Right to Kill

by John Barlow

He watched as an uncharacteristic nervousness spread across her kind, round face. A motherly face, he reckoned, though she claimed to hate kids.

  ‘We’ve been working together for next to no time,’ she said, ‘but for what it’s worth, I reckon you know that I’ve got your back. I mean, you trust me, right?’

  He nodded.

  ‘What have you got in that folder, Rita?’

  ‘Folder?’

  ‘It’s a metaphor. It’s all on pen drives now. Servers, clouds, whatever.’

  ‘Your point?’

  ‘You know my point. What have you got for me? ’Cos I bet it’s the same as I’ve got for you.’

  ‘You show me yours, I’ll…’

  ‘Christine Saunders.’

  She relaxed a little.

  ‘You met her in the library on Saturday, Joe. You logged it on the system. Then you met her on Sunday, and you logged that as well, including notes, despite all the shit on social media. Then you met her again yesterday, outside the library in Cleckheaton. You logged that an hour ago, for Christ’s sake. Gwyn’s pretty sharp, y’know?’

  ‘Gwyn?’

  ‘He’s handling things at your end, if you hadn’t noticed. He’d been going over the investigation. Doesn’t miss much, our Gwyn. Apparently, you ordered a load of background stuff on her when you were pissed. So, he’s thinking, either you’re a meticulous pervert, or…’

  ‘He’s been looking at the file?’

  ‘On Saunders? Yes. We both have. Thought we should, y’know, since you’re otherwise involved with her…’

  ‘I’m not, as it happens. But I have been looking into her.’

  ‘Ironically,’ she said, ‘I do have all this in a folder. Print-outs. I read them all last night, late on, in bed.’

  She began a story that Joe didn’t need to hear, because he’d read the same story, assembled by data support at Elland Road and copied across to the investigation hub by Gwyn Merchant.

  Christine Saunders had been a senior accountant at Asda’s head offices in Leeds. At thirty-three she was earning more than a Deputy Chief Constable, she was married to a management consultant at Accenture and they were living in a leafy north Leeds suburb with their young son. Within a matter of months she had none of those things.

  ‘The accident report?’ Rita said.

  ‘I almost couldn’t.’

  ‘I know. I cried. I just cried when I read it.’

  Thomas Saunders, six years old, came out of school and was met by his young Portuguese nanny. The afternoon was fine, if a little cold and windy, but he was in a thick duffle coat that was slightly too large for him.

  Holding hands, they walked to the top of the road, turned left and continued as far as a pedestrian crossing. They waited for the green man then began to cross. As they reached the middle of the road a silver Jeep Cherokee appeared. Its speed was later estimated to have been in excess of seventy miles per hour.

  It never slowed down. When it hit them it was in the very middle of the road. So were they. Neil Barden, the driver, had seen neither them nor the red lights. He hadn’t seen them because, as he raced down the road, he was bending forwards, trying to snort cocaine from a small mound on his jeans, just above the knee.

  The impact sent the car careering onto the kerb. It glanced off a bus stop before rebounding back into the road. At which point Barden accelerated, as if the massive physical jolt to his system had been an amazing coke rush. He accelerated. Accelerated. Right into the back of a parked Ocado delivery truck. The impact wrecked the Jeep. But the airbag saved his life.

  The young nanny would need three separate operations before they moved her out of intensive care. Yet as she lay there in the road, her hand still held onto the smaller one of Thomas Saunders.

  His head bore the discernible tread marks of a car tyre. The back half of his skull had been flattened so absolutely that it appeared to have been hewn from him by the swift, effective blow of a sword.

  The Saunders’ marriage ended soon after, although Chris kept her ex-husband’s surname. She resigned her position as a corporate accountant, a decision which had been ‘by mutual consent’. The family home was sold. She attended the trial of the driver, then disappeared. Two years after the accident she enrolled on a teacher training course at Leeds Metropolitan University.

  ‘Did you read about the Barden trial, the sentencing?’ Rita asked, pressing her hands into her face.

  Joe managed a sneer, the nearest he could get to an ironic smile as he felt the visceral disgust that he sometimes harboured for the whole criminal process, somewhere between loathing and a futile scream for help.

  ‘The report of the defence’s closing statement?’ she said. ‘I read that twice. Couldn’t believe it. Five years.’

  ‘Out in two.’

  ‘I know. I bloody read it! I know!’ A pause. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Did you read the follow-up on him?’

  She nodded.

  After leaving prison, Neil Barden had returned to his previous profession as a self-employed provider of Class A and B drugs. He’d had several arrests over the years, including one charge. But his lawyers got the charges dropped before it went to court. He now drove a Mercedes C-class and lived in a leafy suburb of Leeds.

  ‘She retrained as a teacher, worked in a couple of schools before taking up her current position in Cleckheaton five years ago. Where Jason Beverage was a student. He got expelled for sexual aggression towards a teacher.’

  Joe looked at her.

  ‘It’s her son’s birthday today.’

  ‘Jesus, I missed that.’

  ‘He’d have been sixteen.’

  ‘Diminished responsibility? Come on, let’s bring her in.’

  Joe shook his head.

  ‘Any forensics on that bike at the library?’

  ‘Nothing definite, as of yet. Still, we’ve gotta bring her in, Joe.’

  ‘Can we do this my way?’

  40

  The last remnants of light were disappearing from the sky as the Land Rover entered the car park fast, gunning straight for the cricket field before lurching to a halt next to Joe’s car.

  ‘Is she here?’ Rita said as she jumped out.

  ‘Yup. Inside. She just WhatsApp’d me.’

  ‘Jesus Christ, Joe! No one saw her leave work this afternoon. And her car’s not at home. We’ve been going fuckin’ ape.’

  ‘I know. You phoned me. A lot. She’s here.’

  Rita shook her head.

  ‘I’ve had someone outside the school all day. Saw her go in this morning. No one saw her leave, and that bike’s still chained to the library drainpipe. She hasn’t been home all day, either. We’ve had her house staked out. What the hell’s going on?’

  ‘She’s in here. Relax.’

  Two unmarked cars arrived and parked close to the entrance. Rita rolled a cigarette as Joe went to speak to the four officers that got out, sending one of them on a quick recce of the pub’s perimeter.

  ‘Can I have one of those?’ he asked her as he returned to the Land Rover.

  She chuckled, in that annoying way that smokers have with almost-non-smokers.

  ‘All that’s going on,’ he said, accepting the one she’d just rolled and waiting as she rummaged in her jeans for a lighter, ‘is that I’m going to have a nice meal with a lady friend. Who you are then going to arrest for two murders.’

  ‘Textbook, eh?’

  ‘Chapter one.’

  ‘Yeah, Don Juan meets the Criminal Evidence Act.’ She held out the lighter. ‘And you’re supposed to have the fag after the sex.’

  He drew hard. The smoke hit him at the back of the throat, then somewhere behind the eyes, a nasty, visceral pain, fleeting but intense, like the thinnest of blades passing through his brain. Smoking suddenly felt like the most ridiculous thing one could imagine doing. Which it wasn’t, obviously: the most ridiculous thing was having dinner with a murderer.

  The other officers were now in a huddle, whispering to each
other. Then the fourth of them came back around the other side of the pub.

  ‘No sign of her car, guv.’

  ‘She’s not friggin’ here!’ Rita said.

  Joe ignored her.

  ‘She’s inside the pub now.’

  ‘Who says? WhatsApp? Jesus Christ!’

  He watched Rita as she lit her own roll-up and inhaled so hard that a quarter of it turned to ash.

  He took another long draw on his own, shuddering at the taste.

  ‘Gather round, gents.’ He dropped the barely smoked cigarette and ground it into the tarmac with his shoe. ‘Right. You all have a recent image of her. Get it fixed in your mind. At some point she’ll come out. Just stop her, nice and gentle. Rita’ll make the arrest.’

  ‘Why not now, guv?’ someone asked.

  ‘We already have enough to bring her in. But I want her to admit it, the whole narrative, stuff we can use, details she’ll find it difficult to retract later. We’re taking down a double murderer. Forget who the victims were. They were killed in cold blood. Let’s just get as much as we can from her now. You all have my number? Good.’

  With that he was gone, marching up to the pub as if it were his first date, like a teenager out to impress, nervous, the confidence half fake and half bare optimism. Pure Joe Romano.

  ‘Right,’ Rita said, ‘there’s a door out the back. We need one of you there. And there’s another door from the kitchen a bit further round. Another body there. Two of you stay close to the front entrance with me. We OK?’

  They were OK. They would’ve perched on the steeple of the parish church if it meant they could tell their kids that they’d taken down a multiple killer.

  41

  Inside the pub nothing had changed. Rugby League highlights on the muted TV up in the corner, Toby jugs still smiling, beer pumps standing to attention along the bar, waiting to go into battle in the cause of all that was good and wholesome in England.

  He ordered a pint of Tetley’s. He knew she was here. But he didn’t look for her. He waited for the beer to arrive, then stood and admired it. A drink, tonight? Not a chance. This pint, which he could see was utter perfection, would remain untouched. Apart from, well, just an inch or two. To remind himself what he was missing.

  Even as he brought it to his lips, she was there beside him, a glass of white wine in her hand. A large glass, and not much left in it.

  ‘Evenin’ officer,’ she said, then tipped her head back and took a drink.

  Her face was pale, almost grey, her eyes sunken and puffy. She was buoyant, a spikiness of anticipation in her movements, but it was forced, awkward. They stood there in the silence for a moment or two. She moved from foot to foot, looking around the pub, which wasn’t busy.

  ‘Well,’ she said in the end, ‘not often I get invited out via a text message at seven in the morning!’

  He took a tiny sip of his beer. It was a couple of shades warmer than cool. The head was creamy, and it had that strangely minty aftertaste of Tetley’s.

  ‘I think we can call this a working dinner. I am working, you know.’

  ‘I’m fully aware of the situation, officer,’ she said, as if his seriousness was endearing. ‘Why don’t we grab a table, get down to work?’

  They made their way into the dining area and chose a quiet spot in the corner. They went through the motions of getting seated.

  ‘Right,’ he said, as they squinted at the menu board on the wall.

  ‘Right.’

  They waited.

  ‘Right,’ he said again. ‘I get the impression that you know what I’m going to say.’

  ‘Best just say it then, no?’

  He glanced around. Several tables were occupied, but nobody close enough to hear.

  ‘Did you think the pencil was enough?’

  ‘Enough?’

  ‘To blame everything on those nutters in the Patriot League, or someone from the library?’

  She looked puzzled, turning the wine glass in her hands.

  ‘I didn’t think that at all. It never occurred to me.’

  ‘What did you think?’

  ‘That it was the right thing to do.’

  ‘Right? The pencil?’

  ‘Everything.’

  ‘Care to explain?’

  She drank the last of her wine, then set the glass on the table, frowning slightly.

  ‘I was coming down from the library. I sometimes walk into town, take the bus home. Don’t always drive. I noticed the car, saw him sitting there in the dark. He wound the window down, and I asked if anything was wrong. He told me to go fuck myself.’

  ‘OK…’

  ‘I knew what kind of person he was. It’s like I said yesterday. You can pick ’em out when they’re ten years old.’

  ‘And that’s why you did it? Because you could see what kind of person he was?’

  ‘Something changed. It only took a second. I didn’t know where I was. Still don’t, really. It was that quick. A pencil was the only thing I had.’

  A young waiter came over. He might have been seventeen, mousy-blond hair in a fashionable mess, his face soft and gentle.

  ‘Are you…?’

  ‘Ready, yes,’ Joe said. ‘I think so. Shall we order?’

  ‘I’ll have the steak and ale pie. With chips,’ she said, smiling up at the young man.

  Joe ordered the gnocchi.

  ‘Any starters?’ the soft-skinned angel asked.

  ‘Some onion rings? For the table?’ she said. ‘And another large white wine for me, please.’

  The waiter nodded, raising his eyebrows as he left.

  ‘A Sopranos fan?’ she said, watching him as he disappeared into the kitchen. ‘Endearing in one so young.’

  ‘No pencil for him, then?’

  She paused, took her napkin, refolded it. Her eyes were wide open, imploring. But they were unsteady, edged with a calm desperation.

  ‘You told me that the bereavement group didn’t do you any good,’ Joe said. ‘Was this the alternative?’

  She reached out and squeezed his hand. He left it there for a second, then pulled it away.

  ‘I never chose to do this, Joe. None of it. Do you blame me? Really?’

  He kept his mouth shut. The digital recorder in his pocket was running. Just let her talk.

  ‘Under the railway bridge? I stood there and I thought, this isn’t me, is it? Or is it? After all the time, year after year, suddenly everything was clear. There I was, in the present. This can’t be right, I told myself, but it was.’

  ‘No. Not murder.’

  Her face lit up. She threw herself back in her seat, giddy, as though he’d suddenly hit on the truth.

  ‘You see? It’s exactly that! This can’t be right, can it? But it is. It was. It just happened. Like a lot of things. A lot of things just happen. Horrible things. They happen to people who do not deserve to die.’

  ‘Jason Beverage didn’t just happen. You meant that to happen. Can I ask you something? Have you been hearing voices? Voices that were telling you to do this?’

  ‘Yes. No! I mean, no, no.’

  She looked around, flapping her hands a little, trying to find the words to express herself.

  ‘Society? What is it, in the end? It’s just a ledger of good things and bad things. A simple account. I’d never realized it before, never been able to understand. That’s what Craig Shaw gave me.’

  ‘Gave you?’

  ‘Down there, under the old railway. Something happened to me. I was taken somewhere, because of him. He showed me, he drove me there. And I’m still there. I see things differently now.’

  ‘What do you see?’

  ‘That I did something good, Joe. I adjusted the ledger. They robbed, raped, sold drugs to the poor and the hopeless. The world’s a better place without them. Do the maths. Getting rid of just one of them means, I dunno, fifty, a hundred, two hundred crimes will not be committed.’

  ‘And you know that for a fact?’

  ‘Joe,
you know I’m right!’

  ‘Do I?’

  ‘We let people die all the time. Bullshit wars whenever the price of oil demands it. Tobacco. Processed sugar. Air pollution. Pandemics. Death is a measure of how we live. It’s part of the equation. It’s maths. That’s why I was chosen, don’t you see? Because I understand the significance of it.’

  ‘Not murder. We draw the line at…’

  ‘Sending young men and women to Iraq and Afghanistan is murder.’

  ‘I’m with you on…’

  ‘Stop trying to be the liberal male, you chump!’ she said, laughing, but on the verge of tears.

  He relaxed, just a little, and tried his best to look crestfallen. He had her now, although he wasn’t sure how long she was going to last in this state.

  Arrest her now? No. One last push. Get some details.

  ‘What kind of solution is yours? Killing Jason Beverage? How did that come about?’

  She clasped her empty wine glass with both hands, until it seemed that it might shatter.

  ‘You know what’s trending on Twitter? One-sixty-six.’

  He nodded.

  ‘When all the police stuff is over with, have I not saved the world from a modicum of future pain?’

  ‘Beverage was younger than my son. Little more than a kid.’

  ‘Rapist-cum-thief and drug dealer. He even managed to do all three together: drug ’em, rape ’em, rob ’em! What are the chances he would have reformed, become a model citizen? It’s maths, see?’

  ‘Tell me what happened with Jason.’

  ‘The whole thing was out of my control. It was as if I was watching. And I felt nothing. Ruthless, that’s the word: without sorrow, without compassion. I felt no sorrow for his death. Or the other one. Craig.’

  ‘I understand what you must have been through.’

  ‘No, no. Really you don’t. It’s the rightness of feeling no compassion that’s the strange thing. You can’t possibly know. It’s weird. It can’t be right. But it is. It is right.’

  ‘Chris, we know what happened to you.’

  She shook her head, harder and harder, until she looked like a young girl desperate to convince you of her innocence.

  ‘You’re a good man. I could see that the moment we met. But a good man can’t understand this.’