I got to my feet and looked over at Raymond and Matthew. Both were lying motionless in a heap by the door, their faces red with blood. Out in the porch I could hear the sound of someone moaning, presumably the other gunman. At the same time, the other car – the one that had been carrying Illan’s assassins – reversed and turned round in the drive, before pulling away.
I approached the door and gingerly put my head round it. The gunman was lying on his front and a pool of blood had spread out below him. He still had hold of the gun, but his grip looked weak. He was trying to crawl towards the front door but didn’t seem to have the strength to make it. I stepped towards him, leaning down to pick up the gun.
And then, for the second time that night, I heard a noise behind me. I swung round, eager not to get caught out again, just as Raymond, bellowing like an angry bull, charged me. He threw a punch, but I managed to read his intentions and dodged it, although I was unable to get out of his way as he ran into me head on, and I toppled over backwards under his weight.
I landed heavily on the back of the gunman, who let out a weird high-pitched squeal as the air was forced out of him. The gun fell from his fingers with a clatter. Winded myself, I desperately tried to parry the blows Raymond rained down on me. I managed to catch him on the chin with a punch of my own, but it wasn’t enough to cause any real damage. He hit me back in the the spot where Kover had caught me the previous night, my already tender right cheek, and I felt something break.
Sensing that I was fading, he reached across me and went for the gun. And that was when I thought of Molly Hagger and the anonymous, gruesome death she must have suffered. Only thirteen years old. Still a fucking kid. And I knew I couldn’t die without making Raymond Keen pay for his crimes. With a strength born of pure rage, I shot upwards, knocking him off balance, and headbutted him bang on the bridge of the nose. I heard the bone snap with a hideous crack and he screamed in agony. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him bring up the gun, but his grip had loosened with the shock of my blow and I ripped it out of his hand, smacking him on the side of the head with the butt at just the moment he punched me again, knocking me backwards.
But this time I kept hold of the gun, and swung it round so it was pointed straight at him. His eyes widened and he froze. I sat back up, and this time he made no effort to resist. With one hand, I grabbed him by his thick mane of hair; with the other, I pushed the barrel against his eye.
‘Now, now, Raymond. Easy does it.’
I pushed him backwards and got to my feet, still holding the gun tight against him. When we were both standing up, I gave him a shove and walked back into the inner hallway with him retreating in front of me. Blood poured liberally out of his damaged nose.
‘Look, Dennis, I’ve got money. Plenty of it. We can come to some arrangement.’ This time there was no mistaking the fear in his voice.
I stopped in front of him, keeping the gun trained on his face. Five feet separated us. ‘I know everything that’s been happening with Kover and Roberts and those kids.’
Raymond shook his head, then looked at me. ‘Shit, Dennis, I never meant to get involved in it all, I really didn’t.’
‘That’s what Kover said. I didn’t believe him, and I don’t believe you. Now, while you’re here, there are a few questions I need answering.’
‘OK.’ He was playing for time.
‘Every time you give me a wrong answer, or one I don’t believe, I’m going to shoot you in either a foot or a kneecap.’
‘Easy, Dennis. Come on.’
‘How the hell did you and Roberts ever get involved together?’
‘I’ve known him for years.’
‘How?’
‘I met him at a charity function once.’ I snorted at the irony, but didn’t say anything. ‘We got friendly. I found out he had something of a coke habit so I started supplying him with the stuff – for a nice low cost, of course, which he appreciated. I liked him, you know, even though it didn’t take me too long to find out about his little perversions.’
‘Go on.’
‘He had money troubles. Big money troubles. And not a lot in the way of scruples. Like most of them kiddy fiddlers.’ He sighed. ‘You know how it is, Dennis. Sometimes you can just see the evil in people. I saw it in him.’
I wondered then if he’d ever seen it in me.
‘And what happened to the kids? Where are they now?’
‘Dead. All dead.’
‘Why? What did you do with them?’
‘If it’s any consolation, Dennis, I didn’t kill them. I had a client, a bloke who was very, very sick. He got off on torturing children. Liked to suffocate them while he was, you know, doing his thing.’
‘Jesus.’
‘I wouldn’t have got involved, I really wouldn’t have done, but he was – is – an important man. We needed him for the business. If there was any other way–’
‘Raymond, there’s always another way. And what the fuck did you get out of letting him do that sort of—’ I couldn’t say it. ‘What did you get out of it anyway?’
‘We filmed him. He used to do the deed in this house I rent up near Ipswich, and we put a hidden camera in there to record him at it. We kept the tapes to make sure he told us everything that was going on.’
‘And who is this sick bastard?’
‘His name’s Nigel Grayley.’
‘And what’s his use?’
‘He’s third in command at Customs and Excise.’
In the far distance, through the sound of the rain, I could hear the first sirens. It felt like a long time had passed since the first shots had been fired, but in reality I doubted if it was much over three minutes.
‘So that’s how you found out about where they were taking the accountant?’
He nodded, and I thought I detected shame in his manner. His shoulders were stooped and it looked like a lot of the joie de vivre had disappeared, probably forever.
‘What was the accountant going to expose about you and your associates?’
‘We’ve got a big illegal immigrant racket going. Have done for years. It was going so fucking well too. We had the infrastructure, the inside contacts. Everything was going fine, no-one was getting hurt, and then that prick decided to blow the whistle.’
‘Where are the tapes? The ones you made of this Grayley guy?’
Raymond exhaled slowly. ‘You don’t want to see them, Dennis. You really don’t.’
‘I know I don’t. But I know people who will.’
‘Fucking hell, Dennis, I really wish it hadn’t all ended like this.’
‘The tapes.’
‘There’s one in the boot of the Bentley. Down by the spare tyre.’
‘What the hell’s it doing there?’
‘I was going to drop it in a safety deposit box on the way to the airport. I didn’t like leaving them all here while I go away, just in case the house burned down.’
The sirens were getting nearer. Now it was my turn to sigh. ‘You know, Raymond, this is one of the most horrendous fucking stories I’ve ever heard.’
‘I know, Dennis, I know.’ He looked down at his shoes.
I knew it was time to kill him, but even now, for some reason, it seemed difficult.
‘And what about Danny? My driver? What happened to him?’
He came at me fast, almost too fast, his bulk moving at an unnerving speed, and he was almost on me by the time I pulled the trigger, the bullet snapping his head back. I fired again, hitting him in the throat, but his forward momentum drove his body into me and knocked me back into the doorframe. I pushed him out of the way and regained my footing, watching as he writhed on the carpet. He rolled round onto his back, making horrendous gurgling noises. He tried to say something, but the only thing that came out of his mouth was blood, huge torrents of it. His head was bleeding severely, and I knew the end was near for him.
I lifted the gun and went to deliver the killing shot, but decided against it. Why let him go quickly? Better
that he died with time to consider the terrible wrongs he’d done.
And so, leaving him choking his last breaths, I walked out of the house to the Bentley, stepping over Luke’s bullet-ridden corpse as I made my way round to the driver’s seat. The keys were still in the ignition and the engine was still running. There wasn’t a windscreen, but I felt that for the time being I could live with that.
I put the car into gear and pulled away.
40
The following afternoon, at a hotel in Somerset, I put the tape from Raymond’s car into the video recorder in my room, and watched for thirty seconds. It was enough. I have seen many dreadful things in my time. I’ve been an inner-city copper for close to twenty years so there aren’t that many sights that can shock me. But this did.
Molly Hagger was on the tape. She was sitting on a bed in a sparsely furnished room, her hands tied behind her back. She was naked but for a pair of black frilly knickers but she still looked thirteen, maybe even younger, and she was in great distress, sobbing fearfully. A naked man appeared in front of her, side-on to the camera. He was balding, middle-aged, and worryingly thin. I vaguely recognized his face. I think, perhaps, that I’d seen him before on the television. He had a hungry look in his eyes and an angry erection. As I watched he struck Molly round the face and called her a dirty little whore. There was an intense pleasure in his voice. He grabbed her by her curly hair and pulled her towards him, slapping her again. She cried out in pain as he forced her to her knees and thrust himself roughly into her mouth.
I switched off then. There was no point in watching any more. It was too distressing. And I knew, without a doubt, that he had ended up killing little Molly Hagger, and that Raymond had filmed it all in glorious technicolour. The hardest part was realizing that outwardly here was a respectable man who had probably shaken hands with royalty before now; the sort of person who appeared on television to give his weighty opinion on events in the world of Customs and Excise. The sort of man who underneath the façade is a foul, deceitful monster who can keep that fact hidden from almost everyone who knows him.
An hour later, I posted the tape along with a detailed report on what I believed had gone on to DS Asif Malik. As promised, I also posted a briefer version of the report, careful to take out any mention of Nigel Grayley so as not to prejudice any future trial, to Roy Shelley at the North London Echo. In neither report did I mention my own part in the affair, although I had little doubt that that would become common knowledge soon enough.
An hour after that, I paid my bill and continued my drive westwards in the rental car I’d hired in the name of Mr Marcus Baxter, a travelling salesman from Swindon.
Epilogue
I approach the Philippine Airlines desk with a smile, and get a smile in return from the Oriental girl. She’s older than her colleagues, somewhere in her thirties, and I expect she’s the one in charge. She greets me happily as if it really is genuinely good to see me, and asks me the usual questions about whether it was me who packed my suitcases or not, and all the rest of it. I answer everything correctly, and we have a quick banter about what the Philippines are like at this time of year. ‘I’ve never been there, you know,’ I say, and she tells me that I won’t be disappointed. ‘No,’ I reply, thinking that it’s been years since I sat on a palm-fringed beach, ‘I know I won’t.’ She briefly checks my ticket, sees that it’s all in order, and flashes me another smile as the cases begin their journey along the conveyor belt.
‘Have an enjoyable trip, Señor Baxter.’
‘Thanks very much. I will.’
I move away from the desk and head towards passport control and my new life. I’m not nervous. There’s no need to be. Three months have passed since that night at Raymond Keen’s house and, in a land of constantly changing images and an ever-shrinking attention span, I am already yesterday’s man. I look different, too. I wear a full beard now and glasses, and my face looks fatter. I’ve put on weight elsewhere too, mainly round the waist, the result of country cooking and quitting the cigarettes. You wouldn’t recognize me from the photos they showed in the papers. No-one would.
And I feel better too, like a new man; a man who’s put the past behind him. There are regrets, of course. That Carla went to her death soon after I’d called her a liar is something that will stay with me for a long time. But, in the end, the past is the past, and I’m happy to say that. I have achieved more as an individual than I ever achieved as a police officer. Thanks to evidence found on Raymond’s premises and my reports to Malik and Shelley, Mehmet Illan and at least half a dozen of his associates are behind bars awaiting trial for their involvement in one of the largest people-smuggling operations in British history. Nigel Grayley, a married father of four, will never go on trial for his crimes, however. Four days after his arrest he slashed his wrists with a smuggled razor blade and bled to death in his cell. An inquiry is now under way to ascertain how he got hold of the blade, but no-one’s shedding any tears, and the tabloids celebrated the news, which was fair enough. The world is a better place without him.
The remains of Molly Hagger and the other girls have not been found. Most people accept that the secret of their whereabouts died with Raymond, but there are others, myself included, who think that maybe Illan could shed some light on the mystery. But he isn’t talking, and neither is anyone else who might know. In the end, you can’t really blame them. No-one wants to be associated with that particular crime. Predictably, Danny never did make it to Jamaica. A week after Raymond’s death his body was discovered with gunshot wounds in the boot of a stolen car in the Heathrow Airport long-stay car park after a security guard had detected a particularly repulsive stench coming from it. I was sad but not surprised when I read about it in the papers.
One piece of good news that has come out of all this, though, is that Anne Taylor is alive and well. I’d mentioned in my report that she’d gone missing too, even though Kover had denied abducting her, but a few days later she turned up in one piece, having gone on a jaunt to Southend with another, older girl in search of a new market for their services. She’s still heading down a rocky road, one that could yet put her in an early grave, but at least for the moment she continues to breathe the same air as you and I.
Mark Wells had the murder charges against him dropped and has begun legal proceedings against the Metropolitan Police for wrongful arrest, demanding an estimated two hundred thousand pounds in compensation. However, his case has not been helped by the fact that less than a month after his release he was re-arrested after being secretly filmed trying to sell crack cocaine and underage girls to an undercover police officer. He’s been in custody ever since.
And so, through all this, there’s only one participant who hasn’t been brought to justice. One Dennis Milne, multiple murderer. I was specifically and publicly named as a suspect in the Traveller’s Rest killings two days after the discovery of Raymond’s corpse, and though there’s been what police describe as a major manhunt, I’ve so far managed to evade capture. I suspect now that I’ll evade it for ever. I’ve got enough money for now and I’ve got a friend in the Philippines for whom I can do some work when funds finally begin to run low. I know I’ll always be able to rely on old Tomboy.
Do I deserve to escape? I’ve thought about that a lot these past months. I’ve done great wrong, there can be no doubt about that, and if I could be put in the same position again knowing even half of what I know now, there’s no way I would have pulled the trigger on that cold, wet night and sent three innocent men to their graves. But you can’t change the sins of the past, you can only work to limit those of the future, and try to carry out deeds that help to make the world a slightly better place. In that, I think I have been at least partially successful. Would the world be a better place without me in it? On balance, I think probably not. But then I would say that, wouldn’t I?
And to those who may one day sit in judgement? What would I say to them?
Just two words.
Forgiv
e me.
The Murder Exchange
For Amy.
But not just yet.
Although virtually all the places where the events of this book take place exist, some of the residential street names are intentionally fictional.
Now
There is no feeling in the world more hopeless, more desperate, more frightening, than when you are standing looking at the end of a gun that’s held steadily and calmly by someone you know is going to kill you. And impotent, too. It’s an impotent feeling realizing that nothing you do or say, no pleading, no begging, nothing, is going to change the dead angle of that weapon, or prevent the bullet from leaving it and entering your body, ripping up your insides, and ending every experience, every thought, every dream you’ve ever had. You think about people you care about, places you’ve been to that you liked, and you know you’re never going to see any of them again. Your guts churn, the nerves in your lower back jangle so wildly that you think you’re going to soil yourself, your legs feel like they’re going to go from under you like those newborn calves you sometimes see on the telly. And your eyes. You know that your eyes betray your sense of complete and utter defeat.
You are a dead man, and you know it.
And then two things happened.
Tuesday, nineteen days ago
Iversson
To tell you the truth, I knew Roy Fowler was trouble the minute I laid eyes on the bastard. His eyes were too close together for a start, and the eyebrows joined up werewolf-style which, according to a book I once read, is always a bad sign. I didn’t like the nose either, or the fake tan, but I wouldn’t have let that stand in the way of business. If I was that fussy, I’d be broke. But there was something in the way he walked that put me on my guard, with his eyes carefully registering everyone in the room, like he half-expected one of them to jump up at any minute and put a richly deserved bullet in his back. He might have tried to hide it by dressing in a smart, well-cut suit and putting an easy smile on his face as soon as he saw me, but I could tell you this straight away: Roy Fowler was one of the world’s guilty.
Die Twice Page 30
