by Andy Maslen
On the way out, she’d noticed a key cupboard screwed to the wall by the front door above a circular wooden table with a few letters on it, waiting to be posted. She went there now and opened the dinky double doors. Hanging dead-centre was a chunky black-plastic-and-chrome key fob. It bore a chrome winged ‘B’. She plucked it from the L-shaped brass hook and returned to the car, thumbing the door-unlock button as she went.
The door was surprisingly easy to pull open. Clever engineering, she supposed.
“Well, we can’t have – what did that helpful sales guy at Bentley HQ call them, ‘enthusiasts of the marque’, was it? – struggling with a hundredweight of steel and glass and all those shopping bags, now can we?”
She turned to other-Stella. “Could you maybe give me a hand with him, instead of just standing there looking all self-satisfied. Please?”
After much grunting, pushing, shoving and twisting of recalcitrant limbs, Stella stood back, wiping the sweat from her forehead with a bloody sleeve. Ramage was sitting – all right, lolling – in the rear passenger-side seat. She folded his arms across his chest, leaned over him, and pulled the seat belt out and around his arms and torso, securing it in the latch with another of those damned muted clicks. An extra-long, black plastic cable tie secured his wrists together. For good measure, she reached down into her rucksack, retrieved the bolt cutters and crimped the chromed seatbelt latch with a crunching sound that suggested it would never release the judge.
The bullet wounds looked messy close up. The blood was still wet on Ramage’s clothing, suggesting that even if she’d missed clipping an artery, the hollow point rounds had damaged plenty of blood vessels beyond repair.
She backed out, seized with a sudden desire to wound the huge car. She pulled out the awl from her rucksack and wandered round the Bentley, dragging its sharp point up and down its glassy flanks, and over the bonnet and boot, raking off chips of paint with a metallic squeal. They stuck to her hand like fish scales.
While she waited for Ramage to regain consciousness, Stella toyed with the pliers and the pair of razor sharp I.O. Shen knives she’d brought with her. He was powerless now and hers to do with what she wished. But the idea of torturing him had lost much of its savour.
Ten minutes later, Ramage’s eyelids fluttered, then opened, revealing those dark-brown eyes that had looked at her so scornfully the day she’d tackled him in his private chambers at the Old Bailey. Stella enjoyed seeing them widen and stretch as they registered the sight of her sitting cross-legged on the gravel by the open passenger door. She watched as he took in the rifle and shotgun at her feet, the Glock in her lap and the knives she held loosely in her hands.
He wriggled inside the grip of the seatbelt then groaned, squeezing his eyes shut against the pain he must have felt as the webbing belt tightened against his ruined arm muscles. His face was pale, the lips colourless.
“Where’s your phone, Sir Leonard?” Stella asked.
“My what? Phone? Why?” he muttered.
“Is it in your trouser pocket?”
His eyes flicked down to his right hip pocket. “Why should I tell you?”
She jumped to her feet, causing Ramage to flinch, and poked the point of the Maoui Deba into the corduroy above his ruined right knee. In a single flowing movement, she slid the blade up towards his hip, slitting the fabric as if it were wet tissue paper. As the pocket peeled back, a phone tumbled free and fell onto the seat beside him.
Stella pouted as she took in the lock-screen. “Oh, Sir Leonard, you coded it. Well, a quick scan at the grease marks on the glass and I’ll soon work out which numbers to play with.”
He smirked. It was probably involuntary, but Stella caught the expression all the same.
She paused. “You didn’t code it?” She touched the tip of her nose. Then she looked at the phone again. “But someone as sensible as you, as security conscious as you, wouldn’t leave his phone unprotected, would he? That would be silly. So, it must be biometrically protected. What did you use? Retinas. Will I have to twirl my little friend here round and round in your eye sockets to remove your eyes, then?” Again, that involuntary twitch of the lips. “Ah! No, just a simple fingerprint for you, Sir Leonard. Well,” she said briskly, putting down the knife and picking up the bolt cutters, “we’d better get to work, then.”
He flinched and struggled against the seat belt, but that was the full extent his bonds would allow his fight-or-flight reflex to carry him.
Stella readied the bolt cutters, gently sliding their short, hard, sharp jaws down to the base of Ramage’s right index finger, ignoring his pleading.
36
A Mother's Love
Ramage’s scream bounced off the stone front of his house.
With the lifeless digit grasped between her own thumb and forefinger, Stella dabbed its tip onto the surface of the phone.
“Success!” she said, bestowing a wide smile on Ramage, who was moaning with pain. “At least we won’t have to take any more off. Now, let’s see. First, let’s disable the security, then we’ll find your contacts. Where are they?” She tapped and scrolled, hmm-ing as she did so, her eyes scanning the screen for a set of initials. “Aha! That wasn’t very difficult. You must have been feeling very confident when you created this little group.”
The screen displayed a group called PPM. Stella tapped the ‘notes’ tab and a set of names and numbers appeared. Her eyes flicked up and down the screen. Then her mouth tightened. Adam Collier’s name was blaring at her from the screen as if written in bright, flaming capital letters eight feet tall.
“Told you so,” other-Stella said.
“They’ll come for you, you know,” Ramage said in a hoarse voice, though still finding the energy from somewhere to sneer at Stella. “Kill me and I guarantee it. If you let me go, I’ll see no harm comes to you. I can do that, you know. I have the authority. I promise.”
“It’s a tempting offer, Stel” other-Stella said, with a wink. “Let this bastard go and he promises to see we live out our lives in peace.”
“You’re right! We should let him go. Oh, wait. No, we shouldn’t.” Stella scowled at Ramage. “Here’s the thing, Judge. I actually don’t care whether your friends come for me or not. Maybe I’ll invite them myself and sit at an upstairs window with the rifle. Pick them off as they arrive.”
Ramage tried again, his voice thickened by pain and raspy as he dragged air into his lungs.
“Listen to me, Stella, isn’t it? Your career is over. Your life doesn’t have to be. Let me go, and I’ll give you enough cash to disappear. There’s a safe in my office, where you found me. I’ve gold, cash, stock certificates and my wife’s jewellery in there. It’s yours. All of it. Please. I’ll give you an hour’s start. A day’s start.”
He was shaking violently now, whether from shock, blood loss or stark naked terror, Stella neither knew nor cared. She felt calm and at peace. No nerves. No fear. She hefted the cleaver in her right hand.
“What did you think about on your drive home?” she asked.
“My what?”
“Your drive home. After you left my husband’s body and my baby daughter burning in the car. What did you think about?”
“I don’t know what I was thinking about,” he wheezed. “How can I remember? You shot me, you crazy bitch. I feel sick. I feel faint. You have to let me go.”
He struggled against the seatbelt, but only succeeded in tightening the last few inches of slack against the inertia reel mechanism. He was panting, and the colour had drained from his face after returning, briefly, during the off-kilter conversation.
Stella leaned down and slapped him with her free hand.
“Don’t faint on me, Judge. If you do, I’ll kill you where you sit.”
Ramage shook his head. Stella could see him making an effort to focus, although his eyes were sliding to one side every few seconds.
“Not long to go now, Stel,” other-Stella said.
She reached down and slit the ca
ble tie with the cleaver. Ramage pulled his arms free from the seat belt, yelping with pain from the bullet wounds in his upper arms. He lunged for the seatbelt latch and thumbed the square red button repeatedly, tugging on the seatbelt as he did so. Nothing happened, and he swore as he noticed the ruined mechanism that trapped the belt’s steel tab in the latch.
Stella watched him, then she spoke. At least, she heard herself speak. But the voice didn’t sound like hers. It was colder, harder. It was more like other-Stella.
“Take these.”
She proffered the pliers she’d retrieved from the rucksack while Ramage struggled with the seatbelt. He looked first at the pliers with their red and yellow rubber grips, then the latch, then up at Stella.
“They’re no good for this. You smashed it.”
“They’re not for the latch.”
“Then what are they for? What are you going to do?”
“Me? Nothing. But you are. I want you to pull one of your front teeth out. Do it and I’ll let you go.”
Ramage’s face suddenly suffused with blood, turning his pale cheeks a dark cherry red. “You’re out of your mind! I won’t do it.”
Then he screamed as Stella smashed the cleaver down onto his left knee. It stuck in the complex web of tendons, ligaments and bones surrounding the joint, handle upwards, as if a careless butcher had abandoned a cutting job and wandered away from his block.
She took a couple of paces back and picked up the empty Winchester. Turning, she pointed the muzzle at Ramage’s stomach.
“It’s loaded with Hatton rounds, Judge. They’re what we use to blow the hinges off doors when we’re busting drug dealers and burglars. There won’t be a great deal of your midsection left if I pull the trigger. But you might survive for a few minutes before you bleed to death. Or the shock might kill you, I suppose. You won’t make a very pretty corpse, is what I’m trying to tell you. And getting there will be extremely painful. I once found a guy in the back room of a club who’d taken a round from a sawn-off in the guts. God, he was making a racket. But then, he had a hole in his stomach you could reach through without touching the sides, so I supposed he was well within his rights. So, what’s it to be? DIY dentistry or a hollow feeling inside? I’ll give you three seconds. One, two–”
“No!” Ramage screamed. “Give me the pliers.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I said, give me the pliers.”
“Give me the pliers–?”
Ramage was crying now. “Please, you sadistic bitch, give me the fucking pliers. I’ll do it, then let me out and you can go. Take the money, whatever you want from me. Just let me live.”
Stella held the pliers out again, handles towards Ramage. She could see two right hands wrapped round the red-and-yellow grips. “Fine. An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. Do it, and I’ll let you go. I promise.”
He extended a shaking hand and took them from Stella using his thumb and three remaining fingers. His eyes were pleading but she just stared back into them.
Inch by inch, Ramage lifted the pliers, his mutilated arms shaking with the effort as other muscles compensated for his ruined biceps, and let the jaws close around an upper incisor. Stella watched his knuckles whiten as he squeezed the grips to lock the jaws around the tooth.
Ramage closed his other hand over his right fist, clenched his eyes shut, took a breath and yanked downwards. A broken scream erupted from his throat as he wrenched the gleaming white tooth from the gum. Bright red blood spurted from the wound, sheeting over the broken lower teeth, his lower lip and his chin.
His hands fell to his lap, still gripping the pliers.
Finally, he looked up at Stella, his eyes sparkling with tears.
“There. I did it. Now let me go.” His words were mushy as his mouth struggled to form the correct shapes.
37
Stella's Final Shot
Stella spoke calmly and quietly.
“No. I don’t think I can let you go. Lola would never forgive me.”
“But you said it, that you’d let me go. You promised.”
Leaning down towards him and pushing her face up close to his, she whispered. “I lied.” Then she stood back up. “I hope you’re hurting, Sir Leonard. I hope you’re in so much pain you can’t think straight. But before I leave you, I just want you to know that you won’t even have the satisfaction that your work is going to continue. PPM is finished. I’ll expose you – sorry, them – in the media. You’ll be a footnote on some crappy Wikipedia page about domestic terrorism.”
He seemed stunned. Then his lips began working again. His voice was broken and low.
“Stella, listen to me, please. We both believed in the law. In justice. We both saw it fail. And we both crossed a line.” His missing tooth, and the blood, were making his tongue struggle to form the words without lisping. “You know, we’re not so different, you and I. We both want justice.”
The effort seemed to exhaust him, or else shock was kicking in. His head flopped back against the seat and his eyes were staring at the roof lining.
“Oh, but we are different, Judge. You see, you want justice. But me?” She closed her eyes for a second, and watched a flickering movie play in her head: a mother and daughter laughing together on a see-saw; a first day at school in a smart new uniform; a nervous boyfriend arriving to take the girl on a date; a beautiful young woman in cap and gown holding a scroll and mugging for the camera; a sweat-reddened new mother holding a newborn baby to her breast, smiling a tired but blissed-out smile. The image faded to black. Then orange. Stella opened her eyes. “Me? I want vengeance.”
She used the Maoui Deba to cut a strip of material from the front of Ramage’s shirt, not troubling to avoid the pallid skin beneath, then stood back and slammed the heavy door.
She opened the driver’s door and pressed the switch that unlocked the petrol filler cap. She’d noticed its position during the drive with Riordan from the Café Royal to Vicky Riley’s house. Jesus, that seems so long ago. Moments later, she was clicking the trigger on the blowtorch, having left the strip of Ramage’s shirt twisted into a makeshift fuse and stuffed down the filler pipe towards the petrol tank. The tank was full, and she’d watched the fabric darken as fuel climbed up through the thin cotton.
She held the blue flame to the end of the shirt fabric. It caught instantly, and a soft yellow flame blossomed, then began creeping upwards towards the circular aperture of the filler pipe.
Stella retreated at a jog, the rucksack and the shotgun bouncing on her back, the Glock in a side pocket of her jacket.
Twenty yards from the car, she turned and stopped. She was exhausted. Not just physically, but mentally. Other-Stella seemed unaffected and was in control now.
“Good girl,” she said. “Now we can watch him die.”
Stella watched the flames disappear into the filler pipe.
Began counting.
Got to three.
Whoomp! The petrol tank exploded, bursting the rear bodywork of the big purple car and showering burning fuel in a circle around its rear. She could see Ramage inside the car, thrashing from side to side. His mouth was open wide and even at this distance she could see the gap where he’d pulled out the incisor.
Then Lola was by her side. She was pointing at Ramage.
“The bad man is burning, Mummy,” she said.
“I know, darling.”
“No, Mummy. The bad man is BURNING. Like I was.”
Stella stared at Ramage’s twisted expression through the glass. His mouth was wide open and the pleading expression in his eyes was that of a man beyond lying, beyond killing… beyond vengeance.
“Oh, Jesus!” She clapped her hand to her mouth to stifle a scream.
She looked down.
Pulled the Glock.
And marched back towards the car.
The fire was burning strongly now, and she couldn’t get closer than ten feet. But it was close enough.
She levelled the pistol.
/>
Aimed it.
And shot The Honourable Mister Justice Sir Leonard Ramage between the eyes.
She turned and ran, tears running through the greasy soot stains that had turned her face corpse-grey.
Lola was waiting for her.
She nodded solemn approval at her mother.
The blaze intensified, and it appeared that the interior had ignited too. The windows darkened as black fumes – melting plastic? – coated their inside surfaces.
Stella stayed and watched as the heat reached the point that the air inside the tyres expanded and burst them with four loud bangs. The air was rich with the acrid smell of burning rubber and plastic, and scorched leather and metal.
That expensive purple paint was blistering and charring now, and Stella could see patches of steel appearing like bone beneath burning skin. She flinched from another, harsher boom that battered the air as the oil in the engine and the sump boiled, then vaporised, the dramatic increase in internal pressure exploding the engine. A silvery piston blew out through the side of the car, whickering past Stella’s head with a breathy whine before bouncing off the trunk of a pine tree behind her.
The blaze contained a great many colours Stella had not been expecting: turquoise, bright lemon-yellow and even an unearthly green as if ghosts had risen up and taken control of the burning car and its dead occupant.
She felt a small hand search out and hold her own. She squeezed back without looking down, knowing what was coming
Then the flames roared out from the engine bay, and when they had died down and the car was a charred hulk sitting on its rims and all Stella could hear was the plinking and popping as metal components cracked and split in the heat, her hand was empty. Lola was gone.
