A Reason to Kill

by Michael Kerr

  “I do,” Marion heard herself say. It was as if another person had moved in and taken up residence in her brain. “I want to really live, not just exist. But let’s go now, Gary.”

  “No can do. I’ve stirred things up and need to see what floats to the top, and deal with it.”

  “All of a sudden, I feel like Bonnie Parker,” Marion said as the enormity of what she was prepared to do struck home.

  “Well I’m no Clyde fucking Barrow,” Gary said. “He was a dipshit. Got himself and Bonnie turned into colanders for no good reason.”

  “And you believe you can outsmart everybody?”

  “You worked closely with me. I was one of your patients, and yet you bought the mixed-up young man act. Did you ever think it possible that I could be capable of the so-called atrocities you now know I committed?”

  “No. You’re very clever, Gary. But there’s always somebody just as smart around the corner.”

  “I doubt that. But it would be a novelty to have a challenge. People are such predictable and easy prey.”

  “What will you do now?”

  “You don’t need to know. Initially, I thought I might stay here with you for a few days.”

  Marion was all in favour of that. “Good. What happened to your hand and arm?” she asked, noticing that coins of blood were beginning to show through the bandage.

  “I got chewed on by a rat, then a dog. They didn’t know who they were fooling around with.”

  She didn’t enquire as to their fate. “Are you hungry?” she asked.

  “Starving.”

  With renewed appetite, Marion fried bacon, sausages, eggs and tomatoes, and served it up with a stack of thickly-buttered toast and mugs of coffee.

  Gary noticed that she had lost some weight. “You look really good, Marion,” he said through a mouthful of food. “You must have lost a couple of stone at least. You’ll need a whole new wardrobe.”

  She blushed. “I did it for you, Gary. I might never be a catwalk model, but it won’t harm to see if there are a few curves under this blubber.”

  Christ, she was just about perfect. Being five years older than him lent her a certain maturity that he found almost maternal. She could be a friend, lover, confidante, and the mother he’d wished his own had been. Marion was far removed from Tracy Noon, who had been a cheap whore and poor excuse for a human being.

  “I killed my mother,” he stated simply. “She was a Tom and a lush, who brought men home to fuck for money. One of her...her punters was my father.”

  The admission released something. He had never told another living soul of his act of matricide. Just confessing it gave him an almost physical relief. He likened it to when he had suffered almost unbearable pain from an abscess under a tooth. When the dentist pulled it, there was an instant assuagement as the trapped pus was discharged.

  To Marion, the disclosure was a thunderbolt. Her stomach rolled. The greasy food she had just eaten threatened to come back up. She pushed her plate away. “Maybe she was desperate, Gary. The drink may have been to dampen her feelings of shame or hopelessness. It’s all too easy for a girl to fall¯”

  “Don’t even attempt to make excuses for her, Marion. We all make life choices. She could have found other work; got by without degrading herself and screwing strangers. I spent years watching an endless procession of pathetic men come and go. I would lie awake at night and listen to the creaking of bedsprings and the cries and moans of pleasure. I went to sleep a thousand times with my fingers in my ears. I was left to fend for myself, mostly. In the end something snapped. I hated her for having me, and for then neglecting me. Maybe she hated me. One night, after she’d finished up with some creep, I pushed her down the stairs. And I felt so-o-o good. The problem was suddenly gone.”

  Marion could not think of anything to say to him. The confession explained so much to her of his personality and subsequent actions. On one level, he probably knew that his mother had cared for him. She could always have had the pregnancy terminated, but had obviously chosen to have him. And she had not given him up for adoption. But the embarrassment of being a young boy with a drunken prostitute for a mother had been too much for him to assimilate and bear. Killing her must have left him very disturbed. Feelings of relief, suppressed guilt, self-condemnation and a sense of loss would take a heavy toll. The boy had lived with the terrible secret, gone unpunished, and had no doubt started mutilating himself as penance, even if he was unaware of the reason he practised self harm. He had also discovered that all dilemmas could be eradicated, erased. She could empathise with that philosophy, to a degree. How many times had she wanted to hurt...even kill somebody? Gary had just taken that giant step over an invisible line and done it, to be changed forever by the experience.

  “You understand, don’t you?” Gary asked.

  “Yes, my love. Let’s go to bed. I need you.”

  They went upstairs, undressed slowly without talking, then lay on the bed and coupled. Marion gripped his buttocks with her hands, rising energetically to meet his hard thrusts. All too soon she climaxed, and then felt him loose himself within her. They kissed, fondled each other intimately, and made love again, moving with less urgency. It was a syncopated act. They enjoyed each other at length, more casually, without the need to rush, savouring, exploring, before eventually releasing together. The physical joining was symbolic. They were connected on several levels.

  Another door had opened in Gary’s psyche. Maybe there was more to life than he had previously envisaged. He’d thought he might have been on a collision course with destruction; that the world was coming to pieces, and he was one of the very last generation that would walk its surface, waiting for inevitable termination. Now, he could foresee a future. His feelings toward Marion transcended violence and sex. He was not just a killer who took life for the sake of the act. He was a connoisseur of death, and would now share that fascination; tutor his new love in the art, so that they could jointly grow and move forward. In Marion, he could see a reflection of his own deepest needs. He would lead her into a new dimension; a marvellous place. Guide her through a portal into a unique world of total freedom, where without hindrance they could explore the dark realm in which he dwelt.

  “If the two of us are going to be a real couple, then you’ll have to be bloodied, like a youngster at the kill of a fox,” he said.

  Marion’s bladder was suddenly full, cramping with the fear of her own potential. She actually wanted to change, to shed off all preconceived notions of good, bad, right and wrong. In renunciation of all acceptable behaviour, and as if it would affirm that she could eclipse her past and be reborn spiritually, she parted her legs and relaxed, to flood the bed in rebellion against common decency.

  Gary watched the act, and then looked into her eyes. He saw the avid gleam of anticipation, and moved over her again, his ardour rekindled by the unspoken pact that they had made. He now had a new-found companion to share in his exploits. The sense of belonging was a new one. He had always been a man apart. Now, he was half of a soon to be double act, though would always be the dominant partner. Oh, what an unstoppable, deadly force they would be. Together, there would be nothing that they could not achieve. The world was suddenly a far more dangerous place for other people to live in.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  MAYBE the combination of too much coffee and Scotch was keeping him awake. He’d told Ron that he would be checking out in the morning. He was supine, staring at the ceiling. The bedside lamp was on. He glanced at his wristwatch. It was almost three-thirty a.m. Turning over, he reached out to switch off the light. Had he been at home, he would have had a shower, then gone down and made a pot of coffee. His mind was too active, overriding the weariness he felt.

  The events since the slayings at the bungalow in Finchley kept replaying, gnawing, eating at him, and giving him no respite. His life had radically changed, and a lot of people had died at the instigation of Santini and the subsequent action
s of his hired assassin. And yet despite being besieged by an almost debilitating sense of culpability that he could not rid himself of, – even though he knew that his comrades’ deaths had been the direct result of a bent cop selling them out – he felt, in contradiction, more alive than he had done in years. He wasn’t just living the current case. There were other considerations and dynamics, and Beth was the inspirational force at the centre. Up until very recently he had not thought of the possibility that life had a grand design. It had been little more than a haphazard series of unrelated experiences. Now, he felt more grounded. He had survived near death, and it had changed him. He had become mellower, and concluded that he was truly in love for the first time. And with that knowledge came a sense of vulnerability and weakness that frightened him. His heart was committed to someone. That he once – quite recently – thought he was in love with Linda, could now be recognised for the misconception it had been. He was able to differentiate, and knew that although very fond of her, something unfathomable had been missing from the equation. What that something was, he could not begin to comprehend. He tried to work it out, but gave up. Why one person could magnetically unlock such a powerful emotion in another was a mystery of such magnitude that it was beyond comprehension. Hate, greed, envy and other sentiments could be examined and understood. There was usually a rational explanation for them. But the power of love was as invasive and indefinable as the most potent virus. It was no wonder that writers and poets used such words as smitten when referring to it. It was in some way an affliction, however pleasant. He accepted that he had been struck, seized and infected by it, but was not complaining. Was Beth his Achilles heel? She had the potential to unintentionally bring about his downfall, by weakening his resolve and distracting him from all else.

  He snatched his hand back from the light switch as his mobile chirped. It was a few seconds before he answered it. He was sure it would be Beth; in the same instinctive way that he had sometimes been humming a tune, just before turning the car radio on to hear that self-same tune playing.

  “Matt?”

  So much for premonition. “Yeah, Tom.”

  “Get dressed.”

  “You mean this isn’t a social call?”

  “I don’t do social at this time in the morning.”

  “So who’s dead?”

  “Frank Santini.”

  “Hit?”

  “Yeah. His car went off the road, through a fence, and nose-dived into a quarry. It went up like a Roman candle.”

  “Fitting for an Italian.”

  “You a comedian now?”

  “Yeah, a regular Ben Elton.”

  “He’s passé‚ like platform shoes and kipper ties.”

  “What about Santini?”

  “I’m informed by the local uniforms that he’s charcoal. The pathologist is on the way to the scene, but I doubt we’ll get spit till he does the cut.”

  “How can you be sure it’s him?”

  “Because Nick Marino gave me a call. Santini got shot off his bedroom balcony. Dom arranged for the body to be relocated, to keep us at arms’ length.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Two minutes from your hotel, and closing. Meet me out front.”

  “Where’s the scene?”

  “A few miles east of Santini’s drum. It’s meant to look as though it went down before he got home from town. The shooter, who just had to be Noon, also capped two of the muscle and a guard dog as he made his getaway. Nick and Luther Tyrell drove the bodies and a Heckler and Koch assault rifle – that had been left behind – over to the coast. Nick says a couple of fishermen took delivery and were going to dump the bodies out at sea. Luther told Nick that there was a deep trench four miles offshore that they used to ‘vanish’ people in. He reckoned that there had been at least thirty burials at the site to his knowledge. They get weighted and wrapped in chicken wire, not canvas. None of them get washed ashore.”

  “Isn’t Nick’s evidence enough to run with?”

  “No, Matt. We’ve only got his word. He won’t come out from cover until he can give us Dominic Santini on a plate, with an apple in his mouth.”

  The sun was up when they reached the quarry. Tom drove through the now open gateway, down the narrow road that dropped steeply to where the twisted, burnt-out wreck of the Mercedes was lying like a crushed cockroach in an amphitheatre of chalk.

  There was already a white Incitent up, almost invisible against the backdrop of the chalk. A forensic team was picking through the surrounding rubble and pieces of the car for evidence. Tom brought the unmarked Cosworth to a halt next to a Portakabin, and he and Matt got out and went inside the prefabricated hut, where an ashen-faced old man was sitting in a grubby easy chair, nursing a mug of tea in his shaking hands. A uniform was with him.

  Tom looked to the officer and raised his eyebrows questioningly as he flashed his ID.

  “This is the night-watchman, sir,” PC Gavin Walsh said. “He’s given us a statement.”

  Tom turned his attention to the trembling man. “What’s your name, sir?”

  “Eric Crompton.”

  “What exactly did you see, Eric?”

  “Like I told the other copper, er, policeman, I...I ‘eard it land. It was like a bleedin’ bomb goin’ awf. An’ then the place lit up like a Christmas tree. Blew the fuckin’ window in. I went out, but there was noffink I could do. Some poor bastard was arf out of the windscreen. He was burnin’up, an’...an’ he was writhin’ about.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Ain’t that enough, fer Gawd’s sake?”

  Tom nodded and followed Matt outside and across to the tent. They could both smell burnt flesh and petrol as they approached. Tom fished his cigarettes out and offered Matt one. They lit up, sucked in the smoke and blew it out of their nostrils to nullify the stink a little, before entering the tent.

  The Home Office pathologist, Hugh Foster, looked up from where he was squatting next to the grisly spectacle of the corpse. It was curled in a foetal position. The clothes had been burned off, and the body was an overall black with bright red flesh showing through the cracks in the flame-grilled skin. The heat had contracted the muscles, causing the arms to bend at the elbows in ‘begging dog’ fashion. The hands were grotesque claws; Twiglet fingers grasping at the air. Worst of all was the head. It reminded Matt of a hairless, wizened Al Jolson. A cascade of what appeared to be melted pink and white nougat protruded from the lip less mouth, and had set on the chin in a thick patina¯ Santini’s reformed dentures. Matt’s stomach threatened to unload its contents. He was not normally squeamish, but a lack of food and the stench and sight combined to make him feel nauseous.

  “This is the passenger, Tom,” Hugh said. “The driver needs to be cut out. He’s part of the vehicle at the moment.”

  “And I suppose there’s nothing you can tell me, yet,” Tom said.

  Hugh pulled the face mask he was wearing down to below his chin and smiled. “As a matter of fact, I can. This, and he pointed a finger of his gloved hand to the cinder-black forehead, is a bullet hole. If you move around to my side of the barbecue, you’ll see that the back of the skull has been blown out. Sometimes extreme heat will boil a brain up and the cranium will explode. But this was definitely caused by a gunshot. I would think we’ll have problems identifying the remains.”

  “We know who he was, Hugh,” Matt said. “Frank Santini.”

  “Santini, the gangster?”

  “The one and only.”

  “Give me a bell when you get round to checking out the driver,” Tom said. And to Matt. “Come on, let’s get the smell of roast pig out of our noses and go break the good news to Dominic. See if he puts on an award-winning act of shock and grief for pops.”

  Tom drove up to the gates of Villa Venice, opened his window and thumbed the intercom button that was set beneath a grilled plate on a post at the driver’s side.

  “Yes?” A tinny Dalek voice
crackled through the concealed speaker.

  “Detective Chief Inspector Bartlett and Detective Inspector Barnes to see Dominic Santini.”

  “Wait.”

  Over a minute passed. Without any further communication the gates swung back to admit them. Tom followed the long, tree-lined drive, to eventually arrive at the front of the impressive house.

  “And they say crime doesn’t pay,” Matt said.

  Tom grinned. “Frank might know it doesn’t, now.”

  A sallow-skinned, middle-aged guy in a sharp, dark blue mohair suit opened the door before Tom had time to press the bell.

  “Follow me,” Carlo said, and led them through a large open hall, past a grand staircase and beneath a glittering chandelier that would have graced Buck House. They were directed into a split level lounge of enormous proportions, which was more like the foyer of a swank hotel than the reception room of a private residence.

  “Well, if it isn’t DI Barnes,” Dom said, approaching them from where he had been standing in front of a large, Gothic-style stone fireplace. He wore a blue oxford cloth shirt, cuffs turned back, a pair of navy trousers, and cream loafers. “And you’ve got your own driver. You must be on the take. A cop’s pay don’t stretch to that.”

  “Where’s your old man, Santini?” Tom asked.

  “How the fuck should I know? I’m his son, not his keeper. Maybe he’s at the club. He sometimes stays over. What do you want with him?”

  “Nothing, anymore. We just left him about five miles from here. He’s brown bread, Dom,” Matt said. “In fact he’s toast.”

  “What the fuck are you saying?” Dom shouted. The muscles in his cheeks tensed, his hands clenched into fists, and he fixed a suitable expression of both surprise and distress on his face.

  “I’m afraid his car went off the road and ended up at the bottom of a quarry,” Matt said with undisguised levity. “It exploded on impact. Frank and his driver look like overcooked Sunday joints.”