by Gavin Graham
It would all be taken care of, sorted.
Wouldn’t it?
He grabbed the weapon and sprung to his feet, pointing it straight out with a double handed grip, crouching forward like the cops did in the movies. He was just doing his best, as always, to adapt in a world that wasn’t his. “Who the fuck is it?”
Another noise, like footsteps.
“Look, I’ve got a gun, so if you’ve come to rob me you can piss off! You’ve picked the wrong place, OK? You don’t know who you’re fucking with!”
His heart was kicking like a mule.
Adrenalin.
Fear.
He struggled to temper his trembling arms as he approached the door and kicked it open, “Fucking bastards, c’mon then!” he screamed like a lunatic, like he’d never screamed before, like he was Tony Montana in the movie Scarface.
That’s when he came face-to-face with his visitor - a little mouse, squirming on the floor and chomping its way round a half-eaten apple.
He frowned in bemusement. “Jesus Christ,” he closed his eyes as an unimaginable wave of relief washed over him, like a man who was about to orgasm.
No heavies.
No balaclavas.
No need for suicide pills or shady body snatchers.
“Just a wee mouse, ha! Hello wee man, where did you come from? I almost blew you’re wee mousey brains out,” he chuckled to himself, totally unaware of the shadowy figure now standing behind him with an evil smile.
He was so relieved.
Glad that the thing could go back in the drawer and that today wouldn’t be the day, to kill or be killed.
Such is life.
As he turned, all he saw was a little white dot.
Moving fast.
The thick end of a baseball bat.
Not the man who swung it, just the dot. Getting bigger and bigger, till eventually it cracked him, dead across the forehead.
The lights went out…
Chapter 33
The sniper
The embodiment of discipline may lead you to certain strength, yet the predictability of routine may lead you to a certain demise…
Billy ‘Red Dot’ Richardson ran away from home as a teenage boy to go and join the British Army. Fighting his way through the ranks, he passed selection and became a coveted member of the UK Special Forces.
The SAS Man.
He was an elusive figure, was Red Dot, and nobody really knew that much about him. For example, it was unknown to most but he’d been watched by millions of viewers in televised footage of the Iranian Embassy Siege back in 1980 as one of the ‘men in black’ that ‘went in through the window’.
That was a long time ago.
He was now an old man, in his sixties.
You wouldn’t really expect a man of that age to be active in the business, but you’d be dead wrong if you thought that about Red Dot. Ironically, his post-military career had been a great deal bloodier than the one he’d seen in the SAS, for he was the infamous gangland hitman that worked exclusively for the number one gangster in Glasgow - Arthur McConnell.
He was an expert in urban assassination and had over forty hits beneath his belt. He’d never been caught. It was hard not to be impressed by such a flawless and ‘untouchable’ record but also frightening to think that a man like that, a highly-trained gangland serial killer, freely walked among us. The Police had nicknamed him the ‘Teflon Shooter’ as they were never able to pin anything on him, also assuming these days that the old man was retired. To this day though, he was still active and picking up contracts.
Years ago, his house would have been surrounded by Strathclyde Police Surveillance Officers, around the clock, hiding in the bushes and whatnot. But these days, his residence at Stirling Villa was a fairly quiet affair, isolated and surrounded by woodland, in a modest wee village in North Lanarkshire. Away from the limelight and the grit of the city in a place where nobody knew him.
But, somebody had found him.
He lived alone and had a set routine.
Routine is the enemy.
Routine makes you vulnerable, eventually.
He always got up at five am for coffee, target practice and his daily five-miler.
Just like today.
He stood on the door step, took the final drag of his cigarette and flicked the butt into an empty plant pot before locking a pellet into the barrel of his .22 Webley air rifle. Like breathing, shooting is a skill that you need to practice, like he did as a boy with this very weapon, killing birds and rodents that crossed his path. It was the best way to get a feel for moving targets.
Velocity and timing.
He pressed his eye against the gunsight and took aim at a bright yellow object, steadying the cross-hair where a letter ‘T’ was painted in red. The empty lager can was nailed to a stump on a wooden fence, several metres to the side of his rusting garage doors. His breathing was slow and measured, his pulse steady. He pulled the trigger and hit the beer can right in the red zone, exactly one millimetre to the right of yesterday’s shot.
One shot a day, always in the red, always spaced at a distance of one millimetre.
No more, no less.
Along the top and down the bottom.
It wasn’t all about keeping the skills sharp either, but remembering his childhood, and the days where he hadn’t had to kill for money or for God, Queen and Country.
He drank his coffee, strong and black.
He lit another fag and let it hang from his lips as he stretched his legs. On the front steps for the hamstring. Against the wall for the calves. Clutching onto a drain pipe for the quads. One last drag, then he flicked the cigarette onto a pile of stubs that grew in a mossy plant pot.
Then, he set off on his usual route.
Just the daily routine of a weathered killer.
He was clearly a man who slept remarkably well at night, for his sins.
He watched him coming down the hill, through binoculars, a wiry old figure with a shaved head and a handlebar moustache - scraggly and overgrown - SAS-style. He wore a string vest that showcased a random scattering of old military tattoos, poorly applied and faded to a greenish-blue. He looked like a half-frozen skeleton, thawing out, running from the icy rivers of death below. He had a brazen and steely look in his eyes, one of determination and focus, perhaps anger.
Yes, he looked pissed off, like he was out to kill somebody; maybe he was.
He moved with defiance, a blatant refusal to face the ever-beckoning call, the unavoidable submission to death.
A determined statement of his moreish needs.
To live more.
Kill more.
Survive more.
Out in the open.
Moving fast.
Churning out breath, white plumes, chilled and fresh, trailing in his wake. Moving like a steam train, a machine that would stop for no man, unless it was on his terms.
Not today though, as someone was waiting for him, and they were ready to make him stop.
Murdoch’s Land Rover was parked behind the bushes, the rear door open and ready.
The trip wire was in place and Red Dot ran to it like a mad man. Right into Mad Dog’s trap, the biggest slip-up of his shadowy career.
All in the name of a daily regime, relentless and disciplined, strictly enforced by an eternal fear of the Grim Reaper. When the old man hit the wire, he’d been running faster than Murdoch thought it was physically possible for a man to run.
Seeing his face get splattered and ricochet as it hit the open road was like watching a hammer come down on the head of a nail; with a gnarly cracking of the bone and a magnificent clotting of blood that pooled around the nostrils and bubbled at his lips. Murdoch actually wondered if his nose bone might have been forced back into his brain.
Could that happen?
He wasn’t sure.
He rolled over, mumbling and gargling, toothless and bloody.
The man who’d come to get Red Dot walked closer, to get a
full-on view. He was a battered mess, rolling around on the side of the road. He watched him like a man who had just shot a deer, without killing it. He stood there looking, loosely clutching a Taser gun in his right hand, wondering if he would have to use it or not. Just then, he touched at his belly like something was slowly twisting inside his gut. He felt like he might puke, a weird kind of empty adrenalin; he was craving for an injection of heroin.
He looked down at the old SAS Man.
He was a tough old bastard, right enough, and he soon got to his knees for a scrap. That’s when Murdoch got even closer to him, taking a straight-aim with the weapon as Red Dot looked him dead in the eye.
Mad Dog pulled the trigger and blasted the old bastard with 50,000 Volts.
Chapter 34
The psychology of murder: a lecture
It is important in life, to know where you were meant to be…
A man dressed in black entered the Strathclyde University lecture hall, shortly after ten pm.
As always, he was late.
And, as always, he limped his way up the shallow steps to the very last row and sat himself down.
Quietly and discreetly.
He wasn’t a student, like the rest, so why was he there?
Well, he may not have been particularly motivated by the theoretical realms of speculative academia but the man in black was very much a ‘practitioner’ and had never been ashamed to admit that he had a great deal to learn from the man who was lecturing there today - Professor Alistair Sinclair - a widely recognised expert on the subject of Criminal Psychology and Forensic Profiling.
A man of significant esoteric greatness.
And, as the man in black would have told any of his fellow mortals: “Greatness in the fields of esoterica is a dying game in Scotland.”
It seemed to the man in black that Sinclair’s brain must have been customised by God, specially engineered to assist with the mechanics and challenges of modern policing. Sadly, though, he hadn’t found his place in that world. He’d wanted to join the Force, at one point, more than anything. But, somethings in life just weren’t meant to be. A world of personal order and discipline simply wasn’t for him and that was something he had learned to accept very early on in life.
You see, he didn’t like to move too much.
He preferred to sit and not move, for as long as was possibly achievable.
Sitting, comfortable, stress-free.
Drinking, coffee or wine; depending on the time of day.
Reading.
Thinking.
Writing books.
Putting things into perspective.
These, to Sinclair, were the most noble and rewarding of all daily human endeavours.
Once upon a time, he had even warned an ultra-fit marathon runner who had grand ambitions in the field of criminology, that: “The procrastination of movement is fundamental to the enhancement of worldly knowledge and that such excessive levels of exercise would undoubtedly inhibit the attainment of true intellectual enlightenment.” Such was the wonderful arrogance of the philosophising intellectual.
Whilst sitting, he also enjoyed eating.
The thirty-two stone he now carried in body weight was certainly testament to that. He was a huge figure of a man with a ruddy complexion that not only suggested high blood pressure but an excessively high intake of Ruby Port and the finest of Wagyu Beef Tomahawks.
As he stood before his audience, his larger-than-life profile made the wooden podium seem distinctly smaller than it was. He shuffled through papers, breathing heavily and unhealthily into the microphone, a picture of poor health and excessive appetites.
Eccentricity, too.
Messy hair.
Thick glasses.
And he always wore these silly bowties, dedicated to Walt Disney cartoon characters, Bugs Bunny and God only knew who else.
He was a snob.
An elitist.
A fumbling, bumbling genius of a man.
He was also one of DCI Mac McGreavy’s nearest and dearest friends.
Professor Sinclair removed his frames and pinched at the top of his nose, between the eyes. Frowning intensely, as if suddenly struck by a piercing headache. He was thinking, though, of a headline that had taken the front pages - MAN WITH CRUCIFIX TATTOO FOUND IN RIVER CLYDE - REVENGE FOR CHARLENE - FRANKIE MURDOCH BEHEADED AND DISMEMBERED IN COLD BLOOD. He muttered something to himself and his fascinated students watched him with eager anticipation. He then shook his head and put his glasses back on, smirking at something that had apparently seemed absurd, some information that was being processed in that brilliant mind of his.
The lecture commenced - THE PSYCHOLOGY OF MURDER. “Well, my little cherubs, today’s ramblings will be very much focussed on an extremely important question. The question is - why? Why do people kill their fellow beings? Serial killers. What motivates them? Sex? Power? Some invisible force of evil? The Devil, perhaps? What could motivate you to kill the person that is seated next to you today, in cold blood? Think about it, very carefully and very honestly. Are you capable of murder? I say, yes. You all are capable of killing. Me, you, and everyone present here today. We all have it within ourselves to kill. And, if we each had to kill someone, if we had no choice in the matter - kill or be killed - I guarantee that several of you would be deeply inclined to do it again. Why? Because, if you can do something once, you can do it a hundred times. Human beings are compulsive. Murder is no different. Some men become alcoholics from the first moment that a drink passes their lips, it comes to be an addictive compulsion, instantaneously. It’s almost as if such compulsions to vice might be pre-programmed into our brains at birth. Leading us to become addicts. Repeat offenders. Blood-thirsty killers. And that, my cherubs, is what makes the Psychology of Murder so downright bloody fascinating, is it not? Because, it is not the act of murder itself that fascinates us so much, but what made the killer do it. How did he or she find themselves in that position? Could we end up in the same place, somehow? Slitting a throat for the first time? Chopping up the body parts? Burying the corpse? Drinking the victim’s blood, like a vampire? Having sex, with a still-warm or dead-cold corpse? Deep down, we are all curious to know, what it was that led them to the thrill of the kill and what made them continue to lurk and hunt upon the dark path. Are they addicts, or just evil? Were they born in the same human condition as you were? Could you have been driven to commit those crimes also? Faced, for example, with the same circumstances. Childhood psychological trauma. Abandonment. Sexual abuse. Violent beatings. Constant humiliation. Could you also have become that same person? And, once you tried it, would you get a taste for it? Could you have that special DNA, or mental programming at birth, that would put you onto the serial killer’s path? To kill and kill and never stop killing until you got caught, or got stopped by a bullet? Could there be one thing that would make us take that first step? To push you over the edge? To plan and execute the murder, in cold blood? Does such a force exist? I say, yes. Let me tell you what it is - REVENGE! Motivating first-time killers since biblical times. ‘It is mine to avenge; I will repay,’ Deuteronomy 32:35. Giving people a taste of their own medicine, because the deserve it, right? The question is, my dear cherubs, how far would you take it, to avenge an enemy?”
Chapter 35
The kill house
The true warrior knows when to do battle, when to retreat, and when to surrender…
He came out of the bathroom to confront the abducted men.
He’d been on the toilet constantly since returning from Bangkok. Could be one of those foreign bugs he’d picked up. Some kind of nasty food poisoning. Whatever it was, he had a bad dose of the shits…
The kitchen had an old-fashioned coal burner, serving as both heater and cooking stove.
Each man was tied to a chair and Mad Dog shocked them to life with a Glasgow Kiss to the dome; one a piece.
“What is this? Are you with the London firm, is that what this is?” Ferris spoke with squintin
g eyes, looking around him and trying to peer out of the kitchen window.
“No, try again.”
“What do you want?” Red Dot spoke, sounding a bit like the Elephant Man, his face all mangled and bloody.
“Revenge. That is what I want.”
The Sniper remained silent but listened intently.
“Revenge against who?” Ferris asked with the fear of God in his eyes.
“The Three Kings, that’s what they get called these days on the street, is it not? Razor, Dancer and Fat Boy?”
Now Ferris sat silent too.
“That’s why the two of you are here. Those wee dicks fucked me over, so now one of you is going to help me bring the bastards down.”
“You must be aff’ yer’ fuckin’ nut,” Ferris intervened. “That would be like signing our own death warrants.”
Murdoch pulled a sawn-off double-barrel from a leather bag that sat on the floor. He stood up and pumped it. “Ferris! I’m going to ask you a simple question and I want a simple fucking answer. Are you going to help me, or not?”
“Nae’ chance, ya’ posh prick, away n’ shag yer maw’.”
“Wonderful, a simple answer to a simple question, seldom to be had these day. I’m afraid to say, though, ma’ maw’ is pan fuckin’ breid’ deid’, right?” He walked right up to The Bookkeeper and shoved the gun in his face at point-blank range. “Watch this, Red Dot…” he pulled the trigger and put his brains to the wall.
It made a Hell of a sound in the small kitchen and made the ears ring like buggery.
Grey matter fragments.
Wild peels of human skin.
Clotted streams of splattered blood.