Gut Instinct (23 page)

“Stephen” he repeated “Tanya was arrested red handed attempting to kill another girl.  She had another message in her hand at the time of
the arrest.  The lads have been early this morning to her flat and they have found the card that the messages were sent on with identical matches cut out to the cards we have, they have found personal information about these girls addresses, ages, marital status etc and plenty
of
names and addresses that may have been her future victims” He paused watching Stephen age twenty years in five minutes. He continued.

“We found ‘cups’ belonging to the murdered girls that are at the lab now looking for traces of evidence and we are awaiting DNA results to match to the cells found in Fiona’s finger nails, but even without those we have enough evidence to charge her.”

Stephens head dropped to his desk, Michael aware that eyes were all on him through the glass panes to
his office; he
walked to the internal windows and shut the
vertical
blinds.
 

“When can I see her” Stephen asked.

“Not a good idea Stephen” Michael replied.

“I have to see her Michael, to get some closure”

Michael understood, thought about it for a minute or so and then said.

“You can’t see her now Stephen you know that
.
S
he is
still being questioned and has not yet been charged, we cannot have this case jeopardised.”

“I know that but.....”

“Let me finish Stephen.  Once she has been charged and is ready to be transferred you can have ten minutes with her max.  Both John and I will be watching through the three way, and if there is any sign of aggression Stephen we will be in to pull you out, have you got that?”

“Sir” Stephen saluted.

“Right, naturally you are off the case, I have put John in charge and he has instructed Derek and Paul to do the interviewing.......”

“But...... Paul?” Stephen asked.

“Stephen you are off the case” Michael replied “Go get some fresh air, a cup of coffee, clear your head and be back here for four thirty, I am hoping it will be all cleared up by then.  Okay”

“Okay” Stephen replied.

Stephen grabbed his coat and left the office conscious that all eyes were on him.  He never said a word and they never spoke to him.

**********

Derek was visibly shaking when he came into the main office after interviewing Tanya Wright with Paul.

“She’s a
fecking
freak” he said grabbing everyone’s attention.  “One minute she wa
s talking to us normally and tel
ling us how she got the women to let her in the house, by playing on their empathy, saying she had
been chased and needed help.  T
he next minute she went into a trance like state and
mimicked
m
e
all through the interview, my body language and everything I said. It
was weir
d”

"
Echopraxia
” Paul said.

They all looked at him dismayed, he laughed.

“Sometimes catatonic schizophrenics mimic body movements of others or obsessively repeat what others say.  These features are known as
echopraxia
” he said, feeling chuffed with himself that he had listened in his classes and internalized his learning.

“So what you saying now Paul, that she’s a fucking schizophrenic” John asked.

“I’m not a psychiatrist John I can’t make that diagnosis, I’m just telling you what I know.”

“She’s probably faking it” Vera said
entering the room in the middle of the discussion.
“After all she is a
psychotherapist;
she’d know all the symptoms.
But forget that look at this!”

Vera had been on the computer all morning digging up as much information as she could
on Tanya Wright’s background.  They all were given copies of the information Vera had.

“Fucking hell” was the first response.

“Jesus” was the second.

“
Oh my God” was the third and this went on until all eight of the team had read the details that Vera had collated.

“Who’s going to tell the boss this?” Derek asked.

There were no volunteers.
Not even Paul, he hadn’t liked Stephen and this was in a sense Karma but even he felt that this was more than he deserved.

Tanya Wright had been born a boy
!
 

His birth name was Richard Dobson and he had used that name up until he
was 1
8 years of age where he began to live as a woman. He
had a sex change operation when he was twenty
two
years of age.

Chapter Thirty-Five

Tanya smiled at him as he entered the interview room, the same smile that she always gave him whenever he saw her.  A pleased to see him sort of
smile
, a sensuous smile that always sent a shiver down his spine.

It had the same effect today, but a different type of shiver, a cold shiver leading to a nauseous feeling within the pit of his stomach.  He struggled to keep himself together, to hide the tremors in his hands that
he
just wanted to put around her throat and squeeze the life out
of her grotesque face.  It incensed him that he had once found this woman to be beautiful, graceful and sexy.  She had deceived him, betrayed him in the worst possible way.

“Hi” she said in a fashion that they had just met up in a coffee shop, not in an interview suite where she
had just been
charged with a triple murder and an attempted murder.  She
displayed no repentance for what she had put him through, how she had
duped
him;
she didn’t even appear to feel any indignity for what she had done to those poor women.

It w
as just Tanya sat there, Tanya
as she had always been.

He pulled the chair out from under the table, squeaking across the floor as he did it. 
It was t
he only noise in a deathly silent room.  He sat down and just glared at her adamant that she would speak the first words.  They looked at each other for what seemed like hours, that uncomfortable silence each
hoping the other
would break it, him
with a face frozen in pain and her eyes with a
glazed look
, but smiling.

How the fuck can she just
sit
there smiling he thought, he’d fucked her and she was really a bloke, what did that make him.  She’d led him on a wild goose chase, murdered three people and left him inane messages that made no sense. Another man had gone to prison for one of the murders, one of her clients.

“Why?” He said no longer able to sit the silence out, he knew that he was probably being watched from the two way mirror, the thought that they may be
interpreting the look as something meaningful between them sickened him to the essence of his soul.

“Why not?” she replied, typical Tanya, gave nothing away.

“You fucking made a fool out of me Tanya, you duped me into believing that you were...............” he couldn’t even let the words come out of his mouth, he knew for sure they
would pour out with the vomit that he was undyingly trying to keep inside.

“Well, well, well” she laughed “it would not be right would it for a woman to make a fool out of a man?”

Another fucking question, could she never give a straight answer to anything, even now, she owed him that,
and she
owed him the truth.

“You’re going down for a very long time Tanya, a very long time, and every minute you are in there I hope that you fucking rot!”

He was losing it, he didn’t want to lose it, he would be pulled out and he didn’t want to leave that room until he had some understanding of why she had done this, why him, was he just in the wrong place at the wrong time or was it something personal.

“Roses are red Stephen violets are blue.  I’m schizophrenic, and so am I – Oscar Levant”

“What the fuck..............
Just
rot in hell bitch!”

“You will rot for as long as me” she replied her eyes like steel and her face
distorting into anger now “you have lain
in the same bed as a transsexual serial killer” she retorted.  “You’ve put you
r
cock inside a man” she laughed now, an evil long drawn out laugh.

He wanted to slap her but instead he stood up and threw his chair across the room.  He knew that he was never going to get anything out of her, anything that would make him feel better.  He slowly walked towards the door.  He knew that if he didn’t leave now they would come and order him out and he wouldn’t give her the satisfaction.

He had just put his hand on the door knob when she said

“Oh by the way, was I as good a fuck as my mother” he turned confused, but she looked away grinning, satisfied, as he left the room running those final words through his head.

Chapter T
hirty-
Six

So that is my story.

Could I have done something different with my life?

You might say
Yes
, but the truth is that no I couldn’t, I was meant to be given this mother and I was born to eventually kill. 

My fate had been decided as soon as I was in that queue.  It was decided when I was given 326, it was decided when 325 fell ill.

I believe that m
y life with my mother was just to prepare me for what I was born to do; it was to toughen me up, to help me to develop a hatred that you need to have burning inside
of you to enable you
to kill.

I had that hatred, I lived with that hatred from the day she ironed my shirt while it was still on my small body, it
intensified each time she abused me, so by the time I was sixteen I was ready.

I was ready to kill.

My time in the institution meant that I had to put my desires on hold but once I was out that’s when it started.

I am being charged with three murders but there w
ere
many more, they were far afield and no-one linked them to me.

Other men were serving time for their murders, I was clever, I would see them pick up men and go home with them and then when they left I would go in and kill them. 

The police would get the DNA from her vagina and these men would be charged with the murder.  They never ever got my DNA.
 
Just like with Ivan Springer.

It was only when I met him, knew what he did for a living that I began my work closer to home, the work that I was born to do.

I wanted him to suffer too for what he did to me and so I killed two birds with one stone.  That was to be my fifth card:

Kill two birds with one stone

But that was to be my downfall, playi
ng too close to home, and not waiting for the right time.

The psychiatrists will say it is down to the abuse I got as a child, they will be arguing it out in court,
one will say I am mad and another will say that I am faking insanity to avoid full responsibility for my crimes,
but you and I know
the truth
don’t we?

Don’t we?

Was I born to kill, or was I born okay and it was my experiences that led me to kill?

Do I have a faulty gene, or am I the result of years of abuse
, nature or nurture
?

That will always be the question on everyone’s
mind;
theorists will be arguing that point well after I have left this planet.

Am I insane?

That is something you will never know.  I will keep that close to my chest.  The state of my sanity
will
decide my
punishment.

Will I stop?

No; I won’t stop until I have killed her over and over again.  Until I can stop women like her producing, until I can stop promiscuous men impregnating women like that.  Then the killing will stop, and then every child will have a chance even if they are born to kill.

Like me.

Epilogue

Stephen
sat in the airport
lounge;
he was just Stephen
now, no longer Detective
Stephen Roberts.