Clock Face of Ills

by Paige Elizabeth Turner

  ‘He was on the kitchen floor when you found him?’

  ‘Yeah. Pummelled him with CPR, and got his wife, Maria, to call the ambos. They arrived within minutes, did their thing, and pronounced him dead.’

  ‘You know they’re now calling it suspicious?’

  McMaster stretches another smile. ‘Yeah. Can’t see what for. The guy clearly died of a heart attack, right? Seen enough of ’em in my time.’

  ‘Any thoughts of the wife offing him?’

  ‘Not a chance. They’re just a lovely old couple who’d probably planned to share the same grave. Have their arguments, like anyone else I suppose. Catch the right breeze and I cop it all. Usually about their delinquent son.’

  Street pounces on the opportunity. ‘Angelo? I’ve had the pleasure. Didn’t remember whether he’d been there or not.’

  ‘He knew he’d been there,’ Plumpton pipes in, ‘just wouldn’t come clean with it.’

  Street swings her a glare, but elects to not admonish his partner in front of McMaster. ‘I take it you got through to him. Had Angelo been there on the day?’

  ‘Too right,’ says McMaster. ‘Got a black Audi. Parks out the back in a spot visible from my place. He left, er, must have been only minutes before his mother came and got me, right? In fact, there was a yelling session around that time. I didn’t have the breeze so I can’t tell you who or what it involved.’

  XII

  Gillian must discover why Angelo is implicated in McMaster’s property transaction. She obtains his vehicle registration number and will rely on Thornton to provide name and address details. She will have no problem drawing McMaster into her web. He’s already made a move – on their second meeting – inviting her home for nightcaps. She’d declined, but only because she hadn’t then mapped out her objectives. Later, she realised that it is irregular for a married man to invite a woman back to his own home.

  Her opportunity arises when, in a dull corner of the Knight’s Arms, McMaster and Main erupt. Gillian records the shouts, ears tuned to McMaster’s words: ‘We’ll have to kill the prick. Either you arrange it or I will, the only difference being if I arrange it you’ll be going too.’ McMaster passes Main a slip of paper. ‘Here’s a number. Call after 8.00 p.m. You’ll find the person very accommodating. I’ll be expecting confirmation at 8.30. As a legal professional, I’m sure you’ll see this in your best interest.’

  Main crunches his brows. ‘Who’s ‘The Jill’?’

  McMaster leans forward. ‘I’ll tell you who she is. She’s an enforcer who’ll solve our little problem. Russian bird, though she doesn’t sing too sweet. Jilonova or some tennis player name pulled from half the alphabet; took the initials of her given names – friggin’ mouthful if you ask me – to make ‘The’, and then anglicised Jilonova. Da-da—The Jill emerged. Must have thought she was sharing fame with the mono-labelled Madonna or our old pet, Jordan, aka Katie Price. We could use the courts to resolve this, which would, as you know, take months or years; or we can use this business incentivator. Don’t go looking for that in your legal dictionary; let’s just say it’s an informal word for “encourager”.’

  ‘I’m a bloody lawyer. These things take time. I’ll work this Angelo in my own way. We’ll get the contract sorted, but I won’t get involved in bloody underworld shenanigans.’

  ‘Listen Jeff. The only thing you’re involved in is taking instructions from your client – me. Remember the objective? I want that parcel of land. For some reason, that Angelo weasel is stalling this. He’s not going to shaft me out of my rightful purchase. Anyway, I’m sure you’d prefer that over the Law Society investigating your processing a transaction at 90 thou’ under.’ McMaster pushes his point, making it clear to Main that his career, and possibly his life, is in jeopardy.

  Main folds the note. ‘I’ll set up a meeting.’ He flings back his seat and storms from the pub.

  McMaster jabs his phone: ‘And how are you, wonder woman? You’re going to get a call from a solicitor, a prat called Jeff Main – that’s ‘M’ for main, not ‘P’ for pain. The guy’s a loser, right; supposed to be representing me in a property transaction. He’s stuffed up by not noticing his client’s tried to stick me big time. I need to show him I mean business. Discretely. Needs to see the error of his ways.’

  ‘I can handle that. What about a two-for-one offer?’

  ‘Not at this stage. I think our Mr Main will come to the party.’

  The situation alarms Gillian; she is shocked to hear, right in front of her, that a senior police officer is plotting revenge on an adversary. She considers the 8.30 p.m. call. Surely, he won’t take a call like that at work? Nor would he accept it on a mobile, unless he has an unregistered Pay as You Go. There is only one place to receive such a call.

  McMaster broods behind two empty glasses. Gillian treats him a pot of coffee. ‘I hope you’re all right. I saw your friend’s tantrum. Thought you might need a sedative. Wish I could join you, but the boss is watching. Enjoy.’

  McMaster smiles, sculls one cup, drops a tenner on the table, and rushes from the lounge.

  Gillian shadows him through the door.

  She pulls to the edge of a grass verge. Two hundred metres farther along the A44, McMaster slows, turns left into his tree-lined avenue and parks in front of his home.

  Gillian studies the property and calculates that a police inspector’s salary, even bolstered by abundant overtime, would not cover council taxes and upkeep. She cannot imagine McMaster as a descendant of the gentry or privileged family line with inheritance rights to estates and worldly chattels. Some people are born lucky.

  At four in the afternoon, the spring sun dips behind a huge turret, igniting the ground floor windows to a soft yellow hue. Gillian proceeds to a potholed lane skirting the property. Parks and waits. Four hours’ later, with phone and penlight, she creeps through the darkness, back to the main road.

  A carved timber panel: ‘Ashton Hill’, headlines the driveway. Keen to avoid crackling stones, Gillian negotiates the drive’s centre where wild grasses squelch beneath her runners. A sliver of moon trickles over the track while a delicate breeze swishes away her footsteps. After creeping through the double row of cedars, she negotiates a huge expanse of lawn and passes a trickling fountain heralding the memory of Lord Stevenson. Eight-twenty-five. Window by window she takes in the property’s sprawling facade. Homes of such grandiose proportion are the mainstay of society’s wish-lists.

  The double-glazed windows dull the electronic shrill of McMaster’s landline telephone. Gillian duck-walks the final four metres to the front of the house, thankful that McMaster has paved over the courtyard of crunchy white stones. A silhouette shuffles behind a curtain. Gillian creeps up to the sash window and peers through a leadlight pane. Inside, McMaster smiles as if he’s just won a hard-fought divorce. He opens an antique cabinet, removes a crystal decanter, and pours a half glass of golden spirit. Guess he’s in for the night.

  Inching down the terrace steps, she clips a cast-iron plant stand, knocking it to the ground. Cusses herself. Light spreads from an upper window: a female silhouette on canvas. The front door clicks open. McMaster.

  Gillian darts across the lawn, hurdles over dwarf rose bushes and a box hedge. She twists, turns and zigzags, sees no one chasing, and then slows, confident she’s shaken her pursuer. Wrong. A shot rings out. Four follow, in two-shot bursts. She identifies the crack as a small pistol, gleaned from firearms training taken as an adjunct to her Investigator’s course.

  She dives to the ground. Minimise the target. Far across the lawn, a figure stands beneath the portico, bathed in light, arm extended, sweeping to fix on his prey. The upstairs curtains swish back into place. Must be the wife. Too bad. What she can’t see won’t hurt her.

  Gillian slithers along the ground in a commando crawl, scraping elbows and knees until she reaches the stand of trees. Hunched over, she waddle
s along the rutted lane, slowing only after fathoming McMaster too inebriated to walk beyond his front steps. Perhaps that was his reason for using the firearm. Or was it an exhibition of supremacy? She slumps into her car, pulls in a lungful of breath, and calls Thornton. Arranges a meeting at the nearby McDonald’s, under cover of high-calorie snack seekers and methadone-dependant youth desperate for a Caramel Super Sundae sugar hit.

  Slouched behind a table alongside the drive-through, she spills the evening’s events: ‘You won’t believe what I’ve just been through. There’s serious shit going on. McMaster’s hooked up with a lawyer, but I haven’t determined what they’re up to, other than to say someone is hampering a land settlement. I have identified a stumbling block as a person known as Angelo. Anticipating important info, I followed McMaster home. Shit, you should see the place. No straight copper could afford that.’

  Thornton is aware of McMaster’s property holding. That is why he had authorised enquiries to establish its current value, but stopped short of researching history of acquisition.

  ‘I thought we’d agreed that his home is out of bounds.’

  Gillian squirms. ‘Yes, but I heard him arrange a call for 8.30 p.m. When he didn’t return to his office, I knew he’d take it elsewhere. I had to follow him. I only realised we were at his home after I saw the ‘Ashton Hill’ sign. It would have been counterproductive to have just driven off.’ Gillian praises herself for the impromptu explanation. She continues: ‘I sneaked into his property and approached the front door. I hoped for an invite for a drink. That’s his form, as you know – he’s already put it on me. I lost my nerve and turned around to leave. It was dark. No outside lights. I knocked over a plant stand and then high-tailed it across the front lawn. Next thing, I’m dodging fucking bullets.’

  Thornton grins, not at her predicament, but at her graphic account. He considers Gillian’s fictional embellishment. He will not accept McMaster firing live rounds at a person – even if that person were trespassing.

  The courts had, in January 2000, in the case against Anthony (‘Tony’) Edward Martin, discarded the long-standing legal maxim – ‘A man’s home is his castle’ – of an owner having the right to protect his home. The full weight of the law once crushed those who sought to breach the code. But no longer. Martin was sentenced to life imprisonment (later reduced by appeal) for the shooting death of a youth who was burgling Martin’s home. Many now see offender’s ‘rights’ surpass those of respectable, law-abiding citizens.

  ‘You’re saying McMaster shot at you?’

  ‘Yes, I am. I know when I’m being shot at, although it’s not something I experience on a daily basis, and not something I thought I’d encounter when I took this on.’

  ‘You were running across the lawn. How can you positively identify McMaster as the shooter?’

  Gillian ponders. ‘When you put it that way, I can’t be a hundred percent. But I saw him bolt out of the front door. I turned, and then came the shots. I couldn’t justify hanging around to get the serial number of his fucking weapon just so I could satisfy a later enquiry.’

  ‘Leave it with me.’

  That’ll mean the boys’ club cover-up, Gillian reasons, too afraid to vocalise her barb. She then details the Knight’s Arms conversation, particularising excerpts of McMaster’s and Main’s heated discussion, and confirming that the ebullient young solicitor is the go-between for a contract killing on ‘Angelo’.

  The underworld is full of Angelos.

  Satisfied he’d both reassured Gillian and exhausted her material, Thornton calls his office and orders a search of the Solicitors’ Practice Register for the name ‘Main’. The righteous Jeffrey John Main has a clean sheet; no traffic violations, no radical university activisms, no drug use, and no flags for suspicious activities. The absence of adverse data leaves Thornton with nothing to link Main to criminal connections. He suggests Gillian probe further if she intends to darken a solicitor’s character.

  Thornton’s only sure bet is that McMaster can never be excluded from any form of illicit dealings.

  XIII

  It had been practical to change her name to Jill.

  Treena Harriet Engelada Krusenjilova tired of the questions: ‘Please spell that for me’; ‘How do you pronounce that?’ It happened every time she introduced herself; and it happened every time she had to complete a form, government documentation, or restaurant booking.

  Jill grew up under the hard hand of military-devoted Bulgarian parents. She was the youngest of five siblings and the only girl. Instead of Barbies and crocheted teddies, she played with plastic rifles and hand guns. Upon unwrapping Christmas and birthday gifts of traditional female companion toys, she’d retreat to her bedroom and later emerge with transformed jungle warriors – their faces coloured with crayon, fatigues hand stitched from khaki handkerchiefs, and weaponry fabricated from ice cream sticks in paint-by-numbers watercolour.

  By the time she entered Botevgrad Senior School, Jill was fully indoctrinated into military protocol, authority and self-preservation. She regularly exploited her repertoire of combat and defensive strategies to quell snide sniggers and name calling. Jill was not a cover girl – and never would be. A pubescent estradiol imbalance flattened her forming curves, morphing her school-champion callisthenic figure into a granite block of weightlifting behemoth. Capitalising on nature’s flaw, she won three consecutive Bulgarian National Powerlifting Championships and two European shot-put gymkhanas.

  In school’s final year, her world collapsed with her parents’ decision to join the former Soviet Bloc avalanche into Great Britain. Adapting to the new country and language was not easy. She evaded school and fell from the pinnacle of her parents’ expectations. Successive failed job applications confirmed her inability to secure employment.

  Jill presents an intimidating aspect, her vast bulk overshadowing her taller than average five-foot-nine. Never has she rewarded a male with heart palpitations, although a few non-conformist men express desire for sexual debaucheries that Jill would never consider. For the past five years, she has experienced more comfort and understanding from her own genus than any male could provide. At twenty-five-years-old, the only male relationships Jill enters are professional. And her profession is contract killer.

  To describe how Jill joined the exclusive band of contract killers – as one of the inaugural female professionals – would be a project of comprehensive commentary. For this exposé, her association with DI McMaster rewinds seven years to her first month in England when she attended an employment interview for a Worcestershire police district interpreter. The interview was held in McMaster’s precinct, where the comings and goings of police and criminals flowed with the same regularity as traffic on the M25.

  As she detailed Bulgarian life, McMaster found affinity with Jill’s weapon proficiency and ability to identify black market firearms – a market that McMaster held, for various reasons, close to his heart. It was during that account when a suspect being led through the precinct broke free from his escort and rushed McMaster, grabbing him from behind in a stranglehold. ‘You bastard,’ he uttered before Jill rushed the attacker, dropped to her hands, and in a whirlwind sweep derived from karate or Thai boxing, swept the assailant’s feet from the floor. McMaster swayed on the toppling seat while the drug dealer he’d arrested months earlier, lay sprawled on the floor with Jill sitting above him with her arm across his throat.

  McMaster’s appreciation founded a close relationship from the incident. So when he decided to ‘encourage’ Angelo Caruso, Treena Harriet Engelada Krusenjilova materialised as the obvious candidate.

  She lumbers into the offices of Craggill, Weston and Rubenstein. Fronts reception. Whispers: ‘Jeff’s expecting me.’

  Directed to Main’s office, she props in the doorway.

  Main bolts upright. ‘Er, hello. Jill? Shall I call you Jill?’

  ‘Call me what you want
.’

  Main flushes and reclines in his chair. ‘You’re here to assist with a complex file?’

  Jill scans a wall of certificates and diplomas. Shoots her gaze back to Main. ‘I don’t know how I can help. I thought I am here about an inheritance.’ She responds with caution, offering no scope for a third-party to identify the source of her contacts and instructions. Always vigilant, she fears bugs, scanning devices and concealed audio-visual equipment planted to capture incriminating material that might later glow in vibrant colour on a high definition screen in the Royal Courts of Justice. And then there’s the Arrest Warrants. With that in mind, she suggests relocating to safe territory: ‘I don’t know about you, but I’m overdue for breakfast. How about we hop over the road for a snack and drink?’

  Main agrees, pleased to remove his personal dealings from the office. ‘There’s a spot down the road – makes a good meal and the cider’s okay.’

  They saunter into the Knight’s Arms, the pairing of such physical compatibility it appeared a successful union of an offbeat dating service or hillbilly matchmaker. Main defers to Jill’s table selection which overlooks the entry foyer and offers line of sight to the bar and rest rooms. Her bulky jacket balloons her to Michelin Man proportions. It is oversize for a reason: to accommodate tools of trade.

  Main returns from the bar with two pints of non-alcoholic cider. ‘Sorry. Don’t drink while I’m working. Can’t have the boss sniffing around for whoever’s trashing his office with alcohol breath.’