Heart of the Demon (D.S.Hunter Kerr) (26 page)

She dropped it back into her pocket and followed him, picking up the pace to keep with him as he jogged to his car.

* * * * *

Back in the MIT office, Grace and Barry Newstead had been given the task of logging all the evidence, which had been gathered and brought from the house. They were in the process of separating the vast array of forensic bags when Grace’s persistently ringing mobile phone disturbed them. The ring tone was a little baby continuously laughing. She loved the tone. It reminded her of her own two giggling girls when they had been babies, and how she had ended up in fits of laughter along with them. Every time she heard it, it had that same effect upon her. But this time she tried to ignore it. She had important work to do. It rang again and she snatched it out of her handbag and flicked up the screen. The screen told her it was Robyn. It had to be important; she knew not to ring her at work.

“Hello Robyn, mum’s busy, tell me what you want quickly,” she said disgruntled.

“I gather I am speaking with Detective Grace Marshall,” said the man’s voice.

She didn’t recognise it.

“Who is this? Is that school? Is there something wrong with Robyn?” she asked anxiously.

“Not yet but there soon will be.” The man’s voice was cold and menacing.

Grace froze, her mind racing.

“You know who this is Grace, don’t you?”
He continued, “It’s Gabriel Wild. You’ve been bad mouthing me Grace and you need to be punished.”

“I haven’t. Is Robyn there?
I haven’t been saying anything about you.” she stammered.

“You’re lying Grace. I heard you. I was hiding in the bushes. You said I was a coward and a wimp and a pervert. Those were your words Grace and for that I’m going to hurt you where it hurts the most.”

There was a long pause on the other end. Grace’s face turned ashen. In her line of vision she saw that Barry was trying to get her attention. She knew that he had spotted that something was wrong.

“Do want to speak to Robyn?”
Grace could hear her daughter sobbing in the background. The sobbing got nearer.

“Robyn. Robyn.” She virtually screamed down the phone.

The sobbing drifted away and Gabriel Wild was back on the line “Do you know what I did to all the other girls?”

“If you hurt her. If you harm one hair on her head I’ll fucking kill you.” She screamed back with an edge of hysteria in her voice. The tears of anger and desperation welled up in the corner of her eyes.

Without warning the line went dead.

- ooOoo -

DAY THIRTY-SEVEN: 12
th
August.

Detective Superintendent Robshaw was running the operation from the Command Suite at the police station. He had called in a Hostage Negotiator, had briefed Task Force Firearms Unit as to their duties and turned out as many police vehicles as he could muster and ordered them to park up at strategic points throughout the district. Finally, he had called in the phone technicians from headquarters to fix the tracking and recording equipment to Grace Marshall’s phone. As soon as her mobile rung again they would be able to get a fix on the user.

In less than four hours he had managed to get everything into full swing, and he was praying that nothing had yet happened to Grace’s daughter, and that Gabriel Wild had a big enough ego to make contact.

He didn’t have to wait long. Grace’s mobile started to ring.

Suddenly the ring tone was not so funny.

She watched the technicians operate their equipment and when they gave her the ‘okay’ signal she flipped up the screen.

It was Robyn’s phone. “Hello Robyn?” she said nervously.

“Hello Grace it’s me.”

She recognised Gabriel’s voice.

“Let me speak with Robyn,” she replied.

“You’re in no position to make demands Grace. And I’m guessing there’s someone else listening to this so I’ll be hanging up before you can get a trace. I just want you to say goodbye to your daughter.”

Grace could hear Robyn’s cries coming nearer to the receiver.
Within seconds she was sobbing in her ear.

“Help me mum,” she snivelled. Then her weeping drifted away.

“The next time you see your daughter, Grace, will be in the mortuary with all the other bitches,” Gabriel hung up.

Grace dropped he
r mobile.

For several seconds there was complete silence in the room.
It was broken by one of the technicians.

“Traced it.” he shouted and stabbed an index finger on a blown up copy of a map of the District. “They’re here, behind one of the units on the Manvers Industrial site.”

* * * * *

The early evening sky was rapidly filling with grey clouds
. With it came a fine rain. It sprayed across the windscreen of the parked MIT car, diminishing the view of the main Dearne parkway. Hunter and Tony Bullars were in the unmarked car. They had tucked the Vauxhall Astra into a lay-by and were monitoring the airwaves on their radio sets. Watching and waiting.

When the
shout went up, indicating the location of Gabriel Wild, the two detectives bolted upright: Stirred into action.

Seconds after the radio
broadcast Hunter locked onto a car that was screaming towards them.

Wild’s Toyota rocked the
MIT car as it shot past.

Hunter revved up the engine and slammed
into first gear.

Tony Bullars snatched up the radio handset
to call it in.

The wheels spun, churning up loose gravel, and
Hunter pressed harder on the accelerator, spurring the car in the direction of Wild’s speeding Toyota. Whipping through the gears Hunter soon had the unmarked police vehicle registering seventy mph and was making ground in their pursuit of the fleeing fugitive. He could hear from the radio chatter that other police cars were coming to their aid. The airwaves were awash with police officers’ voices strategically aiming their vehicles to cut off every conceivable escape avenue to Wild. ‘Whiskey nine-nine’ - the police helicopter had lifted from its base at Sheffield to join in the hunt.

As an advanced driver, trained in the craft of pursuit from his drug squad days, Hunter handled the car faultlessly, jerking around the many roundabouts, before pointing the bonnet towards the middle of the road as he straightened out to continue the
chase. He beeped wildly on the car horn then re-adjusted his fingers to flick on the beam of his headlights.

As Wild’s car
swerved up ahead and the brake lights illuminated Hunter knew his driving had had an effect.

Beyond the Toyota Hunter
spotted whirling blue lights in the distance, heading towards them. The response on the radio told him that it was the marked firearms vehicle and he began to ease off. The Task Force vehicle had a far more powerful engine and was far better placed to take over the chase.

* * * * *

Gabriel Wild almost lost control when he spotted the CID cars flashing headlights in his rear view mirror. For a second his car snaked and he stamped on the brake and whipped down the gears. Hitting the accelerator he could hear the Toyota’s engine scream as he began to widen the gap again. His concentration on the car behind made him completely miss seeing the oncoming marked police car until it was too late.

* * * * *

The police Volvo lined its bonnet up towards the Toyota and swung sideways across the road. The actions had the desired effect. The Toyota’s tyres protested with a concerted squeal, jarring, as Gabriel braked harshly. He could do little to stop the car crabbing sideways as he began to lose control of the steering. In a fit of panic he hit the accelerator. The engine screamed, drowning out the bursting front tyre. It bounced up the kerb, onto the grass verge, smashed through wooden fencing, lining the side of the road, and picking up speed, on a muddy surface, it careered wildly down a small incline. The Toyota slid for ten yards before flipping over, rolling twice onto its roof, finally coming to a halt when it hit a metal gatepost.

* * * * *

Gabriel’s head had taken out the windscreen and only the exploding airbag had saved him from being thrown through. As he kicked open the buckled drivers door he caught a glimpse of himself in the rear view mirror. His face was barely recognisable. His forehead had a wicked gash and blood poured from numerous cuts. His right cheek was already swollen causing his eye to close. He also saw that his lip had split in two. He reached up, fingers probing his blood-marked face.

“The bastards. The fucking bastards,” he screamed.

Robyn was slumped forward in the passenger seat. He could see she was stunned but uninjured. He snapped off her seat belt and dragged her by her hair across the front seats, pulling her through the driver’s door, snatching his Bowie knife from the door-well as he stumbled out onto the grass.

He saw that the CID Officers following behind had already alighted, as had the two uniformed officers who had cut off his path, and they were armed; their short rifles pointing in his direction.

Panic set in.

Gabriel pulled Robyn closer to him pressing his head tightly against hers. His focus was on the two armed officers. He could see their mouths moving but he couldn’t hear what they were saying. The detonation of the airbag had temporarily deafened him.

He pushed the blade to her neck, digging the point into her soft flesh, drawing blood. “I’ll fucking kill her.” he screamed. “I’m telling you she’s fucking dead.”

* * * * *

If Gabriel Wild could have just looked in a mirror at that moment, he would have known how wrong he was.

But then he couldn’t see the red laser dot from the tritium illuminated sight dancing on his forehead.

The 9mm lightweight round left the Heckler and Kock MP 5 muzzle at 400 metres per second. The illegal dum-dum bullet punched into Gabriel Wild’s head just above the eyes, smashed through his skull and fragmented into the frontal lobe of his brain.

He had no time to realise why none of his limbs would move how he wanted them to. The force flung him backwards and before he hit the ground he was dead.

A little blood splattered Robyn Marshall’s cheek and for a second she stood there frozen. Then she let out a shriek and the shriek became a scream.

The Officer secured the cocking handle of his gun, cleared the round in his chamber and then pulled away the fifteen round magazine holder. He turned and handed his weapon to his Supervisor.

“Sorry Sarge I felt I was left with no option. You heard me shout to him three times to drop the knife but he took no notice. I thought he was going to kill her,” he said.

As he strolled back to the Armed Response Vehicle, Paul Goodright received a flashback of the night the CID car was stolen.
Like the other times, he saw the image of his sister lying in Intensive Care, the doctors telling her that her boyfriend had been killed and that she would be crippled for life by the joyrider who had run them off the road.

He had sworn there and then to her that he would track him down, and after all these years of probing and searching his efforts had finally paid off.

Paul dropped his chin into his chest trying to suppress the smile, which was creeping across his mouth.

He had finally delivered Gabriel Wild’s punishment for all the misery he had caused.

Now he could lay his own demons to rest.

* * * * *

“What were Gabriel Wild’s last words to the firearms officer just before he shot him…?

In between drinks, sniggers and laughter erupted from the group of detectives at yet another one of Mike Sampson’s serial killer jokes.

Hunter smiled and shook his head.

The MIT team had virtually taken over one half of the lounge. It was a good job the pub had only the handful of regulars that the team all knew. Anyone else other than the locals in the lounge and they might take offence.

An hour earlier he and others from the team had been so pleased to see Grace hugging her fourteen-year-old daughter so tightly in the back yard of the police station.

He’d tried to put a reassuring arm around his partner telling her it was all over but one look at her face told him her head was elsewhere. All she had kept repeating was that she needed to get Robyn home.

Grace had left with her daughter in the back of a traffic car, in a complete daze.

The Detective Superintendent had wrapped things up very quickly with one of the fastest de-briefs Hunter had ever known, ending the short conference with a promise of a more thorough scrum-down early the next morning and finishing the preamble by standing everyone a drink to celebrate the end of the investigation.

Hunter pushed his way to the bar half listening to the end of Mike’s joke. He knew it was these moments that bonded a team.

On his way he spotted Paul Goodright tucked into a corner, hunched over a beer, rubbing a hand over his shaven head. He
was alone.

He made a mental note to have some time with him once he had got himself a drink. He had not seen him since the shooting.

He ordered a pint and then sauntered across to his old colleague.

“How’re we feeling?” Hunter asked, sliding onto a seat opposite.
Paul’s head shot up. He’d obviously been lost in his thoughts ruminated Hunter.

“Not too bad – had better days.”

He made a brave attempt to crack a smile, but Hunter could see it was half-hearted.

“Glad it’s over?”

“You bet.”
He pushed himself back against his seat. His squat muscular frame stretched his black T-shirt.

Hunter could remember when Paul had been a very slim twenty-something detective with a full head of hair. That’s when the memories tumbled into his head. He would never have guessed that the decisions he and Paul had made that fateful night on the 12
th
October 1993 would have brought about such tragic chain of events involving so many people. As the episodes had unfolded during the last few weeks he had questioned himself so many times. Should he have done anything different? He had found himself unable to answer. No doubt that would be one of many things he would dwell on over the next few weeks.

“Thanks to you the result is good though eh?”

Paul tightened his mouth, rested his strong bare forearms across the table and gripped the bottom of his glass. His beer had lost its head.

Hunter wondered how long he had been nursing it.

“You say that but it doesn’t really take away the feelings I have over what happened all those years ago. That psycho tore my life apart.” He fixed Hunter with his hazel eyes. “I thought that when I shot him it would have made me feel better but its already short lived. I still feel so responsible for what happened. If I hadn’t have gone off shagging that night this wouldn’t have happened.”

“Paul you’ve got to stop beating yourself up. You weren’t to know what was going to happen that night. People happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. You have to put it down to sheer fate. The guy was a killer – born and bred – full stop. There was nothing – and I repeat nothing you could have done about it.”
Hunter pointed towards Paul’s flat beer. “Let me get you a fresh one you’ve earned it believe me. There will be a lot of people out there grateful for what you have done. Just think about all those parents of the girl’s he’s murdered for one. Secondly we won’t have the expense of a trial and the worry that some smart barrister will exploit a loophole or a jury will do an OJ Simpson and allow him to walk free.” Hunter drained his own beer then wiped the edges of his mouth. “I’d be honoured if you’d allow me to buy you a drink.”