A Reason to Kill

by Michael Kerr

  Up on his feet, moving fast, Gary left the shed on the run, darted through the trees to the open ground that he had no choice but to cross. He was almost back to the fence before he heard the distant shout of a nervous guard. So much for Frank’s fortress mentality, and his army of second-rate goons. No one was safe. Once targeted, his mark had been on borrowed time. Santini would have presumed that only an imbecile would attempt an attack on his well-guarded stronghold. Sooo wrong. And now that he had taken care of Santini he would employ his full efforts on dealing with Barnes. Or maybe visit the cop’s girlfriend and formally introduce his self. The couple were just like two overdue library books, and the penalty was much more than either could afford.

  With one end of the rope tied around the rifle, he swung the weapon underhand, up into the air, over the branch that jutted out above the razor wire.

  The deep, throaty growl of the dog almost certainly saved his life. Even as the torch beam found him, he had drawn the Glock. The guard might as well have stuck a target on himself. Gary fired three shots at the wavering disc of light, and a strangled cry told him his aim had been accurate. The torch fell, and its powerful white shaft backlit the German shepherd as it launched itself into the air, hackles raised as it attacked.

  Even as he pulled the trigger, the dog’s front paws hit him full force in the chest, knocking him onto his back. His lungs cramped under the impact. He fought for breath as the slavering jaws came together on his wrist; sharp canines biting to the bone; broad head scything from side to side, powered by taut, bulging neck muscles.

  Wrong hand, you brain dead shit machine! he thought, raising the gun, pressing it into the dog’s ear and pulling the trigger.

  The shepherd didn’t make a sound, just shuddered and went limp across his chest. He inhaled its final, hot, fetid exhalation, and felt the warm blood run from its mouth and nostrils onto his mangled wrist. It was dead, but its jaws were clamped in place.

  Distant, muffled voices. The search for the assassin was on. More torch beams cut through the gloom; long blades of light darting, dancing, raking the darkness.

  Tucking the Glock in his waistband, Gary gripped the dead dog’s bloody snout and tried to pull the jaws apart. They were locked and wouldn’t budge. Time was running out. He couldn’t climb the rope one-handed with the dead-weight of a fucking eighty or ninety pound guard dog hanging from his arm.

  He withdrew the handgun again, forced the end of the silencer into the animal’s mouth like a jemmy, and prised it open. The teeth came out like gleaming nails from a packing crate. Fuck! That brought tears to his eyes.

  Free of the burden, he looked around. As yet, he had not been seen. No one was hurrying towards him or shouting out his position to others. He pushed the gun back under his belt, grabbed both lengths of the rope and hauled himself up, sucking in air and grimacing as white-hot pain shot up his arm from the site of the bite. His left hand was numb. He could hardly grip with it, but somehow reached the branch and hauled himself up to straddle it and bump himself along, above the fence to the thick trunk of the spruce. He scrambled down to the ground and dropped flat as bullets thudded into the tree. The chatter of submachine gun fire split the silence. Once more he drew the Glock, took careful aim at the shape behind the now crackling electrified fence, and loosed off two shots.

  Chip Martin grinned. He was sure he had all but cut the intruder in half with a hail of bullets from the Uzi. No one was near enough to see the look of shock and surprise on the tall Texan’s face as a hollow point slug slammed into his neck, blowing him off his feet, even as a second bullet shattered his sternum. Chip had all of five seconds – that seemed to last forever – to be traumatised by the awful realisation that he was dying.

  Santini’s men did not follow. They were not about to wage war outside the estate. This was Essex, not Afghanistan. Their weapons were illegal.

  Gary made it back to the car without incident. The plan had been to return to the storage facility, but he decided against it. The stinking, confined space had served its purpose. It was time to move on. And he needed to treat his swollen, pounding wrist.

  He drove back into London and abandoned the car, leaving the keys in the ignition to make life easier for the next joy rider who happened along.

  Keeping to back streets, away from main roads, he walked for almost two miles. He needed another safe haven. One where no one would search for him. He smiled. He knew just the place to lay low for a while.

  Red Sevano got the call from Carlo Falco. He listened, knew that what he was being told had to be true, but found the facts hard to assimilate. An unexpected catastrophe is a shock to the system. The mind finds the event untenable and puts up a barrier of denial. After Carlo hung up, Red let the conversation repeat, picking out the salient points as he walked with leaden steps to Dom’s suite, dismayed that it had fallen to him to break the news.

  It was almost two minutes before the door opened. Dom was glaring, enraged at being woken up.

  “What the fuck do you want, Red?”

  “I got bad news, boss,” Red said. He had taken two paces back from the threshold, uncertain as to how Dom might react.

  “Which is?”

  “The house got hit.”

  Dom’s face darkened. He assumed that Red meant the club had been robbed.

  “For how much?”

  Red frowned. Then cottoned-on to his boss’s line of thought. “No, boss, Villa Venice.”

  Dom went cold inside. Red’s eyes held the gravitas of impending news that he knew he would not want to hear.

  “Say it.”

  “Carlo just called. Your papa was the target, boss. He didn’t make it.”

  Dom swallowed hard. His mind greyed, became a swirling column that made him rock on his feet as he fought to maintain composure. The two men faced each other, and for a few seconds Red thought that Dom might faint. He was ready to catch him if he fell.

  “How?” Dom asked in a whisper

  “After he got home, he went out on the balcony of his bedroom. It was one bullet. He didn’t know what hit him, boss. The shooter was in the grounds. He took two of the guards and a dog out.”

  Dom experienced a landslide of emotions. He was the ‘Man’ now, out from beneath the long shadow of his father. The king is dead, long live the king. Molten anger and a thin, cold sliver of fear also vied for his attention. The fucking psycho hitman had reached into the very centre of the organisation. Noon had set them up. He was supposed to be nailing the cop, Barnes, tonight. That had been a diversion. He needed to think fast.

  “Okay, Red. Here’s what you do. Get the girl outta here while I dress. Then phone Tiny. I want him and Eddie back here, now. And tell Carlo to have my father moved. We need to make it look like he was capped outside the estate. I don’t want the filth crawling all over the place. Capisci?”

  “Yeah, boss.”

  Red gave Naomi sixty seconds to get her shit together and vanish. She said nothing, just complied. She could feel the tension, and was astute enough to know that something big had gone down.

  Red phoned Tiny. Told him that the operation was off, and that he and Eddie were needed back at Rocco’s, pronto. He finished up by calling Carlo and relaying Dom’s plan.

  “That’s gonna be a bitch, Red,” Carlo said. “The boss was blown off the balcony. It’s not just a case of half his head missing. He got broken up when he hit the deck.”

  “So arrange for it to look like he never made it home from the club. Have the Merc go off a bridge and explode. If the driver is dead at the wheel and the boss is in the back, it’ll look like the car got shot at. The crash will explain the other damage. And do it now.”

  “The driver, Lansky, is out in the grounds. There’s only Sal with me.”

  “So use Sal. He never was the sharpest knife in the rack.”

  “Okay, Red.”

  “Good. I’ll be coming in with Dom, soon. And Carlo, he’s pissed over this. He’ll
want to know how the shooter got inside. I get the feeling someone will have to take the fall for the fuck-up in security.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  MARION caved in under the pressure. She couldn’t handle it. Waiting for the truth to out – as in her experience it inevitably did, sooner or later – made her feel ill. She had even lost almost a stone in weight. Unbearable stress had achieved what dozens of diets had failed to. She set off to work with her resignation written out, ready to hand to Dr. Stephen Barlow, who was in overall charge of the community mental health centre.

  For over a week she had been living on frayed nerves. Her relationship with Gary would be revealed at some point, and she could not wait any longer for the resulting humiliating facts to become public knowledge.

  Another shed. This time of the standard garden variety, with the expected smells of sacking, stale soil, petrol from the mower, and creosote.

  He moved a stack of empty seed trays, crawled under a table that had been utilised as a bench, and pulled the tower of wooden trays back to shield him from view. Sitting with his knees up and feet against rows of terracotta plant pots, Gary cradled his injured, throbbing arm and made short-term plans as he waited. Apart from being bitten by a fucking rat, and then a dog, the mission had been a complete success. The police would no doubt soon be swarming all over Santini’s Little Italy. And Dominic would be scared shitless. His father had enjoyed more protection than the bloody Queen, but had been taken out in his own house. It was obvious that Dom would adopt a siege mentality and be out of circulation for the foreseeable future. Good. Let the scumbag sweat. He would be dealt with at a later date. Gary felt that there had to be a footnote to Frank’s passing. He found the piece of paper on which he had jotted down a few phone numbers, risked switching the torch on for a second, and phoned the gangster’s stronghold.

  Tiny answered the phone.

  Gary said, “Put Dom the new Don on.”

  “Who wants him?” Tiny asked.

  “You know who, you dumb nigger. Just do as you’re told, boy.”

  “You got no respect, you mad motherfucker. We’ll find you, and when we do, I’ll teach you some manners before I tear your lungs out with my bare hands.”

  “Dream on, you sad bastard. Now put pizza-face on the line, or I’ll hang up.”

  Tiny turned to where Dom was talking animatedly to Carlo and Eddie. “Boss, I got the piece of shit who hit your father on the phone.”

  Dom snatched the phone from Tiny. “You stupid fuck, Noon. Do you really think you can get away with this?”

  “I did get away with it, Dom. And that makes you top dog, now. I did you a favour. Aren’t you going to thank me?”

  Dom screamed down the phone. “THANK YOU! I’m gonna find you and skin you alive, Noon. That’s what I’m gonna do. You know all about contracts. Well now there’s an open one on you. I’m gonna pay a million in cash to anybody who serves you up, alive. You’re the mark, now. But what you got coming won’t be quick or painless.”

  “I’m too good, Santini. Your late and not lamented father now knows that. And you need to know that you’re going down. You can’t move without me knowing where you are. I might get to you at the old man’s funeral, or in a year’s time. Just be aware that I never, ever fail. If I were you, I’d be very scared.”

  “You don’t frigh¯”

  Gary ended the call. What a fine time he was having. This was as good as a day at the circus. Christ, what had brought that to mind. His mother had once taken him to one. He’d sat on a wooden bench, high up, looking down on the sawdust-covered ring. He’d been seven or eight years old, and the few hours spent under the big top had been the most thrilling time of his life, at that time. The colours, smells, and the roar of the crowd. And the clowns, animals, trapeze artists. And...And just everything had kept him on the edge of his seat, awestruck, wide-eyed, and with his mouth hanging open like a retard’s. His clearest memories were those of a lion tamer putting his head in one of the big cats’ mouths, of an elephant taking a dump, and of a woman in a sequinned leotard, who was pinioned to a spinning wooden wheel, that a blindfolded man was throwing knives at. How did they do that? He still didn’t know. Funny how past events can grip your heart and squeeze it. He’d loved his mum, then, back before he knew what she was, and what he was. Aw, well, enough reminiscing. It was always now that counted. The present situation was that everybody wanted him. He had generated such animosity that he could almost feel and taste the hatred thick and sweet in the air around him.

  At nine a.m. he made his move. The narrow back garden was screened from its neighbours’ on both sides by a high panel fence and trees and bushes. The privacy protected him from being seen.

  Using a rusted claw hammer – that he had found in the shed – he prised open a kitchen window, crawled in over the sill and sink and dropped to the floor. With the window pushed back to appear untouched (if not examined too closely), he searched the house, gun drawn, just in case she was at home. The house was empty. He went back to the kitchen, searched the units and found a first aid box. He stripped to the waist, washed and dried off, then poured iodine into the bite wounds before bandaging them. He was suddenly exhausted. The act of murder was a satisfying but draining experience. The fulfilment after each hit left him strangely calm and listless. Each kill was a rebellion against the society he was trapped within. All the insects out there were brainwashed into believing that life was precious and full of meaning, whereas he considered it to be a totally meaningless state, without the possibility of any redemption. Nobody was going to be delivered from sin and damnation as a result of Christ’s atonement. Humanity was cheap and worthless. It was a producer of stinking waste; a polluter and enemy of the environment. All that mattered was the gratification in satisfying his personal desires by culling the population for personal and uncomplicated stimulation. The law was merely a perfunctory institution that was beneath his consideration. The stupid and enslaved masses plodded mindlessly through life, following senseless rules of a game that politicians and moguls made up to further their personal ambitions. He was above all that. Killing liberated his spirit. The ability to end life without compunction was his power, which he exercised at will and was invigorated by.

  He closed his eyes and let his inner radar reach out. He felt safe. Marion did not warrant heavy protection. Maybe there was a cop out front. If so, then good. Who would ever think he was inside a house that was being guarded? The problem now was that he could not trust Marion. She knew him for who he was, and would undoubtedly summon help if given the opportunity. He would force her to phone work and report herself sick, and then spend a couple of days here, before killing her and moving on.

  Upstairs. He undressed and stretched out on her bed. He could smell her on the pillow. The scent reminded him of their abandoned lovemaking. He sighed. Heaven; a real bed again. Comfort could so easily be taken for granted, until it was absent.

  As he rested, he ran through his options. The cop who had survived and claimed to have killed Simon was his new priority. It was a matter of principal. The pig had a bad attitude. Needed to be annihilated. He knew where Barnes was hiding. But also accepted that the cop was far from stupid. It would be a trap, which he had no intention of walking into. The woman was the way to go. Beth Holder would be the pawn in this game. If she was placed in jeopardy, then her knight in shining armour would rush to her rescue. And the bitch deserved his attention. She was taking pieces of silver as she helped his enemies by compiling a profile on him. Not that anything she came up with would help them. She had no way of predicting what he may or may not do next. He was not some flake pattern killer, limited and obsessive like most ritual murderers seemed to be. In contrast, he was versatile, adaptable, and could not be outthought or pigeonholed. Knowing his identity and the details of his background and state of mental health were of no practical value to the inquisitive criminalist. His selection of victims was catholic, his modus operandi varied. Tru
th was, they were dealing with a hunter whose superiority left them behind like some kind of evolutionary missing link. Maybe Dr. Beth Holder should be graced by his presence, to meet the subject of her pen-picture face to face. The conversation they would have might prove interesting, especially for her. She would no doubt attempt to use her knowledge of him to save her worthless skin. And yet surely she must know that you could not talk a person out of his fundamental nature. Nothing she could say would help her. There was no negotiation technique that would sway him from whatever he chose to do. Although he would enjoy listening to any creative argument she might employ in a vain attempt to prolong the inevitable. He may even give her a glimmer of hope; let her think he was gullible and open to being dissuaded from his path. For a while. It would be fitting to leave her for Barnes to find. Perhaps he’d let him live, to be consumed by grief, guilt and hate. Perhaps cut her eyes out and disembowel her. That would be a suitably shocking scenario for the cop to find. Better still, do it in front of him. Make him watch his slut being dismantled.

  He fell asleep with another small sigh of contentment. The world was like a giant playground or theme park, built solely for his personal recreation: Gary World; a mind resort where the sun never sets and the fun never stops.

  A noise brought him awake from a dream in which he was being savaged by humpbacked rats and giant red-eyed hell hounds. He instinctively knew that it had been the front door closing that curtailed his ethereal dismemberment. Most people awaken with a jolt if nightmares threaten to engulf them with more pain or fear than can be borne. Gary did not usually escape the fate his subconscious mind conjured up. Trapped in sleep, he had suffered death by burning and drowning and a hundred other fearful ends. He had felt the pain, experienced the mind-numbing fear, and then the release. He had been into the abyss and returned. Faced death, gone through the veil. It was no big deal.