Blood Reckoning: DI Jack Brady 4 (32 page)

‘I’m really sorry, DI Brady,’ Macintosh said slowly. ‘As I’ve already explained, I went for a walk and somehow lost track of the time. When I realised how late it actually was I returned and apologised to Ronnie, the key worker who was on duty that night. That was just after midnight. It was stupid of me, I know. I was just finding it so difficult coping with some of the other residents in Ashley House. It can be quite difficult at times, despite the likes of Jonathan’s intervention,’ he said, turning to Edwards and smiling appreciatively.

He turned back to Brady. The smile had gone. ‘I really wish I could have been more helpful. I understand how difficult it must be, an investigation of this magnitude,’ he said as his eyes held Brady’s gaze. Macintosh smiled again in an attempt to disarm him. But he could see that it hadn’t worked.

He tried again. ‘But I’m sure that you’ll find whoever did this to that young man. What was his name again?’ Macintosh’s voice quivered just for a moment as he tried to hold in his anger. Furious did not come close. He did not like being accused of something he had not done. His murders had been beautiful. They had purpose. His victims meant something to him. And they knew it. He let them know it.

‘Alexander De Bernier,’ Brady answered.

Macintosh nodded. But it meant nothing to him. He stared at DI Brady, trying to glean something. Anything. But his face was unreadable. ‘I suppose you can’t tell me what happened to the victim, can you?’ he asked. His mouth watered as images flashed through his mind of what he had done to his young men. Beautiful young men.

‘No, I am not at liberty to say. Unless you already know?’ Brady challenged him.

Macintosh smiled indulgently. ‘I’m afraid I have no idea what happened to . . . this Alexander De Bernier.’

‘What about the series of murders that took place here in 1977?’ Brady asked, as he held Macintosh’s gaze.

Macintosh shook his head. ‘I’m afraid I have no idea what you are talking about, DI Brady? Do you, Jonathan?’ There was no anger or irritation in his voice, simply puzzlement. He was good. He knew he was good. Because he knew exactly what the detective was talking about. After all, he had chosen each of the victims. Carefully, deliberately. He had taken them and enjoyed them. Then . . . then he had destroyed them so they would never touch him again.

‘Seven men were killed during the summer of 1977. I’m surprised that you don’t remember? It was all over the news. The press nicknamed him The Joker at the time,’ Brady explained.

Macintosh knew that the detective was studying him for anything that would give him away. A look in his eye. An involuntary twitch or tapping of the hand. But he was better than that. He had read Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung and the rest. He understood psychology better than DI Brady could ever have imagined.

‘Again, I’m sorry to disappoint you, DI Brady. I have no memory from that time. You see, during that year I was a patient in a psychiatric ward where I was given electroconvulsive therapy for severe depression. Some suffer memory loss as a result. I, sadly, am one of those unfortunates.’

‘Convenient, don’t you think?’ Brady asked.

Macintosh remained poised and relaxed as he gave Brady a disarming smile. But inside, he could feel the anger rising. He didn’t like being challenged. ‘I don’t follow.’

‘It’s a shame you don’t remember, because it appears that he’s come back,’ Brady replied.

As soon as he said it, Macintosh understood what he meant. His blue eyes narrowed and turned cold. An involuntary, automatic reaction to hearing something he didn’t like. Jack Brady suddenly reminded him of his psychiatrist. He had betrayed him. Caught him out. Just like the detective was attempting to here. But it wouldn’t work. Not a second time. He had confided in his psychiatrist about his father.

His nasty fucking bastard of a father who had repeatedly threatened to cut off his cock and shove it down his throat if he didn’t do what he was told. Bastard! Bastard! Fucking old, evil bastard. He had taken a knife to him. To his cock. Stroked it, caressed it with a knife and cut it. Again and again . . . while he screamed and screamed.

When he had shared this information, he had forgotten that his killings were all over the news. ‘The Joker’, as the press had coined him. He liked it. It fitted. But in that moment when he revealed his deepest, darkest memories to Dr Jackson, he realised he had said too much. He had seen it in his eyes. The realisation, followed by horror. Then fear. Fleeting, but there all the same. So he had broken into his office and had read his follow-up notes on the session. Dr Jackson had predicted that he was in no doubt that Macintosh was a psychopath who would kill. The psychiatrist would never have believed what would happen next – that he and his family would be the target of his rage.

Macintosh smiled as he looked at the detective. He was imagining what it would be like to hurt him. And those close to him.

Chapter Thirty-Five

Tuesday: 7:09 p.m.

‘Shit!’ Brady cursed. He didn’t know why he was so surprised. He already knew that the lab results would come back negative. The forensic evidence recovered at the hotel room by Ainsworth and his team did not match Macintosh’s DNA. Macintosh had told him in his own way that De Bernier had not died at his hands – but that he had killed the seven young men in the summer of 1977. Then he had abruptly stopped, because he had gone on to kill his psychiatrist and was subsequently locked up. Macintosh was clever. He had covered his tracks well.

‘But we’ll have to release him,’ Conrad said.

Brady looked at Conrad. He knew they had no choice.

The DNA evidence also eliminated Sidney Foster – the suspect from the original case. His DNA was still on file from when he had been convicted of rape. Three convictions; the most recent less than a decade ago. He was still missing. Not that Brady cared. After all, he was no longer a suspect.

But it was not just Macintosh’s DNA that did not match; neither did his shoes. The partial print had come from a size ten and Macintosh was a size twelve. Brady had nothing on him. Apart from the uneasy feeling that he had been looking into the eyes of a killer.

For all the good it had done him, he had gone to Gates after the interview and asked him if they could extend the time they held Macintosh until Brady had secured a warrant to search his room at Ashley House. Just in case there was something there that could tie him to the first seven murders. A trophy that he had kept from one of the victims: letters, diaries, drawings – anything that connected him. But Gates had out and out refused, still furious over the fact that Brady was pursuing two distinguished public figures as credible suspects. No matter what Brady had said, it had no effect. Gates would not listen to reason. They had nothing on Macintosh. Brady’s gut feeling, as Gates had pointed out in no uncertain terms, was not enough to hold him. So Macintosh would walk.

‘Look sir, it’s not as if he was responsible for Alexander De Bernier’s murder,’ Conrad pointed out.

‘But he’s responsible for the others, Conrad. I just need more time to prove it.’

Brady dropped his head into his hands as he thought about Macintosh. He was still waiting for the lab to come back to him on the blood and semen stains on the T-shirt from one of the Seventies victims. He needed that DNA evidence – now. Macintosh may have been eliminated from the De Bernier’s murder investigation, but as far as Brady was concerned that didn’t stop him being a suspect in the Seventies case. He was certain that the DNA evidence would conclusively tie Macintosh to the original Joker killings. He dragged his head up to find Conrad standing awkward and uneasy in front of his desk.

‘You think I’m crazy, don’t you?’

‘I . . . I wouldn’t say that,’ Conrad began, ‘it’s just the evidence doesn’t seem that compelling to me. I mean, the murders that Macintosh was charged with at the time were so radically different from the Joker killings that it seems unlikely they were committed by the same person. Unless they had an extreme personality disorder.’

Brady sighed wearily. He was tired. Too tired to explain to Conrad why Macintosh murdered his psychiatrist, his wife and children in a way that bore no relation to the seven murders that preceded it. Brady knew the reason why McKaley’s team never caught Macintosh. It was because he was too damned clever. The same reason that the police database HOLMES 2 did not see a connection between the murders. Simply because the murders were so radically different. That was what Macintosh had wanted. He did not want any crossover between himself and the Joker killings. That was a part of his identity, his marred psyche, that he did not want known. Brady assumed that he had planned to continue his sadistic killings of young men, if he had not been caught by the police for his psychiatrist’s murder. Brady was also convinced that Macintosh had murdered his psychiatrist because he had realised that he had unintentionally revealed his identity as The Joker. Brady had reread the transcripts – in particular, the last one before the psychiatrist had been murdered. He was certain that it wouldn’t have taken Dr Henry D. Jackson long to have made the connection that his patient was responsible for the local killings. The details of Macintosh’s childhood abuse were too similar to the fate suffered by the seven young men.

‘Trust me here, Conrad.’ But it was clear from the look in his eye that he did not. That he couldn’t understand how Brady had come to conclude that Macintosh had killed in such different ways.

‘Forgive me for speaking out of turn here,’ Conrad began, ‘but I’ve read his files. The murders were . . .’ he faltered.

‘Horrific?’ Brady said.

Conrad nodded as he sat down across from Brady. ‘I understand the time-frame element. I can see why you think there’s a connection. That the seventh victim was murdered thirty-six hours before Macintosh’s last session with Dr Jackson. Then that evening Macintosh had followed his psychiatrist home and—’ He stopped.

Brady raised his eyebrows at him. ‘What? Hard to accept that the man we’re releasing back onto the streets of Whitley Bay actually committed such an abhorrent crime? That the handsome, courteous gentleman that we just interviewed, who chatted so casually with you at the end of the interview about your time at Cambridge, could have killed in the way he did?’

‘Yes,’ Conrad replied.

They both knew that Macintosh’s crime had been so shocking that the Joker killings were briefly forgotten by the press.

Brady nodded. But after Macintosh had butchered his psychiatrist, the Joker killings had stopped. Bang. Right in the midst of a killing frenzy. And why? Because Macintosh had been arrested and charged with the brutal killing of an entire family. In one week, the Joker had murdered two young men, three days apart – showing that his cooling-off period was radically lessening. Then, thirty-six hours later, he had ended his psychiatric treatment for good.

‘How did he know I studied at Cambridge?’ Conrad asked, concerned.

Brady shrugged. ‘Christ knows. Your manner? The way you talk?’

Conrad looked uneasy.

‘Don’t worry. I don’t think he’ll be coming after you,’ Brady said, shaking his head at his deputy. But Conrad’s grim expression told Brady that he didn’t find the idea amusing. And Brady knew why.

Macintosh had taken an axe with him when he followed his psychiatrist home to the leafy, expensive suburbs of Jesmond. He had watched and waited. When darkness fell, he had broken in. Then he had set to work. The police who had attended the crime scene had reported that they had never seen anything so bloody and horrific in their time on the force. Dr Jackson’s body had been found floating in a blood bath. His wife had been found in their master bedroom. Her heavily pregnant body had been splayed and then tied face-down to the bed. He had begun by chopping her hands and feet off. That, by comparison to what followed next, was civilised. Brady shuddered at the thought of what he had done to her. Then, the two children. Twin boys. He had killed them with a merciless swing of the axe.

The three-year-old girl had been the anomaly. For some reason he had taken her – alive. The police had caught him – forty-eight hours later – with the girl. Brady did not even want to think about what Macintosh had done to the child. Needless to say, when the police had tracked him down to a remote cottage in the wilds of Northumberland, they had been too late. A few hours earlier, and then it might have been a different story.

Macintosh had pleaded insanity.

Who wouldn’t?

However, Newcastle County Court had found him sane. Thirty-seven years later, and he had been paroled. This was the part that Brady didn’t understand. It left him feeling nervous.

‘I want him under surveillance,’ Brady instructed.

‘Who?’ Conrad asked.

‘Macintosh.’

Conrad was visibly taken aback. ‘Why, sir?’ he asked, puzzled. ‘He’s in a bail hostel, under strict curfew.’

‘So strict that he broke his parole?’

Brady accepted that they didn’t have the resources to put him under twenty-four-hour surveillance. But he could not shake the feeling he had about Macintosh. The problem he had was that there was nothing – yet – to substantiate his hunch. But it was the
yet
that worried him. The look in Macintosh’s eye for that split second had told Brady that his long stint in prison had not rehabilitated him. That he was still a cold-blooded killer. He just hoped for Edwards’ sake that he knew what he was doing, allowing Macintosh to remain on parole. If it had been Brady, he would have had Macintosh back inside without a second’s hesitation. He had broken his parole. Simple. And Brady sure as hell didn’t believe Macintosh’s bullshit about walking to Blyth on the night in question; the same night Alexander De Bernier was murdered. Brady had a bad feeling that Macintosh was preparing to kill – again.

Chapter Thirty-Six

Tuesday: 8:03 p.m.

Harvey had come looking for Brady. Had found him in the Major Incident Room. His expression had told Brady that it wasn’t good news. At least, not for Malcolm J. Hughes. The sickening disappointment was written all over Harvey’s face. Any thoughts Brady had regarding Macintosh’s release quickly evaporated.