One Dead Witness

by Nick Oldham

  He lurched past Tapperman down the hallway and sank to his knees, supporting himself against the wall. He regurgitated his stomach contents in one violent vomit. It looked just like wet cement.

  Behind him, and ringing in his ears, was the ear-splitting petrified scream of Myrna. She had hit hysteria within a milli-second and showed no signs of coming back to earth until Tapperman gave her one almighty crack across the chops.

  ‘Fuckin’ civvies,’ he said under his breath. Maybe it had been a mistake inviting them to the scene. On reflection, though, perhaps he should’ve warned them.

  It’s not every day that a person gets to see two severed heads, plonked side by side, ear to ear, on a coffee table. Eyes wide open. Mouths gaping. Tongues lolling out. Set in their own coagulating blood, like candle wax.

  The heads of the two brothers, Jimmy and Dale Armstrong. Now former employees of Kruger Investigations.

  Tapperman had a further thought. Jeez, they look like a matching pair of candles. If there had been a wick coming out of them, he would have been tempted to light it.

  Chapter Eight

  The phone rang twice more before Danny even made it upstairs. Each time she answered, it was the same as the first call. Nothing ... then one word which took a further step towards obscenity.

  The fourth time it rang, Danny lifted the receiver, replaced it and threw it down, off the hook.

  Before going upstairs she checked all the doors and windows were locked, curtains drawn.

  Only then, when she felt completely safe, did she go for that long bath to soothe her jagged nerves.

  In the deep, hot, soapy water, she had time for reflection.

  Over the years she had dealt with many women – and some men - who had become victims of obsessive behaviour by their former partners or other people, who for some reason became attracted to them in a sick way. In the past she had given normal, routine advice. See a solicitor. Get an injunction. Ring us when he’s here. Keep a log. You’ll have a hell of a time proving it, you know. Stop being such a softie. Pull yourself together.

  Only now did she begin to really understand just something of what those poor people must have been going through. Now it was real to her. It may have only just started, but it made her afraid, alone and isolated. And much, much more.

  Without even knowing what was coming, Danny burst into tears.

  Her initial reaction was to choke them back, but she realised she needed their release. Accordingly, she howled in anguish, smashed the bath brush on the water and went with the flow.

  When they subsided, she felt slightly better.

  Ten minutes later, refreshed, skin buzzing, hair clean, in her bathrobe and slippers, she trotted downstairs, filled up the wine glass and pointed the remote at the telly.

  Tentatively she picked up the phone and bounced it in her hand. She replaced it, held her breath, bit her tongue.

  Nothing happened.

  She breathed out and sat down.

  When the ring came it sound like an explosion in her ears.

  Inside herself, something crumbled.

  Louis Vernon Trent sat prim and proper across from the old lady. He smiled at her occasionally. She thought he looked like a thoroughly decent young man.

  Most of the time he watched the world go by from the train window, gazing at the landscape which he knew so well. Particularly once he had changed trains in Manchester, he recognised every inch of the towns and country of East Lancashire, eventually merging into mid-Lancashire at Preston, then west as the train headed towards the coast.

  Whilst the train was stationary in Preston, he had a few torrid moments when a couple of uniformed British Transport Policemen came into the carriage. They worked their way down the aisles, closely scrutinising’ passengers, in particular lone males.

  He knew they were looking for him.

  He kept his cool, eyed their approach with confidence and leaned forwards, almost with an intimate gesture to the old woman.

  ‘So how’re you doing, Mum?’ he said. He stressed the last word loud enough for it to be picked up by the approaching cops.

  ‘I’m very well, son,’ she responded brightly, glad of the opportunity to say something. ‘For my age, that is.’

  She laughed. So did Trent.

  ‘What did you think of my birthday present to you?’ he asked as the policemen came alongside. They ignored Trent and his mum. After all, they were seeking a single man, probably still in prison gear. Not someone travelling with his mum.

  ‘Eh?’ said the lady.

  ‘Nowt,’ he said. ‘Go back to sleep.’ He relaxed and allowed himself a smug smile as he closed his eyes and recalled the final moments of his escape.

  He had forced the ambulance driver to take him towards the outskirts of the nearest town where he knew there was an out-of-town retail park. The ambulance was driven behind the retail park to an industrial estate, where they parked up in the back yard of a deserted warehouse.

  At knifepoint, Trent forced the driver out, made him open the rear doors of the ambulance and stand there looking at two dead bodies, soaked in blood. The foot of the brain-skewered prison guard still twitched.

  Trent made the ambulance driver undress and fold up his clothes in a neat pile. He took the man’s wallet which contained sixty pounds and a credit card. He shoved the knife underneath the man’s ear and made him divulge the PIN number for the card which Trent memorised.

  Then it was time to dispose of him.

  Both knew the moment had arrived.

  ‘Look, pal, I won’t talk. I’ll stay here for as long as you say. Anything. Whatever you want. I don’t wanna die. I haven’t done anything wrong. I’ve got a wife and kids.’

  Trent sneered at him. ‘I hate kids,’ he chided. ‘Do you fuck them?’

  The man swallowed, shook his head.

  ‘Get down on your knees.’

  He descended slowly. He was on the same eye-line as his dead colleague in the ambulance, whose eyes stared sightless at him.

  ‘Shall I take mercy on you?’

  ‘Yes ... please ... Look, you can trust me...’

  ‘Oh, fucking shut up whining,’ shouted Trent. He’d had enough of the man. He grabbed his hair and pulled his head back, exposing the neck. He sliced the knife across his throat, forcing the blade deep with a sawing action, severing the arteries.

  The man gurgled, slumped onto the back step of the ambulance, clutching his neck, trying to stem the flow.

  Six feet away, Trent watched him writhe and begin to bleed to death.

  When the man no longer moved, Trent stepped over him and climbed into the back of the ambulance. He cleaned up the self-inflicted wounds on his arms with antiseptic wipes and dressed them with bandages. He undressed himself, towelled himself clean, and got into the ambulance driver’s gear which fitted him well - a green overall and trainers. Over the top of this he put an anorak from which he cut off the epaulettes. He threw his prison gear into the ambulance and then helped himself to the wallets belonging to the dead paramedic and prison guard. This added another forty-five pounds to his stash of cash, four credit cards and a driving licence.

  He briefly considered setting fire to the ambulance, but realised all that would achieve would be to draw attention to the fact he would not be very far away. It was a good decision because the ambulance was not discovered until after midnight, giving Trent ample time to do what he had planned.

  He strolled boldly towards the retail park, posing as an off-duty paramedic; he knew he would find an ASDA store open until ten. Before entering the store he went to a hole-in-the-wall cash machine on the outer wall where, using the ambulance-driver’s card, he withdrew the maximum allowed that day.

  Three hundred pounds richer and armed with a nice, new, non-squeaky trolley, he went shopping.

  In the ‘George’ clothing shop within the store he selected a couple of smart new outfits and two pairs of shoes, with underwear, socks and shirts to match. Next he bought a selection
of tasty food and drink which could be consumed on the hoof and finally a few toiletries and a large holdall.

  Feeling his luck was still in, he pinpointed the busiest check-out with the most harassed-looking till operator and joined - the queue. He presented the ambulance driver’s credit card and looked the young girl directly in the eye. There was no problem. Being under severe pressure, the girl swiped it through and couldn’t even be bothered to give a cursory glance at the signature on the receipt as opposed to the card. It was as well she didn’t. Trent’s was nowhere near that of the man he had murdered.

  He sailed through on a high, bearing two hundred pounds’ worth of clothing. He went directly to the toilets and changed into a new outfit, washed, brushed his hair, cleaned his teeth, emerged a new man.

  Clean. Unruffled.

  Even with the time to buy a newspaper at the kiosk and linger over sausage and chips at the in-store cafe.

  Twenty-five minutes later a taxi dropped him off at the railway station where he boarded the next train north.

  And here he was, only minutes away from his home town, his old stomping ground, Blackpool. It had gone like a dream.

  The old lady had nodded off.

  Trent smiled indulgently at her. Bitch.

  Next stop along the line was Poulton-le-Fylde, the last one before the end of the line at Blackpool.

  Guessing, rightly, that there were likely to be cops waiting at the terminus, he decided not to push his luck too far. He looked slyly around the almost deserted railway carriage - no one was paying any attention to him - and dipped his hand into the old lady’s shopping bag, helping himself to her unguarded purse.

  It went straight into his pocket.

  He hit the platform running as the train pulled into Poulton-le-Fylde and trotted away, carried by his own momentum.

  In a cubicle in the public toilets he examined with glee the contents of a well-stocked purse. Trent blessed the stupid old woman who probably did not have a bank account and kept all her savings underneath her bed. There was almost five hundred pounds stuffed into the purse, plus a large handful of loose change.

  He transferred the money into his pockets and wedged the purse behind the toilet block.

  A few minutes later he was settled in the snug of a nearby pub, a pint of bitter in one hand, a cumbersome-looking sandwich in the other. He estimated he probably had about half an hour before he needed to move on. When he did he would simply catch a cab into Blackpool, book into one of the thousands of guest-houses, and disappear amongst the great unwashed.

  Home and dry.

  A dithery Steve Kruger put the plastic cup to his lips and took a sip of the scalding-hot black coffee.

  With Tapperman and Myrna, he was out in the sultry street, about a hundred yards away from the Armstrong brothers’ apartment building. The trio were leaning on a semi-permanent burger stall from which they’d bought their drinks.

  Myrna looked very ill. Her normally lovely golden-brown skin had developed a tinge of grey and her eyes were tired and sunken.

  Tapperman was talking at the same time as inserting a greasy onion-laden cheeseburger into his mouth.

  ‘Fuckin’ incredible.’ He shook his head and wiped the dribble of fat from his chin. ‘To do that to somebody. I mean, hell, Texas Chainsaw Massacre eat yer goddam heart out.’ The last of the burger disappeared.

  ‘Okay, Mark, we get the picture,’ Kruger cut him short. He breathed out long and hard and tried to manage the memory of what he’d experienced in the last hour.

  On recovering from his vomiting fit in the corridor, Kruger had gone on to witness the rest of the carnage in the apartment which had belonged to the Armstrong brothers. After edging past their heads on the coffee table, he was treated to a tour so he could see where the remaining parts of their two bodies had been scattered.

  Their limbless torsos had been dumped in the bath; their arms and legs were distributed around the living room, kitchen and two bedrooms. The final, nice touch, was that their private parts had been sliced off and placed side by side on a plate in the icebox.

  Kruger didn’t linger. His experienced eyes saw everything they needed to see. He urgently required fresh air. But the atmosphere of the late afternoon in Miami was clammy, making pleasant breathing a difficulty, even on the sidewalk. The air from the apartment stuck in his lungs; he seemed unable to expel it.

  ‘They were good boys,’ croaked Myrna, the first words she had spoken for some time. ‘Good boys and good workers. They didn’t deserve to die, not like this.’

  Kruger looked at her. Some of the colour was flowing back into her face now that anger was beginning to replace shock.

  ‘Yeah, they were,’ Kruger agreed. The Armstrongs had been two of his first employees and had stuck with him through the early days. Both had been tough professionals and superb investigators. Both were good friends to Steve Kruger. He had spent many nights in their company, particularly during the dark days of divorce, and had crashed out several times at their apartment when he’d been too drunk to get home. The apartment, therefore, held fond memories for Kruger. The three of them had hit it a few times with willing ladies.

  Kruger’s eyes returned to Tapperman. ‘Any leads?’

  The big cop shrugged. ‘I guess you an’ me are thinking pretty much along the same lines.’

  ‘Yeah - Bussola. He’s supposed to be a whizz with a chainsaw.’

  ‘Only rumours,’ Tapperman cautioned.

  ‘No smoke without fire.’ Kruger frowned. ‘Anything from the other tenants? To do that with a chainsaw must have made a hell of a racket.’

  ‘So far, no one’s heard a mouse’s fart and no one saw nuthin.’

  ‘But a chainsaw in that place! Must’ve been like a lion roaring in a cookie jar.’

  ‘Nuthin’ - yet. But these state-of-the-art chainsaws can run almost silent.’

  ‘Forensics?’

  ‘Again - nuthin’ yet. Crime-scene guys reckon whoever did it was wearing plastic gloves and overalls ... which’ll all be destroyed by now.’

  ‘It was Bussola,’ Myrna blurted out. ‘He warned us we’d regret it - and now we do.’

  ‘Myrna, honey. . . I know it was Bussola, you know it, and so does Steve here ... but provin’ it’s gonna be one helluva godamned difficult thing to do.’

  ‘In that case, Mark – “honey” - you’d better get your ass into gear,’ Myrna retorted.

  In the dream Danny had been transported back in time. Fifteen years to be exact. She was on-duty and attending the Liltons’ address in Osbaldeston. It was all very clear, as though she was actually there again. She drew up in the car, stopped outside the front of the house and got out. She could hear the argument in progress. Joe Lilton versus his then wife. Danny walked towards the house. She could hear the words being shouted, but she wasn’t really listening. They were going into her brain, but not registering ... then the dream changed and went black and she was being pinned down. A face appeared above her, grotesque features, but it was definitely Jack Sands. His breath smelled of spermicidal cream. He held her down and tried to force her legs apart.

  There was an interruption. A metallic sound, followed by a sort of shuffling noise.

  Danny woke with a start.

  The noises were not in the dream, they were reality.

  She sat bolt upright, sweat pouring off her, heart pounding, her senses switched on, acute.

  There it was again. The click of metal followed by the shuffling noise.

  Danny cursed.

  Jack was back.

  Once more she recognised just how vulnerable she was. The phone was downstairs - off the hook - and there was no alarm on the house with a panic button right where she needed it - next to the bed.

  She rolled off the bed, wrapped her dressing-gown tightly around her.

  Time check: 1.30 a.m.

  Out onto the landing to the top of the stairs. No lights. Don’t switch the lights on. Be brave. Catch the bastard.

  T
hat metallic sound again. This time she recognised what it was. Her imagination ran riot. It was the sound of the metal flap on the letter box. Christ! He was pouring petrol into the house! He was going to torch it, burn it down and kill her at the same time.

  Danny emitted a mad scream of anguish and threw herself at the double light-switch on the landing. Both hall and landing lights came on. Scaring him away was now her priority, before that lighted match came through the letter box. She raced downstairs, bellowing words which were incomprehensible.

  She leapt down the last five steps, twisted into the hallway and faced the front door.

  It was not petrol which had been pushed through.

  A dozen red roses, several with broken stems, lay there forlornly on the mat.

  Danny sank to her knees and picked one up. She crushed the flower in the palm of her hand and allowed the creased petals to drift onto the carpet.

  Steve Kruger sat silently in the passenger seat of the Lexus whilst a trance-like Myrna drove him home. There was nothing of value to say. Kruger had been warned about the dangers of dealing with the mafia and the warnings had proved to be accurate. Two of his employees had been butchered and no doubt he, Myrna and Kelly (who he had phoned, found to be safe and well, and warned to get out of town) were probably still in grave danger. All because he had been frightened by his ex-wife’s big mouth, threatening to reveal things which might destroy him.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said meekly.

  ‘I’m sorry too - for everything,’ Myrna replied, stressing the last word. The meaning was bluntly clear to Kruger. ‘Everything’ included their sexual encounter.

  He sighed and screwed up his face, sick to the stomach, disgusted with himself for having been so weak-kneed as to accede to Felicity’s demands. He should have called her bluff. After all, she was the one who would have had to prove he sold restricted weapons to an unfriendly country.

  He rubbed the base of his thumbs into his eyes.

  The Lexus drew up outside his house.