The Sister

by China, Max

  There was a mixture of messages in the DCI's expression. The way he offered his hand confirmed it. He never does that. They shook hands.

  Kennedy wanted him to do it.

  Later in the afternoon, Tanner switched on his laptop and started to research the history and culture of bare-knuckle fighting among gipsies, he read for around two hours, totally captivated, by a world he hadn't realised still existed. Then he watched a selection of YouTube videos. The fights took place mostly; it seemed, in quiet country lanes, fields and car parks. There was a tradition of settling disputes between families with the fist and not always the fists of those that had the original dispute, but rather more able representatives, usually grown up sons or nephews. It was about honour. The fights were marshalled after a fashion, intervention taking place only if the basic rules were broken, biting being especially frowned upon. The bigger fights had enormous sums of money wagered on the outcome and attracted large crowds. He learned that the venues were never publicised in advance, with arrangements made only in the last moments, because if the police found out they would shut them down. A few of the fighters were clearly legends among the community, but none of them matched the man he was looking for, so he found himself scanning the faces of the people in the crowds. No one bore any resemblance to the E-Fit. No one came close.

  He pulled a few strings, someone who owed him a favour, who knew someone else. That evening, he got a call back; he was to meet a fighter Sunday lunchtime, at a pub in Tilbury.

  Chapter 60

  Melissa dressed in his favourite costume, the white sequined gown and examined the fit in the mirror, smoothing it down, adjusting its lines. It would be off in a while, but still, she liked to look authentic. She rehearsed the skippy, happy moves that came just before the end of her singing routine. She practised it to perfection.

  The white telephone rang. She jumped at the sound. It was 11o'clock.

  He liked to play these stupid games. She felt apprehensive; she wasn't sure why. Something was happening that she couldn't understand, and if she wanted her life back, she couldn't do anything but go along with it.

  "Hello?" she breathed.

  "Are you ready to receive your president? I'm right outside your front door."

  She opened it. "You could have just rung the bell like anybody else would have . . ."

  He breezed in cheerfully, surveying the passageway with his mobile phone; he pretended to be sweeping for hidden bugging devices. He grinned at her. "But I'm not just anybody else, am I?" He had already removed his jacket. His face glowed red with the flush of Viagra.

  "No, Jack, there's no one else quite like you . . ." she dimmed the lights." Happy birthday, by the way . . ."

  "And there I was thinking you'd forgotten . . ." He was now lying on the bed naked, apart from a pair of black socks.

  She slinked toward him, beginning his song . . .

  Chapter 61

  The caller finalised his plans. He had spent the past week observing the house at random times. The girl was living on her own, which was perfect because although she was only a pawn in his game, she was also exactly his type and lived in exactly the right kind of place, somewhere easy to get into. It had no burglar alarm; it also backed directly onto a park, which proved to be good for covert nighttime observation, as well as for an alternate escape route – if needed.

  The night before, something happened that almost changed his plans. As he approached the rear of her house from the darkness of the park, he saw someone else slipping over her back fence. The Peeping Tom, from outside the blonde's place!

  He observed from behind the fence standing on tiptoes. The other man spied in on her through the windows, following her as she moved from room to room. After two hours, the lights downstairs turned off one by one until finally the house was in darkness. A moment later, a light from within set the upstairs windows dimly aglow.

  When the Peeper finally stole away, he'd worked out a place for him in his plans.

  He followed him home.

  When he was sure he'd retired for the night, he broke in. He sifted through everything. These people with mobile phones that never password protect them. He smirked when he spotted the clumsy efforts to disguise PIN numbers, passwords and usernames.

  What's this, a jar of chloroform? What is this guy up to? He contemplated his next move, taking his time.

  Looking around, he found an empty bottle of vodka in the glass recycling. Quickly and carefully, he poured half the chloroform into it, then topped up the remainder in the jar with water. He moved out of the room, amazed at how fast such a small amount of vapour had affected him; he shook his head, and once he was clear of the fumes, took a deep breath.

  A rare smile touched his lips; he was pleased with how well this unexpected development fitted seamlessly into his plans. When he first saw her come jogging out of the back gate into the park, she was wearing tight Lycra leggings that revealed the shape of her legs, the clearly defined muscles rippled with latent power, and she was only cruising. Black pony tailed hair swished from side to side matching the tempo of her pace, checking her watch for the time, she set her dark eyes into a focal point in the distance, sucking in a deep breath, she upped her pace and her full lips pursed into an O shape with each exhalation.

  She was one of the stalker's Facebook friends. Her face instantly recognisable from his photographs, but the poise, the power and grace of her movement, needed witnessing in the flesh for full appreciation.

  She was a perfect fit, and now he had a scapegoat.

  He felt no guilt; the guy was a pervert anyway. There had to be dozens of photographs of women all over his place. It would be only a question of time before this Peeper raped someone. He was performing a public service. Prevention was better than cure.

  Looking back from her gate, it was a distance of three houses to the alleyway. He scooted round to the front quickly, then along the pavement, up to her front door. He rang the doorbell just to be sure no one else was there, using the sleeve of his jumper stretched over his thumb, so as not to leave any prints. There was no answer. He walked casually to the side gate, trying the thumb latch to open it, realising it was secured from the other side; he reached over and undid the bolt. Once through, he observed the property through the rear windows. The inside looked as if she'd just arrived and hadn't finished unpacking, there were half a dozen tea chests filled up to the top with items wrapped in wads of paper. From what he saw, there was no sign of another occupant.

  She was definitely alone.

  Perfect.

  Later that night, he unpacked a box of jam-jars that he'd bought from a boot-sale. Cutting a hole in one of the screw-down tin lids, he passed a flexible breather pipe through it and taping it all round with duct tape for an airtight seal, he fitted a mask to the other end and taped that to the pipe as well. He would reuse the lid because it would fit any of the jars in the box.

  Chapter 62

  Reaching over the top of the gate, feeling for the catch, the caller quietly slid the bolt back and slipped undetected into her back garden.

  He squatted in the pool of shadow under a tree, and gripping the corner of his jacket raised it like a dark wing to light a cigarette under. His face flared yellow for a second. He blinked and glanced up at the moon. It looked red and otherworldly; he rubbed his eyes. Its appearance didn't change.

  He thought it might be an omen, a warning of danger ahead.

  It took another half-hour before the lights began switching off, room by room. The last ones were upstairs, the bedroom and bathroom, he guessed. When all the lights were out, he dressed for the job. Putting on his paper boiler suit and over shoes, he taped the joints to the trousers, to stop them coming off and put on his latex gloves. He pulled up the hood, tightening the draw cord, and then fixed his mask in place. Advancing in the shadow cast by the high fence, he crossed the last few feet and paused by the house to look around. He listened up close to the windowpane and satisfied no one was moving around
inside, scored the glass with a cutter, using masking tape to prevent any fragments falling noisily onto the ground. He popped the leaded pane with his elbow. A few moments later, he was inside. A large railway style clock on the kitchen wall told him it was just before midnight.

  All the lights were out; he navigated his way up to the base of the stairs; the coin-sized beam of his penlight generated a sufficient spill of light to enable him to avoid obstacles like chairs and discarded shoes. He ascended the staircase to the top landing. With all the doors shut, he was reliant on his inner compass to confirm that the door on his far right, corresponded with the last light he'd seen turned off. He moved close to it and listened at the hairline gap where the door met the frame. He heard the sound of regular, deep breathing. Two long minutes passed and the first gentle rumblings of snoring began. Once he was sure she was asleep; he took a small bottle of liquid from his pocket. He caught a whiff of its sweet, seductive odour as he unscrewed the lid, surprised that even that small exposure, had snatched his breath away. He poured a measure of the solution onto the wadding, folded it and silently opened the door. He made a point of waking her just as the wad covered her nose and mouth.

  Her eyes snapped open with sleepy surprise, immediately followed by wide-eyed fear, a futile struggle, momentary disbelief when she finally registered what was happening . . . then she succumbed to blissful unconsciousness.

  He was already hard, and he salivated as he fitted the condom. Seconds later, she was his. The rustling of the paper suit and his own ragged breathing were the only sounds he heard.

  When he'd finished, he carefully extricated himself from her. She was still unconscious. Retreating downstairs back to the kitchen, he unscrewed the lid from the makeshift delivery apparatus, leaving the jar on the side in the kitchen.

  Once back outside in the garden, he slit the tape from the overshoes, removed the paper suit and gloves and put all of it inside the bin bag. He knotted it tightly.

  Crossing the park to the far end in the darkness, and checking all round to make sure he was unobserved, he stopped to hide the bag, tucking it right in underneath a timber bridge that crossed over a deep water-filled ditch.

  He climbed the park fence, silently dropping down on the other side; he made his way down the alley, back to where he'd left the car, four hundred yards further up the road.

  Chapter 63

  The telephone rang, insistently edging its way into his consciousness. At first it fitted with the dream he was having, he even interrupted the dream conversation to say. "I must get that . . ."

  In a sleepy daze, he rolled over onto his side and answered the phone.

  "Tanner," he mumbled.

  It was Kennedy. "Sorry to disturb, but I need you to report to an incident in Blake Street, number 27 . . . Are you listening?"

  "Yes, I am," he said, as he opened his eyes wide, trying to blink away the cobwebs of sleep.

  "Good, only I couldn't hear anything. It's overlooking the park, not far from your place."

  "What's this all about, sir?"

  "Number 27 Blake Street," he repeated. "A woman was raped tonight in her own home by some freak wearing a gasmask."

  He looked at his watch. 1:29 a.m. Oh, great!

  He arrived at the scene twenty minutes later. An ambulance was parked outside on the driveway. Although the curtains were drawn, half a dozen shadowy silhouettes were clearly backlit, moving around purposefully.

  The front door opened unexpectedly; Tanner stepped to one side, allowing the exiting paramedics to pass. They carried the victim out on a stretcher, covered with a blanket up to her chin, an oxygen mask over her mouth and nose. She didn't look much older than his daughter. He watched as they loaded her into the back of the ambulance.

  "This is going to be a long night," he muttered wearily.

  Chapter 64

  Tanner almost overslept. Some internal mechanism dragged him into consciousness and sifting dreamily through his jumbled thoughts; one came crashing to the fore. It's Sunday.

  The double helping of coffee he drank before he left, did little to help him shrug off the sleepiness that trawled on his senses, it was a state that evaporated the instant he walked into the public bar. At least half the windows had been smashed and then subsequently boarded over. The darkness contrasted sharply with the brightness outside. He guessed the landlord had given up putting glass back in. His eyesight now adjusted to the dim light, he scanned the room. All eyes were on him.

  Look out for a dark-haired guy about thirty, wearing a gold belcher chain with a golden boxing gloves charm hanging down. At least two other men fitted the bill, but his man had been looking out for him. Pulling him over to the bar, the boxer said, "Are you looking for me, boy?" Introducing himself as the writer Ed Quinn, he shook hands with the middleweight. His name was Paul Kelly; he looked far heavier than his fighting weight, but that wasn't uncommon. He knew enough to know that these guys often blew up in weight between fights, and then trained it off a few weeks before the next one.

  Kelly's face bronzed from a life of working outdoors, had stubbly five o'clock shadow on his high flat cheeks, and hair shaven at the back and sides, leaving a crown of longer dark hair slicked back and oily looking. His features were relatively unmarked. A clever fighter, he thought.

  "So you're writing about the greatest knuckle fighters are you? Will I be in it, boy?"

  "If you are a great fighter, you can be sure of it!" Tanner joked.

  "Do you want to be finding out?" Kelly looked serious as he indicated the door.

  Suddenly, he felt vulnerable; with half a dozen rough looking men now watching them, Tanner rested his hands on the bar.

  Kelly put his big hand over one of them and squeezed. "Don't worry, boy, I'm joshing with you!"

  Tanner found it vaguely unsettling that although he was at least ten years older than Kelly, he insisted on calling him 'boy'. They shared an uneasy few pints, with only stilted conversation going on between them, and then Kelly offered to put him in touch with a well-respected elder, a twice crowned, former King of The Gipsies, Archie Brooks.

  Introducing himself to Brooks as Edward Quinn, he elaborated on what he was looking for, old photographs, stories and interviews if possible.

  Brooks agreed to meet him at his house that evening.

  Archie Brooks' house was like a static caravan, all luxury red tasselled velvet cushions, expensive ornaments and mementoes of a life on the road.

  "Too old for the travelling," he explained. "I been here fifteen year now … don't like it, but the bones creak these days in cold winters, so here I am, stopped off coolin' my heels for a while, before the next big journey up the stairs," he said, and then rolled his eyes heavenward. "If he'll take me . . ." he said, with a wry smile.

  'Quinn' interviewed him, getting his opinion on who the greatest ever gipsy champion was, they spoke about what these men looked like, their fighting styles, how they fought. Brooks talked him through what seemed like hundreds of rounds.

  "You know unless you've been a part of it, you don't know what it's like to carry on when every part of you is busted up and bleeding, 'cos you never quit. People like me . . . you can't quit. It's all about honour. I never made money like they do today and the hands . . . sweet Mary . . ." He held them aloft, examining them with pride. The knuckles were deformed; the fingers gnarled like tree roots. "They used to pickle the hands in vinegar in those days . . . did it me self. Used to sit there, I did, with each hand sunk in a jar o' the stuff both sides o' me, for hours on end. Used to smell like a chip shop, but made the skin like boot leather, see."

  Eventually, he produced a box and took the lid off. He sifted through an old collection of photographs; there were hundreds, all of them well-thumbed. He was careful to keep them in order, they ran through faded sepia, to black and white, the newest were coloured ones, and they came in all sizes, like the men they portrayed.

  "Them old 'uns were my father's - well, would you look at that," he said, peeling
a photo that had stuck to the back of another one. "I thought I'd lost this one," his face lit up, as he took in all the faces once more. "This is a group of past champions, taken at a big fight gathering in Plymouth a few years back. Every single one o' them was a champion, in the thirty years before the photo."

  "There are only seventeen of them," Tanner remarked.

  "Aye, a few are dead, a handful has won more than once and this one here…" He tapped his finger on the fighter, who although older than the E-Fit, resembled the man he was looking for. "He's won it three times."

  Tanner pointed at each of them in turn, asking the names of each of them, carefully noting them down. He was only interested in the three time champion though, Martin 'The Boiler man' Shaw.

  He whistled in appreciation. "Three times . . . that's quite an achievement."

  "Aye, it is that. The first time he took it; he was just a young man … then he just disappeared for ten years. Come back, won it again, held it for two years. He quit before some fresh young bull took him down . . . not like most of 'em, never knowing when to stop. He stood down from the fighting. He's unreliable, anyway, can't hardly find him when you want him. You know; he still fights occasionally, when the urge takes him, and he has a terrible temper that one - he'd suddenly boil up, then he'd let loose."

  Tanner looked closer at the photograph, squinting, then at Brooks. "Isn't that you Archie, stood right next to him in the photo there?"

  "Aye, we were stood more or less in the order we held the titles. He took it off me." He rubbed his chin at the memory. "I was in me forties, never been beat, not fair and square at any rate," he pulled his top lip up and back with the crook of his forefinger, revealing the missing teeth down the entire side of his mouth. "See that - got jumped by ten of 'em, dropped four before someone swung a bat on me . . . Woke up in hospital, so I did." He sighed deeply. "There was no need for it, you know what I mean? It's not how real men deal with things." He twisted each of the rings on his fingers, so the fronts of all faced forwards. "Anyways, when he came along, he took everything I threw at him, for the first time in me life I felt the age creeping up on me. He never threw ten shots to land one; he never wasted the power, unless he knew it was landing. He served me with a left that shook me all the way down to me boots, he never says a word, not like some, talking' at you all the time, before the fight, during the fight – no, not him. Never says a word, just boils up red with the rage. Now I'm old, I don't mind admitting… That's one of the frightingest [sic] things about him - you don't know what he's thinking - only sound he makes is Pum! Pum! Pum!" The old man was popping off shots to demonstrate, the look on his face, mean. "Getting more power that way, punching, punching, punching, every one a stick o' dynamite - murderous - I'd never lie down. Even now, you'd have to put me down and the only way to stop me is to knock me sparko, you know what I mean? I woke up in the middle o' next week! The boys told me he caught me with three punches, the one that shook me, I remember, but the other two . . . I never saw them coming."