A Last Act of Charity (Killing Sisters Book 1)

by Frank Westworth

There were other odours. There always are. Stoner breathed normally, eyes closed, allowing the room to breathe through his nostrils. There was hotel-room odour; not-very expensive cleaning agents, not-very harsh bleach. The carpets breathed the familiar scent of wet hotel carpet; walked-in road rubbish and weary cheap polymers. There was sweat in the air also. It was a warm room, the SOC team would have gently broiled in their disposable suits while they laboured, and they would have left the heating controls as they had been set by the deceased because they all knew better than to interfere with things like that. The SOC team would also have been innocent of the strong smell of marijuana and the weaker but equally acrid scent of sex. SOC teams wear masks to prevent contamination and to protect themselves from it, and masks do little to enhance olfactory detection. Stoner was a firm believer in using all available senses as he attempted to understand what lay before him.

  Eyes open; lights on. The expected mess. Carefully placed cardboard provided an officially sanctioned walkway. Stoner slipped off his boots. Rested them heels-up against the closed door. Slipped on slippers; he wanted no further destruction of the scene. Walked slowly into the centre of the room, stood still at the foot of the bed. The body had been on this bed. Its shape, the depression of the dead, revealed its previous presence. Five pillows. One of them in the bed’s centre, soaked and black with blood. The body had been arched over this, face up or face down. Interesting. Mostly hidden under one of the other pillows was an eye, an eyeball. Stoner stared hard, focusing intently upon the trailing nerve and connective tissue. The victim’s pale eye looked away, in a shy, passive way . . .

  Above the headboard was a painting. Faintly abstract but rendered more so by the bloody splashing. Stoner stared for a moment. Three pale purple balls on stalks against a purple background. A fourth purple ball hung below the very artificial purple horizon. If that headboard painting, in that room, in this weary hotel . . . if they were the last sights for eyes soon to be forever blind, then it would be a bleak moment indeed, that moment of passing. Another reason for fighting a killer. Die on a beach; die in the sun, die . . . old.

  The dead man had fought. This was evident in the scattering of everything. But he had not fought hard enough or well enough. Stoner pondered. He didn’t know anything about the dead man, other than the two facts that he was dead and that he was a man, but subduing a man was not an easy task. Sex in hotel rooms generally involves at least one girl. Girls are usually less muscled than men. Girls often have trouble overpowering men. This is one reason why women get raped. Holding off a fit man is not easy for a slight woman. A fit man who is in a state of arousal should be even more vigorous than might be usual – the experience of illicit sex, hotel sex, tends to produce extra excitement. This is one reason why the few hit men who are really hit women tend to favour the more subtle or remote approaches to that final departure. Poisons, guns, garrottes; that kind of thing. Stoner pondered some more.

  For the Hard Man to be interested in this, he must have reasonable suspicion that the deaths were more than simply random attacks. They were unlikely to be a result of the joy of sex gone a little further than expected; that particular cause of death was a real rarity. Stoner’s pondering brought him to the notion of the accomplice. Could he picture this conversation: ‘Excuse me one moment, Mr Customer, while I open the door to my big bloke buddies?’ Not easily, he couldn’t.

  So then; drugs in the drink. Stoner, still unmoving in the centre of the room, looked at the array of smashed glass. A couple of bottles. Cheap wine. Cheapskate. No wonder he got killed. Could the motive be meanness? Some cheap, white, trashy German wine, not even mit Pradikat. Not an easy motive, that one. And in any case, the plods had a fine toxicology team in their various pathology departments; if there were soporific chemicals involved – apart from the marijuana, of course – then they would find trace in a trice. If they looked for it.

  He could see no indication that a bottle had been smashed over a head, which is an unsubtle and not always effective way of subduing someone. But the edge of the built-in desktop, as well as being smeared with the ubiquitous blood, also wore what appeared to be a tuft or two of short dark hair. That would have hurt, but by the time the hair left the head, that head was already on its way to make unexpected and close acquaintance with the carpet, so damage had already been done.

  So then; an errant eyeball and a stray tuft of hair. They both pointed one way; they pointed towards a degree of ferocity which was unusual – most unusual – in a contractor. Professionals kept their place in their business by being dispassionate. Efficient. Ferocity has its place, but if the only way a killer can kill is by becoming outraged, ferocious, then the moment would inevitably arrive when the ferocity was not forthcoming and at that point the professional might falter, might fail. At that point, only retirement beckoned. Or worse.

  Stoner looked around him for more signs of far-flung flesh. And of course he found them. Things turn up once you start looking for them. The same thing happens in reverse, too. It is not usually difficult to hide in plain view of folk, especially if they aren’t aware that they’re looking for you. And it is the same with objects. Sometimes things hide themselves from the most professional of searchers. Stoner had never yet been unable to uncover material evidence from a scene after it had been declared clean by a SOC team. And the converse was often also the case: after Stoner had passed his gaze over a scene, a new gaze almost always found evidence he’d missed. The more intense the search, the greater the tendency to miss the obvious. Sometimes.

  Among the glass splinters and shards, two recognisable fingernails. Make that three; the smaller of them possibly painted . . . and possibly not. There was so much muck, so much bloody mess that without picking it up it was hard to tell.

  Much has been written, and more has been said, about the information available to the practiced observer from a crime scene. Stoner’s view was that although all information had a value, the real value lay in the wider view. He was personally acquainted with several practitioners of the SOC expert’s art. He had worked both for and against them in the course of his interesting life. If he had cause to criticise them, which he rarely did, it would be because they tended to look too closely, in too much detail. He felt that as much was often to be gained by the standing back and taking a broader view. His own favoured method involved both, but in most police work involving genuine policemen, resources were an issue. Cost and value had to be balanced. In Stoner’s contracting spook world, these things were less important, funding being politically invisible and always deniable.

  He was calm now. The shock of the mess had eased, his own organism had ceased feeling threatened by the circumstances of the demise of another similar organism. Carpet was just carpet; blood was just mess and an indication of an event, not an emotional decoration . . . or desecration, even. Thoughts of the rights and wrongs of violent death had appeared, said their piece, and then left again. Leaving room for thinking, considering, analysing and concluding, although the latter usually came later. The later the better, Stoner preferred, because conclusions are so often incorrect and so often cloud the case.

  On the functional faux timber desk stood a portable computer. A small one. A netbook. It was inevitably spattered a little with drops and fragments of the dead departed, and its screen stood open, if not completely. It was positioned precisely where it should have been, were it to be operated from the chair which usually accompanied the desk, but which in this case was lying on its side on the far side of the blood-soaked bed.

  Stoner took a tool from an inside pocket. It was one of three he habitually carried when examining a scene, or when working on a motorcycle. This one was an extendable rod with a decently strong magnet at its end; like many mechanics he used it most often in the workshop, where it was a great way to retrieve small, dropped metallic components. In this case, though, all he wanted was to prod the buttons on the netbook to prompt it back to life.

  He was curious to see what a mark who
had brought a recreational lady to his hotel would have wanted to see on his computer while he and his guest were exercising in the customary hotel way. It is indeed possible to take one’s work too seriously.

  Nothing doing. Tapping the space bar with the tool produced nothing; the machine was shut down. He thought about this.

  ‘Excuse me, m’lady, I’ll just shut down my computer before we do that sex thing.’

  It didn’t ring true. Nor did an alternative vision in which ferocious murderer, having just ripped at least one eye and a few desperate fingernails from his victim, paused before his emergency exit to power down a nearby computer. Computers turn themselves into a sleep mode; prodding a key, any key, wakes them up. It’s universal. A mystery. He could reach the On switch without wading through the bloody carpet, but only just, and there was always a risk of an embarrassing slip. The carded track through the swampy carpet was not the most stable pathway in the world, and placing lateral loads on the card itself could produce an unwanted surfing effect, which easily resulted in brave investigator on bloody knees and a future explanation to his masters which would be more than a little embarrassing.

  But it felt important. If the netbook’s screen was open, it suggested that its operator had been using it while his guest was in the room. If he’d finished whatever task had been in hand he would not only have switched it off but would also have closed the lid. So it seemed to Stoner, who risked collapse and embarrassment by reaching to his limit and pressing the On button. The power light lit . . . but only briefly. One very flat battery was the likely reason, then. OK. The netbook would have been inventoried by the SOC team so needed to stay where it was. Time, then, for a mental note.

  For no reason he could explain, Stoner stared through the room’s window. He may have felt a need to let his eyes rest on something further away, relaxing focus often reveals otherwise lost details. Details like the whole-palm print dead centre on the main pane.

  Stoner pulled his cell phone from the leg pocket of his cargoes, flipped it open, took three pics of the print at maximum zoom, such as it was, and sent the least poor of them to the Hard Man along with ‘Anyone we know?’ which might stimulate a response at some point. There was no sign of fingerprint powder on the glass, so far as he could see . . . not that this meant much. Forensic science moves and improves rapidly.

  He also sent an image of the netbook and, entirely to be irritating, of the lonely drying eye. And then he left the room, a man with thinking to do, and maybe a long walk over which to do it. He dropped the keycard back at the reception, eliciting a ‘Thank you, Mr La Forge . . .’ said without a trace of humour. Star Trek was a seemingly endless source of worknames.

  ‘Thank Mr Riker for me, please.’

  The Hard Man always liked to be Number One.

  8

  PAST TIMES

  ‘Do you remember .’

  The Hard Man was drifting into whimsy, it seemed.

  ‘Do you remember the pornographer?’

  ‘Yes. Of course. How on earth could I forget?’

  ‘It would not be easy. She was an unforgettable person. So few persons you meet in this life are like that.’ He stopped. Looked a little lost. Stoner had seen this expression before. It was never genuine, never an honest representation of the way the Hard Man was feeling. And in any case, he remembered the pornographer very well, too well for good sense, probably. ‘Do you think there’s a connection?’ A polite question. Stoner could see one way in which the current case could be connected to that earlier episode, but only in that both cases involved violent death. Which in itself and given their line of work was not particularly remarkable.

  ‘I always felt that she was an unusual woman. It was unfortunate that she ended what should have been a fine career in the way she did.’ The Hard Man was still looking faintly sorrowful. Hang-dog expressions were strangers to his generally and falsely genial features. ‘And I don’t know about any serious connection. You know how I never place any value at all in hunches, even when they’re my own hunches and therefore probably worth no more than anyone else’s. Well, I just have a hunch.’

  The lady both gentlemen referred to as ‘the pornographer’ had been exactly that. But with the unusual twist that the co-stars in her take on the very old and very human game of let’s make babies were usually unaware of their starring status. It had been an earlier, possibly a more innocent internet age, a time when much of the interconnectedness of the ethers was new and when squalid exploitation of the information hyper-highway was in its youth. Unlike most of the pornographer’s willing participants, who were rarely particularly youthful but often shared a tendency towards wealth.

  ‘I can’t see a connection here, not a real one . . . a valid one.’ Stoner decided to push the Hard Man into continuing. The business with the pornographer was one of the few occasions on which the Hard Man had visibly struggled; Stoner had enjoyed the case, not least because of the Hard Man’s evident dis comfort. So he continued. ‘Mean to say. The pornoperson shot her victims only with a camera. She didn’t slice them up and scatter bits of their bodies all about the place. Don’t think anyone actually died, did they? They might have been in pain, distress, but she didn’t in fact actually stop anyone’s heart beating. Put up a few pulse rates, but stopped before actual coronary failure. Put up your own rate, didn’t she? At least a little?’

  ‘You’re an idiot,’ said the Hard Man without animosity, said without heat; said without any indication of intelligent thought behind the mouthwork; on autopilot. ‘You mostly are.’

  ‘And thank you for those few kind words.’ Stoner’s attempt at reactivating the Hard Man had been less than one hundred per cent effective, then.

  ‘She was clever. She misled. She dissembled with symbols everywhere.’ The Hard Man was really drifting now. It was an unusual sight; a sight to be relished, enjoyed, appreciated. ‘Like this one. This is clever. I don’t believe any of it. Apart from the poor sod who’s been clipped I don’t see any of the truth before me. You?’

  Stoner pulled himself away from his gentle amusement at the Hard Man’s unusual distraction and dragged his thoughts back to the crime scene. Even in its state of bodylessness it was as close as he had been to the killer.

  ‘I just saw a murder scene. Really messy. Damage done by someone stronger than average. Someone with rage, too.’ Stoner remembered. Went silent.

  ‘Come along, JJ. This isn’t the first scene you’ve looked at, and I doubt it’ll be the last. You’re not a kiddie. Give me something.’ The Hard Man was plainly feeling benign, his manner almost gentle.

  Stoner looked up. ‘Next time, leave the rest of the body at the scene for a while? Give me more to look at than bits. That might be useful.’

  The Hard Man ignored him, drifting back to his hunch.

  ‘It’s not the body, JJ. It’s not that. Not exactly. Bodies is bodies; dead is just that . . . dead. It’s the filming. I’m unsure why that seems so important, but it does. Something inside says that the filming is more important than the killing. Hence my thoughts on the pornographer.’

  He paused. Stoner prompted him, quietly.

  ‘Heather, wasn’t it? Heather’ . . . he paused . . . ‘someone.’

  The Hard Man nodded. Caught Stoner’s wandering glance before it escaped.

  ‘You know full well it was. Don’t play games. Not about her and not about the thing she did and not,’ he paused for power, ‘not now. That is unamusing. And I would not like that lack of amusement to cloud my thinking or my respect for your competence and your suitability for this . . . this job to become in any way infirm. Do not fuck about with me on this, JJ. Do not play any games. We would have a fight. You would lose the fight and I would retire you from my very short list of professional friends. Retirement in this case would be permanent. In the same way as the pornographer’s retirement was permanent. She cannot recover from it, and neither would you.’

  Stoner smiled at his companion.

  ‘Bloody
hell, I’d no idea it hurt that much.’

  ‘It did. You should accept that fact and move on. An ability to learn from understanding and from experience is what distinguishes us superior humans from a sack of shit on the sidewalk, JJ, and I for one remember that.’

  The pornographer had been a lady of considerable appetite. She had two major attributes which assisted her relentless aim to fulfil that appetite; she was both wealthy and she was stunningly attractive. She did what she did with men – and occasionally with women – entirely for amusement. For personal power. Because she enjoyed it.

  She fucked wealthy men and she filmed them enjoying themselves. Not for her the single static lens. These are digital days, the age of the cheap camera and the cheap operator. She set up an ever-increasing number of recording devices around her bedrooms and bathrooms, kitchens, gym and living rooms, and she filmed lots of physical exercises in them all. When she was exercising with a particularly interesting person or two, she would employ the services of a camera operator, who could zoom and pull focus while the players zoomed and pulled things of their own. And afterwards she would sit down and edit her movies into something less like a home video and more like a blue movie. She became the pornographer when she sent the first of these to one of its more affluent participant co-stars and suggested that he keep it as a memento. She said no more than that, and she needed to say no more.

  At that point she asked for nothing in return. Free home movies, shared with consenting participants.

  Her client base grew steadily. She was expert at what she could do with a man, particularly with an older man, where skill and its application are particularly useful in extracting maximum performance from flesh which had already seen it all, and done it all too many times for just another bed-buddy to be arousing in itself. Many of her men friends recommended her to their own friends. Stoner had found it particularly interesting that even when her men had been the surprised recipients of her feature films many of them still suggested that their friends and colleagues paid her a visit. Unity in numbers, perhaps.