Time to Die

by Alex Howard

  ‘Can you get him up here?’

  The judge nodded. He moved his head so he was looking at an old-fashioned bell pull. ‘With that,’ he said. He was eager to be cooperative now.

  Hanlon looked around the room. The only weapon she had with her was her knife and she did not want to be in a fight in close proximity to the massively muscled Robbo. She guessed, well, she knew, he would be no stranger to violence. She would bet it was Robbo who had slammed Mehmet’s head into the kitchen counter, shattering his skull. If he managed to pin her down with his weight, she would in all probability lose. To lose meant to lose everything. She had no intention of doing that.

  The bedroom was dominated by a huge Victorian fireplace, its hearth decorated with glazed tileware. There was a set of fire irons of a scale in keeping with the large fireplace, including a poker the length and thickness of a crowbar. Hanlon replaced the gag in the judge’s mouth and went over and picked it up. She hefted it thoughtfully in her hand, feeling its solid weight. It was perfect.

  She covered the judge with a blanket so only his bound wrists and ankles were visible; the rest of him, including his head, was an amorphous mass under the cloth. Then she unbolted the bedroom door, tugged the bell-pull and stood behind the old-fashioned screen. The judge’s mask stared at her balefully with its faceted eyes.

  A couple of minutes later, she heard the stairs creak under a man’s heavy weight and the handle of the bedroom started to turn. Her grip tightened on the iron bar as she waited.

  36

  DCS Ludgate slowly followed the twin sets of footprints down the stream. For a solidly built man, he moved silently and gracefully. The gun with its double barrels was comfortingly heavy in his hands. One for you, Hanlon, he thought, and one for you, Sergeant. He had no doubt that the other set of prints belonged to Demirel. Hanlon attracted these hangers-on, he thought dismissively. Other women have dogs, she has Metropolitan Police sergeants. She should get them chipped for when she loses them. Not that Whiteside was exactly lost. Not geographically anyway. How that stupid bitch Clarissa had managed to cock up shooting him in the head, God only knew. It wasn’t the kind of mistake he’d make.

  He came to where Hanlon and Demirel had climbed up the steep muddy bank to look at the lodge. He stood and looked at the prints and divined what had happened. Two sets up, two sets down. He moved slightly downstream and sure enough he picked up their tracks again. He was puzzled now as to what they would find or do on the beach. Had Hanlon arranged a boat? She was certainly far-sighted enough to do that. He was creeping forward now, every nerve strained. They had to be very close.

  The banks of the stream widened and flattened as it spread out to the sea, and then suddenly visible in front of him, he saw Demirel. He was crouched by a sand dune, his back to Ludgate, staring at the house on the island through binoculars. Ludgate noticed prints in the wet sand amongst the shingle and they led to the sea. They were footprints now as opposed to shoe prints. He shook his head in wonder. The crazy bitch must have swum over there. He hated Hanlon’s guts, but he had to admire her bravery and astonishing physical fitness. It would have been understandable for Ludgate to speculate wishfully that she might have been swept away by the powerful current, but he had absolutely no doubt Hanlon would be equal to the challenge. Keeping an eye on Demirel, he fished his iPhone out of his pocket. Still no signal. He’d have to call Conquest from the lodge. He put the phone back in his pocket and slowly and quietly walked up behind Demirel. The noise of the wind from the sea masked any sound he made.

  He walked to within two metres of Demirel. ‘Stand up, Sergeant, and don’t turn round,’ he said quietly. He watched, satisfied, as Demirel froze. ‘I’m armed. If you turn, I’ll fire.’ He watched as Demirel painfully, slowly got to his feet, keeping his back to him as instructed. Ludgate shook his head. And I thought I was unfit, he thought. ‘Turn round slowly now, hands outstretched where I can see them. I’m sure you know the drill.’

  Enver did so. He recognized the voice immediately and was surprised by how unsurprised he was. It was as if he had known all along that if Conquest did have a man in the Met, it would be him. He looked now at Ludgate, saw his sparse, reddish-brown hair blown over his balding head, his fleshy face with the small, piggy eyes unwavering as they held Enver in their stare, the shotgun rock steady in his freckled hands. Enver knew that Ludgate wouldn’t hesitate to shoot him. Now Enver knew Ludgate was implicated, he wouldn’t be allowed to live. That much was certain. The only reason Ludgate hadn’t pulled the trigger was almost certainly because he didn’t want the messy business of clearing up afterwards. At this range, bits of him, chunks, would be spread all over the place. Enver was sure Ludgate had a cleaner death lined up for him than blowing him into shreds with a shotgun.

  He was surprised by how unafraid he felt, surprised and grateful. Although he’d climbed into a boxing ring many times, a thing most people would be terrified to do, he’d never thought of himself as brave. He was pleased to find he was. He’d have hated to go to pieces in front of Ludgate. If anything, he was strangely calm. Barring a miracle, he was a dead man. He breathed deeply and looked around him at the enormous expanse of sea and sky. They were beautiful. There were worse places to die. What did upset him was the feeling he had let Hanlon down. She would be relying on him and he was useless.

  ‘Take your jacket off, Sergeant. Good. Now your shirt and tie.’ Ludgate was concerned about two things; concealed weapons was one of these. The other was a key. Police handcuffs have a universal key and Ludgate did not want to have to body search Demirel to check he didn’t have one concealed about his person. He made the sergeant strip down to his boxer shorts. His clothes lay in an untidy pile on the beach as if he’d gone for a midnight dip. He shivered in the cold wind, his skin covered with goosebumps.

  ‘Good, Sergeant. Now turn round facing the sea. Good. Arms behind your back.’ Holding the shotgun with one hand, Ludgate advanced towards him and, both barrels pressed upwards into the rear of Enver’s skull, handcuffed his hands one by one behind his back.

  ‘Now sit down on the ground, back to me. Slowly now.’ Enver did so and Ludgate gathered up the sergeant’s clothes and shoes, and hung the binoculars around his neck.

  ‘OK, Sergeant. Stand up now. That’s good. Now head for the house.’ Enver winced as his naked feet scrunched painfully on the stony beach. Ludgate followed behind him, the shotgun cradled in one hand.

  Back on the island there was a discreet knock on the oak-panelled door of the bedroom. Robbo had arrived. Hanlon waited, the door opened and Robbo came in. He stopped uncertainly, looking at the bed in puzzlement. Seeing the hands and feet, the body covered with the blanket, he assumed it was the boy, but where was the judge?

  Hanlon sprang from behind the screen and brought the poker down in an overhead arc aimed at Robbo’s head. Robbo sensed, rather than saw, the movement. His response was instinctive, born of years, decades, of violence. His left arm, coated in heavy, protective muscle, swung upwards to block the blow. He grunted in pain as the heavy, iron poker smashed into his arm, fracturing the bone, and his right fist swung at Hanlon. She ducked and felt it graze the top of her head, and then she straightened up and drop-kicked Robbo in the groin.

  It was exactly the same kick that Enver had seen in the gym in South London. The same kick that had lifted the heavy bag, all forty kilos of it, up high on its chains. Robbo gasped in agony and doubled over, his face contorted with pain. Hanlon stepped forward, her left knee scythed upwards into his face, and as she did so she dropped the iron poker, clasped her hands together, fingers interlaced, and slammed his head downwards to meet her knee coming up. There was a dull thud, a muted breaking sound, as the bones in his nose, his gum, upper teeth and cheekbones smashed, and Robbo went down. Even then he wasn’t finished. He tried to pick himself up off the floor, his face a bloody mask, and as he did so Hanlon snatched the poker from the floor and struck him as hard as she could in the right temple, driving the shattered bone of
his skull into his brain. He collapsed on to the carpet face down. A thick, dark red pool of blood slowly formed around his head. His breathing sounded ragged and wet and then slowly ebbed away into silence.

  She looked around her. The blanket had come off the judge’s head as he had struggled to free himself and he looked at her, wide-eyed with terror. Hanlon pulled the ski mask off her face and shook her hair free. Yes, Lord Justice Reece, this is what I look like, look at me, look at my face. Her eyes blazed with bloodlust. I don’t need to hide behind a mask, she thought. She strode to the door and closed it, stepping over Robbo’s body as she did so with as little thought as if he had been a rug. She walked back to the bed and checked on the boy who still lay there on the floor, unconscious.

  She went to the table where the boy’s insulin was. She was well aware how dangerous it could be. Hanlon knew that insulin in a healthy person would lead to coma and death. Years ago, she had been a constable on a murder investigation where this had happened, a husband and wife thing, not too dissimilar to the death of Sunny Von Bülow, very possibly inspired by it. Insulin had recently led to several hospital deaths in the north of England when saline drips had been deliberately contaminated with it. She picked up the boy’s syringe and looked closely at it to see how it worked. It was simple enough. She twisted it experimentally and it clicked as a number of units were dialled. She decided that twenty would probably do. She’d make it fifty to be on the safe side. She turned the injection pen and saw it would allow her to go up to thirty-three. Well, if that was the maximum dose for a type-one diabetic, it would surely be more than enough for a healthy adult.

  She thought of the boy’s mother, she thought of Whiteside, she looked at the tranquil face of the boy himself. She thought of the charred body of the Somali girl and the drowned corpse of Baby Ali and his dead family. She looked at the judge, then at the syringe. An expression of terrible fear spread over his face as he guessed what she was intending to do. He caught her eyes and silently shook his head, pleading with her not to do it. Hanlon’s face was expressionless, her eyes cold, hard and distant.

  She saw Whiteside clearly in her mind’s eye. It was an image, a memory from the past, a couple of years ago. It was before he’d grown his beard. They’d arrested a pompous financier for conspiracy to pervert the course of justice and Hanlon had rough-housed him a little, slammed him against a wall, if she remembered correctly. He’d said, who do you think you are? He had been more outraged than hurt. Whiteside had answered for her, she’s the face of postmodern feminist policing, sir, get used to it. She smiled at the memory. Now Mark was lying in a hospital bed, his head shattered, his body damaged beyond repair, all to protect Conquest and his wealthy customers. Whiteside would never make her smile again. The judge saw her face soften and for a second hope blazed in his heart. Then he looked at her expression as she turned her head back to him. It was the face of a beautiful Medusa. It was then that all hope died for Lord Justice Reece.

  Hanlon sat on the bed next to him. Tears were streaming from his eyes now; he could see no mercy in her face. No humanity at all. Hanlon moved the blanket aside. She looked with dispassionate distaste at his body, his thin limbs, his pot belly, deciding where to put the syringe. He felt the prick of the needle as Hanlon injected him in his groin, near the base of his penis. It seemed to her appropriate. She was sick of the powerful and the connected evading justice. She could even envisage a scenario where the judge would be allowed to walk because it was deemed politically expedient, his arrest considered detrimental to the public good. His trial might undermine faith in the incorruptibility of justice. She covered him up with the blanket, ignoring the mute appeal in his eyes, and wiped the syringe clean where her fingers had touched it, removing her prints with a medicated tissue from a box on the table. Then she crouched over the corpse of Robbo, putting the syringe in his right hand and closing his fingers around it tightly, before holding it with another tissue as she placed it back on the table where she had found it. She glanced at it dispassionately. When SOCO arrived to investigate what had happened, let Robbo take the blame for the judge’s death.

  She went back to where Peter lay on the floor and manoeuvred him underneath the bed. Hiding him was the only thing she could think of doing with him. She looked around the room one last time and took her phone out of her bag to check it. No signal. There was no landline in the room either. She guessed that Conquest had never bothered to have one installed. Somewhere in the house would be a satellite phone like those used on boats and ships, but she had more pressing problems. Two down, two to go.

  Time for Conquest.

  37

  It was as Hanlon had guessed. There was a satellite phone in Conquest’s study. It was a new Inmarsat and it rested on a docking station behind his desk. He had toyed with the idea of getting a landline installed, the expense was no deterrent, but what he didn’t want was outside intrusion on his privacy. Conquest believed you could not be too careful. The satphone was fine. It rang now. He picked it up and listened carefully. Clarissa watched as, still holding the phone, he went to the gun cupboard in his study, opened it, and took out a .22 rifle and a box of shells. The Makarov pistol was at the bottom of the North Sea about two miles from the island. He had two shotguns in the cabinet as well as the rifle, but he had no intention of blowing holes in his house or painting walls and ceiling with Hanlon’s blood and tissue. If he did have to shoot her, he’d keep it neat. Conquest doubted it would come to that. He had every faith in his abilities.

  ‘Sure, Jim. Understood. No, we don’t need help. I’ll handle this myself,’ he said with finality and put the phone down. He slid the bolt of the rifle back and put a bullet in the chamber of the gun. He gently pushed the bolt back into position.

  ‘Hanlon’s on the island,’ he said to Clarissa. He threw over the remote to her and she nodded, using it to switch on the TV and access the channels that were connected to the CCTV cameras in the house and garden. There was a full bank of monitors down in the basement where Robbo had an office adjacent to his bedroom, next to the cell that Peter had occupied. On Conquest’s TV, in his study, you had to view the camera shots individually. Clarissa quickly ran through the options in the house with rapid clicks on the remote. A series of images filled the high-resolution TV screen, one after the other.

  The cell. Empty apart from the dog.

  Robbo’s office, empty.

  The hall downstairs, then the landing upstairs, empty.

  The Bridal Suite. Here was Robbo, face down on the floor, his head haloed in a rusty red stain. The judge, spread-eagled naked on the bed, gagged and bound, his eyes closed. His chest moved, he was obviously still alive, and sitting on the bed, tying her training shoes, Hanlon.

  Conquest studied the picture and frowned, deciding on his options. ‘Wait here,’ he said.

  Clarissa nodded. She watched him through the half-open door of his study as he gracefully, silently, ran up the stairs, rifle in hand. She moved closer to the door and now she could see two images, one on TV of a two-dimensional Hanlon tying a final double knot in her shoe and standing up from the bed, and one in real life of a three-dimensional Conquest taking a position by the door. He clicked the safety on the rifle and held it above his shoulder by the barrel, like a club, or like a baseball player waiting for the ball.

  Clarissa watched as Hanlon clicked the blade of her gravity-knife out and gently took hold of the door handle. She signalled to Conquest above her. He glanced down and she mouthed the word ‘knife’ exaggeratedly, miming a stabbing action. He grinned and gave her the thumbs-up sign. A gun would have complicated matters, but not a knife. He would bet good money that the policewoman had never used a knife in a fight in her life. He had.

  Crouched outside the door, waiting for Hanlon, Harry Conquest was now enjoying himself hugely. This was like old times. This was what he’d been so good at as a teenager, the reason he’d been accepted into the Motorcycle Club. A stunning ability for violence. It had been twenty-f
ive years, he guessed, since he’d been in a serious fight. One that meant life or death. Once, they’d been commonplace. To join the Angels, to be accepted even as a Probationer, he’d had to go Angel bashing, driving out to pubs frequented by rival motorcycle gangs and picking fights. Vicious, bloody brawls in bars and car parks. Your life hung in the balance as the fists and the steel-toed boots swung or glasses were smashed and used as weapons. He still bore the scars. And Harry had been exceptionally talented at violence. He was proud of his reputation. Then, once he was in the Angels, a more professional level of hurt, debt-collecting, often drug debts from dealers. Conquest had a bloody past and he’d been very good. As he stood there, feeling the adrenaline course through his body, he felt the years drop away. Life had been so much more fun then.

  Today, he was richer and more successful than he could have believed possible, a multimillionaire he guessed, but part of him suddenly hankered for the old days, the excitement. The drugs, the booze, the partying, the women, maybe even the camaraderie. He’d got to the top, but a pinnacle is a lonely place to be. Life had become too corporate, too planned, too controlled. He’d never be young again, but tonight he’d stop time for once, he’d be the man he once was. Tonight he’d really live again.

  He was looking forward to taking down Hanlon. She was a worthy opponent. She’d managed to deal with Robbo, that in itself was an achievement. Very few men could have done that. And she’d swum all the way here as well. He had to admit she was good.

  Clarissa gestured frantically and he smiled. She was coming. He saw the doorknob turn, then the door opened and Hanlon strode out. Conquest admired that. She didn’t creep out, she boldly stepped out. As she did so, he moved his right foot out and swung the rifle in a powerful arc. The wooden stock hit Hanlon on the left upper arm. The bone broke on the impact. The power of the blow knocked her off balance and as she started to right herself, to launch the hand containing the knife at Conquest, he slammed the rifle butt into the side of her head. She collapsed on the floor, not quite unconscious but dazed, and Conquest kicked her in the stomach. He heard her gasp as the wind was driven out of her, and she doubled up and let go of the knife. He booted it away with his foot. It fell through a gap in the bannisters on to the polished, parquet floor below, where Clarissa picked it up. He kicked Hanlon again, viciously in the guts, and she retched.