Die Twice

by Simon Kernick

  And then, as I was beginning to turn away, I saw it. A wicked-looking silencer coming into view. Pointing straight towards the back of my head. I heard the creak of a floorboard behind me and knew immediately that I was one second away from death.

  In one single movement I threw myself against the wall, ignoring the pain as Elaine bit me in the shock of my sudden withdrawal, and lashed out with my arm, knocking the gun flying. Its owner, a stocky bloke in a baseball cap, looked momentarily shocked. I took my chance and jumped forward, grabbing him as best I could and headbutting him on the bridge of his nose. The cut on my forehead immediately reopened but the gunman had been hurt. He took a step backwards but quickly recovered himself, delivering a sudden flurry of rabbit punches to my kidneys as he struggled to break my grip.

  Every part of my body seemed to be burning with pain, and blood from the head wound was dripping down my forehead and into my eyes. But I knew I couldn’t give up. I had to protect us.

  Summoning all my strength, I headbutted the gunman again and wrestled him through the bedroom door and out into the hallway, banging him hard against the opposite wall. His cap fell off, revealing a hairless head beneath, and for some reason this seemed to give him a renewed burst of strength, like Samson in reverse. He cursed and managed to push me away, before trying but failing to deliver a punch to my bollocks. I gasped as he got a better shot to my ribs, and took a step back as if hurt, before charging forward, head bowed like a bull, and delivering another ferocious headbutt right to the chin. Something cracked in there and the gunman made a sound half like a cough, half like a scream. Realizing my head was my best weapon, I shoved him back against the wall, then swung round so my back was facing him and delivered a skull-jarring reverse butt. His resistance simply evaporated and he slid down the wall, unconscious.

  My head was spinning and my eyes stinging with blood, so much so that I could hardly see. Regaining my balance, I wiped at my face with my forearm, clearing the worst of the obstruction, and tried to focus again.

  Which was the moment when the silencer hissed and a searing pain that eclipsed anything I’d yet felt surged through my shoulder, the force of it sending me reeling into the wall.

  Gallan

  I was just about to knock on the door when I heard a loud commotion from inside and the sound of shouting. I put my head against the wood and listened. It sounded like a fight between two men, and I wondered for a moment if I’d got the wrong place. One of the men howled in pain, and there was a crash as if they’d both just charged into a wall. They were big blokes, I could tell that from the force of the impact, and I decided that discretion was the better part of valour and that it was best just to call for reinforcement.

  Then there was a pause in proceedings for a couple of seconds, followed by a faint popping sound, then a cry of pain and a dull thud.

  I’d seen enough Hollywood films to know immediately that it was a gunshot from a silencer, and the damage it had done was obvious, even if I couldn’t see it. I stepped back from the door and dialled the station on my mobile. The controller answered after four rings. I gave my location and called for back-up.

  ‘I need firearms units as well as an ambulance,’ I hissed into the phone. ‘Someone in there is definitely armed, and it’s the address of a person we need to question with reference to a murder, although I must emphasize that at the moment the person is not, I repeat not, a suspect.’

  I switched off the mobile and went back to the door and listened. There were voices coming from inside, one sounding in pain, the other dominant, firm. Ruthless. I knew I should wait for reinforcements. All my training told me there was no point confronting armed suspects in an enclosed space when unarmed, particularly when it was obvious that the suspect had just shot someone. All my instincts agreed. It was a united stand. But at the same time I also knew I couldn’t stand there and do nothing while someone was murdered, and from the tone of the conversation in there it sounded like that was exactly what was about to happen. Sometimes, like it or not, you simply have to stick your neck out. The alternative is the eternal knowledge that you could have done something to save a life but chose not to.

  I pulled a credit card out of my pocket and, using the method a convicted burglar had once taught me, went to unlock the door.

  Iversson

  I was sitting back against the wall, shaking as my body went into shock. To my left lay the unconscious gunman. In front of me stood the woman I was in love with, half naked, very beautiful, and pointing a long-barrelled Browning at me, the end of the silencer only a few feet from my face. After everything else, it was a sight my mind really couldn’t fathom. It felt like I’d finally cracked and this was the beginning of my short and probably one-way route to the loony-bin.

  ‘Elaine,’ I managed to say through teeth that were chattering manically. ‘What are you doing?’

  She managed a sympathetic smile. ‘I’m sorry, Max, I really am. If it’s any consolation, it’s just business. Nothing else. You’re actually not a bad bloke, even if Joe Riggs does say you murdered his missus a few years back; you were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Now, I didn’t want to do this – that was his job.’ She motioned towards the unconscious gunman. ‘In fact, it was Joe’s job, but the thing is, you don’t seem to want to die. And now it’s left to little old me to do the dirty deed. You know something, Max, I’ve never shot anyone before, and I’ve never really wanted to either, particularly someone who was such a good lay, and in my fucking flat as well, but you know what they say, never let emotions stop you from doing your job.’

  Still I couldn’t get a grip on what was going on. I heard her words, delivered in a slightly weary matter-of-fact tone, saw her standing there pointing a gun at me, but none of it seemed to register. It seemed like maybe I’d fallen asleep, and that any second now I’d wake up in her arms with her stroking my head, telling me it was OK, it was just a bad dream, like my mum used to do when I was a kid.

  ‘Elaine,’ I whispered. ‘I love you.’ And I know it sounds stupid, but I really meant it.

  ‘I know you do, darling,’ she said, her finger tensing on the trigger. ‘I know you do.’

  Gallan

  The door lock clicked, and slowly, ever so slowly, I pushed it open.

  Peeking my head round, I saw a naked man in the hallway about three yards away, bruised and bleeding, and apparently suffering from a bullet wound to the shoulder. He looked a mess, and he was shaking badly. Next to him lay another man in casual clothes, not moving, his head turned away. The naked man was staring into a room right in front of him, from which emerged a slender hand and forearm holding a long gun with a silencer attached, aimed at the naked man’s head. I couldn’t see the actual person holding the gun but I was pretty confident it was Elaine Toms, company secretary of Dagmar Holdings, who owned the flat in which I was now standing.

  The naked man whispered something I couldn’t quite make out but which sounded a lot like ‘Elaine, I love you’, and his face suggested he meant what he was saying, which was a bit unfortunate. And I thought I had problems with my love life.

  I took a step forward, then another one.

  ‘I know you do, darling,’ said Elaine Toms in her slightly grating north London accent. ‘I know you do.’

  Her finger was tensing on the trigger, I could see it. I took another step forward, frantically calculating what I could possibly do to prevent her from killing him. The naked man’s eyes were widening and his mouth was opening, though no words were coming out. He knows, I thought. He knows he’s about to die.

  ‘Armed police!’ I yelled suddenly. ‘Drop your weapon and come out with your hands up. You’re surrounded. I repeat, you are surrounded!’ My voice was loud and authoritative, probably the most it had ever been. I hoped Elaine Toms didn’t recognize it from our earlier meeting.

  It seemed she didn’t.

  ‘Get back!’ she called out, still not showing herself and making no effort to drop the weapon. ‘Get back
or I’ll shoot him! Don’t think I’m bullshitting either. If you don’t get out of this flat now I’m going to kill him. Do you understand? And you’ll be the one who’s fucking responsible.’

  The naked man, his face covered in blood, turned his head and looked at me quizzically, presumably wondering where my gun was.

  ‘Drop your weapon, Miss Toms,’ I demanded, desperately trying to keep the fear out of my voice. ‘You are in enough trouble as it is without adding murder to your crimes. If you drop your weapon, then this will end peacefully. If you don’t, then you risk being shot.’

  ‘Retreat now or I kill him. I mean it!’

  ‘Don’t do it, Miss Toms. You are surrounded. It won’t do any good.’

  And then my heart sank as, still pointing the gun at the naked man’s head, she stepped out of the room and into the hallway.

  For a second she looked confused, then the confusion turned to annoyance. Slowly, the barrel of the gun moved round so it was facing me.

  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.

  First, Jack Merriweather sat up, rubbing his head and uttering the immortal words, ‘What the fuck’s going on?’

  Second, the naked man kicked out with his right leg and struck Elaine Toms in the calf of her left one, knocking her off balance. She slipped, then fell forward, and the gun went off, the bullet ricocheting off the carpet before flying harmlessly into the ceiling. She landed on her front, gun arm outstretched, but still holding it. As she tried to right herself, I took my chance, running forward and stamping as hard as I could on her wrist. She yelped in pain, but didn’t release the gun, so I stamped again, and this time she did. I pulled it up by the barrel, stepped back, resisting the urge to kick her in the face for scaring me senseless, and turned the gun round. Toms massaged her wrist, wailing in pain and accusing me of breaking it, while Merriweather continued to rub at his head and face, smearing the blood over it, still unsure, it seemed, about what was happening. The naked man simply sat where he was, shivering and silent.

  ‘All right,’ I said, holding the weapon gingerly, and praying that no-one chose this moment to make a break for it, ‘everyone stay where they are.’

  ‘I need a cloth for my face,’ said the naked man, and slowly got to his feet. ‘Please.’

  He stood where he was for a moment, wiping the blood from his eyes. Something about him looked familiar. Very familiar, though the beard made it difficult to tell for sure.

  In the distance, I could hear the sirens. ‘Just stay where you are for a moment, sir.’

  ‘Please, I need water.’ He stumbled forward into the room from which Elaine Toms had just emerged. At the same time, she started edging along the floor in my direction, eyes watching me like a hawk in search of a weakness.

  I pointed the gun directly at her head. ‘Do not move,’ I told her.

  ‘The man with no clothes,’ she said, motioning over her shoulder, ‘is Max Iversson. He’s wanted for murder.’

  Iversson. Shit!

  I heard a window opening in the other room, and the sound of someone clambering out. A second later, a noise like a crash came from outside. I stayed put, hoping he wouldn’t get far without any clothes, knowing that I had to make sure Toms didn’t escape. I cursed myself for not clocking Iversson immediately. It’s amazing what some blood and the Grizzly Adams look’ll do to a person’s face.

  Toms looked like she was going to make a break for it. ‘You’re letting him get away,’ she said mockingly.

  I smiled at her, holding the gun steady. ‘Then I’d better make sure I don’t make the same mistake with you.’

  She gave me a very unladylike sneer but didn’t make any move. At the same time, the sirens seemed to close in from all sides, cars screeching to a halt in front of the building. There was a loud bang as the front door to the building was forced, followed by the sound of heavy footfalls on the stairs.

  The cavalry had arrived.

  Wednesday, three days later

  Gallan

  ‘So, Jack, tell me. Why were you in Elaine Toms’s apartment armed with an illegal handgun and silencer?’

  Merriweather looked at his solicitor, who gave a slight nod, then back at me. ‘No comment,’ he said, scratching absent-mindedly at the plaster on his broken nose.

  ‘How do you know Elaine Toms?’

  There was a pause. ‘No comment.’

  ‘Is it through Dagmar Holdings?’ Again, he looked at the solicitor, a bald, pinch-faced individual with outsize glasses and an officious air. This was the infamous Melvyn Carroll. Again, he gave that little nod.

  ‘No comment.’

  ‘What do you know about Dagmar Holdings?’

  ‘No comment.’

  I sighed. ‘You’re not helping us much here, Jack.’

  ‘Or yourself,’ added Knox, who was sitting beside me. ‘You’re facing very serious charges. Charges that carry a substantial prison sentence. We’re talking years, Jack, not months. Years. I suggest you think about that next time you get asked a question.’

  Merriweather yawned ostentatiously. ‘Are you lot going to charge me with anything or are you just going to sit here wasting my time?’

  Melvyn Carroll leant forward. He smelt strongly of eau de cologne. ‘My client insists he has done nothing wrong, and, as he has informed you repeatedly, has nothing further to say on the matter. I would therefore strongly request that you let him go.’

  Knox and I looked at each other, then back at Merriweather. Jackie Slap stared straight ahead at me, his eyes cold. His expression was a simple one. It said: You can’t touch me. I held his gaze, looking back at him expressionlessly. The room was silent for several seconds as the two of us stared each other down. Carroll opened his mouth to say something, but it was me who spoke first.

  ‘What do you know about the murder of Robert Jones?’ I asked, and something in Merriweather’s expression cracked. The composure was restored within the space of a second, but it was too late. I’d caught it. I knew I was on the right track.

  He shook his head slowly. ‘I don’t know nothing about anything like that. Never heard of the bloke.’

  ‘You’ve never heard of Robert Jones, the paperboy who got murdered six months ago?’

  ‘Oh yeah, yeah, that. I heard about it, but I don’t know nothing about it. Why should I?’

  ‘That’s a good question,’ said Carroll. ‘What has the murder of a paperboy got to do with the charges my client is being questioned in connection with?’

  ‘We think Mr Merriweather may be able to throw some light on the child’s murder,’ said Knox, emphasizing the word ‘child’.

  ‘Look, don’t try to fit me up with something like that!’

  ‘No need to shout, Jack,’ said Knox.

  ‘I’m surprised you thought you hadn’t heard of him,’ I continued, ‘because it was, and is, a very high-profile case, and the last place he was seen alive, before he was so brutally murdered, was Runmayne Avenue where an associate of yours, Tony Franks, has a house—’

  ‘Never heard of him.’
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  ‘And where you were seen by witnesses on a number of occasions, including only two weeks ago, when you were emptying out the property and claiming you were Mr Franks’s brother.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘And I don’t know where this is leading,’ Carroll interjected. ‘I’m going to have to ask you to desist with this line of questioning. It’s completely irrelevant.’

  I bent down beside my chair and picked up an evidence bag. I held it in front of Merriweather’s face. ‘Guess what this is.’

  Merriweather squinted. ‘I can’t see anything.’

  ‘Look closer.’ I pointed my finger at something almost intangible in the bag. ‘It’s a fibre, Jack, or two fibres to be precise. They came from the coat Robert Jones was wearing on the day he died, and guess what? We found them in the house you were emptying the other week. What do you think of that, then?’

  ‘There must be some mistake.’ There was no doubting the fear on his face now. Carroll also looked wrong-footed by this unwelcome new development. ‘I don’t know anything about a dead kid.’

  ‘Are you sure about that, Jack?’ asked Knox.

  ‘Course I’m fucking sure.’

  ‘How do you explain it, then?’ I asked. ‘How they got there.’

  ‘It’s nothing to do with me. I didn’t live there.’

  ‘Why were you emptying out the place, then?’ Knox said.

  ‘Where’s Tony Franks, Jack? We can’t seem to find him.’

  ‘I don’t know a Tony Franks.’

  ‘Why were you emptying out his house, then?’

  ‘I wasn’t—’

  ‘We’ve got a witness who says you were. She even spoke to you.’

  ‘Fuck this, I don’t want to answer any more questions.’

  ‘I think my client would like a break in proceedings,’ said Carroll.

  ‘We haven’t finished yet,’ snapped Knox.

  ‘I’ve fucking finished,’ said Merriweather, folding his arms and making a great play of looking away.