Time to Kill

by Roger Ormerod

  He growled deep in his throat. Anger closed his eyes for a second. He moved his head stubbornly.

  “It was Kyle, Odin. Not me. I saw the packet from the stockings he took along to do it with.”

  He came to his feet. I tried to stand.

  “I could have proved it,” I told him. “The bottles in here, the record sleeves—they’re all the twins of the ones in the Queens flat. But they wouldn’t have any of Elsa’s prints on, as they should’ve done. When you told him I was here he knew I’d spot it. So he sent you up to destroy the evidence.”

  I got to my feet. The room swam. Odin moved and I lurched to the door.

  “My Margie,” he said.

  I got the gun lined on him. He blundered towards me.

  “Odin!” I bellowed at him. But he bulled ahead.

  I could have stopped him. A thirty-eight in the guts would have stopped him. I stood with my back to the door and brought up the gun. I yelled for him to stop.

  He came on steadily, like a tractor in low gear. I yelled some more, and he walked straight on to the gun. But I couldn’t fire at the great oaf. He swept the gun aside and hit me once with his fist on the side of the head.

  He must have stepped over me to open the door.

  15

  I had no idea how long I was out. My head swam, and I’d left a small pool of blood by the door. I sat for a few minutes trying to think about it, but no thoughts were coming. Then I realized that Odin was running loose and gunning for Kyle. The word `gunning’ throbbed in my head and I went to see if he had taken it. It was against the skirting beside the door. At least I’d got that, if I could only decide on something to do with it.

  I dragged myself into the bathroom and rescued the half of brandy from the medicine cupboard, and after a couple of minutes I realized that if Odin caught up with Kyle it wouldn’t be Kyle who would lose out, it’d be Odin, because Kyle had a gun.

  The floor wasn’t too steady. but I walked across it to the door and looked back. There was nothing left of my beautiful evidence, nothing but shattered glass and a pile of ashes in the fireplace topped by a dozen buckled discs. I put the gun in my pocket, opened the door to go out.

  The phone rang. I stared at it, trying to decide what to do, then I thought it was maybe Elsa ringing to see how I was. I stumbled the two yards and picked it up.

  “Dave,” I said.

  I could hear a steady, sibilant breathing. I knew it was Kyle, ringing again to see what had happened. I grappled with my brain, wondering whether to tell him Odin was after him wondering what was best, and the phone clicked dead in my hand.

  I put it down slowly, went out of the door, and closed it gently behind me. I got the Jaguar out and headed it down the drive. It was going to be a rough ride. I headed for Kyle’s place.

  In Wolverhampton the traffic congestion was terrible. The Jaguar’s a big car and I was having one hell of a game judging its width. But in Kyle’s district it was quieter. We were on the taking-the-kiddies-to-school bit, where I only had to cope with women drivers. I got to the cul-de-sac. All was quiet. There was no crowd gathered round police cars and ambulances. I parked right at the top end, opposite Kyle’s bungalow, because I wasn’t going to be able to do much walking. Then I got out.

  The garage doors were open, and no car. All the same, I went round the side and had a look. Kyle still hadn’t done his washing up. I went back to the front.

  The woman next door was loading three horrible children into her car. I approached her. She looked startled. I hadn’t looked at myself in a mirror for some time, so I couldn’t guess what she saw.

  “Has Mr Kyle been out long?” I asked.

  “I really couldn’t say.”

  “Has there been a man in an orange Mini looking for him?”

  She touched her mouth with her fingers and said: “Well...yes.”

  “How long ago?”

  She thought, her eyes sliding at me. “Ten minutes.”

  “Thank you,” I said, and got back in the car.

  I knew suddenly where Kyle would have gone, and Odin after him. Kyle had got all the evidence destroyed for him, but that didn’t quite cover all the points. I’d been a fool. Dave Mallin, the righteous, disbelieving right and left because that was what I’d been trained to do. Elsa’s prints were in the Queens flat, so all it’d meant to me, was that she must have been there. But she’d only got to say she hadn’t, and any reasonable person would query the fingerprints, not her veracity.

  Odin must have seen it at once. It was only Mallin who’d had to make an issue of it. So Elsa was in danger, and there was I sitting in a car, whilst Kyle...

  I swung out on to the main road. My head was clear. I made a valid decision that it would be quicker to make a circuit on to more open roads, the car being more one for loping than nipping. I gave the engine its head. Along the road from Wolverhampton to Bridgnorth I was doing eighty. Bridgnorth came up. I ached with impatience trickling over the bridge, but once clear of the river I could open out again a little.

  I swerved into Elsa’s drive with the tyres screaming. There was an orange Mini standing in front of the house, and a Volkswagen beside it. Before the Jag had stopped I was out, and I had the gun in my hand. The front door was unfastened and I butted it with my shoulder, almost dropping with pain. Then I stopped in mid-stride, and Elsa screamed.

  She was halfway up the staircase, leaning over the rail and looking down. Kyle was in the hall, facing me. As I came through the door he fired, but not at me. Odin had his back to me. He was ten yards from Kyle and making it less every second, but moving slow. Kyle backed up and fired again. Odin twisted from the impact of it and fell to one knee. Then he struggled back to his full height.

  Elsa shouted: “David!”

  I didn’t look at her. I couldn’t get a clear sight on Kyle. I roared at Odin, but he did not hear me. He moved steadily forward and the gun in Kyle’s hand bellowed out again. Odin did not pause. Kyle had his back now against the dark oak panelling, feeling sideways for a doorway, anywhere he could go to get further from Odin. And not finding it.

  Odin went on. I shouted, but I knew it was too late. Nothing was going to stop Odin, and now, as he was only three feet from Kyle, he was an unmissable target. Kyle fired again. The blast sounded dull, because Odin was on him. Kyle tried to bring up the gun again, but their bodies were touching. Odin’s huge hands were at his throat, and I could do nothing. But I ran, stumbled, forced myself across the floor and at Odin, dragging at his arms, but uselessly. Kyle’s face glazed. His eyes bulged. The gun fell to the floor.

  Then Odin stepped back, two steps back, and sat down ridiculously. Kyle crumpled down at my feet. I stooped to catch him, but he was limp as a damp rag. I rolled him over and his head lolled. Odin had broken his neck.

  I turned to Odin as I heard Elsa’s heels clattering across the parquet. He had both hands to his stomach, a look of pained surprise on his face.

  Elsa was at my shoulder.

  “Ring for an ambulance,” I said. There was a chance for Odin. It would’ve taken a field gun to finish him off. “The police...”

  “Doris...” she whispered, and I saw beyond her that the old dear was already at the phone.

  “You’re all right?”

  “Oh David, I think he was going to kill me.”

  I was damn sure he was.

  “And for something you never did.”

  She took my arm and clung to it. It felt good. We waited for the ambulance and the police.

  “What didn’t I do?”

  “You didn’t go to the flat at Queens,” I told her.

  She smiled. I had time for one comforting thought. There was one thing I had achieved—I’d managed to deliver the Jaguar.

  If you enjoyed reading Time to Kill, you might be interested in Third Time Fatal, also by Roger Ormerod.

  Extract from Third Time Fatal by Roger Ormerod

  1

  We were going to a wedding. Not ours, more’s the pity, be
cause Oliver was still stupidly concerned about marrying my money, as he called it, but nevertheless a wedding. I’d had the vague idea that it would give him romantic ideas, but so far I’d seen no sign of them.

  Already, only fifty miles towards our objective, I knew we were going to be late, in spite of the fact that we’d started out early. He had assumed — almost insisted — that he would be doing the driving, and he was naturally taking it steadily. I couldn’t blame him for that, as his right arm was recovering only slowly and was clearly giving him pain. I wasn’t supposed to notice that. Oh — why do we have to stroke their egos so carefully?

  Eventually my nerves wouldn’t allow me just to sit there, staring at the dashboard clock.

  ‘I’ll take over if you like,’ I offered, even managing to sound casual.

  ‘Now, Phil... you know I’ve got to use my arm as much as I can, and the car’s lovely to drive.’

  I grimaced to myself, and settled deeper into my seat. That was the reason I’d bought it: easy to drive. It was a BMW 735 with an auto box and power-assisted steering, all of which I had hoped would ease the effort for him. But oh dear me, I’d even had to be careful over that. One wrong move and I’d have had him developing an inferiority complex.

  Yet I had intended that I would be doing most of the driving. It was mine, after all, but it was significant that his reservations about sharing my income were not present when it came to driving my car.

  ‘We’re going to be late,’ I said quietly.

  ‘Nonsense!’ He flicked me a distorted grin. ‘You women — fuss, fuss. No need for hurry. It’s only a wedding.’

  Only! But it was the wedding of my special girlhood friend, Heather Payne, poor, repressed and unassertive Heather, who at school had needed me as a friend, as a buffer against life’s agonies. To Heather, everything had been a painful obstacle to clamber over; everywhere confronting her were problems over which she would pessimistically brood herself into depression. No wonder she’d been so long getting herself married, in finding a man, the right man. But she had never possessed one iota of self-confidence, and I couldn’t expect any improvement now. She would need me. She would quiver into hysteria if I wasn’t there. And on time.

  Ten miles further on I was beginning to work myself into a state of nerves. Still over a hundred miles to go, and Oliver was simply sitting back and enjoying the drive.

  ‘Shall we stop for coffee?’ I asked. ‘The first place we come to.’

  ‘I thought you were in a hurry.’

  ‘All the same...’

  Then, sitting opposite him with a table between us, I could observe what I had guessed, that his face was pale with tension and his lips down-drawn against the pain.

  ‘You’re overdoing it,’ I told him.

  ‘I can still drive —’

  ‘The keys,’ I demanded, holding out my hand. He hesitated. I insisted. ‘After all, it’s my car, and you won’t let me get my hands on it. The keys, please.’

  Then he smiled, and things happened to Oliver when he smiled, gloriously intimate things that caught at my heart. I knew he realised I was sparing him from having to admit that the effort had almost beaten him. He placed the keys in my palm.

  ‘It’s got a bit of understeer unless you accelerate round the corners,’ he told me.

  ‘I’ll watch it.’

  ‘And don’t forget it’s not run in yet.’

  ‘I’ll not forget.’

  What I wasn’t forgetting was that we had a little over two hours in which to reach the church, which was about ninety miles away, and there was no motorway to which we could easily resort. And Heather would be a quaking mess if I wasn’t there on time.

  ‘Didn’t I tell you,’ said Oliver ten minutes later, when I clipped a grass verge on a fast corner.

  I said nothing. The car was a dream to drive fast, and the engine refused to feel or sound over-stressed. I relaxed and gave it its head.

  One of the difficulties was that we were driving into unknown territory. Neither of us knew Somerset, and we had only the simple instructions that St Asaph’s was twenty miles inland from the north coast. Head for Lynton, had been my instruction over the phone. Then Oliver, who was a better driver than navigator, gave me a seemingly wrong direction, and in five minutes we could see glimpses of the sea ahead, and we hadn’t passed a church for miles.

  ‘Hell!’ I said.

  ‘Next left,’ he told me.

  ‘How d’you know that?’

  ‘I took the precaution of looking it up in a church directory, my love. Somehow, I guessed we’d get lost.’

  I said nothing, but took the next left. The clock on the dash already indicated that we were late. Poor Heather!

  It was a tiny church on the edge of a village that had never developed into anything resolute, little bits of it exploring side lanes and baulking at the hills that surrounded it. It had no centre, just a few houses clustering about the church, where a stream trickled along beside the road, and another few visible around the bend further along. In front of the gate was parked a very smart Mercedes sports coupé, and no other car. Leaning against the gate was a bored, dark-haired man who looked about forty but was probably less. The best man? If so, why wasn’t he with the groom? Or was this the groom himself? No — he couldn’t be. No groom could look so bored. Impatient, perhaps, if the bride was late, but surely not bored.

  Then I saw that the bride was not in fact late, as she walked into sight from inside the churchyard. And oh, how she had changed! Plumper, even slightly podgy now, her hair no longer the bright cascade of gold I could recall, but an indeterminate straw with shades of grey, and in a blue going-away costume that did nothing for her figure. She was clearly under stress, unable, it seemed, even to stand without great effort.

  It was the groom who was late. Wasn’t it part of the best man’s duties, to get the groom there on time?

  She recognised me at once, clattering forward on high heels, her arms wide.

  ‘Oh, Philipa! Phillie!’

  Then she was shaking against me, sobbing, ruining her make-up but not caring for anything now. Because he hadn’t arrived.

  I thrust her away from me a little, sufficient to be able to consider her face. As I recalled her, still she had that petulant, pouting expression of a child deprived of something she wanted and had to have. There had always been a point when she had been able to resort to a reserve of stubborn and inflexible purpose, and if the desire was strong enough she would go to extreme lengths to satisfy it. What she currently desired was marriage to this particular specimen of manhood, even though he lacked the grace to be on time, and by heaven she intended to get him.

  But he hadn’t turned up to be got.

  Beyond her, I could see that Oliver was having a few words with the bored and clearly hung-over man, who had to be the best man. I made comforting sounds, and when I felt that very soon she was going to collapse in my arms I led Heather to my BMW and got her seated inside, sliding in beside her.

  By now a few of the guests, or perhaps all of them, had followed to see what was going on. Or not. It was going to be a quiet wedding if it ever got going. That would be typical of Heather, always so introverted and never one for show. There were two hovering ladies, one in pink and one in green, who were clearly her maids-of-honour, but they hovered at a discreet distance, looking pained at Heather’s distress but not intending to become closely involved. Was I Heather’s only real friend? I tried my best to justify the responsibility.

  ‘That’s the best man?’ I asked her.

  ‘Yes. It’s his friend, Jeff Carter.’

  ‘I don’t even know your... your man’s name.’

  ‘It’s Martin. Martin Reade. With an ‘e’ on the end.’

  ‘And what does Jeff Carter say about him?’

  ‘They had a party...’

  ‘Oh yes, they would. Stewed to the eyeballs, I’ll bet. And didn’t his friend see him home?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she whispered.
‘I don’t know anything.’

  ‘Then we’ll have to find out.’

  I got out of the car and went over to Oliver, who was looking very annoyed. ‘Like getting blood out of a stone,’ he told me, clipping the words.

  I took a more careful look at Jeff Carter. He was a thin, angular man, dark and sullen with grey, piercing eyes, very much bloodshot now. He was untidily dressed for a wedding, in a crumpled suit he seemed unused to. Quite definitely he’d been drunk the previous night. If he’d had a shave that morning, he had forgotten to put a blade in his razor. He wouldn’t raise his eyes to mine after the first glance.

  ‘He doesn’t remember getting home,’ said Oliver. ‘Says he walked. The party was at The Rolling Stone, a pub in the next village.’

  ‘Hasn’t Jeff got a car? How did he get here this morning?’

  ‘He’s got a car,’ said Oliver patiently. ‘A black Fiesta. But it’s not in running order. Got a lift from a mate who was coming this way.’

  ‘Hasn’t he tried to contact him, this Martin Reade?’

  ‘Take it easy, Phil,’ said Oliver quietly. We had been talking about Jeff as though he wasn’t there. Strictly speaking, he wasn’t. Certainly, his mind was somewhere else, groping for its way to the present.

  ‘He could have phoned,’ I said stubbornly. ‘Done something, anyway, instead of just standing here.’

  ‘He’s phoned, from that box along there, by the little bridge. Several times — but there was no answer.’

  ‘Right,’ I said. ‘Then it’s obvious. We’ll have to go and dig him out.’

  ‘Exactly,’ agreed Oliver gently. He’d already decided that.

  I went back to Heather, who had crunched herself into a compact ball of misery in the passenger seat, and told her what we’d decided to do. There was some difficulty in getting her to understand, but in the end we got her into the Mercedes, which was her own I gathered, and in which they had intended to drive to Heathrow Airport for a plane to New York, on their honeymoon.