The lieutenant and his squad were incredibly brave men. He respected that. But the officers he had met seemed to be cut from the same mould, always concerned about how others perceived them. Especially non military persons. “I’m at the front door, standby.”

“Roger that, all units standby.”

Stirling stepped to the left hand side of the front door and knocked hard with his knuckles. “Peter Barton, it’s the police,” he called loudly. “We need to speak you!”

Silence.

              “Peter Barton,” he knocked harder. The door rattled in its frame.

Silence.

He knocked harder still.

Silence.

“Where is he?” Stirling whispered into the coms.             

              “He’s still in the hallway but nearer the rear of the house.”

              Stirling knocked again. The door thudded against the frame.

“Peter Barton!” The lights inside the house went out, plunging the gardens into darkness. “What happened then?” Stirling growled.

              “Barton has turned the power off.”

              “Brilliant.”

              “I’ve got more good news,” the lieutenant sounded panicked. “I’ve lost his heat signature.”

              “Forced Entry Team, green light to go!” Stirling ordered. He moved aside as an armour clad figure raised a metal battering ram and slammed it against the lock. The wood splintered and cracked and the door bust open under the first hit.

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Peter Barton had frozen with fear when he heard the first knock. It was almost a relief when the caller identified himself as the police. Almost. Whatever doubts he had in his mind vanished immediately. He had to do it now. There was no choice now, no options, no way out; he was at the portal to a new existence. He opened the cupboard beneath the stairs and stepped inside. When the second knock resounded through his house, he opened the fuse box and pulled the main switch. The lights went out all over the house and he felt a strange kind of relief spreading over him. All his pain and the constant fear of persecution dissipated in seconds. Everything that transpired from here on in was in his hands. No one could stop it now. He could finally make amends for Simon without anyone judging him. He knew that they would kick the door in any second but they would be too late.

                            *************       

              The entry team moved quickly and silently. The hallway carpet was threadbare and cracks ran across the plastered walls from floor to ceiling. Their gun-lights illuminated a dark wooden staircase to their left and the unoccupied hallway to their right. As they swept the rooms, the second team entered through the rear.

              “Kitchen clear!” came over the comms.

              “Living room clear!”

              “Hallway clear!”

“That’s the ground floor swept, Detective.”

“No one climbed the stairs,” the lieutenant added. “He must be there somewhere.”

              Stirling followed the unit inside. It seemed obvious that the only place Barton could have hidden was a cupboard beneath the stairs. One of the entry team had a sensor against the door. He listened intently. The house was silent apart from the sound of men breathing nervously. He shook his head and signalled that they should open the door. Stirling paused to think. Could the door be booby trapped? Of course it could be but he doubted it. He nodded for the team to move.

              Heckler and Koch MP5’s were aimed at the door as it was pulled open. Stirling held up three fingers and counted down, three, two, one, go. The door was thrown open and two officers moved quickly into the cramped space. There was a few seconds of silence then they called, “clear.” Their tone was both muted and confused. “Its empty, Sergeant.”

              Stirling frowned and walked down the hallway. The smell of must and mothballs tainted the air. The entry team shuffled back to allow the big detective to look inside. The cupboard was no more than a wooden partition that boxed in the space beneath the stairs with a door added for access. The fuse box was mounted on the far wall and Stirling reached inside and switched it on. A bare bulb illuminated the cupboard. There were two cardboard boxes and a Dyson upright vacuum cleaner. A shelf fitted to the wall above his head had a tin of furniture polish and some Brasso on it and two coat hooks were overloaded with winter jackets. Stirling tapped the walls with his knuckles. They were solid brick. He looked at the floor and stamped his foot on a filthy Moroccan rug. It sounded hollow beneath the wooden floorboards. He grabbed the edge of the rug and pulled but it didn’t budge an inch.

              “It’s glued to the floor,” Stirling grumbled. “There must be a hatch to the cellar in here.”

              “There’s no cellar on the plans,” the lieutenant informed them over the comms.

              “Been there and bought the t-shirt. Plans aren’t worth shit.” Stirling stepped out of the cupboard. “Can you cut that rug off and see what’s underneath please.”

              An FET officer unsheathed a lethal looking blade from his belt. He knelt and began cutting the dusty material away from the wood. “There are hinges here,” he panted. “There is a hatch but it must be bolted from underneath. Pass me a wrecking iron and I’ll force it.” His colleague handed him a metal tool that resembled a crowbar. “I’ll try and wrench the hinges first.”

              Stirling froze to the spot when a shotgun blast resounded from beneath them and echoed off the walls of the house.        

            CHAPTER 23

              Tod Harris began to surface from a drug induced slumber. His memories of the hours before he blacked out were sketchy at best. He remembered eating and drinking and the smell of perfume. Then he remembered running as fast as his legs could carry him, breathlessness, pain in his back and then the police. The police had arrived. The image of policemen aiming their guns, shots, blood and then a face with dying eyes. Then nothing. He could hear voices. Muffled voices. Spanish voices. The odour of disinfectant drifted into his consciousness. He felt someone touching his wrist. The pressure on his flesh was almost painful. He heard two voices close by but he couldn’t understand what they were saying. Although he was becoming aware, he was as helpless as baby. He was breathing, his senses were becoming functional yet he had no control over his body. Moving was way beyond him yet. He couldn’t even open his eyes.

              His mind wandered from dreams to a blurred reality. The anaesthetic made him feel warm and safe inside a bubble but he knew that all wasn’t as well as it seemed. He was in hospital but he wasn’t sure why. There was a warm numbness in his back. Had he been punched hard? He remembered the blow. Then he remembered the blood trickling down his skin. Had he been stabbed? Maybe. A knife flashed into his mind but it was stuck in someone’s abdomen. Not his. He was an onlooker. As he focused on the strange sensation from his back, he became aware that the numbness had an edge to it. There were tiny prickles of pain radiating from it. He didn’t like that feeling. He didn’t want the numbness to fade. He didn’t want to know what it was masking. The image of a woman flashed into his mind. Her face was impassive. He was having sex with her for a few enticing seconds then she was gone replaced by newspaper headlines. His blood ran cold. His consciousness reached another level. He was coming around. The prickles of pain became darting bolts of white light in his brain. Breathing was painful. He didn’t want to come up out of the warmth. He wanted to stay down in the pleasant oblivion. Fear crept into his mind. Fear of the pain that was intensifying but there was something else. Something that he should fear more than the pain. He had been hiding from something. He was on the run. The sudden realisation shot through him like an electric shock.

              His eyes twitched as he tried to open them. They felt glued shut. His mouth was as dry as sandpaper. He couldn’t swallow. Panic replaced his feeling of wellbeing spreading through his veins like poison. His eyes opened and the overhead lights hurt. He blinked hard and tried to clear his vision. The surroundings were sterile, white and magnolia. There was a drip hanging from a stainless steel stand. The tubes ran from two bags of clear liquid into his right hand. He lifted his hand to inspect it. There were no handcuffs fastening him to the bed. It was a relief but he felt like a tortoise on its back. He wanted to get up but couldn’t. His brain screamed at him to move. Get out! Get out! But his arms and legs weren’t listening. They were disconnected from his motor neurons.

              Tod tried to speak. He desperately needed water. He wasn’t sure what he tried to say but it came out as a rasping cry. A woman appeared from his left as if she had been standing over him. She picked up his wrist and touched his forehead.

              “Tranquilo! No pasa nada,” she said in a soothing voice. He didn’t have a clue what it meant but it sounded nice. Her eyes were deep brown. He could dive into them and get lost. She was beautiful. Her presence soothed his nerves. “Tranquilo! No pasa nada.” She repeated softly. Tod tried to speak again but could only rasp. “Beber,” the nurse said putting a glass to his lips. “Beber,” she smiled. Tod sipped the water and felt it hydrating his mouth and throat. He swallowed a little and nearly choked.  He took a deep breath to clear his airways and pain racked his back and chest. The nurse turned at the sound of a male voice. The uniformed figures of four armed police officers loomed into his sight and he couldn’t control himself any longer. Tod knew what he had done. He felt his lower lip trembling and then he began to sob like a child.             

                                  CHAPTER 24

              Stirling climbed down the cellar steps tentatively. The wood creaked beneath his bulk threatening to give in beneath the weight. Three bulkhead lights that were fixed to the walls threw pools of light across the concrete floor leaving the corners draped in dark shadows. The air was dry and dank and tinged with the smell of urine, excrement and the unmistakable coppery aroma of blood. The body of Peter Barton was slumped in a kneeling position in the centre of the room. His dead hands still clung to a single barrelled shotgun, which was resting on a blood soaked shoulder. The head was all but gone. Only the lower jaw remained intact. The remains of his brains and skull were splattered across the rear wall in a funnel shape. Globules of pink matter dripped from the rafters above him. As he looked around, it was what covered the walls beneath the viscera that gripped Stirling’s attention.

              “He’s blown his own head off,” an FET officer said quietly.

              “You think so?” Stirling nodded and decided not to comment on his powers of observation. There was a reason why some officers became detectives and others kicked down doors. While the ruined body was hypnotising to look at, the images, maps and newspaper cuttings that covered every spare inch of wall were totally mesmerising. He stepped around the corpse and studied the images. Each headline made his heart beat faster. Barton had made a collage of articles from all over the globe, murders, kidnaps, rapes and child abductions from every corner of the world.

There was a desk pressed to the far wall and above it was an enlarged map of the North West of England and North Wales. Dozens of coloured pins adorned the map, some solitary and others in clusters. It was the cluster of pins that covered Crosby Beach, which fascinated him the most. There was a circle drawn in red marker pen and Stirling immediately identified it as where he was standing, Barton’s house. The pins seemed to radiate out from there.

                    The newspaper cuttings around the left of the map were all about the hunt for Simon Barton. Post-it notes were stuck over each article with an illegible scrawl written on each. To the right were articles relating to the Butcher murders. ‘Another Victim of the Butcher of Crosby Beach Located’, each headline was painfully familiar. Stirling had mixed feelings about that case. He had met his wife during it and she had been kidnapped and nearly died at the hands of Brendon Ryder, The Butcher. During the investigation, the DI had lost an eye and her confidence. It was all behind them now but seeing the headlines made him feel uneasy. Stirling studied the notes and checked them against the pins. It appeared at first glance that each post-it note had a coordinate scrawled on the top right hand corner. Each coordinate related to a pin on the map.