Time to Kill

by Brian Freemantle

  ‘Why do you want to know that?’

  Slater breathed in deeply. ‘My wife has a business, an art gallery. With protective CCTV. She thinks Jack Mason was caught on it, within days of your letter. Within days of him being released from the penitentiary.’

  Peebles groped for a response, glad to see Denver coming at last into the park off Pennsylvania Avenue. Behind him, on the avenue itself, an unmarked covered truck had pulled up. By the time the driver got out and raised the popped hood, a policeman from the White House protection detail reached it to talk to the now partially concealed man. Denver opened a copy of the Washington Post but sat twisted on the bench too, keeping Peebles and Slater in perfect view across the small, pebbled oval broken by a circular flower bed. Ironically the predominant flowers were tulips.

  Peebles said, ‘You got the loop?’

  Slater gradually released the indrawn breath. ‘No. I’d convinced her it wasn’t possible for Mason to know where we were, after the first conversation you and I had. And she hadn’t rewound the tape, as she should have done, so she only saw a limited back view of the man she thinks was Mason. I was out of town and she didn’t tell me immediately.’ It sounded empty, facile, an invention of an hysterical woman. It was empty and facile, even if Ann wasn’t an hysteric! There hadn’t been any fingerprints on the smooth stems of the tulips either, but he’d decided against mentioning yesterday’s bouquet on David’s grave. Peebles wouldn’t think that made any more sense than everything else he was telling him. Slater didn’t think that made sense, either, although not for the reasons Peebles would question. It was inconceivable that the bouquet of tulips could have been placed on David’s grave without some physical trace being left upon them. So who’d gone to the trouble of wiping every stem? And why?

  ‘She didn’t keep the tape?’

  ‘She was under a lot of stress. Not thinking.’

  ‘I’m sorry about your son … the accident,’ stumbled Peebles.

  Denver’s back was to the White House and the stalled truck. The police officer was walking away now, his radio close to his mouth, leaving the driver engrossed under the hood.

  ‘Thank you.’ Slater shifted, straightening more naturally on the bench. ‘I want to be able to convince my wife that it wasn’t possible for her to have seen Mason. That’s why I’m asking what I’m asking.’

  ‘I don’t think it could possibly have been Mason,’ insisted Peebles. He wished Denver, seemingly intent on his newspaper just a few feet away, had given him an estimate of how long he wanted the exchange to be stretched out. And that he could stop sweating. His chest was positively aching where the tape was pulling at him. He put himself straighter on the bench, to ease the discomfort.

  ‘I just need some idea of a location.’ Slater supposed he could invent somewhere sufficiently far away. But after Hillary Nelson’s verdict, and the unmarked flowers, Slater wanted the reassurance, as well.

  ‘I double-checked when I got back last time,’ said Peebles, anxious to end the encounter. ‘It’s way beyond my authority, which I told you it was. But I can pass the request on to Langley. Which I will do. I can’t promise a quick answer, though. You’ve got my number. Why not give me a call in a couple of days, so I can tell you what they say?’

  ‘You hot, Mr Peebles? I don’t think it’s particularly warm today.’

  ‘I don’t …’ started Peebles, but stopped. ‘I’m not feeling so good … feverish … I think I might be coming down with something.’

  Slater’s movement from the bench was very quick but smooth and he was halfway across the oval, skirting the flower bed, before Peebles properly realized Slater had got up. Denver moved, slightly, but didn’t look up from his paper until Slater reached him.

  Standing over the man, Slater said, ‘Perhaps you can help me?’

  Denver’s face creased. ‘What the hell …?’

  Slater said, ‘You’ve been on that same page for a full ten minutes. David’s death wasn’t reported in the Post – I know because I checked – so there was no way Peebles could have known and told me how sorry he was unless he’d been briefed. You were far too jerky getting your ear piece out when you heard me ask Peebles why he was sweating so much and he spent most of the time we were talking looking not at me but at you, as if he was expecting some guidance. And with the amount of terrorist security there is around the White House these days do you really think they would have let a potential car bomb stay that close unless there hadn’t been a positive Langley guarantee that it was a communication van? I really would have expected things to have got much better, more professional, over the years.’

  ‘Buddy, I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,’ said Denver. ‘And what’s more I don’t want to know. Why don’t you go back to your friend and both of you fuck off back to whatever hospital you’re on release from?’

  ‘You heard the conversation we had. Can you help me?’

  Denver stood up, crumpling his newspaper. ‘I told you to fuck off.’

  ‘You fucked up,’ accused Slater, conversationally. ‘You know it and I know it. You had a receiver in your ear, to listen to everything I was saying to Peebles. So if you’re not wired to a two-way transmitter as well – and you shouldn’t be because they always cross-wire and interfere – your truck over there don’t know it yet. Which means Langley don’t know it, either. Not yet, that is. Not until I make contact with the numbers I still have – numbers that still get answered – and give them your description and tell them it was more like a vaudeville show than a proper, professional intelligence operation. So, can you help me?’

  Denver remained where he was for several moments, the crumpled paper still in his hand. Finally, so quietly it was difficult to hear, Denver mumbled, ‘You heard what he said. Call in a couple of days.’

  ‘In two days I call Peebles,’ stipulated Slater. ‘If I don’t get help on the third day I call Langley.’

  ‘Who the fuck do you think you are! You’re—’

  ‘A Russian defector who brought in one of the worst spies ever to operate from within the CIA,’ stopped Slater. ‘Let’s not fall out … buddy.’ He looked across the flower bed. ‘Why don’t you go and put Peebles out of his misery?’ He’d probably taken the sneer too far, Slater acknowledged. But he was buoyed up, excited even, by how quickly and easily – how professionally – he’d realized what was going on, his satisfaction undiminished by their incompetence. He was glad, too, that he’d wired himself to record everything that had been said, both to Peebles and whoever this amateur, very badly posing as a supposed professional was.

  Despite the quick insistence to the psychiatrist, Slater still wasn’t sure – didn’t know how he ever could be – that he could kill Jack Mason, not until the moment came. If push came to shove he knew, though, that he could – and would – do everything else and whatever else to keep Ann and himself safe. He couldn’t be sure about killing another human being until the moment came. But if there were the slightest proof Mason had anything to do with David’s death he wouldn’t have any uncertainty. Then it would be exactly what he’d told Hillary Nelson. He’d want to kill him.

  ‘Where are you?’

  Always the same fucking script, thought Mason. ‘My flight leaves in two hours; I’m already at the airport.’

  ‘Which airport?’ asked Beverley.

  ‘Los Angeles.’

  ‘How’s it gone?’

  ‘I think I’ve got a chance in San Diego. The second agency I told you about. San Diego’s good. You ever been there?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You’d like it. I didn’t try, obviously, because I couldn’t without a passport, but Mexico’s less than an hour away.’ Once more Mason felt like a conjuror, needing to keep so many balls in the air at the same time and, although it was necessary, he was becoming increasingly irritated that one of them had to be Beverley Littlejohn. Virtually at once the anger transferred towards himself; she was necessary, and he had to stay focused, keep jugg
ling. Beverley was a bonus, essential to his evolving plan, and she couldn’t at this fast-approaching conclusion become an irritant.

  ‘LAX doesn’t sound very busy from here?’

  ‘I got a booth, not an open pod.’

  ‘You spoken to the lawyer?’

  ‘Told him I was coming back to settle everything. Got a meeting the day after tomorrow.’

  ‘Then you’re back here?’

  ‘I’ll be back when I’m back,’ said Mason, putting the edge into his voice.

  ‘I wasn’t—’ Beverley started at once but he interrupted her.

  ‘You were. Don’t.’ It really was going to be a relief, getting rid of her. There was silence from the other end. ‘Beverley?’

  ‘I’m sorry. I miss you.’

  ‘If it’s like this every time I shan’t call so often.’

  ‘Don’t say that!’

  ‘There’s just been a change on the indicator board, but I can’t see it from where I am. They might have switched the pier.’

  ‘Don’t go! Not when you’re mad at me.’

  ‘I’m not mad. I just don’t like these sorts of conversations, like I’m wrapped up. Hog-tied.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘And for Christ’s sake stop saying you’re sorry!’

  ‘I’m …’ she started then stopped.

  ‘I’ve got to go.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘I’ll call when I’m settled.’

  ‘Soon?’

  ‘When I’m settled.’

  ‘I love you.’

  ‘I love you, too …’ Mason timed the pause. ‘When I’m not hog-tied.’

  He only just managed to stop himself slamming the phone down, irritated by the delay of the facile argument. It would be good, a relief, to be rid of her. Why did women imagine they had some God given right to pussy whip a man in every situation? He’d beaten that out of Ann but couldn’t be bothered to do the same with Beverley. She was history now.

  Despite the delay her whining had caused, Mason stuck to his prepared schedule, driving the short distance from the post office to the Annapolis mall with which he was most familiar, managing to park close to his already isolated weapon emporium, experiencing a jump of physical excitement the moment he entered the Aladdin’s cave of potential carnage, allowing himself the briefest, new fantasy of the lingering agony he could inflict upon Slater and Ann with the ordnance set out all around him.

  It was practically deserted and at once a man Mason guessed to be little older than twenty, blond hair in a long ponytail, detached himself from a group of waiting salesmen and hurried towards him, a smile clipped into place.

  ‘Hi there!’ he greeted. ‘How ya doing?’ The ID on his shirt named him as Rod Redway.

  ‘Good,’ said Mason. ‘Impressive looking place.’

  ‘With the stuff we’ve got available here we could have won the war in Iraq in half the time,’ said the salesman, smiling at his own overly rehearsed joke. ‘Means we got whatever you want.’

  ‘It’s not going to be a great sale,’ apologized Mason. ‘I just need a box of handgun ammunition and some cleaning material: oil and a brush and cloths, stuff like that.’

  ‘Why don’t I run past you some of the stuff we got?’

  ‘Maybe another time,’ answered Mason. ‘I’m on a tight schedule today.’

  ‘Wouldn’t take all that long,’ pressed the man.

  ‘Another time,’ repeated Mason. ‘I’m looking for some ten-millimetre shells.’

  ‘Hey!’ said Redway. ‘Serious Dirty Harry stuff. What you got?’

  ‘A Glock.’

  ‘No problem,’ assured the man. ‘I’ll need your licence.’

  Fuck! thought Mason, sure the inward jolt didn’t show as hesitation. He groped into both inside pockets of his jacket, putting on the frown, then both on the outside, shaking his head as he did so. ‘You’re not going to believe this!’

  ‘What? said Redway, frowning.

  ‘I’ve come out without the damned thing. I didn’t set out today to get it – just came in when I saw your store.’

  ‘Can’t let you have any ammunition without it,’ said the salesman.

  ‘Of course you can’t,’ said Mason. ‘I know that well enough. I’ll have to come back some other time. I could still do with the cleaning stuff.’

  There was almost an imperceptible tightening of irritation in the other man’s face at the smallness of the sale. ‘That I can let you have.’

  Mason bought the first of everything he was offered, uncaring at knowing it would be the most expensive. As he paid, he said, ‘This is the sort of thing that makes you feel a total jerk.’

  ‘It happens,’ said Redway, in a tone showing that was exactly what he thought Mason to be. ‘Come back again soon, you hear.’

  ‘I will,’ promised Mason, hurrying out of the store hot with embarrassment, never to know the irony of another encounter just a few miles away.

  Slater had expected the gunsmith to be a work-shirted cowboy, maybe complete with Stetson. However, the man who confronted them wore a collar and tie and a subdued brown suit, the only inconsistency a droop-ended moustache that bracketed his mouth. There was a comprehensive and computer-consulted ID check, which established his business, after which the formality lessened and the man, whose quickly offered card named him as William Jackson, smiled in colleague-to-colleague understanding and said, ‘What have you got already? Surprised we haven’t met sooner.’

  ‘I’m not,’ said Slater. ‘I don’t have a gun.’

  The man pushed himself back from his computer station and said, ‘A security consultant who doesn’t have a handgun – a selection, even!’

  The genuine incredulity was almost amusing. Slater said, ‘I advise on property, burglary protection, stuff like that.’

  Jackson nodded back to his humming computer. ‘Well respected, too. Still would have expected you to already have something.’

  ‘That’s why we’re going to need your advice. I want something for my wife as well as myself.’ Looking around him, from the barred and presumably locked handgun display cases to the wall-chained ordnance and rifles with their triggers removed, Slater decided there was enough weaponry in this warehouse-sized emporium less than half a mile from Ann’s gallery to start a small-sized war. There were at least five other salesmen attending to customers: two, presumably husband and wife couples, had children with them, one boy, whom Slater guessed to be about the same age as David had been, had his nose literally pressed against a display case. Slater was conscious of Ann turning positively away from where the children were.

  ‘I’ve got the name!’ the man suddenly announced. ‘Didn’t recognize it before but now I remember. Sorry. Sorry about your loss, too.’

  Slater felt Ann stir awkwardly beside him. ‘Thank you. Like I said, something for both of us.’

  ‘The paper said—’

  ‘I know what the paper said,’ stopped Slater. ‘I don’t want to talk about anything they said, OK?’

  ‘Sure. Sorry again.’ Jackson nodded once more to his computer. ‘Know you’re kosher with what the paper said, but I’ve still got to go through the system, you understand?’

  ‘Of course you have,’ accepted Slater.

  ‘What’s the system?’ demanded Ann, impatiently.

  The gunsmith got up from his computer station. ‘You can’t take what you buy away with you today. You’ve got to wait seven days, before you can collect it. That’s to allow a full background check by the police, who have to approve the issuing of a licence.’ The man shrugged, apologetically. ‘It’s into criminal records and mental stability. I’ve also got to fire a sample round from whatever you buy and send the spent cartridge to the police, to create a ballistic record to attach to your file, in case the weapon is ever involved in a shooting of any sort.’

  ‘I can’t carry a gun for seven days?’ pressed Ann.

  ‘You can’t carry a gun at all,’ insisted the dealer. ‘You want
to do that, you need to apply for a concealed gun licence and to get that the police need to be convinced you’re doing so in the interests of public safety.’

  ‘What about …? started Ann, indignantly, but stopped.

  Jackson shrugged. ‘I don’t make the rules, Mrs Slater. I’m a believer in the Amendment that it’s the right of every American to bear arms, but there’s been too many nuts and now there’s terrorism, as well.’

  ‘Thanks for explaining things,’ said Slater, who’d already known the regulations but wanted Ann to hear them separately, from an independent expert, to avoid her suspecting he was inventing obstacles. She’d again remained locked in the house while he’d been in Washington the previous day, only finally opening the door that evening when he’d presented himself in front of the monitoring porchway television. He wasn’t totally sure she’d believed his lie that fingerprints found upon the tulips weren’t on record and therefore couldn’t have been those of Jack Mason. The impossibility of the stems being completely unmarked was the most pressing of all the illogicalities troubling Slater.

  ‘So let’s get down to business!’ said the dealer, enthusiastically. ‘You got any idea what you want?’

  ‘We’re relying on your advice,’ reminded Slater. His recollection of his KGB firearms training was of a cumbersome Makarov revolver, with a kick virtually impossible to hold down or guarantee any accurate aim, and of being deafened for hours after range practice without ear mufflers.

  ‘I think I might have something special for you,’ offered Jackson. ‘It’s a .45 Hechler and Koch LAM – that’s laser aiming model – known in the trade as a SOCOM from it being the choice of the US Special Forces Command. It actually beat the Colt company, although it’s adapted to use the Cold-manufactured Knight suppresser if you want a noise and flash silencer. It’s got a twelve round magazine and is one of the most accurate – if not the most accurate – handguns on the market.’ The man had been moving among his display cases as he spoke, finishing the pitch at the exact moment of producing the gun. He offered it to Slater and said, ‘How’s that feel?’