A Good Day To Die

by Simon Kernick

  ‘I know. I can see.’ The gun hadn’t moved but she’d subtly changed position so her face was pointed towards the door. ‘Do you often get power cuts?’ I asked.

  ‘No,’ she said, and for the first time since she’d pulled the gun, there was uncertainty in her voice. ‘I can’t remember the last one, and I’ve been here two years.’

  ‘Then it seems like a very unfortunate coincidence, if you believe in such things.’

  She took a tentative step towards the door, turning her head so that I was back in her field of vision. ‘This had better be nothing to do with you.’

  ‘How could it be? I’m in here with you.’

  ‘Why are you whispering?’ she demanded.

  ‘I’m listening.’

  ‘Do you think—’

  The front window exploded, the sudden crackle of breaking glass shattering the room’s eerie quiet.

  Instinctively, we both dropped to our haunches, and I reached for my .45, dragging it free with an angry tug and pointing it at the window.

  The curtain hadn’t moved. I waited for the second shot, wondering why they hadn’t tried to take us out earlier when we’d been coming from the car.

  Five seconds passed and still the second shot didn’t come. I could hear Emma’s breathing. It had accelerated with the surge of adrenalin but was still under control. I admired her for that. She didn’t speak, and I could see in the gloom that her gun was also pointed at the window. You had to give her ten out of ten for guts. Most people would have been curled up in the corner, shaking with fear.

  I let another five seconds pass, and asked her in a whisper whether she was all right.

  ‘I’ve been better,’ was the answer, but the uncertainty remained in her voice.

  I moved towards the front door, keeping low, and only raised myself to my full height when I got there.

  ‘Where are you going?’ she whispered.

  ‘I don’t think it was a bullet,’ I answered. ‘It didn’t sound right. I’m going to go and take a look.’

  ‘They might still be out there.’

  ‘They won’t. Not now. The window made too much noise. And if they wanted to kill us, they’d have done it when we were on our way in.’ But I wasn’t as confident as I sounded. I listened at the door, but couldn’t hear anything. I told Emma to move to one side so that I could open it up without exposing her to danger, and she did as she was told.

  Stepping to one side and keeping close to the wall, I turned the handle and let the door swing slowly open. The only noise came from the traffic out on the main road.

  I peered round inch by inch, keeping the gun pressed against my hip.

  The narrow cobbled street was empty, with no sign of the assailant, or anyone else reacting to the commotion. But what caught my attention were the lights that were on in the windows opposite. Coming out further, I saw that the houses to either side also had power. I was trying to work out exactly what that told me when I spotted the brick lying on the ground amongst shards of glass a few feet away. A hole several inches across and surrounded by spider’s-web cracks had appeared in the window where the brick had made contact, but the safety glass had been strong enough to deflect it.

  There was a note attached to the brick by two elastic bands. I leaned down and removed it, then retreated inside and shut the door behind me.

  ‘Is everything all right?’ Emma asked from somewhere in the darkness.

  ‘It was a brick,’ I answered, slipping the .45 back into my waistband. ‘Whoever chucked it’s gone.’

  ‘Not exactly sophisticated.’

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘I suppose it’s not.’ As I spoke, I unfolded the note and tucked it under my armpit, before producing the box of matches I’d bought in the pub the previous night and lighting one. I retrieved the note and read it in the match’s small light.

  Two words, typed in bold, large font.

  Look upstairs

  The breath stopped somewhere in my throat and I could feel my stomach constrict.

  ‘What are you looking at?’ she asked, coming up behind me. ‘Don’t tell me that was attached to the brick?’

  I blew out the match and refolded the note, pushing it into my jacket pocket, then turned to face her. She was standing a few feet away, the pale contours of her face just visible in the darkness. I couldn’t see the gun but assumed it was down by her side.

  ‘Stay down here,’ I told her. ‘I need to go upstairs.’

  She started to protest but I moved past her, fumbling my way over to the staircase and banging into the sofa on the way. I didn’t want her to follow in case of what was up there, but it was clear from the sound of her footsteps that she wasn’t planning on hanging back. As I reached the staircase and found the banister, she asked me again about the contents of the note.

  This time I told her.

  She cursed under her breath, but stayed behind me as I reached the staircase. ‘I should go up first,’ she whispered. ‘I know where I’m going.’

  ‘No way,’ I said, and made my way up the stairs, thankful that they weren’t creaking. As surreptitiously as possible, I brought the .45 back out, hoping that Emma wouldn’t see it.

  And then when I was close to the top of the staircase, the power came back on. I had to blink rapidly to reaccustom my eyes to the light and immediately thrust the gun out in front of me in case this was some sort of trap.

  But it wasn’t. No one suddenly appeared. No shots rang out. The whole upper floor was quiet. It also looked remarkably ordinary, in so far as anything in Emma’s house looked ordinary. It was a lot tidier than downstairs, and there was no obvious sign of intrusion. The walls were painted the same orange as the sitting room, and several abstract paintings – little more than symmetrical patterns created in black and white – hung from the available spaces, along with an expensive-looking metallic silver clock shaped like a very thin oblong. Three doors, all painted white, were positioned round the small square landing.

  ‘Which one’s your bedroom?’ I asked her.

  ‘The one to your right. Why?’

  ‘Just an educated guess,’ I said, and pushed the door open rapidly. I flicked on the light switch and ran inside, keeping low, and moved the gun round one hundred and eighty degrees in a covering arc, taking in from left to right the desk with PC, the neatly made queen-sized bed with stuffed animals reclining impassively on the pillows, the huge wardrobe that took up most of one wall.

  At first, I missed it. But as I swept the gun back round from right to left, my eyes stopped and focused on something in the middle of the bed.

  It was a small African woodcarving of a narrow tapering face, about six inches long, that blended in well with the midnight blue of the duvet, but definitely didn’t belong in the room. Thick, straw-like hair sprouted up wildly from the face, through which two large chicken feathers had been passed in opposing directions. Each feather had what appeared to be dried blood on the tip, and there were further flecks of blood in the hair as well.

  As I lowered the gun, Emma came into the room and saw what I was looking at. I heard her take a sharp intake of breath and out of the corner of my eye saw her put a hand to her mouth. Despite the fact that her other hand was still attached to the Colt Diamondback, she looked very vulnerable again. ‘Oh God, they’ve been in here. In my house.’

  She took a step towards the bed but I put out an arm to stop her. ‘Don’t touch anything. You might contaminate evidence.’

  And then a thought struck me, something that I should have cottoned onto as soon as I’d seen the lights showing in the other houses in the street.

  Unless whoever had cut the power had some supremely good contacts within the local electricity company, the only way they could have shut it off was if they’d done so manually.

  From inside the house.

  ‘Where’s your fusebox?’ I demanded.

  ‘Downstairs. In the utility room. It’s off the kitchen.’

  I didn’t hesitate. I went out of th
e room and hit the stairs at a run, almost stumbling in my haste to cut off any escape, the gun waving wildly in front of me, although, God knows, I really didn’t want to have to use it in here after what had happened in the cinema.

  But, of course, I was too late anyway.

  The front door was wide open. The intruder had gone. He’d even had the nerve to turn the power back on while we were otherwise occupied, before calmly emerging from his hiding place and walking straight out the front door.

  I went over and closed it, not even bothering to attempt a pursuit, then pulled the bolt across. Next I pulled back the curtain and inspected the window in more detail. It was going to be expensive to repair because the whole pane would have to be replaced, but overall the damage was limited, and even another couple of heaves of the brick wouldn’t have shattered it. It definitely wasn’t an emergency job.

  When I was satisfied that everything was in order, I found a plastic bag in one of the kitchen drawers and went back upstairs.

  Emma was sitting in the swivel chair by the desk and staring into space. She was no longer holding the gun, and the exhaustion in her face suddenly made her seem very much her age. Even her hair seemed to have lost its lustre. The woodcarving remained on the bed.

  I stepped across and carefully picked it up, turning it round in my hands. It was an ugly-looking thing, the pitted eyes staring out malevolently from amidst the straw, but not much different from any of the other traditional African face-carvings on sale in hundreds of shops across London and the South-East. I put it in the bag, tied the handles and placed it on the floor by my feet.

  ‘The man you’re investigating,’ I said, turning round in her direction, ‘is his name Nicholas Tyndall?’

  Which was when she said something that truly shocked me.

  ‘I know who you are now.’

  There was no fear in her words, simply a weary resignation. Our eyes met, and I knew there was no point lying about it. She knew. I said nothing.

  ‘When I first saw you, I thought you looked familiar,’ she went on, breaking eye contact and looking at a point above my left shoulder, ‘but I couldn’t place where it was I’d seen you before. Then, when you lied to me about who you were, that started to get me suspicious. But it was only when you pulled that bloody great revolver that I remembered where I’d seen your photo. Three years ago in the papers. Dennis Milne, police officer and killer.’ She emphasized that last word and I flinched involuntarily. ‘They mentioned your name when they were writing about Malik’s murder. They said he used to work with you a long time ago. Is that why you’re here?’

  I nodded slowly. ‘He was a good friend of mine once. I don’t like to think of his killers running free.’

  ‘But you’re wanted for murder. You’re risking everything by getting involved.’

  I shrugged. ‘Sometimes we do things we don’t understand.’

  She ran a freckled hand slowly down her face, and I could see the tension in her features. When she looked at me, I saw an attractive, vivacious girl who’d suddenly found herself in terrible trouble. I wanted to reach down and hold her. Press her head against my chest and tell her that it was all right, it wasn’t as bad as it looked, and breathe some of the vibrancy that had been there the previous evening back into her.

  Then, in a soft voice, she asked a question that ripped me apart. ‘You’ve come here for my help, but what’s to stop you killing me when I’m no longer any use to you?’

  For a moment I didn’t say anything as I absorbed the blow. It still hurt to know that this was how the world viewed me – as a murderous pariah – because somewhere, somehow, they were wrong to do so.

  ‘I haven’t got a heart of stone,’ I told her. ‘I’ve done things I’m not proud of, things I’ve regretted, but I honestly never meant to hurt anyone who didn’t have it coming to him, and I’m not going to do anything to you either. I promise you that.’ She didn’t say anything so I continued. ‘You can call the police if you want, report you’ve seen me, but I’d ask that you don’t. I’m here to find out who was behind Malik’s murder, which is something I know you want too.’

  ‘I don’t know if I want it any more,’ she said, rubbing her face again. ‘Not after this. I’m a smalltime bloody journalist on a small-time bloody newspaper. Why are they targeting me?’

  ‘That’s the problem: you’re not small-time. You’re doing too well on this, because you’re unearthing information that’s making life very difficult for Nicholas Tyndall and his people. That’s why they’re doing this.’

  She didn’t try to deny that Tyndall was the man she’d refused to name the previous night, which only confirmed what I already knew. Instead, she looked round the room as if it was suddenly unfamiliar. ‘I can’t believe it. Last night everything in my life was going fine, now it’s just ... I don’t know ... it doesn’t seem real. I can’t believe I’m sitting in my bedroom with a man who’s wanted for mass murder.’

  ‘I told you, Emma, you’re safe with me.’ But perhaps what I should have been asking was: was I safe with her, an investigative journalist who’d send her profile skywards if she decided to turn me in? No one would dare to call her small-time after that. The problem was, at the moment, I didn’t have much choice but to throw in my lot with her.

  ‘What happened tonight with Pope?’ she asked.

  I gave her a brief rundown of the events in the cinema and the shooting in the street outside, but I left out any mention of Richard Blacklip. There was no point in letting her know that I’d been carrying out hits during my time abroad, or where I’d been residing.

  ‘You killed someone, before I picked you up?’ Her tone was understandably shocked.

  I looked away. ‘It was self-defence. I had no choice.’

  ‘But the police are going to be after you, aren’t they? And they’re bound to have CCTV footage.’

  ‘I was well disguised, and when I was outside I was keeping my head down. I was also wearing gloves. I don’t think they’ve got a lot to go on.’

  ‘A true professional,’ she said with educated sarcasm.

  ‘Maybe.’

  She sighed. ‘I can’t believe all this. I need a cigarette.’

  ‘Here, have one of mine.’ I reached into my pocket and produced a pack of Benson & Hedges.

  ‘I thought you didn’t smoke.’

  ‘I didn’t yesterday. Today I figured I’d live dangerously.’

  She managed the beginnings of a smile, removing some of the tension in the room. It made me feel sorry that I was causing her all this anguish, although you could say – depending on how uncharitable you wanted to be – that she’d brought at least some of it on herself.

  I stepped forward, proffered the pack in her direction and waited while she took one.

  ‘The upside-down cigarette,’ she said, spotting the one I’d switched round in the pub the night before. ‘It doesn’t seem to have brought you much luck.’

  ‘I don’t know whether it has or not,’ I answered, lighting us both up. She gave me a puzzled look as I fished for the two business cards I’d taken from the wallet of Blondie’s dead colleague earlier. One was for a restaurant somewhere in the City, but the other was more interesting. It was this one I handed to Emma.

  She turned it over. ‘What is this?’

  ‘It’s the card of a guy named Theo Morris, from a company called Thadeus Holdings.’

  ‘I can see that, but what’s it got to do with anything?’

  When I told her where it had come from, she looked at me as if I was some sort of grave robber, which I suppose wasn’t that far from the truth.

  ‘And the photo on here. It’s not the man you ...?’ Her words trailed off.

  I shook my head. ‘No, it’s not him. It was behind another card that I took out of the wallet, so I guess it was left there by accident. A shooter would never be carrying ID. There’s a mobile number written in pen on the back which is going to need to be followed up.’

  She started to say
something, but I kept on talking. ‘Now I understand your position, and after what’s happened here tonight I’d advise you very strongly not to write any more articles about Malik’s murder, at least until it’s safe to do so, but you can still help me without putting yourself in any danger – providing me with bits and pieces of information. Nicholas Tyndall doesn’t want to hurt you; I can promise you that. He just wants you to leave him alone. And if you stop sending the spotlight his way and instead leave me to do the legwork, then you’ll be safe. The police aren’t getting very far in solving this murder, and the more time passes, the less the likelihood is that they will. But I think I’ll be able to, and without blowing your cover. I’m a good detective – it’s not something you ever lose – and I’ve come a long way to make sure I get justice, so I’ve got the motivation. And I’m not easily scared, either. On the other hand, if you turn me in, we might lose a real opportunity to bring some very bad people to justice.’

  I was using my best persuasive tone, and even though parts of what I said might have been exaggeration, I believed the crux of it to be the truth.

  She continued to stare at the card in front of her. Finally, she turned her gaze in my direction. ‘What bits and pieces of information do you want from me?’

  ‘First off,’ I said, pointing towards the mystery business card, ‘I want to find out who the hell Theo Morris and Thadeus Holdings are.’

  23

  Emma booted up the PC and connected to AOL while I fetched a stool from near the door, brought it over and sat down beside her. Directly above the desk was a large skylight, on which the rain outside beat a steady, comforting tattoo.

  When we were online she typed Thadeus Holdings into the search engine. A list of the first twenty matches appeared, with the company’s own website at the top. Emma clicked on it and a bland site map appeared with the company’s logo, the letters TH in bold Gothic lettering, in the top right-hand corner of the screen. There was a drab yellow circle in the centre of the screen connected to a number of smaller yellow circles by spoke-like blue lines, and in it was a summary of what Thadeus was supposedly all about: Helping clients develop a cost-effective and holistic corporate security policy. With offices and associates in twenty-nine countries worldwide. In other words, the usual corporate bullshit. It made me wonder whether whoever penned such inanities actually thought they were saying something useful, or whether, more likely, they knew perfectly well it was a load of crap.