Free A Reason to Kill by Michael Kerr Page A

him?” Tom asked.
    “Young. In his twenties,” Penny said, her eyes closed as she recalled his features. “He was the same height as Jerry...five-nine. And he was slim, but looked strong. His hair was light brown, receding at the temples. And his eyes were black, somehow not human. I had the feeling he was...crazy
    She gave a full account of everything the intruder had said and done. Of how he had wanted to know when Becks, their dog, was taken for walks; of his changing moods. Of the fact that one minute he could be pleasant and friendly, and the next, threatening and violent.
    Tom showed her the sketch.
    Penny physically shied away from it. Tom could have been holding up a live cobra in front of her.
    “That...that’s him. And the New York baseball cap is Jerry’s.”
    “Did Jerry own a red jacket?” Matt asked. It pained him to hear Penny talking about her husband in the present tense, as though he was still alive. It would take a long time for her to accept that he was no longer among the living.
    “A fleece. He has a red fleece. Why?”
    “The killer was wearing the cap and fleece when I saw him.”
    “Why would he do that?”
    Matt wasn’t prepared to hold anything back. She deserved the full picture. “There were two cops in a van outside the bungalow. I believe he wore Jerry’s stuff to get near to them without causing any alarm. They would have seen him leave the house with the dog and not given him a second look.”
    “Did he...?”
    “Yes, Penny. He shot them both before entering the bungalow. We have a lot of people going through what you’re having to face. I know that that won’t help. But what he did affected a great many lives.”
    “His voice, Penny,” Tom said. “Did he have an accent?”
    She shook her head. “He sounded local. Definitely a southerner.”
    “Anything else?” Matt asked her. “Try and picture him, Penny. Was he wearing a ring or neck chain? Did he have a tattoo?”
    “No...But he had scars on his wrists.”
    “What kind of scars?”
    “As if he had slashed them lots of times,” Penny said, running a finger across her own wrist repeatedly to illustrate what she meant. “Some were just white lines, but others looked fresh. There was a bandage on his left wrist. I don’t recall any jewellery. He wore a dark sweater, blue jeans, and trainers.”
    There was no more.
    “Okay, Penny. Thank you for going through it with us,” Tom said, before stating the time and date and turning off the tape. “And try to feel safe. No one knows where you are, apart from us and your parents. Be sure to tell them to keep your location to themselves.”
    “Why does he do it?” Penny asked, looking from Tom to Matt.
    Tom had no answer for her.
    “You answered that yourself, Penny,” Matt said. “He enjoys it. Some people don’t need a reason to hurt others. They do it because they can, and because it fulfils some sick inner need.”
    After leaving Penny’s room, Tom and Matt went to the clinic’s small cafeteria on the ground floor.
    “That was more than I hoped for,” Tom said, returning from the self-service counter with two cups of coffee. “It confirms there was only one perp involved.”
    Matt propped the crutch up against the wall behind the corner table, grunting as he twisted slightly and his back and side complained. “You can feed that sketch to the media,” he said. “It’ll negate any reason for the killer to try and take Penny and me out. The only threat we were, was that we’d seen him.”
    “I’ll arrange a press conference when I get back, after the super is clued up. He’ll want to be the mouthpiece. The cameras love him.”
    Matt pulled a face. He had no time for their boss, Jack McClane, who he considered to be a lard-arsed pen-pusher, only interested in brown-nosing to the suits on the top floor.
    “I know,” Tom said. “He’s a dickhead. But he can be pointed in the right direction if things are put to him in a way that leaves him thinking