Kissing a Killer

by David Carter

  ‘Am I glad to see you,’ said Walter.

  Hector nodded and said, ‘Did you see him?’

  ‘Nope, but I heard him, and I saw the damage he did with his glass missiles.’

  The door to number 35 was swaying to and fro. Walter eased it open and crept inside. Hector followed. There was no one in there, no happy nieces, no gurgling great-nephew. There was a glass display cabinet with half the prize exhibits obviously missing, and half drunk coffee on the table, faintly warm.

  ‘Looks like they cleared out,’ said Walter, retreating outside. ‘She was frightened, was Corla, maybe made a wise move.’

  Hector nodded and said, ‘I think he’s gone higher.’

  Walter nodded and said, ‘Agreed. You go on, I’ll follow,’ and Hector hit the stairs running, but before Walter could follow, the door to another flat opened a tad. Eyes peered out, and the door opened further, and Corla appeared and whispered, ‘In here, Walter.’

  Walter went inside and Corla hurriedly shut the door.

  They were all there, Corla and the nieces, and Chantelle’s toddler Ben. The door to one bedroom was wide open and inside, two young men were there, busy, headphones on, tape and CD decks all over the place, computers by the dozen, big small and modern and alive, and Walter heard a jingle being played, Dee Bee Cee – the continuing sound of free pirate radio, and then one of the lads said, ‘We are interrupting this programme to bring you a special news report. The man known as the baseball bat murderer is being chased as we speak by police through Portobello Towers. More news as soon as we get it, but for now, steer well clear of Portobello.’

  One of the young men came to the door and checked out the suspicious looking stranger, and pushed the door closed.

  Corla said, ‘Ignore them. They’re good boys. Have you caught him yet?’

  ‘Not yet, but we will, I think he’s gone up on the roof.’

  Corla nodded and said, ‘He’s here to kill me. You know that, don’t you?’

  ‘He’s not going to kill anyone. I’m going after him,’ and Walter headed for the door, Corla following.

  ‘Be careful,’ she said. ‘He’s very dangerous.’

  ‘I know that. We have two officers down.’

  She let him out and closed and locked the door.

  Up top, Hector had reached the top floor. There was a small narrow fire escape door with a metal bar across it, half way up. He pressed the bar and the door flipped open with a soft clang. He went through, and up six breezeblock steps to the left, and he was out on the roof.

  There was not much there, just a flat pitched roof with a single small building on it, not much more than a big square box, located immediately above the non-working lifts. Probably contained all the elevator gubbins that were currently on strike. A minute later the Guv joined him out on the roof.

  Walter glanced around, surveying the scene. It was a great view up there, and for once despite being one of the murkiest Novembers on record, it was a clear day. You could see for miles, the river Dee winding its way through the old city, and North Wales beyond, the snow-capped mountains of Snowdonia away in the distance, but he wasn’t there to admire the view.

  Away to the right was a suspicious looking radio aerial, a lashed up effort on the corner of the building, held together with black electrician’s tape, no doubt pumping our Dee Bee Cee’s exciting exclusive. The only other thing on the roof was the small boxy building.

  ‘Have you looked behind that?’ asked Walter, pointing.

  Hector shook his head.

  ‘Do it now!’

  Hector nodded and ran to the building and went behind it, and disappeared from view for a matter of seconds, as if he was visiting the dark side of the moon, and then reappeared, shaking his head.

  He returned to Walter, and said, ‘What now?’

  Walter gazed at the small building, his mind running on overtime.

  ‘On the top of it, Hector. Check out the top.’

  Hector grinned and muttered, ‘You could be right,’ and he took a run at the building, and jumped at it, his right foot hitting it half way up, his hands reaching high, grasping for the top, as he grabbed the roof, and heaved himself up, athletically, not a problem for a six foot fit man like Hector Browne.

  He jogged into the centre of the small add-on building and turned and grinned back down at Walter and said, ‘Nothing here, Guv. Not a thing!’

  Walter nodded too and said, ‘Come on down.’

  Hector turned around and held onto the side of the topmost roof and kicked off and jumped down backwards, as easy as an Olympic gymnast dismounting the bars.

  Jenny reached the top floor, breathing hard, but only through physical effort. She saw the open door that led up onto the roof, but another narrow door at the far end of the corridor caught her eye. It was blowing to and fro and something about it didn’t look right.

  She ran along the corridor and pulled the door open and looked around. It was the traders’ staircase, and she paused and listened. She could hear muffled voices somewhere down below, men’s voices and then the echoing sound of steps on the concrete stairs. Were they coming up or going down? It was hard to tell.

  She shouted down the stairs, ‘Guv?’

  A quick reply hurtled back: ‘Fuck off!’

  Jenny didn’t recognise the voice and set off down the stairs, running, so much easier going down than coming up. She yelled, ‘Stop! Police!’ and caught them within three floors. Two late teenage boys, close cropped hair, not a surplus ounce of weight on them, insolent attitude, but nothing Jenny hadn’t seen and heard a hundred times before.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ she asked.

  ‘We’re going to work. What are you doing here?’

  ‘Where do you work?’

  ‘On the carwash on the Greyhound estate.’

  ‘Have you seen anyone else, a six foot tall dark haired man, or a big black guy?’

  ‘Nope and nope. Is that it?’

  Jenny nodded and muttered, ‘That’s it,’ and she turned and hurried back up the stairs.

  One of them said, ‘She’s a frigging nutcase!’ And they laughed over-loudly and hurried on down.

  Up on the roof Hector said, ‘What now?’

  ‘If he’s not on the lift shaft roof, and he’s not behind the building, the only other place he could have gone is in one of the flats, or over the side.’

  ‘Brave man if he has,’ said Hector.

  ‘You take north and west, I’ll take south and east,’ said Walter, heading for the eastern edge. ‘And be careful.’

  Hector nodded and headed for the north side.

  Walter stood as close to the edge as he dared and peered down. There was no wall or fence of any kind on the edge, nothing to stop anyone falling off. About four feet down, all the way round, was a black metal net, narrow gauge, small holes in the netting, sticking out maybe three feet, designed as some kind of safety feature, probably there to stop anything raining down on the unsuspecting public below. Objects like sticks and stones maybe, dropped there by nesting or squabbling gulls, and over time blown towards and over the edge. It was debateable whether that net could catch and hold a human, and certainly not a human determined to go that way.... all the way down.

  But for someone to climb down there, and over and beyond the net, and then back into the side of the building, that appeared almost impossible to Walter. Maybe an ultra-strong ultra-fit gymnast might make it, but beyond the net there was precious little in the way of handgrips or footholds, or so it seemed to Walter, and he couldn’t see how anyone could do it.

  Walter retreated into the centre of the main roof and said, ‘East and South clear.’

  Hector came back, nodding, saying, ‘North and West clear too.’

  ‘If someone’s gone over the side they’ve got more balls than I have,’ said Walter.

  ‘Me too, I couldn’t do it.’

  Walter scratched his chin.

  Hector said, ‘Looks like he’s got away, Guv
.’

  ‘No,’ said Walter. ‘He’s still here. He’s here alright.’

  Thirty-Seven

  Hector pulled a face and switched his weight from one foot to the other, and said, ‘I’m not with you. I don’t follow. How do you mean?’

  ‘I think you do, Hector. I only have one question: Why?’

  Hector pursed his lips and pulled a grimmer face and looked downcast and shrugged his shoulders and said, ‘How did you know?’

  ‘I didn’t, not until a moment ago. It’s the old thing, take away all possibilities, and the only one left is the correct one, and that set me thinking.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘It was the fingerprint thing that didn’t fit. There was always something too convenient about it, and just the one too, no other trace of Flanagan ever being in Belinda Cooper’s place, and you were the only one pushing for him to be the guilty party, and it was you who went to Flanagan’s place with Gibbons, and my guess is that while Gibbons kept him talking, you made your way into the kitchen and picked up some small item, a small glass or something, and pocketed it, hoping there might a print on it, and you got lucky, because there was.’

  Hector sniffed and stared Walter’s way.

  Walter continued. ‘It isn’t easy to lift a print and then re-lay it in a different location, but with your expertise, and the things we have taught you, you managed to do it pretty well. Nice touch to put it inside the bedside table drawer, by the way; that took things to a whole new level, intimacy wise. And then there was the ID parade that you somehow managed to avoid by fixing up a dental appointment, no doubt at the last minute. You probably told them you had terrible toothache, and you did that because you’d discovered that Corla could and would ID you if she set eyes on you, just as she did this morning on your way here. And you came here to kill her, didn’t you? Well, didn’t you?’

  Hector sniffed a cold laugh and didn’t answer.

  Walter spoke again.

  ‘It was a moment ago, when you athletically leapt on that roof, a six foot slim man, leaping up there, and all along we have been looking for a six foot slim man who could look after himself, with dark hair and eyes, just like yours, Hector. And you still haven’t answered my question: Why?’

  It looked like he wasn’t going to speak, but he did.

  ‘Do you remember that Sunday in the Maaz Khan case when I persuaded everyone in to work overtime? It was the day I’d set aside to give my lady, Sweet Georgia Browne, a full weekend’s CPA.’

  ‘Concentrated Person Attention,’ said Walter. ‘I remember it well, what of it?’

  ‘Well, she never forgave me for that, me messing her around, and about ten days later, Heather Holmes, that’s her real name by the way, gave me the elbow.’

  ‘Is that what this is all about? Being rejected by a woman?’

  ‘No Guv, not quite. It’s far more complicated than that.’

  ‘Explain yourself!’

  ‘She was everything to me. A truly exceptional person. Everyone else by comparison was, well, irrelevant, and afterwards she refused to see me, and changed her phone numbers and email address, and I couldn’t even call her. I really flipped. I never knew you could feel like that, kind of numb. And I was so incredibly angry, I can’t explain it, and then I stopped eating, couldn’t sleep at night, but kept falling asleep at work. It was eating me up, gnawing away at my guts.

  And one night I was out getting drunk, and I got talking to this guy who told me all about this good time girl who had a caravan down by the river, and how she’d do anything for fifty quid, and he really did mean anything. I thought that maybe if I went down there somehow it might bring my Heather back.’

  ’By killing her, you mean? Eleanor?’

  Hector nodded. ‘Yeah, that was the deal, I didn’t want anything else, I went tooled up with petrol and matches, my brain was totally scrambled, I wasn’t thinking straight at all.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘She was a real strange kid, that Ellie Wright.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘As I was doing it, throttling her, do you know what she did?’

  ‘I can’t imagine. What?’

  ‘She reached up and kissed me, Guv. Can you believe that? She kissed her killer, as if in thanks, as if she wanted me to kill her all along.’

  Walter snorted his disbelief and said, ‘And Belinda Cooper? What did she do to deserve to die?’

  ‘That was completely different.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘I only wanted to frighten her, I wanted to spread panic through the city, I wanted to see what you would do, and I figured that if I was right there with you I’d always be one step ahead.’

  ‘You did that all right, spreading panic and fear.’

  ‘You don’t understand, Guv.’

  ‘Explain!’

  ‘She came at me, real crazy. Tried to kill me, tried to turn the tables. It was always going to end badly.’

  Walter sighed and stared across into Hector’s gaunt face. He’d turned a shade of November dirty white. Some days in November in England everything is dirty black, or dirty white. Seemed like that, right there.

  ‘You almost killed two of your own fellow officers.’

  ‘I’m sorry about that. They’re not seriously injured, are they?’

  ‘They’ll live, no thanks to you. You need help, man.’

  ‘It’s too late for that, Guv.’

  ‘No, it isn’t!’

  But even as Walter said that he saw Hector’s future. The remainder of his life behind bars in a place where he would be a marked man, a sitting duck, a big trophy to be hunted down by every sick and evil individual the State had decided to incarcerate. Sooner or later they would get to him, they both knew that. Crooked police officers went through hell in prison, and who was to say they didn’t deserve it? But a police officer who had turned into a killer, that was something else entirely, a rare and heinous thing, and all on Walter’s watch. No doubt the stinking stains would flood across the records of everyone involved.

  The door to the roof opened again and Jenny and Corla stepped out and stared across at the two men. The guys’ body language looked wrong; as if it were all over, when it wasn’t.

  ‘Guv?’ said Jenny. ‘Everything okay?’

  ‘You!’ yelled Corla, pointing and glaring at Hector. ‘It’s him! He’s the killer!’

  Jenny glanced at Hector and Walter in turn.

  Walter let go the tiniest of confirming nods.

  Jenny grimaced in disbelief and shook her head.

  ‘Come on, Hector,’ said Walter. ‘We need to go and get this sorted,’ and he slipped a pair of cuffs from his coat pocket.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Walter.’

  Hector had never used his boss’s Christian name before.

  Walter nodded and stepped towards him.

  Hector brushed Walter’s hand aside.

  ‘You’ve been great, Guv. I love the bones of you.’

  ‘It’s time to show some real courage, DC Browne.’

  ‘That’s all drained from me, Guv. It’s slipped away forever, forgive me, will you?’

  And he brushed past Walter and ran towards the edge.

  Jenny read the situation well. She’d guessed what Hector might do, and leapt into action. She ran towards him, trying to head him off, but realised she wouldn’t get there in time. She leapt full length like a rugby fullback tackling a flying wing, reaching out for his ankles, hoping to bring him down before the white line.

  Hector had half expected something of the kind. At the last second he hurdled Jenny’s outstretched arms and grasping fingers, kicking her hands in the process, fracturing two digits. He was strong, incredibly strong, much stronger than he looked, and dainty feminine fingers were never going to stop a healthy hurtling man.

  Walter and Corla watched Hector clear Jenny, and dive over the edge, missing the black netting with ease, and like an Acapulco cliff diver he soared through the air, and was gone.


  Walter, Jenny and Corla rushed to the edge in time to see Hector plummeting earthwards, towards his end, ever faster through the chilly November air, ever more content with his life choice of violent death.

  ‘Look out!’ screamed Walter to those below.

  Some people looked up, and saw thirteen stones of masculine human muscle and bones hurtling down towards them. Huge terrified eyes stared up, disbelieving eyes glaring down.

  The former DC Hector Browne crashed into the worn tarmac with a sickening thud. The body bounced, though not by much, for that’s what it now was, a dead body, where once, not so long ago, it had been a fine young man, and a promising police officer, who in recent days had twisted and turned into a ruthless and merciless killer. What is it they say? Even a dead cat bounces, as do mentally ill policemen.

  ‘Why?’ said Jenny, holding her damaged hand to her side.

  ‘Rejection,’ said Walter.

  ‘That’s a pathetic excuse!’ scowled Corla.

  ‘Of course it is!’ agreed Walter. ‘But that’s the reason.’

  ‘He must have been an incredibly weak man,’ muttered Corla.

  ‘He was,’ said Walter. ‘Weak in mind, strong in body.’ He glanced across at the women. Jenny’s hand was almost twice its normal size. ‘What’s happened to Karen and Darren?’

  ‘Gone with the medics.’

  ‘And that’s where you’re going too. Come on, let’s get you some treatment.’

  ‘I’m glad he’s dead,’ said Corla.

  She was the only one there who was.

  Corla sniffed the freshening wind and mumbled, ‘I feel free at last. Totally free.’

  Thirty-Eight

  Caw! Caw! Caw! The rooks were doing what rooks do, seeing in the dawn. It was just gone 7.30am on the first day of December. There was a thick crunching frost on the grass, and it was beginning to snow. Old gravestones and headstones and different sized blackened and mossy stone crosses lined the frosty lawn, standing out at weird angles. None of Hector’s family and friends had chosen to attend the garden of remembrance.

  Maybe it was too early for them, maybe they were too ashamed, perhaps they simply didn’t care. It’s forever surprising how many people in the twenty-first century suffer unattended funerals. You can have a hundred thousand friends on social media, and still be alone at the graveside.