Die Alone

by Simon Kernick

  ‘It’s probably best not to mention what happened to Karen,’ he said, leading me up the driveway to the pretty cottage where he and his wife had lived since long before their daughter Dana had been abducted. Dana had grown up here, and I wondered how different all their lives would have been had she not been snatched that sunny summer’s day all those years ago.

  ‘My lips are sealed,’ I told him, following him inside, through a narrow hallway with low-hanging beams and into a cosy living room where Karen Brennan sat with a book. The TV was on in the background with the volume turned low, playing a nature documentary.

  As I came into the room she got to her feet and shook my hand but her demeanour was less than welcoming. ‘Hello, Mr Mason,’ she said, not looking me in the eye.

  ‘Call me Ray, please,’ I said.

  She nodded tightly and looked past me towards her husband. ‘Are you OK, love? You shouldn’t be out doing all of this.’

  ‘I’m fine, don’t worry about me,’ said Brennan, giving her a tender kiss.

  She held him for a long moment, and I found myself feeling jealous for what they had, even though their closeness had been cemented by tragedy. They clearly adored each other, and their love simply served to amplify my solitude.

  ‘Please sit down, Ray,’ said Brennan. ‘Can I get you a drink of something?’

  I sank into one of the armchairs, still stiff from the hour-long journey down here in the boot of the Audi. I felt like I was intruding on them but the desire to relax with some company trumped the feeling, as did the idea of a drink. I hadn’t had alcohol in over a year, but I wasn’t going to turn it down now. ‘Yes please. Have you got a brandy?’

  Brennan said he had and went to get it while I faced Karen Brennan across the room.

  ‘They’re saying on the news you killed three people last night,’ she said, finally meeting my eye. ‘Did you?’

  I’d never given either of them the full details of the Bone Field case or told them who the suspects were. In the run-up to my arrest I’d done my utmost to keep them abreast of developments, but that had been more to show them that I was working on their behalf. All they knew was that their daughter’s killers had yet to be brought to justice.

  Brennan returned with two glasses of brandy while I was still working out how much to tell her. ‘Don’t question him too much, Karen, please,’ he said, handing me one of the glasses.

  I took a big sip, reeling at the burning sensation as it ran down my throat. I’d never really been a spirit drinker, preferring good red wine, but the brandy had a soothing effect and I took another sip before speaking. ‘It’s OK,’ I said. ‘I’ve asked you for help so I owe you a full explanation.’ I looked at them both in turn. ‘I believe – in fact, I know – that there were three men involved in Dana’s abduction and murder, and they’re the same people I was investigating for the Bone Field murders.’ Neither said anything but both were listening closely. ‘I killed one of them last year. He was a long-term associate and confidant of Cem Kalaman. Yes, I did kill Kalaman last night, along with one of his bodyguards who was trying to shoot me at the time. Kalaman was also one of Dana’s killers, and I don’t make any apology for ending his life. He was responsible for a lot of murders and the world’s a better place without him in it.’

  The room fell silent as they took this in, and I took another sip of the brandy.

  Karen spoke, and there was a mixture of disapproval and anxiety in her expression: ‘I wanted justice for Dana, but I didn’t want you to kill people.’

  I remembered the first time I’d visited them the day after Dana’s remains had been discovered, the best part of thirty years after she’d gone missing. Karen Brennan had been utterly distraught, desperate for me to find her daughter’s killers, showing me her final school report, pressing a photo of her into my hands and asking me to keep it to remind myself of how kind and beautiful she’d been. And I remembered feeling so sorry for her that I’d committed the cardinal sin of detective work and become emotionally involved in a case, making that fateful promise to bring Dana’s killers to justice, whatever it took.

  Whatever it took.

  ‘I know,’ I said. ‘I understand that.’

  ‘You said there were three killers,’ said Steve Brennan. ‘Who’s the other one?’

  ‘I can’t tell you that,’ I answered, deciding that knowing Alastair Sheridan’s identity would do them no good. ‘But he’s someone with power. Someone who’ll be very hard to get to.’

  ‘But if you know who he is, why can’t the police do something about him?’ asked Karen.

  ‘There’s no evidence against him. He’s clever, he’s well protected, and he’s ruthless.’

  She looked frustrated. ‘So he’s going to get away with it?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said truthfully. ‘Look, I’m so sorry to involve you both like this. It was the only way.’

  ‘We’re old, Mr Mason … Ray. We’ve suffered enough. We don’t need this.’

  Karen Brennan’s words hurt because I knew she was absolutely right.

  ‘Come on, love,’ said her husband. ‘Ray’s a good man. He’s tried to do the right thing for Dana. It’s more than anyone else has ever done.’

  She looked up at him. ‘But at what cost? You’re risking our last few months together for this.’

  I frowned. ‘Your last few months? What does that mean?’

  Steve Brennan sat down next to his wife and took her hand. ‘I’ve got cancer,’ he said after a pause. ‘Oesophageal. I was diagnosed a month ago. It’s already spread to the lungs. They’ve given me a year at most with treatment. No more than six without.’ He looked down at his lap, then back at me. ‘I’ve opted for without.’

  I didn’t know what to say. Finally I took a deep breath, musing on the utter injustices of this world. ‘I’m sorry. I really am. Listen, I can take it on my own from here. I’ll be out of your home tomorrow at first light, I promise.’

  Brennan shook his head firmly. ‘You know, for twenty-seven years we had to sit here waiting for news that they’d found our daughter. Twenty-seven years! Just not knowing. Wanting to die but knowing we couldn’t because we had another daughter … But the pain … it was hell. It is hell. You know, sometimes, very occasionally, I’d have this little sliver of hope that she was somewhere alive, like that Austrian girl, that she’d be found. And then one day the last bit of hope just disappeared when they dug up her bones miles away. And to find out that she’d been brutally murdered … God, it was like being hit with it all over again.’ He paused. ‘And then you came, and you offered to help us. You were the only one who did. And for the first time I actually felt some hope. Then you got put away, and you didn’t write back when I wrote to you.’

  ‘I thought I’d failed you,’ I said quietly, ‘and my correspondence was checked so I couldn’t tell you what I’d done or hadn’t done.’

  ‘I understand. But we were ignored all over again. The inquiry into Dana’s killing ground to a halt. But you never stopped, Ray. You promised us you’d do everything to bring to justice the people who killed our daughter. And you’ve done that, and spent time in prison for it. I know Karen doesn’t share my sentiments but, I’ll be honest, I feel a lot better knowing these men are dead. It gives me some peace.’ He turned to his wife and squeezed her hand. ‘You’ve got to understand that, love. I want to do this for Ray. I’ve booked the ferry to St Malo for tomorrow morning. I’m taking him over. It’ll be safer that way.’

  Karen nodded slowly and her face tightened as a tear rolled steadily down one cheek.

  I bowed my head, not wanting to intrude upon her grief – a grief that had gripped her since the summer of 1989. Someone, an old girlfriend, had once said to me while we were watching a real-life crime documentary that if murderers could see the grief they left behind, they’d never want to commit a crime again. In truth, she’d had a point. Most killers weren’t psychopaths, and plenty had the capacity for regret, but there were some for whom the
suffering they left behind was part of the enjoyment of the act itself. Alastair Sheridan was one of those people, and I had no doubt he wouldn’t care less about the deep, all-consuming pain in this room tonight.

  I finished my drink and got to my feet. A framed headshot of Dana, caught for ever in childhood, grinned across at me from the mantelpiece and I looked at it for a long moment, thinking that if I had my time again, I’d still hunt down her killers just as ruthlessly.

  ‘I’ll leave you two in peace,’ I said.

  ‘I’ll show you to your room,’ said Steve. ‘We’ve got an early start tomorrow.’

  As I walked past Karen she looked up at me, the tears still running down her face. ‘Good luck,’ she said at last, but she didn’t get up.

  I thanked her, thinking that, whatever happened, I was going to go after Alastair Sheridan. I didn’t know how I’d do it. Or where or when. But it would happen. And when it was over, one of us would be dead.

  32

  When Jane Kelman got back to her hotel room in the Hilton at Heathrow Airport, she was angry and frustrated. Somehow Mason had thwarted her once again. In the last twenty-four hours she’d almost had him not once, not twice, but three damn times. And still he’d got away.

  Jane was a businesswoman first and foremost and one of her selling points was that she never got emotionally connected with her jobs. She’d killed for money many times now (she didn’t know the exact number because she thought it vulgar and disrespectful to keep count), and until she’d come across Ray Mason she’d had an enviable hundred per cent success record. He now stood out as a symbol of her failure. What was more, she was taking unnecessary risks to get to him, and that was going to have to stop right now.

  She poured herself a glass of Chenin blanc from the mini bar and sat down in the tub chair next to the bed to review the events of the night. She didn’t think anyone had seen her either arriving at or leaving the old lady’s house, but she couldn’t be sure of that. She hadn’t passed any police cars leaving the scene and had been wearing a balaclava when she’d fired on Mason in the woods, so the driver of the car he’d escaped in wouldn’t have seen her face.

  En route back to the airport, she’d pulled off the M25, driven down a rural back lane and buried the gun and the silencer about twenty yards apart in woodland, where they were unlikely to be found. The gloves she’d dropped in an industrial waste bin close to the short stay car park where she’d left the rental car, which had been hired using a fake name and credit card that couldn’t be traced back to her.

  She took a large gulp of the wine, which tasted cheap and dull, and, concluding that she’d done everything she needed to, put in a phone call to the number Sheridan had given her, and gave him the bad news. Not only that she’d failed to kill Mason, and Boyd, but that she was quitting while she was ahead and leaving the country the next morning.

  Sheridan wasn’t pleased. ‘I thought you were meant to be the best,’ he told her. ‘You can’t just leave a job half finished.’

  ‘I have no idea where Mason is. He escaped in a car. And there’s no point trying to go after Tina Boyd now either. Or him for that matter. He won’t risk coming after you now.’

  ‘That’s easy for you to say. It’s not you he’s after.’

  ‘Look,’ she told him coldly. ‘You deceived me. I thought I was cleaning up a minor problem for you. I had no idea that Ray Mason was involved, or that you’d organized for him to kill the head of the Kalaman crime organization. If I’d known that, I’d never have taken the job. You made the mess. You clear it up. And if you’re scared Mason might come after you, then get some security.’

  ‘I’ll pay you half a million to deal with it,’ he said, a note of pleading in his voice.

  And that, she knew, was Alastair Sheridan’s problem. He was like a spoiled child, too used to getting what he wanted, and when things went wrong, he got desperate. It made him an unreliable client, and she didn’t need that.

  ‘I’m sorry, I can’t help you,’ she said. ‘Make sure you have the hundred thousand dollars’ compensation for the loss of my colleague in my account by Monday at opening of business.’

  She ended the call, switching off the phone. She’d get rid of it in the terminal tomorrow before she boarded her plane to Miami, and home. Sheridan had already paid her for the first part of the job and she’d subcontracted Voorhess, who clearly now no longer needed paying since what was left of him was sitting in a pig’s belly, so she was up on the deal, and the fact that she was still alive was also a bonus.

  Jane’s degree had been in finance and consequently she looked after her money very carefully. She had $1.7 million in liquid investments, a rental property in Panama on the Pacific coast, and no mortgage on her condominium in Fort Lauderdale. She’d already paid for her sons to get through university, so there were no outstanding debts. But her cash target was $2.5 million. When she had that amount, she could leave the life for ever. She’d fallen into killing by accident and, although she was good at it, it was no career for a lady. At forty-six, it was definitely time for a change. Maybe even meet a nice man and settle down somewhere.

  That was her dream, and it was why, when she’d finished the wine and poured herself a second glass, she checked the private hotmail account she used for business to see if there were any other jobs in the pipeline. She wanted something nice and easy. An unsuspecting wife or husband she could take out with minimal fuss for a nice flat payment. Instead there was a message from an address she recognized immediately: DWolf119@hotmail.com.

  The message was to the point: ‘Are you free for an urgent job. Need to be in London next 24 hours. Payment 750 pounds.’

  ‘750 pounds’ meant three quarters of a million, which equated to nearly a million US. An almost unheard-of sum for a hit. Except DWolf was a representative of the Kalamans. It was he who’d hired her the previous year to kill the man in witness protection.

  If they wanted to pay her three quarters of a million now it could only mean one target. Ray Mason.

  Jane couldn’t resist a small chuckle. The Kalamans clearly didn’t have a clue that it was Alastair Sheridan who had ordered their boss’s murder, and that he’d already hired Jane to sort out the mess. But then, why should they? What it meant for her, though, was a double payday. If she played this right, she could kill Mason and collect payment both from Sheridan and the Kalamans. She was looking at well over a million dollars. She’d have to kill at least a dozen individual spouses for that kind of money, and would probably have to wait years for that number of jobs to come along. This way, she could be completely retired within the next few weeks.

  It was too tempting a possibility to turn down, and even though she didn’t have a clue where Mason was, she knew that with the combined resources of the Kalamans and Alastair Sheridan hunting him down, he wasn’t going to be that hard to find.

  ‘I’ll be in London tomorrow morning,’ she wrote, not wanting to let DWolf know she was already in the country, in case it aroused suspicions. ‘Consider me in. I’ll need clean tools and a down payment.’

  She had to wait less than five minutes before she received a reply: ‘Good. Both are available. Call this number as soon as you arrive.’

  She wrote down the number using the hotel stationery, shut down the laptop, and finished off the wine.

  She was back in the game.

  33

  Tina and her lawyer, Arley Dale, were sitting next to each other in an interview room at NCA HQ, facing a very pissed-off-looking Mike Bolt across the desk, while Mo Khan sat next to him, his own face making little attempt to hide the contempt he felt for Tina. It was 11.45 p.m. but she was feeling wide awake.

  Arley had once been a high-ranking commander in the Met and been groomed for the top job of commissioner. Then one day, seven years earlier, when she’d been forty-five years old, her life had been torn apart. Her husband had been murdered and her two teenage children abducted and used as pawns to blackmail her by a terrorist group. It ha
d been Tina who’d managed to get the children back safely, killing their captor in the process, but unfortunately, before that happened, the terrorists had forced Arley to reveal secrets that had resulted in a number of police officers being killed, and because of this she’d spent the next four years of her life in prison where she’d spent the time studying for a law degree, and on her release had started a small but successful legal practice.

  She and Tina weren’t close, but they’d remained in touch, and when Tina had called on her for help earlier, Arley hadn’t hesitated to offer her assistance.

  The air in the interview room was warm and close as Bolt exhaled loudly and ran a hand through his closely cropped hair. He was dressed in the same clothes he’d been in when he’d come to see Tina fourteen hours earlier so he had clearly had a long day. Weirdly, it made her feel sorry for him.

  ‘Where’s Ray Mason?’ he asked her now.

  She met his gaze with confidence. ‘I told you both this morning, I don’t know. I haven’t seen him since before his arrest last year.’

  He and Mo exchanged noncommittal glances.

  ‘Where were you last night between nine p.m. and midnight?’

  ‘What’s this got to do with anything, DI Bolt?’ asked Arley. Her tone was firm but not confrontational. ‘Tina’s come in tonight to give you her witness statement regarding the murder of her neighbour, Mrs Mary West.’

  ‘Tina’s come here tonight because she was arrested on suspicion of assisting an offender,’ said Mo.

  ‘Which is a claim she completely denies, and which you have, as far as we can see, absolutely no evidence to back up.’

  ‘Listen,’ said Bolt, ‘you’re both former career police officers, so why don’t you just cooperate and answer the questions as they’re put to you?’

  Tina sighed. ‘Last night, I went for a drive. I needed to think. I’ve been having a tough time of it recently.’