The Business Of Dying

by Simon Kernick

  ‘You know something, Runnion, I’ve always disliked you. And I’ll bet you shifted those tax discs from that Holloway robbery as well.’

  ‘No, I didn’t. I’m serious—’

  ‘But you know what? That’s nothing to do with me any more so I’m not even going to pursue it. I’ll leave that to other people. But what I will tell you is this: if you don’t get me these two guns this afternoon, you are a dead man. It’s as simple as that.’

  I moved the gun upwards so it was pointed directly between his eyes. A bead of sweat rolled down his forehead and on to his nose. He blinked rapidly, but remained stock still. I think I’d convinced him I was serious.

  ‘Please stop pointing that thing at me.’

  ‘Are you going to get me what I want?’

  ‘It’s going to take some time.’

  ‘Have you got the ones I want in stock?’

  ‘I don’t carry stock. Not of that—’

  ‘Stop lying. I repeat: have you got the ones I want in stock?’

  ‘I can get you two guns like that, yes.’

  ‘Where are they?’

  ‘I’ve got some gear over in a lock-up in Shoreditch. Guns. I should have what you’re looking for. Now, please stop pointing that thing at me. It might go off.’

  I doubted I’d have hit him if it had, but I wasn’t going to tell him that. I lowered the gun and smiled. ‘Let’s go over there now. Have you got transport, or shall we go in my car?’

  ‘I can’t go now, Mr Milne. I’ve got things I’ve got to do.’

  I laughed, but there was no humour in it. ‘We’re going now,’ I told him. ‘My car or yours?’

  He sighed, then looked at me as if he still couldn’t quite believe I was doing this. I looked back at him in a way that convinced him I was.

  ‘We’ll take mine, then,’ he said. ‘It’s out the back.’

  He went and locked up the front of the shop properly, then the two of us exited the rear door, fighting our way through the boxes of crap, unsafe electrical goods, and stolen property that made up the vast bulk of his inventory. The back door emerged into a tiny potholed car park containing two cars that looked like they were just about ready for the knacker’s yard. We got into the slightly more respectable of the two – a rusty red Nissan which had probably looked quite flash and sporty back in the mid-1980s – and drove slowly out into the street.

  The mid-afternoon traffic was heavier than usual due to an accident on Commercial Road backing things up and it took three quarters of an hour to make a journey that wasn’t much the wrong side of a mile. We didn’t speak a lot on the way. Runnion did ask a few probing questions about who it was who’d provoked my ire and whether I was going to kill or simply wound them, but I told him to keep his mouth shut and his eyes on the road, and after a while he got the message. I felt strangely detached from the whole thing. I was doing everything instinctively without any real thought as to the possible consequences. Nothing really seemed to matter. I had a plan, and if it succeeded I would be pleased, but if it failed, then so be it. I might even end up dead, yet, sitting there in the choking traffic, even that thought held no fear. And the funny thing was, it wasn’t such a bad feeling to have. It felt almost liberating to know that this world, so often wrought with pressures and tensions, was no longer of real importance. Life for me had come down to a set of tasks that I would either complete or not complete. It was as simple as that.

  The lock-up was one of a row on a narrow back road off Great Eastern Street. Runnion parked up on the pavement directly outside, and we got out together. There weren’t many people about – a few City types taking shortcuts, the odd courier – and you wouldn’t have thought you were only a couple of hundred yards from one of the largest financial districts in the world.

  I stayed close to Runnion, keeping my hand in my coat pocket with the gun. ‘Don’t get any ideas about running,’ I told him as he opened the lockup. He didn’t say anything, and stepped inside. I followed him in, trying not to look too conspicuous, and pulled the shutter down behind me as he switched on the light.

  Unlike his shop, the lock-up was remarkably tidy. There were boxes piled up on both sides but there was space to move about in the middle. At the far end, under a pile of tarpaulin, was a wooden strongbox which Runnion had to unlock. From inside it, he removed a large holdall which he put on the floor.

  ‘Pick it up,’ I told him. ‘We’re going back to your house.’

  ‘What?’ He looked at me, aghast. ‘What for?’

  ‘Because I want to take my time choosing and this isn’t the place to do that.’

  He started to argue, but I pulled the shutter back up and waited for him to walk out. He put the holdall on the back seat, secured the lock-up, and we were on our way again.

  Runnion lived in a row of reasonably well-kept terraced houses in Holloway. I’d raided it once with Malik and a couple of uniforms looking for stolen property, which, predictably, we hadn’t found, but I remembered it being quite a homely place. That had been about a year ago now and he’d been married at the time to a surprisingly pleasant wife who’d even offered us a cup of tea as we rummaged through their possessions, which is something of a rarity. She’d left him now and I kept enough tabs on him to know that he lived on his own.

  Because we were moving away from Commercial Road, it took a lot less time to get to his house, even though the traffic was still heavy. We went inside in silence and sat down in his sitting room. There were a couple of dirty plates on the floor and various other bits and pieces of rubbish. Nothing like as tidy or as homely as I remembered it.

  I motioned for him to sit down. He thanked me sarcastically, putting the holdall down on the floor between us. He was a lot cockier now than he had been, a result no doubt of the fact that he was getting used to the situation.

  ‘Do you mind if I smoke?’ I said, lighting a cigarette without offering him one. He shook his head and mumbled something, lighting one for himself. I sat back in my seat and took the gun out of my pocket. ‘OK, show me what you’ve got in there.’ He unzipped the bag and gingerly took out a shabby-looking .22 pistol. ‘That’s no use to me,’ I told him. ‘Keep going.’ He put the .22 on the carpet and reached back into the bag like a miserable Santa, emerging this time with a sawn-off pump-action shotgun. I shook my head, and he carried on. Next up was more in tune with what I wanted: a newish-looking MAC 10 sub machine pistol. There was no magazine in it, but after a quick rummage around Runnion came up with two taped together. ‘I’ll have that one,’ I told him, and he put it to one side.

  He pulled out a further three weapons – all hand-guns – and told me that was all he’d got.

  I smiled. ‘Well, it’s not bad for a man who likes to keep away from weapons.’ Still holding on to my own gun, I gave each of them a brief inspection and settled for a short-barrelled Browning. ‘Have you got ammo for this?’ I asked him.

  ‘Should have,’ he said, and once again began a search of the bag, bringing out a couple of mint-condition boxes of 9mm bullets which he put with the MAC 10 and the revolver.

  I took a long drag on my cigarette and watched him carefully as he put everything else back in the holdall. When he’d finished, I stood up and picked up my newly acquired weapons. I put the MAC 10 in the pocket of my raincoat, along with the magazines, and stubbed my cigarette out in an overflowing ashtray. I picked up the Browning and inspected it again, removing the magazine, checking the bullets.

  ‘You haven’t got a silencer for this, have you?’ I asked.

  ‘No, I fucking haven’t,’ he said, remaining seated.

  ‘Well, I hope when it comes down to it, it works.’ ‘I’m sure it will.’

  I released the safety and pulled the trigger. It did.

  35

  ‘I’ve been hearing some funny rumours today, Dennis.’

  ‘Oh yeah?’ I leaned back against the phone-box glass and took a drink from the can of Coke I was holding. All part of the new diet. ‘What sort of ru
mours?’

  ‘That you’re involved in a lot of serious shit. That the police are looking for you with a view to questioning you about some very nasty crimes indeed. Possibly even murder.’

  I whistled through my teeth. ‘Serious allegations. Where did you hear them from?’

  ‘Are they true?’

  ‘Behave. You’ve known me for close to ten years. Do you really think I’d be involved in murder?’

  ‘And I’ve been in journalism for close to thirty years and one thing I’ve learned is that people are never what they seem. Everyone’s got skeletons in their closets, even the vicar’s wife. And some of them are pretty fucking grim.’

  ‘I’ve got skeletons, Roy, but they don’t include murder. Now, have you got the information we were talking about?’

  ‘I’m concerned, Dennis. I don’t want any of this coming back to me.’

  ‘It won’t. Don’t worry.’

  ‘That’s easy for you to say.’

  ‘What do you mean, easy? I’m the one who’s on the run. Look, I promise all you’ll get out of it is a fucking decent story.’

  ‘When? You keep telling me this, but so far I haven’t got a thing to go on and I’ve put my neck on the line for you.’

  I sighed and thought about it for a moment. ‘It’s Thursday now. You’ll have your story by tomorrow.’

  ‘I’d better have.’

  ‘You will. So what’s the address then?’

  ‘What are you going to do to him?’

  ‘I need to ask him some questions. That’s all. He can solve a puzzle for me.’

  ‘44b Kenford Terrace. It’s in Hackney. That’s all I know. And don’t ever fucking tell anyone you heard it from me.’

  36

  I sat for a long time in the cold darkness waiting for Alan Kover. His flat, not the one in which he’d committed the infamous rape, was stark in its minimalism. There was only one chair in the cramped little sitting room. It faced a cheap portable TV which had a small cactus plant on it, the only decoration of any kind in the whole room. I sat with my back to the door, watching the blank screen. Watching and waiting and thinking. Kover was the last key in the mystery surrounding Coleman House and its inhabitants. From the wound on Carla’s throat, and the way she’d been attacked from behind, I felt sure that he had also been the man who’d murdered Miriam Fox. But such a scenario still threw up far more questions than answers. Presumably, Kover and Carla had been involved together in Miriam’s killing. There was no other way she could have known the details of it. But how the hell had two such disparate personalities come together, and what on earth did they kill Miriam for? And what, if anything, did her death have to do with the disappearances? Kover and me, it seemed, had a lot to talk about.

  I wanted to smoke. Badly. But I couldn’t risk doing it in his flat so I opened my third can of Coke of the day and took a sip. What depressed me about this place was that there was nothing remotely homely, or even human, about it. It was like a bad attempt at a show home created by some very lazy people. I’d checked it over thoroughly, just to see if there were any clues as to what had been going on, but had found nothing. Nothing at all. Just kitchen cupboards with pots and pans in them, a wardrobe with some clothes, a bathroom with a toothbrush and soap. Not a thing that could tell you anything about his personality. For a few minutes I’d even thought I’d got the wrong address, but then I’d felt about under the bed and had pulled out a load of crumpled, dried-out tissues, and I knew then that this was where Kover resided. They’d said he had an unusually high sex drive, but he was sensible enough, having been on the receiving end of police attention, not to leave anything about that could get him into trouble. There were some unlabelled tapes piled up on the video recorder beneath the telly but I doubted if they contained anything incriminating.

  I looked at my watch for the hundredth time since breaking in: 8.20 p.m. This time eleven days ago I’d been sitting outside the Traveller’s Rest in the pouring rain with a man who was almost certainly now dead. I’d tried Danny’s mobile three more times since the attempt on my life, and he still hadn’t answered. The message kept saying that the phone I was trying to call was probably switched off and that I should try again later, but I knew there was no point. He would have answered by now. Even in Jamaica.

  Behind me, I heard a key turn in the lock. Slipping out of the chair, I moved through the darkness until I was standing behind it as it slowly opened. A large figure emerged carrying a shopping bag and, though I couldn’t make him out properly, I could tell it was Kover. The cosh came silently out of my pocket and, as he shut the door and turned to switch on the light, I cracked him hard over the back of the head.

  He went down on his knees without a sound and stayed in that position for a second, so I hit him again. This time he toppled over on his side, and I knew he was out cold.

  I worked fast. Grabbing him under the arms, I pulled him over to the chair I’d been sitting in, and flung him in it. He was already moaning and turning his head so I knew he wouldn’t be under for long. I picked up the length of chain I’d brought with me and wrapped it three times round his upper body, securing it tightly to the back of the chair before padlocking it and chucking the key into my pocket. Next I produced some masking tape from my coat and used it to secure his legs and gag him.

  By this time his eyes were fluttering and he was coming round. I lit a cigarette, savouring the first taste, and went round switching on all the lights before filling up the kettle and switching it on to boil. There was a four-pack of cheap lager among his shopping so I pulled off one of the cans and opened it, putting the rest in his sparsely populated fridge. I took a long drink – my first alcohol of the day – and stood watching him.

  It took him a minute or two to realize where he was. He saw me, and his eyes widened. I smiled at him. He attempted to move, realizing then that he was helpless. I put my fingers to my lips to indicate that he should be quiet, then removed the tape from his mouth.

  ‘What’s going on?’ he demanded. His voice was surprisingly high-pitched for a big guy and, though it sounded confident on the surface, there was a hint of nervousness which, under the circumstances, was no great surprise. ‘I’m not saying nothing without my lawyer here.’

  This was an interesting statement. It meant he knew exactly who I was. Maybe Car la had told him. I laughed and took a drag on the cigarette, stepping backwards. I had a perverse feeling that I was going to enjoy extracting information from him.

  ‘You tried to kill me last night,’ I said.

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ He struggled against his bonds. ‘Now let me out of all this stuff. I could sue you for this.’

  I pulled the tape back over his mouth and stubbed the cigarette out on his carpet. ‘You know who I am, don’t you?’ I said. ‘You know I’m a copper.’ I paced slowly round the chair. ‘Unfortunately, what you don’t know is that I’ve left the Force. And what you also don’t know is that I’m a killer, and that I’ve killed people who’ve deserved it a lot less than a piece of shit paedophile like you. So what I’m saying is this: I’m not like anyone who’s ever questioned you before. I’m not here to put you behind bars. I’m not here to try to find out why you do the things you do. I’m here to find out some answers, and if you don’t give me those answers I’m going to blow your fucking brains all over this shitty wall, and that’s after I’ve kneecapped you.’ I stopped in front of him and pulled the Browning from my pocket, placing the barrel hard against his forehead. His eyes widened. ‘OK? First question: why did you kill Carla Graham?’ Once again, I removed the tape from his mouth.

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he blustered, looking down at his hands. ‘Honestly.’

  I pushed the tape back, then turned and walked into the kitchen, picking up the freshly boiled kettle.

  He knew what was coming when he saw me emerge with it, but there was nothing he could do. Desperately, he struggled in the seat as I stopped in front of
him, stood there for a moment, then ever so gently tilted it until the boiling water dribbled slowly out and on to his upper left thigh. I increased the flow a little, moving to his other leg, watching as his face stretched tight and red with pain and his eyes bugged out of his head. I stopped, paused for maybe three seconds, then repeated the procedure, this time chucking a little on his groin for good measure. His wriggling became hysterical and a surprisingly loud moan came from behind the tape as he tried to cry out. His face was now beginning to go purple.

  I stood back and watched him for a little while, a serene smile on my face. I felt that I was performing a worthwhile task, probably the most worthwhile task I’d performed in my whole career.

  Without warning, I chucked a load more over his groin, waited while the pain racked through him in great agonizing bursts, then put the kettle down and took a drink from the beer.

  ‘Right. I hope we understand each other now. There’s no limit to the pain I’ll inflict on you if you don’t answer my questions truthfully, so it’s in your interests to just get it over with. And in case you think about crying out . . .’ I reached down beside the chair to where the small jerry-can of petrol sat and poured its contents all over his body and head. ‘If you thought hot water was painful, then nothing will prepare you for this.’

  I put the can down and removed the tape. This time I crumpled it up and chucked it on the floor. I was confident I wouldn’t need it again. He’d answer my questions now all right. Kover gritted his teeth, still fighting against the effects of the scalding, and turned uncomfortably in his seat.

  ‘Now, let’s start again. Carla Graham was involved in the murder of Miriam Fox. I know that for a fact. And I suspect you were too. What I’m missing is the reason. Whatever it was, you and her fell out about it, and you responded by butchering her on her own bed. Now, let me tell you something. There’s no point in you not telling me the whole truth or protecting anyone else who may be involved or whatever, because if I get one word of a contradiction in your answers, then you’ll burn. It’s as simple as that. And I know you know that I’m serious.’