Serial Killers Incorporated

by Andy Remic

  ‘How are you? Are you hurt?’ said Callaghan, his voice – incredibly – steady.

  ‘I’ve been roughed up a little.’

  Callaghan frowned, bitterness flooding him. ‘What do you mean, “roughed up a little”?’

  ‘I think I’ve got a broken nose. And a snapped rib. I’m OK.’

  ‘Yeah, well I’m not. Have you still got your gun?’

  ‘Is this line secure, Callaghan?’

  ‘Good point. But hell, fuck the line. Sophie, have you still got your gun?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘If he comes back, shoot him. In the foot... or something.’

  ‘That’s not the best option. I can’t do that. I think... Cal, I’m going to come down to you. It’ll be safer that way, safer with you. Yes. Yeah that’s what I’ll do... you can protect me.’

  Callaghan stared at the phone, moving the receiver away from his face and glaring at the plastic in absolute disbelief. Get to fuck! he wanted to scream. I’ve got my own bastard problems! I’ve got a damn serial killing lunatic on my case, the police tailing me and now you go and drop this pile of steaming horse-shit in my lap! Well, thanks but no-thanks, I’m damned if I’m looking after you and your mad, gun–running gun-toting bastard of a husband as well!

  He controlled his voice. His words were clipped and to the point. ‘I think that would be a bad idea,’ he said. He could almost hear the frost over the line. Cal smiled grimly at that.

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘You know. With the shit that’s going on. And everything.’ It sounded lame. Even to his own ears. It sounded like a desertion. A deformed kid left in the woods. Kittens and a brick in a sack.

  ‘You listen, mister, don’t you be dropping me now, Callaghan!’ Sophie’s voice had risen an octave; he sensed the filament of panic there, nestling on the brink of a hysteria cliff. ‘Not when I need you! Not when we started this thing together!’

  ‘Whoa! I’m not dropping anybody. All I’m saying is that if Vladimir comes down here to look for me, it’s the most dangerous place you could possibly be. Right?’ He thought quickly. ‘Listen, go to our place in Stratford upon Avon. You’ll be safe there. Until this thing blows over. Yeah?’

  ‘Blows over?’ she snarled. ‘You’ve been watching too many fucking BBC docu–soaps! Vladimir is a Romanian gun–runner. You’ve been fucking his wife. He has found out. He wants to cut your balls off, then cut you into small pieces. It won’t just blow over like a bad storm Cal, you dickhead. It won’t just go away if you hide your head under the duvet. He set off from here four hours ago, with a boot full of guns. You think you’re ready for that? Is your police protection that fucking good?’

  She hung up.

  Callaghan stared at the receiver, at its robotic dialling drone.

  ‘Shit,’ he said, voice soft. ‘Kiss kiss. Love you too.’ He replaced the receiver, moved into the kitchen and found the largest stainless steel butcher’s knife he possessed. This was a proper knife, not the sort of knife used to chop vegetables, but the sort of knife used to gut a quarter–tonne of beef.

  He retired to his bed with his whisky.

  He won’t come, he thought.

  Nah. Not with my armed police escort outside.

  He’d have to be... crazy...

  Sophie’s words echoed in the distant halls of his memory. ‘He’s killed thirty four people. Well, thirty–four that I know about. You know how these things are. Your husband says, “I’m just popping out for the Sporting Chronicle, honey,” and comes back with a severed head in his boot.’ They laughed at the time, and drank Champagne, spilling it across fine Italian silk sheets paid for with Vladimir’s blood–money.

  Callaghan shivered at the memory.

  And took a hefty slug of the old amber fire.

  Cal was dozing, hovering over a plain of unreality halfway between sleep and wakefulness. The whisky was good in his mouth. The line of coke had calmed his mind. And the image hit him like a splash of white fire... White. Bright white. Spirals of ink–black exploding into a static image superimposed... hazy and half real. But – whereas before the image of the young girl had haunted his dreams, now it came to him and forced him awake and hung there superimposed over the scene of his darkened room...

  Cal blinked. He licked dry lips. His hand moved, touching the hardwood bedside cabinet for reassurance. It was there; solid, lacquered beneath his questing fingers. But the dream vision hung in existence like an ethereal visitation...

  The girl stood, white dress to her ankles. She held a sword, pooling blood to a carpeted floor. And behind her... behind her was – a hallway. Cal frowned. It was the hallway outside his apartment. A two–seater settee containing a man, slumped untidily, a bullet in his forehead, mouth open, slack, eyes rolled up in their sockets. Behind, just out of focus, a hazy figure was holding – a gun.

  With a start, Callaghan realised the dead man was McGuinness.

  The girl looked up, looked up into Callaghan’s eyes. She lifted her sword, with its bloody tip. She pointed at his door, her head shaking from side to side.

  ‘Son of a bitch!’

  Cal surged out of bed, the vision gone like drifting smoke. He knocked the half–empty whisky bottle over. It clunked to the carpet, rolled under the bed. He pulled on his jeans and boots, and lifted the broad–bladed kitchen knife to his cheek.

  It wasn’t real, he kept telling himself.

  A bad echo of a worse dream. It couldn’t be real! It’s just my rabid paranoia haunting me!

  Head swimming from various drugs, Cal moved through the ambient light of his apartment. He stopped by the door. Paused. No, he thought. He shook his head. This is horse-shit.

  He started to turn, but couldn’t, and hung in limbo for a few moment, cursing his paranoia.

  He grabbed the handle, opened the door on slick hinges.

  He peered out into the corridor.

  And there – yes – was McGuinness, newspaper folded on his lap, a battered paperback in one hand, head resting back against the wall. A soporific pose. It cheered Callaghan no end and he released a deep, pent–up sigh of anxiety which eased like slow-steam from between clenched teeth.

  I’m spooked, he realised. Hairline–trigger, paranoia controlled by a freaky scaled serial killer and my own ex–fucking–girlfriend and her cuckolded gun–toting husband!

  Shit. What a place to be! But things can only get better... right? Just like the song.

  He laughed silently, closing the door and turning away. You must be mad, he told himself. Life couldn’t get any more surreal, even if this was a damned movie! Yeah. He nodded. It’s all that Charlie and whisky. Turned your brain to squid–mush; turned your nightmares into a cheap production with a deranged murderer and a fruitcake bitch; filled with B–rate actors and the stereotypical scene set in a motel room! Must be a David Lynch film. Maybe Terry Gilliam.

  There came two muffled thuds. In the corridor.

  Callaghan stopped. Blinked. Frowned. Whisky residue tasted sour in his mouth.

  Fear grabbed his spine and shook him.

  He dropped his book, Callaghan realised with surging relief. Yeah! Dropped his damn paperback! Jesus, is he trying to give me a heart–attack? I’ll open the door, see the dumb bastard on his hands and knees moaning about his bad back and peppered with a fallout of donut sugar....

  Cal moved back to the doorway. Grabbed the handle. Opened it with a laugh...

  Into the shocked face of a broad–shouldered, black–bearded man in a grey pinstripe suit. The man’s eyes went wide. Callaghan’s mouth fell open. They stared at one another dumbly.

  The man lifted his hand towards Callaghan’s face, fingers clasping a long sleek pistol – with the extended barrel of a silencer... Cal moved, faster than he’d ever moved in his life, some primal instinct kicking in as his kitchen blade slashed up in a reflex blow that skimmed the man’s wrist and cut a deep line upwards from his chin, across his bulbous nose and exited with a peeled strip of flesh by his temple. For a mo
ment Callaghan stared at the man – stared at the thin line of red like a crayon mark from an angry toddler. Then the line opened, gaped a crimson diagonal mouth and blood flushed down the man’s beard as he stumbled back, crying out, crashing into his two companions who stood behind with their own weapons pointing at the floor. There came a hiss and a bullet splintered the doorframe by Callaghan’s ankle. He yelped and stumbled back, slamming the door. Shots ate the wood, disintegrating the lock. A flattened ricochet skimmed past Callaghan’s face making him duck, squinting, features a Halloween mask. A hand appeared, opening the door through splinters, and Callaghan snarled and leapt forward, his knife coming down in a savage sweep that cut deep through flesh and tendons and grated on bone, bringing a scream. Cal kicked the door closed on the half–severed hand, then turned and ran as bullets riddled the wood again, one flying past his head, another skimming his shoulder. He heard it pass, a whistle which embedded in the wall near the window with a thud and puff of plaster.

  Cal spun left into the kitchen and halted, breathing fast. Adrenaline fuelled his panic.

  Weapons! I need weapons! he thought. How many men? How many? He was assuming three – because he had seen three. But there may have been more, right? Out of sight?

  His eyes cast about, he slammed open a kitchen cupboard filled with cleaning products and grabbed the nearest bottle – bleach. He fought with the cap, sensing more than hearing the men coming towards the kitchen, and with the cap free he ran to the doorway and crouched to one side, eyes lifted, ragged breathing locked suddenly in stasis...

  waiting...

  A gun appeared... followed by a carefully advancing figure. Cal speared his knife into the man’s shin, and felt the blade twist in his grip as it slid through flesh and glanced off bone. The hitman grunted and Cal reared, squeezing the bleach into his face – into his eyes. The assassin screamed, dropping his gun and stumbling back clawing himself. Cal dropped the bleach, grabbed the silenced pistol and stood, panting, wondering what to do next. Taking a deep breath, he moved into the corridor where shadows flashed and he pulled the pistol’s trigger. Bullets hissed and spat.

  The scene was unreal. A movie on a Big Screen.

  Cal didn’t feel part of it. He felt detached.

  A ghost.

  Bullets whined down the corridor. Callaghan heard the soggy thud of metal in flesh. He ran, felt a bullet skim his earlobe and the shock jerked him kicking into reality. A man loomed before him and Cal shot him in the face, then was out, spinning into the hallway, slipping, skidding, and running. He glanced at McGuinness as he sprinted past, slumped on the settee, eyes rolled back in their sockets, gunshot to the forehead. Callaghan reached the lift. Glanced back. He looked down at the gun in his trembling fingers. It was cold and hard and alien.

  One of the men stepped from Callaghan’s apartment, clutching his wounded wrist, an evil glare eating his face like leprosy. Callaghan lifted his gun but the man did not flinch, did not run for cover; instead, he lifted his own weapon with steel eyes and fired –

  A bullet clipped the wood to the left of Callaghan’s head. Cal pulled the trigger, and bullets smashed down the hallway, slamming off to the bulky man’s right. Another bullet spat plaster at Cal. He blinked, not daring to breathe. More discharged shots bucked the weapon in his hand. Most missed, but one caught the man high in the chest, smashing his collarbone and exiting in a shower of gore which decorated the wall.

  The man stumbled back, then down to one knee.

  Callaghan carried on firing and bullets whined, impacted with slaps, until there came the deadman’s click of an empty chamber. He dropped the weapon in horror. Watched his wounded attacker pitch forward on his face.

  ‘Come on,’ muttered Cal, willing the lift to arrive.

  The lift pinged, and Cal leapt backwards into the welcoming cube; he stabbed at the button as three men appeared at his apartment doorway. One bore a face sliced diagonally open, and was holding the skin together with blood–slick fingers. The second had streaming, watering eyes, inflamed skin and a scowl reminiscent of murder. The third carried...

  An Uzi.

  ‘Bitch,’ hissed Callaghan as the lift doors closed and the Uzi rattled. Bullets howled. Callaghan watched impact dents appear in front of his face in rapid succession... and then he was descending, bloody knife in one hand, eyes wide with fear and confusion.

  What do I do know?

  What the fuck do I do now?

  Run, came the simple, only reply.

  Run for your life...

  He stumbled into the foyer, where chatter turned to silence as the clutter of people stared first at the knife, then at Callaghan’s face. He charged and the crowd scattered – giving him a clear path.

  Outside, he inhaled cold dockland air. Glanced left and right. He ran on, cutting past various pubs with areas set out with chairs and tables. Business was quiet on this late evening. Cal veered left, over the grey bridge of tubular steel sections and tensioned support wires.

  He heard a whine, and a hiss. Something zipped close by.

  Cal lowered his head and pumped his arms, thundering over the bridge and bearing right, pain searing his chest as the sprint threatened him with a legacy of hedonism.

  He pushed on, heart screaming.

  People stared at him. Men and women. They scrambled to get out of his path. He ignored them all. He sprinted up steps, paused, wheezing, to glance back. Three men were following. They were joined by another two, all in dark suits, one openly brandishing the Uzi sub–machine gun.

  ‘This can’t be happening! Where are the police? Where’s my fucking protection?’

  He ran on, chest on fire.

  The lock–up, he realised. Grab a bike. Yeah, try and catch a 186mph GSXR Thousand, you bastards!

  He ran into Canary Wharf’s shopping precinct; up escalators and through onto another bridge heading for rows of quayside houses beside the Britannia International. Sweat coursed his body. The knife was lead in his grip but he didn't dare release it; it was his lifeline. He glanced back again...

  The men were still following.

  ‘Shit. Shit!’

  Pain throbbed through him. Muscles burned. Bones ached. His chest screeched in pure agony. Fire ruptured his lungs. The air itself seemed filled with toxic acid.

  Callaghan pushed himself on.

  I wish I’d carried on at the gym, he thought.

  Wish I’d just exercised – period!

  He ran. Ran and ran and ran. The knife was heavy in his fist; not just the weight of metal, but the weight of guilt. He had cut somebody. Opened flesh as easy as baked fish on a marble chopping block. And the gun. The bullets! He had shot a man in the face... Jesus Christ! And another in the chest!

  Cal shuddered. Nausea swept him.

  But still he ran.

  He ran for his life.

  Strangely, there was no security on the underground lock–up. Cal sprinted down the concrete ramp, fumbling with keys even as stars of exhaustion flickered before his eyes, over-exertion threatening to drop him. His breathing was a fist in his lungs. His leg muscles filled with marbles.

  He dropped to a crouch, glancing left and right. The roller–shutters rattled up and he smashed the light–switch. Strip–light flickered. His collection of bikes gleamed.

  Cal ran to the Suzuki, grabbed a jacket and helmet, fumbled the key into the ignition. It wouldn’t fit. The key was rubber. Then plasticine. This simple physical act seemed to take an eternity. ‘Get in there you bitch, get in!’ he cursed, and finally the key slid home with a perfect mating. Cal kicked his leg over the bike, fired the engine and revved the bike hard. Smoke poured from exhaust.

  Lights flickered. Cal blinked.

  He heard an engine revving high and hard outside, a car pushed to extremes. Lights swept the wall. A huge black car appeared across the opening to the lock–up, sweeping around in a savage arc, tyres locked, rubber–smoke filling the air.

  Doors slammed. Cal rested his knife on the bike’s broad
tank, pulled on his helmet, and stared with base animal fear at the lock–up’s entrance. A man appeared wearing a black suit. He was large, broad–shouldered and handsome. He was smiling.

  The last time Callaghan had seen him, he had been staring at the man’s feet. On a balcony. In Glasgow. Whilst he amiably considered falling to his death. Naked.

  ‘Vladimir,’ he hissed through the helmet’s visor.

  Vlad lifted his hand, palm out, as if trying to pacify Callaghan. Men stumbled to a halt outside the lock–up. There were many. Cal caught again the glimpse of a face sliced with a diagonal cut. A symbol of savagery. The injured man had padded the wound as best he could, and the pads were stained deep red.

  Cal swallowed. Hard.

  ‘Mr Callaghan. Calm down! Turn the engine off. I just want to talk.’ Vladimir’s voice was low and soothing. A smile sat on his face – but not in his eyes. His eyes told a different story; of maiming, torture, cold–bloodied violent murder.

  ‘Go to hell,’ muttered Callaghan.

  He gave the throttle a blip. A warning blip. The knife – his only weapon – sat before him on cold metal. But to pick it up meant he wouldn’t be able to control the bike; one hand clutch, one hand throttle. Shit, bastard, fucking just fucking unbelievable!

  Vladimir started towards him. Slowly. A single step at a time. He stooped a little, entering the lock–up.

  Cal revved the bike again. His eyes narrowed. There was just enough room, to the right, where the car had slewed sideways across the entrance. And if he hammered it, leant the Suzy at the right angle, then...

  you’ll be dead, said his inner, mocking demon.

  Cal slammed open the throttle and dumped the clutch. The Suzuki 1000cc GSXR screamed, smoke pouring from the spinning rear tyre, front wheel lifting as Cal clamped himself to the tank and Vladimir leapt aside. The bike rocketed forward, smashing under shutters and leaning to the right at a crazy angle. His exhaust clipped the car’s front bumper, jerking the rear wheel out with a shriek of stressed steel. Rubber bit concrete, gripped and the bike shot like a bullet from a gun chamber. It howled across the platform towards the EXIT ramp, then screeched as brakes locked and the bike rose up on its front wheel, nose facing the floor, rear wheel spinning uselessly. The rear wheel slammed back to the ground; still. Cal stared in disbelief at the huge, 18–wheel Arctic lorry which blocked the exit. He glanced over his shoulder. Vladimir appeared, still smiling. He shrugged, almost in apology. As if to say, see mate, I had all the angles covered. Sue me.