A Reason to Kill

by Michael Kerr

  Putting the wads of banded fifty pound notes in a plastic sack, he wound gaffer tape around the top of it, went downstairs into the laundry room – that served the eight flat complex – and wedged the door from the inside, so as not to be disturbed.

  Grunting and straining with the effort, he manoeuvred one of the large dryers away from the wall, removed a breeze block that he had loosened a long time ago, and placed the bag of money in the hidey-hole behind it, along with the handgun and silencer. There was no logical reason why his flat should ever be searched, but he chose to embrace his own version of the chaos theory, therein which unpredictability ruled. He would not have been able to relax for a second with incriminating evidence under the floorboards, or stashed where professional searchers would undoubtedly find it.

  “Floorboards!” he said aloud, halfway back up the stairs. He liked floorboards, and yet had none. The floor under his carpeting was made from chipboard, or maybe MDF, which was all the rage these days. He had read somewhere that it had carcinogenic properties. Would it end up causing the same disastrous results as asbestos had done? And it was common knowledge that overuse of mobile phones was giving people brain tumours. Modern technology was lethal. The world was being poisoned. And some people thought that he was mad. If he could somehow work out how to explain his hidden wealth, then he would move out to a village in Essex, buy a cottage with ceiling beams and real floorboards, and put up a bird table in the back garden. It was a dream he determined to make come true. The prospect of enjoying rustic charm appealed to him.

  The next morning, he showered, took his medication, and dressed in tight denim shorts and a plain white T-shirt that highlighted his tanned face and arms. It didn’t take a lot of sun to turn his skin a tawny brown. And the fair hair on his forearms looked like 9 carat gold threads against it. He was slim but muscular, and when ‘Maid Marion’ arrived in just over an hour, he wanted to look his best; beauty to her beast. She was short and dumpy, with a body that resembled a lumpy mattress, and her breath reeked of garlic, which also leaked from the pores of her skin as she perspired and stunk up his flat. After she had gone, he would have to spray the place with magnolia and vanilla air freshener, and open the windows wide to let out the residual aroma of her presence.

  He closed his eyes, to fantasise. He chose to see the CPN naked in his bath, her hands tied tightly behind her back and her ankles bound together. She would be gagged, and he would show her the knife before slowly starting the procedure. She would buck and writhe, and whine through her nose. He would initially open her up with an orthodox ‘Y’ cut from shoulder to shoulder, and then cut down between the quivering pink blancmanges of her sagging breasts from sternum to pubic mound. It would not be an autopsy as such. After all she was alive, not dead. This would be more of a pre mortem inspection. She wanted to see inside his mind and examine it. He would see inside her body, sink his hands into her hot, slimy guts and pelvic organs, before dissecting her. He would negate her arrogant, condescending attitude. The bitch would be flopping around the bath like a dying cod on a trawler’s deck. He wondered at what point she would manage to escape into unconsciousness, before the spark of whatever life was, fizzled out.

  As he imagined dismembering the raw meat, bagging it up and packing the resulting parcels into the boot of his car for dispersal at several sites, the buzzer snapped his attention back to reality. Jesus! He could still smell the illusory warm, coppery stench of her blood. He could even taste it; a little salty, and of course flavoured by the garlic that the fat cow undoubtedly chewed whole cloves of.

  The buzzer sounded again, like an irate wasp in a bottle. He could have answered the intercom on the wall and pressed the button to disengage the lock on the outer door, but elected to go down to let her in. It seemed more mannerly.

  The Clozapine was kicking in. He felt relaxed, and the hallucinatory episode of butchering the nurse had helped him to internalise his anger. He was now mellow, primed to play her pathetic mind games.

  “And how are we today?” Marion asked, almost pushing past him as he opened the door to greet her with what he felt to be an amiable smile.

  Always the royal we. As if that somehow inferred they were Team Noon. “I’m feeling well, Marion. How are you?” he replied, not caring how she was.

  “I’m fine, Gary. Thank you for asking,” she said, heading for the stairs. He followed, marvelling at how her massive buttocks were somehow contained within the too-tight skirt she wore.

  She entered the flat as though she owned it, and lowered herself into one of the armchairs, testing the creaking frame to its limit.

  “Would you like a cup of tea?” he asked.

  “That would be nice, Gary,” she said, opening a buff document wallet to withdraw his personal notes and care plan details.

  He went into the kitchen, a smile on his face as he filled the kettle and switched it on. She was so transparent. Her eyes had flitted over the front of his shorts, feasting on the bulge at his crotch that was enhanced by the wearing of a cock ring that tightly encompassed his genitals. And no doubt as he turned away, she had also eyeballed his tight buns. Should he incite her to seduce him? Screwing her was something he had deliberated over for months. She would be a worthwhile ally, who he could manipulate even more if she was infatuated with him. He determined to set up his old video camera in the bedroom to record their antics through a gap he would leave between two doors of the wall-length wardrobe. That would put the shoe firmly on the other foot. With the control shifted, he would dictate all future aspects of their relationship.

  “There you go, Marion,” he said, placing the freshly brewed cup of Earl Grey on the glass-topped coffee table in front of her, before sitting down on the settee with his legs open to allow her to make what she would of the provocative pose. He was surprised to feel aroused to the point of discomfort beneath the stretched denim.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  THERE were eight beds in the main area of the ICU, all in sight of the nurses from the semicircular station at the rear of the unit. Matt was one of the patients, attached to a cardiac monitor, intravenous drips that provided him with antibiotics and glucose, and a bifurcated oxygen tube clipped to his septum. He was unconscious. His skin was slate grey, eyes sunken and underlined by puce, crescent smudges. He looked dead.

  The young male nurse brought a plastic contour chair for Linda. Tom accompanied her to the bedside and looked Matt over. Didn’t like what he saw.

  “I need a smoke,” Tom said. “I’ll see you back in the waiting room.”

  Outside, well away from the main doors of the hospital, Tom fired up, dragged deeply on the cigarette, and stared out from under the concrete overhang at the summer rain that still sheeted down from a sullen sky.

  He was shaky, and felt weak and tired to the bone. Stunned disbelief was still the strongest emotion he felt. This wasn’t America, where cops met violent ends with sickening regularity. The shooting of police officers was still an extremely rare occurrence in Britain. That five of his men had been gunned down that morning was almost inconceivable. Donny Campbell had been married for less than a year, for Christ’s sake. And his wife, Kath, was pregnant. The kid would be born fatherless. Bernie Mellors was divorced, but had been very close to his two daughters. Keith Collins and Tony Pybus were single, though that was of little solace. How many lives had been affected by their deaths? How many hearts broken? Wives, children, parents, significant others and friends would have to face a wall of grief and find a way to accommodate it. It was a fucking catastrophe. And knowing that Frank Santini would be laughing at them made it even worse. Tom’s brain burned with a white-hot wire of anger. Even a young couple next door to the supposed safe house had been shot. The man was dead, but his wife had survived, though was in a critical condition. The bullet had struck her at an angle, glanced off her skull, fracturing it, but had been deflected enough to travel around the outside of her cranium, under the skin and hair, to almost tear her right ear off
as it exited. There had also been a baby boy in the house, found unharmed. If the mother lived, then at least she still had her son. Tom supposed that his survival would be some measure of consolation. The kid wouldn’t be an orphan.

  Dropping the cigarette end and grinding it out with the sole of his shoe, Tom promised himself that Santini would get what was coming to him, and sooner rather than later. Even the mighty fall eventually, and Frank Santini would be no exception. His days were numbered.

  Back inside, grimacing at the antiseptic smell that hit him as the automatic doors slid back, Tom determined to stay at the hospital until Linda’s mother arrived. She was on her way in from Oxford, and should be there within the hour. He would then head back to the Yard, write up his report and steel himself against the bollocking that the brass would subject him to. He just hoped he could grit his teeth and not tell the dickheads into what dark and unwholesome places they could shove their slings and arrows.

  Linda put her hand over Matt’s. It was clammy, not the marble cold she had expected. “You’re going to be fine, Matt,” she said. “I’ll be here with you until you wake up.” Could he hear her?, she wondered. Maybe not, but she talked to him anyway, about everything in general and nothing in particular. She had read somewhere that even people in comas sometimes responded to the outside stimulation of voices or music. And Matt was not comatose. Every so often, she went back to the waiting room. Her mother arrived and fussed too much, as usual. Tom left, promising to return as soon as he could. Linda didn’t care whether he did or not. Bartlett meant well, but was part of the problem that had led to this.

  It was two-thirty the following morning when Matt’s fingers twitched and then tightened round her hand. She gasped, shocked by the unexpected movement. And her stomach cramped as his eyelids slowly opened. Would he still be Matt? What if his brain had been damaged and he had no awareness of his surroundings, or of anything?

  “Matt, are you all right?” she asked.

  His eyes found hers. He blinked and frowned as he fought to focus. Swallowed hard, and felt nauseous from the residue of the meds.

  A male nurse appeared at the bedside with what looked to be a kiddies’ plastic beaker, complete with lid and spout. “Just take a couple of sips,” he said, slipping one hand gently beneath Matt’s head to elevate it slightly, as he placed the spout to his lips.

  “Donny? The others?” Matt whispered, after the cool water had moistened his mouth and throat.

  Linda could not summon the words, but her expression answered for her.

  Matt closed his eyes again, but was unable to hold back the tears that forced their way out onto his cheeks.

  “I’m so sorry,” Linda said, her fingers smoothing his hair back from where it lay damp on his brow.

  Matt’s teeth were clenched, his cheek muscles bunched. He let the horror sink in. The facts were simple. Professionals had walked in like some bloody terrorist group on a mission, and coldly blown away everyone in the house, bar him. More by luck than good judgement, he had survived. Going for a piss had saved his life. Had he gone before Donny, then it would have been him that ended up wasted with the others. He pushed all the pointless ifs to the back of his mind. One thing was not an if, it was a definite. He would get past what had happened to his team by nurturing the anger and finding those responsible. Nothing could put things right. Dead was dead. But retribution would go a long way to even things up and bring about some measure of closure.

  First things first. “How am I doing?” he asked Linda.

  “It was touch and go for a while,” she answered. “They had you in surgery for hours. You’d lost a lot of blood.”

  “And?”

  “You...you lost a kidney.”

  “You make it sound as if I misplaced it. What else have I lost?”

  “That’s it. You get to joust at windmills again another day, when you’ve healed up,” she said with a sharper edge to her voice than intended.

  There was something distant about her. He sensed a farrago of emotions, and one approximated that of a woman sickened by her partner’s constant philandering. She was acting the way a wife might, having found lipstick on one collar too many. He had the premonition that, not at this time while he was in an intensive care unit, but soon, when he was fitter, she would deliver an ultimatum. Her eyes and body language said that he was in the last chance saloon.

  “Are we in trouble?” he asked.

  “Yes, Matt. Think of this as time out. You need to know that I couldn’t go through it again. I love you too much to spend my life waiting for another knock at the door. Maybe I just haven’t got the strength of character to sit on the sidelines of a copper’s life.”

  “You’re asking me to quit the force?”

  “No, I didn’t say that. I’m suggesting that you look at your priorities. If playing cops and robbers is something that you can’t walk away from, then I don’t think we have what it takes to be a couple.”

  As if on cue, to leave the subject hanging like the sword of Damocles over them, the Badger, Dr. Lawson, swept into the unit with the air of James Robertson Justice in the old ‘Doctor’ movies.

  Linda bobbed her head and kissed Matt on the forehead, not his lips. “I’ll be out in the waiting room,” she said. “My mother came, and Tom Bartlett is back. He stayed with me for hours. They’ll both want to know that you’re back in the land of the living.”

  “How’re you doing, Inspector? I’m Dr. Lawson. I patched up your bullet-ridden body.”

  “You tell me how I’m doing, Doc. I’m a cop, not a medical student. And call me Matt.”

  “You got away with it, Matt. One bullet nicked your femoral artery and fractured your femur. The other pulverised your left kidney. The resulting shock and blood loss nearly killed you. And there was a chance you might have suffered brain damage, due to oxygen loss to the brain. We still need to do a few tests, but I think you beat the odds this time. The belt around your thigh was a lifesaver”

  “What about the kidney?”

  Sam Lawson grinned. “It was delicious. I had it lightly sautéed with fava beans, and washed it down with a glass of Chianti.”

  Matt couldn’t suppress a tight smile. “Very funny, Lecter. I meant¯”

  “I know what you meant. The answer is, you can function quite normally with one kidney. You just haven’t got a backup now, so you’ll have to take care of it.”

  “How long will I be in here?”

  “I should think we’ll be able to throw you back out on the street in about a week, maybe less. But you’ll be convalescing for a couple of months. Initially, just lay back and let the healing process do its job. No getting out of bed for a few days, until I give the okay. I’m sure the indignity of nurses bearing bedpans will encourage you to get well with all due haste.”

  “Thanks, Doc, you’re a prince.”

  “I try to please,” Sam said, nodding, and then moving off to another bed, where a woman on a ventilator was passing blood into a colostomy bag that was suspended below the level of the sheet covering her. Matt looked away and thanked God for small mercies.

  A few minutes later, Tom came in, by himself. Matt thought he looked ill, more like a patient than a visitor.

  “You look how I feel, Matt,” Tom said, parking himself in a chair.

  “You don’t look too hot yourself, Tom. Did you get the shooters?”

  “To the best of our knowledge, there was only one.”

  “One?”

  “Yeah. And he spent some time in the house next door. Left the couple for dead, but the woman is still hanging in. If she makes it, we might learn some more. Did you see the perp?”

  “For an instant. He was young, in his late twenties at a guess. Maybe five-eight or nine. And he was thin. He had weird eyes, black like a fucking white shark’s. Wore a baseball cap and a red top, a fleece, I think.”

  “Did he say anything?”

  “No, Tom. He came to kill not ch
itchat. What’s been recovered from the scene to make you think he was alone?”

  “Just slugs. Ballistics is working on them, and Ray Baxter over there says preliminary tests point to them all coming from the same silenced 9 millimetre. He thinks the shooter used home-made baffles of steel wool to suppress the sound. The striations bear that out.”