Time to Die

by Alex Howard

  Conquest still made no real sound apart from hoarse gasps. He and Hanlon were about a metre away as they faced each other, separated by the shaft of the spear. Hanlon advanced on the dying Conquest, the forward pressure of the weapon as it sank further into his body pushing his legs and lower back against the edge of his desk, trapping him. As she moved forward, gripping its shaft, yet more of the spear emerged from Conquest’s back. Centimetre by bloody centimetre she moved forward jerkily, Conquest’s body twitching as more and more of the metal slid into him, until their bodies were touching, chest to chest, separated only by the width of Hanlon’s hand on the spear. Her thumb was pressed against his chest, her little finger against her own. Her face was so close to Conquest’s, their noses were only a couple of millimetres apart. It was almost as if they were lovers.

  More blood trickled out of Conquest’s mouth, his white teeth were stained vampirically with the stuff, and Enver could see his lips move as he tried to say something. Hanlon stared into his dying eyes, and Enver heard her hiss, ‘Mark sends his love.’ And she gave the spear a final jerk upwards, lifting Conquest off his feet. The light in his eyes was finally extinguished and his head slumped forward.

  Hanlon put the spear down. The end of the shaft was so long it rested against the raised hearth of the fireplace, propping Conquest upright against his desk so it looked like he was standing. Hanlon stood, seemingly lost in thought.

  ‘Ma’am!’ said Enver, urgently. She shook her head as if to clear it and went over to him. Quickly, she one-handedly undid the straps that secured his arms. Enver stood up. As he did so, he immediately sat down again, wincing at the agonizing pain in his foot. It was then the door of the study opened and Ludgate and Clarissa stood, framed in the doorway.

  Clarissa took in the sight of Conquest’s bloodsoaked corpse, skewered by the spear, and the dreadful sight of Hanlon, covered in blood, both her own and Conquest’s, as if she had been dipped in it by a giant hand. Clarissa couldn’t believe that this had happened. It was like some kind of dreadful reverse miracle. Like Lazarus, back from the dead. She clapped a hand to her mouth to stifle a scream and stood, paralysed by the scene. Ludgate reacted more robustly. It was obvious what had happened, God knows how it had, but that wasn’t the problem. Hanlon was. The bloody woman had got free. Demirel was still sitting where he should be; he concentrated on the DI. He could see the shotgun out of Hanlon’s sight on the desk, concealed by Conquest’s body and the upright screen of the laptop. She was closer but didn’t know it was there, and Enver was still restrained in the chair.

  He jumped forward to seize the gun. Even if Hanlon managed to pick it up, she only had one hand and the broken-open shotgun needed two to close it shut and work it. Then, without warning, Enver was upon him.

  He had seen Ludgate move and he sprang out of his chair, ignoring the agony in his foot. As Ludgate’s fingers reached for the stock of the gun, Enver’s fist crashed into the side of his head. As a fighter, Enver’s strengths had always been as a puncher rather than his ability to move well. He would never have reached the top because of this, but in a brawl he was unparalleled. Style hardly mattered. The extra ten kilos he was carrying as surplus weight only added to the power of the mass behind the punch. Ludgate literally saw stars from the force of the blow. It was like being hit with a sledgehammer. He sprawled across the desk, coating himself with Conquest’s blood which had pooled in a sticky puddle on the wooden surface from the exit wound in his back. His outstretched arm sent the shotgun sliding across its surface and it fell to the floor next to Hanlon. There were two loud thuds as a left and a right hook slammed into Ludgate’s kidneys, one and two. His lower back exploded with the pain and he nearly blacked out, then he was dragged off the desk on to the floor, face upwards with Enver on top of him.

  Ignoring the shotgun, Hanlon picked up the rifle and called out as she exited the room, ‘I’m going after the woman. The boy’s upstairs. Go and find him. Get backup.’ Enver nodded. He was sitting on Ludgate’s chest now, his knees pinning the DCS’s arms to the floor. He drew back his fist. Demirel’s face was maddened with bloodlust. Even in the ring he had never felt anything like this level of visceral hatred. Ludgate had meant to kill him and Hanlon. Enver’s dark brown eyes were sleepy no more. All Ludgate could do was lie there helplessly, trapped under Enver’s weight, and await the blow. Enver’s fist was huge.

  Clarissa had run into the hall while Enver and Ludgate were struggling over the shotgun on the desk. Her tight dress made movement hard and her high heels were impossible to run in. She kicked her shoes off and looked around desperately. The house suddenly seemed like one huge cage. Upstairs were the two bodies and she didn’t want to join them. The ground floor had Hanlon. Downstairs, she feared being caught like a rat in a trap. She had seen what Hanlon had done to Conquest, God knows what the woman would do to her if she got her hands on her. Then, suddenly, like some hideous vision of an avenging angel of death, as if reading her mind, Hanlon herself appeared in the doorway. She was coated in blood, both hers and Conquest’s, and under her arm was his rifle. Clarissa moaned and backed away from Hanlon in terror, then ran for the front door and outside into the night.

  Clarissa hurried down the steps and stood irresolutely looking around her. Her heart was thudding wildly. It was like a dreadful nightmare. What to do? What to do? She looked one way, then another. Her mind couldn’t think, she was panicking so much. It was like some horrible dream, hyper-real yet insane. The house’s bright security lights bathed everywhere within thirty metres in a harsh, white radiance. She could see the boat Ludgate had arrived in pulled up on the shingle next to the jetty, but she could never get it into the water in time. She sobbed in panic. Hanlon was coming. On the other side of the house were the rocks and she knew they’d tear her bare feet to pieces. The door of the house crashed open, and there stood the terrible, blood-spattered figure of Hanlon. Behind the house was the sheer slope of the hill. She had a sudden vision of climbing it on her hands and knees, then a sudden jerk on her ankles in the darkness as Hanlon seized her and pulled her down into the terrible strength of her arms. She ran for the paddock, forgetting momentarily about the pigs.

  Enver finished tying Ludgate’s arms behind his back with duct tape. His ankles were tied with the same material. He sat him upright and ran more tape around him, securing him to the leg of a heavy, mahogany table in the room. He tugged experimentally at the tape and nodded in satisfaction. The DCS wasn’t going anywhere. He picked up the shotgun and wondered as he did so, what the aftermath of all this would be. Enver’s mind usually ran very much on procedural lines. Tonight was unparalleled as far as he knew in police history. He laughed, slightly hysterically. He’d have to write a report. He laughed again, so hard that tears welled from his eyes. Where would he begin?

  The assistant commissioner had wanted Enver to make sure Hanlon caused nothing untoward to happen without him knowing about it. Look around you, sir, thought Enver. Welcome to normality, courtesy of DI Hanlon. Conquest pinned with the spear like a butterfly, the DCS bound and gagged, he himself naked apart from his boxer shorts, with a bullet hole in his foot. Perhaps he should give Corrigan a ring, he thought, put him in the picture. Better still, he could take a photo on someone’s phone and send it to him. This idea precipitated another gale of laughter, he was sobbing now as he laughed, tears rolling down his cheeks. His stomach muscles were starting to ache. He wiped his eyes and tried to relax.

  Conquest’s TV was still flickering through its selection of fixed camera images from the house. The Bridal Suite came on, with clear images of the two bodies: Robbo’s and the judge’s. Hanlon’s handiwork, he assumed. Enver guessed there would be a control unit somewhere, probably in the cellar. Shotgun in hand, just in case, he limped across the study, wincing with pain, then crossed the hall and hobbled down the staircase through the door he’d noticed earlier.

  At the bottom of the broad, stone stairs was a corridor running under the house with several doors, al
l open except one. The one that was closed had a prison cell style door. Enver looked through the viewing glass. The room was empty except for a small brown and white dog. He recognized it as a spaniel. His colleagues in the drug and bomb squad often used them. It was one of the few breeds he could identify; dogs used by the police were breeds he knew – Labradors, German shepherds, spaniels – and dogs he thought of as criminal were pit bulls and Rottweilers. He wasn’t a dog person.

  In the cell, he could also see a school blazer and a couple of books. This must have been where they’d kept the boy. He tried the handle experimentally. The door was unlocked and as it opened the dog ran out and stared up at Enver expectantly. It wagged its tail hopefully. It seemed happy to be out of the cell. The man and animal looked at each other and Enver shrugged. He guessed the dog might as well come too. One of his colleagues would look after it later. He limped on down the corridor, slowly and painfully, the dog at his heels.

  He found a bedroom where he guessed the dead man upstairs had slept. Its walls were decorated with violent, pornographic images and there was a table with drugs paraphernalia and stacks of porn DVDs, bodybuilding manuals, bike magazines and some books on Nazi Germany. Some of the drugs were prescription and he looked at the bottle labels for painkillers. He found some diazepam that looked promising and swallowed three. The adjacent room was a bathroom, leading to a kind of utility room which contained computer equipment, a couple of professional-looking servers, filing cabinets, film equipment neatly labelled and stacked on racking, and a table with a bank of monitors and the CCTV camera system’s controls.

  Enver knew a lot about CCTV systems and this one was simplicity itself. It was old-fashioned, it still had actual tape, and it took him only a couple of minutes to rewind and wipe it clean. There was now no visual record of whatever Hanlon had done upstairs, or the death of Conquest come to that. That’ll make the IPCC’s job a bit harder, he thought. They can rely on Hanlon’s version of events. He nodded in satisfaction and patted the dog on the head. He switched the system off and, accompanied by the spaniel, headed upstairs. Time to try and find the boy.

  Hanlon followed the retreating figure of Clarissa at a brisk walk. Her arm was still agonizingly painful but the adrenaline coursing through her more than compensated. The relief at still being alive was incredible. She had never felt so euphoric. Even the shrill pain from the break in her arm reminded her she was still alive, the boy was still alive, Enver was still alive. And her enemies were dead. Conquest, dead. Robbo, dead. The judge, dying. The sight of the moon and the clouds in the night sky, the occasional glimpses of stars, the scent of the earth underfoot and the smell of the sea, the noise of it breaking on the shore in a series of whooshing audible dips and troughs was amazing. Everything was hallucinatory real. She put her head back and laughed with the pleasure of it all. Clarissa heard the laugh, carried by the wind. She was crying now and almost blinded by tears as she ran and ran, pursued by the grim figure behind her.

  Hanlon saw Clarissa in the distance in front of her reach a barred fence and hesitate briefly, looking into the field and then back at Hanlon. Scylla and Charybdis, a rock and a hard place. The DI behind, the pigs in front. The moon was momentarily revealed from behind a cloud and light glinted off the rifle. Clarissa remembered the way Hanlon had looked at her. She thought of what Hanlon had done to Conquest. She saw again in her mind’s eye the body of Robbo on the floor, and the judge, dying, tied to the bed. She knew Hanlon would have no mercy. She looked over into the field at the pigs and climbed over the fence, into their field. She was more frightened of Hanlon than of the Large Whites.

  Enver looked around the Bridal Suite. The judge was still breathing, but Enver thought his face looked oddly shrunken. The insulin that Hanlon had given him meant his body was hypoglycaemic, the sugars in his blood now dangerously depleted. He had slipped into a diabetic-style coma induced by Hanlon’s injection and already the irreversible process of brain damage had begun. If the judge had been fitter, if he hadn’t had so much alcohol or cocaine and Viagra in his system, his body might have been able to fight back. Peter would have recommended an injection of glucagon, he had some in his schoolbag, but Peter was still in his drugged sleep.

  Enver couldn’t have cared less about the judge. To be honest, it was better for him and Hanlon if the judge was dead. It was Peter that concerned him. He looked for the boy behind the curtains, feeling as if he was playing hide-and-seek. The boy was not there and then Enver bent down. There he was, under the bed, still unconscious. Enver tried to move the bed to one side but it seemed fixed to the floor, so he gently pulled Peter out. The boy stirred and Enver noticed his eyelids flicker. He didn’t want the boy waking up and seeing the glassy-eyed corpse of Robbo, or the naked judge come to that, so he cradled him in his arms – the boy felt feather light – and, limping heavily, gasping with the pain, carried him outside the room to the landing. The dog followed. Enver gently carried Peter down the stairs to the hall. The pain from his foot was a lot less and he guessed the opiates in the pills must be starting to kick in. He sat on the bottom step and put the boy down on the floor. Through the doorway he could see the still erect body of Conquest, the spear end clearly visible. He went into the room, collected the handset from the satphone docking station and returned to the boy’s side, closing the door behind him. He didn’t want the boy to see that bloodstained corpse when he came to.

  The dog was gently licking Peter’s face. The child opened his eyes suddenly and looked around startled. The first thing he saw was a very large, hairy man, naked except for a pair of pants. He froze in terror, wide-eyed. Then he saw Tito. He put his arms round the dog and Tito pushed his muzzle into his face and sneezed with pleasure. The man held up both hands placatingly. He had a pleasant, open face and an old-fashioned moustache. ‘It’s OK,’ he said, ‘I’m a police officer.’

  Peter looked at him suspiciously. He certainly didn’t look like one. ‘Where’s your badge?’ he asked.

  The man smiled and started to laugh. Peter held Tito close to him. ‘It’s a long story, Peter Reynolds,’ he said. ‘Let’s phone your mum, shall we.’ Peter nodded and the man handed him what looked like a large mobile phone.

  ‘Go on,’ he said. ‘Use that. Phone her. She’ll be worried about you.’ Peter took the phone suspiciously and dialled his home number. It rang once and he heard his mother’s voice, ‘Hello?’

  By the time Hanlon reached the fence, Clarissa was halfway across the field. The pigs were following her. Pigs have very sensitive noses. Despite her orders from Conquest, Clarissa hadn’t bothered to change. She’d assumed that they would kill the two police and bag the bodies, and her new clothes would get equally contaminated, so she’d left the dress on. It was a mistake.

  The pigs were hungry. They scented the dress and snuffled and grunted deeply. They smelt food. Their eyes gleamed. Conquest had wanted them starving so they would make quick work of Peter’s body. They were starving. Now, they could smell Hanlon’s blood on Clarissa’s clothes. It was what they’d been trained by Glasgow Brian to respond to.

  Clarissa heard them grunt and turned and saw the pigs trotting after her, in a dreadful procession, led by the boar. The fitful moonlight shone on his sharp tusks. She increased her speed as her fear grew and the pigs, maybe smelling her terror as her eyes dilated, her heart pounded and sweat and tears streaked down her face, picked up their pace too. It was an uneven race, a race she couldn’t win. She doubled her speed. The pigs followed suit. Then her bare feet, wet and muddy from the grass field, slipped, and Clarissa fell. Boars are very aggressive animals and when he saw her stumble and fall, he attacked. She was just getting to her feet when the boar was on her. It bucked, then scythed its head upwards, and its tusks and snout thudded into her bent-over stomach. The knife-sharp, strong tusks ripped through her blouse and skin into her gut. She cried out and doubled over. Now there was a great deal of blood to attract the animals, blood and soft, warm food. They went into a kind of feeding
fury, butting each other out of the way, their sharp hooves trampling and stamping as they fought for the meat beneath them.

  Hanlon leant on the fence. She heard Clarissa screaming for maybe a minute and a half before she died. The pigs were on top of her in a bucking, tearing frenzy as their prey struggled helplessly beneath them. Then, as her movements stopped, the pigs grew quieter and calmed down as they started to feed, grunting with pleasure, their stomachs filling. Hanlon could hear them from where she stood. She laid the rifle down and started to walk back to the house.

  As Hanlon reached the half-open front door, she stopped and listened quietly. She could hear a boy’s voice talking. ‘Hello, Mummy. It’s me, Peter. Yes, I’m fine. I’m with a policeman now, his friends are coming. Yes. I love you too. Oh, Mum, I’ve got a dog now, please can I keep him. Thanks, see you soon. Mum, I love you.’

  Then she heard Demirel’s voice. ‘This is Sergeant Enver Demirel, Mrs Reynolds. Metropolitan Police. Your son is fine. Please could you pass me on to my colleague who I’m sure is with you. Thank you.’

  Hanlon sat down heavily on the doorstep, staring over the sea. She didn’t want the child to see her coated in blood. Enver finished speaking and she heard him tell Peter to wait a moment with the dog and not to move, while he spoke to his colleague.

  He padded out to join her and sat next to her as they looked out together at the mainland. He thought, from a distance we must look like some couple enjoying the romantic moonlight over the seascape, then, when you look more closely...

  ‘Do you know what Rize province is famous for, ma’am?’ he asked.

  ‘Tea,’ she said simply. Enver nodded. He felt hugely tired. He didn’t ask what had happened to the woman. He looked at Hanlon, her hair a wild mane, her face streaked with blood.