The Turnaround

by Mark Timlin

‘You know.’

  ‘Spit it out, Nick,’ she said, and there was an anger and hardness in her voice I’d never heard before. ‘Did they rape us? Is that what you’re asking? Did they interfere with our maidenly honour? Is that what you’re so worried about?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘No. But one of them talked about it. If you didn’t come across with what they wanted.’

  ‘Which one?’ I asked.’

  ‘You’re pathetic,’ she spat.

  ‘Which one?’ I repeated. ‘Just tell me.’

  ‘I see,’ she said. ‘You’ve got it all worked out, haven’t you? You’re going to go and hurt him. Fuck what happened to your daughter. Just so that your honour’s satisfied. Your sorry little macho pose is safe. Pathetic! Jesus, I don’t know why I ever bothered with you.’

  ‘Just tell me, Fiona,’ I said. ‘I want to know.’

  She sighed. ‘The small one in the car just now, with the hooded top,’ she said. ‘Satisfied?’

  ‘Fine,’ I said. I turned round and leaned over into the back. ‘Were you frightened?’ I asked Judith. Stupid question.

  ‘Yes, I was.’

  ‘I’m sorry. It was my fault.’

  She looked at me for the first time. ‘No, it wasn’t, Daddy.’

  Christ! After all she’d been through, she could still say that. I felt ashamed; a great wave of shame, like a pain in my gut, and a hot flush of anger for the men who’d put her through such an ordeal.

  ‘It was because of me,’ I said.

  ‘That doesn’t make it your fault.’

  ‘That’s a matter of opinion, sweetheart.’

  ‘You can say that again,’ said Fiona.

  I started the car. ‘I’ll take you home.’

  ‘And?’ said Fiona.

  ‘I’ll come in and see that you’re safe. Then I’m going out again for a bit.’

  ‘Are you fucking serious?’ said Fiona.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Aren’t you going to stay with us?’ she asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘You’re just going to leave us?’

  I didn’t say anything.

  ‘You’re a bastard, Sharman. We need you. Judith needs you.’

  ‘I know. I’ll be back later.’

  ‘Later is too late for me.’

  ‘Judith?’ I said, looking over my shoulder.

  She sat in the back, little and white-faced and hunched up like an old woman. I felt that pain in my gut again. ‘Judith?’ I said again.

  She looked at me. ‘You will come?’

  ‘Of course,’ I said.

  ‘I’ll be fine,’ she said.

  ‘Good girl,’ I said. Patronising git.

  Fiona said something ugly under her breath. I didn’t blame her.

  ‘I’ll be back tonight,’ I said. Or never, I thought. Maybe that would be best for all concerned.

  ‘When?’ asked Fiona.

  ‘Who knows?’ I said. ‘I’ll be gone for a few hours. No longer.’

  ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘I’m going to see Webb. The bloke who hired me in the first place.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Who knows?’ I lied.

  ‘You’re going after those men, aren’t you?’

  I shrugged.

  ‘You’ll get us all killed.’

  I shrugged again, and put the car into gear and pulled out of the parking space, down the hill and into the main road. We were back in The Oval within ten minutes.

  I went up to the flat with them. I asked what had happened, how Keogan and his crew had got them, but neither of them answered so I left it.

  The flat was neat and tidy so I assumed that it had been outside. I wondered where Fiona’s car was, but didn’t ask. It would all come out in time, or it wouldn’t.

  All they would tell me was that there had been four of them: Keogan, Lenny, Hooded Sweat Shirt, and the one who’d been the passenger in the Volvo. That was really all I needed to know. We went into the kitchen and I put the kettle on and made tea. No one drank any.

  It was that kind of situation.

  I asked Judith if she wanted to go to bed.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I want to stay with you.’

  ‘Do you want a bath?’

  She shook her head. ‘Not now.’

  I got a couple of beers out of the fridge and gave one to Fiona. I offered Judith orange juice. She shook her head again. We sat together in that silent kitchen for an hour. Then Fiona went and ran a bath.

  ‘When are you going out?’ said Judith when she had gone.

  I looked at my watch. It was almost eight. ‘Soon,’ I said.

  ‘You promise you’ll come back?’

  ‘I will,’ I said.

  Fiona was in the bathroom for half an hour. She came back in a bathrobe. ‘Your turn,’ she said to Judith. ‘The water’s just the way you like it. Lots of bubbles.’

  Judith looked at each of us. ‘You won’t go until I come back, Daddy, will you?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  She left the room.

  ‘Another beer?’ I said to Fiona.

  ‘Why not?’

  I got two more out of the fridge. I didn’t know what to say. ‘I screwed up,’ I said.

  ‘That’s nothing new.’

  ‘I’ll try and make up for it.’

  ‘Don’t tell me. Tell Judith.’

  ‘You don’t mind her staying here?’

  ‘She’s not going with you tonight, that’s for sure.’

  ‘I will be back.’

  ‘Quite frankly, Nick, I couldn’t care less.’ She called me Nick again.

  We didn’t speak again.

  Judith came back twenty minutes later.

  ‘I’d better be going soon,’ I said.

  ‘Don’t let us keep you,’ said Fiona.

  I got up and went to Judith. This time she held me tightly. ‘I won’t be long, darling,’ I said.

  I left then. I’d stayed longer than I’d meant to. The fact is I didn’t want to go at all. Would you?

  I got to James Webb’s house at 9.45 and told him what had happened. Everything I knew. We left at 11.00. I took the shotgun from under the back seat of the Granada. He drove us in his Daimler.

  36

  We turned off the A22 just past East Grinstead on to the B2110. By then I could have done the journey blindfold. I showed Webb the entrance to the lane. He drove on for a couple of hundred yards until there was a place to pull off the road. He killed the lights and the engine. I collected the shotgun and got out of the car. It was chilly and quiet. There wasn’t any other traffic on the secondary road.

  ‘Come on,’ I said. ‘It’s just over that field. And keep quiet. They might have somebody on watch.’

  ‘All right,’ he said. ‘I want these bastards as badly as you do, you know.’

  ‘Sorry, Jim,’ I said. ‘I forgot.’ I pumped a round into the breech of the gun as we walked across the damp blacktop, over the fence and through the trees. The ground was soft underfoot but the moon was high and the way was clear. Within minutes we were at the fence that surrounded the garden. The front of the cottage was in darkness. We walked around to the back and I saw a single chink of light at the French windows. We climbed over the low fence and crept past the shed and across the wilderness that was the garden. There was no sign of anyone outside. Trust, you see. Or, more likely, greed.

  Our feet were silent on the paving of the patio and I peered through the glass. There was a gap where the curtains hadn’t been drawn properly and I could see one corner of the living room. Keogan was sitting on one of the straight-backed chairs, counting out a big pile of money on to the coffee table in front of the fireplace. The gun he’d held in the car was lying on the table in front of him. Lenny was standing behind him.

  I couldn’t see anyone else in the room. The other two had to be somewhere else in the cottage.

  ‘I’m going in,’ I hissed in Webb’s ear. ‘Stay cool, Jim.’ />
  He wanted to say something to me, but I couldn’t be bothered to start a conversation. I put my finger to my lips, shook my head and moved him away from the window. It was too late now. I leant my back against the wall, counted to three, and tried to get my mind right,.

  I thought of Wanda, and what she’d said to me on her deathbed. I thought of the Kellermans blown to pieces in their comfortable house. I thought of Stan McKilkenney as he must have felt with a double-barrelled shotgun in his mouth as Lenny pulled the triggers, and Natalie Hooper as she inserted the sharp, cold blade of the razor into the soft, warm flesh of her wrist.

  I thought of Fiona and Judith, caught up in a nightmare not of their own making, and I concentrated my entire being on the gun in my hands.

  I spun round and blew the French windows to hell and gone.

  The glass blew inwards with a satisfying crash and the curtains billowed and shredded and caught fire. I stepped through the frame and slapped the material out of the way.

  Lenny stood like a statue in the middle of the room, his hands full of bank notes. I worked the action of the Savage, and blew a gaping hole in his stomach. He hit the wall hard and stood looking down at his guts smoking and running down the front of his trousers like wet, scarlet snakes. He dropped the money and tried to push some of the bloody bits back, but lost his balance and fell forward hard on to his face and lay quiet. I pumped another shell into the chamber of the shotgun. Keogan looked at the gun on the table.

  ‘Go ahead,’ I said. My voice sounded strange through ringing ears. He hesitated. ‘Or don’t,’ I said. And I shot him in the chest anyway, and tumbled him and the chair he was sitting in across the room. The room was full of smoke and the smell of gunpowder and the stink of blood and flesh, suddenly and violently exposed to the air. I looked round. James Webb was standing in the ruins of the window frame. I chambered another round, then took a handful of cartridges from my pocket and replaced the shells I’d used. Then I went looking for the other two.

  One of them was coming up the stairs from the cellar. He’d been the passenger in the Volvo. He was young and stupid-looking, but not for long. He was dead-looking before he knew it. I pumped the shotgun’s action again, and looked down the stairs for the last of them, the one in the hooded sweat shirt who had frightened Judith so much. Nothing. All at once I heard footsteps on the stairs and the sound of a scuffle from the rear of the house. I turned back out of the kitchen and ran down the hall. I heard Webb shout: ‘I’ve got him,’ and I ran into the back room. It was carnage in there. Webb was holding the last man in an arm lock. ‘Let him go,’ I said.

  He did as he was told. ‘Step back,’ I said again. Webb did as he was told again. I held the Savage in one hand and stuck the barrel under the fourth man’s chin. He was sweating and shaking. ‘Leave it out,’ he said, almost choking.

  ‘No,’ I said back. ‘You leave it out.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You’re the one who likes to kill little boys and put it to little girls,’ I said.

  ‘No! It wasn’t me. It was them,’ he said desperately, pointing at the bodies on the floor.

  ‘Yes, it was,’ I said. ‘And now I’m putting it to you. How does it feel?’

  He tried to turn his head away, but I slapped it back with my free hand. ‘How does it feel?’ I asked again.

  ‘I didn’t mean it,’ he said. ‘I was only joking, I swear.’

  ‘You’re quite the fucking comedian, aren’t you?’ I said. ‘Now you’re going to die laughing.’ And I pulled the trigger and blew his head clean off his shoulders. Blood and bone and brains and hair and gristle spattered the walls like impressionist art, and his headless body took two or three steps backward and fell half on and half off the sofa.

  ‘Christ,’ said Webb. ‘Christ almighty.’

  I threw the hot shotgun back through the doorway and looked at the money strewn around the place. ‘The wages of sin,’ I said.

  ‘What are we going to do?’ asked Webb.

  ‘We’ve done it,’ I said. And it felt good. But it wasn’t over yet.

  ‘Go out to the shed in the garden. There’s a can of petrol next to the generator. Bring it in here,’ I told Webb.

  ‘What?’

  ‘A can of petrol,’ I said patiently. ‘In the shed outside. Get it.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Work it out.’

  He did as he was told. I stood and waited for him in that stinking room shaking like I had a tropical disease. I looked down. My DM’S were soaked with blood and the bottoms of my faded jeans were dark with the stuff. James Webb came back with the petrol can and gave it to me. I took the top off, and splashed the petrol around the walls and furniture and over the three dead men in the room, and along the hall and into the kitchen to the fourth body by the cellar door. I went back into the room where Webb was waiting and threw the last of the petrol up the ruined curtains and out on to the patio. I took out my lighter and thumbed the flint wheel. ‘Say goodbye, Jim,’ I said.

  He said nothing, and I bent down and put the flame of the lighter to the pool of petrol on the patio. It caught and the fire danced along the liquid, up the curtains and into the room.

  ‘Come on,’ I said. ‘Let’s get out of here.’

  We ran along the lane and across the road to the car. As Webb pulled it away, I looked back once and saw an orange glow through the trees. I didn’t bother to look back again. We headed towards Tunbridge Wells along deserted, sodium-lit carriageways, and picked up the London road just outside the town. Neither of us said a word until we were safely on the A21 and heading north. I was the first to break the silence. ‘You can drop me off,’ I said.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘The Oval will do.’

  He nodded. ‘Got another cigarette?’ he asked. I lit two and left the pack on the dash. We didn’t speak again on the ride back.

  He stopped the car on the corner by the tube. ‘Will this do?’ he asked.

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘You don’t have to worry, you know,’ he said. ‘About your daughter and your friend, or yourself. I’ll take care of everything.’

  ‘Is that right, Jim?’ I said wearily.

  He nodded.

  ‘See you around then,’ I said, and got out of the car and shut the door behind me. I watched his lights fade in the direction of Clapham before I headed towards Fiona’s block. It was 2 a.m.

  The cranky lift was working, and Fiona answered the door after I’d leant on the bell for a few minutes. ‘Oh, it’s you,’ she said.

  I felt about as welcome as head lice. ‘Who were you expecting?’ I asked.

  She didn’t answer. She had been in the big bed with Judith who was still asleep. She looked at the state of my clothes.

  ‘You’ve had a busy night,’ she said coldly.

  I nodded. ‘Have I got any clean clothes here? I asked.

  ‘In the wardrobe in the bedroom. Don’t wake Judith.’ I went upstairs and found a fresh pair of jeans and a shirt. I looked at my daughter’s face on the pillow of Fiona’s bed as I left the room. She was asleep and dreaming. They didn’t look like pleasant dreams. It was my fault. I went outside and changed on the landing. I took my bloodstained clothes downstairs and put them in the garbage. Fiona made me coffee, then went back to bed without another word. I sat in the living room and watched the dawn break over London with the Colt in my hand. I didn’t sleep.

  37

  The fire at the cottage was the last item on the 5 o’clock news and each hourly bulletin after it on LBC. Fiona and Judith got up around nine. I turned off the radio. We didn’t talk much. Fiona made eggs and toast for breakfast. I didn’t eat. I was dog tired but still couldn’t sleep. At midday I went out to get a paper. Things had changed since I’d last listened to the radio. The headline in the Standard read:

  SHOTGUN MURDER BROTHER’S SUICIDE

  Man kills four then himself

  I took the paper into a pub and bought a bottle of lager and sat at
an empty table in the nearly deserted saloon bar and read the whole story. This is what it said:

  In an amazing development in the fifteen-month-old mystery of a bizarre murder in South London, James Webb (43), a company director of Cambridge Road, Crystal Palace, was found early this morning dying in his luxury car on the towpath of the Thames near Barnes Bridge, apparently from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

  Webb, a company director, was the brother of Sandra Kellerman (36), the mother of two discovered shot dead last March with her husband, carpet tycoon David Kellerman (45), and their children Toby (9) and Brian (6) at their million-pound mansion in Crown Point, South London.

  Webb was rushed to Queen Mary’s Hospital, Roehampton, but was dead on arrival according to a hospital spokesman. On the passenger seat of the car was a note. The police have not revealed the full contents, but a source said that Webb had named four men for the murders of his sister and her family, and had admitted shooting them dead earlier last night at a remote cottage near East Grinstead, and then setting fire to the building. He also indicated that the men were part of a gang who successfully executed a series of daring robberies at banks, jewellers’ and other premises in the Home Counties, over a period of several years until the death of his brother-in-law, whom he also named as leader of the gang.

  Police have declined to confirm or deny the incident, but local reports from East Grinstead indicate that the emergency services were called to a suspicious blaze that completely destroyed a building outside the village of Coleman’s Hatch in the early hours of this morning. The building has since been cordoned off and forensic experts are waiting for the ashes to cool before they can carry out a detailed search of the ruins. James Webb’s wife, Mrs Doreen Webb (39), was not at the family’s luxury £500,000 house this morning, and police say she is staying with relatives at an unspecified locale. Neighbours in the quiet, tree-lined street expressed shock and amazement at Webb’s alleged suicide.

  The piece went on with a resumé of the story of the murder in Crown Point. I folded up the paper, lit a cigarette and finished my drink. Jim had come good, like he’d promised. And all the time he’d had his gun with him, and never said a word. I went to the bar, ordered a triple brandy and raised a toast to him with it.