Dead Man's Gift and Other Stories

by Simon Kernick

  I asked the obvious question. ‘So why’s no one interested, if this man’s such a prolific killer?’

  ‘He’s a powerful man with powerful friends,’ replied Darnell. ‘He once saved the life of the Italian finance minister on the operating table, so no one’s going to think him capable of such things. And the evidence is circumstantial. Look at him. Like you said, he doesn’t look like a killer. But’ – and he put a hand up here – ‘he’s also made a mistake. One that cements his guilt. Two years ago there was another disappearance of a young girl, but this time it was near Lake Como. Moretti has a second home there. He knows the area well.’

  For the first time I was intrigued. If what Darnell said was true, then this really was the case of a dangerous serial killer. But why then had no one but a middle-aged drunk put the pieces together? ‘I’m very sorry for your loss,’ I told him, ‘but I don’t know why you’re telling me all this. I’m just an expat in a faraway country. I couldn’t do anything, even if I wanted to.’

  He nodded slowly, looking down at his almost empty drink. ‘I tell everyone. I always hope – stupidly, I suppose – that if I tell enough people, someone somewhere will do something. Do you believe in God, Mick?’

  I told him the truth. ‘No. And I never have.’

  ‘Well, after all that’s happened to me, it may surprise you to hear that I do.’

  It didn’t. In my experience, there’s no end to some people’s faith, and the darker the times, the more it tends to manifest itself.

  He looked at me intensely. ‘My faith in God has taken a beating over the years, and there have been times when I’ve called His existence into question. But I’ve always come back to Him, always known that one day He will give me the justice that I crave so much. And in the last few days I’ve felt different, as if He’s there by my side, leading me down a certain path. And tonight, when I came here and saw you, I felt a flicker of familiarity as if we’d seen each other somewhere a long time back, and that’s when everything began to fall into place.’

  I didn’t say anything. Just stared back at him, not liking at all how this was going, and wondering what I was going to do about it.

  ‘I know who you are,’ he said quietly.

  I feigned puzzlement, but inside I was already planning my next move. I didn’t want to kill him. I’ve never wanted to hurt the innocent, and you didn’t get much more innocent than this man, who’d already suffered enough for several lifetimes. But I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life in jail, either.

  ‘You can kill me here and now, if you want,’ he said, clearly guessing what I was thinking. ‘I’m at the end of the road now, and all I really want to do is leave this life and go to the next, where I can be reunited with Barbara and Erin. But I would ask you to take the dossier on Moretti and bring him to justice, for the sake of my daughter.’ Slowly, he reached into his pocket and took out his wallet, carefully removing two photos, which he placed on the table.

  I didn’t pick them up, but I could see clearly that one was a shot of Darnell, his wife and their daughter when she was about six or seven. Darnell looked decades younger, almost a different man. His hair was dark and, even from a distance, the smile on his face stood out. The photo next to it was of a tanned young girl on a beach, with long curly hair the same colour as her father’s, and a wide gap-toothed smile.

  ‘That picture is the most precious thing I own,’ he said, tapping the picture of his daughter. ‘It’s the last one ever taken of Erin. Less than a week before she died. Look how alive she looks.’ He was smiling now, and I had the feeling that he truly believed he’d be joining her again very soon, and that made me happy for him. ‘I know you believe in justice,’ he continued, picking up the photo of the three of them together, but leaving the one of Erin on the table. He finished his drink and stood up. ‘The media said you were a bad man, but I also know you were a police officer for a long time and that you killed some very bad people. Your secret’s safe with me. I give you my word on that.’

  He started walking out the door, leaving the satchel and the photo behind, and for a few moments I was so confused by the situation that I sat there, temporarily struck dumb.

  Finally, as he was turning the handle, I called after him. ‘How do you know I’m going to do it?’

  ‘I told you,’ he said. ‘Because I have faith.’

  2

  My real name’s Dennis Milne and I have a complicated relationship with morality.

  When I started out as a cop I wanted to do good. I believed in the fairness of the judicial system, and my ambition was to uphold the law and make a career putting the bad guys behind bars where they belonged. But close to twenty years in London’s Metropolitan Police changed all that. I realized that the law sided with the bad guys, that it didn’t provide justice, and just because you were one of the good guys trying to do right by the world, it didn’t stop you from being pissed on by everyone, from your superiors to the CPS, to those vulture-like defence lawyers whose only rationale was to help the guilty go free.

  So I became corrupt. It was a slow, steady downward process that started with me accepting money for information and finally led to my second career as a contract killer. I had rules. I would never knowingly target the innocent. It was only the kind of scum who, in my mind, deserved to die.

  But, of course, things never quite worked out like that. I ended up being tricked into killing three men who were entirely innocent of any wrongdoing, which was the catalyst for a number of events that ended with me fleeing the UK as a wanted man.

  In the seven years since, my life has been varied and, at certain points, more enjoyable than I’ve deserved. I met and fell in love with a beautiful woman, then lost her when her father recognized me, and was only saved from imprisonment by a man called Bertie Schagel.

  The problem is that Bertie Schagel is no knight in shining armour. He’s a ruthless, cowardly and sociopathic thug who never gets his own hands dirty, but uses other people to do the jobs that he doesn’t have the balls to do himself. Unfortunately, because he secured my freedom, I now have to work for him as an occasional contract killer. He knows everything about me, and I know virtually nothing about him. His real name probably isn’t even Bertie Schagel. We communicate through the drafts section of a Hotmail address that only the two of us have access to. When he wants me for a job, he writes a message. We meet up, he gives me the details. I carry out the job and, a week or so later, payment is made electronically, always from a different bank account.

  But this time it was me who contacted him to arrange a meeting, which was how I found myself a week later at the Riva Surya Hotel in Bangkok, sitting at a table in the far corner of the restaurant terrace overlooking the Chao Phraya River, along with Mr Schagel himself.

  Bertie Schagel was very fat. He was, as the saying goes, the type of man who fat men like to stand next to. That day, he was wearing his customary black suit with an open-neck lilac shirt, from which sprouted a thick, grey wodge of sticky-looking chest hair, and he was sweating profusely as he steadily demolished the table full of Asian delights he’d been scoffing when I arrived.

  While I waited for him, I ordered a bottle of Singha, and wondered once again why I was here. After all, I was under no obligation. I hadn’t seen Bob Darnell again. I asked around and found out he’d been staying at a hotel just down the road, but had checked out the morning after I’d met him. Since the police hadn’t turned up at my door in the intervening days, I could only assume he’d been true to his word about keeping my secret. The fact that he’d been able to recognize me, though (and I wasn’t yet subscribing to the theory that divine intervention was playing a part), made me uneasy, and it had crossed my mind to consider upping sticks and moving somewhere else.

  In the meantime, though, I’d examined Darnell’s dossier on the alleged serial killer, and the more I read, the more it looked as if Señor Moretti had a case to answer. He had indeed been in the vicinity of where the first three girls had disap
peared and, considering they went missing on different continents, this already set alarm bells ringing. And although his whereabouts were unknown when the fourth girl, Maria Ropelli, went missing near Lake Como, the fact that his house was only seven miles from the spot where she was last seen was also pretty damning. I don’t believe in coincidences. No detective does. So either Roberto Moretti was just supremely unlucky or, far more likely, he was the man responsible for the disappearance of all four of them.

  The dossier also contained an aerial photo of the area of Roatan where Erin Darnell’s remains were found. The exact spot was marked with a red, hand-drawn circle, as was the house where Moretti had allegedly been staying. As Darnell had claimed, the main building was only about fifty yards away from the burial site, and there were no other houses for at least two hundred yards.

  I’d done some of my own research on the internet too and had found out that after the discovery of Erin’s remains, the Gardai in Ireland had liaised with their Honduran counterparts, and that the authorities there had reopened the case. According to a newspaper report in the Irish Times in October 2004, a number of local men had been questioned about her murder, as had tourists who’d been staying nearby at the time, including an Italian couple whose rental property had been right next to the site. But Moretti and his wife weren’t mentioned by name, and the tone of the report suggested they weren’t being treated as suspects. There was another Irish Times article in January 2006, stating that the murder inquiry had found no new leads and was being wound down, although not closed. After that, I couldn’t find any further mention of it. Erin Darnell had, like so many other murder victims, faded into distant memory.

  Nothing in the dossier proved anything of course – or even came close to proving anything – which, I suspect, was why the relevant authorities in Italy, Ireland and the countries where the girls went missing weren’t that interested in getting involved, especially as it seemed Moretti was a man of some influence, unlike Bob Darnell.

  If he was the killer, Roberto Moretti was never going to admit it to the police, even under interrogation. He’d get lawyered up and deny everything, and might even sue for wrongful arrest. But someone like me would be able to get the truth out of him. If I was to put a gun against his head, he’d tell me everything. I’ve done such things before, on more than one occasion, and the technique tends to be highly effective.

  But like I said, I was under no obligation to get involved.

  It was the photo of that smiling young girl on the beach, with her whole life in front of her – a life that had been so cruelly taken away – that made the decision for me. It was insane, it was foolhardy and it was incredibly risky, but I had this growing urge to give her and her father some kind of justice. You see, it gave me a purpose that had been lacking ever since I’d arrived in Laos. My life was directionless. The days drifted by, fading into one another, interspersed with the occasional trip to somewhere in Asia to commit murder on Bertie Schagel’s behalf. In the end I was lonely, with far too much time to think about the crimes that I’d committed and the lives I’d destroyed, and I suppose I believed that by doing this I might somehow redeem myself.

  Which was why I was here now.

  ‘I need to go to Italy to take care of a problem,’ I said as Bertie pushed the last empty plate to one side and wiped first his forehead, followed by his mouth, with the napkin. ‘The kind that requires a permanent solution.’

  Bertie looked unhappy at this and glared at me. ‘Who for?’ he demanded.

  ‘For myself.’

  ‘What? Has someone not paid a bill in your little guesthouse?’

  I ignored the feeble joke and glanced round, just to make sure we weren’t being listened to, but the restaurant was almost empty and there was no one within thirty feet of our table. Still, I spoke using our agreed codewords. ‘When I get to Italy, I’ll need an untraceable unit. Preferably one with a pipe attached. Can you do that for me? I’ll pay you.’ I knew Bertie would be able to do it. He was Dutch by birth, and he was the kind of man who’d have plenty of contacts in Europe, especially Italy, where the Mafia were still influential.

  ‘Tell me who the person you’re meeting is, and why you want to close their account.’

  ‘It’s someone I believe needs dealing with. That’s all I can tell you.’

  ‘So it’s something you don’t have to do?’

  ‘No. I don’t have to do it. But I’m going to anyway.’

  ‘Why? If you don’t have to?’

  I sighed, thinking I might as well come clean with him. ‘You may not believe it, but I’ve got a conscience. And if I’d let it guide me in the past, I would have ended up a lot happier.’

  Bertie smiled unpleasantly. ‘And that’s your problem, isn’t it? It’s too late. You spilled the milk. Isn’t that what you English say? And now you’re crying about it. Well, I’m sorry, my friend, but like everyone else, you have to abide by the decisions you have made. Especially when they’re so permanent. I forbid this foolishness. You can’t go.’

  ‘I’m going, Bertie. That’s all there is to it.’

  He leaned forward in the chair, which was no easy feat, the smile gone now. ‘I can have you arrested before you even get to Italy.’

  I held his gaze. ‘I know you can. But then you’d lose a good operative. And you know I’m good.’ It pained me to have to argue this way – promoting my ability to commit murder – but appealing to Bertie’s good side wasn’t going to work, since he didn’t have one.

  ‘When were you planning to go?’

  ‘As soon as you can organize me what I need. It’ll be a quick trip. I won’t be in the country more than a few days.’

  ‘If I do you this favour, then you do the next job for me for free, right?’

  I’d like to have punched his fat face in then. Beaten him to a bloody pulp and left him lying in his own vomit. Men like Bertie Schagel were a cancer, profiting from the misery of others as they ended lives from a safe distance, but I wondered whether my anger was directed at him, because otherwise it would just have been directed at myself. ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Next job free.’

  ‘And remember. You get caught, you’re on your own.’

  ‘I’m always on my own,’ I said.

  He heaved himself out of his seat. ‘I’ll leave you to get the bill. And leave cash. I don’t want them having any record of who we are.’

  ‘You don’t exactly blend into the background,’ I told him.

  ‘Unfortunately, it seems, neither do you. Otherwise we wouldn’t be in business.’

  And I had to admit, he was right on that one.

  ‘I’ll be in touch,’ he said and waddled away, leaving me there, staring out across the river with only my regrets for company.

  3

  Venice. It’s a city I’ve never visited, and one I’ve never particularly wanted to, either. I’ve never been that much of a romantic and, in my experience, most places that are so hugely hyped-up tend to be disappointing.

  However, even though I arrived on an unseasonably cool, cloudy day, I couldn’t help but be impressed as I walked out of the main railway station and saw the Grand Canal open up straight in front of me, flanked by magnificent old buildings that seemed to rise straight out of the water.

  I’d chosen my hotel carefully. It was a midsized place that faced onto a pretty square at the front while a narrow alleyway ran along the back. Naturally the rooms most in demand were at the front, so it wasn’t hard for me to book one that faced out onto the alleyway. One thing you learn very quickly in the contract-killing business is that it’s hard to kill someone and get away with it, especially if you don’t want to cause collateral damage. You have to pick your spot and your timing perfectly, which means getting to know your target, his habits and his movements. Usually this information’s provided to me by Bertie Schagel. Someone else does the legwork, then I go in and do the unpleasant bit.

  This time, however, I was entirely on my own, which meant having to do
both jobs. Hence the choice of hotel. When I was shown to my room by the concierge, I had to admit to being underwhelmed. The double bed was tiny and took up most of the floor space; it was dark; and the decor was something even my grandma would have called outdated, and all for 150 euros a night. But when I sat down on the chair that was squeezed in beside the bed and looked out the window, I could see straight down the alley to what, according to Bob Darnell’s dossier, was Roberto Moretti’s front door.

  I removed the pistol and suppressor that I’d picked up from Bertie’s contact in Rome from my overnight bag. The pistol was a brand-new Smith and Wesson P22, perfect for a quiet, inconspicuous murder without much mess. It contained a ten-round magazine and I’d been given a spare box of .22 ammunition, which I hoped I wouldn’t need.

  I screwed the suppressor into place and gave the gun a once-over, unloading and reloading it, before racking the slide and pointing it straight at the bathroom door. I cocked the hammer and stared down the sights with my finger on the safety catch, feeling that rush and power of being a trigger-pull away from being able to kill any man in the whole world.

  The feeling passed as quickly as it had arrived and I slipped the gun into the inside pocket of my jacket, using a couple of strips of Sellotape to keep the handle in place. There was no telltale bulge when I looked in the bedroom window. I was ready to go. I just needed a target.

  Moretti’s place was a four-storey stone townhouse that looked a couple of hundred years old at least – what estate agents would call a character dwelling – about thirty yards further down the alley on the opposite side, and if I craned my neck in the chair I had a good view of it. So, taking my jacket off and grabbing the map of Venice and city guide I’d bought at the station, I settled down in the bedroom chair to wait, hoping that Moretti would put in an appearance soon.