Head Shot
( Bob Skinner - 12 )
Quintin Jardine
Head Shot
Quintin Jardine
1
Size matters…
'I didn't appreciate how big it was, not until the very moment when he brought it out.'
She looked up into his twisted, anguished face. 'I mean I've seen that calibre of gun before,' she added, 'but I've never actually held one.'
'It's quite a cannon,' he admitted. 'I'l give you that.'
'Yes, but I'm not just talking about its weight, or its smoothness, or any physical thing, I'm talking about a sheer sense of potency; I just seemed to feel it flowing into me. It scared me, yet thrilled me, at the same time.' Her voice was matter-of-fact; he realised the depth of her hysteria and that scared him more than anything.
He threw his head back and exhaled, a great breath hissing through his teeth. He could feel the tension gripping him, bunching the muscles behind his neck, puckering the scars of battle that he had picked up over the years. That roar of anger and frustration swelled up inside him again, and again he held it back.
He gazed at the weapon as it lay at her feet; a huge old-fashioned nickel-plated automatic, which he recognised as a 45 calibre Colt, with a long black silencer fitted to the end of the barrel. 'So…' He ground out the word. 'Gripped by this sudden surge of omnipotence, you…' Again he cut himself off short. 'Is that what you're saying?'
The emotion within him seemed to bring her to her senses, or to somewhere close by; yet still, she looked at him as if he was a stranger.
'No,' she said evasively, her whisper barely audible even in that still, silent room. 'That's not how it happened. I was frightened; he was mocking me.'
'If he'd laid down the fucking gun, and you had picked it up, why were you frightened?'
There was a long pause; he felt his heart-rate rise, and a strange, cold feeling ran through him. 'Come on,' he snapped, at last, forcing her to answer.
'It was the look in his eyes; he was sneering at me. He thought he was so dominant; he was just so damn confident. He was playing with me as if I was his slave. He had me there, at his mercy, about to be kil ed and there was nothing I could do about it.'
'Did he speak?'
'Oh yes,' she said, her voice strengthening. 'He spoke, all right. He explained to me in great detail what it would do to me… after he was finished with me, that is… how the bul ets were soft-nosed with a mercury core to flatten them on impact. He didn't have to, though. I've seen how they work.'
'Too bloody right you have,' he grunted, absently.
She gave no sign of having heard him. 'Then he told me he was going to shoot me in the back of the head. It would blow my face away, he said, make a mess that would be a message as well. He said that he wished he could be there when they found me.'
She took a deep breath. 'He laughed at the thought of it. That's how sure he was of himself; he laughed as he got down on me, and then he put it on the floor as he undid himself, he laid it right beside my face. He invited me to look at the means of my own destruction, to understand it, to feel its power. I remember thinking he was crazy, and looking at him, too scared really to understand what he was saying. He was smiling, all the time smiling. "Don't worry," he said, when he was almost ready.
"The best is yet to come."
'But he had got it wrong. He thought I couldn't move, but when both his hands were busy, when he was…' She paused for breath. 'I made a grab for it. I almost dropped it: that's how badly I was shaking, that's how frightened I was. But I managed to keep hold of it, and to put it up against his head, and to tell him to get off me.'
He looked down at her, waiting for her to finish. She was still perched on the edge of her seat, her naked body shining silver in a shaft of moonlight that flowed through a narrow gap in the curtains.
'And then… okay, I suppose you could be right… then, I felt it: I felt the power that it gave me, power over him for a change. My hands had stopped shaking, completely. I could hold the gun steady. I saw the safety catch on the side, and I saw that it was off.
'He stopped laughing then. I pointed it at him and it was his turn to be terrified. And yes, you're right, I wasn't frightened at al; not by then. I just felt so angry, so tremendously, overpoweringly angry, at what he'd done to me, and been going to do. I couldn't stop myself; I didn't want to stop myself, and so…'
He finished for her. '… You blew his fucking head off. You had him under control, but you fucking well shot him.'
Suddenly he bent and picked up the great gun from the floor; releasing the magazine, checking it, then slipping it back into its housing in the butt.
He knelt down beside the body, feeling the queasiness which always overtook him when he confronted death, close up. He was glad that he had switched off the light as he looked at the leavings of the man, lying face up on the floor, in a dark puddle that had soaked into the rug on which he had fal en. 'He wasn't kidding about the ammo,' he said. 'You don't use this stuff to inflict flesh wounds. Shoot someone in the arm with one of these shells and you'll blow it right off.' He glanced over his shoulder, back towards her.
'You made a good job of it,' he said. 'You shot him right in the face; took out his right eye and the bridge of his nose. No, this bastard wil not be bothering you again.'
He saw a shiver run through her shoulders; he knew that soon, she would need sedation.
'This leaves us with only one smal problem,' he continued.
'What's that?' she whispered.
'What the hell are we going to do with him?'
The skul 's empty eye-sockets seemed to be looking up at him from the white card, which the cabin attendant had given him. 'Welcome to Malaysia,' he murmured.
A significant part of Bob Skinner's police career had been spent pursuing the drug dealers who had threatened the social fabric of Edinburgh, the city that lay at the heart of his force's territory. The bigger they were, the more he hated them, with his strongest venom being reserved for those who peddled the most addictive substances in the most vulnerable areas, the places where the poverty trap was at its tightest, and where the perceived respite offered by spoon, flame and needle was, for some, an irresistible lure.
The heavier the sentences the Scottish High Court had handed down to those convicted, the wider had been his smile. But even he thought that the Pacific countries were going too far in imposing the ultimate penalty on the peddlers. At the same time, he recognised that much of the global supply of hard drugs originated in the area, and that at least the regional governments were showing the rest of the world that they took the problem seriously.
His difficulty with their policy was that, invariably, the people who fell through the trapdoor were the couriers, the mules, the foot soldiers, but never the generals. In any war, the great majority of the casualties come from the Other Ranks; in the global battle against narcotics the story was just the same.
The Deputy Chief Constable planned to say as much in his speech to the plenary session of the international conference at which he was representing the police service in Scotland. He knew that his view would not be popular with his Malaysian hosts, but that would not deter him from putting it forward.
'They spell it out, sir, don't they,' said Detective Chief Inspector Mary Chambers. 'A red skul and crossbones and "Death penalty for drug trafficking", stamped on your landing card. That's a bit unnecessary, heading in this direction, do you not think? There can't be a hell of a lot of smack smuggled from Heathrow to the Far East.'
Skinner glanced sideways at her, taking in the plain, square face, the forehead defined by close-cut dark hair which offered not a hint of personal vanity. 'She looks more like a copper than any bloke I've ever seen,' An
dy Martin had said after her interview, and, the DCC had conceded, he had been right.
'Maybe not,' he agreed, 'but a lot of the traffic into Kuala Lumpur stops over at other airports in the region where consignments might be loaded.'
'I hadn't thought of that, I suppose.' The woman spoke with a pronounced Glasgow twang, a voice with muscles in it; her accent was not unlike Skinner's Lanarkshire dialect, but it was rawer, not dimmed as his had been by twenty years of East of Scotland life.
'I understand that,' he said. 'You've worked at the sharp end of the business until now, just as I did, once upon a time. Operating in Strathclyde you haven't had the bloody time to consider the global aspects of the trade; you've been too busy dealing with the problems on the streets. But believe me, it helps to have that broader understanding.
The supply chains are long, but always they're interlinked, from the poppy to the needle. The more of us who share our knowledge and experience, the better chance we have of tracing each one right back to source and shutting it down for good.'
'Is that why you brought me with you on this trip? Not to learn; just to tell tales about pinching pushers in Paisley?'
He looked at her, laughing at her boldness. 'Why I brought you? It's why I recruited you in the first place. Did you think I brought you through to Edinburgh just on Wil ie Haggerty's say-so? Hell, no. I've been watching you since well before he was appointed to our command corridor.'
'Is that so?' She looked surprised. 'I just assumed that ACC Haggerty had put a word in for me.'
'Oh, don't get me wrong,' said Skinner, quickly, 'he did. But only after I asked him about you.'
Chambers frowned. 'And it was as easy as that, was it?' she mused.
'What? You asking if Strathclyde were happy to let you go?'
'Well…'
'Not a bit of it, Mary, I promise you. Your chief was pissed off; make no mistake about that. But I'm not without clout, and I'm playing a long game just now.'
'What do you mean?' she asked.
'You'l find out, when it's time,' he answered, intriguingly. 'But not just yet.'
'Cabin crew, seats for landing.' The captain's instruction through the small loudspeaker above their heads seemed to emphasise that all discussion was at an end.
2
PC Charlie Johnston hated this sort of night-shift work; sure, his colleagues told him he was daft, complaining about the cushiest job of them all, but he couldn't help it. He knew his limitations as a copper, yet he was never happy unless he was in a position to explore them. In his case that meant crowd control at football matches; being on patrol in shopping malls to deter and when necessary pursue thieves, or to come down on the occasional wee toe-rags who thought it was funny to harass and alarm respectable folks.
What he did not like was being sat on his arse in a decrepit sub office like Oxgangs for hours on end, catching cal s, which in practice rarely came in, dealing with theoretical evil-doers who were, in practice, tucked up in bed. It was not unusual for night-watch guys to spend their entire shift reading the Evening News, and listening to the insomniacs' programmes on Radio Forth, envying the disc-jockeys for the fact that at least they had someone to talk to, envying the guys and girls in their panda cars, just for the fact that they were out there. No, what Charlie did not like was sheer bloody boredom.
Yet, when the phone rang, at first he failed to hear it. He was on the verge of solving a tricky clue in the Sunday Express crossword… or, at least, he thought he was. It sounded four times before it made its way through to his consciousness. He scowled, and picked it up. 'Oxgangs police office,' he barked.
'Hello there,' said a female voice. 'Sorry to wake you.'
'That's okay, dear,' he responded, his weariness in contrast with her chirpiness. 'I was away for a hit and a miss.'
'Lucky it wasn't a day and a night. Listen, this is Nicola Ford; I'm a paramedic, and I'm at the doctor's surgery just down the road from your station. There's a dead man here.'
Johnston frowned. 'Aye, wel, that happens. Doesn't it?'
'Not in places like this, in the middle of the night, it doesn't.
Surgeries are usual y closed at two in the morning. Our night time call-outs are either to houses, pub fights or road accidents. This man's had a heart attack, here at the doctor's.'
'So? What do you want us to do about it?'
'I want your lot to attend.'
'What for? Is there no' a doctor there?'
'Yes, but this is an unusual case. DrAmritraj says the man called him at home, bypassing the normal emergency service. He was complaining of mild chest pains. The doctor says that he offered to cal an ambulance right away, but the man refused. He wanted a home visit. Normal y, Dr Amritraj would have referred him to the night service, but he says that he knew him quite well, so he went round to see him.'
Charlie Johnston stifled a yawn. 'Aye, so? How did he get to the surgery?'
'I was getting to that. The doctor says he was a bit concerned by his symptoms. He wanted to take him to A amp;E at the Royal, but the patient became agitated at the suggestion. He said that he had a phobia about hospitals and he refused point-blank to go there. The doctor has an ECG machine in his surgery, so he decided that he would take him there for a proper check-up, and that if he was having a heart attack, he'd sedate him, put him under, like, then cal us.
'The patient agreed to that and they came here, but before Dr Amritraj even got him hooked up to the ECG, he took a cardiac arrest. The doctor tried to resuscitate him; he shocked him, gave him atropine, al the usual procedures, but it was no use. So he called us to take him to the mortuary.'
'That's fine, hen, but what do you need us for? There was a doctor in attendance when the man died, so we don't need to be informed.'
'That's what DrAmritraj said, but there's the next of kin,' the paramedic answered, a little less chirpily than before. 'The man lived alone. The surgery has no other family members on its books, and no clue as to where they might be. It's your job to trace them, not ours. We can't stay here all night; we've got to shift him.'
'Aye, all right,' said Charlie. 'I'l get a panda round as soon as I can.
Haud on a minute.' He laid the phone on the counter of the office, and turned to the radio transmitter. 'Any car in the Oxgangs area, come in please,' he said, into the microphone.
There was a crackling sound. 'Aye, Charlie?' a male voice answered.
'Need an attendance at the doctor's surgery in Oxgangs Road. There's a body there, and next-of-kin needin' advised.'
'Cannae do it, man. We've got a domestic here. Bloke's thumped his wife; we're having taste arrest him.'
'What about Jenny?'
'Her car's down the bypass at a road accident.'
'Aye, okay.' He flicked the mike off, and picked up the phone.
'Listen, hen,' he said. 'Al our cars are occupied, so I'll have to come myself. I can do that; I just have to put my phone on divert and let divisional HQ know why. I'll just be a couple of minutes.'
Excited at last by the prospect of escaping from his nocturnal prison, the clerk, dispatcher and occasional jailer made his arrangements, slipped on his uniform tunic, with its utility belt, and made ready to step out into the fresh night air. As an afterthought, he took the office's Polaroid camera from the desk where it was kept.
3
He liked the spring; 'the renewal of God's promise' he called it, even though he had never been devoutly Christian. Few things appalled him more, in fact, than his country's religious right, and their active involvement in the electoral process ensured that he was an ever-present at the pol s, voting the straight Democrat ticket whatever the personal failings of its candidates.
Indeed in the previous fal he had been proud to play his part in ensuring that party kept its grip on the New York State senatorial seat, beginning in the process a career which he hoped would lead the new incumbent to the White House in her own right. How the First Gentleman would take that would be something else again, but wha
t the hell, he had had his eight years.
He approved of women in public life. Just as well. Goddammit, he thought, with a smile, with the wife and daughter I've got.
He had been an active politician himself once upon a time, forty-five and more years back, a young man not fresh from law school, but forged thereafter by bloody action in Korea. A short spell in the public defender's office in New York City had been enough to light the spark. He had seen men die in battle and had accepted it as something that came with his birthright. But the sight of one of his clients, a young black boy barely out of his teens, being dragged, screaming, to the electric chair, strapped down and virtual y burned to death, had made him physically sick on the spot.
He was elected to the State Senate and served for a total of six years, through the cold dark years when Elsenhower was president, Nixon was scheming to succeed him, and John Foster Dul es, and his spymaster brother, ruled the country. With the rise of Kennedy, friends of his from Massachusetts persuaded him to put his own political career to one side for a while, to work on the young senator's presidential campaign team. There had been a promise of national office at the first electoral opportunity, but in the immediate aftermath of the narrow triumph, his reward had been a post as second assistant attorney general, in Bobby Kennedy's team.
He and the new president's aggressive, ambitious brother were at odds from the start, and relations between them had worsened when he had discovered that the New York senatorial seat, which he had been told would be his in time, was in fact earmarked for Bobby.
And so, a mere six weeks before the fall of the elected King Arthur, he had accepted an offer to become a senior partner in what was then known as McLean and Whyte, the largest legal firm in Buffalo, in his home state. In the same month, he had made an offer of his own, one of marriage to Susannah, a young teacher he had met in Washington.
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