by Michael Kerr
“I’m standing in front of Santini’s computer,” he said to the ace programmer. “There’s a shitload of disks. Can you get over here and dig out some info for me?”
“On my way, Tom. And don’t let anyone who doesn’t know what they’re doing mess with anything. It could have traps laid to wipe data.”
“That’s why I called you, Kenny.”
All Tom could do was wait. There was a chance that a lot of incriminating evidence was stored on the scores of disks that filled the dozen or so cryptically labelled storage boxes, though he doubted that there would be any leads to help them find the players he was after. Even approaching Andretti would be a total waste of time. The gangster would deny any claim of having put Santini together with a shooter. But he had to play with what he’d got. Follow the trail back, as Matt would put it.
On a whim, Tom looked up Beth Holder’s number and rang it.
“Yes?”
“Beth?”
“Yes, Tom. What can I do for you?”
“Have you heard from Matt, tonight?”
“No. Why?”
“He’s flown the nest.”
“What do you mean?”
“He ran, or should I say, drove out from under the noses of the team that were covering his stubborn arse.”
“With a plaster cast on his leg?”
“Tell me about it. I think he must have taken it off.”
“But why would he do that? What could possibly motivate him to go off by himself?”
“God knows, Beth. I was hoping you’d have an idea. If he gets in touch, let me know. We can’t protect him if we don’t know where he is.”
“I’ll do that, Tom. And you let me know if you find him.”
He heard the catch in her voice. He had unwittingly worried her. “He’ll be fine, Beth. He knows what he’s doing, even if we don’t. When he surfaces, I’ll get him to give you a bell.”
Beth thanked him and then ended the call.
“Very good,” Gary said. He had been sitting cheek to cheek with Beth, listening to both sides of the conversation. “Your boyfriend is resourceful. I’m really looking forward to meeting up with him.”
“Why are you so obsessed with Matt Barnes, Gary?” Beth asked.
Gary moved away from her and reached out to accept the mug of coffee that Marion held out to him. He said nothing.
Beth observed that Marion was more together. Now even able to make eye contact with her. Something significant had happened. Beth sensed the change of mood and dynamics. It was as if Marion had found some inner well of strength. She was more composed and in control of her emotions. It had not been lost on Beth that the ex-nurse was ill at ease with Noon. Knowing what he had done previously was one thing. They were detached events, without substance. Being present and having to watch him murder in cold blood was, potentially, a whole new deal. If Beth’s ability to analyse characters was near the mark (and it usually was), then there was a possibility that she might have a reluctant ally. Marion was basically law-abiding, having spent the greater part of her life counselling, involved in talk therapy, attempting to help patients rebuild their lives and become well again. She was programmed to promote the well-being, not the destruction of individuals. Noon’s power over her might not be as potent as he believed. The impending blood bath may have brought about the realisation that her infatuation was, to say the least, foolhardy.
Gary turned his attention back to Beth, looking her up and down as though she was a side-show freak, or an unidentifiable exhibit suspended in a jar of formaldehyde.
“I am not obsessed with Barnes, Doctor,” he said, his words clipped. “My mind is far from being preoccupied to an unreasonable extent by him. He’s just a detail. It’s Barnes who has the obsession, and is intent on bringing me to so-called justice for grievously wounding him and dispatching a number of his incompetent comrades in arms. He presents a small risk, which makes it prudent on my part to eradicate him. Also, the fucker killed Simon, which made it personal.”
“Simon was your tarantula, right?”
“He was a mygalomorph. There is a difference, but I won’t bore either of us by going into it. Barnes boasted that he’d squished him; an act that in itself earned him a bullet.”
“He was winding you up,” Beth said. “Simon is alive and well.”
“That’s nice to know. I hope it’s true. But it doesn’t change anything.”
“It should. Unless you have a death wish.”
“I don’t. Truth is, I’m basically bad, not mad.”
“Then why don’t you just take off and start afresh somewhere with a new identity.”
“You disappoint me,” Gary said, fixing Beth with a look that a teacher might give to a child who he expected much more of. “I thought you were a hotshot profiler. It’s fundamental to my nature to kill. I consider it both a vocation and the ultimate game, Doctor. And the higher the risk, the greater the emotional and intellectual reward.”
“You call killing a game?”
“Of course. The same as any other, but for bigger stakes. I don’t do it for the money alone. Do you imagine that any vastly rich sportsman or woman continues to compete for the monitory recompense? They do it because it’s what they do; what they are. Take away their reason to exist and they have nothing.”
“I find that a poor metaphor. You’re trying to say that you were born to kill, and that it’s as natural as playing football or tennis. Is that what you think you are, a natural born killer? Do you see that as somehow significant and worthwhile?”
“I don’t have to see it as anything. I believe in achieving personal fulfilment in whatever way I see fit. And your views, principles and beliefs are irrelevant. I’m totally self-contained, Beth Holder. You’re not a person to me, just a very insignificant detail of a very big picture, no more or less important than a ripe apple I might pluck from a tree to temporarily sate my appetite. Or an ant to crush underfoot, rather than step around.”
Beth now saw him for what he truly was; a creature as repugnant to humanity as the fictional monster in the Alien movies. He could not be reasoned with, or even communicated with on any meaningful level. Even though he spoke the same language and bore a deceptive resemblance to the species he dwelt among, he was not, in essence, one of them. This was a genetically malformed being, a faulty product pressed out on an assembly line which should not have passed inspection, but been rejected, returned to the mix and melted down.
Marion felt faint. The blood seemed to be withdrawing from her brain and extremities to leave her feeling light-headed and numbingly cold. She could feel a rash of gooseflesh erupt on her arms. The fear was palpable. She wanted to run from the flat, but her legs were fixed, as if thick roots had sprouted from the soles of her feet and taken hold, to grow down into the floor. ‘I am a tree’, a small voice whispered in some dark recess of her mind. She remembered primary school days, when the teacher, Mrs. Walker – who had always dressed in a red, tight-fitting two-piece suit – had have them play charades. The children would pretend to be anything their imagination could create. She, Marion, had always opted to be a tree, crooking her arms out and clawing her fingers, to picture herself as one of the terrifying trees in the forest that Snow White had fled through. Now, it was she who felt the clutching branches of dread that she had been snagged by in countless childhood nightmares that the fairy tale induced.
If there had been any grain of doubt as to Gary’s mental state, it was now resolved. His remarks to Beth satisfied Marion that he was incapable of caring for anyone or anything but himself. She would have to somehow gather her wits, pick the moment and end this. How she could have envisaged being party to murder, she could not now imagine. It was as if Gary had possessed her in the way a mind-altering drug or a hypnotist would. She had been under his control; knew at heart that it would be the end of her, but had not cared. Love – or the power of that indefinable but all-conquering emotion – had lulled her in
to a state far removed from her true nature. It was as if she had been spinning around a sun, being slowly drawn into the waiting conflagration by its gravitational pull, but too beguiled by its warmth and brightness to draw back and break free. She had in some way wanted to be consumed, to suffer both the agony and the ecstasy. But the spell was now broken, and the paralysis of both her mind and body was unlocked. She was returned to being wholly the person she had been before falling under Noon’s tenebrous enchantment.
Lighting a cigarette, Marion took deep, calming drags from it, and waited. The next time Gary engaged Beth in conversation and had his back to her, she fully intended to pull the steak hammer from her jeans and club him to death, not relenting until his skull was broken like an egg; his brains mashed to a pulp.
“You would contaminate a sewer, Noon,” Beth said. “Even the rats would be repulsed and sickened by you. I hope that¯”
Gary lashed out again with the gun, and watched as she fell back with blood erupting to mist the air as her scalp split open.
“You’re pushing me, you stupid cunt,” he said. “I want Barnes to watch you die, slowly, before he gets his. So be a good girl and don’t say another word till he shows up. If you insult me again, I’ll cut your fucking tongue out.”
Beth struggled back up into a sitting position. Her thick hair had absorbed some of the blow’s impact, and although dazed, she met his stare and remained defiant. Fuck sucking up to him and acting like a victim. She wanted to rattle him and see if there were any cracks in his shell. But decided to use a little tact.
As Beth made to again question his motives, without being so disparaging, Marion moved with a speed that her stocky, overweight body did not appear capable of. She tugged the hammer free as she closed on Gary, raised it two-handed, high into the air, and aimed a mighty blow at the crown of his head.
DS Dick Shaw, who had been tagged ‘Rickshaw’ for twenty-three of his twenty-nine years, braced himself as he waited for the DCI to pick up.
“Bartlett.”
“It’s Shaw, guv. I’m in Barnes’s house.”
“And?”
“There’s a hacksaw, chunks of plaster, and some ripped-up bandage on his kitchen table and the floor. Looks like he sawed through the leg cast so that he could drive.”
“What else?”
“Nada. The last incoming call on his land line was from the Yard.”
“So check his mobile number. Someone had to have contacted him. There’ll be a record of the call. You’ll be able to find out what area it was made from.”
“I’ve got a guy on it.”
“Get back to me when you know something. And make it fast.”
“Ignorant bastard!” Dick said, once certain that his superior officer had terminated the call. Barnes had made them look like fucking idiots by doing a runner. They owed him one, if he didn’t get his ticket punched.
Tom was getting angry. The frustration was building up like shit in a blocked drain. He could feel his cheeks heating up, and knew that bright red patches would be signalling his choler. His recently acquired ulcer was burning in his gut. And his chest hurt. He searched his pockets for antacid tablets, but had chewed his way through them all.
“Get me a glass of milk, would you?” he said to Pete Deakin. “Then have Luther taken in and processed.”
Luther looked up from the spots of blood on his black loafers, which he had been gazing fixedly at. He didn’t know if it was from the wounded cop, or Dom, and wasn’t in the least concerned. “I thought¯”
“You thought right, Luthor,” Tom cut in, rubbing his sternum with the heel of his hand, hoping that he was not about to suffer another fucking heart attack. “We’ve got a lot of talking to do, real soon. And after that, we’ll work something out that will keep you, me and the suits upstairs at the Yard happy. It’ll be a trade-off. You saved a cop’s skin, and that goes a long way in my book. But I’ll want everything. Understand?”
Luther nodded, and the light from the tube on the ceiling reflected off his shaven skull. He envisaged a token sentence, after he had helped put a lot of people away for a very long time. If he was lucky, and could do his stretch without being sussed as a grass and shivved, then when he came out he would catch a silver bird to Barbados, maybe open a gym and train some of the local kids to box. He had put money by for a rainy day, and black-bellied clouds were now gathering directly overhead, ready to dump on him. He smiled to himself. This was only going to be a summer storm that would quickly pass. His decision to save the cop and subsequently cap Dom and Carlo would bring clear skies soon enough.
Tears of rage and fear dampened Marion’s cheeks as she brought her arms down in a full-blooded, sweeping arc, aiming the hammer at the top of Gary’s head.
Beth stiffened and attempted to remain composed, not looking away from her antagonist’s face. But Gary was attuned to his surroundings, noticed the rigidity in her features, and saw the flash of movement mirrored in Beth’s almost imperceptibly widening eyes.
Stoat-quick, half turning, he managed to move slightly to his left, which resulted in the broad hammerhead glancing off his skull, not striking him with the accuracy and impact that Marion had intended.
He reacted instinctively, without thought as to why she would suddenly attack him. He swung his arm round and fired upwards twice from the kneeling position he had assumed as he was bludgeoned to the floor.
Both bullets tore into Marion’s stomach with less than half an inch between the two entry holes. The slugs erupted from high up in her back, taking a welter of blood and tissue with them, before embedding into the ceiling amid a crimson spray. She was thrown backwards, to totter across the carpet, bounce off the door jamb and spin into the kitchen on tiptoe, arms flailing. Her back thudded into the refrigerator and she slowly slid down the door onto her fat-cushioned buttocks, to leave a glistening poppy-red trail on the white, enamelled metal.
Sitting, legs apart, hands palm up at her sides on the granite coloured vinyl like a marionette at rest, Marion coughed once and stared in disbelief as a stream of hot gore jetted from her mouth to splash into her lap. Her eyes rolled back to show shining white orbs between the wide-open lids. She felt as though hot pokers had been pushed into and through her. And her heart physically ached, felt swollen, too large for the cavity it occupied. Oh, Jesus fucking Christ! She could feel the blood draining from her numbed brain. Knew that life was deserting her. She uttered a single, wet, plaintive moan, before her head fell forward and death took her.
Even as Beth attempted to rise from the settee, Gary redirected his attention to her, shot out his left hand and pushed her back.
“Why would she try to hurt me?” he asked, patting at his now matted hair, and then holding his hand in front of him to stare in disbelief at the blood coating his fingers. “She...she loved me, for fuck’s sake.”
Beth was stunned at both the sudden explosion of violence that had resulted in Marion’s death, and by the behaviour of this homicidal fiend, who was now acting like a grief-stricken little boy, unable to comprehend why his pet dog had snapped at him for pulling on its ears.
“I think she saw you for what you really are, Gary,” Beth offered.
She knew who I fucking am,” he said, his bottom lip quivering and his eyes shiny with tears. “and loved me in spite of it. She saw us as a modern-day Bonnie and Clyde. We’d made plans for the future.”
“Knowing that you’re a killer is not the same as being present when you do the deed, Gary,” Beth said. “Deep down, Marion knew that what you do is wrong; beyond acceptance. She was incapable of seeing any point in killing for the sake of it.”
“There’s no point to anything, shrink. The same stars shine down that have for millennia, overseeing the rise and fall of empires and the extinction of life in myriad forms. What you, I, or anyone else thinks or does is of absolutely no fucking consequence in the great scheme of things. Don’t you know that?”
“I know a
bout you, Gary. That you were emotionally crippled as a youngster, and that your mother had a lot to do with it.”
“Leave my fucking whore of a mother out of it!” he bellowed. “What right do you have to make assumptions and try to categorise me? You can’t begin to know what motivates me. I think you’re like one of those sad film or book critics, full of arty-farty interpretations of what the director or author was trying to convey through his work: scavengers, who can only pick through the leftovers of someone else’s meal. The reality is, that sometimes what you see is all there is to it. There doesn’t have to be hidden agendas or layers. Not everything is a fucking onion. How can you begin to understand what you’ve never been...never felt, or never done? You’re like a travel writer who produces a guide to somewhere exotic you’ve never visited, from the safety of your office chair. I detest your arrogance.”
Beth sat back under the verbal onslaught. His eyes were bulging like a cartoon toad’s, and his free hand was up at his bearded face, first tearing at the hair, then scratching through it, raking at the underlying cheek until it bled. When he pulled his hand free, his fingernails were rimmed with raw flesh and blood.
“I know what I see, Gary,” she came back. “I’ve spent years talking to and treating people with personality disorders. I don’t have to be a schizophrenic or sociopath to recognise the symptoms. I’ve never put my hand in boiling water, but I know the damage and pain that doing it would cause. You’re obsessed with violence and death. You need to be in control. You’re psychologically damaged, or you wouldn’t express yourself with such antisocial behaviour. You resent what other people have, and has eluded you.”
He actually smiled, became calmer and nodded, as if he appreciated her response to his outburst.
“You’ve got spunk, Doctor, I’ll give you that. I’m what you say I am, and much, much more. But it’s all just words, not worth the amount of breath expended in voicing them. It doesn’t change anything. When Barnes arrives, I’m going to let him live long enough to watch me rape, then kill you. He’ll welcome his own release, but it won’t be quick or clean.”