The Business Of Dying

by Simon Kernick

  I stepped into the hallway and gently eased the door closed behind me, putting the chain across it to delay her if she tried to make a getaway. There were no lights on in the hallway itself but the sitting-room door on my left was open, providing some light. I stopped and listened again.

  Making as little noise as possible, I slowly put my head round the sitting-room door.

  The room was empty. In the corner, the TV blared as a news reporter in some dusty war-torn location gave a dramatic run-down on whatever conflict it was he was covering. A half-drunk cup of coffee sat on the teak coffee table, and next to it was an ashtray with two butts in it. I waited a moment, then, still hearing no sound from anywhere in the flat, walked inside. I leaned over and dipped my finger in the coffee. It was cool, but not cold. Maybe half an hour old. No more than that.

  I retreated back into the hallway. Immediately to my right was the kitchen. The door was half closed but the light was on inside. I pushed it open and had a quick look but, like the sitting room, it too was empty. That only left two rooms, one of which was the bathroom, right opposite me at the end of the hall. Its door was wide open. I crept up, paused for a moment, then reached round and pulled on the light.

  Empty.

  Which left the bedroom.

  I assumed she must have gone out for something; either that or she’d taken a very early night. It didn’t matter. I could wait for her easily enough. I didn’t suppose she was having a romantic tryst in there, otherwise I’d have been able to hear her. Carla was not a woman who could enjoy a quiet fuck.

  I stepped forward and listened briefly at the door. Again, just silence.

  Slowly, ever so slowly, I turned the handle. The door creaked open.

  It was pitch black. Even without looking, I could tell the curtains were closed. I stepped inside, waited a moment, then reached for the light switch, trying to remember which side of the door it was on. Again, no sound. No sound at all.

  I picked the right side, found the switch, and flicked it on. It seemed very bright and I blinked rapidly as my eyes refocused.

  It took me two, maybe three seconds to see the huge dark stain that spread high up the wall behind her kingsize bed. Beneath it, lying face forward on the heavily bloodstained sheets at a slightly skewed angle from the wall and with its arms and legs spread wide, lay the fully clothed corpse of Carla Graham. She was wearing a white blouse, whole swathes of which were now crimson, black trousers and socks. One of her bedside lamps had fallen off its perch and now lay on its side on the floor, the only obvious sign of a struggle, and her hands were gripping on to great clumps of the sheets. There was a vague, airless smell in the room but nothing like as pungent as the stench in the funeral home after Raymond had murdered Barry Finn.

  I stepped forward, still finding it difficult to believe what I was seeing, and gingerly approached the body. I didn’t want to touch it, not without gloves on, but I wanted to check that she was actually dead, although with that much blood it was difficult to believe she could be anything but.

  Her eyes were open. Wide. Terrified. But still beautiful somehow, even in death. We could have been something. We really could have. At that moment, I felt a bitter regret that it had come to this.

  The gaping wound in her throat was partly obscured by her hair, but I could see that it was very deep and very wide . . . similar to the one that had ended Miriam Fox’s life. Out of the corner of my eye, I watched a droplet of blood ease slowly down the wall. I looked back down at Carla’s throat. The blood was still oozing out of the wound, though its flow was now down to a trickle.

  She had died only a short while before. A very short while. Ten, fifteen minutes. No longer than that. The blood hadn’t even coagulated yet. I’d been outside for about ten minutes, sitting in the car. No one had left the building in that time. It had taken me five minutes to get up the stairs, give the flat the once-over, and come into the room where I stood now. That was fifteen minutes in total. In my estimation, she’d almost certainly been alive fifteen minutes ago.

  Which meant only one thing.

  I heard the movement behind me and whirled round at just the second the knife came flashing through the air in a great arc, still dripping with Carla’s blood. I jumped backwards and banged into the bedside table. The blade swished past perilously close to my skin, almost touching it, only an inch separating me from certain evisceration.

  My attacker was a big man, well over six feet with a build to match. He had a black baseball cap pulled low over his face, but I could make out the look of steely determination beneath it. There was no way he was going to let me live. Not now I’d seen him.

  He stumbled slightly with the momentum of his swing and I jumped forward, grabbing him by both wrists and kicking him as hard as I could in the shins. He flinched with pain but maintained his balance, and pushed me back against the table, at the same time twisting his way out of my grip.

  Now he had both hands free again, and he brought the knife up in a rapid thrust aimed at my belly, but I leaped aside, landing on my back on the bed, my head resting on Carla’s still warm corpse. I could feel the blood-drenched sheets wet against my body. I tried to kick out as he lifted the huge knife above his head but his legs were pressed up tight against mine, making movement next to impossible.

  He brought the knife down hard, but I wriggled violently and grabbed his arm with both hands, pushing it to one side and banging it against the wall with all the strength I could muster. He didn’t release his grip. Instead, with his free hand he punched me hard in the face and I felt a terrible pain shoot through my cheek. He punched me again, a triumphant look in his eyes, and my vision began to blur.

  Then, suddenly changing tactics, he stopped punching me and reached over to grab the knife from his other hand, which I had pinned against the wall. In doing so, he relaxed the pressure on my legs, and before he had a chance to stab at me again I kicked out wildly, cracking him in the knee with the heel of my new brogues. He jumped backwards out of range of my feet and his cap flew off, revealing a thick head of unkempt hair. The loss of it appeared to distract him momentarily, like Samson losing his locks, and I took the opportunity to roll across the bed, forcing myself over Carla’s slick, greasy body.

  I seemed to roll for ages before finally crashing down the other side. I could hear my attacker coming round the front of the bed, and I desperately hunted through the pockets of my coat for the gun I’d taken the previous night. I got a grip on the handle and tried to tug it out, but it snagged on the material. He was coming into full view, replacing the black cap on his head, the knife held wickedly aloft. Only feet away. I felt the material around my pocket tear. I pulled again, desperately trying to get it out, panic threatening to fuck up everything.

  Suddenly the handle came free and I whipped the gun out, pointing the barrel at my assailant. He saw it and stopped dead, then made a split-second decision to turn and run for the door. I located the safety catch, flicked it round, then sat up and took aim. He was almost through the door but I managed to get off a shot. It went wide and high, hitting the upper door frame. He kept going, disappearing from view, and I jumped to my feet and started out after him.

  When I came out into the hallway he was at the front door, fiddling with the chain. He turned, saw me, gave me one last defiant look, and pulled it open. I fired again as he started down the stairs, but again the bullet went wide and high. It was no wonder the Turk hadn’t been able to hit me the previous night. The sights on this gun were so out of kilter I’d have had to aim at the ceiling to get any chance of actually putting a hole in my target.

  I could hear his heavy footfalls on the stairs, taking them two at a time. There was no way I was going to catch him now. I stopped where I was, panting with exhaustion and shock. That had been close. Far too close for comfort. That made two attempts on my life in twenty-four hours, neither of which had been that far from success. So far I’d emerged unscathed, but it was only a matter of time before my luck ran out. />
  And now I was never going to get any answers from Carla Graham.

  But her killer would know them. And luckily for me I knew him. Or knew his name, anyway.

  There’s a true story that goes like this. A thirty-two-year-old man once kidnapped a ten-year-old girl. He took her back to his dingy flat, tied her to a bed and subjected her to a prolonged and sickening sexual assault. He might have killed her too; apparently he’d boasted in the past of wanting to murder young girls for a thrill, but a neighbour heard the girl’s screams and called the cops. They turned up, kicked the door down, and nicked him. Unfortunately, he later got off on a technicality and the girl’s father ended up behind bars, and later under ground, for trying to extract his own justice. I remembered the case because an ex-colleague of mine had worked on it. It had been two years ago now.

  The rapist’s name was Alan Kover, and he was the man who’d just tried to put a knife in me.

  There were more footsteps on the stairs, this time coming up. I placed the gun back in my pocket and walked over to the front door. As I was shutting it behind me, the guy who’d let me in emerged from round the corner. He was carrying a heavy-looking torch that I think was his best effort at a weapon, and wearing a very concerned expression.

  ‘What’s going on?’ he asked. ‘I’ve just seen a man with a knife come charging down the stairs.’

  I started down towards him. ‘Call the police,’ I said.

  ‘But I thought you were the police.’

  ‘Not any more I’m not.’

  ‘Then who the hell are you?’

  I pushed past him without stopping. ‘Someone who hopes good luck comes in threes.’

  33

  ‘Mehmet Illan. Forty-five years old. Turkish national, he’s been resident in this country for the last sixteen years. He’s supposedly just a businessman, but apparently he’s got previous convictions in Turkey and Germany for drugs offences, though no record here. He’s got a number of companies on the go doing all sorts: import/export – mainly foodstuffs and carpets; a chain of pizza parlours; a PC wholesalers; a textile factory. You name it, he’s got an interest in it somewhere down the line. But the word is that a lot of his companies are just fronts for money laundering, and that his real profits come from elsewhere.’

  ‘Oh yeah? Where?’

  ‘Apparently he used to import a lot of heroin overland from Turkey and Afghanistan, although no one’s got any hard evidence of that, but now he’s in the people-smuggling business. You know, asylum seekers.’

  ‘I hear there’s big money to be made in that sort of thing.’

  ‘Very big. These people come from all over the place and they’ll sell everything they’ve got to get the money to pay the smugglers. The going rate can be as much as five grand per person, so one lorry-load of twenty people can be worth a hundred K to the people doing the smuggling. If they only shift a hundred a week, they’re still clearing half a million, and chances are they’ll be shifting a lot more than that. It could be thousands.’

  ‘And you think this guy Illan’s involved in that?’

  ‘That’s what I’m hearing. My information says he’s a major player, but he’s done a good job of keeping himself as far away from the action as possible, so no one’s got anything concrete on him. What’s your interest in him anyway?’

  ‘I might have something on him. You’ll hear about it before the end of the week. You’ll be the first to know.’

  ‘Whatever it is, be careful, Dennis. This guy is not to be messed with. You know those three blokes shot dead the other week – the customs men and the accountant... ?’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘The accountant was something to do with one of his front companies, and the talk is that Illan was the guy behind the murders, although proving it’s another matter. So, he doesn’t fuck about. You piss him off, you die. If he’s prepared to commit triple murder, he’s prepared to kill a copper.’

  ‘Don’t worry, I’m not going to do anything stupid.’

  ‘So if you didn’t know anything about this guy – and I assume you didn’t otherwise you wouldn’t have been phoning me – what is it exactly you’ve got on him?’

  ‘Be patient, Roy.’

  ‘Patience doesn’t sell newspapers, you know that.’

  I put some more money in the phone, knowing that I was going to have to give him something.

  ‘I think I can prove a link between him, some other criminals, and the deaths of those three blokes.’

  I could hear his breathing change at the other end. He was excited, but nervous at the same time in case I was bullshitting.

  ‘Are you serious?’

  ‘Deadly.’

  ‘So, why are you telling me? Why aren’t you arresting these people?’

  ‘It’s a long story, Roy, but basically you’re going to have to trust me.’

  He sighed. ‘I knew it was too good to be true.’

  ‘I’ve resigned from the Force,’ I told him. ‘There were a couple of minor irregularities. It was with immediate effect. That’s why I haven’t arrested anyone yet.’

  ‘Christ, Dennis. Really? What did you do?’

  ‘Suffice to say I’ve had some involvement with people who know Mehmet Illan. Not major involvement, but enough to get me sacked. And enough for me to know a few things about them.’

  ‘Tell me more.’

  ‘Not now. I need you to do something else for me. It shouldn’t take five minutes.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Alan Kover. Remember him?’

  ‘The name rings a bell.’

  ‘He was that child rapist who got off on a technicality. The girl’s father got arrested trying to burn his flat down and ended up committing suicide. It was about two years back, over in Hackney.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, I remember.’

  ‘Kover’s still walking the streets and I need to find him. Urgently.’

  ‘What? Is he involved in all this?’

  I decided to lie. It was easier. ‘He might be, I’m not sure. Can you get me his current address?’

  ‘Dennis, you’re asking me to do a lot here. This sort of stuff could get me in one fuck of a lot of trouble. What the hell are you going to do to him, anyway?’

  Again, I lied. ‘Nothing. I just need to speak to him. You do this for me, I promise no one’ll ever know it was you, and you’ll get the exclusive on this story. After this, the whole of Fleet Street’ll be beating a path to your door. I promise.’

  ‘It might not be that easy. He might have changed his name.’

  ‘He had previous convictions so it’s unlikely he’ll have been able to change his name. He should be on the Sex Offenders’ Register.’

  Roy sighed. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’

  ‘It’s important, and I’m going to need the information quick.’

  ‘Give me more of a snifter on this story. Something to really whet my appetite.’

  ‘Get me Kover’s current address by tonight and I’ll tell you a bit more then.’

  ‘This’d better be fucking good, Dennis.’

  ‘I’ll call you on this number at five tonight.’

  ‘I’ve got a meeting. Make it six.’

  ‘Six it is. And same thing applies. Don’t tell anyone you’ve heard from me.’

  The beeps went as he started to say something else, and I hung up without saying goodbye.

  I stepped out of the phone box into the morning rush hour and made my way slowly back towards the hotel.

  34

  ‘With you in a minute,’ came a voice from the back of the shop as I shut the door. I pushed the bolt across and switched the sign round from OPEN to CLOSED – not that I expected to be disturbed. Len Runnion’s shop is hardly a Mecca for retail activity. Still, always easier to err on the side of caution.

  He appeared behind the counter wiping what looked like a Chinese ornamental vase with a cloth, presumably to get rid of fingerprints. When he saw me, he attempted a smile, but it wasn’t
a very good effort and his eyes started darting around alarmingly, always coming back to the vase in his hand.

  ‘Oh, hello, Mr Milne,’ he said as jovially as possible. He put the vase down under the counter. ‘What can I do for you?’

  ‘Guns,’ I said, approaching him. ‘I want some guns.’

  His eyes seemed to go into overdrive, and he took a step back. I think there was a look on my face that scared him. ‘I don’t know where you’d get them sort of things from,’ he said nervously. ‘Sorry, I can’t help on that one. I make it a point never to go near any sort of weapon.’

  I stopped on the other side of the counter and eyed him carefully. ‘I’m no longer a police officer,’ I told him, ‘so I’m not interested in nicking you for anything. Now, we can do this the easy way or the hard way.’

  ‘Look, Mr Milne, I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about so I think you’d better leave if that’s the sort of thing you’ve come for.’ He was more confident now that I’d told him I was no longer with the Force.

  However, the confidence was shortlived. I pulled out the gun I’d taken from Illan’s man and pointed it directly at his chest. ‘I’m not fucking about, Leonard. I need at least two firearms other than the one I’m pointing at you, preferably ones that are magazine loading. Plus a reasonable quantity of ammunition.’

  ‘What the fuck is going on here, Mr Milne?’ he asked unsteadily, his eyes for once very much focused as they stared at the gun. ‘Is that thing real?’

  ‘Very much so. Now, I know you deal in illegal firearms, everyone knows that.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about—’

  ‘Yes you do. You know exactly what I’m talking about. You’re going to supply me the two weapons I’ve just asked for now – today – or I’m going to kill you. It’s as simple as that.’

  ‘I’ve got no guns. I promise.’