A Reason to Kill

by Michael Kerr

  They had met two years ago. She had been on a girls’ night out, and he had been on his own, propping up the bar in the Half Moon pub. One thing quickly led to another. That he was a cop intrigued her, initially. Love conquers all, they say, whoever they are. Wrong! Matt could not give her enough of himself. She wanted more from the relationship, but had come to know that time was a commodity Matt rationed unfairly, in her estimation. And even when he was supposedly off duty there was a tension as she waited for the call that would instigate his apologising for cancelling another night out, weekend away, or just the pleasure of them being together.

  Linda believed that through Matt’s eyes her personal world was mundane. She was a freelance journalist, now working wholly from home via computer. And the cesspool that Matt steeped himself in was too deep and stagnant; not something that she could come to terms with. A year living under the same roof with a murder cop had in some way depleted her lust for life and jaded her outlook. She had learned that loving someone till it hurts and becomes a vexation to the spirit, was not sustainable. They both knew each other’s feelings. Their shelf life had expired, and all that remained was for one of them, her, to make the break and move on.

  “Matt was shot this morning,” Tom said, his voice a controlled monotone. “He’s alive, but in a serious...critical condition. You need to come to the hospital, Linda.”

  Wings of fear flapped in her stomach and tried to take flight. “Is he going to make it?” she asked, forcing the words through what felt like a rock tightly wedged in her throat.

  Tom ran his fingers through thinning, sandy hair, hiked his broad shoulders and narrowed his eyes. His expression was pained. “It’s touch and go, love. He lost a lot of blood. They’re operating on him now.”

  Sitting in the Cosworth next to the DCI, Linda silently prayed that Matt would pull through. When she felt she could talk, she turned to the burly cop. “Tell me what happened,” she said. “I need to know.”

  Tom bit his bottom lip. By the book, he shouldn’t discuss what had gone down. But what the hell. He didn’t have to go into specifics. “Matt and four other officers were at a safe house, looking after a witness,” he said. “They got hit.”

  “Meaning?”

  “That Matt was the only one to come out alive.”

  “Dear God!”

  “He’ll get past this, Linda. He’s like that town Tombstone in Arizona; too tough to die,” Tom said with more conviction than he felt.

  Matt was still in surgery at the Middlesex Hospital when Linda and Tom arrived at a little after ten. They were shown into a small waiting room. Linda went over to the window, stared out through it, but saw nothing. Her thoughts were focused inward.

  Tom sank into one of the easy chairs that were crowded arm-to-arm against two of the walls. The terracotta-coloured fabric was almost identical to that of the old three piece suite in the lounge of his semi in Wood Green. Time to get rid of it, he thought. His wife had been bitching for a new one for almost three years. He would tell her to go ahead. As long as it wasn’t fucking terracotta she could get whatever the hell she wanted. The walls of the room were a soft hue, maybe coral pink. And the framed prints on them were all by the painter who was into ponds and lilies: Monet? Tom wasn’t sure. The whole ambience of the decor was an attempt to calm and comfort. It didn’t work, even though it was an antithesis to the disease, illness and death that was all around them, out of sight in wards and operating theatres. He felt like shit. Just being in a hospital brought on phantom pains. He had suffered a mild heart attack almost four years back. Now, he took his beta blockers and aspirin every day like he should, but had drifted back to smoking, and was living on a diet of fried food and stress. His chest hurt. Imagination? Think about something else.

  “You want a coffee or anything?” he asked Linda, standing, needing to move.

  Linda was in a world of her own, still facing the window, her forehead now resting against the cold glass, hugging herself, even though the warm air was stifling and stale in the small room. She hadn’t spoken to Tom since they’d arrived, but then, neither had he to her. Walking across the room, he put his hand on her shoulder. She jumped, startled out of dark thoughts.

  “Sorry. Do you want a drink?”

  Her cheeks were wet. “Uh, yes. Something cold. And will you please talk to somebody? Find out how he is.”

  Tom nodded. Turned and made his way out into the corridor. Headed for the vending machine he had seen next to the nurses’ station.

  Matt Barnes wasn’t just one of his DIs. He was a friend. They had been in CID together. Spent a lot of time in pubs, talking about football, women, villains...and more women. He also needed Matt to give them something. He was the only survivor, and had surely seen the perp who’d shot him. The brass was going apeshit. Lester Little had been Tom’s responsibility. The buck stopped on his desk. That’s why they’d been sitting on Little instead of handing him over to Witness Protection. But he didn’t give a flying fuck what the suits on the top floor thought. He had no answers, only questions of his own. Someone had given Frank Santini the nod, and the result was a massacre on a quiet middle-class street in Finchley. Only he and the two teams concerned had known the locations that Little was being ferried between. It didn’t take an Einstein to work out the implication. What a fucking mess. The conversation between himself and Lester Little several weeks previously came back to haunt him:

  “You’re looking at double figures, Lester. We caught you cold, setting up the importation and distribution of enough H to fill a supermarket. You’re a front for Santini, and unless you serve him up on a plate, you’ll do the bird for him.”

  “I got nothin’ to say,” Lester had said.

  Tom had shaken his head. “You’re fifty-four. Do you see yourself in Belmarsh till you’re old enough to apply for a bus pass?”

  Lester’s smile was sardonic. “If I grass, I’ll get my throat cut and my tongue pulled out through it. You can’t offer me enough to say jack shit about anythin’.”

  “What if we spring you, lift Santini, and let it be known that you’re helping us with our inquiries?”

  Lester’s face went bone white. The smile disappeared. “You can’t do that, Bartlett. You’d be signin’ my fuckin ’death warrant.”

  “I can and will do whatever it takes to get to your boss. Talk to me, and I’ll guarantee you immunity, with the paperwork to catch a silver bird and start over in Spain or somewhere.”

  “What’s the catch?”

  “You get up in the witness box and spill your guts. You’ll be under twenty-four-hour protection until then.”

  “And you really think I’d be safe?”

  “I guarantee it.”

  Lester shook his head. “I’m between the proverbial rock and hard place, Bartlett. I reckon I get to be chopped liver whichever way I jump. Santini will have someone in Witness Protection.”

  “I’m the only game in town and you know it, Lester. You made your bed, now you get to lie on it. My team will look after you.”

  “Okay, but my money says I get capped, and that Frank stays on the street.”

  “Trust me, Lester. You’ll get to play golf in the sun, screw dusky senoritas, and drink sangria till it comes out of your ears.”

  “I don’t play golf, the sun doesn’t agree with me, I’m gay, and I drink French cognac,” Lester said without a trace of humour...

  Tom sighed. Fished in his pocket for change. Jesus, how right Little had been. He was now in a mortuary drawer with three bullet holes in his head. A far cry from a new life. If he could speak, he’d say: ‘I told you, Bartlett. But you just wouldn’t fuckin’ listen up’.

  Back in the waiting room, Linda was now sitting, head hung down between her shoulders, unmoving. She was withdrawn, consumed by her own thoughts and fears.

  “I got you a Coke,” Tom said, holding out the can.

  She took it. Pressed the ice-cold metal to her forehead. Rolled it
back and forth. “Thanks. Anything?” she asked.

  “Only that they’re nearly finished operating, and he’s made it this far. No details.”

  It was another ninety minutes before a guy in surgical greens entered. Linda could read nothing in his expression.

  “Mrs. Barnes?” he asked.

  “No. I’m Linda Reece. I’m Matt’s...partner,” she said, as if needing to explain.

  “I’m Dr. Lawson. One of the team that have been patching, er, Matt up.”

  A badger, Linda thought, standing up to face the portly surgeon. He was in his fifties, and he sported a bushy black beard that was going to white in the middle, over his chin.

  “He’s in post-op, now,” Sam Lawson said.

  Thank God! He was alive. “Is he going to...?”

  “I believe he’s going to pull through, Ms. Reece. But his condition is still serious. We had to remove his left kidney, though that in itself is not a major concern.”

  “What is?” Linda asked.

  “He lost a great deal of blood and went into severe shock. If there was a lengthy decrease in the flow of blood to his brain, then tissues will have been deoxygenated.”

  “Are you saying he might be brain damaged?”

  “I’m saying, we’ll know better when he regains consciousness. His EEG looks fine. I don’t bet, but if I was a gambling man, I’d put money on him making it. Having said that, there are no guarantees.”

  “There never are in life,” Linda whispered, and then ran out of the room to look for the toilets. She was going to throw up, and the doctor could have safely bet a month’s salary on that.

  CHAPTER THREE

  FIRST thing he did when he got in was make coffee, before going into the lounge to feed a live cricket to Simon, his pet spider. After being away, taking care of business, he knew that the little guy would now be peckish.

  The thrill of the kill had subsided. After the event, he always experienced a period of anticlimax. Even now, so soon, he wanted to feel the high again. Everyone dies. Take your pick; natural causes, accident, suicide or murder. But the anticipation of personally making it happen was what turned his wheels. When he wasn’t taking life, he was thinking about it, or planning it.

  He drank the coffee and then ran a bath. Got in and lay with his knees up and his head resting on a padded, plastic-covered pillow fitted with suction cups to hold it to the smooth surface of a bath that was also made of plastic. Was everything made of fucking plastic these days? The shower curtain, toilet lid and seat were. And the mirror was framed in the stuff, as was the frosted double glazed window. The more he looked about him, the more of the invasive manmade synthetic resinous shit he saw. The world was being overrun by unnatural polymeric substances. Calm down. Think good thoughts.

  The water was now only lukewarm. He had been soaking in it for over an hour. His fingers and toes were ‘wrinkled like prunes’, as his mother used to say. Sitting up, he reached forward and plucked a Stanley knife from the plastic rack, pleased that at least the knife was made from metal. Substantial. Thumbing the sharp blade out, he ran it smoothly across the inside of his left wrist. Not too deep. Just enough to allow plenty of blood to escape and flow down his fingers to drip into the scented water. Both wrists and inner forearms were striped with white scar tissue, caused by years of self mutilation. God! He wanted to cut deeper; do it properly. He imagined inserting the blade into his forearm at the crook of the elbow, and drawing it down under pressure in a zigzag line to his wrist and severing the artery in several places. There would be no real pain, just pulsing crimson jets spattering the white-tiled walls and Artexed ceiling. The room would be turned into a Pollock drip painting.

  ‘Do it, do it, do it!’ one of the voices in his head insisted.

  “No,” he replied aloud, clearly and with conviction, and the tension dissolved to leave him calm and no longer in the mood to self-destruct. Maybe another day. If he had taken his medication, then the episode would not have occurred. But he’d had a job to do. Needed a clear head. The clozapine tended to make him feel a little lethargic and dulled his senses. He couldn’t drive or work efficiently with his brain numbed-up as though it was full of anaesthetic. Retracting the blade, he tossed the knife back on top of the flannel in the rack, got up, turned on the shower and grunted at the pleasant discomfort of the sudden impact, as needle jets of chilled water drilled the soap and blood from his body.

  After towelling himself dry and bandaging his wrist, he went through to the bedroom and dressed in casual clothes. He skipped down the stairs, whistling some inane ditty that had been plugged unmercifully on the radio for a week or two. He could have been a pop star, if socialising was not such a problem. Ha! Maybe in his next life.

  He made a call on a pay-as-you-go phone that couldn’t be traced.

  “I got the pest control guy askin’ for you, boss,” Luther ‘Tiny’ Tyrell said. “You wanna word?”

  Frank Santini nodded, and Tiny handed him the cell phone.

  “Yeah, speak to me,” Frank said.

  “I eliminated that rodent problem.”

  “Music to my ears. I’ll have the balance of your fee delivered as arranged, and be in touch if we have any further infestations.”

  “Always a pleasure to do business with you. Bye for now, Mr S.”

  Frank tossed the phone back to Tiny, who picked it out of the air with reactions that belied his appearance. He was six-eight, wide as a bus, and had the look of someone who had gone several bouts too many in a boxing ring.

  “Give our friend at the Yard a bell, Tiny. I want details,” Frank said, his mood now lighter than it had been for weeks. With Lester out of the way, he could relax. The plods had nothing without the little rat. Disloyalty was something he could not and would not abide. He looked after his people, and demanded total allegiance in return. If anyone stepped out of line, then an example had to be made. It was the only way to stay on top of the food chain and command respect.

  Frank was a lean, sinewy Italian, who looked all of his sixty-five years. His face was swarthy, cruel looking, with high cheekbones, a patrician nose, and dark, heavily lidded eyes. He wore a toupee that was incongruously black against the silver of his remaining underlying hair; sitting atop his head like a limp animal pelt. Frank thought it undetectable, and no one around him had the balls to enlighten him as to how bizarre it looked. He was dressed in a dark-blue mohair suit, cream silk shirt and maroon tie. His loafers were handmade in Milan. He had all the accoutrements, but still looked like a spiv who you wouldn’t buy a second-hand car, or even a watch from.

  Francis Mario Santini had been born in the back streets of Naples in 1947, to migrate to London with his mamma the same year. His father, Rocco, had not survived the war.

  Frank was to carve out an empire from the underbelly of society in the East End after the Kray twins, who he had been on good terms with, were safely behind bars. He kept a low profile, took a percentage of almost everything that went down north of the river, and protected his interests with a small army of enforcers who, like Tiny, knew better than to ever cross him or his son, Dominic, who if anything was even more dangerous and unpredictable than Frank.

  Tiny closed the phone and pocketed it. A gold-capped grin broke the ebony edifice of his broad face. “He wasted Lester and five pigs, boss,” he said. “The guy’s like the fuckin’ Terminator.”

  Frank smiled. “Get us both a drink, Tiny. I think we can afford to celebrate. Their case just fell apart. I might just send DCI Bartlett a sympathy card. He’s had a hard-on for months, dreamin’ of seein’ me in prison grey. I’d like to see the cocksucker’s face now.”

  Tiny went across to the corner bar, built Frank a large Jack Daniel’s over ice. Uncapped a bottle of Club soda for himself.

  “Life is good, Tiny,” Frank said, sipping the chilled sour mash as he walked over to the floor-to-ceiling window that overlooked the Thames from his penthouse apartment. “Put an extra five grand
in our friend’s payoff. He deserves a bonus.”

  “Have you met him, boss?” Tiny asked.

  “No, and I don’t ever want to. Just drop the cash off and leave the scene. You gotta know that some people are screwballs, Tiny. This guy came highly recommended. But he has a death wish, which makes him as lethal as a fox in a chicken shed.”

  Gary watched from the bushes as the Merc stopped on the inner circle of Regent’s Park. The giant, shaven-headed black exited and walked along the pavement towards the nominated bench seat. After waiting until Santini’s goon had placed the briefcase behind the seat, returned to the car and driven off, he collected the balance of his fee. Less than forty minutes later he was back at his flat in Putney. He placed the briefcase on the bed and opened it. There was an extra wedge of five thousand, with a note that read: ‘For doing the filth’. It was nice to be appreciated. Santini recognised class when he saw it; though he had not taken the cops out for any other reason than that they were an armed threat in between him and his intended mark.

  Paid hits were very profitable. They gave him the independence, means, and the time to commit more emotionally rewarding personal atrocities. He was a chameleon, able to project a meek and affable personality to the morons that monitored his mental health, and especially to Marion Peterson, the buxom community psychiatric nurse who he had to suffer regular contact with. At first he had hated the CPN, considering her a spy; an enemy within who exacerbated his paranoia. However, with time, he came to acknowledge that she and the rest of the support team – as they tagged themselves – were an invaluable aid. Due to his perceived co-operation and self-awareness of his condition, he was able to present them with a model patient who, in their opinion, was no danger to himself or society at large, and responded well to all the required therapy. The art was in cloaking the aggression and the need to express himself by hurting others. As long as he was believed to be popping the antipsychotics as prescribed and following his care plan to the letter, he was protected by the system. Should he demonstrate an unwillingness to comply, then the consultant psychiatrist, CPN, social worker and his GP would consider him a risk and section him under the Mental Health Act, condemning him to an indeterminate future in a nuthatch. The thought of staggering about, full to the gills with drugs that would eventually turn his brain to chicken soup, was his biggest fear in life. To be surrounded by head cases, listening to ‘lift music’ all day and being locked in a room at night, was not an option. It would never happen. He wasn’t ill, just different. True, he heard voices that sometimes insisted he do things. But he possessed the willpower to ignore them – most of the time – should he choose to. And he didn’t display inappropriate behaviour in public these days. As a teenager, masturbating on the top decks of buses had seemed a harmless activity; though he had discontinued the practise after the first arrest. For some reason it had offended other passengers. Overall, he considered himself ‘in control’. He was able to concentrate, plan, and make decisions. Sometimes his thoughts did jump erratically between completely unrelated topics, which he accepted was disordered thinking. But he was basically as bright as a new penny, even aware of other people’s feelings, though they did not concern him. It was the imagined events that could be a little disconcerting. The compulsion to act them out was sometimes irresistible. Thankfully, he had the ability to fool all of the people most of the time. So many underestimated him, which in the majority of cases proved to be a fatal mistake on their part.