by Michael Kerr
“I’ll be in the squad room,” Ryan said, and ended the call.
Sometimes...A lot of the time, the system didn’t work. There were too many breakdowns in communication. Phil Newton and Dag Hubbard did not yet have a copy of the photograph that had been taken of Valentino Pavlovka at the murder scene at Snaresbrook, or they would have recognised him as being the supposedly still hospitalised survivor. He was still just D3 to them; an anonymous member of Gorchev’s mob.
Julie went up to her office. Ryan stayed in his car for a few minutes, smoked a cigarette with the window wound down, and thought about the chain of events that had played out since Tyler had shot Cheryl Webster, Stuart Rhodes, Paula Kay, and Veronica Kirkwood. The body count was stacking up, and the investigation now involved both Russian and Italian crime lords. Had it not been for Anne Stark being unable to accept rejection, and seeking Tyler out to murder Paula Kay, then the SCU would have been working other cases. The bloody consequences were still playing out. How many more people would die before it was over? It was never over. The names of the perpetrators and victims changed, but it was never, ever over.
Ryan climbed out of the Vitari and flicked the cigarette end away. It struck him that he was part of a growing industry, that existed only because of violence and death. He had watched the Trooping of the Colour once, and was amused by the followers who, armed with brooms and shovels, cleared away the steaming horse shit that was left in the animals’ wake. He now saw a correlation between what he did, and shit shifting. He was part of a large operation, whose work only began after the deed was done. And it was not lost on him that clearing cases was not as straightforward as shovelling shit, and was by far the dirtier of the two jobs.
There was some good news waiting for him in the squad room. A violent rapist who targeted widows in sheltered accommodation had been arrested by two of his officers. The perp’s description and his MO had been circulated to superintendents of all private and council run homes that catered specifically to the elderly.
Raymond Candy dressed smart, and was a smooth operator. Old people, especially women, were bowled over by his charm and good manners. Armed with a clipboard and a fake ID that backed up his claim of being a benefits officer, he would inveigle his way into homes by purporting to be calling to ensure that pensioners were claiming and receiving their full entitlement of allowances. The allure of a few extra pounds a week was usually enough to get him past the doorstep.
True to form, Raymond had accepted the offer of a cup of tea from Ellie Wilcox, an eighty-year-old spinster, who invited him in on the strength of his winning smile, and the conviction that there might be hundreds of pounds in arrears to be had, that she had not known she was eligible to receive. Raymond had plenty of leaflets, and the practised patter of a snake-oil salesman.
Leon Costello lived in the same unit as Ellie, at number eight, just three doors away in same single storey block. Leon was the superintendent, and took his job seriously, watching over the residents with all the due care and attention that heedful and wary kindergarten teachers would afford toddlers in their charge.
It was fortuitous that Leon was standing at his window and saw the tall man walk up to Ellie’s door. The description given to him by the police was spot on. Over six foot tall, thinning sandy hair, sharp features, smartly dressed, and carrying a clipboard.
Leon called the number that was included on the flyer he had been given, reported the sighting and circumstances to the copper who answered, then hung up and, armed with a master key and a seven iron from his golf bag, let himself into Ellie’s to find the man knelt on the floor between the dazed old lady’s legs, with his pants down to his knees.
When officers arrived at St Anne’s Homes, their job had been done. Leon was in Ellie’s lounge, pouring her a cup of tea, and Raymond Candy was waiting for them in the hall, trussed up with a plastic-coated washing line, and bleeding profusely from a deep cut to the back of his head. The now red-bladed golf club was leant up next to the front door. All the forensics and technology hadn’t been able to stop Candy. As in many instances, it was the alert reactions of a citizen that resulted in the crime being solved. The description given by victims, and the subsequent flyers created from a police artist’s sketch had led to the rapist’s downfall. It was still with the public’s assistance and information received, that most cases were closed satisfactorily.
Ryan drank coffee and pondered on Tyler. Where the hell was he? How many different disguises and assumed identities did the man use? A small voice piped up and reminded Ryan that there were an embarrassing number of unsolved murder cases taking up a lot of cabinet space. Some old, cold cases got solved, as new techniques – mainly DNA retrieval – caught out killers who had had no reason to worry about sweat, semen, saliva or blood, back when they had committed their crimes. The smarter ones had worn gloves, and were intelligent enough to know that as well as fingerprints, leaving the pattern of a shoe sole, or the tread marks of a vehicle’s tyres was enough to convict them. Tyler was cunning, capable and very knowledgeable. He was a child of the modern computer age, and used his ability to shed identities at will. Having forensic evidence was still of no practical help without a suspect to take samples from and make comparisons. Maybe they would get lucky. So far, they had no useful leads. They were relying on him making a mistake, and Ryan thought that was as likely as him trying to catch a fly with chopsticks. They had to locate him, or calculate his next move and be waiting for him to make it.
* * *
Andy was sure that he had made a serious mistake. Faith had given him the impression that his arrival had been the most significant event in her whole pathetic life. He didn’t move or say anything. Just faced the woman who had him in her sights. She appeared to be very calm and collected. The shotgun was steady as a rock; the end of the wooden stock wedged in her hair-smudged armpit, with the smooth walnut compressing her melon-sized right breast. For such a roly-poly little woman, there was a certain balanced grace in the stance that she had adopted, with her dimpled left knee slightly bent, to no doubt give her a stable footing against the recoil that firing the weapon would generate.
He should have been fearful, but felt strangely calm and centred. Knew that should the woman pull the trigger, then he might see the blast, but would probably have no knowledge of being propelled backwards off the chair. A twelve gauge at that range was going to blow his head apart, or pulverise his heart. Death was no big deal. He believed in nothing. It was how you went that counted, and he could not envisage making old bones, or dying in a hospital bed of some disease that was as mean and dispassionate as himself. Better to go out explosively, while still having a lust for life.
Faith lowered and broke the shotgun. Picked out the cartridges with finger and thumb and put the weapon on the work top next to her.
Andy nodded. She had graphically illustrated that she could be trusted with his life. He appreciated the method she had employed to convey her sincerity and impress him. It was high drama, and very effective. She had chosen him over any moral misgivings that she had obviously discounted. This was a woman who knew what she wanted, and would not let the fact that he was a wanted killer get in the way.
He beckoned her to him, and moved his chair back. He was as hard as he could ever remember being, and Faith needed no encouragement to stand astride him and lower herself onto his throbbing member.
It was the next morning, after they had showered together, that Faith suggested he dye his hair. She had bought dark brown L’Oreal semi-permanent hair colour shortly after Percy had died, but had never got round to using it on her own greying locks.
Andy shaved his beard off, but left the moustache. He sat on a chair in the kitchen while Faith applied the colour to his hair, eyebrows and moustache. The result was amazing. With his contacts in, and wearing a pair of the dead farmer’s spectacles, he could barely recognise himself. The transformation was astonishing.
Over a week later, having purchased equipment from differ
ent suppliers over a wide area, Andy was able to produce all the documentation necessary to become John Kelly. Hacking into various departments allowed him to engineer a rock solid past. To all intents and purposes, he was John Kelly, and had all the paperwork needed to stand up to stringent scrutiny.
Faith was besotted by him. He was the stuff of her dreams; a younger man who she could live out her most wanton fantasies with. She decided to lose some weight and take more interest in her appearance in general. She coloured her own hair, and was delighted when ‘John’ told her that she looked ten years younger. After a life of near servitude to Percy, she was now totally liberated. The frequent and satisfying sex with John was beyond any expectation she had ever harboured, and there were no rules or restrictions. Many of the things they did were new to her. She had never fellated Percy, or experienced a man’s tongue inside her, or contemplated engaging in bondage, and the – so far – mild sadomasochistic practises they indulged in. The bedroom now reeked of perspiration and semen. She could have opened the window, or sprayed the room with air freshener, but was turned on even more, if that were possible, by the combined odour they produced. The scent of sex was highly stimulating and intoxicating.
It was a new and strange experience for Andy. He had found someone who he actually trusted, to an extent. He had known after the shotgun incident that this desperate woman was totally obsessed with him, in the way that some teenage girl would pass out at a concert given by the pop star of her dreams. Faith was absolutely head-over-heels in love with him. And to be adored without reservation, and despite his faults, was something he had never known. Gemma had been attracted to him. For a short while he had wondered if, given time, they might have become more. But fate had decreed that he would never know. On reflection, he did not believe that the young, blonde relocater would have ever been psychologically ready to know him for what he was.
They sat together on the settee and watched the news. He, a smooth-skinned and muscular man, and she, a tubby, older woman, past her prime. They did not wear clothes in the house, and constantly fondled one another, and frequently copulated in any position that took their fancy. But Andy was becoming a little restless. The news was now full of fresh violent acts and mishaps. A chemical company in Luton had blown up, and apart from twenty deaths and many injured, there was a risk of more casualties as a cloud of toxic gas drifted at the mercy of the wind over Bedfordshire. There had also been a shooting in Hampstead. A high court judge, his wife and their married daughter, son-in-law and three grandchildren had been shot to death as they sat at the dinner table. It had all the hallmarks of a professional hit. The repercussions of sentencing organised crime bosses to lengthy terms of imprisonment could, and did in some cases, prove fatal.
Andy decided that it was time to act. He would kill Gorchev. The Russian could not be allowed to survive, following his failed attempt to have him handed over to Savino’s cohorts. Every action produced a reaction. Andy did not, and had never possessed the ability to be wronged and put it down to experience. People had to be aware that their word or deed would result in appropriate consequences. He had served Gorchev well, only to be unappreciated and rewarded by treachery in the final analysis.
Benny White kept looking at his watch and cursing under his breath. His relief, Jan Tesarik, was now ten minutes late. The Czech was never on time, and never early. The shifty-looking little bastard always had a different excuse. He needed a good slap round the head. But having only one arm bought him a lot of rope to play with.
“I am truly sorry, Benny,” Jan said, rushing through the door and making his way to where Benny was trying to wear the industrial grade blue carpet out by pacing up and down it in his size fourteen loafers. “My daughter vos not vell. I had to drop her and my wife off at ze doctors’ surgery.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Benny said, not impressed with the excuse. He took the lift down to the basement garage and walked along one of the low-ceilinged, dimly lit aisles to where his VW was parked nose-in, next to a thick concrete pillar. As he opened the car doors with his remote, a figure stepped out from behind the pillar and pointed a handgun at him.
Benny considered dropping to the ground and attempting to make a getaway by using other vehicles as a shield between him and the gunman, but decided against it.
“Where is Gorchev?” Andy asked the towering, scar-faced doorman. “And know this, Benny, if you lie to me, then it will be those close to you who I’ll kill.”
“How―?”
“I do my homework, Benny. I know that you don’t get paid enough to try and protect your boss. I also know that your mother is wheelchair bound. Do you want to die here, knowing that I will go to her house in Battersea and tie a plastic bag over her head?”
Benny was not about to gamble with his mother’s life. “Gorchev moved out a coupla days ago,” he said with no hesitation. “One of his regular drivers told me. Him, Kirov and Pavlovka got in the back of a plumber’s van an’ took off. They were headin’ for a factory in Wokin’.”
“Why?”
“ ‘Cause it was gettin’ too hot here. The filth are parked across the street, an’ the boss was a bit nervous. The factory is a front, an’ there’s flash accommodation up on the first floor. One of the Ruskie’s drove Gorchev’s Merc’ out front, while he sneaked off in the van.”
“Where exactly is this factory? What is it called?”
“It’s on the Knaphill industrial estate; SG Products. It’s a packagin’ company. Makes corrugated boxes an’ stuff like that. It’s one of Gorchev’s legit operations, to keep the tax man off his back.”
Andy didn’t make a meal of it. Benny had done him no harm. He was just a foot soldier. He put a bullet through the big man’s forehead. Then a second through his temple as he hit the ground. The reports were no louder than polite coughs.
Getting the body into the boot of the VW was no mean feat. He was sweating like a pig by the time he drove the car up the ramp, to head for a building site not far from the Millennium Dome, where he could dump the corpse in one of the deep piling holes and throw some rubble in to cover it. Benny would be embedded in tons of concrete the next day, to probably spend a few thousand years encased and preserved. Maybe some archaeologist who would not be born for another twenty centuries, might come across the corpse. It was an interesting premise.
After disposing of Benny’s body, Andy drove to a derelict warehouse, removed the plates from the VW, and torched it.
He caught a tube to Edgware and met Faith who, as arranged, was waiting for him outside the station in the Jeep.
He leant in the open window and kissed her on the lips. “You been waiting long, babe?” he said.
“No, love. How did your business go?”
“Sweet. We need to go to Woking.”
“Tonight?”
“Yes. We’ll stop on the way and have a nice meal. How does that sound?”
They ate at a steak house in Chertsey, and the riverside setting reminded Andy of his shooting a young woman only a few hundred yards away. A lot had happened since then. He had the urge to slow down and take things easy for a while. Perhaps give Faith a new identity and take her with him to Grand Cayman.
“How would you like to go and live in the Caribbean?” he said.
Faith paused, hand in mid-air, a sautéed button mushroom impaled on her fork. “Are you joking?”
“I’ve never been more serious in my life, babe. We could buy a house by the beach, and use it as a base to travel the world from.”
“Have you won the Lotto?”
“No need to. I have a lot of money put by, and can always make more.”
“When do we leave?”
“In a week or two. You shall be Mrs. John Kelly. We’ll go as a married couple.”
Faith blinked as tears filled her eyes. Life had always been so lacklustre, without the promise of such overwhelming joy. She had never been abroad, or even had a proper holiday since childhood, when her parents had rented a caravan at Ilfra
combe every year.
“Won’t you tire of me, John? I’m not some young chick with―”
“Don’t sell yourself short, Faith. You have qualities that transcend any fleeting beauty of the flesh. You’re the first woman I’ve ever wanted to wake up next to every morning. We have so much in common. And despite the things I’ve done, you’ve accepted me for who I am. I’ve found something in being with you that was always missing, even though I didn’t know what it was.”
“Oh, John, I’m so happy. If this last week has been a dream, then I don’t ever want to wake up.”
An hour later, with Andy at the wheel, and the Jeep enshrouded in chill fog, they were cruising past a large prefabricated factory unit on a sprawling industrial estate. SG Products was surrounded by a ten-foot-high chain link fence, and was lit by sodium lights that cast a dull, luminous yellow glow, and appeared to hang suspended in the murk, shedding very little light on the concrete no man’s land around the bland-looking building.
Andy did not slow down. He had seen all he needed to. If Gorchev was inside, then he would soon be dead.
After parking at the rear of a deserted unit with whitewashed windows, Andy climbed into the back of the Jeep and changed clothes. After donning black garb that he took from a carrier bag in foot well, he told Faith to stay in the vehicle.
“What are you going to do?” Faith said. “Or don’t you want to tell me?”
“Have you ever heard of the Russian Mafia?” Andy said.
“Yes. Does it really exist?”
He nodded. “A man by the name of Sergei Gorchev attempted to have me abducted. He planned to hand me over to a man who wants me dead. I am now going to kill Gorchev. He’s in one of the factories we passed.”
Faith did not question his intentions. “Be careful,” was all that she said.
“I will be,” he replied, screwing a silencer to the end of the German made SIG Sauer 9mm pistol that he had taken from one of the Russians at the flat. He checked the mag. It had its full compliment of fifteen rounds.