Motive Read online

  MOTIVE

  by

  Alan McDermott

  For Del.

  Sorry you didn’t get to read this one, bro.

  Also by Alan McDermott

  Gray Justice

  Gray Resurrection

  Gray Redemption

  Gray Retribution

  Gray Vengeance

  Gray Salvation

  Trojan

  Run and Hide

  Seek and Destroy

  Fight to Survive

  Out June 4th 2020

  Gray Genesis

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Epilogue

  Chapter 1

  In many of life’s pursuits, location is key. Where to buy a house, where to take a holiday, where to find work.

  But never more so than where to kill a man.

  She drove around the back of what had once been a thriving industrial estate to open space. Today, most of the buildings had no roofs, and the remaining walls were covered with graffiti. It was perfect because few people came here.

  The last thing she wanted was an audience.

  She parked a few feet behind the only other vehicle in the area, a silver BMW belonging to Sean Conte, and got out. She’d seen him leave his house twenty minutes earlier, but hadn’t followed him. There was no need. He was going to take the dog for a walk, just as he did every day. Always the same spot, rain or shine. All she had to do was be there when he returned to his car.

  The derelict estate had an unwelcoming feel to it, like it knew it was about to host an evil deed, even in the gorgeous July sunshine. The wild grass was at least knee high, but a trail cut through the yellowing weeds and down a slight incline towards a clump of oaks. That was where Conte would come from. She’d see the top of his head while he was still a hundred yards away, and that was when she’d get into character. Until then, she had little to do but set the scene and wait.

  She opened the boot of the car and put the jack, portable compressor and X-shaped wheel brace next to the rear tyre, then let most of the air out.

  She was ready.

  The dog in the back seat of her car pawed at the window, but she didn’t let it out. It was just there for show. She’d borrowed it from a neighbour who’d been unfortunate enough to sprain her ankle a few days earlier, offering to take it for a walk. She could have completed her task without it, but her presence would arouse less suspicion with a canine in the vehicle. She’d cranked the windows a few inches to make the Labrador more comfortable, not because she hated to see an innocent animal suffer, but to avoid having to explain to its owner why it was either dead or seriously dehydrated.

  A wave of excitement washed over her when she saw the top of Conte’s head appear twenty minutes later. His hair was dark, not a sign of grey even though he was in his mid-fifties, but his daily walks seemed to be his only form of exercise. His stomach had long ago turned to flab, and she could almost hear him panting as he made his way up the shallow incline, even from a hundred yards away.

  His poor condition was a bonus, but she couldn’t be complacent. At six feet, he was four inches taller than her, but she didn’t anticipate that being a problem.

  She forced herself to relax, then leaned into the open boot of the Honda and began tugging at the spare wheel in its well. It wouldn’t move, but that was because she hadn’t removed the wing nut securing it in place. In fact, she’d tightened it as much as she could.

  “Oh, for the love of…”

  She stood upright, kicked the boot of the Honda and stood with one hand on her hip and the other against her forehead.

  “Need a hand?”

  Her eyes flashed open and she saw Conte standing close by. A small white Yorkshire terrier strained at the lead to get to her, its tongue lolling, but the man easily held it in check.

  “If you could, that would be great,” she said, offering a tired smile while moving away from the car. “I’ve got a flat but can’t get the spare wheel out.”

  Conte handed her the dog’s lead and rolled up his sleeves. “It’s probably just caught on something.” He leaned into the boot, then laughed. “You haven’t removed the restraining nut.”

  She smacked herself on the forehead and groaned. “I am so stupid.”

  Conte chuckled. “It’s easily done…wow, this is on tight.”

  As he leaned into the boot and struggled with the wing nut, she dropped the terrier’s lead and took two items from her handbag. The first was a stun gun, and she jammed it up against his rib cage and pressed the button. Conte’s body spasmed as electric current shot through his body. She felt as if some of the charge was coursing through her own body, but she knew it was just the adrenaline that came with each kill.

  After five seconds, she released the button and Conte slumped forward into the boot, a low groan emanating from him. She leaned over him and stuck the second item from her handbag, a hypodermic needle, into his carotid artery. She pushed the plunger down, emptying the sodium thiopental into his bloodstream. It would take around thirty seconds for the drug to take effect, so she put her hands on his shoulders and pushed down hard, pinning him inside the car. He struggled initially, but soon his efforts petered out and he lost consciousness.

  She had no time to lose. The drug would wear off in minutes, and she still had work to do. She pushed his upper body as far into the boot as she could, then lifted his legs and swung them inside. Once he was in, she pulled a plastic bag over his head and used a thick elastic tie with hooks on either end to secure it around his neck.

  She angled his head so that she could look into his eyes, but they were closed. Still, she stood looking at him for a moment, a sensation of power rushing through her that was better than any sex she’d ever had.

  The terrier shattered the moment by barking, darting towards her before backing off sharply and repeating the dance again and again. She picked up the tyre iron and waited for the dog to get close enough, then swung. She missed, so she planted her foot on the dog’s lead for a second attempt. The terrier had nowhere to go. She raised the tool once more and brought it crashing down, catching the dog on the side of the head. It yelped, took a couple of uneasy steps sideways, then collapsed. She hit it a few more times for good measure, then picked up the limp body and threw it into the boot beside its owner.

  She lowered the lid, then used the compressor to inflate the tyre once more. When she was done, she tossed the equipment on top of the two bodies. It had been almost four minutes since she’d put the bag over Conte’s head, and when she checked his pulse she knew it had served its purpose.

  It was almost anticlimactic, but it wasn’t just the killing that gave her the rush. The knowledge that she would g
et away with it was the main driver.

  She slammed the boot lid and got behind the wheel. The hard part was behind her, but she still had plenty to do. First, she would take the Labrador for a walk at another place—one that was busier—and then return it to her neighbour. It wouldn’t hurt to establish an alibi, though she didn’t expect to need one. She’d killed twice before and suspicion had never pointed her way.

  It wouldn’t this time, either. She was refining her methods with each kill, and so far this one was going as planned.

  She drove out of the abandoned industrial estate and made her way to Richmond park, where she let the neighbour’s dog chase a ball for half an hour. She bagged up two piles of its crap like a good citizen, then dropped the mutt off with its owner. She declined the offer of a cup of tea, saying she was running late for a lunch appointment. Ten minutes later she was on the M3 heading west.

  “…but if the sun ain’t shinin’, then I ain’t smilin’, and I hate to—”

  She turned off the radio to concentrate on her driving. When her speed read sixty-eight miles an hour she engaged the cruise control, sticking to the inside lane and maintaining a good distance between herself and the car in front. If she was stopped by the police, she’d have a hard time explaining away the bodies in the boot.

  It wasn’t easy to stay focused on the road. The feeling of elation was still with her, her muscles tingling and her pulse racing. She drove on autopilot, barely noticing the road or her surroundings as she recalled the moment she’d hit Conte with the stun gun and his body shuddered.

  There was even better to come.

  She left the motorway at junction five and took the first exit at the roundabout, then a right onto a country lane. She’d been down here twice in the last month, scoping out a suitable place to dump Conte’s body.

  After fifteen minutes on the quiet roads, she found the spot she’d chosen on her last visit. It was a small dirt track that led into five hectares of dense woodland. She was able to drive fifty yards through the trees before the track ended abruptly, where she turned off the engine and got out.

  The only sounds were bird calls and the ticking of the car’s engine as it cooled down, but the little red wallet she’d left behind ensured her that she was alone and that her hiding place hadn’t been visited in the past two weeks. She picked it up, and apart from a little rain damage from a downpour days earlier, it seemed untouched. The twenty-pound note was still inside, which meant no one had seen it.

  Satisfied that she could work uninterrupted, she popped the boot and took out a canvas holdall. Inside was a full-body, disposable coverall. She put it on, making sure her blonde hair was tucked inside the hood. She took off her shoes and put on another pair, which she would dispose of later.

  Once she was dressed appropriately, she took a portable vacuum from the back seat and ran it over Conte’s body to remove any of her hairs that might have fallen on him. She spent ten minutes on the task, minutes that would save her from years in prison, then picked up the bag and walked ten yards west of the car until she found the spade. It was leaning against the tree, exactly where she’d left it.

  She took a polythene sheet from the holdall and laid it out on the ground, then started digging, carefully placing each shovelful on the plastic sheet. To make the hole big enough to accommodate Conte and his dog, she had to stop a few times for water breaks due to the heat.

  As she finished off her third bottle of water, she sat at the edge of the hole and caught her breath. The exertion had taken it out of her, but she was only halfway through. She gave herself a few minutes’ rest, then walked back to the car to gather the dead.

  As she opened the boot, a putrid stench enveloped her. Conte’s bowel had given way. She made a mental note not to leave the next one so long as she fought past her revulsion and pulled him out feet first. She dragged him over to the hole and dumped him in so that he was lying on his back, then knelt down to remove the plastic hood and elastic tie.

  She got the shock of her life when he groaned. She jumped back and picked up the spade, poised to strike, but he didn’t move.

  She waited a minute, frozen in the same pose, before relaxing and dropping the spade.

  It’s just gases escaping, she told herself.

  She put the plastic bag and tie into her holdall and took out a facemask, a pair of gloves, a hammer and a cloth. Also inside was a see-through Ziploc bag containing a few hairs and a pair of tweezers. She used the implement to place the hairs on Conte’s body. She wedged two under his fingernails, with others placed on the legs of his trousers. After planting the evidence, she put the gloves on carefully and used the cloth to wipe down the shovel and hammer to remove her fingerprints, then put the rag back in the bag. She then put the mask over her face and picked up the hammer.

  You won’t feel this, but it has to be done.

  She brought the hammer down on his forehead with all her strength, then his cheek, his temple, his lips, eyes, the side of his neck. With each impact, she thought about her very first kill, and the strength of the blows intensified. She was no longer looking at Sean Conte, but Colin Harper, the man who had set her on this path. She’d seen his face last time, too, but she hadn’t beaten the previous victim with a hammer; she had stabbed him repeatedly, instead. She was careful not to use the same modus operandi in case the killings were linked. That was the last thing she wanted. Anyone investigating this crime had to see it as a one-off.

  The main reason for the unnecessary violence was to obliterate all signs of the hood and tie as well as the injection site. Research had told her that death by asphyxiation caused tell-tale petechiae to form, and these little red spots would be a red flag at an autopsy. She wanted the cause of death to look like a savage beating; otherwise, the evidence she was about to leave would be for nothing. The police would establish that the attack was carried out in the shallow grave post-mortem, which would add to the mystery.

  The kick she got out of inflicting the damage was secondary.

  Once his face was reduced to a bloody pulp, she dropped the hammer next to his body and took out his wallet. It contained fifty pounds in cash and several bank cards. She put the money aside and tossed the wallet onto Conte’s chest, then went back to the car and dragged the dog’s corpse by its lead to let it rest with its owner.

  Filling in the hole was a lot easier than digging it, and fifteen minutes later she was done. She threw the spade to one side of the unmarked grave, then took off her paper suit and mask and put them in the holdall, followed by the plastic sheet. Her last act was to remove the gloves she’d spent weeks creating. They were a work of art, but she knew she couldn’t keep them. Reluctantly, they went into the canvas bag, which she zipped closed.

  When she got back to the car, the smell from Conte’s evacuation had almost gone. She fetched a couple of air fresheners from her glove box, the kind designed to hang from the rearview mirror, and tossed them into the boot before slamming it shut. She changed shoes once more and put the other pair back in the bag, then put the holdall on the passenger seat and reversed back to the road. In all the time she’d been there, she’d heard no more than a dozen vehicles pass by, so she felt it safe to cover up the tyre tracks she’d left. She backed out onto the road, then pulled onto the grass verge and walked back into the woods, where she pulled a branch off a tree and used it to scrub the ground the car had passed over.

  With her penultimate task completed, she allowed herself a smile. It would be a nervous few weeks before she would find out whether her latest venture had paid off, but it had all gone to plan. All she had to do now was dispose of the evidence in the holdall, and she would take care of that later in the evening.

  As she drove back to the motorway, she was buzzing. She imagined it was what people who took cocaine felt like after a couple of lines, though she’d never touched drugs of any kind.

  Killing was the only high she needed.

  Chapter 2

  After two in the morning, t
he streets of Manchester were surprisingly busy.

  Ryan Anderson thought so, anyway. It had been a long time since he’d had a Saturday night out in the town, but not a lot had changed in his absence. The scores of teenagers in short skirts and boob tubes had been replaced by even younger girls in shorter skirts, but for the most part, it was the same town he’d visited briefly seven years earlier.

  He walked toward a group clearly celebrating something. There were six women and three men, all wearing fancy dress costumes. One of them was dressed as a French maid, complete with short black outfit and fishnet stockings. Others included a vicar and a cavewoman, and the three young men looked like extras from the Rocky Horror movie. They were all making the most of the heatwave.

  Ryan angled his walk to avoid them, but the maid stepped into his path. She had black hair in a high ponytail, and the costume hugged her trim figure.

  “Hey, handsome,” she said, waving a feather duster at his crotch. “Want me to polish your bed knob?”

  Her friends howled with laughter, and Ryan had to admit that it was a unique chat-up line. However, he had more important things to do. He smiled politely and tried to walk past, but she stepped in front of him once more.

  “What’s wrong,” she mewed as she stroked the two days of stubble on his cheek. “You prefer boys, is that it? Then you’re in luck. Jason here loves his meat injections, don’t you, Jase?”

  One of the boys turned red and averted his eyes, while the rest of group whooped and cheered. “Go on, Jase, you like ’em tall and rugged!”

  Ryan was already bored with the banter, and time wasn’t on his side. He took a big step to the left, and when the maid copied him, he shimmied to the right and past her. She lost her balance as one of her high heels caught in a crack in the pavement, and her friends rushed to help her up as Ryan continued on his way, calls and jeers ringing in his ears.

  A younger Ryan Anderson would have been flattered at the attention from the maid and would have probably accepted her offer, but he’d done a lot of growing up in the last decade. These days he preferred women with a mature outlook, not drunk twenty-somethings who’d take anything with a cock and a pulse.