I Want Him Dead

by Anthony Masters

  “But why did you —”

  “I said, please hear me out. My wife’s been shot.”

  “Can you repeat that?” It was as if part of her mind had blanked out and Anne couldn’t understand what he was saying.

  “Shot dead.”

  She found the information impossible to take in. “Where are you?”

  “In a telephone box on the Romney Marsh.”

  “Why there?”

  “Will you help me?”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “The baby needs help. He might not survive all this.” His voice broke and she finally felt his anguish.

  Anne glanced down at the alarm clock. It was after 1 a.m. “Meet me at Raynes Park Station. Can you do that?”

  “Yes. I think so. It’ll take a couple of hours.”

  “Be careful.”

  “I’m very grateful to you.”

  “Then we’ll have to work out what we’re to do next.”

  “Did you say ‘we’?” He sounded all in now.

  “Yes,” she said firmly. “That’s what I said.” The circumstances might have changed, she thought, but the strategy was still in place. It meant everything to her.

  * * *

  Joe had not been able to steal a car that had the convenience of a baby chair so he had wedged Timothy in the niche between the front and back seats. At first he had cried, but wrapped in Joe’s overcoat he slowly settled down and eventually fell into exhausted sleep.

  He drove the Orion at a moderate speed around the M25, praying he wouldn’t be stopped by the bored crew of a patrol car. If he was — he’d be finished.

  Carla’s open eyes were now in his mind all the time and the fact that he had left her alone appalled him, but what else could he have done?

  Timothy moaned but didn’t wake, and Joe wondered what he was going to do when he got hungry for Carla had still been partly breast-feeding him. Still that was a minor consideration compared to their survival.

  Joe drove on, all too aware that his bright future had collapsed around him. What was the point of going to Australia now? With Eamonn in a coma. With Carla dead. How could he manage Timothy on his own? For a while Joe contemplated driving to the nearest police station and giving himself up. It would be so much easier if he did, but Timothy would go into care, for he knew that Carla’s parents were too old to look after him and as there was no one else he continued to drive towards London. Only this morning Anne Lucas had provided him with the opportunity of a lifetime; now, in a matter of hours, he had lost everything.

  The snowfall had been relatively light in Wimbledon, but Anne was still cautious about the road surface as she drove down the hill.

  Her feelings were confused. If this man was Paul’s assassin, what kind of violence had so suddenly caught up with him? Or had he killed again?

  But when Anne pulled up alongside the parked Orion, she was amazed to see Herrón, or Barrington as he now claimed he was called, looking very different from the confident, capable man she had met in the buffet at Hastings Station the previous morning. He was grey with exhaustion, a little pulse she had not seen before beat in his temple and a large patch of dried blood stained his shirt.

  “Are you hurt?”

  His face twisted as if in pain but he shook his head. “It’s — it’s not my blood.”

  “Where’s the baby?”

  “Asleep on the floor.”

  Anne got out, opened the back door and gently picked Timothy up. He snuggled into her coat, making a little grunting sound of satisfaction.

  Joe tried to pull himself together but he stuttered as he spoke, hardly able to bring the words out. “I’m going to drive down the side of the station and abandon the car. Get back in yours and try to keep him warm.”

  More snow began to fall as Anne waited, wondering if Barrington had dumped the baby on her and fled.

  She watched the snow dim the ugly skeletal outlines of the bridge over the railway track, softly, silently falling, increasing her agitation as she held him close to her. Was Barrington coming back? Surely he would. She was holding his baby — or what he had told her was his baby. There was no real way of being sure of anything or anybody in this labyrinth. Anne knew she had kept some old bottles of Peter’s that she had never been able to bear to throw away and they would probably do at a pinch, but would he take to boiled milk? The practicalities of the situation comforted her.

  She cuddled the baby and he murmured sleepily, contentedly. Then to her enormous relief Barrington came back, opened the door and sat shaking in the passenger seat, staring ahead as if he had not seen her.

  Anne switched on the ignition and drove slowly home through the snow, the windscreen wipers squeaking as they tried to cope with the increasing flurries.

  “You and Timothy must get some sleep. I’m going to tell Peter you’re a journalist I know whose wife is ill.” She was determined to be logical, to make commonsense decisions — whatever Barrington had been through.

  “Ill,” he muttered.

  She realized he was in shock and continued to speak calmly, almost casually.

  “Whatever’s happened, we’ve still got to think ahead. Are you wanted by the police?”

  He nodded.

  “Then I suggest we drive down to Dover tomorrow and get on a ferry. There’s a hotel in Normandy I know. We can get some stuff for the baby en route and I can improvise tonight.”

  “Then what?” he muttered, and Anne knew he was dependent on her now, no longer able to think for himself. The heady sense of power and purpose returned.

  “Have you got your passport?”

  “Yes. Tim’s on it, too.”

  “Then that’s all we need. For the moment. Try not to think ahead.”

  Joe Barrington wept in her arms most of the night, and if Anne was afraid that Peter might hear him, she showed no sign of any agitation.

  “I hardly knew her,” he said over and over again, although Anne barely understood what he was saying. “I’d kept so much from her. She never asked. I never told her.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” she told him gently, for she realized that she didn’t want to understand. In fact, the less she knew about this man, the better.

  “I think you should listen to me. You need to know.”

  “I don’t.”

  “Haven’t you guessed?”

  Again she didn’t reply and they lay together without speaking for a long time. As they did so, Anne was reminded of the squalid space where she had once imagined she and this man would have sex. Somehow, in her own comfortable room, the animal lust seemed a long way away.

  After a while Joe Barrington asked, “Why France?”

  She pressed a finger to his lips.

  He might still kill me, Anne thought. Either here, or in Giverny. But she hadn’t the slightest fear, only a feeling of acceptance, of the possibility of justice being meted out.

  “My brother’s dangerously ill. He’s in a coma, but I can’t go to him.”

  “Because the police will be waiting for you?”

  He nodded. “When we met in Hastings yesterday, it was limbo. Will Giverny be the same?” He had a kind of childish dependence.

  “Yes,” said Anne. “That’s exactly what it should be.” She sighed in relief at his acceptance, his signature to their agreement. They wouldn’t talk about the past. They would just let it catch up with them.

  “What about your son?”

  “I’m going to send him to my mother’s for a few days.”

  They were silent, but as if waiting for a signal.

  “Make love to me,” she asked him.

  As he took off his clothes, Anne lay back on the bed and thought of Spindrift and the cramped double bunk. It was about to be exorcised.

  Towards morning, they watched the palest of snow-bound dawns begin to colour the sky through the undrawn curtains.

  Joe Barrington’s body had been lithe and wiry yet unexpectedly soft, and when he had come the sensation
had been the reverse of the sweaty, gasping grapplings she had had with Paul and Anne felt strangely content. There had been nothing of the struggle for supremacy she had fantasized.

  Afterwards, they lay together without speaking, holding hands, the light getting stronger outside.

  Timothy was sleeping in a drawer she had laid on the floor beside the bed. He had been damp, soaked both by the weather and by himself, and earlier she had spent an exhausting hour cleaning and changing and then feeding him. Fortunately she had found a few old baby clothes of Peter’s — even a nappy — and after all her labours Timothy had rewarded her by taking the strange bottle with its unfamiliar contents and once again drifting into deep sleep.

  Despite the fact she hadn’t slept at all, Anne had never felt so alive, so comforted.

  “Hold me,” he whispered.

  “I told you last night.” Anne tried to reassure Peter. “He’s an old friend. A journalist who used to work for The Sunday Times. His wife just died in France and I’m taking him over for the funeral. You don’t mind going to Granny for a couple of days, do you?”

  “He’s got a baby.” He was very agitated.

  “Yes.”

  “What was his wife doing in France?”

  Anne’s powers of invention almost failed her. “She’s — was — an interior designer. On a project in Lille.” Now she was getting as good a liar as Barrington.

  “She was French?”

  “English.” The more he questioned her, the more her ability to reassure him was spent.

  “Can’t I stay here?” He was desperate, clinging to his home rather than to her.

  “On your own?”

  “I’m fourteen.”

  “No way.”

  “Can’t Granny come here?”

  “She’s only just gone back.”

  “I won’t be able to see my friends.”

  “This is an emergency,” she snapped. “Can’t you realize that?” Anne didn’t want to lose patience with him. She knew she was being cruel, but there seemed no other choice. She had to go to France with Barrington. She had to see it all through.

  “Why did he sleep in your room?” asked Peter accusingly.

  “Because he was so upset. He cried all night.”

  “Can’t I come with you?”

  “It wouldn’t work. He’s in too bad a state.”

  “I could be useful,” he said plaintively.

  “Look — it’s only a couple of days. It’s terrible. Like Dad. His wife’s dead.”

  At last Peter backed down. “Was it hit-and-run?”

  “No. Just an accident.”

  “Did she die at once?” he asked almost ghoulishly.

  “I don’t know. He didn’t say. Please, Peter — go to Granny, however boring it is. I’ll only be away a couple of days.”

  “I bet you’ll ring up and say you’re staying longer.”

  Anne winced. “Help me. Please help me.” The fact that she had no further arguments to advance seemed to move Peter into partial acquiescence.

  “I won’t stay with her more than two days,” he warned.

  “OK.” Anne replied wearily. “Don’t you love Granny any more?” she added mawkishly.

  “She smells.”

  “I’m sorry,” she replied. “But she’s old.”

  Peter gazed at her searchingly. “People do bad things when they get old.”

  “What on earth do you mean?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Come on — are you talking about me?”

  “I’m talking about Dad,” he said abruptly.

  When Joe woke, Anne had disappeared downstairs and Timothy, exhausted by the traumatic events of the night, was still sleeping. For a moment he only felt a crushing hopelessness. Then the terrible realization of Carla’s death returned and he turned over, burying his head in the pillow, hearing her voice over and over again. “I love you, Joe.”

  There was Carla who he hadn’t needed and Anne Lucas who he did. But the only way he could protect himself against them was to think about Ruth. Today, Joe suddenly realized, was pay-day. Was he going to let her down, or could he take the risk of making his so-called atonement? Then he realized that whatever the danger he had to go through with it.

  When Anne returned to the bedroom, Joe told her at once, knowing exactly what her reaction would be.

  “I’ve got to go to London. Just for a few hours.”

  She gazed at him in amazement, completely thrown and immediately suspicious, just like she had been when he went down the side of the station to lose the Orion.

  “I’ll be back by lunch time. We could catch an evening ferry.”

  “Are you out of your mind?”

  “I owe somebody money.”

  “This is crazy.”

  “And I’ve got to pay it back.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “It’s got to be done,” he persisted obstinately. It was as if he had one chance of redemption, and if he didn’t take it there wouldn’t be another.

  “The police are looking for you, for Christ’s sake.”

  He gazed back at her woodenly, stubbornly, childishly.

  “You can’t go anywhere, Joe. What is all this, anyway?”

  “You said you didn’t want to know.”

  “We must go immediately. I’ve got Peter fixed up with his grandmother —”

  “I need a couple of hours. Do you think I could borrow your car?”

  “You’re not planning to come back, are you?” Joe could see the angry tears in her eyes.

  “I’m leaving Timothy with you. Isn’t he enough collateral? I’ll be back by midday at the latest. Then we’ll go away together. See if we can find a place to lick our wounds.”

  She was silent, still not believing him.

  “That’s what we want, isn’t it?” he said angrily, and then tried a softer approach. “We need each other.”

  “All right then,” she said at last.

  “You can trust me.”

  “You’ll have to prove it.”

  Freda had returned to the shop at about nine and over a hearty breakfast had switched on the television news, hardly reacting to the item when it appeared.

  “Two bodies were discovered in a remote part of Romney Marsh, Kent, last night. Both had been shot at close range. A man in his twenties was discovered on the road, and in a nearby Volvo was the body of a woman in her mid-thirties. The only survivor, seventy-year-old Michael McMarn, has been taken to Ashford hospital. Police currently have no information on the motive behind the double killing.”

  Freda snapped the television off and went to the kitchen where she prepared herself a large hot chocolate to which she added cream and sugar. Soon she would return to her vigil. Strength would be needed.

  When Joe had gone, Anne did the washing-up, thankful that Peter was watching television in his room. She had heard the news on the radio and some of the events of last night had become a little clearer, but she had no intention of dwelling on them. Whatever he was, whatever he had done, they still had to go to Giverny together. But why had he been such a fool as to go to London? The police could easily pick him up.

  She hung up the tea towel and went into the bedroom to hold Timothy close as she bottle-fed him. Despite the trauma he had so recently suffered, he didn’t seem to mind being so abruptly weaned from his mother’s milk to the ordinary cow’s milk that she had so carefully boiled and cooled. I have to see it through, Anne told herself again. I have to see it through. And if she did? What then? Would she be reborn? She felt a wave of self-loathing.

  Joe Barrington’s nerves felt as if they were going to give way at any minute, but he was still determined to reach Ruth. Miraculously he had withdrawn the cash and placed it in a locker at the station without incident, and gradually his confidence grew as he began to feel like an invisible man, drifting through the crowds, impervious to interference because he was paying his dues.

  Now he was walking past King’s Cross Station and d
own the side road towards the scaffolding and the hoardings, beyond which lay the old sidings. Checking his watch, Joe saw that it was just on half past ten. Would she be there?

  To his amazement he saw Ruth leaning against the hoarding, even paler and scruffier than he had remembered her.

  “You’ve come.” She spoke without expression, casually.

  “Let’s walk.”

  “You don’t want to be seen talking to the likes of me.”

  “Here’s your key.”

  “What’s in that locker? A dead rat?”

  “A grand. As promised.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “Don’t spoil it all for me. I’m going abroad.”

  “You’re on the level?”

  “Have you got a bank account?”

  “Are you joking?”

  “Do you want to go and open one?”

  “No way.”

  “Where are you going to put the money then?”

  “I was thinking of going home for a while. I keep in touch. Drop in occasionally.”

  “You got a drug habit?”

  “Bit of one. Nothing too bad. My old girl’s probably still got my post office book. They never got rid of anything and my room’s just as I left it.” She spoke scornfully.

  “Will your mother pay it in for you?”

  “Do anything for me.”

  “You going to carry on like this?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think that far ahead.”

  He shrugged and Ruth paused, suddenly more appeasing. “If there is cash in that locker, I’ll be grateful.”

  “OK.”

  “Was it you who killed that geezer in the toilet?”

  “You’re breaking the rules,” said Joe. “I’ve got to go now. Be lucky.”

  He didn’t look back as he strode away from her.

  Ruth shrugged, strolled down the street again and then, making sure she was unobserved, she let herself into another cut-away section of the hoarding.

  A boy with dreadlocks got up from the smouldering fire. “Got tired of waiting?” he asked. “I told you he wouldn’t show up.”

  “He brought me the key.”

  “So what? The guy’s some kind of nutter.”

  She shrugged and squatted down in front of the meagre flames, stirring them with a stick.

  Joe Barrington took a taxi to Westminster Cathedral. He hadn’t been in a church for as long as he could remember, but he knew it was the only way he could reach Eamonn, despite the fact that neither of them had thought about God in years. Mam had rarely visited a church but she had had a childish dependence on the Holy Mother, even when she was regularly beating Eamonn.