Time to Kill

by Brian Freemantle

  At the graveside Slater needed the help of Mary Ellen Foley to keep Ann upright. As the coffin was lowered, Ann emitted a wail more animal than human. There was no reception wake. Mary Ellen rode home with them in the funeral car and helped Ann immediately to undress and settle in bed, although she refused the sedative that the doctor had prescribed. When Jean arrived to drive Mary Ellen home, Slater told her to keep the gallery closed for the rest of the week and that he’d call at the weekend to tell her if Ann intended opening the following week, doubting that she would. He warned Mary Ellen he wasn’t sure when he’d be returning to the office, either. Finally alone, he checked every hour upon Ann, who remained unmoving as she’d settled in their bed, apparently asleep. In between he drank two very large brandies, without their having the slightest effect before impulsively packing all David’s clothes and belongings, including his basketball, belatedly sorry that he hadn’t included the ball in the burial coffin, cumbersome – maybe even unacceptable – though the gesture might have been. He thought, inappropriate though it also might have been, that he should have included David’s hunting knife: it had epitomized the camping weekends that there would no longer be. And Slater cried, abruptly at different memories and reminders, sometimes as loudly and unrestrained as Ann had wailed at the graveside.

  Slater came awake slumped sideways on the couch upon which he’d finally sat after packing David’s things. The lounge was in complete darkness but he knew at once that he was not alone in the room. As he straightened, sticky-eyed, aching and cold, he blurted, ‘Who is it …? Where …?’ There was the shift of somebody moving. ‘Ann?’

  There was no reply but Slater became vaguely aware of a figure sitting on the facing couch and leaned sideways again to snap on the table lamp. Ann wore a housecoat but it was open over the nightdress into which Mary Ellen had helped her. She was staring directly ahead, unfocused, holding between both hands a tall tumbler Slater knew would be gin, already half drunk. ‘Ann?’

  ‘David’s gone,’ she announced, no emotion in her voice.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘We won’t see him. Never again.’

  ‘No.’

  Like an automaton she lifted her glass, drank deeply, and lowered it back to her lap. ‘He was killed. Murdered.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Ann moved, only slightly, looking properly at him for the first time. ‘You know?’

  ‘Of course I know, darling. He was run down … a car that didn’t stop.’

  ‘No!’ she contradicted, louder than before, indignantly. ‘He was killed by Jack. Jack ran him down. Killed him.’ She drank again, robot-like.

  Their doctor had warned Ann’s reaction might be unpredictable. ‘The police are going to find who did it. There’s a detective working on the case now. I’ve spoken to him.’

  ‘Jack did it. Tell him that Jack did it.’

  ‘I will,’ said Slater. ‘I’ll call him tomorrow.’

  ‘You’re not listening to me … believing me …’ Indignant again.

  ‘I am, darling. I’ll tell him tomorrow.’

  ‘Listen to me!’ Ann insisted. ‘I’ve seen Jack … know he’s here. That he’s found us. Wants to hurt us.’

  ‘It’s late, Ann. Let’s go back to bed. I’ll get you the medicine the doctor prescribed.’

  Ann finished her drink in a gulp, at once offering her glass. ‘Get me another. Don’t water it down with too much ice. I want to taste the gin.’

  Slater hesitated, knowing from the accompanying pamphlet that alcohol was not recommended with the medication she’d been prescribed, but then took the glass to the kitchen where the rarely used drinks were. She was rambling, in shock, but nowhere near drunk. He wouldn’t let her have another, after this.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said, accepting the drink when he returned.

  ‘We’ll go to bed after this.’ He considered having another brandy but decided against it. His mouth tasted sour from what he’d already drunk.

  ‘When you went to San Jose,’ she started again. ‘When I took that afternoon off from the gallery …’ Ann stopped, looking at her glass as if in memory. ‘I didn’t check the CCTV. I wasn’t there. A lot had been overrun when I did look, the following day. That’s when I saw him. He’d gone past the gallery. He doesn’t look quite the same. He seems broader, but I know it was him.’ She was talking quite ordinarily, her voice flat, conversational.

  Slater sat gazing at his wife, unspeaking, unsure. It had to be a fantasy. Had to be. Maybe it was more than shock, a nervous breakdown even, brought on by grief. ‘What did you do with the tape, Ann? Have you kept it, for me to see? Changed it for one of the spares I gave you?’

  Ann shook her head. ‘We’d talked about it, remember? Decided there was no way he could find us. He didn’t look quite the same, like I said. I thought I was imagining it. Now I know I wasn’t.’

  It just wasn’t possible, couldn’t be possible! ‘You saw his face?’

  She shook her head again. ‘He’d gone past. It was his back. His face would have been on it if I’d looked at it earlier, as I should have done.’ Ann took a deep gulp. ‘I’m sorry. It’s my fault David is dead. All my fault.’

  ‘Stop it, Ann! It’s not your fault. Nothing’s your fault.’

  ‘He’ll come after us now. You know that’s what he’ll do, don’t you? I know Jack. I know that’s what he’ll do.’

  He’d have to get Ann psychiatric help, Slater decided. Were psychiatrists bound by the same Hippocratic oath as medical doctors, forbidden by confidentiality against disclosing to whom Ann had been first married and the fact that he was a defecting Russian? He’d have to check. It didn’t matter if they weren’t. He had to get Ann well.

  ‘You’ll have to kill him, of course,’ said Ann, no tone to her voice. ‘Kill him before he kills us. That’s what he’ll try to do, after what he did to David.’ She drank again.

  ‘Ann, we’re going to have to help each other. We’re going to go to bed now. I want you to take what the doctor gave you. You have to get some sleep.’

  ‘You don’t believe me, do you!’ she accused again. ‘You think I’m mad.’

  ‘No, darling. I don’t think you’re mad. We need help, both of us. We’ve got to learn how to cope.’

  Ann came forward on her seat, looking fixedly at him. ‘You’ve got to believe Jack has found us, stop him doing to us what he did to David. Get a gun. Whatever. Something to protect us.’

  ‘I will. I’ll get a gun tomorrow. Today, rather. I won’t let anything happen to you.’

  ‘Don’t patronize me! Believe me! I want another drink.’

  ‘No, Ann. No more drink. We’re going to bed now and you’re going to take what the doctor gave us.’

  ‘You locked up? Set the alarms? Checked the CCTV?’

  He hadn’t done any of it, Slater realized. ‘I’ll do it now.’

  ‘He could have got into the house already. Be hiding somewhere.’

  ‘He’s not in the house, Ann. No one’s in the house except you and me. And you’re safe. Nothing is going to happen to you, I promise.’

  ‘I want another drink.’

  ‘I’ll lock up.’

  Slater went from room to room, securing the doors where he had to and checking the window bolts. Before setting the individual room alarms he fast forwarded most of that day’s CCTV loop, most of which was empty even of passing cars. The only people on the tape were the funeral people who’d collected and returned them, he and Ann, Mary Ellen Foley and Jean. He saw, as he watched, that he’d left his car outside in the drive instead of putting it away in the garage as he had done in the first week or two of learning of Jack Mason’s release. To do it now would mean unlocking at least three doors and turning off and resetting as many alarms and Slater decided not to bother. When he got back to the lounge he saw that Ann had made herself another drink.

  He said, ‘We’re all locked up. And I’ve checked the CCTV.’

  ‘I’m not ready yet.’

&nb
sp; ‘I’m very tired, after today. And I’ve got a lot to do in the morning, after what you’ve told me.’

  ‘I need a gun, too. We both do.’

  ‘I need to go to bed now if I am going to be able to do everything that I have to do in the morning.’

  ‘I’ll take my drink with me.’

  ‘All right.’

  Ann rose without his having to help her and walked unaided to their bedroom, not needing the handrail to climb the stairs. She took the prescribed tranquillisers without argument, although with the gin she carried, not water.

  ‘I told you he’d find us, didn’t I?’ she said.

  ‘Yes, you told me.’

  ‘And I was right.’

  Slater decided their doctor had to be his first call in the morning. He needed a recommendation to a psychiatrist as soon as possible.

  * * *

  Jack Mason squinted close to his computer screen illustrating the funeral photograph in the Frederick News-Post, wishing the definition were clearer and acknowledging that Daniel Slater was good, appearing to have forgotten nothing of his ingrained tradecraft. So cleverly had Slater hunched himself into Ann’s shrouding black veil that, had he not already made the identification and known the assumed identity, he would never have recognized the man who’d been his control for three years, after his re-assignment to CIA headquarters from Moscow. It could be a misconception from how Slater had been holding himself to support Ann but the photograph seemed to confirm Mason’s impression from his brief sighting outside the gallery that physically Slater was slightly heavier from how he remembered the man from their monthly contact meetings. The hairstyle had definitely been changed, worn shorter and with the parting on the side opposite from how he’d once combed it. Slater had never worn double-breasted suits, either; there’d been a threadbare joke about his not wanting to look like someone from the Soviet Praesidium, each of whom always seemed to dress like that. It was impossible to make out Ann’s features beneath the veil or to determine how much, if at all, she had physically changed. If she still drank as much as she once had the need would have been for Slater to hold her up from collapsing into a drunken heap rather than because she had been overcome by grief at the boy’s burial.

  Mason read the accompanying story with as much attention as he had devoted to the photograph. For the first time there was reference to a homicide investigation, although not into the killing of the boy but into the circumstances surrounding the death of the man who had been found close to the burned-out 4×4. The body still hadn’t been identified and there was insufficient orthodontic work to canvas dentists, the usual method followed to trace people so badly disfigured by fire. Mason sniggered at the police spokesperson’s insistence that the investigation was ongoing, initially deciding that they still weren’t making any progress, before balancing the dismissal with the thought that the killing of Ann and Slater – even if it could be manoeuvred into appearing accidental which he increasingly doubted – could instantly escalate the police probe to a federal level. But that was predictable anyway after David’s death. An already suspected homicide would actually increase the obvious existing confusion, more to his advantage than endangering him.

  His difficulties were far closer to home, Mason decided; or to where he’d chosen to make his very convenient and sexually satisfying home. Now – immediately – was the time to go back and deal with Slater and Ann, when they were still locked into shock and grief and wouldn’t be thinking about anything other than the loss of their kid, whose killing had been easy, a presented opportunity he’d grabbed and successfully used. He wasn’t likely to get another, Mason realistically accepted. On this occasion he’d have to plan far more carefully, ensuring every precaution; ‘never initiate an operation until establishing a guaranteed escape’ echoed in his mind, the universal intelligence mantra. Which took time, potentially a lot of time. Creating an absence that had to be accounted for and accepted by the so far trusting Beverley Littlejohn if she was to be kept as a potential alibi – his best and most guaranteed escape, in fact.

  Mason spent the remainder of the day trying to evolve a convincing story, picking at the too obvious flaws that she might isolate, not completely satisfied with his final resolve but unable to improve upon it. Whether he succeeded in convincing her came down to his already self-admired acting ability. Even if he did, his schedule would still be limited and if it wasn’t sufficient Beverley and her usefulness would have to be discarded, which she was eventually going to be in any case.

  Mason had the apartment immaculate and the drinks prepared as usual for Beverley’s return, waiting for her on the balcony while she completed her homecoming ritual; the diaphanous shift that evening a pale yellow silk.

  ‘So how was your day?’ she asked.

  ‘Decisive,’ replied Mason, his script already prepared.

  ‘You’ve got an interview!’ she anticipated at once.

  ‘I’ve been making decisions.’

  Beverley sat regarding him seriously. ‘What’s that mean?’

  ‘That I’ve acknowledged – realized – that I haven’t been fair to you.’

  Her second pause was longer than the first. ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘You’re out on a limb with me. Getting involved like you have, risking everything. And I’ve been taking advantage of it, moving in like I have, not yet going down the coast to register with other agencies because I don’t need the money … not thinking of what you’ve got to do, making out reports, stuff like that. It isn’t right and it isn’t fair and—’

  ‘Stop, darling! Please stop! I’ve become involved with you because I want to become involved. I’ve told you already that I don’t give a damn about any risks and I don’t think you’re for a moment, in any way, taking advantage of me. I want you to be here, living with me. And I know you’ll get a job and I think you’re being sensible not rushing it, snatching at the first thing that comes along.’

  Mason shook his head in apparent refusal. ‘I spoke to Patrick Bell today, too. Told him I didn’t want to go on with the compensation claim. I can’t risk the publicity, can’t risk how it would affect us. I’ll take their crap offer, close everything down.’

  Beverley smiled, faintly. ‘I’m so glad … about the publicity, I mean. That wouldn’t have been a good idea, would it?’

  ‘I have to go back east,’ Mason declared. ‘Bell says he’s initiated a lot of legal things that have got to be unravelled now that I’m not going to proceed. The quickest way to do that will be for me to go back because I want everything to be settled quickly, once and for all, so that we can properly settle down – everything quick, sorted out and finalized. That’s why I’m building in the trip to Los Angeles and San Diego.’

  ‘You’re losing me along the way here,’ protested Beverley. ‘Let’s take it a little slower.’

  Mason refilled both their glasses. ‘I’ll go back east tomorrow. Sort all that needs to be sorted out with Bell – with luck the shitty first offer will just about cover my costs but it doesn’t matter if it doesn’t. The only thing that matters now is you and I. When I’m done, I’ll fly back to Los Angeles or San Diego – whichever is the most convenient but do both to complete all the formalities – and then come back here.’

  ‘How long’s that likely to take?’

  Mason shrugged. ‘As long as it takes. And I’ve got two things to ask you and if you don’t like either I’ll understand – be very disappointed but I’ll understand because I’m an ex-con and you’re a law officer according to the definition of your job.’

  Beverley sat on the opposite side of the tiny balcony, her drink forgotten on the separating table. ‘What?’

  ‘You’re going to have to cover for me in that first report you’ve got to submit – exaggerate a little on how hard I’m trying to rehabilitate and settle down.’

  ‘I’ve already realized that.’

  ‘As I said, it’s your choice.’

  There was a brief, hovering silen
ce.

  Mason said, ‘So what is it?’

  ‘You know damned well what it is.’

  Mason smiled. ‘You’ve no idea how much I’d hoped that’s what you’d say. And something else that’s just occurred to me. We’ve got to keep Glynis out of this. We both know how much she wants to get into your pants. You any idea how she’d react, if she found out – suspected even – what was going on between us!’

  ‘I’m not going to talk to Glynis about anything,’ insisted Beverley. ‘You said there was something else?’

  ‘There is. Will you marry me?’ That hadn’t been rehearsed but he decided it was brilliant and that he had the most guaranteed escape alibi he could possibly have.

  Twenty-One

  When he didn’t produce the demanded handgun but instead, as gently as he could, suggested they see a specialist doctor, Slater expected the indignant outbursts – near hysteria even – with which Ann had greeted his doubt that she’d seen Mason on the gallery CCTV.

  Instead, quite composed and without any resentment, she said, ‘A psychiatrist, you mean?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Slater. There was nothing to gain from trying to avoid or sweeten what he was attempting to do to make her well again; he was obviously going to be as supportive and loving as was possible but Ann would despise him if he lied. Her very calmness had to confirm that he was right, that Ann was suffering from delusion and possibly a nervous breakdown. She’d been more agitated earlier, telephoning Jean to keep the gallery closed and telling him she was going to set all the house alarms and locks the moment he left and not answer the telephone or open the doors until she saw from the porch TV it was him at the door, even after he’d put the car in the garage. She made him immobilize the entry into the house from the garage, declaring it susceptible to electronic interference.

  ‘So you think I’m mad; that I’m making it all up?’

  ‘I think we need help.’ Slater fell back upon already established reasoning. ‘Both of us.’ Another surprise was that she was very evidently stone-cold sober. He’d risked one scotch and water after leaving the office, from which he’d had his conversation with their family doctor, Herbert Mills.