Ashes by Now

by Mark Timlin

  ‘Did they hurt you?’ I asked her.

  ‘What them? No. Not so’s you’d notice. Don’t forget I’ve been hurt by experts.’

  ‘I know the feeling,’ I said.

  ‘So what do we do now?’ asked Toby.

  ‘We get Jackie as far away from here as possible. Out of the country. There’s a lot more shit due to hit the fan before this lot’s all over.’

  They didn’t know the half of it.

  ‘Is that all right with you, Jackie?’ I asked. ‘A holiday in the sun. With Toby.’

  She looked shyly at him. ‘It sounds good,’ she said.

  ‘Good,’ I said. Then to Toby, ‘Have you got any money?’

  He frowned. ‘Just a little.’ Then his face brightened. ‘But I’ve got the company’s plastic.’ He hesitated. ‘But I don’t think I work for them any more, do I?’

  ‘I shouldn’t worry about that,’ I said. ‘I’ll straighten it out. Have you got your passport?’

  Toby tapped his jacket. ‘Always,’ he said.

  ‘Good. Jackie?’

  ‘It’s at my flat.’

  ‘Right. Toby, you take Jackie to her place. Grab her passport and get to Heathrow. Get on to the first plane to somewhere warm. Preferably somewhere they don’t get English papers for a week or so. Don’t go near Fortescue’s. Use your card to buy what you need when you get wherever you’re going. Tell no one, and I mean no one, where you are. Just go. In a couple of weeks phone Slade. I think everything will be cool by then. All sorted. One way or another.’

  ‘What about you?’ said Jackie.

  ‘I’ll be OK.’ I looked at my watch. It was almost one a.m. ‘I’ll stay here with Collier till morning. Give you plenty of time to get the first flight out. Then I’ll let Slade know he can print, and no one will be damned.’

  Just me probably, I thought.

  ‘Now go,’ I said. ‘Get lost. And have a good time.’

  Jackie came over and kissed me on the cheek, and there were tears in her eyes. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘For everything.’

  ‘No worries,’ I replied. ‘Take care of yourself, you hear?’

  ‘Thank you,’ she said again. ‘I’ll never forget you. I’ll pray for you each night.’

  It was nice to know that someone would.

  ‘Go,’ I said. ‘And good luck.’

  Toby shook my hand. ‘Are you sure you’ll be OK?’ he asked.

  ‘Course I will.’

  ‘But you’ve got no car.’

  ‘I’ll be fine,’ I said. ‘I’m a big boy now.’

  He slapped me on the back, and took Jackie’s arm and led her out of the kitchen. She looked back once, and smiled, but I saw the same look in her eyes that I’d seen all those years before at Brixton nick.

  Then it was just me and Collier. And the DJ upstairs.

  44

  I sat in the rickety chair that Jackie had vacated opposite Collier, and looked at him. He wasn’t so much, bleeding nose and all, with his handkerchief, all black with blood, stuck up against it.

  ‘So, Terry,’ I said. ‘Just you and me.’

  He took his hankie off his face and said through swollen lips, ‘I’m going to get you for this.’

  The melodrama of the remark should have been funny, but it wasn’t. ‘Don’t you ever give up?’ I asked. ‘It’s over, son. Finito. The end of an era. You’ve had a good run for your money. Why don’t you just give in gracefully?’

  He sneered, and spat out a gob of blood which landed between my feet.

  ‘There’s no getting through to you, is there?’ I asked. ‘No getting through to you at all.’

  ‘I’m going to kill you, Sharman,’ Collier said. And I believed he would if I gave him half a chance. ‘I should’ve finished the job the last time.’

  ‘You stupid shit,’ I said. ‘You shouldn’t even have told me that Sailor was dead. I would never have known and, even if I did, so what? I didn’t care one way or another who murdered Carol Harvey after all this time, God help me. It was history. But you had to stir it all up again.’

  ‘Grant told me you were going to help him.’

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘I looked him up at the address he gave after he got out. It was his uncle’s. He told me you were going to help him. Then he went on the run.’

  ‘Who could blame him?’ I said. ‘With you on his tail again. And he ended up here, poor fucker. So that’s why he killed himself. Because he was scared of you.’

  And I never gave him a chance to tell me.

  ‘But you were going to have a meeting with Grant,’ he said. ‘He told me.’

  ‘Then he was lying. Maybe he thought you’d leave him alone if he said that.’ Fat chance, I thought. ‘I only agreed to meet him after he’d left his uncle’s. And that was just to get him off my back. He kept phoning me up, whingeing and whining about how hard done by he’d been. I told him to fuck off when I did see him. I told you that the last time we were here. But you wouldn’t have it, would you? And now look where you are. You’re finished, son. You and Millar and Grisham and Byrne. When that paper comes out on Sunday, you are fucked.’

  ‘Not so fucked that I can’t get someone to deal with you.’

  ‘Like you were going to deal with Jackie?’

  ‘Another few minutes and I would’ve.’

  ‘How did you find her at the hotel, by the way? She wasn’t supposed to tell anyone.’

  ‘I went knocking on doors around where she lived. Showing my warrant. She’d left the keys of her flat with some bird a couple of doors down. She’s got goldfish, see. Jackie. Can you believe this? She left her address with the bird in case something happened to the fish.’

  Fucking fish, I thought. I don’t believe I’m hearing this.

  ‘Oh well,’ I said. ‘It’s all over now.’

  ‘Don’t you believe it. It won’t be over till I see you dead.’

  ‘There’s only one thing to do then.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’ll have to kill you, son. That’s all there is to it. It won’t be over till one of us is dead. That’s for sure.’

  This town isn’t big enough for the two of us, I thought. Just like the old westerns I used to watch at Saturday morning pictures.

  ‘You haven’t got the bottle,’ said Collier.

  ‘We’ll see about that,’ I replied. But I wasn’t sure that he was far wrong. ‘Come on, let’s go into the other room. It’s noisier in there, and no one’ll hear the shots.’

  He went a bit cross-eyed at that, and didn’t move. So I got up and went over and grabbed his lapel, hauled him to his feet and pushed him out into the hall. I shoved him along, and reluctantly he went.

  We were about halfway down the length of it when I felt a presence behind me, and something hard was pushed into my back. A voice I recognised said, ‘Drop it.’

  It was Millar. He’d stepped out of one of the rooms off the corridor, and if it wasn’t a gun barrel poking into my back, it was a pretty fair approximation.

  I stood still with the Colt pointing at Collier. Then I heard the unmistakable click of a firearm’s hammer being cocked behind me. ‘Don’t fuck about, Sharman,’ said Millar. ‘Or I’ll blow your kidneys away.’

  Shit, I thought, as Collier turned and grabbed the Colt out of my hand, and poked it into my face. ‘Cunt,’ he said and punched me left-handed in the side of my jaw.

  I felt blood of my own in my mouth, and he reached into my jacket pocket and retrieved the Smith & Wesson I’d taken off him earlier.

  ‘Your turn,’ he said. ‘In the big room. You’re dead, you slag.’

  So that was that. The tables were well and truly turned, and I knew that this time the only way I’d leave the flat was in a body bag.

  I felt my bowels go liquid, and I cursed my own stupidity
. Still, it was too late for that. Far too late.

  Slowly I walked in front of the pair of them towards the living room of the flat.

  ‘What happened, guv’nor?’ asked Millar, as we went. ‘Where did he spring from?’

  ‘Fuck knows,’ replied Collier. ‘He turned up with the bird’s boyfriend. Fuckers caught me in the kazi.’

  ‘Where is she now?’

  ‘Gone to the airport with the bloke. Don’t worry. There’s no planes till morning. We’ll catch up with them.’

  Bastard, I thought, and my head spun with ways to get out of my predicament, but I couldn’t come up with one that had a ghost of a chance of working.

  Millar pushed me into the middle of the room, and stood on my left, holding a small, but lethal, Colt revolver of his own.

  Collier walked round to face me. He stuck my Colt in his jacket pocket, and bellowed, ‘How did you find out about Byrne’s confession?’

  ‘You told me.’

  He looked at me in disbelief. ‘When?’

  ‘In the car, after you beat me up in here. When you were taking me up the marshes to kill me. You must’ve thought I was out of it.’

  ‘We did, otherwise you would never’ve got out of the motor. So you never saw it. It was all a bluff what they were going to write in the paper.’

  ‘Papers like that don’t bluff,’ I said. ‘There’s too much at stake. They saw it all right. Or at least a copy.’

  ‘How did you get it?’

  I had to smile – even under the circumstances. ‘How’s the alarm system at your place? Had it fixed yet?’

  He looked puzzled.

  ‘A bit of damp in the junction box, wasn’t it?’ I said.

  I saw realisation dawn on him. ‘That was you?’

  ‘Me and someone else. We got in, found your safe and I made a couple of copies.’

  ‘You scumbag.’

  ‘You can talk,’ I said. ‘When it comes to being scum, you’ve got anyone else I know beat by a mile.’

  I thought he was going to hit me again, but he just smiled in triumph. ‘Keep talking, Sharman,’ he said. ‘Keep flapping your gums. You’ve had it, my son. Had it good and proper.’

  That was fair enough. As long as we were talking, I was still alive. And like they always say, where there’s life there’s hope – not much, but a bit.

  ‘Tell me something,’ I said. ‘Just one last thing.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘How come you believed Jacqueline Harvey that day in Brixton, and not Byrne? How come you sussed out that he’d raped Carol?’

  ‘What, old Alan Byrne? Good old Al. Simple. I’d known him a long time. A lot of years. And I knew what he liked.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Young girls, mate. They were his weakness. Not as young as Carol and Jacqueline, I’ll grant you. But young enough. I’d seen him at our do’s. Always with a stripper on his knee. The younger the better. And magazines. He had quite a collection. Used to get them from the porn squad. I wasn’t surprised. I knew his missus too. She was like a prune left out in the sun. If I’d been him, I’d’ve gone for some sweet young meat as well. When I went back and saw him after young Jacqueline had gone, he was all over the place. Shaking and sweating and all sorts. I put it to him that he’d done the deed. He folded like a wet rag. Pathetic. He was more worried about his promotion prospects than his nieces. I nearly done for him, I swear. But he begged me. Told me he’d help me and Millar and Grisham in the future, if we’d put someone in the frame for the rape. He’d do anything he said. I knew he was going to do well, and I agreed. What did I care about Carol Harvey? His only worry was that she’d wake up and shop him. I think he’d meant to kill her all along. But even if she did he thought that he’d be all right. That he’d got her so scared she wouldn’t talk. When she died it was even easier. No witnesses, see. Byrne fell over himself to sign that confession. He’d’ve sucked my cock if I’d told him to. And we had Grant banged up ready to be charged, thanks to you and Lenny. Who was going to believe a nonce like that against all of us?’

  ‘Me maybe,’ I said.

  ‘Which was why we never webbed you in. I never trusted you from the first minute I saw you.’

  ‘Thank Christ for that,’ I said. ‘Being trusted by you isn’t exactly a compliment to anyone’s integrity.’

  He raised his arm to hit me again, and Millar interjected, ‘Come on, guv. Let’s get it over with and out of here. We’ve got things to do.’

  Collier looked at him and nodded. ‘Right, Lenny,’ he said. Then to me, ‘Kneel down.’

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘You heard. Kneel down.’

  ‘Fuck you,’ I said defiantly, and Millar crashed his gun down on to my shoulder so hard that I thought my collar-bone had fractured.

  ‘Down,’ said Collier again.

  I knew that if I didn’t obey, they’d just beat me down, so I did as Collier ordered. I knelt on the dirty plastic-covered floor and looked up at him.

  He cocked the S&W he was holding, and stuck it into my face. From my viewpoint, it looked as big and deadly as a cannon.

  ‘Open your mouth,’ he said.

  I shook my head, and he slapped my face hard with his empty hand. ‘Open it.’

  I parted my lips, and he pushed the barrel of his gun hard against my teeth and smiled. ‘Goodbye, Sharman,’ he said, and I saw the knuckle of his trigger finger whiten.

  So that’s it, I thought. The sum total. My whole life lived for this. Kneeling on the floor of a stinking room, in a stinking flat, on a stinking estate, in a stinking town, having my head blown off my shoulders by a psychopathic copper. Jesus. What a way for it all to end. I’d thought about dying so often in the past, and begged for it to happen enough times, God knows, that maybe Collier was doing me a favour.

  Perhaps now I’d get a bit of peace at last.

  I looked past the gun in his hand, up into his face. My killer’s face. The last face I’d ever see. And as the music from upstairs thumped on, I saw his head implode as a bullet entered just beneath his right eye, and blew out the back of his skull in a spray of blood, bone and brains. I felt something hot splash across my face, as his left eye popped out from the concussion of the entry, and more blood flew out of the empty socket. He stepped back, taking the gun away from my mouth, and fell to the floor. I looked at Millar, whose eyes widened, and whose head turned towards the door, before a second bullet slammed into his torso, then another, and another, raising dust from the material of his coat. He stumbled sideways, then he too fell to the floor and lay still, leaking blood from the entry holes.

  I stayed where I was, then turned and looked round. Toby was standing in the doorway, holding his silenced Browning. He was wreathed in smoke, and a wisp escaped from the barrel of the silencer. The room stank of used gunpowder and blood and fear.

  I put my hands on the floor in front of me, lowered my head, and breathed deeply, trying hard not to throw up.

  ‘Are you OK?’ he shouted above the sound of the reggae.

  I’ve been better, I thought, but managed a swift nod.

  He came over and dragged me to my feet. ‘I saw the other one coming back as we were leaving. I had to make sure you were all right.’

  I held on to Toby’s shoulder for support. ‘I’m glad you did,’ I screamed above the constant noise. ‘Where’s Jackie?’

  ‘In the car downstairs.’

  Thank God, I thought. All she needed was to see this. ‘Good,’ I said.

  Toby looked round the room and put his mouth close to my ear. ‘We’d better get this mess cleared up,’ he said.

  ‘No,’ I replied. ‘You get out of here. Carry on as planned. Don’t tell Jackie what happened. Just go.’

  ‘But –’

  ‘No buts. I owe you a biggie, Toby. I’ll get this sorted. Now hop it. And give
me your gun. I’ll get rid of it.’

  He handed me the still-hot pistol, and I put it on top of the orange crate.

  ‘Go,’ I shouted.

  He nodded, then came over and took my hand again. ‘Clean up your face,’ he said, then shook my mitten, and left without looking back.

  Maybe there was something to be said for SAS training, I thought as he went.

  I walked into the bathroom and looked at my face in the sliver of filthy mirror above the hand basin. If I’d thought I looked like a casualty of war earlier, now I looked like a corpse. The skin of my face was white and grainy with black shadows under my eyes, and a streak of dark blood across my cheek. I ran some rusty water into my cupped hands and splashed the blood off, then dried myself with my fingers. The blood had hit the shoulder of my jacket and I rubbed it into the leather, which was already scuffed and stained enough so that one more dirty mark wouldn’t matter. I looked into my eyes again before I left. I knew that my soul was already scuffed and stained too, and I wondered how many more dirty marks it could take before it wouldn’t matter either.

  I shrugged at my reflection, and went and cleaned up as best I could the room where Collier and Millar’s bodies lay.

  I found the four cartridge cases that Toby’s Browning had ejected and stuck them into the pocket of my jeans. Then I recovered my Colt Commando from Collier’s pocket and stuck it into my belt in the small of my back. I put Collier’s S&W in one pocket of my jacket and Millar’s Colt in the other. Then I unscrewed the silencer from Toby’s automatic, and put it in one pocket and the Browning in the other.

  I had so many guns on me that I felt like a walking ordnance depot.

  In the corridor outside the flat I found the three cartridge cases that had been used to blow away the lock, and I put them in my pocket with the rest.