A Good Day To Die

by Simon Kernick

  ‘How do I know you ain’t gonna kill me anyway?’

  I slowed down as a jeepney in front of me stopped to pick up passengers by the side of the road. ‘If you’re a shooter then you should know better than anybody that your best weapon is the art of surprise. I’ve just told you exactly what I’ve been hired to do. Now why would I bother saying anything if I still intended to kill you?’

  He thought about that one for a few seconds, then opened the glove compartment. Seeing the blood-filled Coke bottle and the paint, he shut it again and lit another cigarette. At the same time, I overtook the stationary jeepney. ‘That bastard,’ he said, taking a drag. ‘I knew I should never have trusted him. And the ten grand in the boot?’

  ‘Behave. It doesn’t exist. Be thankful that you’ve still got your life. So, are you in agreement with my plan? It’s a lot better thought out than the one you used for your little job.’

  ‘You want me to lie in the dirt and have chicken blood splashed all over me while you do a David Bailey?’

  ‘That’s about the size of it.’

  ‘It doesn’t seem like I’ve got much choice, does it?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I don’t think it does.’

  He emitted a loud sound of consent that sounded like someone impersonating a fart.

  ‘I’ll take that as a yes, shall I?’

  ‘All right,’ he grunted. ‘Let’s do it.’

  4

  A mile short of the resort of White Beach, there’s a left turning that leads up to the Ponderosa, Mindoro’s only golf course, a truly terrible collection of nine holes built high up on the side of a steep, forested mountain, where the wind whipping across the greens makes hitting a decent shot next to impossible, but where plenty of the expats try on the basis that there’s nowhere else for them. I’ve never liked golf so I’ve not given it a go myself, although they do have some spectacular views over Puerta Galera and the islands beyond. Some say that on a clear day you can even see Manila eighty miles to the north, although I never have and wouldn’t particularly want to either.

  The road starts smoothly enough, which is useful as it’s so steep, but quickly degenerates into a dusty, potholed and winding track, like so many of northern Mindoro’s roads. The money’s been made available more than once to pay for resurfacing them, but it always seems to disappear into someone’s pocket before a square foot of tarmac’s been put down.

  On the way up, while Slippery was complaining about the road’s state after banging his head on the roof for the second or third time, I asked him how he knew Pope.

  He responded by asking how I knew him, which I recalled as another irritating habit of his from old. Answering a question with a question.

  ‘I don’t,’ I said. ‘A friend of mine here does.’

  ‘He’s a solicitor – a bent one. I was up on some charges and he represented me.’

  ‘And got you off, no doubt.’

  He nodded evenly. ‘He did, yeah, and we kept in contact after that.’

  I thought about this for a moment. I hadn’t figured Pope as a solicitor. I had him down more as some sort of gangland Mr Big, since he obviously had such influential friends. It surprised me that they might include someone from within the team investigating the two murders that Slippery had committed. Defence lawyers and coppers rarely mix well, not when you consider that the former are always trying to fuck things up for the latter, and making far more money in the process.

  ‘And when Pope, your brief, asked you to commit murder for him, you weren’t a bit shocked?’ I asked.

  ‘No,’ he said simply, reaching into his shirt pocket for the cigarettes. ‘I wasn’t.’

  ‘Don’t light up now,’ I told him. ‘We’re almost there. You can have a celebratory smoke afterwards. To usher in your new life.’

  He grunted irritably, but put the pack back in his pocket. ‘Don’t try anything, Dennis. And I mean that. I’m no fucking pushover.’

  ‘I have no doubt about it, Billy. You were always the hardest, and dare I say it, the slipperiest target I ever chased. I’m not going to try anything.’

  I slowed down as the road flattened out just before it came to a blind bend, still a good mile from the golf club. There was a slight grassy incline on the right where I could pull up without blocking anyone else coming either way, not that there was much chance of that. On the way up we hadn’t run into anybody and the Ponderosa’s not the busiest of places, especially on a weekday.

  I managed to get right up onto the verge and cut the engine. ‘We’ll do it down there,’ I said, pointing to a path that led into bushes.

  ‘Why there?’

  ‘Because it needs to be a place where no one’s going to disturb us, so they don’t wonder what on earth we’re doing. Believe it or not, there’s hardly any places on this island where you can go without running into someone.’

  ‘I’m watching you,’ he said, all semblance of his earlier good humour now gone.

  ‘You’re getting paranoid,’ I told him and slowly took the snub-nosed .38 revolver from the waistband of my jeans, showing it to him as I did so. I then placed it in the side pocket of the driver’s door so that it was out of sight. ‘See? I’m now unarmed.’ I gave myself a quick pat down and leaned forward in my seat so he could see I wasn’t bullshitting.

  His expression relaxed a little. ‘All right, all right. Let’s get this over with, then.’

  ‘Bring the bottles with you, can you?’

  He retrieved them from the glove compartment while I pulled a small digital camera out of the storage space between the two front seats, and then we both got out of the car. I clicked on the central locking and waited for him to join me. There was a gentle breeze in the air and it was cooler now that we were over a thousand feet above sea level. The only sound was the incessant chatter of the cicadas in the undergrowth.

  We started walking down the path in single file, with me leading. The route ahead opened up into grassland and a hundred yards to our left a huge ravine appeared, beyond which another forest-covered mountain rose up. In the distance, beyond the mountain, I could see the sea and the red-and-white telephone mast that stood on the hill overlooking White Beach – the only sign of man visible in the whole spectacular vista. Take that away and we might as well have been standing there a thousand years ago.

  The path forked and I took the left-hand route, which followed a gentle gradient through a grove of palm and mango trees in the direction of the ravine.

  ‘Where the fuck are we going?’ I heard Slippery demand behind me.

  ‘I told you, somewhere quiet.’

  ‘I don’t like this.’

  ‘Look,’ I said, turning round so I was facing him, ‘you can see I’m unarmed. What am I going to do? Kung fu you to death? And if you’re that worried, look behind you.’ I pointed up to a collection of neat two-storey wooden huts with pointed roofs that stood on a hill behind the road we’d been driving up. ‘See, we’re not that far from civilization.’

  He looked in the direction I was pointing. ‘Who lives there, then?’

  ‘People called Mangyan. They’re farmers. They tend to keep themselves to themselves, but I still don’t want any of them seeing us.’

  I resumed walking and he followed, his complaints temporarily silenced.

  ‘I’ve just thought,’ he said after a few seconds. ‘Have you brought another shirt with you? ’Cause my one’s going to be ruined.’

  ‘Shockingly enough, no,’ I answered. ‘But you must have packed a spare. When we’re finished I’ll drop you back at the hotel, you can have a nice warm shower, and then you’ll be as right as rain.’ I stopped by a palm tree and turned around. The Mangyan huts were almost out of sight. ‘Here’ll do,’ I said.

  He stopped a yard or so behind me and I pointed to a clump of long grass a few feet away. ‘Lie down there on your back, legs together, arms outstretched and head to one side, like dead people do on the telly. And put the bottles down next to you.’

 
; ‘Are you sure there are no snakes in there?’ he asked, giving the grass a useless kick.

  At the same time, I leaned down and felt round the back of the palm tree, locating the Browning with silencer that I’d taped to the bark the previous day. I pulled it away and peeled off the tape, pleased that I’d planned ahead enough to keep my options open. Then released the safety.

  ‘Hold on,’ he said, turning round, ‘we ain’t brought anything to put the paint on with . . .’ The words died in his throat as he saw the gun, the shock rapidly giving way to resignation as I pointed it at his chest.

  ‘I can’t fucking believe I fell for that. I should have known a bastard like you would have tried something. And you’ve got the nerve to call me slippery.’

  I had to admire his guts. He knew what was going to happen, that this was the end of the line for him, but he didn’t beg and plead. I felt an unwelcome twinge of doubt that I had the strength to pull the trigger. Then I remembered why I was going to.

  ‘You know that copper you killed?’ I asked him.

  ‘Don’t tell me . . .’

  ‘He was my friend.’

  ‘Ah, fuck it, Dennis. It was just business. Like it always is. Nothing personal.’

  ‘Well, this is personal. Now tell me everything you know about Les Pope and the people behind that shooting, and don’t leave a single thing out, or the first bullet’ll be in your kneecap.’

  He sighed loudly and nodded his assent. Then he turned away slightly, dropped the bottles, and quick as a flash he was pulling a throwing knife from beneath the ankle of his jeans. With astonishing speed he swung round to take aim, and I cursed. It had never occurred to me that he’d be armed, but then he wasn’t called Slippery Billy for nothing. This bastard didn’t know the meaning of the word defeat, and I felt a sudden heartfelt admiration for him, coupled with the unwelcome knowledge that in many ways there really wasn’t that much difference between us.

  Then I started firing. The first bullet caught him in the shoulder, knocking him sideways before he could release the knife. The second missed, I think, while the third and fourth struck him in the upper back as he continued to spin round. He fell to his knees and tried to face me again, still holding on to the knife, and once again I got that tiny twinge of doubt that I’d be able to finish him off. But perhaps I was just deluding myself, because a moment later I aimed the gun at his head and pulled the trigger twice more.

  His body bucked sharply as the bullets struck him just below his left eye, but somehow he managed to retain his kneeling position, holding it for what seemed like an awfully long time before slowly, almost casually, he toppled onto his side.

  I waited a few moments just to make sure that his luck had finally run out, then looked behind me to check that no one had heard anything (there was no one there, so I assumed they hadn’t), before finally approaching the body. Blood ran in thin, uneven lines down the side of his face and onto his neck, but his eyes were closed and he looked peaceful, as the newly dead do. Standing there watching him, I reasoned that he had killed at least twice for no other reason than money (one of his victims being a police officer and my friend), and wouldn’t have lost a second’s sleep if the boot was on the other foot and he’d been the one shooting me. So I really had nothing to feel guilty about. But I wasn’t entirely convinced. It didn’t make me feel any better that I then used the camera to take half a dozen photos of his corpse, as per our contract, before searching his clothes until I found his mobile, the key to his room and the false passport he was carrying, all of which I pocketed in my jeans. I finally concluded matters by putting on a pair of surgical gloves, wiping the Browning’s handle and picking up all the loose cartridges. I then grabbed Slippery by the shoulders and hauled him deeper into the undergrowth. Thankfully, he was lighter than I’d been expecting, because there was still some way for him to go before we hit his final resting place.

  I dragged his body fifty yards in all, the path quickly giving way to a thick wall of bushes and trees, and I was hot and panting when we finally came to the edge of the ravine. The drop here was almost sheer and ran some five hundred feet into the tree-carpeted valley below.

  I’d chosen this spot because the valley was pretty much inaccessible to people. There was always the chance that a resourceful Mangyan tribesman had somehow found a way in and was nurturing a vegetable plot there, but that was a risk anywhere on the island. The chances were that the body would lie undiscovered for months or even years, and if the remains were one day found, it was unlikely the police would be able to identify them as what was left of Billy West, and I don’t suppose they’d be too worried about it either, even with the bullet holes in his skull. They’d probably conclude that it was a local who’d fallen foul of the NPA, the Marxist rebels cum anti-drugs vigilantes who operated in the mountains behind Puerta Galera, and who still made the occasional foray down to the coast, using their guns against those who didn’t see eye to eye with them.

  I didn’t like the idea of depriving Slippery Billy of a burial. I didn’t know his family situation but I supposed he had loved ones somewhere, and that they’d be left wondering for the rest of their lives what had happened to him. But I had no choice. He’d made his bed and, uncomfortable as it was, he was going to have to lie in it.

  As I toppled him over the edge and turned away, wiping sweat from my brow, I thought about the mysterious Les Pope, the man who’d commissioned this and Blacklip’s murder, as well as at least two others. Would he be losing any sleep over his crimes? I doubted it. Like Billy West, I expected he’d just see it as business.

  I pondered that particular matter as I returned to the Land Rover and continued my journey up to the Ponderosa golf club for a much-needed drink and a chance to think about the man whose murder I’d just avenged.

  5

  Asif Malik. He’d been a colleague of mine in Islington CID for more than a year during my last days in London. Originally I was his boss, and then, just before my ignominious departure, he’d got promoted to the same level as me, which hadn’t been much of a surprise. He’d always struck me as a man who was going places. He was hardworking, bright and, most importantly of all, decent. Most coppers are decent people underneath it all, but some – myself included – get more cynical as the years go by and the crime rate keeps rising. I’d once believed in what I was doing, in my ability, as a police officer working within the strict frameworks the law sets, to change things and deliver justice to the people who needed it. But time, and the growing realization that what I was delivering was nothing more than a sticking plaster for a gaping wound, had corrupted me to the point where both my reputation and my conscience were now well beyond repair.

  It was possible that Malik had changed too. After all, I hadn’t seen him in three years. But somehow I doubted it. He’d always been unflinching in his view that what he was doing was right, and what the people he was trying to catch were doing was wrong. To Malik, life had been relatively simple. There was good and there was evil, and it was the duty of all right-thinking people to try to promote the former and stamp out the latter. That was why it had upset me more than I would have expected when I’d read about his death on the Net three weeks earlier. Because he was one of the good guys, and God knows there aren’t very many of them left these days.

  Since leaving home, I’d followed his career on its upward trajectory, in the expat papers and on the Net, from detective sergeant in Islington CID to detective inspector in Scotland Yard’s SO7 Organized Crime Unit, and then to his final, brief role as a DCI in the National Crime Squad. It had pleased me to see him doing well. First and foremost, because I’d always liked him. I think he reminded me a little of what I’d been like when I’d started out, before the rot had set in. But there was more to it than that. For some reason, the evidence of his progress helped to ease the guilt I felt periodically over the fate of the only three innocent men I’ve ever killed – the two customs officers and the accountant whose deaths had led to the disintegr
ation of my old life, and my subsequent exile. I guess I saw Malik as an extension of me: my good side. The young copper I’d mentored, and sent on to greater things. If I was capable of helping him, then I couldn’t have been that bad a man. That’s how I’d rationalized it on those occasions when the guilt had begun to get a grip. And it helped, because like a lot of things, there was a degree of truth in it. He had learned a lot from me, and before the secret of my other life had come out, most of it had been good.

  Billy West hadn’t even known who Malik was when he’d snuffed out his life along with that of the man who’d been sitting next to him in the Clerkenwell café that night. The job had just been an easy way to make some decent money. Nothing more, nothing less. And now there was a wife who was a widow, and two young kids who were going to grow up without a dad. I don’t suppose Slippery had given them a second thought. He’d now paid the price, but Les Pope? At the moment, Les Pope slept soundly in his bed six thousand miles away, unaware and unworried that he’d made a new enemy. Someone like him probably had plenty anyway.

  I had lunch in the open-fronted clubhouse at the Ponderosa, overlooking the sea and the islands beyond, but didn’t see anyone I knew. Puerta Galera’s a small place and the expats tend to stick together. When you’re on the run for murder it’s a lot safer to keep yourself to yourself, but isolation was next to impossible in a community this size. It wasn’t a problem, though. They knew me as Mick here and, as far as I was aware, they accepted my cover story that I’d lived and worked in the Philippines tourist trade for years. Most of them had been out here a long time themselves and wouldn’t have known who I was anyway; and those who had come in the last three years wouldn’t have been able to pick me out unless they knew who they were looking for or, like Slippery, were already acquainted with me. My appearance had changed considerably since the days when my photo had been plastered all over Britain’s newspapers. I’d had two very professional bouts of plastic surgery – one in Davao City when I’d first arrived, one in Manila a year later – that had changed the shape of my nose and chin and removed the dark lines beneath my eyes. My skin was a much darker hue thanks to its prolonged contact with the sun, and my hair, thinner now that I’d hit forty and tinged for the first time with grey, had lightened for the same reason. I also wore a small, neatly trimmed beard that fitted my long thin face comfortably, and which had never been there during my time as a copper. Despite all that, however, I was still a little disconcerted by the speed with which a man I hadn’t set eyes on in ten years had known who I was. Maybe it was time to think about going under the knife again.