My mother’s cheese wire with the little wooden handles on either end.
One to stab, one to bludgeon, one to garrote. I’d been staring at them for ten minutes, and although I’d like to think I wasn’t stalling—I think I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t and who could blame me—it was an impossible choice. Although I really think I’d already dismissed the cheese wire. It sounded like a clever idea, but there was so much that could go wrong with that. At least the knife or the hammer could be a one-hit deal, if done right.
So hammer or knife? Knife or hammer? It was like a Tommy Cooper routine from hell. I’d obviously take both, but one would be a backup, left in my belt perhaps, and the other would be used to do the deed. I felt that trying to use two at the same time would make it harder to focus.
A knife has to penetrate the skin to do damage. It needs to puncture a major organ like the heart to kill quickly, or he’ll probably be conscious for a little while afterwards and might fight back. If I catch him unawares with the hammer, right on the back of the head, then he’s out for the count at least. Most likely concussed and/or brain damaged and possibly even dead.
It made sense.
Plus, if he’s not dead and just unconscious, then you can use the knife.
Could I stab an unconscious man?
You’ll find out.
The hammer was small, the kind you’d use to bang nails into a piece of self-assembly furniture. I thought it had enough weight to do damage, yet was still light enough to be wielded quickly.
The reason I’d chosen the paring knife as an option in the first place was because its blade was so short - long enough to puncture as deeply as I thought necessary, short enough to be able to move fast if required - but also because it could slip into my back pocket and not protrude too much. I would be wearing my coat anyway. The hammer would be tucked into my waistband and hang down the leg of my jeans, the head of it obscured by the coat. I had my Dad’s leather gloves out, too. I’d washed them to be on the safe side, unsure if they would have any skin particles of his or whatever on the outside or whether washing would make a single fuck of a difference, but I’d done it anyway. I believed the Man in White about the evidence factor, at least as far as that pertained to me, but I didn’t want to risk getting my Dad’s DNA all over the crime scene. It was November, and cold, so it wouldn’t look strange to Rick’s mate (not his mate, his DEALER) if I turned up wearing gloves.
Go on then. If you’ve chosen, go. Nothing else to wait for. Tool up.
I looked up at Klaus, who was standing next to me and looking as if he were watching my hands. It was hard to tell what his eyes were actually observing, hidden as they were behind his shades. I wondered if he had blue eyes to match his blonde hair. I never found out. I’d be amazed if he didn’t, though.
“Look. I don’t know if you’re allowed to give advice or whatever, but it would make no sense if you weren’t,” I said to him, speaking as calmly as I could. “As long as you’re not actively helping me physically do the deed, because that has to be me, right? But you can surely give your opinion?” Klaus, of course, didn’t even move a millimeter in response. It wasn’t a no though or even a headshake. I decided to try anyway. I felt that getting the opinion of someone like Klaus could be a major help. “I think I’m going to go with… uh, with the hammer. I think that’s going to be more, you know…” I wanted to say devastating, but I couldn’t. “It’ll do a lot of damage and at least knock him out in one hit. I think there’s less potential for trouble with the hammer than there is with the knife. So. Do you agree?”
There was silence for several seconds while the black mirrors that were Klaus’ eyes bored into mine. I was about to mutter whatever under my breath and start trying to calm my shaking hands down enough to undo my belt for the hammer, but then to my surprise, Klaus moved. He did not, of course, take his eyes off me for a single second—Klaus would never do that, not unless he was within grabbing distance—but instead began to walk backwards across the kitchen. It would have looked funny if not for the unusual amount of certainty with which he did this. He walked backwards with the same level of awareness and surefootedness that anyone else would walk forwards. The effect was unsettling. He reached the opposite kitchen counter, where I’d left my father’s toolbox earlier after getting the hammer, and reached out with his right hand. He grabbed the toolbox and lifted it as if it weighed nothing—which it certainly did not—and brought it back to the kitchen table where I was sitting, placing it right in front of me.
Now he took his eyes off me—only now I was close enough to be observed peripherally or caught if need be—and began to root around inside the toolbox. After a moment, he pulled out a larger, heavier hammer, and held it before my eyes. I looked from the hammer to his face, Klaus’ shades pointing at me once more. He brought up his other gloved hand, holding it slightly below the hammer’s head, and then brought the hammer down into his free palm with a weighty smack. His empty hand then gripped around the hammer’s head tightly, squeezing it and shaking it slightly for a moment.
I got it. I nodded. Klaus did the same.
He then released the hammer’s head and turned it around so that the handle was held out to me. I took it while feeling, to my disgust, slightly proud. In principle, at least, I’d chosen correctly. Teacher had approved.
***
Half an hour later, my old Fiesta was pulling up outside a nondescript house in Chapelfields, Coventry. It was a semi-detached building on a relatively nice suburban street. I don’t know what I’d expected to find. A crack barbecue going on outside? Guerilla soldiers training child assassins on the front lawn?
Just think of the girls. Just think of the girls. It might even be easy.
That had been my mantra all the way there. My shaking hands were getting worse, and the even-more-present-looming of Klaus, when crammed into the passenger seat beside me, was actually giving me a headache. Well, that combined with the stress, although I really, really hate to use that word here. Stress… that’s what executives get when they’re worried about meeting their department sales targets, or what single mothers feel when trying to finish all the shopping in time for Christmas.
I looked at Klaus, already wearing his headphones and looking at a small but bulky handheld device that was already displaying the view from my badge camera. It was grainy but surprisingly smooth, providing a chest’s-eye-view of the steering wheel, the dashboard, and the street ahead through the Fiesta’s mud-spattered windscreen. I realized that Klaus was now staring at me, and once he saw that he had my attention, he tapped the headphones once. The message was clear. I’m watching and listening. Don’t get any ideas.
“Yes, yes, bloody hell, you guys made that clear enough, how many more fucking times?” I hissed, nerves and adrenalin giving my mouth a metallic taste as I spoke.
Think of the girls. You’re doing this to save them. Take yourself out of this. You’re a remote-controlled drone in this. You don’t have a choice. You are not to blame.
The door handle felt impossibly heavy as I fumbled it open and got out, feeling the pain of the hammer’s head against my hip lessen as I rose from my seat. I could have put it into my waistband upon arrival, but I didn’t want to risk it being seen, or worse, risk chickening out. I looked up and down the street. It wasn’t busy, and no one was going to remember an ordinary-looking twenty-one-year-old parking his car and going into a house.
Now just turn around and walk towards the house. Don’t think about it. Just do it.
The house had no gate and no low-level wall around its small front garden, unlike a lot of its neighbors’, and so I began to stagger my way to the front door on hollow legs. I was about to murder someone. I was about to—
Think about the girls. You aren’t here. You are being operated by them. This isn’t you. Think of the girls.
I knocked.
The door opened, and a man perhaps ten or fifteen years older than me answered the door, half-asleep. He was wearing a h
oodie and what looked like pyjama bottoms, and he gave me a tired smile. His slightly greasy hair was pushed up at the back like he’d only just woken up, and his stubbled face peered at me amiably through sleepy eyes.
“Hello?”
“Hi,” I heard someone say, as if from very far away. “I’m Rick’s mate. He said I could come and see you?” This strange person’s voice sounded normal, not at all as if he was about to throw up on the slippers of the guy answering the door.
“Thought so,” the man said, stepping backwards and pulling the door open with him, only briefly glancing over my shoulder to look for anyone watching. The Fiesta, deliberately, was parked ten feet or so along the road, hidden by the neighbors’ bushes. “Neil,” he said, gently slapping at his chest by way of introduction as I slid into his house. The first wall of security was breached, a killer gaining entry with a weapon, access granted with a simple sentence.
There’s a theory in psychology – I’ve read a lot of psychology books in the last decade – that I found absolutely fascinating. It’s called “The Magic Because”. It’s been some time since I read it, but as I recall, an experiment was conducted with a group of people lining up to use the office photocopier, sending in a stranger to ask if he could jump ahead in the line. Something like ninety percent of them said no. When it was tried again on a later occasion, this time giving the pusher-in an obscure reason to do so (my boss just dropped this on me, and I have like five minutes to get it done, so can I cut in?), very few people refused.
That’s all we need; something to hang our hats on as a reason for what we do. Reasons. I’ve done a lot of thinking about reasons. Neil’s reason for letting me inside his house, a complete stranger, just as he would a plumber, carpenter, or pest control officer, was because he’d been told to expect me, even though he had no idea who I was. I had a hammer and a knife in my pockets. I’d come to his house solely to murder him in his own home.
“I’m Klaus,” I said in response. I’d already decided to use a fake name. I don’t know why, given what I planned to do to Neil, but using an alias just felt safer. As I said it, I felt something shift inside me, gentle and subtle, but vital. That little change I’d been trying to make. It didn’t take it all away, not at all, but that small change was there.
This isn’t you. This isn’t you. It’s them.
Neil closed the door behind me. The house was dark. He led me into the kitchen.
***
Chapter Three: A Tough Deal to Close, An Unpleasant Past Reference, and Utilising Existing Market Knowledge
***
I’ve talked about regrets. I’ve had a few, as the song says. I can see Neil’s face very clearly when I think about that day: his slight double chin with its dusting of morning stubble; his skinny limbs attached to a torso that stooped at the shoulders and emphasized his small beer and/or McDonald’s belly; a skinny man carrying a slight amount of weight in all the wrong places. The house smelt of almonds. Neil had a faint whiff of B.O. I was a kid, yet Neil had been a man who still thought he was a kid, too.
If none of this had happened—his drug-dealing career aside—the irony is that I think I would have grown up to be him.
But it didn’t work out that way, and here I am.
***
“D’you, uh, d’you want a cup of tea?” Neil asked, tipping the hoodie’s hood back with one hand and scratching at his scalp as he did so. It wasn’t a question I’d expected at all. Where was the meth lab in the front room? Where were the Columbians sitting around smoking and listening to Latino music on a tinny radio? Where was, at the very least, the strung-out girl lying on a pile of rags and filth in the corner, as well as the scummy, wordless associate who sat in his boxers watching an old TV?
There was none of that. It had been hard to see the front room from the outside due to the drawn curtains (strange in any other house given the time of day, but not perhaps so strange in this one). However, as I was led through the front door to the kitchen entrance (bumping a shin against the padded but solid weight of the sofa on the way), I was amazed by the sheer ordinariness of the house. It was a bit dirty and very messy, but this could have been one of my student friends’ places. I tried to think of one of their names, but I couldn’t. I heard the faint noise of a TV coming from the kitchen. It seemed Neil had been hanging out in there before I arrived.
Said kitchen turned out to be surprisingly clean despite the chips and holes in the ancient (well, ‘70s era, but that was another era to me) kitchen suite. The linoleum on the floor was heavily bubbled though, and the fridge was adorned with cracked and torn stickers from what looked like ‘80s cereal box ad campaigns. Through the window to the outside, I saw an overgrown back garden, with a strangely brand-new-looking barbecuing contraption standing at one end.
“No… actually, yes,” I said, not wanting any tea at all and then realizing—disgustingly—that I could maybe get him when he turned his back to make the tea.
Don’t fucking fool yourself, I thought. You can’t do it yet. You know you can’t.
I have to. It’s just after 12 pm.
But—
“Cool. Sugar?”
The question saved me, gave me something I could handle. What was I doing here?
“Uh, two.”
Neil was looking at me strangely, pausing with one hand on the open cupboard door. All I could hear was my heart in my ears and my chest. I wasn’t surprised by his next question. I thought he could pretty much see the word MURDER written across my forehead, and as I looked back at him I realized that—despite everything—the logical part of my brain was in control, assessing already.
“You all right?”
“Yeah, yeah. I’m just, I’m…” I floundered, looking for the answer. Luckily, honesty was easy. “I just feel fucked, to be honest. I just, y’know, need to relax.”
Neil continued to stare for a second longer than I could take. I actually twitched with the tension, my shoulders spasming. Fortunately, he blinked as I did so, and I turned it into a cough. As he fully turned to the cupboard, opening it to grab some mugs, my subconscious brain finished its report and sent it down to the conscious part. It was terrible:
Ok. You have time because you could probably take him even if you didn’t go the surprise route. He’s shorter than you, and apart from the gut, he’s skinnier than you. You aren’t big, but you’re bigger than him. You aren’t strong, but you’re stronger than him. Fuck the hammer. Go close when he shows you the stuff, then put the knife in his neck or stomach. Or if he does turn his back, use the hammer anyway and—
The room actually started to go grey again, and I bit my tongue hard enough to draw blood. It worked and the world came back.
“I know the feeling,” he said, fishing around in the cupboard. “Sorry, I’m a bit wary at the moment. I don’t really sort out people anymore that I don’t know. That obviously means I’m not earning as I was, but geez… I’ve had a bit of bother with one of Rick’s mates before. Guy freaked out on some ket. I don’t deal ket to new clients anymore, so if it’s that you’re after, you’re wasting your time. But I owe Rick a favour, so I can sort you something else. He didn’t say what you wanted?”
I hadn’t expected him to be this verbose. I knew what I was going to tell him in response, an answer ready for that question—I’d already planned it—but he’d just brought something up that had caught my attention. I had to take a moment to put my rehearsed answer aside and ask the question. Was he talking about who I thought he was? Rick’s mates and ket in the same sentence… it could only be the same guy. The one that everyone in Coventry had heard about. We didn’t get a lot of that kind of thing in the city, so of course everyone had heard. Curiosity got the better part of me, as always, even through the tightness in my chest.
“Was that… the guy they found stabbed? With ket in his system?”
I’d heard about it on the news, and when Rick had told me that he’d known the stabbed guy—had worked with him—I hadn’t forgot
ten it. Clearly, neither had Neil because he froze and stared at me.
“Jesus, would I tell you if it was?” he asked, looking nervous.
“No, no. Sorry. Stupid question. I don’t normally do this kind of thing.”
“Well, let’s just fuck it, let’s just get it done then, yeah?” he asked, shrugging and closing the cupboard door, mugs forgotten. “What did you actually want?” He turned to face me, putting his hands in his hoodie pockets. I noticed that.
He couldn’t get them out in time—
Time was what I needed. I wasn’t ready. I had to get him out of the room for a moment at least. I needed to breathe and push back the kitchen walls that were closing in.
Test him. The confirmation, remember?
“Coke, just need a bit of coke.”
A coke dealer. The sort of people they kill all the time on TV.
“’Fraid not,” said Neil, shaking his head, looking almost embarrassed for a moment. “Long story. Normally yes, but not for a few weeks now. Rick should have told you that. Speed and weed; ket if I know you. So, y’know, it’s only the first two. Which do you want, man?”
I didn’t know what to say. I felt cold all of a sudden, thrown.
He’s still a drug dealer! He’s a drug dealer!
He was. But…
Get him out of the room. Get him out of the room.
“Weed. Uh, please.”
I was going to hit this man with a hammer? I couldn’t even get my hands to stop shaking.
“Ok. How much?”
What?
“…what?”
“How much do you want? Look…” he paused for a moment, realizing the naivety of the person he was dealing with and probably cursing Rick’s name. “I sell it in eighths, right? All the way up to an ounce,” he continued, with a slight sigh.
“An ounce,” I heard myself say, thinking simultaneously that the larger amount would take longer to get together and also that I didn’t have that much money.
Then that’s the time to—
“Oh,” said Neil, brightening slightly and straightening up. “You know that’s gonna be expensive, right? Like…” he paused, and then I knew, even in my state of near-catatonia, that he was trying to figure out how much he could get away with telling a clear drug deal virgin like myself. “… £300?” he concluded. The questioning tone of it confirmed it. He was pushing his luck as well as drugs, it seemed.
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