JM04 - Deadly Justice

by DS Butler

  And he’d felt something.

  A horrible feeling of self-doubt. A feeling that he might be wrong.

  He shouldn’t doubt himself. How many years had he been planning this? How carefully had he arranged everything? There was no time for second thoughts now.

  This was his purpose.

  He was right. What he was doing was right. This element of doubt sneaking into his brain contaminated his thought process. He wasn’t thinking logically. He was questioning things, things he knew for certain.

  The killer entered the Duke’s Head. The scent of beer and stale sweat wrapped themselves around him, but he could still smell it. The sulphur. The stench of Craig Foster’s death.

  He manoeuvred his way through the rowdy crowd of drinkers who were celebrating a heady day of summer, so rare in England. The Olympics had been going well and there was a strange feeling settling on London, the complete opposite of this time last year, one of camaraderie.

  It was hard to believe that only last summer fires had raged, businesses had gone under and lives were destroyed. How quickly people forgot.

  At the bar, the killer ordered a double whiskey and took it off to a corner. There weren’t any spare tables, so he stood by the window, staring out as he sipped his drink.

  He knew what would make him feel better. He dropped his black holdall on the floor. Kneeling beside it, he rummaged through the contents, taking care that no one inside the pub could see into the bag. The last thing he wanted was for someone to spot the gas mask.

  The killer pulled out a battered black notebook. He ran his fingers across the worn leather surface and smiled before zipping up the bag. As soon as he held the book in his hands, he felt a feeling of calm and renewed sense of purpose wash over him. He was doing the right thing.

  He opened the book and looked at the quotes he had neatly printed out on the pages over the years. On the first page, he had copied a quote from Leonardo da Vinci, “He who does not punish evil commands it to be done.”

  The killer closed his eyes, savouring the peaty taste of the single malt on his tongue, and let the words roll over him, willing them to sink into his consciousness.

  On the next page of his notebook he had printed in capitals the words of Winston Churchill from the War Office departmental minutes from 1919, “I AM STRONGLY IN FAVOUR OF USING POISON GASES AGAINST UNCIVILISED TRIBES.”

  The killer took a deep, calming breath. Craig Foster was nothing if not uncivilised.

  He deserved everything he got. If someone like Winston Churchill thought it was the right thing to do, then he was worrying about nothing.

  He was too hard on himself. It should never be easy to take another life. To stand there and look that person in the eye as their life slipped away wasn’t pleasant, but he owed it to them.

  He passed the sentence, which meant he should be the one to kill them.

  The fact was that if he was unable to do that, to look them in the eyes as he took their lives, then perhaps that person didn’t deserve to die after all, and that would change everything.

  The killer wasn’t crazy. He wasn’t one of those people who thought they could change the world on a grand scale. He didn’t think people would remember him, or write about him after he was dead. There wouldn’t be any articles or TV shows. He didn’t want that anyway.

  There weren’t many people in this world whom history would remember. He didn’t expect to be able to change the way people thought.

  It was hard to change society, but if everybody tried to change small events, if people stood up for their ideals, it could start something. It could start a ripple … and that ripple would spread.

  The killer turned to the third page of his notebook where he’d copied out the thoughts that passed through his mind as he planned his campaign for justice. His eyes scanned the dark, squashed text, looking for his favourite quote from Dante. He knew them all by heart, but there was something about seeing them written down, something reassuring.

  All too often, people were content to sit back and do nothing, even when confronted with the most awful degradation of society, as long as it didn’t impinge on their everyday comforts.

  He wasn’t like that.

  He was doing the right thing. He was standing up for something he believed in.

  The killer drained the last of his whiskey and headed outside.

  Yes, he was doing the right thing, and he wasn’t going to stop.

  14

  AFTER THE DEBRIEFING, MACKINNON headed over to Fiona Evans’ house in Twickenham to drop off Tim Coleman’s card.

  Fiona let him in and led him into the kitchen where her daughter sat at the kitchen table scribbling furiously in a Disney colouring book. The little girl was so busy making sure the blue crayon she was using to colour the princess’s dress stayed within the lines she didn’t look up when Mackinnon entered.

  “Hello, Anna,” Mackinnon said.

  Her eyes flickered upwards for a moment, and she smiled shyly before returning to her colouring. “Hello.”

  “Come on, sweetheart,” Fiona said. “It’s time for bed.”

  Anna pouted and dropped her blue crayon on the kitchen table. “Oh, just a little while longer.”

  Fiona shook her head. “No, it’s bedtime. I’ll come and tuck you in after you’ve cleaned your teeth.”

  Anna gathered her crayons together, putting them back in the pencil case slowly, all the time looking at her mother with a doleful expression. When that didn’t work, she tucked the colouring book beneath her arm and shuffled out of the kitchen.

  Fiona turned to Mackinnon. “I was just about to open a bottle of wine. Would you like a glass?”

  “Thanks.”

  As Fiona set two wine glasses on the scrubbed pine surface of the kitchen table and took a bottle of white wine from the fridge, Mackinnon fumbled in his pocket for the agency card.

  He put it down on the table in front of him. “His name is Tim Coleman, and he works as a carer. I don’t know much about the agency, or whether he’ll be suitable, but I knew you were looking for some extra help with Luke.”

  “Thanks, Jack. I appreciate it. It’s really hard to get someone you trust.”

  Mackinnon pushed back from the table a little. “He did say that the agency worked with the NHS in some cases.”

  Fiona smiled and looked down at the card. “I’ll give the agency a ring and check them out.” Fiona poured a generous measure of Chardonnay into both of the glasses. “Money is not such a problem now,” she said.

  Mackinnon looked up at her. “It isn’t?” Immediately his mind was full of all kinds of scenarios. Had Bruce stashed some money somewhere?

  Fiona pushed one of the glasses across the table to Mackinnon and gave a twisted smile. “My parents are well off,” she said. “Bruce didn’t want to accept their money. He wanted to support us himself. But now...”

  Fiona sighed and sank down into a chair, propping her elbows on the kitchen table and resting her head in her hands for a moment before taking a long sip of wine.

  “Things weren’t exactly easy in the months before Bruce died. Luke was attending a clinic that promised us the world and cost us a fortune. We were struggling financially, to be honest. My parents offered to help, but Bruce was stubborn.

  “And you know what a police officer’s salary is like. I wasn’t working, and it wasn’t easy to make ends meet. I wanted to accept the money from my mum and dad, but Bruce wouldn’t hear of it.”

  Mackinnon took a sip of the ice cold Chardonnay and wished it was a beer. He wasn’t a big fan of white wine, but on a warm night like tonight it was at least refreshing. He couldn’t understand it. If Fiona’s parents were offering to give them money to pay for Luke’s rehabilitation, why would Bruce risk everything for a bribe?

  He’d gambled on his career. He understood Bruce may have had his pride, but surely accepting some money from his in-laws would have been a better option than taking dirty money from a drug dealer.

 
; Mackinnon was lost in thought as he stared down, watching droplets of water trickle through the condensation on the outside of his glass.

  Fiona reached out and touched his hand. Mackinnon’s eyes flickered up from the wine glass and met hers. There was something in the familiarity of the gesture that made him feel uncomfortable.

  Mackinnon pulled his hand away, picked up his glass and swallowed the rest of the wine. “Thanks for the drink. I’d better get back. We’re in the middle of a busy case at the moment.”

  Fiona sat back in her chair. “You’re going back to work tonight?”

  “Trawling through paperwork, not much fun. Chloe is not going to be happy,” Mackinnon said, not really knowing why he felt the need to mention Chloe. “But I guess you’d know what it’s like being married to a police officer.”

  “I didn’t realise you were married,” Fiona said. Her gaze fixed on Mackinnon’s left-hand.

  “I’m not, but I live with Chloe. Well, not all the time. She lives in Oxford, so I spend a lot of my time driving between London and Oxford. It’s not easy but we make it work.”

  He was rambling, but he didn’t want to send Fiona the wrong signals.

  “Right,” Mackinnon said, standing up. “I’d better be off. Thanks again for the wine.”

  “Any time. Thanks for dropping off the card. I’ll give the agency a call tomorrow.”

  As Mackinnon was about to leave, Fiona lay a hand on his arm and said, “Thank you for thinking of us. You’re a good man, Jack.”

  Mackinnon was lost for words.

  At the end of the driveway, he looked back at the house and saw Anna staring at him from one of the top floor windows.

  “I think someone else wants to say goodbye.” Mackinnon nodded at the window and grinned, waving back at the little girl.

  Fiona stepped out of the doorway and then peered up at the window.

  Anna quickly disappeared from view behind a swishing curtain.

  Fiona rolled her eyes. “She’s supposed to be in bed. I thought she’d been too quiet.”

  As Mackinnon walked back to the train station, he considered why he’d been so quick to bring up Chloe. He wanted to help Fiona and her children. He felt he owed them something. But the last thing he wanted to do was give Fiona the wrong idea about his visits.

  It hadn’t been that long since Bruce died, so perhaps she wasn’t even thinking that way. Perhaps he’d been reading too much into things.

  15

  CHARLOTTE GOT BACK TO her flat at just after eight p.m. She then spent the next hour checking the place was secure.

  She had fallen into a routine now and could do a circuit of the flat in one thirty-minute sweep.

  An hour a day. Half an hour before leaving in the morning and half an hour after returning home. First she did a loop of the whole flat, checking nothing had been moved, then she moved on to the balcony doors and checked each window in turn, running her fingers along the frames, making sure everything was just as she’d left it.

  At eight twenty-five she had almost finished when she remembered that she’d missed the window in the sodding bathroom.

  Now she would have to start all over again.

  Thirty anxious minutes later, she poured herself a glass of cranberry juice and laced it with a hefty slug of vodka. She liked to think it was practically healthy with all that vitamin C making up for the alcohol.

  She knew she should cut down because it had gotten to the point where she needed a couple of drinks every night to get to sleep and that wasn’t good.

  She sighed and took a sip, enjoying the sharp, dry taste of the cranberry.

  It had been a long day, but she wanted to do a little research. She opened up her beat-up old laptop. The fan started making an awful noise almost immediately, a kind of whirring, almost a groan. It wouldn’t last much longer. Great. More expense. It was expensive enough living in London without all these little extras.

  Over the past few weeks, she’d been thinking of moving. A fresh start, a new job, a new home.

  She looked around her living room, fit to bursting with one armchair, a two-seater sofa and a little coffee table. She’d be able to afford something bigger if she moved away from London.

  She’d been thinking about fresh starts a lot recently, thinking it might help with all the strange habits she’d been developing. She attended counselling for a little while, under duress. Her GP had been quite insistent it would help. It hadn’t. The only thing she’d gotten out of it was a name for her weird behaviour: OCD.

  But knowing what it was didn’t make it go away.

  Starting over, in another part of the country, would give her a chance to put all this crap behind her.

  She took another sip of her drink, still no closer to coming to a decision. Glancing down at her laptop, she saw that the computer had finally booted up. She clicked on the browser icon and muttered a prayer, hoping it didn’t crash on her as it did fifty percent of the time.

  Forty-five minutes and a number of Google searches later, she closed the lid of the laptop and sat back in disbelief. She couldn’t believe people were making a profit from suicide. How could people make money from something like that?

  She’d forgotten all about her vodka and cranberry.

  She’d discovered sites where people sold gadgets to make sure the gas acted quickly and couldn’t escape before they killed the subject.

  They called them exit hoods.

  Charlotte pushed the laptop away from her. She’d seen posts on forums where desperate people declared their intent to kill themselves, even giving dates and times. And people were actually encouraging them, telling them how brave they were and that they were doing the right thing.

  She wondered what their families would think if they knew.

  So far, the information they’d gathered for the victimology hadn’t indicated why Syed Hammad may have wanted to take his own life. They had spoken to people who had seen him every day, and so far, no one had said that Syed Hammad had been depressed let alone suicidal.

  She picked up her drink and carried it to the window. She leaned on the windowsill, staring out at the East London skyline. There were so many people out there, some of them feeling desperate, helpless.

  In this morning’s briefing, DC Webb had said he could not understand how people could be so selfish.

  But she could. She understood what it was like when you hadn’t slept properly for weeks, when you never felt safe, not even for a moment.

  She drained her glass. Maybe it was time for that fresh start.

  16

  PC STEWART ALLAN AND PC Rhonda Jones were called out to investigate the disturbance at Bexley house. PC Allan knocked on the door of flat number nine.

  “The complaint came from number nine, didn’t it?” PC Allan asked his colleague.

  PC Jones rolled her eyes. “Yes. Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten already.”

  She pushed in front of him and rapped on the door again, louder this time. Finally, the door was opened by a little grey-haired old lady. She beamed up at the officers.

  “Come in. Come in,” the old lady said.

  They entered a hallway that was decorated with pink floral wallpaper and a deep pink carpet. Small tables and cabinets lined the side of the passageway, each with a dozen trinkets and statuettes of ballerinas balanced on top. PC Allan edged his way carefully past the precariously balanced ornaments.

  “It’s a very warm night,” the old lady said. “Would you like a cup of tea?”

  “That would be lovely,” PC Allan said as he followed her into the sitting room.

  The two officers sat down on an overstuffed sofa, and the old woman bustled off to make some tea.

  PC Allan yawned and noticed PC Jones glaring at him. They should really have asked about the disturbance straightaway, but he was gasping for a cup of tea.

  He stretched out his legs and tried to arrange the cushions behind him to get comfortable.

  PC Jones shot him another lo
ok. She didn’t like him much. He could tell. She was new and eager. Far too eager, in his opinion. It was all business with her. She hadn’t yet learnt to slow down and actually talk to people. Ten years as a PC in this area had shown him just how important it was to create a rapport with the community.

  They sat in silence until the little old lady brought the tea.

  PC Allan smiled widely as he caught sight of the custard creams balanced on the tea tray.

  The little old lady began to pour the tea and said, “You must be boiling in those uniforms. It is such a stifling evening. We must be due for a thunderstorm, don’t you think?”

  PC Jones frowned and pulled herself forward, struggling not to sink back into the cushions. “Could I take your name please, madam? And the details of the disturbance?”

  The old lady pursed her lips and handed PC Jones a cup of tea.

  PC Allan smiled at the little old lady as she handed him his cup. “What a charming tea service,” he said, holding up the cup and admiring the delicate rose pattern and gold rim on the saucer.

  The old lady beamed. “I am rather fond of this set. It was a wedding present, so it’s over fifty years old. Would you believe in all that time I’ve only lost one saucer?”

  “Er, yes. Lovely, I’m sure,” PC Jones said. “But if we could talk about the disturbance? That is why we are here.”

  PC Allan took a bite of a custard cream. It was no use. He’d never worked with anyone with less people skills.

  “Oh, yes,” the lady said. “Of course. My name is Barbara Stanley, and I have lived here for over forty years.”

  “That’s a long time,” PC Allan said. “You must have seen a few changes.”

  PC Jones narrowed her eyes again. And before Barbara Stanley could answer, PC Jones balanced her biscuit on the saucer and said, “What time was the disturbance?”

  “It would have been about an hour ago.” Barbara Stanley took a sip of her tea. “Yes, that’s right. I remember now. I looked at the clock because my quiz show had just started.”