by David Barry
Time had suddenly slowed down. I tried to measure our chances, hoping an adrenaline kick from the fear would help bail us out of this treacherous situation, but my brain struggled to function. Beside me, I couldn’t hear or feel any movement from Alice, who was still as a rock. I couldn’t even hear her breathing, so quiet was it in the tomblike confines of the car.
‘Now then,’ Chapmays said, ‘this is what will happen. You will both get out of the car on the driver’s side. You will then walk forward at least three paces to the front of the car. Is that clear?’
I knew he was taking no chances. He was not going to risk my smashing the car door into him as he climbed out. This would give him room to manoeuvre.
‘Cat got your tongues?’ he rasped, and jabbed me hard on the back of the head, the metal of the gun sending shivers of hot and cold pain up and down my nervous system. ‘OK, out you get. Now!’
Alice pushed open the door and stepped out into the darkness. I followed her across and we moved forward until we stood about six feet in front of the car.
‘Hold it right there,’ Chapmays commanded as he followed us out.
We stopped, waiting for the next instruction. I guessed he would take us further on to his property, just in case a cyclist or a dog walker happened to be passing in the road. ‘OK. Now walk slowly along the drive towards the house.’
We did as he instructed and, as we turned the corner to his house, the halogen lights came on again, flooding the area with the circular drive in front of the house where his BMW was parked.
The house, I briefly noted, was white, with large sash windows, and looked as if it was early 20th century, but then I’ve never been strong on architecture, especially when I have a gun pointing at my back. There were three stone steps leading up to a front door, the top half of which was criss-crossed with panes of glass in four panels.
‘Open the door and walk inside,’ he told us.
I pushed open the door, which opened to the right, instinctively holding it for Alice to enter before me, and we found ourselves in a large hall with a black and white chequered floor. I let the door swing behind me, but Chapmays crossed his left hand over his right to stop it, making sure he still had a tight grip on his gun. A quick glance back and I saw the barrel had a silencer attached.
On a hall table I saw a pile of unopened letters, the top one being a bill for water rates. I squinted and strained, cursing the deterioration of my sight, and my need to wear off-the-peg reading glasses. I caught Alice staring at it as well, and I hoped her young eyes were capable of reading the name on it.
‘Into the room on your right,’ Chapmays said.
We entered a large living room. The beige carpet was soft and springy, and the furniture was chintzy, the image of a man who fancies himself as worthy of living in the stockbroker belt. On a glass coffee table lay a lightweight, sandwich-thin laptop. I stared at this for a moment, and it seemed to be sending me a message of hope, as I began to rack my brains for a way of saving us from this cold lunatic’s sentence of death.
Chapmays kept his distance, making certain he had a clear shot if either of us tried to grab him. He was smart enough to know that anyone whose life is in danger will resort to any means to survive. I didn’t think he would give us an opportunity. But I suspected he wanted information. He would want to know how we managed to track him down. And once he had this information, I guessed he would have no further use for us.
‘Sit down over there.’ He nodded towards a large four-seater settee.
Alice sat at one end and I sat at the other. I saw him smile thinly at this, knowing we had deliberately widened the gap between us.
‘I see what you’re doing but it won’t work. You’d both be dead in an instant. So don’t even think about it.’
It was the first time we’d had a good look at this man. He was nondescript, like the character from soap opera about the civil service. Average height, brown hair with a side parting, cut to medium length. Everything about him was ordinary, except for his thin, swan-like neck with an extremely prominent Adam’s-apple.
I perched on the edge of the settee, leaning slightly forward, letting my coat flop open. If only I could find a way of getting to my gun, but the chances looked remote. He’d shoot me clean through the head before I’d got it out of my pocket, let alone clicked the safety off. And he probably guessed I was carrying a pistol, but he was probably too scared of getting up close to search me.
‘There’s something I need to know,’ he began, pointing his silenced revolver at each of us in turn. ‘How did you manage to track me down?’
I cleared my throat before replying. ‘It’s a long story, Mr Chapmays.’
‘Or is it Mr Keene?’ Alice said. He looked surprised at that, and she added, ‘Yes, I read your mail in the hallway. And I presume the initial P stands for Peter, the same as in Chapmays.’
‘Of course. It’s safer to use the same first name. Now, I think I asked you a question. How did you find me?’
‘Through your girlfriend, Christine Bailey, of course,’ I replied. ‘She’s betrayed you, Peter. She sent us a text telling us you were round at her place, then we came over and stuck a tracker on your car, the same as you did eleven years ago to Alice’s family. Ironic, isn’t it, don’t you think?’
He flushed. ‘The two-faced cow. The lying fucking bitch.’ His insipid voice now had an edge to it.
‘Whoa!’ I exclaimed. ‘Who was it who betrayed her and her friends to the police in the nineties? And who’s been masquerading as a dead toddler for all these years?’
‘Enough!’ he snapped. ‘I did what I had to do because it’s a case of survival. The fittest survives. Plain and simple.’
‘And does your survival mean killing innocent children?’ Alice’s voice trembled as she said it.
He paused while he thought about this. Then, he spoke in the prissy tone of a bureaucrat justifying his actions. ‘I’m not a cruel man. I take no pleasure from the pain of others. When I put bullets through your family’s heads, they would have died instantly. There was no pain involved.’
Tearfully, Alice said, ‘But why my brother? He had his whole life before him.’
He shrugged. ‘It was regrettable, but necessary. Survival, you see. I couldn’t leave a witness behind. Nor will I.’
He glared at her, angry now, possibly blaming her for Bailey’s betrayal of him. He was smart enough to know that another woman could have talked his girlfriend into it. I realised how close we were to death, and I had to use our one chance of survival.
‘A good thing we’ve taken out an insurance against anything that might happen to us, accident, murder suicide or disappearance.’
He chuckled humourlessly. ‘Oh, please! What can you possibly...?’
‘A transcript,’ I cut in. ‘We have all the details of our investigation on our office computer, from day one when we discovered Peter Chapmays bought a tracker from that firm near Guildford, right up to today. We spent most of the week writing it. And we have several USB pen drives. One which has been deposited with Alice’s solicitors. So if anything should happen to us - ’
‘I think you’re lying.’
I patted my coat pocket on the right, thanking God I had brought the flash drive with me, never imagining it might come in useful in this way.
‘I’ve got a flash drive with me. If you’ll allow me to get it out...’ I nodded at his laptop. ‘You can boot it up and take a look if you don’t believe me.’
He aimed the gun at my forehead. ‘OK. Take it out very slowly and chuck it over here.’
I fumbled for the little plastic pen drive, brought it out and threw it across the carpet. With his gun trained on me, he bent over, picked it up and moved to the coffee table, which was only about a yard from where Alice sat, and I could see what was running through her head. It was
a slim chance. But at least it was a chance.
He kept his eye on us as he knelt down, felt for the laptop catch and opened the lid, then found the switch at the back of the keyboard and clicked it on. His gun was aimed at Alice, and I wondered if he knew she had trained in martial arts. Or maybe he had decided that she being younger could move quicker then me. Which was probably true.
He waited a moment for the familiar Windows tune to declare it open, then took the top of the pen drive off with his teeth, found a USB port at the back and slid the drive inside. His eyes dropped to the keyboard but only for the briefest moment, alternating between operating the laptop and keeping a watchful eye on us. Once the document was open he scanned it hastily, in between looking up and observing our movements. I knew we would have to make a move at some point because there was no way he would let us live, given that he had already eliminated every one who got closer to discovering his identity or that of Eclipse. And still we were no nearer to knowing who he was protecting or working for, unless it was the Russian in Krakow that Shapiro had told me about.
‘This is all very interesting. Anyone reading it would have no difficulty in finding out about Peter Chapmays, a child who died back in the seventies. But your evidence only goes as far as tracing this non-existent person to Christine Bailey. There is nothing here that I can see about the real Peter Keene.’
He yanked the pen disk out of the USB port, threw it sideways across the room, and, without bothering to close the programme, slammed the lid of the laptop down.
I pointed the finger of my right hand at him, hoping I could use misdirection so my left hand could edge a little closer to my gun pocket. ‘You’re forgetting something, before you were recruited by whoever you’re working for now, you were an undercover cop, probably employed in your real name, and your handlers in the Special Demonstration Squad will not only know your real identity, but they may have helped provide you with false documents in the name of Peter Chapmays.’
‘Crap! The trail from my false ID will lead nowhere, except back to a dead child in 1975.’
By the shifty way his eyes moved from mine to the laptop I saw that he was lying. It was only a second of lost concentration, because I had unseated him briefly with my guess about his identity. And in that one fearful second I knew I had to make a move, hoping that if I went for my gun, Chapmays would aim at me, giving Alice a chance to go for him. It was a huge risk, but I had no other option.
I reached into the pocket as I stood up, tugging the gun out by the butt with my left hand. I saw Chapmays raise his silenced revolver, as I brought my right hand across to aim with both hands, but first having to click off the safety. I knew there wouldn’t be time as he could get in the first accurate shot. But from my left I saw something flying through the air. I hadn’t seen Alice get up from the settee, which she had managed in one fluid movement, flying across the room towards Chapmays on the other side of the coffee table. I saw him swing the revolver in her direction, but too late. She sailed through the air and one of her legs caught him on the side of the head and one on the shoulder. His revolver went bouncing across the carpet towards the door. But Alice, drop kicking him with both legs, landed badly on a corner of the coffee table and I heard her gasp with pain as the sharp wooden edge caught her in the ribs as she turned. I had the gun in both hands now and my thumb fumbled for the safety. Chapmays raised himself from the floor and reached for the laptop. I now had the safety off and raised both hands taking aim, but Chapmays was quicker with the laptop, which came spinning through the air. Instinctively I turned my head away but the laptop struck me on the side of the head and I fell back, my vision impaired by the blow, and the pain unbelievably intense, like a steel hammer pounding my skull. As I tried to get up from the sofa, I felt strong hands like talons, twisting and tugging the gun out of my hand as Chapmays took it away from me. There was nothing I could do to stop the maniac from putting a bullet in my head.
Through half-closed eyes, flooded with tears of pain, I saw his finger tighten on the trigger, and I knew this was it. But just then he vanished from sight and I heard a terrific screech of anger or pain, followed by more crashes. I blinked the tears from my eyes and summoned up the effort to raise myself from the sofa, and what I saw gave me hope. In the marble fireplace, Chapmays lay with his head against the fender, and Alice stood over him. She bent over and picked up my gun, just as he attempted to reach for it, where it had clattered onto the tiled surround. She was smart enough to take several paces backwards, away from him, the Glock aimed at his prostrate body.
My head pounding, I hobbled over to the door and picked up his revolver, stopping to pick up the flash drive which I put back in my pocket. Alice, I noticed, shook almost uncontrollably and had difficulty holding the gun steady. But it didn’t matter now. I had Chapmays’ revolver trained on him.
To calm Alice, I said, ‘I’ve changed my mind about guns and martial arts. Whatever it is you did when I was looking death in the face is something I wish I had on camera.’
Ignoring my comment, Alice stared at Chapmays with loathing. Her shaking I guessed might have been to do with trying to retain her self control and not shoot the bastard out of revenge for what he had done to her family, more than the struggle to overpower the assassin.
‘Get up!’ she commanded.
He got into a crouching position, and for one moment I thought he was going to make a desperate bid to hurl himself at Alice. But I was wrong. As he tried to stand up straight, wheezing and panting, I could see he was far from tough. A man who was fearless only when he had a gun in his hand.
Alice stood facing him, the Glock aimed at his head. ‘You’ll go to prison for the rest of your life, you cold-blooded bastard. But first of all you need to tell us who it is you’re working for. Who ordered you to kill my family?’
He smiled but his eyes registered nothing but a cold indifference to life. ‘Go fuck yourself!’
‘Do yourself a favour, Peter,’ I said. ‘Think of Dan, your son. You need to square things with him before you go down. Don’t let him think you’ve got no human qualities, that you’re just a scumbag who has no scruples whatsoever.’
He ignored me and stared at Alice. His smile widened, goading her with his indifference. ‘At least I’ve still got a healthy son, who has all his life before him. Whereas you, you pathetic little bitch, have nobody. I made sure of that when I killed your family, including your little brother. You should have seen the look on his face when he knew in that brief moment he was about to die.’
An icicle of fear sliced into my nervous system as I realised what he was up to.
‘And I enjoyed the power I had. If I’m honest, I have to admit I enjoyed shooting that little bastard, your pathetic little brother. You should have seen the hole I made in his head.’
Alice’s face was a mask of darkness.
‘No, Alice!’ I screamed. ‘Don’t do it.’
My last few words were blurred by the loud crack from my pistol. Chapmays fell back into the fireplace, a large red hole in his head where the bullet had entered.
Chapter 28
Alice was in a traumatised state as she stared at his body, the horror of what she had done consuming her like flames in a burning building. She held the gun in front of her in the firing position, unable to rouse herself from a frozen attitude of disgust and despair. Then she moved slightly, staring at the gun as if it was contaminated, and I thought for a moment she was going to vomit. She turned the gun towards herself as if she couldn’t believe it had gone off in her hand and it was all a terrible mistake. She was stunned and confused, her eyes glistening with tears of distress. I was afraid she might accidentally pull the trigger and injure herself, so I darted forward, my mind racing as I tried to think of a way to deal with the situation.
‘Alice! Put the gun on the coffee table in front of you.’
Deeply shocked and tu
rned to stone, she didn’t seem to hear what I said. ‘Alice!’ I repeated. ‘Listen to me...’ I walked to the right of her, took her arm and gently lowered the gun. ‘Drop it on to the coffee table. It’s all over. There was nothing you could have done. He was never going to jail. He forced you to assist in his suicide. You have to believe that.’
She unlocked her fingers and let the gun drop on to the coffee table. A good sign. She could still function, even though her trance-like state meant she was still traumatised by the killing. She turned to look at me, fighting back tears.
‘Oh, God!’ she whispered, awed by the terrible magnitude of the killing of another human being, however much that person deserved to die. ‘I killed him. It means I’m as bad as he is. I’ve descended to his level.’
I gripped her shoulders, staring at her with a fierce candour. ‘No! You mustn’t believe that, Alice. It was self defence.’
‘He was unarmed when I shot him.’
I was relieved to notice she had overcome the burden of tears, and I thought she might be open to what was running through my mind. First, I had to reassure her that what she had done was an accident, brought on by the evil psychopath’s gloating over her family’s murder.
‘And your family was unarmed when he shot them. So was Rick and Bill, and the detective up in Peterborough, and Christ knows how many others he may have killed in the eleven years since he killed your family. You mustn’t even think of blaming yourself for his death. He was a monster, who at least had the decency to fall on his sword at the end. Although decency is the wrong word. Don’t you understand, Alice? He forced you to pull that trigger. If he’d been arrested, he would have found some way of ending it. They would eventually have discovered him hanging in his cell.’
‘Except now, with him dead, we won’t know who ordered him to kill my family.’
She was starting to think rationally, which was a good sign. She looked into my eyes, and I saw a sudden determination in her expression as her lips clenched tight before she spoke. ‘I know what we must do, Freddie. Give me your hankie.’