The Alex King Series

by A P Bateman

  Both cars were parked to the side of the house. Both were new plates, the Audi six months newer than the Range Rover. They were base models, but still some hundred-thousand pounds worth between them. The Range Rover was muddy, but the Audi had recently been polished. King looked back at the house. A satellite dish was discreetly fitted behind a gable. He looked back at the cars and the garden. To him, although wealthy enough to afford the cars, or at least the repayments on them, the people here still had a proper life. They worked, took pride in their property and used it as it was meant to be used. They were far removed from the body being loaded into the coroner’s vehicle across the valley in the California house. They had no unrealistic aspirations of that lifestyle either. Had the fifth richest man on that list not lived across the valley, this house and its occupants would have been something for all around to aspire to.

  The main door to the house was ajar, but King expected it to be. He drew his weapon, but doubted there would still be a threat inside. In fact, he knew there wouldn’t be, but he was in his early-forties and had only made it that far by being at the top of his game. He just hoped his game was still good enough.

  The house was quiet. But he knew it was far from empty. It was early spring. A warm day. The shot had taken place at one-pm. It was now four-thirty. The shooter would have gotten here early. Now King had ascertained that this was the place, and with the cars of the household still parked outside, he assumed at least one member of the household had worked. The shooter would have to have arrived before the family had set out. There would be a child or children. The climbing apparatus would point to that. The timber was well-stained, looked new. At least not decades old. There were no pinch marks at the trunk, no warping of the wood as the tree had grown. It was a new addition to an old and well-established garden. It was a school day so the whole family would have been up. The man of the house in his shirt and tie, sipping tea and checking his smartphone. The wife and mother perhaps in active-wear, ready for a run or the gym after the school run. His fiancé would have jabbed him in the ribs at such stereotypical assumptions. She was any man’s equal. But he was building a picture in his mind, a snapshot of the people who owned a house like this.

  King looked around the hallway. There were coats on a rack. A lower rack was fixed below it. Children’s coats, easy for them to reach. He estimated the coats to fit an eight to ten-year-old. Sure enough, there was a polka dot affair, a woollen thing and a drab-looking blue anorak with a hood. A school coat.

  It wasn’t going to be easy, but King had no expectations. No matter how bad it would be, he knew deep down that he would still have seen worse.

  The silence was deathly. As was the smell. King kept the Smith & Wesson revolver pointed downwards, at an angle of around forty-five degrees. He didn’t expect to be using it, but good weapon drills had kept him alive.

  He was looking at about ten-hours since the shooter had set up their position. It was twenty-degrees-centigrade outside. Slightly warmer inside. Plenty of time for the gases to build, the blood to sour and putrefy. He edged his way through the hall, caught sight of himself in the gilt-framed mirror. Dark close-cropped hair, slightly salt and peppered at the sides. Rugged, his eyes cold and blue, the sockets dark, haggard. He looked tired, but it was to be expected. There had been little sleep lately. A couple days’ worth of stubble had sprung up on his face. He didn’t do suits, would look out of place in one. He peered through the doorway into the kitchen. The family had owned a dog, a golden retriever. It was either swelling from the gases inside, or had eaten a large breakfast. For three more dogs by the look of it. It looked to have been shot in the head, between the eyes at the bridge of its nose. Its tongue, dry and pale, hung out a long way on the stone floor. Its glossy eyes were open, staring lifelessly at King as he stepped back out and headed for the stairs.

  He didn’t check the other rooms. He already knew how this had played out. He holstered the revolver. It was a short-barrelled, or snub-nosed .357 magnum. Six shots, no safety catch, no jams or stoppages, fixed sights, huge stopping-power. He had cut down the hammer and filed it smooth, so that there was nothing to snag on the draw. It meant the weapon could not be cocked and would require a full trigger pull, but he had re-sprung and worked on the trigger springs and mechanism too. He had also removed the standard burred walnut grips and fitted Pachmayr textured rubber custom grips instead. It was technically old fashioned in appearance, but in recent years he had found an affinity with simple, fool-proof equipment. All he wanted was for it to work first time, every time. He expected it of a pen, absolutely required it of a weapon.

  He scanned the landing. There was a large porthole framing the California house, with glimpses of the sea beyond. He was surprised it had not been stained out. Or bricked up altogether. Ahead of him was a child’s bedroom. A Keep Out! sign with the child’s name emblazoned on it. Liam.

  Liam would have been about ten years old. He lay with his hands by his sides and his eyes closed. He looked peaceful, and King hoped it had been a quick end to an old too short life. He walked into the room and surveyed the scene. The curtains had been pulled back, the window closed. He suspected the shooter had done this, he would have known how long he had to wait, no sense in leaving the curtains drawn closed and arousing suspicion. Neighbours would have been few and far between around here, but they would always notice the apparently insignificant details. Like curtains drawn closed on a work and school day.

  There was no blood. Not that King could see. He bent down closer and inspected what he could see without touching. There was bruising around the top lip and on the tip of the boy’s nose. King got even closer and looked at the point under the chin. Bruised, like a thumb-print. He could picture it happening; the index and middle fingers pinching the nose, the curled finger tips clasped over the boy’s mouth, knuckles pressing into the top lip, the thumb under the chin keeping the mouth shut. A classic method of suffocation using just one hand, and one used by the notorious Victorian serial killers Burke and Hare. Like them, maybe, the shooter had sat on the boy’s chest while he had done it. Most probably. Not only to stop the struggle, but to hamper the lungs from working effectively, speed the up procedure.

  King straightened up. It had been a cold and calculated killing. On the face of it, little drama. But not for Liam. No, depending on whether he had snatched a breath beforehand, death would have taken at least three-minutes. That’s what he had learned from a lifetime around death. The rule of three. Like a Fibonacci number sequence. Three months without food, three days without water, three minutes without air or inflicted with an arterial bleed, or three seconds for massive brain trauma or severing the spinal cord.

  So, Liam had been dealt three minutes. Three whole minutes of confusion, fear and bewilderment. And finally, acceptance. It would have been silent from outside the room. The grizzly act undetected.

  Silent.

  So, was he killed first? Or had the shooter ended the boy’s life once his parents had been taken care of? It mattered. Because either way, it told King something about the person behind the rifle.

  6

  Three weeks, two days earlier

  Social media announcement

  Anarchy to Recreate $ociety

  We are overwhelmed that we have passed the one-million likes mark. We know how you feel, how you are as shocked as ourselves that five people are worth the same as the poorest 65% of the planet’s population. How can this be? How can we have created a world where people are richer than entire countries? That a day’s interest on their money could build a residential estate, a comprehensive school or a homeless shelter? That a week’s interest on their fortune could build a hospital? Feed thousands of people for a year? Did you know that the wealthiest fifty people own more than three-hundred homes around the globe? That fifty of those homes have not had a single residency in two years? Eight super yachts, each costing upwards of one-hundred million dollars have remained in port for more than three-years. The fuel in them alo
ne would heat and power six-thousand UK or Northern US homes for a year. If tax avoidance over the past five-years by the wealthiest twenty people were to be paid, it would wipe out the national debt of the eight poorest countries within the EU. It would put the British National Health Service into the black and run at a 20% profit for the next twenty-five years. Enough! The multi-billionaires at the top, the five individuals who are worth 65% of the world’s poorest people need to pay! They need to pay now!

  Like and Share if you agree.

  7

  King bypassed the next room, he could see it was a bathroom. The door was ajar. There were few rooms and it was at odds with the size of the house, but then he worked it out. The upstairs was serviced by two staircases. Either it had been split into two separate properties, and that was still the case, or it had reverted to one and no access remained from the second floor. Perhaps it had been to house to parts of the same family. Like grandparents on one side and their children, complete with their offspring on the other. Or maybe they rented half the house as an income in the summer? The location would have been perfect for holiday lets. Air B&B’s were all the rage now and many people topped up their income with a few weeks letting out rooms or annexes each year.

  King moved on, did not give it anymore thought. The room he wanted was the master bedroom. Not because of what he knew he would find, but because it was the room with the drawn-closed curtains and the partially opened window.

  The smell was worse in this room. There were two people in here and the room faced south, gaining more sunlight on the glass for most of the day. It was a few degrees warmer than the rest of the house, captured the heat more. King could see this from the great shaft of sunlight that shone through the gap in the curtains. Dust hung in the light, intensifying its appearance like a search beam. Or a stage light. This particular stage light, however, shone onto the faces of two dead bodies.

  The man had put up a fight. He had taken a beating. King eased the curtains back and the room grew brighter. He could see blood and bruising at the edge of the man’s mouth and eyes. The mark across his face was lightly chequered. Something had struck him hard and had left a distinct pattern. King knew what it was instantly. Familiarity through years of exposure to the design, and use in the field. At the extremity of a rifle’s shoulder stock, there is a chequering, either etched in wood or plastic, or a retro-fitted metal butt-plate. It formed a grip on clothing, allowed a shooter to keep the rifle tight to their shoulder and not slip after a shot.

  The man had taken a rifle butt in the face, but it wasn’t the cause of death. That had come from the same weapon that had killed the dog downstairs. And the fact that he had been hit with one weapon and shot with another told King there had been two people up here.

  He looked at the man’s knuckles. They were soft hands, that of an office worker, a lawyer or a doctor. There was a cut on the right knuckle and King noted to get the young woman leading the forensic investigation to test for DNA. Maybe he got some of the other guy’s saliva or blood on there when he had slugged one of his killers in the face. The left knuckle was bruised. He wasn’t sure how long bruising continued after death, or even if it did. He noted also to speak to the young forensic scientist on that count too. The man wore a pair of tartan slouching pants. The modern take on pyjama bottoms. He was bare chested. Would probably have been asleep when they were disturbed. Judging by the smell and the wet patch on the bed, neither of them had visited the bathroom that morning. The body let go at the time of death, or soon after.

  The woman would have been in her mid-thirties. She was attractive and clearly took care of herself. Both of her wrists were bruised, but apart from resisting somebody’s grip, it didn’t look as if she’d put up much more of a fight. Her nightdress was intact, and he could see she wasn’t wearing anything else underneath. He would get forensics to check, but it did not look like anything sexual had happened. It wouldn’t have. These were professionals. The end had come for her with a bullet from the smaller weapon. There was brain and bone splatter on the headboard and a neat little hole in the wood. Otherwise, her head was relatively intact. King guessed a 7.65mm. Larger than a .22 but smaller than a 9mm. Again, forensics would have the last word, but because of British gun laws regarding handguns, the weapon would most likely be illegal, so ballistic matches would be meaningless, unless the weapon had been used in a previous crime. He looked around the floor of the bedroom. There were no spent cases. The weapon could have been a .32 revolver in that case, but King doubted that. They had policed the scene themselves, that was all. They would have had plenty of time to do that.

  He walked back across the room to the window. The California house was perfectly framed in the window, at least two-thousand-five-hundred metres away. Five hundred metres further than any .338 Lapua Magnum should reach accurately and with lethal effect. It was a tremendous shot. King had taken a few himself over the years. The rogue Iraqi commander at nine-hundred metres with a Russian-made 7.62mm Dragunov rifle. Several kills at five-hundred metres with an M4 assault rifle, considered on the limit for both barrel length and range for the 5.56mm round. The ISIS sniper at fifteen-hundred metres using a .50 in Syria. He had even scored bulls and vee-bulls on two-thousand metre targets on Salisbury Plain using a .50 Barrett against static paper targets. But this shot was incredible, and well beyond the cusp of the .338. Which meant skill beyond his own, or anybody he had met. And given what King had done for his country for almost twenty-years, and the company he had kept, that was what scared him the most.

  8

  Three weeks earlier

  Social media announcement

  Anarchy to Recreate $ociety

  Thousands of people dying daily from dirty water, starvation, disease and poor living conditions. Austerity affecting our lives, our living standards, wages, food prices, public services and the prospects for our future generations. And why? Because fat-cat bankers bankrupted society through their greed. The billionaires got richer and we, society, became poorer. Anarchy to Recreate Society is the fastest growing group on social media. We are at ten-million likes and you continue to like and share our posts. Why? Because you know that what we say is true. You know that enough is enough and we all must act now. But what do we do? How do we stop the richest five people on the planet getting richer? How do we get them to contribute taxes, charitable donations and random acts of human kindness? Easy! We have the power. We can make a change.

  Like and share this if you agree.

  9

  Nine months earlier

  South Africa

  “I tell you, he’s hit the six-thousand mark.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “No, ‘Dulla has seen it with his own eyes, ‘bro!”

  “Drunken caffer can’t see straight, much less out to six-thousand metres.”

  The boy looked at the old hand. “Ah, don’t use that word, eh?”

  “What, drunken?” he grinned.

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Sorry to upset your sensibilities,” the older man said, his accent was thick Afrikaans, guttural and punchy. “I remember when caffer meant a male bull. Tough and strong, regal even…”

  “You know you didn’t mean it like that,” the boy said. He wasn’t really a boy. At the age of nineteen he was not only a man in his own right, but a crack shot and a keen tracker. He had taken parties out to hunt lion and buffalo. He was promised elephant this year, but it had not yet materialised. “Anyway, Pistorius was with him, or at least he took him out there. He asked for a range out past five-thousand.”

  “And what the hell is five-thousand metres going to do for him? That’s five-kilometres!” He swung the open-topped Land Rover around a pothole which could have swallowed it whole, but he kept the speed the same, the rutted track violently shaking the metal and rendering the padded seats useless. “And you say he’s hit six-thousand? Who needs a shot that long?”

  The boy shrugged. “He took a Springbok down at seven-hundred met
res.”

  “Bullshit!”

  “No,” the boy said. “I was there.”

  “Prone?”

  “No.”

  “Bench rest, or a tree?”

  “No. Standing, shouldered.”

  “What with?”

  “With a varmint rifle.”

  “A what?”

  “Small bullet, large back-charge and case. So that the bullet travels at shit-hot speeds and the shock takes the animal down as much as the metal. A .22-250, I think. Short barrel.”

  “Are you pulling my chain, ‘bro?”

  “No.”

  “But why? A .375 magnum is the legal rifle calibre for water buffalo and lion. Even elephant. But that’s the minimum legal calibre,” the man said incredulously. “Why piss about with plinking ammo. Most gamies are bringing in .416’s or larger these days.”

  “I guess it’s not plinking ammo in the rest of the world,” said the boy. “Other countries don’t have the space. They want the bullet to either stay in their quarry or drop out the other side. They can’t shoot a deer using a .500 with a town or a school a half a mile further on down range. They have smaller game too. Deer and foxes, rabbits, I guess. Cougars…”

  “Cougars! What the hell has a tart who likes young cock got to do with anything?” he grinned.

  “It’s a type of mountain lion,” the boy sighed, not humouring him. “In America. They have coyotes too, that’s like a cross between a fox and a wolf, and they have larger timber wolves, of course. They need a hot round. They don’t need a big round like a .308 though. Fast moving .22’s are the most popular. Like .223 or .220. Pistorius said the man’s testing his skill.”