KILL ME GOODBYE

by A K Reynolds

  ‘Okay.’

  I pretended to dial 999 then pressed the mobile to my ear, waited a moment, and said, ‘Police, please. That’s right, police. There’s been a shooting incident by the side of the Ladybower Reservoir in the Peak District. You need to send some armed men here immediately. How many? Two, both of them men, both armed with handguns. My name is Davina Walters.’

  I justified my actions by telling myself the public would be safe, even without police intervention. Those two criminals would just want to get back to their car as soon as possible and try to pursue us. They wouldn’t be interested in attacking anyone randomly and drawing further attention to themselves. ‘This isn’t my mobile, it belongs to a park ranger who’s driving me to safety,’ I added, turning my head towards the ranger. ‘What’s your name please, for the police?’

  ‘Brendan Sakharov.’

  ‘The ranger’s name in Brendan Sakharov. Thirty minutes you say? And we have to keep away from the area? Okay, we will.’ I held out the mobile. ‘It’s done.’

  He pushed it back into his pocket.

  ‘It sounds like you have a dangerous job,’ he said.

  ‘Not usually. This is a first for me.’

  His lips curled into a grim smile. ‘Hope it’s a last, too, eh?’

  When we got to the hospital car park I said, ‘You can drop me off here. I’ll make my own way to the A&E unit.’

  He turned his car round and left. I went to the main entrance, knowing the time I had available would be limited. The first place the gunmen would look for me would be the nearest hospital. But I had a head start on them as they’d have to go all the way back up the hill and down to Muldoon’s house before they’d be able to use their car.

  There was a payphone near the hospital entrance with a board containing useful numbers next to it. I ordered a taxi to Manchester. It seemed unlikely a taxi outfit in the Peaks would be laundering money for the likes of Hench or Devlin.

  When the taxi arrived the driver looked me up and down as if he wasn’t sure he should let me in. I can’t say I blamed him. With my scarred face, the layer of muck I was coated in, and my ragamuffin clothes, I must’ve looked like an escapee from a crime series set in Victorian times.

  It was 5 p.m. when my taxi reached the outskirts of Manchester. I asked to be dropped off at the Tesco superstore in Droylsden. As the taxi pulled up I checked my surroundings carefully before taking the risk of getting out.

  The sky was dark with clouds and a steady drizzle was falling. By the time I entered the supermarket my dirty face resembled one of Bridget Riley’s black and white paintings. I quickly bought a new, clean outfit for myself, paid at the till, and walked the short distance to the Travelodge at Ashton-Under-Lyne. It was a soulless new building next to a dual-carriageway with a group of retail sheds along one side interspersed with a sprinkling of trees.

  I booked in under a false name, paid with cash, and took a welcome shower and changed my clothes. By that time I was hungry so I ventured out for a takeaway. I spent the rest of the evening lying on the bed in my single room watching television.

  When it was time to turn in, I reflected on the fact that I was no nearer getting out of the mess I was in than I had been on the evening I’d found my sister dead, when my life had started to unravel. But I had one thing going for me at least: the mobile phone Tara had posthumously given to me. I had another go at finding out what was on it. But all I found was the same anodyne stuff as before.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  SATURDAY

  While climbing out of bed at 7 a.m. I reflected on recent events and decided my immediate priority was to address the fact that sooner or later Hench was going to catch up with me, and it was pretty obvious he was going to kill me when he did. I doubted very much that meekly handing over Tara’s mobile phone would stop him from killing me. I was a loose end. And loose ends always needed tying up, permanently. Muldoon’s fate had made that much clear.

  I needed to insure against the risk of being a loose end and decided to cover myself with an insurance policy of sorts.

  I downloaded the Snapchat app and set up an account under a false name. Then I trawled through Snapchat to find out if the rumour I’d heard about it was true. It was. I soon found an account selling a range of firearms and ammunition.

  As I knew nothing about guns, I carefully read the specifications of the firearms on offer, checked what they meant using Google, and eventually decided a Smith & Wesson M&P9 Shield would be ideal for my purposes. It was advertised as being thin and lightweight . . . the size of a hand . . . One million Shield owners can’t be wrong. Plus it was only £600. (The ammunition was, annoyingly, extra though). The gun was being sold by a dealer in London. I contacted him and we came to an arrangement. I paid the hotel and boarded a train to London. I hadn’t wanted to risk public transport but needs must and all that.

  The journey from Ashton-Under-Lyne to London took approximately three and a half hours. During that time I told myself the weapon I was buying was purely for self-defence, and that I wasn’t a killer, but nor was I going to be a victim. Then I imagined threatening Hench with the gun. In my mind’s eye, I demanded to know what he wanted from me. He ran his hand through his greasy grey hair and laughed in my face. I levelled the gun. He laughed louder. My hands began to shake. Still laughing, he grabbed a machete from a table by his side and advanced on me, his mouth twisted in threat. Try as I might, I couldn’t pull the trigger and kill him, even when he raised the machete over my head. A bead of sweat trickled down my brow. When I felt it running down my face, I decided it wasn’t healthy to imagine such scenarios and did my best to concentrate on reading the newspaper I’d bought at the station.

  I got off the train at Kings Cross, took a minute or two to get my bearings, then strolled via Midland road to the KFC on Camden high-street. Walking right past it I entered another fast food outlet a few doors away – the AFC, or Alabama Fried Chicken. Apart from the absence of Colonel Sanders, and a few minor changes to the design detail, it could’ve passed for its nearest neighbour.

  The place had a good sized seating area and most of the seats were occupied. After a brief spell in the queue I gave my order for a two-piece chicken meal with large fries and a coke. When my meal was ready I took it to a small table in a corner which had a sign on it that said: Reserved for VIP guest. I sat behind the table, pleased it gave me a good view of the interior and the entrance. The meal had been given to me in boxes served on a tray made of brown plastic. I took a manilla envelope from my pocket and placed it under the tray then I began to eat.

  A skinny black youth who couldn’t have been more than fourteen years old came in. Walking with an aggressive swagger, he exaggeratedly swayed side to side with each step he took. He was wearing a red bandana, a baggy black coat, and dark blue jeans that looked like they could have accommodated three of him. Swaggering up to my table, grim-faced, he stared me in the eye. I nodded. He raised the tray up by one edge, removed the manilla envelope, put it in his pocket and left. I continued eating, wondering if I’d just been ripped off by an enterprising young criminal. Just as I was finishing the last of my French fries the youth returned with an AFC takeaway bag in his hand, which he placed on the table in front of me. I opened it and peered inside. My take-away was in it. I looked up at him and nodded. He swaggered away for a second time.

  With the bag in my hand I went to the toilet, locked myself in a cubicle, and closely examined the contents. Namely, the gun and three magazines of ammunition I’d paid for. I pushed a magazine into the gun, put the gun in one pocket of my jacket and the two magazines containing my spare ammunition in another. Then I emerged carrying an empty bag which I jettisoned in the waste bin on the way out.

  As I needed some essential items like clothes and a toothbrush, I did a little shopping before boarding the train back to Manchester. It was 5.30 p.m. by the time I got off the train at Ashton-Under-Lyne, far too late to do anything useful. I made sur
e my new baseball cap was rammed low on my head and walked with my head down through the barriers.

  It should have been a thirty-five minute walk from the railway station back to my hotel but I did it in less than thirty, due to the fear-fuelled energy surging through my system. I wasn’t sure what scared me more, being caught by Hench, or using the gun to shoot someone, or being pulled by the police with a firearm in my possession. None of those prospects was acceptable to me. But one of them was going to happen somewhere down the line, that was for sure. I felt it in my marrow.

  The feeling kept me awake for some hours after I went to bed but eventually I nodded off.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  SUNDAY

  On waking, I thought about James, Tara’s boyfriend. He knew something. He had to. Tara had said as much in her note that’d been in the envelope with her mobile phone. What’s more, James was something of an expert on the Manchester underworld. He was the crime reporter for the Manchester Daily News. Often when I was working on a case, he seemed to know more about it than I did. I rang him. He didn’t pick up so I sent him a text:

  Hi James,

  I’m devastated by the news about Tara. I’m sure you are too. Sorry it’s taken me so long to contact you about it. I just couldn’t face talking about Tara before, but now I feel I need to talk and get it out of my system. Do you feel the same? If so, can we meet up and give each other a shoulder to cry on please? What do you think? Anyway, please call me when you have a moment. I’m so, so sad about things,

  Jo.

  I’d bought myself a bulky grey jacket in London for two reasons. One, it was warm, and two, it had a lot of big pockets. Stuffing my belongings, including the gun, into them, I donned my black baseball hat and walked to the railway station, all the while taking an obsessive interest in every person I saw and every vehicle that passed me by.

  I caught the 10.16 a.m. train to East Didsbury, arriving at its small railway station, after two changes, at 11.45 a.m.

  James and Tara had lived together on Albert Hill street in Didsbury. It took me fifteen minutes to walk there. Their house was like the vast majority of houses in suburban Manchester: a pokey red-brick terrace with a small back garden and a tiny yard at the front. Their car, a silver Toyota Yaris hybrid, was parked in the street. They were very environmentally-minded and only had the one car between them. The fact it was there meant James was likely to be at home.

  I rang the bell. There was no response. The curtains were open so I peered through the window into the front room. It looked just as I remembered it: two small sofas in the far corner at right angles to each other, a large-screen plasma TV on the wall, and a stereo unit that belonged in a space the size of a warehouse rather than my sister’s cramped front room. Tara had liked her music.

  I rang the bell again. Still no response, but I wasn’t giving up. I walked to the end of the street and made my way along the narrow backstreet to the rear of their property. A high brick wall stood between me and their back garden. It had a wooden door in it. When I tried the handle of the door it wouldn’t open. It was locked, which I’d expected. No one was around so I reached up, scrambled with my feet, and hauled myself over the wall, landing, winded and shaken, on the other side.

  The garden was a timber-decked rectangle about fifteen by twenty feet with a circular cast iron table and four chairs in its centre, and potted plants in clusters around its edges. Nothing was out of place as far as I could see. But the back door had a hole cut in it big enough to climb through. Someone had used some sort of power tool to make that hole.

  For a moment I stood still and listened carefully. The only noise came from a gust of wind and a tin can rattling down the street. Reaching into an inside pocket I grabbed my gun and flipped off the safety. Then I crouched and entered the house via the hole in the door. Once I was inside, it occurred to me I might find a scene like the one I’d found at Rustin’s house. The unwelcome image of Rustin’s dead body appeared in my mind and made me feel like throwing up. Suppressing the sensation I walked through the kitchen-diner and pushed open the door to Tara’s narrow hall. Three books were strewn on the floor, two of them open. My instincts screamed at me to leave. I forced myself to stay because I needed to get whatever information I could from the property.

  Gun in hand I ascended the stairs, doing my best to convince myself I was capable of pulling the trigger if I had to. On the landing at the top of the stairs I turned left, then quickly right, in case anyone was waiting to jump me. No one was so I entered the spare bedroom which served as their study.

  A desk by the window was covered in paperwork. The paperwork was what I expected: documents and leaflets concerned with the campaigning environmental organisation they worked for in their spare time; bills and letters to be dealt with. The ones to Tara were addressed to Ms T. T. Finnegan. She had a middle name – Tasmin – but I was one of the very few people, apart from our parents, who knew what it was. She used the initial of the name because she thought it sounded cool, but didn’t ever use the name itself. A bookcase against the wall was chock full of activist material relating to the same organisation but there was nothing in it of interest to me.

  The bed in the main bedroom was undisturbed and the place was clean and tidy. The bathroom however told a different story. The lock on the bathroom door was broken and the wooden jamb was splintered. The floor, which was finished in large cream coloured tiles, had spots of blood on it. The spots were oval with jagged edges, indicating they’d come from someone who was moving, rather than someone who was standing still and shaving. And they were far too big to have come from a shaving cut.

  I had to assume that someone had broken into the rear of the house while James had been out. Whoever it was had waited until James had come in through the front door then jumped him. James had run upstairs and bolted himself in the bathroom in a desperate bid to save himself. That bathroom door might have given him two seconds of protection before the bolt gave way and he was overpowered and taken, dead or unconscious, through the back door. His abductor had unlocked the door with James’s key and locked it again from the outside. The abductor(s) probably had a car parked on the backstreet, had bundled James into the boot, and driven off. They likely knew Tara was dead and no one would come to the house for a while. So James’s disappearance would only come to light days after the event.

  Somewhat rashly, as it would betray my presence via my DNA, I went through James’s and Tara’s personal documents to see if there was anything among them that might shed light on what was going on. There wasn’t, at least that I could tell. But one thing I did find of note was a scrap of paper with a telephone number for Martin Von Koss on it.

  Leaving the house the same way I’d got in, I scrambled over the wall to the backstreet, using one of the outdoor chairs to give me a leg up.

  As discreetly as I could I headed back to my hotel, feeling jittery every step of the way. Once I was ensconced in my room I felt safer. I cleared my mind, breathed deeply, and called Martin Von Koss.

  ‘Von Koss,’ he said, when he picked up.

  The two short words that constituted his surname were enough, when he said them, to give me an insight into the sort of man I was dealing with. He had the urbane, confident manner of someone who’s accustomed to being listened to and obeyed.

  ‘Mr Koss, I’m Tara’s sister, Jo.’

  ‘Jo? Jo Finnegan?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘I’m sorry for your loss, Jo. What’s happened has come as a terrible shock to us all. How can I help you?’

  ‘I just wondered if you had any idea about anyone who might have wanted her . . . dead?’

  There was a silence that lasted about five seconds.

  ‘You have no business delving into that, Jo, it’s a matter for the police. But I’m sure you’re very upset and that’s why you’re asking, so I’ll do my best to answer. Your sister was well-liked within my organisation. I know of no one who had an
y reason to harm her. Does that help?’

  He sounded sincere. But I’d recently discovered anyone can sound sincere about anything. I’d been hoping he’d say something incriminating and give himself away, inadvertently revealing he was the man behind it all. There was still a chance he might. I tried another tack.

  ‘Yes it does thank you. There’s something else we need to talk about.’

  ‘Make it quick, I have things to do.’

  Does Hench work for you?’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘I’m talking about a man called Hench. Does he work for you?’

  ‘Who’s Hench?’

  ‘I guess that answers that.’

  ‘That would appear to conclude our conversation, then. I’ll say goodbye now, Jo.’

  ‘One more thing, Mr Von Koss.’

  ‘Jo, I’m only making time for you because I know how you must feel. Don’t try my patience.’

  ‘She said you were behind it.’

  ‘Behind what?’

  ‘Her death. Tara left a note saying you were behind it.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re burbling on about, Jo. This business with your sister appears to have unhinged you. I don’t mean to be rude, but I’m hanging up now. Don’t call me again. It might not work out well for you. Goodbye.’

  The thinly-veiled threat with which he concluded our conversation made me wonder if Von Koss might be the same sort of person Devlin was, but better at hiding it. Certainly, I hadn’t heard any rumours about Von Koss being a criminal. Such rumours were rife about Devlin, but no one dared give voice to them in public, and not just because of the potential for a libel action.

  I turned in convinced that there was more to Von Koss than anyone knew. Other than for my sister.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT