by Michael Kerr
“I need to think,” Billy said. “Make a pot of tea, would you? There’s no hurry.”
Suzy could hear her mother snoring in the living room. She would probably sleep for six or eight hours, so Billy was right, there was no rush. But what was wrong? He looked worried.
“So what do you need to think about?” Suzy said as she brewed the tea.
“About my uncle. He thinks that I stole something from him, and he isn’t a forgiving type of bloke.”
“What did you steal, Billy?”
“A few quid, and a car, but Sean has got the wheels. It was money that he owed me, but he doesn’t see it like that.”
“What are you saying, that we’re in danger?”
“No, I think that we’re fine, babe. I just gave a guy that he sent after me the slip. Call a cab and we’ll get the fuck away from here.”
Thinking it over, Billy did believe that he was safe. His uncle had obviously sent two wankers to whack him. He imagined that Sean was history, and that the man and woman that had followed him down the alley to the canal had topped his friend. But that was no big problem. He hadn’t told Sean his plans, so they would have learned nothing, and so the trip to the US via Europe could go ahead.
Matt and Pete left the Yard in Matt’s Vectra. Phil and Errol were behind them in a pool car. They wanted to take Foster down with as little fuss as possible, to ensure that no member of the public became collateral damage. Pete had arranged for a patrol car to attend the location where Marci was now back on dry land, cold, dripping wet but uninjured, apart from badly damaged pride.
Tam was on edge. What if Foster left by a back entrance to the flat, if there was one in the two-storey building? And what had become of the man that he and Marci had believed was following the killer?
Matt parked in front of Tam’s car, and he and Pete walked back to where Tam was keeping an eye on the flat. Phil and Errol were in the street behind the complex, in case Foster left by a back door or window.
“Phone the Yard and get someone to check out who lives at that address,” Matt said to Tam.
Tam had the information in less than two minutes. “A mother and daughter are the tenants,” he said. “Sandra and Suzy Beale. Maybe Foster is close to Suzy.”
“I want to take him outside the flat,” Matt said. “If he feels at risk he’ll stay in there and the women will be at risk. What else do we know about him?”
“He lives by himself in the house on Wilton Street,” Tam said. “His mother died recently. She had been in a care home for quite a while, suffering with dementia. Apart from that, Foster is an unknown quantity. He’s unemployed, somehow pays his way, and hasn’t been nicked for anything.”
“We know where he gets his money from to pay his way,” Matt said. “He robs people and kills them.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Billy left his tea. The mug appeared to be clean, but there was a hairline crack in it; a breeding ground for germs. He went into the living room and approached the grimy double-glazed window from the side, to ease the nicotine-yellow net curtain back a fraction and look out. Apart from an old woman walking past with the aid of a cane, there was no one. He was positive that no one knew where he was. How could they?
He needed to get out of the room. Suzy’s mother was slumped in her wheelchair, grunting like an old fat sow, with her cocked to the side and a glistening snail trail of drool seeping from the corner of her slack mouth. He could smell the sour sweat that emanated from her obese body and determined that the woman was the product of her own making; a sick and worthless individual. Her hair was shoulder-length, straight, looked dirty, and was a mixture of ash-grey and faded brown. He would be doing her a favour by taking out his newly acquired handgun and putting a bullet through her head as she slept. Unfortunately that would probably send Suzy apeshit, and so he resisted the urge.
This flat was like a three-dimensional nightmare to him. It was a tableau of total clutter, with dust on every surface, and the carpet almost clung to the soles of his shoes, not cleaned or vacuumed for probably a decade. How could Suzy live like this?
“Did you call a cab?” he said as he returned to the kitchen.
Suzy nodded. “It should be here in a couple of minutes,” she said. “Tell me where you plan on taking me, Billy.”
“I’ll let you decide. Choose between Las Vegas or Miami.”
“You’re kidding me.”
“I’ve never been more serious in my life,” Billy said.
Suzy went to him, put her arms around his waist and kissed him on the lips. He wished that they had time to make out, but the toot from outside signalled that the cab had arrived.
“Damn!” Matt said as the taxi stopped and the horn sounded. It was too far away to approach on foot. And then Foster came out with a young woman that Matt assumed to be Suzy Beale. They climbed in the back of the vehicle and it moved away from the kerb.
“Follow it,” Matt said as he turned and ran back to the Vectra with Pete at his shoulder. “We’ll take turns at being lead car,” he shouted to Tam. “My guess is that he’s heading out to Heathrow.”
Billy had a problem that he needed to resolve urgently. He was in possession of handguns that he would have to get rid of before they got to the airport. One was in his waistband. The others were in his suitcase.
There was plenty of room. He put the case flat on the floor, unzipped it and, turning sideways to hide his actions from Suzy, added the Browning to the plastic shopping bag that held the others, after first wiping it with a T-shirt. He would get the cabbie to stop next to a waste bin and drop the bag in it. Once he had done that he would be able to relax and leave his past behind him. A minute later he leaned forward and asked the driver to stop at the next waste bin he saw. They were still in Hounslow, and he needed to rid himself of the weapons before they hit the dual carriageway.
Matt saw the brake lights flash on. He had no alternative but to drive past the cab as it stopped for no apparent reason next to a bus shelter. Pete had an open line with Tam, who had pulled in behind a parked van.
“What’s happening?” Pete said, putting the phone on speaker so that Matt could hear.
Tam had to exit the car to be able to see the cab. He watched as Foster climbed out and dumped what appeared to be a white plastic bag into a waste bin and then got back into the vehicle. Tam climbed into the Mondeo and pulled out into the traffic to resume the tail.
“He’s on the move again,” Tam said into the hand-free phone. “He dropped a bag into a bin near the bus shelter. I’ll arrange for it to be recovered.”
Matt stayed in the inside lane as they joined the dual carriageway. Foster was now between the two unmarked cars, whose drivers were experienced enough to play cat and mouse in the traffic without being noticed.
They had been right about Foster’s initial destination. Matt used a roundabout to get back behind the cab as it came up to the terminal signs, and with Tam now directly behind him they followed it to where it stopped outside Terminal 5.
“Uniforms picked up the bag,” Tam said over the phone to Matt as they stopped well back to watch Foster and the girl exit the cab and pull their cases over the pavement to the automatic doors and enter the building. “It had three handguns in it.”
“He wouldn’t be stupid enough to enter the airport armed,” Matt said. “Let’s go in nice and easy and wrap this up.”
Billy looked around the vast expanse of the terminal building and walked across to one of the check-in counters and smiled at the woman behind it. “We’d like to book flights to Paris,” he said to her.
Matt and Pete were approaching from the left, walking behind a couple with two children. Tam strolled up from the other side, stopped and looked up at a monitor that displayed flight details. This would be quick and easy, he thought. Foster was holding the handle of his trolley case, and looked totally at ease.
Matt made the first move. Walked up behind the wanted man, grasped him by the upper arm and said, “Willia
m Foster, you’re under arrest.”
Billy reacted instantly, letting go of his case and jerking free, to step sideways in front of Suzy and savagely push her into Matt, knocking him off balance.
Tam grasped the girl by the wrist as Pete and Matt rushed towards Foster.
There was only one way for Billy to go. He leaped through the gap in front of him, where a short conveyor belt was situated to transfer labelled luggage through a curtain of vertical plastic strips into the bowels of the terminal, where they would be delivered to the appropriate handlers to load on carriers that would take them out to waiting aircraft.
Diving through the hanging strips, Billy rolled off the belt and came up into a standing position. He was on a metal grid walkway. It seemed to be as long as a football field, and there were steps leading down at intervals, but none within ten yards of him. He did not consciously think; just let his instincts guide him. He climbed onto a chute, to scramble over cases on the nonslip rubber belt that fed them to ground level.
As he reached the bottom, he heard a voice shouting his name and telling him to stop, which only spurred him on. He needed to get away from the building and find a way out, around it, to somehow return to the road at the front and hijack a vehicle.
Pete was first to bend down low and follow Foster into the surreal world of suitcases that could have been commuters being ferried to their destinations on moving walkways. He saw the man they were after scrabbling his way down over the luggage and shouted, ordering him to stop, not surprised when he did not.
A baggage handler appeared from behind a truck and put his hand up, only to be bowled over as Billy straight-armed him in the chest and ran on without missing a step.
A 747 thundered in to land nearby, and Billy was almost deafened by the roar of its engines. He was totally distraught. He could not comprehend how the police had identified him. And his plan to fly off and start a new life was in disarray.
A forty yard run brought him to the corner of the building. He rounded it and saw a twelve-foot high galvanised steel fence behind a broad, landscaped belt of bushes and small trees. There was still hope that he could escape. But how would he be able to scale the fence with one hand? His left hand was all but useless. He would just have to do it and bear the pain. His continued freedom was paramount in his mind, not broken fingers.
Pete reached the corner and saw Foster two thirds of the way up the fence, groaning as he clawed his way up to the top.
Sprinting to the base of the barrier, Pete drew his gun and aimed it up at the man and said, “Armed police, Foster. Come back down or I’ll shoot.”
Billy didn’t pause. He just shouted, “No you won’t, I’m unarmed,” as he swung himself over the top, to lose his grip and fall to the concrete walkway that ran alongside the security fence.
Most of the impact was absorbed by his left shoulder and leg. He screamed out as he got to his feet and lamely hobbled up the short grass incline to the low wall ahead of him.
As Pete holstered his pistol and reached out to grasp hold of the fence, Matt caught up, to jump up onto the netting as if he was a spider on a web, hooking the fingers of both hands in the diamond-shaped network of wire, to scale it in seconds and drop down, bending his knees and rolling to ensure a soft landing.
Billy made it over the wall and was back on the road fronting the terminal. He ran pell-mell across to the central divide, to where private hire cars and other vehicles were offloading passengers. The fourth car was perfect. The driver had closed the boot and was hugging a female. The engine was running, and so he climbed in and drove off, crying out as he used his now pulsating left hand to work the manual gear lever; the agony almost negating the sharp pain in his leg. He had to get away. The police didn’t seem to understand. He hadn’t done anything wrong; was just a regular guy looking out for himself in a world in which you had to carve out your own destiny. The men and women that he had done away with were of no significance; no big deal. Their fate had just been brought forward by an indefinite amount of time. Why did it matter? So many people perished every day, but the population didn’t decrease, it was on the rise. What he did had purpose, unlike the random death of a kid taken out in a hit and run on the road, or a woman dying of breast cancer because she had been born with it in her genes. Death was so fucking normal, and yet if a private individual like him murdered someone for money, which made the world go round, then he was considered to be committing a criminal act. Was an owl a murderer for swooping down and killing a field mouse to eat or feed its chicks with? And somewhere on the planet there were probably still cannibal tribes that killed and ate each other. It was a culture; a way of life that he could see nothing wrong with. The law interfered with individuals’ desires. He firmly believed that as a free spirit he should be able to do exactly what he wanted. Life was cheap and plentiful, and so it seemed incredulous to him that the slaughter of a few nonentities should be of any concern.
He drove out of the airport and headed east on the A4.
Matt saw Foster climb into a dark-blue Peugeot 308 and take off at speed. He ran to where a man was stepping out of a fridge-white Ford Fusion, flashed his warrant card and told the guy that he was commandeering the vehicle. Before the astonished looking man could say a word, Matt was in the car and giving chase, his thumb on the horn to warn foot traffic.
Matt phoned Pete as he drove. Informed him as to what was going down, and told him the registration number of the Peugeot. “He’s heading east on the A4,” Matt said. “We need to have him stopped. Arrange it.”
Pete made calls, and hoped to hell that Foster didn’t lose Matt, dump the car and vanish. They’d had him cold at the check-in counter, and yet he had somehow cut loose and got away from them. He was an accident waiting to happen, injured, more than likely in a state of panic, and speeding towards the city. It would be the team’s fault if some innocent pedestrian was hit by the out of control killer.
Billy looked in his rearview mirror and saw the Ford gaining on him, headlights flashing on and off. It had to be one of the cops that had been chasing him.
He accelerated up to over a hundred mph. He needed to get off the dual carriageway, find a housing estate and ditch the car. There would be police heading his way. Soon after he was entering Cranford, back on single carriageway, and overtook a bus and made a sharp left onto a side street, to almost immediately make a right and drive into a builder’s yard on his left. Braking hard, he got out and limped back to the gates and closed them. He needed to get away from the immediate area, find another vehicle and then somewhere safe to lay low while he decided what to do next.
Matt saw the ruby flash of tail lights as the backend of the Peugeot turned left in front of the bus and entered a side street. He had to stay behind the bus for a few seconds until it passed the end of the street, before he could continue the pursuit. There was no sign of the other car. Matt took note of the street name, drove slowly and looked down the first side street to his left. A pair of eight foot tall gates began to close. He stopped and watched as they came together to display the words: Lyle & Perkins – Builders’ Merchant in flaky white on the green-painted wood. It had to be Foster. He was trying to find a hole to hide in, like a wounded, cornered animal. There had been no time for him to drive the full length of what was a long street, to reach the main road at the end of it.
Parking in a space outside a terrace house with a To Let sign bracketed to the wall, Matt headed for the green doors, phoning Pete as he approached them to let his sergeant know where he was.
As Billy reached the back door of the small business, a stocky man in his fifties opened it and said, “Why did you just close the gates?”
Billy smiled, and then slammed the edge of his hand into the man’s throat.
Jerry Wilson made a sound like a startled crow, fell to his knees and put both hands to his throat as if he was attempting to strangle himself. With a crushed windpipe, he forgot about every other problem in his life. He was wholly preoccupied w
ith trying to suck air into his lungs, which was an almost impossible task. Within the few lingering seconds that he remained conscious and aware, Jerry thought about his wife, Rachel, and his daughter, Keira, and of how insane it was that he would never see them again. And then terror flooded his mind as he sank into unconsciousness.
Billy paid no attention to the man thrashing about on the floor. He went through to the small showroom, locked the front door and flipped over the sign, which was hung by a plastic sucker on the wire-reinforced glass, to advertise the premises as now being closed. He then scanned the shelving to see what he could utilise as a weapon. He settled for a robust looking claw hammer with a forged steel head and a handle fashioned from wood. He stuck the handle of the hammer into his waistband and used his right hand to grasp the now limp body by an arm, to drag it from view behind the counter. There was also a door on the same wall as the counter, and on opening it he was faced by a narrow flight of stairs leading up to the floor above. Closing the door behind him, he ascended the staircase with difficulty. His leg was on fire, and halfway up he had to pause and dig deep to find the reserve of fortitude needed to inject him with enough determination to break through the pain barrier and continue.
There were three rooms leading off the landing; a bathroom, storeroom and a room that had an old cowhide couch, table, small fridge and a kettle. There was also a desktop pc and phone on a table. This was obviously were the shop owner had taken time out, probably when closing for an hour at lunchtime, and for the odd tea break, or to do some bookwork.
Billy went over to the window that faced the road at the front. A police car went by without slowing. He was safe for awhile. With the car out of sight, he would be able to stay and gather his thoughts. He went over to the couch and laid down on it with a cushion behind his head. He wanted to rest as he ran through his options.
The sound of breaking glass followed by a loud thud caused him to shoot up in a sitting position. It could have come from anywhere in the vicinity, but his paranoia was such that he believed with absolute certainty that someone had broken into the building. Slowly standing up, he withdrew the hammer and went to the door, to hide behind it and listen for movement below him.