The Dying Place (26 page)

Soldiers. Cops. Farmers. Hunters.

Enthusiasts.

Alan Bimpson hated the last group most of all.

He knew the power of these things. The assault rifle that took up most of the space on the coffee table. It had cut through three people with barely a breath being taken at the farm, so he knew its power. The handguns
to either side. Close range, bullet in the head or neck or chest or stomach … it didn’t matter. If it wasn’t instant, blood loss would get you eventually.

He had knives, but hoped it wouldn’t have to come to that. So messy.

Alan Bimpson had the experience. The know-how. He had the means and plans.

He had the targets in mind. He didn’t know their names, but he knew enough. He didn’t need to know a family history. They were all the same. He’d heard the ‘
mother
’
of the boy from the previous week which had kicked this process into action quicker than he’d anticipated. He’d heard her all right. Simpering and crying about her lost child.

He knew the truth. He knew she barely cared about her children. Only about what they could mean for her monetary-wise.

All the same. They were all the same.

Scroungers.

Making everyone else’s life a misery. Bringing up her horrible little bastard children to have no fucking respect. Only out for themselves, for what they could get.

He’d already forgotten her name.

There was no society any more. No neighbourhood. Just people either making the streets unclean with their presence, or too scared to leave the cocoon of their houses, safe in the glow of the box in the corner.

And not even homes were safe any more. Noisy neighbours, nasty neighbours, nosy neighbours.

Bastards, bastards, bastards.

He had the will.

When they talked about him in years, decades, centuries to come, they would never know what thoughts had run through his mind as he stood in his home that first evening, readying himself to leave. They could speculate, call it whatever they like, psychoanalyse it to death. A mental unhinging, a detachment from reality. A downward spiral into paranoia and despair.

It wasn’t that at all. He knew what he was doing. He was conscious of his decision. It was the most unselfish act he’d ever commit in his life.

He took the last thing he needed. The gold chain, draped over a carriage clock on the mantelpiece. The cross on the end of it, glistening in the low sun.

It was time to clean up the streets.

22

They were in the supposedly nice part of the city. To look at, anyway. The police thought very differently.

The area of Netherley used to be predominantly farmland, green belt, countryside. Then they started building in the sixties; homes, flats, maisonettes … all for people to move there from other run-down parts of the city. The green faded and became grey and brown. Vermin-infested and crime-ridden. The flats were the worst. Built and pulled down in fifteen or twenty years.

They looked like a prison. Felt like one, Murphy guessed.

The eighties came and the flats were demolished, but the people were left behind.

Murphy stared out the window as they passed a group of young lads, openly drinking from cans of lager as the procession of police cars and vans lit them up with their headlights as they passed them by.

Both crime and youth unemployment were high in the area.

Things were better, Murphy had been told. Like everywhere in the city, crime rates had fallen. Meant very little for those who were still there, still stuck in the same position.

Out of the estates, it was different. When you hit the outskirts, the views changed, became beautiful. Murphy had driven around there often. Pulled up at the side of roads to look at horses in the open fields. The farms which survived pulling in a few passing motorists on their way out of the city, in the direction of Widnes.

The atmosphere in the car was thick with tension. They had only one man’s word to go on, but everyone was expecting the worst. The firearms officers would be going in first, but that didn’t stop the three DCs in the back considering the different possible scenarios which could occur. Murphy was having no trouble in tuning them out, but he could tell Rossi was struggling.

The amount of quiet swearing in Italian under her breath told him that.

‘They’re slowing up ahead.’

Murphy sat up straighter in the passenger seat, peering into the dull light to see if the lead van had turned off yet. They were going on sketchy instructions from the hospitalised George Stanley, but a few of the officers seemed to know where he meant. There were a few farms around the area, but the directions given seemed to pinpoint the place as what one uniform had termed ‘The Old Manor’. Which didn’t strike Murphy as a normal farm name.

‘They’re turning off,’ Murphy said. The three blokes in the back of the car had gone quiet now.

‘Almost there.’

Streetlights disappeared, bringing the lateness of the evening into starker relief.

They were going in blind.

Five minutes of winding around old, bumpy farm roads, travelling at no more than twenty mph, and the red brake lights signalled them to stop.

‘We’re here,’ Murphy’s radio crackled into life. ‘Stay put until further notice.’

Murphy listened in as the firearms officers approached an unseen building, clearing the outside, then gaining entry. He thought he could see torchlight bouncing around up ahead as he peered through the windscreen. The car had become deathly quiet as everyone held their breath collectively, waiting. Waiting for it all to go wrong.

Murphy knew they’d be too late.

If George Stanley was right, if what he was saying was true, the man would be gone by now.

‘All clear in main house. Three bodies, deceased on arrival.’

A quiet profanity came from the back of the car.

‘Now moving onto outbuildings.’

Murphy waited, Rossi tapping out a beat on the steering wheel. He had the urge to tell her to stop, but controlled himself.

‘Three buildings. One empty.’

Murphy had done firearms training. Many years previously. Hadn’t enjoyed it at all. Didn’t like the power of the weapons.

‘Second building, one body. Deceased on arrival.’

Four. This would keep them occupied.

A few minutes later the final message came over the radio.

‘Third building clear. Three bodies. Deceased on arrival.’

Seven bodies.

Murphy could hear them outside, the other uniforms, officers, detectives. Talking amongst themselves, some quietly, some louder than that. The level of swearing and taking of the Lord’s name in vain would have made Frankie Boyle blush. Murphy stood with Rossi, surveying the scene in the kitchen of what they’d found to be the main farmhouse. They looked at it from a distance, suited-up in white forensic boilersuits in order to preserve any evidence.

He wasn’t sure it was entirely needed.

‘According to our Mr Stanley, one man is responsible for all this,’ Rossi said, speaking for the first time without being prompted since they’d arrived there.

‘Hard to imagine …’

‘Not really,’ a voice said, from behind a mask. Murphy turned to see the portly frame of a packaged-up Dr Houghton. ‘You just have to see it.’

‘What’s your verdict?’ Murphy said, moving back as a forensic officer bustled past him.

‘These weren’t the first to go,’ Houghton replied, waving a hand across the three bodies who had fallen to the ground near each other.

Murphy gazed at each in turn, kneeling to get a closer look. The first, a white male who looked to be at least mid-forties from the greying hair, which was now matted with dark blood. His black T-shirt was torn almost in half, a dark hole in the middle of his chest, peppered by pellet marks. Flesh ripped apart. The second was a woman, the shirt she’d been wearing almost completely shredded. Her stomach was one open wound, a mass of red and pink as her insides tried to escape. Murphy swallowed back some bile before forcing himself to look at the third body.

‘Looks like they were trying to leave when your man opened fire,’ Houghton said from behind Murphy. ‘Close-range gunshot wounds in a variety of places in their upper bodies and heads. Easy cause of death.’

‘Except for him,’ Murphy said, pointing to the third body of a man near the back door.

Houghton raised his eyebrows at the body. ‘A shotgun or assault rifle can do a lot of damage.’

Murphy nodded, forcing himself to look at the body again. The face was empty of features, just a hole where they should be. Brain matter was strewn out behind his head, blood and gore filling out the rest of it.

‘Have you been out to the other building yet?’ Rossi said, her voice quiet in the small kitchen.

Houghton sighed, lifting his mask off his face. ‘Yes. Three bodies, all died in the same manner. Gunshot wounds to the temple. Clean through.’ They followed him outside, where he pointed a finger towards neat piles of brain matter which nestled on the floor near each body. Blood trails stretched across the concrete path which led towards the outbuilding. ‘They’d been kept inside, by the looks of things. Locks on the outside. They were shot just outside the building and then dragged back in. It was a massacre.’

Murphy had seen it already. Three young boys. Teenagers. None older than seventeen or eighteen. Their bodies a mess, the pain they’d experienced in death etched across their faces.

‘It’s small fry compared to what we found in the last building,’ Houghton continued. ‘One body. Tortured, by the looks of it. Won’t know cause of death yet.’

Murphy rubbed a gloved hand over his face. Tiredness was battling against everyone there as the lateness of the night struck. They’d been at the farm for hours now, a quick glance at his watch telling Murphy it was closer to dawn than it was midnight.

‘Any identifications?’

Houghton stifled a laugh. ‘Nothing at all, David. Forensics will be able to tell you more on that. They’re going through the rest of the house.’

‘Okay, thanks Doctor.’

‘This guy,’ Houghton said, coming closer to Murphy and Rossi, ‘this guy is manic, frenzied. I’ve not seen anything like this before. Seven dead, and six of them within a short space of time. He just took them out, one by one. Grouped together. It’s … startling.’

‘One got away. So we know he makes mistakes,’ Rossi said, pulling herself up to full height, her soft accent becoming hardened.

‘I hope you’re right. Before we see any more of this,’ Houghton replied, moving away as he spoke.

‘Alan Bimpson,’ Murphy said, turning to Rossi. ‘We need to know everything we can on him now. He’s our main suspect.’

Rossi nodded. ‘I’ve got a bit, but not much. Possible addresses …’

‘Let’s get a team together. Put the doors through in the next hour.’

‘Okay.’

Murphy rubbed his eyes, a stinging sensation hitting them. They say adrenaline gets you through the late nights as a copper, but they were human like everyone else. He needed sleep. Couldn’t see it happening any time soon.

‘Let’s have a look at the third scene,’ Murphy said finally.

Prepared himself.

The third building was no bigger than a large shed really. A single high-beam light had been set up outside, illuminating the thick wooden door which was being held open by a brick, placed there by a forensic officer, Murphy assumed. Inside, strip lighting lit up the small space, running down the middle of the room. Metal shelving ran down one side, empty crates scattered down the opposite side. The room was sparsely furnished, apart from the one object which took up most of the space.

‘It’s a rack,’ Rossi’s voice said from behind him.

Murphy nodded. He’d seen one before, but never in the flesh. True-crime books of serial killers had glorified the item for him. Various contraptions, built usually by hand, to inflict twisted desires.

Murphy exchanged a greeting with the last remaining forensic tech officer who was left with the body inside the room, clicking off the last few pictures. Then the body would lie there until another van arrived to take him to the mortuary.

To take his place alongside the seven other victims.

‘I don’t think it’s too difficult to see what’s happened to him,’ Murphy said, walking around the body. The air grew thicker inside, as the smell hit, the body decomposing in the warmth of the small building. Rotting, biting at the back of his throat. Murphy tried not to swallow.

‘He looks older than the other three.’

‘Maybe. Perhaps he’s just big for his age. No real stubble on his face.’

Murphy cast his eyes down the bare chest. Welts the size of fifty-pence pieces scattered across his chest like fallen leaves. Burns.

A soldering iron was lying on the floor near the rack.

Angry red marks fading to brown wrapped around his neck. Wounds which had bled but stopped short of gushing blood, no pooling around the body. Slash marks rather than punctures.

‘This is wet …’ Murphy said, touching the surface of the rack.

‘That’ll be down to this,’ Rossi replied, pointing towards a half-empty bowl. ‘He drowned him.’

Murphy shook his head. ‘I think they call it water-boarding.’

‘Jesus …’

His trousers, blue jeans with no belt, had been left untouched. Dirty brown stains on the knees.

He had been left in the restraints.

‘He shoots everyone else … why the difference here?’ Rossi said, lifting various items off the metal shelves and placing them back down soundlessly.

‘Personal grudge? Fun? I don’t know.’

The forensic officer began packing away his camera, left the room without a further word. Murphy moved to the top of the body, leaning over the head to stare at the scarred shaved dome.

‘Some of these aren’t even fully healed. He’s been here a while, I’d guess,’ Murphy said, fighting against the urge to move the head to a straight position.

‘Well, Dean Hughes was here almost seven months.’

‘Right.’

Outside there was a burst of laughter, quickly muted by low words.

‘This won’t be the last,’ Murphy said, standing up straight and hearing a crack in his back as he did so. ‘Whoever did this has unravelled.’