Die Twice

by Simon Kernick

  There he was, bright as a bell, a wide smile on his big round face, as if the whole world were his playground and all was fair within it. That was Raymond Keen for you. He was one of those big, bouncy guys who simply oozed joie de vivre. Even his haircut, a magnificent silver bouffant of the kind so beloved of middle-aged men who want to put one over on their balding contemporaries, and which sat on the top of his head like a curled up Cheshire cat, seemed designed to tell the world what a jolly character he was, which was a little odd when you considered that one of his more active and lucrative sidelines was running a funeral parlour. But Raymond, as became clear when you got to know him, was a man with a deeply ironic sense of humour.

  ‘I’ll join you, I think,’ I told him.

  I got up and we started to walk across the grass in the direction of the boating lake. Some kids who should have been in school were playing football and a few mothers were out strolling with prams, but other than that the park was quiet.

  I didn’t beat about the bush. ‘What the fuck happened, Raymond? You told me I was shooting drug dealers.’

  Raymond attempted a rueful smile but he didn’t look overly guilty. ‘Give me a break, Dennis. I could hardly have told you the real targets, could I? You wouldn’t have shot them.’

  ‘I know I wouldn’t have shot them! That’s the point. You got me involved in something that’s against everything I stand for.’

  Raymond stopped and looked at me, a smile playing on his lips. Angry or not, it was obvious he knew there was nothing I could do about the situation. He had me pinned, and he knew I knew it.

  ‘No, Dennis. That’s where you’re wrong. You got yourself involved. Admittedly, I embellished the truth a little bit—’

  ‘You mean you lied.’

  ‘But I needed them out of the way, and knowing – and all credit to you for this, Dennis – knowing your moral standpoint on this sort of thing, I thought I’d withhold some of the details. But I don’t want you to lose sleep over it. These blokes were pondscum. They were blackmailing some associates of mine and the associates wanted them out of the way.’ He sighed meaningfully. ‘They were corrupt men, Dennis.’

  ‘And that’s meant to make me feel better, is it?’

  ‘If it’s any consolation to you, it makes me feel bad as well. I don’t like the idea of men dying. Human life is a very precious thing, not to be taken away lightly. If there was any other way, any other way at all, you can claim a bet that I would have tried it.’

  The phrase ‘claim a bet’ was one of Raymond’s favourites, even though it meant absolutely nothing, and I’d never in my life heard a single other person utter it. Hearing it now annoyed me.

  ‘Raymond, you have fucked me up. Do you have any idea the sort of pressure the murder of customs officers is going to generate? It’s not like shooting three dealers who no-one’s going to miss. These were family men who died doing the job they loved.’

  ‘They were blackmailers who died because they were trying to blackmail the wrong sort of people. That’s what they were.’

  ‘But that’s not what the media are going to say, is it? To them, these guys are the thin blue line, brutally murdered in the line of duty. They’re going to be clamouring for a result on this. And you can claim a fucking bet on that.’

  ‘Don’t be facetious, Dennis.’

  ‘I’m being serious. Deadly serious. The pressure to get a result on this one is going to be massive.’

  ‘But they’re not going to get a result, are they? We’ve done everything needed to cover our tracks. It was a well-planned operation. All credit to you for that, Dennis. It was a professional job.’

  He started to walk again, and I followed. To him, the conversation was effectively over. He’d said his piece, tried to smooth the ruffled feathers of his part-time employee, and now it was time to move on.

  I then did a stupid thing, a very stupid thing, that was to cause me and plenty of other people a lot of grief. I told him I’d been seen.

  That stopped him dead. Which, of course, I knew it would.

  ‘What do you mean?’ There was an edge, to his voice now and I wasn’t sure if it was anger or nervousness. Probably both. Immediately I regretted opening my mouth. I’d just wanted to punch a hole in the smug air of confidence he was exuding, and it looked like I’d been only too successful.

  ‘I mean, I was seen. One of the staff, a kitchen girl or something.’

  ‘Did she get a good look?’

  ‘No. It was dark and raining, and she was a fair way away.’

  ‘How far?’

  ‘Fifteen, maybe twenty yards. And I had my head down. I doubt if she could give much of a description.’

  ‘Good.’ He seemed mollified. ‘Why didn’t they say anything about that on the news?’

  ‘On something like this, where there’s evidence that it was a planned killing, they won’t want to risk putting the witness in any danger. Also, they’ll still be questioning her.’

  ‘How come you didn’t shoot her?’

  ‘Would you have wanted me to?’

  ‘Well, it mightn’t have been a bad idea.’

  ‘What? Four killings? Come on, Raymond, this is England, not Cambodia.’

  ‘Well, if you didn’t think she saw anything, then I suppose there’d have been no point.’

  ‘I don’t think she saw anything.’

  ‘Maybe not, then. There’s no point killing anyone unnecessarily.’

  ‘Especially when human life’s such a precious thing.’

  Raymond glared at me. He wasn’t the sort of man who liked having the piss taken out of him. ‘I don’t really think you’re in a position to get on your high horse, Dennis, do you?’

  ‘So what were these customs men doing, Raymond, that was so bad they had to die?’

  ‘As I said, they were blackmailing some associates of mine. Associates who are very important to the smooth running of my business.’

  ‘That doesn’t really answer my question.’

  ‘Well, my apologies, Dennis, but that’s all the details available at present.’

  ‘It said only two of them were customs. Who was the other one?’

  ‘Why so interested? You can’t bring them back.’

  ‘I want to know who I killed, and why.’

  Raymond sighed theatrically. ‘He was another piece of pondscum. He thought he was setting the other two up. In that, he was wrong. Now that’s all I’m going to say on the matter.’

  I took a last drag on my cigarette and stubbed it underfoot, still feeling pissed off.

  ‘Look, think of it from my perspective,’ he continued. ‘Just for a moment. I needed the job done and you’re the best man I’ve got for that sort of work. It’s unfortunate that your main talent lies in that direction; it’s a particularly barbaric skill to possess, but there you go.’

  ‘You didn’t have to use me. A man like you’s got other contacts.’

  ‘What did you expect me to do? Ring round and get quotes in? I had no choice, Dennis. That’s the long and the short of it. I had no choice.’

  ‘Don’t ever ask me to do anything like that again.’

  Raymond shrugged, seemingly none too concerned. ‘Last night was a one-off. It won’t happen again.’ He looked at his watch, then back at me. ‘I’m going to have to go. I’ve got a punter at two o’clock.’

  ‘A dead one or a live one?’

  ‘She’s deceased,’ he said sternly. ‘A car accident. Beautiful-looking girl, and only twenty-three … her whole life in front of her.’ He crossed his hands in front of him and was silent for a moment, I assumed out of respect for the dead. Then it was back to business. ‘Anyway, I’ve got to prepare and time’s getting on. I don’t want the poor thing to be late for her own funeral.’

  ‘That’s very thoughtful of you.’

  ‘Thoughtfulness costs nothing, Dennis.’

  ‘Which reminds me. There’s the small matter of my remuneration.’

  ‘As if I’d forget.�
�� He fished a key out of the breast pocket of his expensive-looking suit and chucked it over to me. ‘The money’s in a locker at King’s Cross. The same place as last time.’

  I put the key in the inside pocket of my suit, resisting the urge to thank him. There wasn’t, I concluded, a great deal to thank him for.

  Sensing my continued annoyance, he flashed me a salesman’s smile. ‘You did a good job, Dennis. It won’t be forgotten.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Somehow, I don’t think it will.’

  * * *

  After we’d parted company I grabbed a sandwich at a café just off the Marylebone Road. They didn’t do anything with sushi in it so I ordered smoked salmon, thinking it was probably the next best thing. The sandwich tasted like cardboard, but I wasn’t sure whether that was as a result of the poor-quality bread or my own numbed tastebuds. I ate about three quarters of it, washing it down with a bottle of overpriced mineral water, then smoked two cigarettes in quick succession.

  On my way back to the station I called in on Len Runnion at his pawn shop just off the Gray’s Inn Road. In some ways, Runnion was one of Tomboy’s successors. He dealt in stolen goods of pretty much every description, using the pawn shop as a cover. He had none of the class of Tomboy, though. A very short man with a leering smile that made Raymond’s look genuine, Runnion had cunning, ratlike eyes that darted about when he talked. And he never looked anyone in the eyes, which is something I can’t stand. To me, it means they’ve got skeletons in the closet. From what I knew of Runnion and from what I could guess from his general demeanour, I expect he had a whole graveyard in his.

  In the armed robbery I was still effectively investigating, the two robbers had held up a post office and, after stabbing the postmaster’s wife and one of the customers, had got away with several hundred vehicle tax discs as well as a small sum of cash. I strongly suspected that they were amateurs who wouldn’t really know what to do with the discs other than sell them on to other criminals. Professionals don’t knife two people for that sort of return. It was a fair assumption then that they’d try someone like Runnion as a possible conduit for the goods, and if they had I wanted to know about it.

  Runnion claimed ignorance of any tax discs. ‘What would I do with them?’ he asked me as he polished some garish-looking costume jewellery. I stated the obvious and he told me that he wouldn’t have a clue where to sell such things. I didn’t believe him, of course. Men in his line of business always know where to unload contraband. I told him that the perpetrators had stabbed the postmaster’s wife and one of the customers during the course of the robbery, and that the customer had been lucky not to bleed to death. ‘He was sixty-one years old, trying to protect the members of staff.’

  Runnion shook his head in mock disbelief. ‘There’s no need for that,’ he said. ‘Never any need for violence. It’s all about forward planning, isn’t it? If you use forward planning, no-one gets hurt. The kids these days, they just don’t have any. It’s the education system, you know. They don’t teach them anything any more.’

  This was probably true, but you don’t need to hear it from a toe-rag like Len Runnion. I told him firmly that if he was approached by anyone offering stolen tax discs he should play them along a bit, get them to come back again, and inform me straight away.

  He nodded. ‘Yeah, yeah, no problem. Goes without saying. I don’t have no truck with bastards like that.’ Which, of course, he did. Among other things, Runnion was wel known for supplying firearms, usually on a rental basis, to whoever needed them. We might never have caught him for it, but that didn’t mean anything. We knew he did it. ‘If I hear anything, I’ll make sure you’re the first to know, Sargeant.’

  ‘You’d better do, Leonard. You’d better do.’

  ‘And will there, shall we say, be a little drink in it for me if I come good?’ The eyes darted about like flies in a field of shit.

  ‘I’m sure we’ll be able to come up with something,’ I told him, knowing that bribery was usually more effective than threats. After all, as a police officer, what could I threaten him with? That we’d look into his business affairs more closely when we had the time? It would hardly have got him quaking in his boots.

  It was five to two by the time I got out of Runnion’s shop. Rather than continue my journey to the station, I thought I’d phone Malik to see how everything was going.

  He picked up after one ring. ‘Miriam Fox.’

  ‘Miriam?’

  ‘That’s our victim,’ he said. ‘Eighteen years old, just turned. Ran away from home three years ago. She’s been on the streets ever since.’

  ‘Miriam. It seems a funny name for a Tom. I assume she was a Tom.’

  ‘She was. Six convictions for soliciting. The last was two months ago. Apparently she came from a good home. Parents live out in Oxfordshire, father’s something big in computers. Plenty of money.’

  ‘The sort of people who call their kid Miriam.’

  ‘It’s a rich girl’s name,’ Malik agreed.

  ‘A runaway, then.’

  ‘That’s what I can’t understand. All over the world you’ve got people struggling to get out of poverty and make a better life for themselves, and this girl was trying to do exactly the opposite.’

  ‘Don’t ever try to understand people,’ I told him. ‘You’ll just be disappointed. Have the family been informed?’

  ‘The local boys are round there now.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘I’ve got her last known address here. A flat in Somerstown, not far from the station.’

  I had to hand it to Malik, he didn’t hang about. ‘Has it been sealed yet?’ I asked him.

  ‘Yeah. According to the DI, they’ve got a uniform down there at the moment.’

  ‘Keys?’ It was always worth asking this sort of thing. You’d be amazed how many times simple things like means of entrance to an abode got overlooked.

  ‘I had to pick them up myself. The landlord was one cheap bastard. It turned out she was late with the rent. He asked me what he could do to get hold of the money she owed him.’

  ‘I hope you told him where to get off.’

  ‘I told him he’d have to talk to her pimp. I said as soon as I got his address, I’d give it to him.’

  I managed my first smile of the day. ‘I bet that pleased him.’

  ‘I don’t think there was much that was going to please him today.’ Anyway, the DI wants us to check out the address. See what we can find.’

  I told Malik where I was and he said he’d come by and pick me up en route. He rang off and I lit a cigarette, sheltering the lighter from the cold November wind.

  As I stood there breathing in the polluted city air, it struck me that maybe Malik was right. What the fuck had Miriam Fox been thinking about, coming here?

  6

  For me, one of the worst jobs in policing is looking through the possessions of a murder victim. A lot of the time when a murder’s an open-and-shut case, which mostly they are, it’s not necessary to have to do it, but sometimes there’s no choice, and it’s a painful process, the reason being that it puts flesh and bones on people, gives you insights into what made them tick, and this only serves to make them more human. When you’re trying to be rational and objective, this is something you could really do without.

  Miriam Fox’s flat was on the third floor of a tatty-looking townhouse that could have been improved dramatically by a simple lick of paint. The front door was on the latch so we walked right in. Bags of festering rubbish sat just inside the entrance and the interior hallway was cold and smelled of damp. Thumping techno music blared from behind one of the doors. It annoyed me that people lived like this. I was all for minimalism, but this was just letting things go. It had nothing to do with poverty. It was all about self-respect. You didn’t need money to clear away rubbish, and a can of paint didn’t cost much. You could get a lot of paint, plus brushes for everyone, for the price of a few extra-strength lagers or a gram of smack. It’s all about priorit
ies.

  A uniformed officer stood outside the door of flat number 5. Someone in flat number 4, which was just down the hall, was also playing music but thankfully not as loud as the guy downstairs. It also sounded quite a lot better – hippy stuff, with a woman singing earnestly about something or other that was obviously important to her. The uniform looked pleased to be relieved of his guard duty and made a rapid exit.

  I checked the lock quickly for signs of tampering and, seeing none, opened the door.

  The interior was a mess, which I suppose I expected. At least it was in keeping with the rest of the building. But it wasn’t the mess of someone who’d gone completely to pot and no longer cared about her surroundings, which is a lot of people’s image of the desperate prostitute. It was a teenage girl’s mess. An unmade sofa bed took up close to half the floor space of the none too spacious living room. It was liberally sprinkled with clothes, not the sexy ones a Tom wears to attract her customers, but leggings and sweaters, stuff like that. Normal stuff. There were two threadbare chairs on either side of the bed and all three items of furniture faced an old portable TV that sat on a chest of drawers. There were pictures on the wall: a couple of impressionist prints; a colourful fantasy poster of a female warrior on a black stallion, sword in hand, blonde hair waving in the imaginary wind; a moody-looking band I didn’t recognize; and a few photographs.

  I stopped where I was and gave the place a quick once-over. A door on the left led to a bathroom while one on the right led into a kitchen that didn’t look to be much bigger than a standard-sized wardrobe. There was only one window in the whole flat as far as I could see, though thankfully it was large enough to throw a bit of light into the place. The view it offered was of a brick wall.

  On the floor in front of me, amid the teen magazines, empty KFC boxes, Rizla packets and other odds and ends, was a huge round ashtray the size of a serving plate. There were maybe ten or fifteen cigarette butts in it, plus the remains of a few joints, but what caught my eye were the pieces of screwed-up tin foil, the small brown pipe, and the dark patches of crystallized liquid, splattered like paint drops inside.