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  COMFORT ZONE

  A Tale of Suspense

  Stephen Bentley

  Hendry Publishing

  Copyright © 2020 by Stephen Bentley

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, without prior written permission.

  Hendry Publishing

  Philippines

  hendrypublishing.com

  Contact: [email protected]

  Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.

  Cover Design by www.thebookkhaleesi.com

  Edited by S. Lee

  Comfort Zone/ Stephen Bentley. -- 1st ed.

  Dedicated to Zabrina, my wife.

  “Mental illness" is among the most stigmatized of categories.' People are ashamed of being mentally ill. They fear disclosing their condition to their friends and confidants-and certainly to their employers.”

  ―ELYN R. SAKS

  CONTENTS

  PROLOGUE

  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

  EPILOGUE

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ONE

  PROLOGUE

  2017

  She heard the footsteps and guessed the guy was about ten yards behind her. It must be a man. They are too heavy for a woman. Another few hundred yards and she would reach safety – her garden flat home. I swear, no more drug runs for Ben Turner, she thought. This is too risky. Her heart pounded faster. She could hear it thumping in her chest until the sound of her panting blocked it out. She could smell aftershave. It wasn’t her cologne, nor was it her breathlessness she could now hear. Before the lights went out, she thought, Fuck you, Ben!

  When she regained consciousness her first sensation was movement. I’m in the boot of a car. She was unable to see anything. I must be blindfolded. She tried to check for a blindfold but trying to move her arms was futile. Her hands were tied behind her back and she couldn’t move her legs as they too were bound. Then she felt a searing pain in the back of her head and lost consciousness once more.

  Clueless as to time, she knew she was in a strange room. It stunk of urine. In the distance she heard the low rumble of motorway traffic. Her head still hurt, her eyes unable to pierce the gloom, but she could see shadows. The blindfold’s gone. On trying to move, she heard a scuffling noise and knew she was tied to a chair. She heard a door open but was unable to see in the dark. Then she heard footsteps walking away and heard a second door open. A few moments later, a car engine started and the headlamp beams flooded both doorways and the room with bright light, penetrating the darkness. She was forced to shield her eyes from the light by tilting her head to the side, averting her gaze. Curiosity taking over, she scrunched her eyes and made out the figure of a man in front of her. A man dressed in black, wearing a ski-mask. He held a long knife in front of him. He cut the tape across her mouth before running the blade down her cheek. She felt the blood as it ran to the corner of her mouth, giving her the metallic taste of her own blood.

  “Who are you?” she asked in panic. “Is this about the drugs? Here, have them.”

  Removing his mask, the man in black said nothing.

  With his face bathed in the light from the headlamp beam she recognised him. “Oh god, why are you doing this?” She knew then this was nothing to do with the half-kilo of cocaine in her jacket pocket belonging to Ben, her lover.

  Silently, he walked a few feet to a table set against the far side of the room. Picking up the tool set on the table, he turned back to his prisoner. She screamed on seeing the chainsaw. Pulling on the cord, he fired it up, then cut off his victim’s right arm at the elbow. She went into shock. Moments later the man used a blowtorch to cauterise the wound. Still, he said nothing. He cut the ties to move his unconscious captive, carrying her to a makeshift operating table in the middle of the room. Placing her on her back, he forced her mouth wide open with a clamp and using a scalpel, he cut out her tongue. Wiping his bloodied rubber gloves on his black jumpsuit, he reached for a meat cleaver. With one fierce blow to her slim neck, he cut right through skin, muscle, sinew and bone. Her head now rolling on the table, he was satisfied she was dead. Still he said nothing.

  Bloody murder over, he left the room. His car was parked outside the deserted outbuilding, one of the few remnants of an abandoned former airfield close to a motorway twenty miles away from London. He opened the boot of his car, pulled out a black plastic refuse sack and removed his jumpsuit and gloves, placing them inside the sack. Any casual observer would have also seen two other clean jumpsuits and unused sacks.

  TWO

  CHAPTER 1

  Within the next five days, the killer would return with two more abducted young women, the modus operandi identical to the first slaying except for one detail. The third victim died but was not decapitated. Her fatal wound was inflicted with the same scalpel used to cut out their tongues. He slashed the wrist of her one remaining hand after he heard a noise above the room ceiling. Checking the room above by flashlight, and satisfied the noise was caused by rats or some other vermin, he became despondent that he hadn’t followed his usual method of killing.

  Shrugging, he left the building for the final time, first wiping the tools clean to destroy any trace of his fingerprints. He then threw the soiled jumpsuit and bloodied gloves in the last remaining clean sack and drove home to the other side of London.

  Satisfied the man in black had left, a twenty-six-year-old named Charlie Atkins dared come out of hiding. He was homeless and had been for the past ten years. He was a diagnosed schizophrenic with a history of sexual deviancy and convictions for sexual assault.

  He approached the killing room slowly, reassuring himself the killer had gone. Opening the door, he flicked on his lighter to illuminate the room and saw the third victim bleeding out on the table. He was struck by her beautiful blonde hair and long legs. Pushing up her short skirt, he removed her underwear before he lay next to her on the table. He pushed her over onto her side and in a few seconds ejaculated inside her. He rolled her onto her back, so she was now gazing up with glazed lifeless eyes, ripped off her blouse and bra, then bit her breast close to her nipple. Using her underwear, he wiped himself clean. Atkins slept the rest of that night covered with old cardboard packaging in his usual spot in the room above.

  Case Conference Crown Prosecution Service Harlow, Essex

  “We have plenty here to charge Atkins with the three murders. What else do you want? There’s his sperm inside the anus of the last victim and his sperm on her panties. The bite mark is an identical match to him. Not to mention her blood on his clothes,” Margaret Childs, Senior Crown Prosecutor said.

  “I know. I know. But I’ll tell you what’s nagging away at me, shall I?” Detective Inspector Dick Jewell said.

  “Go on.”

  “Why admit to having sex with a dead woman but deny killing her and the other two? Plus, I don’t believe he’s capable of dreaming up this story about the mystery man in black who he insists is the true killer,” the inspector said. “And tell me how he got all three to the abandoned airfield. He has no car and can’t even drive. We know all three women … all respectable professionals … must have been abducted in London, then taken to the airfield. Then there’s the cocaine. Half a kilo on the first victim and small amounts in the pockets of the other two. How is all this connected to drug trafficking? I don’t get it. We are missing something.”

  “That’s for his legal team to ponder, not us. We have ample evidence to charge
him and there’s a realistic prospect of conviction,” Childs said.

  “I suppose so, but these murders have all the hallmarks of ritualistic killings.”

  “No suppose about it, and what about Atkins’ fingerprints all over the weapons: the chainsaw, scalpel, and cleaver? And the blowtorch, let’s not forget that,” the lawyer pointed out.

  “Okay, you’re right. I have checked all the databases for similar killings anywhere in Europe and drawn a blank. I guess we have no choice but to go with what we have,” DI Jewell said.

  “Correct! Anyway, it’s a racing certainty Atkins will end up locked away in Broadmoor subject to a hospital restriction order. He’s a danger to the public and a known schizophrenic.”

  THREE

  CHAPTER 2

  2019

  Hunching down into my favourite navy-blue, woollen overcoat didn’t help. I could still feel the biting easterly cut right through me. The bright sunshine was deceptive. I shuddered, thinking of the warm home I had left behind. The trouble was I had no idea how much longer I could call it home. Not that it seemed like much of a home since my wife died, but at least she insisted I got that old gas central heating boiler replaced with a new one. Just a shame Liz is not around to enjoy the warmth. Walking past the market’s food stalls, I could smell the roast pork sandwiches. The smell reminded me of the Sunday lunches we once enjoyed at home. I was alone with my thoughts on a bitterly cold November day… in Hounslow of all places. There was a fuzzy noise in my head. I found it difficult to concentrate.

  “White noise, I guess. That’s what it is,” I said aloud, causing an old lady to stare at me as if I was crazy.

  Perhaps I am. Revenge… and murder are in my heart, mind, body and soul, and I don’t totally understand why. I sense a part of me is missing, and it isn’t the obvious – Liz, the only woman I ever loved aside from my mother, of course.

  I have no clue as to what is happening. I can feel it, but can’t see it, nor can I identify it. It is there, though. There is SOMETHING splitting me in two. It’s a tug o’ war. Like good on one side. Evil on the opposite side. Good to the left of me, evil to the right… I silently hummed, in tune with the Stealers Wheel song.

  The noise invaded my head, rendering logical thinking impossible. Looking down at my feet I walked on, the rest of me following in robotic movements. I was on autopilot. Roaming around the open market I must have looked like a zombie with sunglasses. Fourteen years of practice at London’s Criminal Bar had taught me west London’s Hounslow Heath Car Boot market was a den of iniquity. Most things, legal and illegal, could be found here – at a price. Stolen goods, drugs, guns, pirated DVDs, sex workers, contract killers and what I was searching for – a bomb maker. You just had to know where to look or who to ask without ending up in hospital, or worse.

  My mind cleared for a while. I could hear the market sounds merging into one cacophony of Babel-like tongues rising then falling like a furious sea lashing a rocky shore. I was faintly aware of the immigrants’ yells and calls as they crashed through my mind’s white noise. The market was a magnet for London’s immigrants, old and new, Somalis and east Europeans counting as the new with Jamaicans, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis the old. The eastern Europeans were of interest to me. I had an inkling I needed a Russian. Not any Russian, but preferably a former Spetsnaz or GRU agent. I say an ‘inkling’ because I knew I was going to kill and I knew who, but I didn’t know why, how, when or where. I didn’t wish to harm anyone but… it was the voice in my head. I had to.

  A voice startled me. “Mister Mercer, what brings you here?” It snapped me out of the fugue on hearing my name spoken in a Cockney dialect.

  “Just looking, Dave.” I recognized Dave Walton as one of my old clients I had defended at the Old Bailey some years back. It seemed like he was now selling smuggled cigarettes at the market, judging by the cartons on his stall table.

  “I know this place like the back of me hand. So, fart and give me a clue and I might be able to point yer in the right direction.”

  I chuckled at the colourful language and decided to seek help. “Russians. Do you know any or where they hang out?”

  “Russian girls?”

  “No, nothing like that. Just Russians.”

  “Gotcha. You need an interpreter.”

  I nodded. How do I explain the inexplicable?

  “Try over there. The stall selling the golf clubs. Don’t buy the snide though. They do ‘ave some genuine but obviously they’re half-inched.”

  I did a quick take on the rhyming slang of “half-inched” meaning pinched as in stolen before smiling. “Thanks, Dave. Golf clubs in winter?”

  “Yeah. Crazy eh? Lots of golf nuts like to go to places like Portugal and Spain in winter, though.”

  “Suppose… how’s the wife these days?”

  “Fucked off. Good riddance, but thanks for asking, Mister Mercer.”

  “Sorry to hear that.”

  “I’m not,” Dave laughed. “Take care now, Mister Mercer. Those Russians are heavy. Don’t fuck with them. Wouldn’t want you to get killed or nuthin’. You’re okay, not like those posh boy barristers.”

  “Thanks, Dave. I’ll take your advice. Dave, one other thing.”

  “What’s that, Mister Mercer?”

  “I hope you’re staying away from railway tracks these days.”

  “Haha! You remember.”

  “How could I forget? You were banged up for a burglary to feed your habit. You told me how desperate you were to get clean as you tried to do away with yourself. I could not help pissing myself when you told me how you lay down on the tracks waiting for the next train to come along. That’s when you delivered the punch line, ‘Trouble was, Mister Mercer,’ you said, ‘the railway porter looked down at me from the platform. He shrugged and said, ‘Mate, you’ve missed the last train.’”

  We both laughed at the memory before Dave spoke again. “You’re all right, you know. As I said, better than those posh boys. They know fuck all about real people.”

  Reminding myself it was partly the “posh boy barristers” that brought me to the market cleared my head. I started for the stall pointed out by Dave, but not before I turned around to speak to him once more as I recalled my erstwhile client was one of the most agile burglars in London. That triggered something, an idea, in my mind.

  “Dave, are you clean these days?”

  “Been clean for years, governor.”

  “Good. I may have something for you if you are interested. It’ll pay well.”

  “Dodgy?”

  “Yes. Give me your mobile number.”

  Dave scribbled it down, thrusting the scrap of paper in my outstretched palm.

  FOUR

  CHAPTER 3

  Arriving at the stall, I saw rows of golf clubs in branded bags set out on display on a stepped table. A young woman who seemed to be a sales assistant smiled. Encouraged, I removed my gloves and took one club out of a bag, then I felt a hand grasp my shoulder.

  “You look? Timewaster or buy?” The voice was deeply accented and sounded Russian, but I was no linguistics expert. Turning to the voice, I was surprised to see a slight, even wiry man about five feet ten inches tall with shoulder length hair. I had been expecting a larger, heavier, and shaven headed man to accompany the voice.

  “I don’t know yet. I’d like to have a proper look.” I felt emasculated by this weak response. Looking around, I noticed the smiling young woman had gone. Drawing a deep breath, I added, “Look. Is there somewhere private we can talk? I have a business offer you may be interested in.”

  The Russian did not answer. He turned towards a large, white VW Transporter van at the back of the stall and whistled loudly. A larger, heavier, and shaven headed man hopped out of the van’s passenger door. He walked to me, grunting something in Russian. Sticking a gun into my back or what I thought was a gun, he prodded and pushed me inside the back of the van.