Hilary Bonner - Friends to Die For

Alice was the second woman to have destroyed my life. I could do nothing about the first evil bitch. Not then. But I could destroy Alice. I could make her life every bit as dreadful, as empty, and as wasted as I knew mine would be. I was only ten, but I had the power. The vengeful God of the Bible I kept always at my side was with me, bestowing upon me steadfast resolution and a will beyond my years.

I took her eyes so that she would never again see me. And I took her tongue so that she would never again speak of me.

Alice had been more than a foster mother to me. I’d loved her in a way I do not remember loving even my real mother. But then I have no memories of the time before my devastation. It was Alice who seemed to have been always there for me. She’d been everything to me. Until she betrayed me. The shock of it made me capable of what others might regard as a quite heartless brutality. It wasn’t that. I was not the evil one. Alice had proven herself to be shallow and craven. I did have a heart, then, but she broke it. I knew at once what I had to do. Alice left me no choice. My destiny lay before me. It was written in The Book.

And thine eye shall not pity, but life shall go for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.’

Ironically it was Alice who had sent me to Sunday school. I quickly became a star pupil. I was a clever boy, particularly good at memorizing verse from the Bible. And I took an intense pleasure in the Old Testament. I avidly devoured the messages it held for me. I gloried in them. I knew beyond doubt that so many of them were directed at me alone. They had been written in another age, by prophets and by saints and by scholars, for me to seize upon, to grasp with my whole being, and to obey.

My one true friend is the Bible. The Good Book has an answer for everything in my world. It tells me that my God will supply every need according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus. That has always been and always will be so. For ever and ever. Should my heart be troubled He provides solace. Should I ever, for a second, question my destiny, He enhances my resolution. He lifts me from despair and gives me vigour in all that I endeavour. I am and will always be His avenging angel.

Vogel travelled to Charing Cross in the back of the squad car with George. He wanted to be close to him. He was appalled and captivated by him. If George spoke, if George moved a muscle, if George crossed his legs, scratched his nose, touched his ear, sneezed or coughed, Vogel wanted to know.

George Kristos, né Rory Burns, did not look like a monster. Yet he was undoubtedly the most monstrous creature Vogel had ever encountered.

Kristos did not speak again during the ten-minute journey, nor did he speak in the custody suite. It was only when he was asked to step into an anteroom with an officer in attendance and remove his clothes for forensic examination that he spoke.

‘And you shall make them linen breeches to cover their nakedness, from their loins even to their thighs they shall reach ,’ he said. And he smiled. A wide gentle smile that did not reach his eyes.

Vogel felt a shiver run up and down his spine. Clearly George Kristos was some sort of religious maniac. Vogel wasn’t sure that modern psychology recognized such a condition. But the label certainly fitted.

He waited until George reappeared, now dressed in the regulation paper suit made of recycled materials, which was standard custody issue. Then he instructed the custody officer, Sergeant Andy Pierce, to arrange for George to be placed in a cell where he would be detained until they were ready to interview him. Vogel knew that Clarke and the rest of the MIT team would have been working flat out on the case in his absence, and he wanted to familiarize himself with any new information before proceeding with a formal interview.

George smiled again. It was a knowing smile. Vogel looked away. He couldn’t wait to see Nobby Clarke and learn what progress had been made.

When he arrived at the DCI’s office she was engaged in an animated discussion with Pam Jones and Joe Carlisle. Clarke looked up at him, pausing mid-sentence.

‘Scotland have done some digging for us. The real Georgios Kristos died when he was seventeen,’ she said.

‘Jesus,’ said Vogel.

‘And you are not going to believe the rest of this, Vogel,’ she said.

Vogel thought he might. He said nothing, waiting for her to continue.

‘We now have details of the road accident in which Rory Burns’ mother was killed and he was injured. Apparently, mother and son were walking across a bridge when a motorcyclist who’d been going way too fast suddenly lost control and ploughed into them. The mother was catapulted into the river and swept away on the current. They found her dead body washed up downstream a couple of days later. The boy ended up straddling the front wheel of the bike. It seems the motorcyclist carried on across the bridge until the boy eventually fell off. A witness said the biker just sped off — didn’t even stop to see whether the kid was still alive. The boy suffered appalling injuries to the genital area and lower abdomen. Surgeons had to perform a penectomy and his testes were also removed.’

‘Jesus Christ,’ said Vogel. ‘He has no penis and no balls. No sexual organs. That would explain why Marlena’s sexual organs were removed — same thing with the two King’s Cross victims.’

‘Revenge,’ said Clarke. ‘Revenge for what happened to him.’

Vogel nodded. ‘Was the motorcyclist caught?’

‘Disappeared without trace. The only witness was a fisherman down on the riverbank, a couple of hundred yards away. It was dusk, and he wasn’t close enough to give a description of the biker. Rory Burns was three years old — too young and too traumatized to be of any help. All they could get from him was that there’d been a big wheel and a pink lady.’

Clarke looked down at a report in front of her, freshly emailed from Edinburgh. ‘“The pink lady went away,” he said. His mother had been wearing a pink coat, so the cops thought the boy must have been talking about her. I think they should have listened more carefully. I think the motorcyclist may have been a woman. I think she may have been the pink lady.’

Vogel thought fast.

‘You think the pink lady was Marlena?’

Clarke passed a photograph to Vogel. It showed a young Marlena standing alongside a pink Norton motorcycle.

‘The SOCOs found it in that suitcase of memorabilia in Marlena’s flat, but nobody thought it had any significance. Do you remember seeing it?’

Vogel shook his head. ‘Even if I had, it wouldn’t have meant anything to me ’til now.’

‘Well, it turns out Marlena’s father was from Edinburgh, so she may have had other kin up there. There can’t have been too many female motorcyclists in the early eighties, not riding proper grown-up machines.’

‘But wasn’t she supposed to be living in France throughout the eighties, supplying the great and the good of Paris with young women of ill repute?’ asked Vogel.

Clarke picked up the mug of tea on her desk and took a sip. She pulled a face. Vogel guessed she’d probably let the beverage go cold.

‘Maybe she was just visiting Scotland. That would explain why they never caught up with her. A day or two after the incident a couple of uniforms were called to an explosion at an old municipal dump. Someone had set light to a motorcycle. The tank had been full of petrol, so there was damn all left of it. The number plates had been removed and the vehicle identification number destroyed, either during the fire or before. The local plod believed it was the bike involved in the incident that had maimed Rory Burns and killed his mother, but they couldn’t take it any further. The evidence literally went up in flames.’