Midnight's Door Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Also by ROBERT F BARKER

  Free Download

  Dedication

  Author Note

  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

  CHAPTER 40

  CHAPTER 41

  CHAPTER 42

  CHAPTER 43

  CHAPTER 44

  CHAPTER 45

  CHAPTER 46

  CHAPTER 47

  CHAPTER 48

  CHAPTER 49

  CHAPTER 50

  CHAPTER 51

  CHAPTER 52

  CHAPTER 53

  CHAPTER 54

  CHAPTER 55

  CHAPTER 56

  CHAPTER 57

  CHAPTER 58

  CHAPTER 59

  CHAPTER 60

  CHAPTER 61

  CHAPTER 62

  CHAPTER 63

  CHAPTER 64

  Further Reading

  Death In Mind Chapter One

  Death In Mind Chapter Two

  DIM Chapter Three

  Free Download

  About The Author

  MIDNIGHT’S DOOR

  ROBERT F BARKER

  Kindle Version first published in 2019

  Copyright@Robert F Barker 2019

  All Rights Reserved. No part of this book

  may be reproduced in any form other than that in

  which it was purchased, and without the

  written permission of the author.

  Your support of authors’ rights is appreciated.

  All characters in this book are fictitious.

  Any resemblance to actual persons,

  living or dead is purely coincidental.

  By Robert F Barker

  The DCI Jamie Carver Series

  Last Gasp (Worshipper Trilogy Book # 1)

  Final Breath (Worshipper Trilogy Book #2 )

  Out Of Air (Worshipper Trilogy Book # 3)

  Family Reunion

  Other Titles

  Midnight’s Door

  Have you discovered Last Gasp and The Worshipper Trilogy yet?

  Get a free copy of, THE CARVER PAPERS, - The inside story of the hunt for a Serial Killer, - as features in LAST GASP

  Click on the link below to find out more and get started

  http://robertfbarker.co.uk/

  DEDICATION AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  This book is dedicated to all those who work ‘on the door’ and whose job it is to put themselves in the way of trouble, just so that others can enjoy a night out without having to worry about the dangers they may otherwise face. Their role demands patience, diplomacy, restraint - physical and mental - and an impressive grasp of psychology. My gratitude goes to those with whom I had the pleasure to work and to train, and who showed me that even thirty years policing doesn’t teach you everything. For the difficult work you do and for your sheer professionalism, you have my utmost respect.

  My thanks also to Nikki, Sue, Caroline and Geoff for your help, encouragement and support in getting this book ready for publication, and to Steve, Kath, Raj and Daniel for your advice, expertise and professional knowledge in helping me produce a story which, hopefully, bears some relationship to the reality of what goes on, ‘on the door’. Finally, my special thanks to my good friend and former colleague, Terry Oates, through whose work I first became acquainted with the likes of those such as Danny Norton, and whose experience of working with and training licensed Door Supervisors proved invaluable in helping me refine many of the details.

  Author Note

  For many years, Mr Smith’s nightclub at Warrington was renowned as Northern England’s premier dance venue. Clubbers travelled from far and wide to enjoy the buzz and excitement generated by its heady mix of music, dance - and other pleasures. During this period, when the town’s club scene was at its height, I worked as a Detective Inspector in charge of the local CID. We were always busy. Elements of the story that follows were inspired by incidents that occurred around those times. Some years ago, the iconic building that housed the club was destroyed in a fire. For the purposes of this story, it still stands.

  Prologue

  The girl stands in the full glare of the car's headlights, like a stage performer under spotlights. She is crying constantly now, and the rough ground attacking her bare feet makes it ever harder to meet her tormentor's demands. All around is darkness. The nearest houses are those they passed just before he turned off the main road, a good half mile away. And though she can hear, clearly, the music coming from the car, she knows it is not so loud as will carry that far. Even if it were, the residents are probably used to their peace being shattered by those who make use of long, lonely lanes at night. Couples. Adulterers. Doggers.

  Cold now in the flimsy black dress that is fine for clubbing but not the open-air in late-autumn, she winces as something sharp digs into the sole of her foot, the left one this time. Again she wishes she had kept her shoes on instead of discarding them for fear of breaking an ankle. Even if she could, she does not need to look to know that her soles are cut and bleeding. But despite the pain, she does not break from her task. She dare not. Since she began, she has stopped, twice, to try to plead with him. Each time her reward was a stinging blow, first to her buttocks, then the back of her thighs. And though she cannot see what he wields in his hand, the bite as it lands and the swishing noise it makes as it flies through the air tells her it must be long, and thin. Both times she felt it she let out a scream, which itself was painful. He must have crushed something, bone or cartilage, when he first turned on her, gripping her throat like a vice as he finally revealed why he had brought her here. As well as the strikes to her backside, the interruptions bring on further tirades, renewed demands that she do as he tells her, '-And stop that snivelling.'

  By now, black rivulets of mascara on her cheeks and chest mark the flow of her tears. They are driven not just by pain. It has taken a while, but she now realises the full horror of her predicament. And for all that she is hurting in several places, she knows now they are just the beginning. Barring a miracle, worse is to come. Far worse.

  Like all her friends, she has been party to the debates concerning what, exactly, the so-called Club-Killer does to his victims. Speculation has ranged between brutal rape followed by strangulation, to bloody imaginings involving the sorts of methods favoured by the type the media revel in labelling a 'Ripper.' No one knows for certain of course. So far the police have been selective in the details they have released. The result is that in the safety of the clubs, or at home, at work, there are some who delight in dreaming up and giving voice to tortures of the most appalling kind imaginable. Right now the girl wishes she had never listened to any of them, and does her best to
focus on the one means through which she hopes she may still avoid the fate she dare not even think about.

  At the beginning, he said that if she does well, he may spare her. The part of her that is still capable of rational thought knows this is a lie. Having revealed himself, he will not, could not let her live - whatever promises she makes about not going to the police. But right now, most of her brain is not operating rationally. Right now it is ready to latch onto anything that holds out hope, however slim, she may come out of this alive.

  The trouble is that, while the particular piece of music coming from the car is one of her favourites, she is finding it impossible to respond the way he is demanding. Sure, on a club night, on the dance-floor, she only needs to hear the piece's distinctive opening riffs and she is into it. Within seconds, the sensuous gyrations and provocative thrusts she practises at home in front of the mirror are in perfect syncopation with the music's seductive rhythms, its intoxicating, driving beat. When she is in that place, others stop to watch.

  But right now, pain and the fear that is threatening to turn her legs to jelly make it impossible to reproduce the fluidity of movement that, on a club night, draws admiring comments. Instead, her movements are jerky, uncoordinated. The rushing noise in her ears is making it difficult to even hear, never mind pick up on, the music's rhythms.

  Lifting a hand to shield her eyes from the headlights' glare, she tries pleading with him once more.

  'I, I can't,' she whimpers. 'It- It hurts. My feet-'

  'Yes, you, CAN.'

  His snarling response is accompanied by yet another strike - to her lower back this time. Again she screams as pain she can only liken to being branded with a red-hot iron ripples through her. Desperate to avoid further punishment, she draws a gasping breath, and renews her efforts to keep up with the music. But she is aware that the longer the torture goes on, the harder it is becoming to control her movements, making it ever more unlikely she will meet his demands. In which case, what?

  As if reading her thoughts, he snaps at her. 'Come on. You can do better than that. I've seen it, remember? You do it for THEM don't you? Well now you can do it for ME. Come on. DO IT.'

  Head spinning, the girl flexes her arms and gyrates in a way she hopes is a passable imitation of her usual performance. She does not need what happens next to tell her it is not.

  She feels his hand, balling in her long hair. Without warning he pulls her head back, exposing her throat to the stars. In the dark she had not even seen him slip round behind her. Crying out in agony, she staggers back, going with the pull. Fearing what may be coming next, her instincts are to remain on her feet, whatever happens. On the ground she will be helpless, even more at his mercy.

  'PLEASE,' she cries. 'DON'T.'

  Then she feels him, right next to her, pushing in close. His rasping breath is on her cheek, bristly stubble rubbing against the smoothness of her skin. She is aware of a musky-sweet smell. It comes from his aftershave. She has smelled it before.

  In a voice that is quieter, almost a whisper now, he says, 'You're just a fucking whore, aren't you? What are you?'

  Her first instinct - survival - is to agree with him. 'I- I'm a fucking whore.'

  'That's right. I bet you get off thinking about men's cocks, growing as they watch you. That's what does it for you, isn't it? Thinking about men's cocks. Growing. I'm right, aren't I? TELL ME I'M RIGHT.'

  'OWW.' She cries again as his grip on her hair tightens. But some vestige of pride still remains. 'NO. I'm not like that. I just like to dance.'

  'Yeah, I know. Especially when you know you're surrounded by cocks. You like cock don't you? Well here, like THIS.'

  Grabbing her flailing wrist with his free hand, he yanks it back and down. She gasps as she feels him, right next to her.

  'TAKE IT, BITCH,' he yells in her ear. 'You know you want to.'

  Trembling with fear, fighting against the gag reflex that just the thought of touching him brings on, she dare not resist as he guides her hand to him.

  'That's it. Harder. SQUEEZE it.'

  Sobbing now, close to collapse, she does as instructed as his hand wraps itself round her wrist and forces her to engage with him in the way he craves. There is a flurry of movement as his body writhes in her grasp. As he pulls even harder on her hair, she feels the warm spillage on her fingers, the back of her hand. At the same time he lets out a groan.

  'Uunngghh.'

  But in that moment, his reflex response causes his grip on her hair to loosen. Just for a second, he lets go altogether. In that second she sees her chance, the only one she may have. She takes it. Springing forward, she tries to force her aching legs, her torn feet, to carry her away somewhere, anywhere, into the surrounding dark.

  She manages only a few short metres before something soft - a scarf? - loops round her neck and yanks her backwards, pulling her off her feet. She lands, hard, on her back in the dirt, the force of it spilling the air from her lungs. Before she can replenish it he is on top of her, crossing his hands in front of her face and pulling the two ends of the garotte in opposite directions, constricting her arteries and windpipe. Her mouth opens and closes repeatedly, but in vain. Astride her, and with the car's headlights behind, he is silhouetted against the night sky. Black spots begin to flash across her vision. Some memory tells her they are the first signs of oxygen starvation.

  But even as she feels her strength draining away, his grip on her changes. Clamping the ends of the scarf in one hand he lifts up the other so she can see what is there. A knife, like ones she has seen in films and on television but never in real life, flashes before her eyes. She tries to scream but the constriction round her throat renders it silent.

  With his full weight on top of her, she can only watch, helpless, as he swaps his grip on the knife's handle so it now points down, rather than up. At the same time he winds the garotte round his wrist, twisting the material so it tightens further round her throat.

  As her eyes began to flutter and the blade plunges downward, her last thought is how she now knows the answer to the debates about what he does.

  They were all right.

  CHAPTER 1

  Saturday. Late Evening

  In the four years I’ve been running the door at Midnight’s, I've only ever been late for work once. Sod’s law, it was the night all the stuff that had been brewing for months kicked off.

  By ‘stuff’ I mean the problems with the Russians, the attacks on the girls, the thing with Vicki. Especially the thing with Vicki. And by ‘late’, I mean really late. It was close to half-eleven when I finally pulled onto the car park at the back that used to belong to a carpet warehouse but since they went bust is now up for grabs.

  I’ve gone over what happened that night many times since, and still can’t say if my being late made any difference. But I can’t help thinking that if I had been there from the start then maybe, just maybe, things may have turned out differently. At the very least I’d know who to blame for what happened after - me.

  The reason I was late was because I’d stayed too long visiting my Dad at Stoke and got stuck coming back up the M6 Northbound when a lorry-fire turned it into a car park. And I only stayed at Dad’s because he was in a bad state when I got there and it took longer than I expected to settle him before I could get away. At one stage I was thinking I might have to stay, but he eventually calmed down enough that I was happy to leave him.

  I only mention all this because it was while I was sitting in the fast lane going nowhere that I got the call from Thailand. And while it wasn’t directly relevant to what happened that night, it would play its part later.

  The call came from Stevie B, and if I said it came out of the blue, it would be an understatement. Two-and-a-half years to return a phone call has to be something of a record.

  It started with a voice I recognised saying, ‘Is that you Danny?’

  ‘Who’s this?’ I learned long ago never to let on until I know who it is. But I was already placing the
heavy scouse accent.

  ‘It’s Stevie, Danny, Stevie B.’

  ‘I thought you were in Thailand?’

  ‘I am. That’s where I’m ringing from. How you doin'? How’s the team?’

  I didn’t answer straight away because I was trying to remember whether the tariff I was on included free calls from abroad, or if the call was costing me. Eventually I said, ‘I hope you’re ringing to tell me you’ve got that hundred you owe me?’

  ‘Better than that, Danny. Guess what I’m looking at. Right now.’

  Stuck on the M6, with Eric, my number two, ringing me every quarter hour to update me on the Agnes situation, I wasn’t in the best of moods for guessing games.

  ‘A beautiful sunset? A lady-boy? A wok? Stevie, you’re six thousand miles away and I haven’t seen you or your dumb-nuts mate, Shane, since you both buggered off to Thailand with my hundred quid. How the hell do I know what you’re looking at?’

  ‘It’s Ged Reilly, Danny.’

  Right then it was as well I wasn’t going anywhere because I locked up. I gripped the wheel so hard my wrists hurt. A thousand thoughts invaded my not-so-large brain. All I could say was, ‘Ged Reilly?’

  ‘Honest to God, Danny. He’s right here in front of us, trussed up like a turkey ready for the oven. What do you want us to do with him? You want us to-’

  ‘WHOA STEVIE, you-’ For a second I couldn’t get the words out. I’m like that sometimes. I get tongue-tied when I’m flustered. Not like my Uncle Kevin. I never saw Uncle Kevin lost for words. Not even the night my Aunty Betty stuck a knife in his ribs. ‘You bloody bitch,’ Uncle Kevin said. ‘That was a new shirt. And it was from Next.’ Then he fell down and we didn’t see him again for two months, or Aunty Betty for six.

  One of the things that’s different about my line of work is that to do it properly you have to make people believe that you’re not just hard, but sufficiently borderline-psycho that punters won’t want to mess with you. The trouble is, people you think would know better actually fall for it. People like Stevie B and his mate, Shane, who if he ever took up acting, would be a shoo-in for Lennie in that great Steinbeck novel, Of Mice and Men.