Running Stupid: (Mystery Series)

by James Kipling

Jester finished up his sandwich and drained his drink. He tried to walk quietly when he returned to the kitchen, but he knew that nothing was going to wake up the driver, anyway. He was out for the count.

  He fixed his sights on the window above the sink. It was too dark to see much but the curtain hadn’t been drawn all the way. A gap in the centre allowed for a view outside. Rain still pelted down, flooding the grassy gardens around the caravan and smearing the windows. Jester peered through the rain splattered glass. Something had caught his eye. He’d seen something move.

  He leaned over the sink, pushed his face closer to the window and strained his eyes. He couldn’t see anyone. Nothing was moving and everything was quiet.

  He rinsed his glass, dried it and placed it on the dish-rack next to the sink. Something outside of the window attracted his attention again. Something was moving towards or across the window, and it was moving at pace.

  Jester could only look on as a house brick shattered through the glass, bounced off the far wall and landed on top of the bin, creating a deafening roar like two cymbals clashing. The front door to the caravan exploded inwards. Metal hinges flew across the floor as the door broke free, giving way to two men in hoodies and padded jackets.

  Cursing under his breath, his feet lost in a moment of do we move? and where do we move? Jester shot a hand across the kitchen worktop, scooped up a shard of glass and then quickly tucked it into the back of his pants.

  The two intruders made a beeline straight for him. Before he could decide what to do, they were on him, restraining him. A third man ran into the caravan whilst Matthew struggled underneath the physical presence of the intruders. He stopped at the door to take note of the situation and then headed straight for Charles who was just waking up.

  Charles saw the danger and tried to act, pouncing off the sofa, but he quickly and sheepishly sat down when the third man drew a semiautomatic pistol from his coat and pointed it at his head.

  31

  Jester was dragged over to the sofa and thrown down. The men that had been holding him then made their way out of the caravan. The third man pointed his weapon at Edinburgh and Jester.

  “What the fuck is going on here?” Charles said angrily, his voice directed at the man with the gun, a large hood shading most of his features.

  “Sit there and shut up,” the gunman ordered.

  “Did you have to break the window?” Jester asked lightly.

  The man turned to him. Matthew was sure he saw a smile underneath the hood. “Matthew Jester,” he said slowly, taking his time with each syllable. “You’re a wanted man.”

  “Ahhh,” Matthew made a noise of recognition. “Is that why people keep shooting at me?”

  The hooded man didn’t reply to Jester’s sarcastic comment but he continued to stare.

  “He’s just bought this place,” Jester said, looking around. “You really didn’t need to break the window.”

  “It kept your eyes busy,” the man said, his voice familiar to both Jester and Edinburgh.

  The other two men returned carrying ropes and a collection of cable-ties. They set the ropes and ties down on the dinner table and then headed back towards the door. Using a simple hammer, they managed to get the door to stick back in its frame. It wasn’t secure and wouldn’t stay in place but it served to keep out the wind and the rain.

  After fixing the door, they returned to the living room and stood on either side of the gunman.

  All three men stared at Jester and Edinburgh ... stares filled with intimidation and curiosity.

  During the silence, Jester turned to Charles, a simple smile on his face. “Well at least they fixed the door.”

  “Get up,” the gunman said, using the barrel of the gun to gesture an upwards motion. “Get on your feet.”

  They both stood. The three intruders backed away. “Move.” The man pointed the gun to his right. “By the table, move,” he ordered.

  Jester and Charles did as they were told and made their way to the mahogany dinner table.

  “Take a chair each,” the gunman instructed, aiming towards the four wooden chairs that circled the table.

  They both picked up a chair and, under instruction, moved to the middle of the room. There they were told to put the chair down and sit on it. Whilst they did so, the two unarmed intruders gathered the rope and ties from the table and set about tying Charles and Matthew up. The gunman watched them all the while.

  Jester flinched as he felt the tight plastic of the cable-tie around the ringlet scars on his ankle. “Be careful,” he snapped. “I’m already bleeding down there.”

  The man grumbled an apology and continued.

  “What do you want with us?” Charles asked.

  “With you?” the man seemed to ponder on those words for a moment. “Nothing,” he replied after a sarcastic deliberation. “I just want him.” He nodded to Jester who was keeping a close eye on the man tying him up.

  “Ouch,” Jester bellowed, kicking. “What the fuck are you trying to do?” he spat his words towards the man at his feet, trying to tie his ankles together.

  “Please be still,” he said.

  “Be still? You’re trying to cut my fucking feet off. How can you expect me to be still!”

  “I’m not trying …” the man paused, took in a deep intake of breath and continued with what he was doing.

  “What the fuck was that?” Jester shouted.

  “Can you please be quiet?” the gunman asked.

  “Fuck you,” Matthew snapped, looking up at the hooded gunman.

  “I don’t think swearing at me is the wise thing to do, do you? After all, I am holding a gun.”

  Matthew nodded, signalling that he had absorbed all that had been said. “Fuck you,” he spat again.

  “Please be still!” the man at Matthew’s feet shouted.

  “Stop trying to cut my fucking feet off then!”

  The man turned and looked at the gunman, pleading in his eyes. The gunman nodded at the man and turned to the third intruder who had just finished tying Charles to the chair. “Help him,” he instructed, motioning towards Jester’s restraints.

  Within seconds, both men were at Matthew’s feet. He struggled against the restraints, forcing one of them to hold him down whilst the other tied him up.

  When they finished, they both retired to the mahogany dining table. One sat on top of the table and the other dragged a chair out from underneath, placed it a few feet away from Matthew and Charles and sat down.

  “Phone,” the gunman said brashly.

  The seated man nodded in acknowledgement. He pulled a mobile phone out of his pocket, tapped three numbers onto the display and then pressed call. When the person at the other end picked up, he spoke two simple words that sent a chill down Jester’s spine. “Police, please.”

  Jester immediately turned to the gunman. “You’re here for the ransom money?” he asked.

  “You catch on quick, don’t you?”

  In the background the man on the phone had been transferred to the police department.

  “You’re making a mistake, mate,” Jester said softly.

  “Ten million quid is not a mistake.”

  “No, the mistake you made was thinking you could pull this off.”

  The gunman paused momentarily. “Don’t try to fuck with me,” he warned. “I kill people like you for breakfast.”

  “Nasty habit,” Jester was quick to reply.

  Jester locked stares with the gunman. He couldn’t see his eyes through the hood but he stared in their general direction. “This is not you,” he said.

  “You don’t know me.”

  “I know you’re a middle aged security guard who is probably run under with credit card bills, re-mortgages and loans.” Jester could practically see the gunman squirm, He smiled and continued. “You saw an opportunity like this and you thought, ‘why not’ so you hired the two men closest to you, Scout Master Incompetent and the one who smells of beer and jellied eels – I’m guess
ing you found him down at the pub. Maybe he tagged along as a last minute thing.”

  The gunman fell silent. His identity wasn’t much of a concern. He wasn’t doing anything illegal; on the contrary, he was handing a criminal over to the police. The meagre attempts at hiding his face were for personal reasons only, a psychological thing. Something to give him an edge of intimidation over the fugitives.

  Jester had recognised the voice and put two and two together. The security guard removed his hood and exposed his face.

  “Turn away,” Matthew said. “Turn your head and walk away before this gets ugly.”

  “The police will be here in ten minutes,” the man with the mobile phone returned to the conversation.

  The security guard smiled at Jester. “In ten minutes, I’ll be looking at ten million quid. I’ll be a hero,” he informed Jester. “You’re a sick fucking murderer. I’m not turning my head on you or on that much money and fame.” He spat at Matthew’s feet as if to confirm his disgust.

  Jester looked down at the glob of saliva and sighed.

  “This is not what you think it is,” Charles looked at the gunman, his eyes pleading with him. “You have to let us go.”

  “Not what I think it is?” the gunman was pacing up and down in front of them, the gun hanging by his side. “Let me tell you what I think this is.” He stopped pacing, jumped in front of Charles and dropped on his haunches. “This morning at breakfast, I picked up my paper to do my usual thirty minutes reading before I started work as a bus driver.” He was holding the gun close to his face.

  “You see, I have two jobs.” His face was a mixture of anxiety, excitement and agitation all stirred up with a big stick of lunacy. “In the paper I read about your little friend here.” He waved the gun Matthew’s way. “And I see the reward: ten million quid. That’s a lot of money, and as you can imagine, when I read the article I was thinking about all of my worries, all of my debts – if that ten million was mine they would all vanish. What I wasn’t counting on was a visit from Mr. Ten Million himself.” He looked across at Jester. “The man that’ll end all of my troubles.”

  “He is innocent,” Charles pleaded.

  The gunman laughed. “I don’t care,” he spat. “For ten million quid, I would hand mother Teresa over to the police.” He returned to his pacing, but there was something slick to his movements now, a touch of confidence.

  Charles looked at the strutting security guard and sighed. He lowered his head and turned to Matthew, surprised to see that the man was already looking his way. A look of bemusement flashed across the face of the driver when Jester aimed a wink at him.

  “I think she’s dead,” the beer-smelling man chided.

  “She is dead,” the second man added.

  “That’s not the point!” the gunman snapped.

  “How do you share ten million quid three ways?” Jester asked.

  The gunman stopped his pacing and looked at Matthew with suspicion. “None of your business.”

  “It’s all of my business,” Jester said. “In fact, I pretty much am the business.”

  “You look far too calm for a man who has a gun pointed at him.”

  “Thank you,” Jester answered politely.

  The gunman raised his eyebrows, shook his head and then continued to pace the floor. “How did it feel when you killed your girlfriend?” he asked, his head arching towards Jester as he finished the question.

  Jester didn’t reply, the smile wiped from his face.

  Noticing the impact that his words had on the restrained millionaire, the security guard advanced on Matthew with a smile growing wider on his face. “Did you get a kick out of it?” he asked.

  Matthew didn’t reply. All eyes in the room were on him.

  “Did you enjoy it?” the gunman pushed, his face inches from Matthew’s. The millionaire fugitive could smell stale cigarettes and onions. “Watching her bleed, did she beg you? Did she beg you to stop?”

  Still Matthew remained quiet, his expression blank.

  “Is that why you enjoyed killing her so much? Because she begged. Did you like it when she begged for you to stop?”

  Charles looked across at Matthew with concern. The younger man was still not replying, and his silence unsettled the driver.

  “How long did she take to die, Matthew?” the gunman pushed, his face now a whisker away from Matthew’s. “Did you leave her to bleed to death? Did you watch from a distance as she suffered?”

  This time Matthew did react. He quickly moved his face away from the gunman’s and then, with the force of every muscle in his neck, he forced his head forward again. His skull met with the gunman’s skull at pace, a dull thudding sound preceded by a gasp and a moan.

  The security guard stumbled backwards, his hand instantly reaching for a quickly reddening patch on his temple. Jester stood, his restraints falling from his body with great ease, and advanced on the security guard. He threw two punches in quick succession, advancing as he did so. Both times his fist collided with the gunman’s face. Two swift punches ... one broke his nose, the other rocked his jaw.

  He stumbled back, lost his balance and fell, the gun falling at his feet. When he hit the ground he shook the whole caravan. The other two men were closing in on Matthew. One of them, the one who had made the clumsy, anxious knots, pounced on him, but Jester anticipated his movements.

  He reached around his back, grabbed the shard of glass taken from the broken window, and threw an uppercut at his attacker. The tip of the glass pierced the skin under his chin, sliced through his lower jaw and then lodged itself in the roof of his mouth.

  He fell back, hands on his mouth, blood pouring through his fingers and down his chin. He screamed in agony, his words curdling the blood that amassed in his throat. He fell to his knees, gripped the base of the shard with both hands, embraced himself and then pulled.

  All eyes in the room had been transfixed until that point but when he pulled the shard free, they all turned away. When their eyes returned, the man had passed out from pain. His face was a picture of distortion and disgust, the only external wound was the entry point below his chin, but the internal wounds were strong enough to cause a constant stream of blood to leak out of his mouth. He was already beginning to choke on his own blood in his unconscious state.

  The final man, the one who had restrained Jester in the chair, the one who smelt of beer and pickles, had turned white. His face had been drained of all colour. He turned away from his unconscious friend and looked at Jester.

  Matthew smiled back. He plucked the semiautomatic off the floor milliseconds before the hand of the security guard touched it.

  The beer smelling man, still wearing his hood, looked on with horror. The security guard, now alert but still on the floor, stared at Matthew with increasing aggression.

  “That’s what happens when you do things on a whim,” Jester said calmly. “You end up hiring an idiot who can’t even tie a knot,” he pointed the gun at the security guard.

  “Matthew, don’t,” Charles spoke behind him. “Let’s just get out of here,” he offered.

  Jester continued to point the gun. He twisted his aim until the barrel was in a direct line with the security guard’s temple. Then, closing one eye, he hovered his finger over the trigger.

  Fear exploded in the eyes of the security guard. He looked at Matthew with pleading eyes. A wet patch quickly formed around the crotch on his pants, but he seemed oblivious to it. His mind fully set on the gun and the end of his life.

  Matthew made a small ‘bang’ noise and faked the recoil of the gun. “You’re dead,” he said to the security guard, a grin across his face.

  The security guard passed out, a movement that came with no warning.

  “And you.” Jester turned the gun on the third man.

  “Please don’t shoot,” he pleaded instantly. “I don’t care about the money, please just go, leave me. I have a wife and kids.”

  Jester nodded and pointed to Charles. “Untie
him,” he instructed.

  32

  Free of the harsh restraints, Charles stretched every muscle in his body.

  Jester looked down at the security guard. He was still unconscious, oblivious to the world. “Wake him up,” he instructed the only conscious intruder.

  The man nodded sheepishly and knelt by his friend’s side. He gently slapped the comatose guard across the cheek. Receiving no reply, he slapped him again, his hand practically caressing his cheek.

  “I said smack him,” Jester reiterated. “I didn’t tell you to start feeling him up.”