A Good Day To Die

by Simon Kernick

  I stayed as still as a statue, knowing that she only had to turn her head ever so slightly and drop her gaze downwards and the lives of the four people in this house would be changed for ever. One tiny movement; such huge ramifications.

  But she didn’t. Instead, she shut the drawer without removing anything, turned on her heels, and left the room. A few seconds later I heard the toilet flushing and Boyd heading back down the stairs. It was at that point that I finally started breathing properly again.

  They didn’t stay long after that. I couldn’t hear what they were saying because I remained in the bedroom, but I heard the front door open and shut, and after what felt like a suitable interval, I got to my feet and emerged from my hiding place.

  When I returned to the lounge, Emma was smoking a cigarette and looking stressed. ‘I ought to bloody well kick you out,’ she told me bitterly. ‘What if they talk to my neighbours and one of them saw you coming in?’

  ‘No one’s seen me round here and I’ll be very careful that they don’t in future,’ I promised her, before changing the subject. ‘Did you know that when DS Boyd came upstairs she rifled through your desk drawer?’

  Emma frowned. ‘Did she? What do you think she was looking for?’

  ‘I don’t know. Sources, information, anything, I suppose.’

  ‘Isn’t that illegal?’

  ‘It is, and anything she found would be inadmissable in court, but it’s the sort of thing that happens now and again. The police are like anyone else: they want results, and sometimes they’re prepared to cut corners. But I was surprised she felt the need to do that. I mean, most of the sources for your articles on this case have been cops, haven’t they?’

  She nodded, still frowning.

  ‘Is Barron one of your contacts?’ I asked, assuming by the way he’d been talking to her that he was.

  ‘Yes, he’s been helpful on this case.’

  ‘I don’t recognize the name. Is he based at Islington?’

  She shook her head. ‘No. He’s retired, technically, but they brought him back for this case because the Met’s so short of detectives. They’re doing that a lot these days.’

  ‘And who was the other guy? The one you phoned about Delly’s address?’ Again, it had been a name I hadn’t recognized.

  ‘John Gallan. He’s a DI at Islington. A nice guy, and helpful too, but he’d still arrest me like a shot if he knew I was harbouring you.’

  It was then that I realized quite how much danger I was putting her in by using her as my unofficial assistant, and I knew it was going to have to stop. ‘Look, I know I’m causing you problems with my involvement in this, so I’m going to say goodbye now. Thanks for all your help, and if I do end up finding out the motive behind the Malik and Khan killings, I’ll let you know. All I’d ask in the meantime is that you don’t tell anyone I’m back here.’

  ‘It’s not safe for you either, Dennis. My advice would be to return to the place you came from while you’re still in a position to.’

  Blondie had said pretty much the same thing to me two days ago and, like Emma, he’d had a point. But I was getting close now, I could feel it, and I didn’t want to let go. For the last three years life had been easy, but it had also been unfulfilling. The truth was, I liked hunting. For twenty years, prior to my ignominious departure from England, I’d hunted criminals every day, sometimes for insignificant crimes, sometimes for murder, and I’d enjoyed it. I’d enjoyed the chase, the evidence-gathering, the slow but steady peeling away of the layers of fat to reveal the bare bones of the mystery beneath, the one mistake that would ensnare my prey. The fact that the prey usually ended up getting a far lower sentence than his crime deserved was a matter of some disappointment, but never enough to stop me from trying again. And now, free from the constraints of an undermanned and overregulated police force, the prey wouldn’t escape so lightly. And I was enjoying the puzzle, too. This was a real mystery – not one of the grimy, pitiful tragedies that make up so much of the world’s murder statistics. A series of murders and attempted murders had been committed, yet I still had no initial motive. All I knew was that if I found the motive, all the layers would peel away and I’d be left with my solution. When you’re a twenty-year copper, ex or current, you don’t turn away from a challenge like that. You revel in it. Even if the stakes were so high.

  I walked over to the chair and picked up my coat. ‘If you could give me the contact details of the psychotherapist who treated Ann, I’d appreciate it.’

  Emma sighed. ‘Look, sit down.’

  ‘I thought . . .’

  ‘I know I ought to let you go, but I’ve invested a lot of effort in this case; it’s something that I’ve watched the police plod through almost as if they don’t want to solve it, and because of that, I’ve been determined to. And now it seems there’s even more to it than I thought. Do you honestly think that Ann’s father had something to do with it?’

  She returned to her original place on the sofa, so I sat down too.

  ‘Well, this is what we’ve got,’ I said. ‘Les Pope ordered and arranged the murder of Richard Blacklip a year ago, very shortly after Blacklip had been charged with offences relating to the sexual abuse of his daughter, Ann, which had taken place some years earlier. Ann was the girlfriend of Jason Khan. Jason Khan was shot just over five weeks ago, along with Asif Malik, after Khan telephoned Malik and called him to a meeting in a café. It may well be that Jason had important information he wanted to share with Malik, someone who, according to his brother, he knew from the past. We still don’t know what that information concerned. It might have been something to do with Thadeus Holdings, or Nicholas Tyndall and his operations, or Ann herself. Whatever it was, it was something very serious, and Ann was no doubt privy to it as well, because she was killed a few days later. So it’s possible it had something to do with the relevations her psychotherapy revealed. But if that’s the case, why did Ann live for so long after her father’s death without coming to any harm? Why didn’t they get rid of her at the time of his arrest if her knowledge was that incendiary?’

  ‘That’s why I can’t see how it can be anything to do with it.’

  ‘It may not be, but the Blacklip connection’s too coincidental to pass up without looking at further. I need to visit the psychotherapist and see what light she can throw on things.’

  ‘Do you think that’s a good idea?’

  ‘I don’t want you doing it. Barron’s right: you are taking a risk if you’re seen to still be sniffing around. Leave it with me. I think it’d be wise if you took a bit of a back seat for the moment.’

  For once, Emma didn’t argue. In fact, she surprised me. She asked me if I was hungry. ‘I’m going to cook some spaghetti in tomato sauce. You can stay for some if you want.’

  One thing I’ve learned through life is never to turn down an invitation from an attractive lady. You’ve always got too much time to regret it.

  Which was a pity, really, because had I left there and then, things might have turned out very differently.

  30

  While Emma prepared the dinner, I helped myself to another can of Fosters and turned the volume up on the telly. Channel 4 news was on and I watched a piece about the rise of obesity amongst the country’s schoolchildren, complete with grim footage of waddling kids in gym shorts, before Britain’s new Lord Chief Justice popped up to be interviewed by the newsreader about comments he’d made suggesting that prison should only be reserved for the most violent offenders. Apparently, he’d claimed that putting burglars, thieves, even first-time muggers behind bars only made them worse.

  The new Lord Chief Justice was called Parnham-Jones, and for the interview he was without the old wig and gown; instead he wore a plain black suit with a sky-blue silk tie and matching handkerchief, and was sitting in an armchair next to a roaring fire in his country home. He was in his early sixties, I’d guess, white-haired, with the bearing and aquiline features of a public-school-educated patrician not used to, or
much comfortable with, criticism. I would have bet all the money I’d got stashed in my poky little hotel room that he’d never been on the receiving end of a crime in his life. And commentators and politicians wondered why the public had lost faith in Britain’s criminal justice system.

  Parnham-Jones defended his comments in soothing, thoughtful tones, but with an underlying steel that brooked no dissent, always making a point of addressing the camera directly. Prison, he explained, was the university of crime. Send first-and second-time offenders there and they were not only likely to reoffend but to move on to more serious offences. Far better to ease the terrible overcrowding in the prisons and give them meaningful community-based sentences instead.

  To be fair to the guy, he put his point across well, and with the sort of succinctness that TV interviewers love, but you had to wonder how much he really knew about what was going on out there. In my experience, community-based sentences – painting old ladies’ houses, cleaning walls of graffiti, drug-treatment programmes – tended to be a bit of a joke. They were badly administered, the criminals often only turned up when they fancied it, and they never felt much like a punishment. I’m not 100 per cent sure that prison’s a lot better in terms of turning people away from crime (in the end, criminals commit their crimes knowing full well they’re wrong, but not really being too bothered about that fact, so trying to rehabilitate them’s a waste of time), but at least when a guy’s banged up he’s not actually out there thieving, mugging, or whatever. In that sense, whatever the liberals amongst us might say, prison works.

  Emma came back in with the spaghetti and a plate of garlic bread and we ate at the table with the TV off.

  You get that sense sometimes, or I do anyway, that things are looking up for you, and that the worst is over. In my experience, it’s usually followed by a very heavy fall. But as I sat there demolishing Emma’s cooking (and it was very good), while quaffing my second can of Fosters, I couldn’t help forgetting about my worries.

  After we’d finished eating, we cleared away and she put on a CD of Van Morrison’s greatest hits. I asked her how she’d got into journalism.

  She smiled. ‘I’ve always liked a good story, and I did English at A level, so that was the foundation. Then when I was at sixth-form college, just before our exams, they had a careers fair where representatives from different industries set up stalls in the refectory so that we could go and talk to them. The journalist who came from the local paper was only a couple of years older than me and he was quite nice-looking, so I got chatting to him, we ended up going for a drink, and he got me a job on the paper. I was meant to go away to uni, but I ended up marrying him. God knows why. I think it was because my dad was so against it. He had all these ideas of what career path I should take. He wanted me to become a lawyer, like him.’

  ‘So where’s the husband now?’

  ‘We were young and it didn’t last, but by then I’d got a taste for the job. After the split, I moved up to town and I’ve been working here ever since. The money’s not fantastic but it gives me independence.’

  I wondered why she wasn’t on a national newspaper – she certainly seemed to have enough talent – but chose not to say anything, in case I hit a raw nerve. ‘And this place? Is it yours?’

  She smiled proudly. ‘It is. With a little bit of help from my parents.’

  Which was typical. You never saw a poor lawyer. ‘You need all the help you can get with the prices these days,’ I said, or something equally inane.

  She asked me how I ended up being a policeman, and I gave her the honest answer: because at one time I’d thought that it was a useful, socially acceptable job, and I’d genuinely believed I’d make a difference.

  ‘How did you end up as a hitman?’

  I cringed a little when she called it that. It wasn’t how I saw myself, somehow. ‘Is this an interview?’

  She shook her head, her expression one of genuine interest. ‘No, it isn’t, but I would like to know.’

  I thought about the answer for a long time, and as I mulled it over I lit a cigarette, as if that would somehow make answering easier. At the same time, I also thought about Malik. I pictured him up there in heaven, or whatever the Islamic equivalent was, looking down at me with a mixture of interest and disapproval as he too waited for my answer. I knew that whatever I said would never have been enough to have earned his forgiveness.

  ‘Because I wasn’t strong enough, or sensible enough, to say no,’ I said eventually, and hoped that Malik would have at least half approved of that.

  Emma was unconvinced. ‘But why did you decide to kill people for money?’

  I sighed. ‘I thought when I did what I did that I was doing the world a favour. I thought I was killing people who deserved it.’

  ‘But Dennis, you can’t just be a judge, jury and executioner,’ she said, with a hint of educated self-righteousness. ‘You haven’t got the right to decide who dies and who doesn’t. No one has. And you’re still doing it. Only a few weeks ago, you shot the suspect in the Malik and Khan murders.’

  ‘Slippery Billy? He deserved it. If he hadn’t been a murderer, I wouldn’t have killed him.’

  She paused, unsure, I think, what else to say. I’m not the best person to argue with about the ethics of murder, because I can sympathize with other points of view. In the end, I do what I do; and I’ve done it because at the time my instincts have told me to. It’s no justification, but at least it’s a reason, and some people don’t even have one of those.

  Emma sat forward in the seat and watched me intensely. It was a little disconcerting, but somehow I didn’t want her to stop. It felt good to be the centre of attention for once.

  ‘Do you really consider yourself one of the good guys, Dennis?’ she said softly. ‘Don’t you ever worry that you might be just as bad as the people you put down?’

  She looked beautiful then; the perfectly rounded features of her pale face amidst the flowing auburn hair, and those big, smiling, hypnotic eyes that seemed to drag you further and further in. And I knew that whatever I replied was going to disappoint her.

  In the end, I settled for what I thought was honesty.

  ‘No,’ I said simply.

  We slept together that night.

  It just happened. We drank some more, watched the TV, moved off the more difficult subjects (although she tried occasionally to come back to them), and as the evening progressed I’d felt that there was something growing between us. I liked her anyway, and had done since the moment we’d met, but I was also detecting a growing warmth coming back the other way, as if she’d finally accepted me for who I was and was prepared to stop getting too uptight about it. Or maybe it was just the booze.

  I’m no Valentino, and like most men I’ve had less practice than I would have liked over the years, but after the last of the beer had gone and we were halfway through a bottle of red wine, she’d stood up to go into the kitchen for something, and I’d followed her in there. She’d turned round, sensing my presence, and I’d taken her in my arms and kissed her. For a second she hadn’t reacted and I’d thought that maybe my confidence in my own charm was misplaced, but then she’d kissed me back – hard and with passion – and a few minutes later, still entwined in each other’s arms, we’d danced and stumbled our way up the stairs and into the bedroom, clothes strewn behind us. I’d wondered briefly what the hell I was doing; then, as we fell on the bed and she giggled as I kissed her neck and tugged at her underwear, I’d ceased caring.

  Afterwards we lay naked on the bed and smoked, and I experienced a peculiar feeling of detachment, as if somehow I wasn’t there and it hadn’t really happened. I listened to the sounds of the night – the cars humming faintly past on the main road, the occasional drunken shout from somewhere in the distance – and tried to relax and enjoy the moment. I let my fingers drift down to her belly, pale and flat in the perma-glow of the city’s lights, but all the time my instincts were talking to me, trawling back through the many dark exp
eriences of my life and predicting the winding, uncertain path of my short-term future.

  And what they told me was as unnerving as it was accurate.

  That a fall was definitely coming.

  31

  I was woken by the alarm at seven the next morning after a good night’s sleep, which would have benefited from being an hour or two longer. But who was I to complain? Emma’s bed was a lot more comfortable than the one in my hotel room, and there was the added bonus of having her in it. I lay where I was, eyes half closed, while she had a shower, but when she came back I could see that she wanted me gone.

  ‘I’ve got to be in the office for nine,’ she said, chucking me my clothes, ‘but I’ll be on the mobile. I’m not trying to hurry you or anything, but you understand ...’

  I told her I did, and heaved myself out of bed. ‘I’ll leave you in peace, and I’ll check in later when I’ve got something. OK?’

  She smiled but it looked forced. I felt like telling her not to worry; that it wasn’t her fault. I don’t suppose it was easy for someone like Emma – a nice, well-brought-up girl with a decent job – to come to terms with the fact that she’d slept with a killer. Especially one who was on the run, and currently in her house. She gave me the number of Ann’s psychotherapist, Dr Cheney, and I wrote it down, trying not to stare as she pulled on her skirt.

  At the front door, there was one of those pauses where neither party’s quite sure what to do or what to say. I leant forward and kissed her gently on the cheek, and she turned her face and planted one on mine. It felt good enough.

  ‘See you later,’ I said, and hurried out the door without looking back, feeling like a kid who’d stayed out late without telling his parents.

  Dr Madeline Cheney was not the easiest woman to get hold of. I called her just after nine o’clock from the Italian café near my hotel and got her secretary. Dr Cheney was busy, I was told in very professional, patient-friendly tones. If I wanted to make an appointment, I could go through her, the secretary.