Killing Pretties

by Rob Ashman

  Malice shoved open the door and was immediately enveloped in an atmosphere of grease and oil. The source of the fumes emerged from a side office dressed in a set of overalls that constituted a fire hazard.

  ‘Alright, Mally?’

  ‘Here you go, Wazzer,’ Malice said, handing over the keys. ‘Pick it up later.’

  Wazzer slid a second set of keys across the filthy counter top.

  ‘It’s got fuel in it,’ he said.

  ‘I owe you one.’

  ‘No you don’t.’

  Malice went back outside and sucked fresh air into his lungs. He pressed the key fob and the indicator lights flashed on a white van. Or more accurately, a van that was once white. He climbed into the driver’s seat and shoved the burger cartons, cans and newspapers off the dashboard. The interior smelled like the inside of the garage. He wound down the window and set off.

  There was one distinct advantage of driving around in the stinking van. Swivel didn’t give it a second glance as Malice pulled into a side street and parked. Minutes later he reached around the corner and grabbed a fistful of yellow puffer jacket. Swivel’s eyes went into orbit and both his feet left the floor with fright. Malice frog-marched him into the alleyway and jammed him against the wall.

  ‘Oh… err… Mr Malice. How nice to… it isn’t that time already, is it?’

  ‘Shut up Swivel. I don’t want money, I want information.’

  ‘Okay, about what?’ Malice released his grip and Swivel smoothed the wrinkles out of his pride and joy.

  ‘What do you know about Burko?’

  ‘He’s dead.’

  ‘Don’t fuck me about.’ Malice was almost standing on Swivel’s toes, glaring down at him.

  ‘No, sorry, what I mean is. I heard he’d been murdered. Found him in a ditch on the Claxton, nasty business by all accounts.’

  ‘Any word on who did it?’

  ‘Noooo!’ Malice shifted position and was now standing on Swivel’s toes.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘I’m positive, Mr Malice. No one knows nothing.’

  Malice disregarded the double negative.

  ‘I want you to keep your eyes peeled and your ears open. Is that clear?’ Malice immediately regretted the ‘eyes peeled’ suggestion as they were going round and round faster than the whirligig in a kid’s playground.

  ‘Of course, Mr Malice, of course.’

  ‘One last thing. Have you heard the name Lubos Vasco?’

  ‘Umm… let me think… Lubos — what did you say?’

  ‘Vasco, Lubos Vasco.’

  Swivel shook his head frantically, sniffing up his nose.

  ‘No, Mr Malice. Never heard of him.’

  Malice checked his watch. This was going to take longer than expected. Swivel was lying. It was obvious — his eyes had stopped moving.

  Chapter 29

  C ourt room number one is rammed. I’m still buzzing from the coppers paying us a visit last night. When they left, the sex was amazing. Afterwards, I drifted into a deep sleep while Elsa went downstairs to watch TV. Well, when I say it was amazing… it was for me.

  I snap back to the present and flip through my notes one last time. Today is a big day. The defence team have put Tracey Bairstow on the stand and I have the opportunity to cross-examine. Watch out Tracey; here comes the pain.

  The clerk of the court brings us to order.

  ‘All stand,’ he crows.

  Everyone gets to their feet. The cloaked figure of Judge Peregrine Mason creaks its way into view. He presided over my last case. It was a touch and go affair but I had my nose in front. He gave a summing up which was completely biased towards the accused and swung the jury to deliver a not guilty verdict. That’s another rapist walking the streets.

  Mason gathers his robes around him and sits in the big seat. He belongs in a mortuary rather than a courtroom.

  Tracey Bairstow is led into the witness box. She’s dressed in a demure cotton dress and no makeup, her face is the colour of uncooked pastry. A stark contrast to her flamboyant clothes, fake eyelashes and full war paint that she normally parades in front of her adoring public. She probably feels as dreadful as she looks.

  We have the usual introductory remarks from the judge and then I’m on my feet.

  ‘Ms Bairstow, can you tell the court the last time you saw your husband?’

  ‘It was Friday the ninth of November last year.’

  ‘Can you elaborate, please?’

  ‘Yes, he was in the bedroom packing an overnight bag. He had a business meeting the next day with a prospective client. He was due to return on Sunday.’

  ‘But the records show he left on Saturday morning?’

  ‘Yes, that right.’

  ‘Didn’t you see him then?’

  ‘No, we… umm… we slept apart that night and when I got up in the morning he was gone.’

  ‘Why did you sleep in different beds?’

  ‘We’d had a row.’

  So far, so good. All of that is true.

  ‘I’ll come back to the argument later, if I may. Can you tell me where this client meeting took place?’

  ‘In Birmingham.’

  ‘Was it usual for your husband to go away on business over a weekend?’

  ‘Yes, it happened from time to time.’

  Yes, because he’d been balls deep in my wife on numerous occasions.

  ‘How had he planned to travel to this meeting?’

  ‘By car.’

  ‘Surely catching a train would have been easier?’

  ‘Brendan hates trains. He preferred to take the car.’

  Not any more, it’s at the bottom of the reservoir.

  ‘Let me take you back to Sunday January fourteenth, 2018. I have here a paramedics report detailing the head injuries sustained by your husband. Do you remember the events leading up to this?’

  ‘Yes, we argued and Brendan cut his head.’

  ‘Cut his head? You make that sound like an accident, Ms Bairstow. Would you kindly tell the jury how Brendan was hurt?’

  ‘We argued and he got violent. He grabbed me and I defended myself.’

  ‘You struck your husband on the head with a heavy metal ashtray. That’s right isn’t it?’

  ‘As I said he attacked me and I defended myself.’

  ‘Brendan called an ambulance because he couldn’t stop the bleeding.’

  ‘I was defending myself.’

  ‘The paramedic administered four steri-strips to hold the wound closed and Brendan refused to go to hospital or press charges.’

  ‘I keep telling you. I was defending myself.’

  ‘Is that in the same way that you were defending yourself when you smashed a bottle over his head while he was talking to Abigale Greening outside your gallery?’

  ‘Umm… no… I mean.’

  ‘Because we have already heard in her testimony that the CCTV footage at the time clearly shows you striking your husband when he is doing nothing more than standing in the street.’

  ‘He was shouting at me.’

  ‘Was he shouting at you the time you hit him with the ashtray?’

  ‘He could have been. He was always shouting at me.’

  ‘And you hit him to stop him shouting, is that right?’

  ‘No, he attacked me.’

  ‘He didn’t attack you the evening outside your gallery but you still saw fit to strike him over the head with a bottle.’

  ‘No it wasn’t like that.’

  ‘The jury have seen the footage and I put it to you it was exactly like that. You have a track record of attacking your husband and causing him serious physical harm. Don’t you, Ms Bairstow?’

  ‘No … I mean … he attacked me … I was defending myself.’

  ‘Did he shout at you on the evening when you last saw him?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Did you hit him over the head to stop him shouting?’

  ‘No, no, I didn’t hit him with anything!’ />
  No, you didn’t, Tracey, and neither did I. Though I did remove the pectoral muscles from his chest, his nose and his hands. There was a lot to choose from.

  ‘Talk to me about this business meeting. Who was it with?

  ‘I don’t know. In his diary was an entry for Spiral Design.’

  ‘This is an online diary.’

  ‘That’s correct.’

  ‘Had you heard of this company before?’

  ‘I had but, as I said, they would have been a new customer for us.’

  ‘When your husband failed to return home, what did you do?’

  ‘I called him on his mobile.’

  ‘And what happened?’

  ‘It went through to voicemail.’

  ‘Did you report him missing?’

  ‘No, no I didn’t.’

  ‘Why was that?’

  ‘I just thought he was angry and was staying away to teach me a lesson.’

  ‘Angry with you because of the row you’d had?’

  ‘Yes, that’s right.’

  ‘Was it a serious argument?’

  ‘Umm… I can’t remember.’

  ‘Serious enough for him to shout at you?’

  ‘I don’t remember.’

  ‘Because we’ve already established that when Brendan shouts at you, you are inclined to hit him over the head with something heavy.’

  ‘No, it wasn’t like that.’

  No, it wasn’t like that. He drank a Ketamine Americano and was flying higher than a US drone over Kandahar.

  ‘Tell the jury why your calls went unanswered?’

  ‘Because he’d left his phone behind.’

  ‘That’s right. The police conducted a search of your property and found Brendan’s mobile phone, switched off, in a drawer. Did he have a habit of going away on business and leaving his phone behind?’

  ‘No.’

  He’d been putty in Elsa’s hands. She’d convinced him to leave his phone. After all, it was good to be on the safe side.

  ‘What route would he have taken to drive to Birmingham?’

  ‘I don’t know; M25, M40 I suppose.’

  ‘Do you know what ANPR is, Ms Bairstow?’

  ‘Something to do with number plates?’

  ‘Very good. It stands for Automated Number Plate Recognition, which is a system that records vehicles that are in transit on certain roads. There are a number of these on the route your husband would have taken to drive to Birmingham. Guess how many times it tracked your husband’s car?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘None. Not once. So, according to you, Brendan drove all the way to Birmingham to a business meeting with Spiral Designs and avoided every one of the ANPR cameras on the way.’

  ‘Umm… I don’t know…’

  ‘When the police followed up with Spiral Designs they have no record of a meeting with Brendan. Why would that be?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Which hotel was he staying at?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You said it was an overnight stay. Which hotel was he planning to use?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘The police checked every hotel in Birmingham and none of them had a booking for Brendan Bairstow. Why would that be?’

  ‘I…’ her voice broke.

  That’s because he was at my house, enjoying the delights of my wife while I sat patiently in the kitchen awaiting my turn.

  ‘So we are being asked to believe that your husband has a meeting with a company who have never heard of him, travels by car to Birmingham and takes a route that avoids all the ANPR cameras, has a non-existent hotel reservation and leaves his mobile phone in the house tucked away in a drawer. Is that what you’re asking this court to believe?’

  ‘No … I mean … yes … I mean …’

  ‘I put it to you Ms Bairstow that you and your husband had an argument which spiralled out of control. You became violent and killed Brendan Bairstow. Then you panicked, concealed the body and fabricated this whole sorry story to cover your tracks. You even put an entry in his dairy.’

  ‘No, no, it didn’t happen like that.’

  ‘How did it happen, Ms Bairstow?’

  ‘We fought, yes, but he left in his car and I didn’t see him again.’

  ‘You didn’t even report him missing to the police, did you?’ Tracey stared down at her shoes. ‘His agent reported it to the police. You didn’t do it because you knew precisely where your husband was.’

  ‘No I thought he was doing it to teach me a lesson.’

  ‘I think you were the one dishing out lessons that day, Ms Bairstow. A lesson that cost your husband his life.’

  ‘God! For pity’s sake… no.’

  ‘Where did you dispose of the body and the car?’

  ‘I didn’t…’

  ‘Where is Brendan now, Ms Bairstow? Where?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  I do. He’s sitting on the window ledge in my kitchen, glinting in the sunshine.

  Chapter 30

  M alice burst into the office and tossed Pietersen’s car keys onto the desk. She was hunched over her keyboard, scrolling through CCTV footage, surrounded by reams of paper.

  ‘You were right. It ran like a badger’s arse,’ he said.

  ‘Told you. Bloody thing,’ Pietersen replied over her shoulder.

  ‘It’s a nice motor.’

  ‘It’s nice when it runs right.’

  ‘A blocked fuel injector and a dodgy cable. It’s a wonder it ran at all.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That’s what was wrong with it. My guy said you need to get it serviced by someone who knows what they’re doing.’

  ‘It’s fixed?’

  ‘Yep,’ Malice slumped down in his chair and flipped open his laptop.

  ‘Shit, thanks. I mean… how much do I owe you.’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Come on I must owe something? That can’t have been cheap?’

  ‘How much cash do you have on you?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Pietersen found her bag and rummaged in her purse. ‘Twenty-three quid and some change.’

  Malice got up and wandered over, dipped his hand in and came away with the twenty-pound note. ‘That’ll do. You can buy me a coffee with the rest.’

  ‘Twenty quid! It must have cost double that, and add a zero on the end?’ Pietersen’s eyebrows couldn’t go any higher.

  ‘Let’s just say it’s my way of saying sorry for getting off on the wrong foot the first time we met.’

  ‘You don’t have to—’

  ‘It didn’t cost me anything and this…’ he held up the twenty-pound note, ‘will buy my mate a few beers and a bag of chips.’

  ‘I don’t know what to say.’

  ‘Talk to me about the Von Trapps,’ Malice returned to his seat and folded his arms across his chest.

  ‘I have the CCTV from their local train station as well as taxi records. I’ve also got a request in with the boss for the bank records of Damien and Elsa Kaplan.’

  ‘That’s good. Waite hasn’t got back to me regarding us getting another body, I’ll chase that up.’

  Pietersen’s phone buzzed on the desk.

  ‘Excuse me, I need to take this,’ she said, walking to the back of the room and staring out the window. When she disconnected the call, she spun around. ‘Do you mind if I shoot off for a bit? Something’s come up.’

  ‘When you get back we’ll take a run out to have another chat with the Kaplans.’

  ‘Won’t be long.’

  Pietersen scampered down the stairs into the car park. She put the key in the ignition and fired up the Porsche. She listened to the familiar sound of the big engine idling inches behind her; a smile spreading across her face.

  She pulled out of the car park and headed away from town onto the duel carriageway. The tuned exhaust growled with delight. She shifted through the gears and took her foot off when she ran out of road at one hundred and ten mi
les an hour.

  Malice had been right — he’d certainly fixed it.

  Pietersen cruised along a back road until she came to a public viewing area. The suspension bridge towered overhead. She got out and could hear the trucks and cars rumbling above her. She made her way along a narrow foot path which was overgrown. The wind was whipping through the valley making her eyes sting. She could hear footsteps behind her and so quickened her pace.

  To the right was an underpass; a walkway that dipped under the road and led to nowhere. She glanced over her shoulder to see a man wearing a long black coat. She darted into the tunnel.

  The place stank of stagnant water and piss. Streaks of green and brown mould ran down the walls from the water seeping through the roof. Cans and bottles were scattered across the ground. The sound of her heels reverberated off the concrete as the gloom quickly enveloped her. She could hear a second set of heels following. They were getting closer.

  She made out, through squinting eyes, a cone of white light at the far end as the footsteps behind her were quickened.

  Pietersen spun around.

  ‘Where the hell were you last night?’ a man said, catching up to her.

  ‘I got tied up and couldn’t get a message to you.’

  ‘That’s not acceptable.’

  ‘I know, sorry.’

  ‘Don’t—’

  ‘Don’t what?’

  ‘Don’t fuck this up. You know what’s at stake.’

  ‘I said I was sorry.’

  ‘Okay… how’s it going?’

  ‘He’s difficult to keep tabs on.’

  ‘How do you mean?’ the man tapped a cigarette from a packet and lit it up.

  ‘There’s been two occasions where he ran off and had conversations with men where I wasn’t included.’

  ‘Ran off?’

  ‘Yeah, he opened the car door and legged it. Twice.’

  ‘Who were they?’

  ‘Don’t know. I didn’t get a good look. The first was a man in a yellow jacket who Malice chased up the road. The second time he spoke with a tall lanky guy with a beard and a bald bloke who looked like a beachball in a tracksuit.’

  ‘A lanky guy and a beach ball in a tracksuit? You gotta do better than that.’ In the gloom Pietersen watched the red ring draw its way up the white tube. The man blew a plume of smoke into the air from the corner of his mouth, leaving the cigarette dangling from his bottom lip.