To Kill Or Be Killed

by Richard Wiseman

  Betty, blind drunk, flopped unconscious after their first coupling and Cobb drank some bourbon, smoked a cigarette and went back to the bed and ‘used’ her whilst she was comatose. Finally he left her slumped on the bed, had a shower and drank some coffee. It was two in the morning when he arranged spare blankets on the suite lounge sofa and settled down with the television.

  He’d ordered cold cuts and crusty bread along with fruit, salad and snacks. He watched the news eating a beef and horseradish sandwich. News twenty four was covering the riot at Underworld. When they mentioned Mason’s name he chuckled. So Mason knew he’d lucked out and had gone for a night out, silly man. Still he hoped the ‘fella’ got away. They’d got on well during the time on the submarine. Betty’s snores made him look in on her. He covered her tanned old skin with the duvet, thinking her not too bad when he didn’t look too hard.

  He went back to the sofa, turned off the television and fell asleep thinking about how sore the old broad was going to be when she woke up.

  Chapter 80

  London

  2AM

  April 19th

  ‘Leash’s face seemed to glow golden brown in the light of bedside lamp. She stirred when he eased himself away. Mason looked at the clock. It was two in the morning. He knew he had to get out of the house.

  The sound of the shower woke ‘Leash’ and she stood in the bathroom doorway naked with ruffled black hair watching him shower.

  “Are you going?”

  “Yeah. I have to move on. “The shower stopped and he stepped out and towelled himself. She went downstairs and he heard the kettle boiling. He was quickly dressed and when he got to the kitchen she stood arms folded by two cups of coffee on the kitchen side. She had lit a cigarette. He held the stolen Sig 220 in his hand.

  “Those things will kill you.” He said waving the weapon at her cigarette.

  “Ditto tough guy.” Her smoke waved at the gun barrel.

  He tucked the pistol in the back of his waist band and picked up his coffee. He broke a short silence between them.

  “Look I’m in the UK to do this one job. It’s a big job and a lot of money. After that I have to head for a non extradition country, like South America or something…” He trailed off. He'd never before wanted to say what was on his mind at that moment, but the feeling he got when he looked at her was strong.

  “If you’d like to hook up… I could contact you… I mean…” Again he trailed off and she moved towards him, dropping her cigarette in her freshly made cup of coffee. She put her arms around him and held him tight.

  “I’d like that. I had a feeling about you. It’s got stronger now.” She ended the embrace and put her face close to his, kissed him gently, twice on the lips. “Do your job, get out and call me I’ll come running, really I will.”

  “Listen,” his face became serious, “The people after me are good, really good, so they will get here sooner or later. Tell them nothing. Tell them we met, you cut my hair, we arranged to meet and we spent the night together. Tell them nothing else. I’m not a bad man ‘Leash’, I just kill for a living. The people I kill have generally done something bad so it’s like pest control. Thousands of people are killed in accidents every year, through doctors’ negligence, company health and safety lapses, you name it. I was a soldier once and I killed on government orders, so killing isn’t so bad if there’s money or a reason behind it. They’ll tell you I’m evil, that I’m a murderer, but they’ll kill me on sight if they see me and say it’s in the interests of national security. Don’t believe what they tell you about me. When we get together again I’ll tell you all about me and my life and you can decide. I wish I had time now. I’ve wanted to share my story with someone for years, now you’ve come along I’ve got to go…”

  ‘Leash’ touched his face gently. “It’s okay Marc I understand.” Mason suddenly laughed.

  “My name is Mason, Peter Mason, sorry I forget sometimes.” ‘Leash’ laughed too and held out her hand to shake.

  “How do you do Peter Mason I’m Aliesha Jones.”

  They laughed and embraced. They said goodbye quickly and from the open doorway she watched him walk away. Tired she went back to bed, able to smell him on the sheets. She smiled and early morning day dreams of life on a tropical beach in South America filled her head.

  Mason went to the motorbike, wheeled it into the road and started it up. He followed the map in his head back to the Bickenhall Hotel. He kept to back roads, twisting and turning through an indirect route, not just because of those giving chase, but because he had no helmet and he didn’t want the police to stop him. Two or three times on the short winding journey his mind turned to ‘Leash’, but he shook her out of his head. He had to be serious and clear headed, no time for school boy romance now.

  He rode up to within fifty metres of the hotel, parked the bike and dropped the key down a drain. He walked past the hotel and saw an open window, two floors up. Each window on the white frontage had a ledge above the old sash window. The first floor windows had a balcony and rails. Mason jumped, scrabbled and made a route up to the open window as if the hotel front was a climbing wall. Finally standing on the narrow window ledge he slowly and carefully wiggled in a limbo movement inside. There was nothing beneath the window and he was inside kneeling in the half light in a double room. A bald man he had seen check in was lying in bed, covers half off, snoring. Mason saw keys and personal effects on the bedside table. He padded over, took them, including a wallet, and silently exited the room. He walked through the dark corridors, into the stair well and up a floor to his room.

  His key pass worked and he gathered his things, especially his pistol from the self locking safe. He quickly and carefully checked the room to make sure there was nothing personal and opened his window. His room was at the back. He took a length of twine from his bag of tricks and lowered his bag. He followed the bag down, using the climbing wall style again to get down and at ground level grabbed his bag.

  The key fob was VW. It took him an annoying half an hour to find the white VW Beetle. It was in a car park on the corner of Gloucester Place and the Marylebone Road. The ticket was in the wallet. He adjusted the seat, started the car, cleared the punch ticket barrier and turned the car for Vauxhall. It was three in the morning, traffic was light and sparse and it didn’t take him long to get there. He parked up two streets away from the Priory Arms, tilted back the passenger seat and settled down. It would be ages before the pub opened and he could meet the contact.

  Chapter 81

  Albany Street Police Station London

  3 a.m.

  April 19th

  It had taken much less time than Tony Deany had expected to get through the interviews at The Underworld Night Club. They had worked through a hundred or so club goers. They showed Mason’s photograph and asked a set pattern of questions.

  “Do you recognise this man?”

  “Did you see this man in the club?”

  “Did you see this man talking to anyone in the club?”

  A number of ‘are you sure?’ questions were added. If they had seen him the ‘where?’, ‘what was he doing?’ and other related questions were added. Trained in observation the DIC duty team members, tired as they were, applied their full training to the task, checking body language and tone of voice at various points.

  They came up blank. He had been seen and with a girl, but none of the people interviewed knew her.

  “Well that’s that.” Deany said wearily. “I can’t believe that we didn’t get a single link or lead.”

  “Time to get back and get some rest.” Ellie yawned.

  “Oh no. We’ve to go to the police station and interview the people they arrested. They’ve had a hard time containing them as it goes.” Liam said, he was logged into his laptop.

  “Didn’t another duty team go?” Deany was tetchy and tired.

  “No. DIC are at full stretch right now.” Liam replied.

  “I take it they checked the CCTV he
re?” Deany asked exasperated.

  “Yeah. Tape went over when we started. Look.” Deany and Ellie looked over his shoulder at the isolated footage on the laptop screen. The footage showed Mason arriving, the next clip showed the girl arriving with friends, the short conversation and the walk to the band room, the final clips were of their return to the bar a little later, their quick leave taking and lastly Mason leaving with a jacket.”

  “Well for one we need to find the thin guy and the fat girl. Second he started the fight to get the jacket, but dropped it. What did he take?”

  “Keys!” Ellie shouted then added, “ Bike keys it’s a heavy metal club. He took a motorbike.”

  Liam tapped in a message, check tube station footage for motorbike for Mason’s leaving time. The reply was swift, Easy, we have Mason and girl on motorbike leaving. Registration PN07 GYP. Will have camera checks on road CCTV for last hours run through. Good Luck. Diane.

  “We’d better get going to Albany Street.” Liam said.

  Back at DIC centre activity was intense. Diane was exhausted and Jack wasn’t due back until nine in the morning. Cobb was still being searched for and nothing was showing up. A full London cab check was being done. CCTV watchers had been taken out of the rooms and sent to cab companies with pictures. Every CCTV camera was being checked, but there were too many hours of footage and not enough people. Diane had called in every DIC watcher in the country to work the night shift and log into the system to check an area’s film footage. She had excluded McKie and Jaz from the mailing list. When a section of the city had been checked and cleared from one time to another it was automatically logged. Diane had been in contact with the coastguard and Navy, but the stolen boat had not been seen. It was dark though and a boat without lights at night was invisible except to radar, but she needed a visual check.

  When Deany, Ellie and Liam got to Albany they were faced with only thirty interviews, but Deany knew who he was looking for. They looked in each cell until they found the fat girl and thin guy.

  It was three in the morning when the club goers arrested in the fight were allowed to leave, some cautioned, some pending trial.

  Leah and Jack, ‘Leash’s’ friends were taken to an interview room. All three DIC came in and sat down.

  “Is this about that man ‘Leash’ hooked up with?” Jack asked.

  “Whoa! Slow down mate. Have you seen this man?”

  “Yeah that’s the man Leash was with tonight!” Leah practically shouted. “Oh my god he’s not a murderer is he?”

  Ellie sat down in front of Leah. “Who’s ‘Leash’?”

  “She’s my friend. I share a house with her on Fortress Road, number 23. Is she in danger?”

  The three DIC looked at each other. Liam left the room.

  “Tell us what happened tonight, from the beginning.”

  “Hadn’t you better go and help her.”

  “My colleague will deal with that right now. Tell me about this man.”

  Outside Liam spoke to the Superintendent, who in turn called armed response. Liam called Diane and she told him to let the armed police handle it. She knew they were tired and didn’t want casualties. Liam was relieved. He went back into the room.

  “… then they went for a drink and didn’t come back and then the fight broke out, that’s all I know.” Leah ended and looked at Liam.

  “Armed response are going to deal with it, Diane says we step aside on this one, tiredness can kill and all that.”

  “Oh my god poor ‘Leash’”

  “According to CCTV footage she happily got on the motorbike with him.”

  “Typical ‘Leash’ always looking for excitement.”

  Jack said and shook his head in disbelief.

  “Well she’s found it now, probably too much.” Ellie said.

  “Is there anything to eat, I’m starving.” Leah said. The three DIC officers and her friend Jack gave her withering looks.

  Chapter 82

  South West Coast of England

  Close to Torbay

  4 a.m.

  April 19th

  Stanton’s eyes were glazing over. He’d pushed the boat as fast as he could and the currents down the west coast had helped him. He was low on fuel and exhausted. He’d taken off the wet clothes and put on Dean’s waterproofs. The clothes weren’t drying. The yellow rubber trousers and top were uncomfortable and he’d taken the boots off. Dean had no other clothes on the boat. He wanted to get to the mouth of the Thames before day light, but knew he wasn’t going to make it. He couldn’t take the boat through channel waters in daylight as he assumed the boat’s owner and the passenger would be reported missing and air sea recue, coastguard and lifeboats would be alerted on the assumption that the boat had run into trouble. He was unaware of Dean’s survival.

  Come daylight the Navy would be scouring the ocean. He had to have another plan, a plan B. He didn’t want to get back on land. He fancied sailing in and sailing out. He ran into less people that way and he liked it. He might be tired, but in the dark at sea he felt safe from capture.

  Once he’d turned the boat left at, right angles, skirting the needles and land’s End he calculated the time and fuel and knew he wouldn’t make the Thames Estuary by daylight.

  He put the boat on autopilot and made a coffee then he checked the charts. Southampton was not too far away, full of boats. He could moor up, dump this craft and steal another. The navy wouldn’t be looking in a harbour for it. He checked the currents on the chart. It looked complicated and could take hours, what he needed was an open harbour in a bay. He ran his finger back along from Southampton and stopped it at Torquay. It was close enough for the fuel to last as well. He had made up his mind.

  Chapter 83

  London

  4 a.m.

  April 19th

  The smash of the door had woken Aliesha from a sweet dream. She didn’t have time to get out of bed before an armed policeman with an MP5 shone his barrel torch in her face and screamed at her not to move. There were shouts of ‘clear’ all over the house and she was dragged, wrapped in her duvet down to the lounge. They’d let her dress, cuffed her and taken her to Albany Street. She was left alone in the interview room for half an hour. Tony Deany, Ellie and Liam had been called back to Euston Tower, where they gratefully went to their rooms and slept. Tony didn’t even take his clothes off he just laid down on the bed and fell asleep.

  The wait at Albany Street station for Aliesha was for Diane Peters and the DIC psychologist Else Patrick to arrive. Else wasn’t happy at being woken up and called out in the early hours.

  Else was a PhD in Psychology, Masters in Psychotherapy and had numerous qualifications in Occupational Health. She was a sixty year old short blonde woman from Lancashire. Her short, neat stature, belied a giant mind, but she was a woman of regular habits and disliked being woken at odd hours.

  She and Diane were let into the locked interview room. They both sat down opposite Aliesha. Diane put, stereotypically, a brown cardboard docket on the table.

  “Who are you two, you don’t look like police?”

  “I’m Mrs Peters and this is Mrs Patrick, we’re from a government agency.”

  “Oh spooks eh?” Else raised an eyebrow.

  “We’d like to know about Peter Mason, the man you took home from the nightclub.”

  “There’s nothing to tell. He came to the hair salon, where I work, I cut his hair, and I fancied him so I told him the night club I was going to. When I got there he was sat at the bar, I got off with him and he wanted to go back to my place. We went to my house had sex and when I woke up he’d gone.” Aliesha spread both hands out in ‘a that’s it’ manner.

  “Did he tell you anything about himself?”

  “Not much?”

  “He told you his real name at the salon though?”

  “Yes.”

  “Don’t lie!” Diane’s voice was like a whiplash in the room and left a thick echo for a moment.

  “I’m not lying.�
�

  “He booked and paid for his hair cut in the name of Marc Townshend, but you knew he was Peter Mason. So he must have told you later. That tells me there’s some connection between you that’s more than casual sex for both of you.”

  “Clever bitch aren’t you.” Aliesha folded her arms and stared into mid distance.

  “If Peter Mason told you his name then you’re either lucky to be alive or you mean something to him and I’d bet on the latter and as that’s true it means you can tell me about him.”

  “I’m telling you nothing. You have nothing on me and you’ll have to let me go in twenty four hours.”

  “That’s not true. I’ve got a link between you and Mason and that means I can hold you on the prevention of terrorism act. I can hold you here for 42 days, well when I say here I mean I can have you put in a prison cell and transported between there and here every day, so don’t get cocky with me Miss Jones!”

  “I haven’t done anything. I just met him and… he was a bit rough, he scared me… he even told me his name… but I don’t know anything else I swear…” Aliesha’s switch to a half pleading earnest, innocent victim from a confident young woman would have drawn sympathy in most people, but Diane knew her job and she looked left at Else, who was sitting, hand over her mouth thoughtfully gazing at Aliesha.

  “She’s lying.” Else said slowly.

  “What?” Aliesha stood up. “What the hell is she, a psychic or something?”

  “She’s an insecure young woman, probably fell out with her parents, the usual East West clash, her brothers got all the attention. She’s changed her name by deed poll to ‘Jones’ to make the break complete, probably at seventeen, it’s usual when legally free for the unhappy to do that. The black clothing and pseudo anarchic culture of Goths and metal appeals to her because of the occult links which fly in the face of the gentle and respectable values of what would have been a Hindu upbringing, but being genetically inclined to seek adventure the family life didn’t appeal and drove a wedge. Now she thinks she’s a night life good time girl, but really she’s just a naughty little girl inside. If she didn’t know who Mason was when she met him, she does now and she’s protecting him because he’s like the father figure she wants…”