Authors: Michael Kerr
“You thought right, Luthor,” Tom cut in, rubbing his sternum with the heel of his hand, hoping that he was not about to suffer another fucking heart attack. “We’ve got a lot of talking to do, real soon. And after that, we’ll work something out that will keep you, me and the suits upstairs at the Yard happy. It’ll be a trade-off. You saved a cop’s skin, and that goes a long way in my book. But I’ll want everything. Understand?”
Luther nodded, and the light from the tube on the ceiling reflected off his shaven skull. He envisaged a token sentence, after he had helped put a lot of people away for a very long time. If he was lucky, and could do his stretch without being sussed as a grass and shivved, then when he came out he would catch a silver bird to Barbados, maybe open a gym and train some of the local kids to box. He had put money by for a rainy day, and black-bellied clouds were now gathering directly overhead, ready to dump on him. He smiled to himself. This was only going to be a summer storm that would quickly pass. His decision to save the cop and subsequently cap Dom and Carlo would bring clear skies soon enough.
Tears of rage and fear dampened Marion’s cheeks as she brought her arms down in a full-blooded, sweeping arc, aiming the hammer at the top of Gary’s head.
Beth stiffened and attempted to remain composed, not looking away from her antagonist’s face. But Gary was attuned to his surroundings, noticed the rigidity in her features, and saw the flash of movement mirrored in Beth’s almost imperceptibly widening eyes.
Stoat-quick, half turning, he managed to move slightly to his left, which resulted in the broad hammerhead glancing off his skull, not striking him with the accuracy and impact that Marion had intended.
He reacted instinctively, without thought as to why she would suddenly attack him. He swung his arm round and fired upwards twice from the kneeling position he had assumed as he was bludgeoned to the floor.
Both bullets tore into Marion’s stomach with less than half an inch between the two entry holes. The slugs erupted from high up in her back, taking a welter of blood and tissue with them, before embedding into the ceiling amid a crimson spray. She was thrown backwards, to totter across the carpet, bounce off the door jamb and spin into the kitchen on tiptoe, arms flailing. Her back thudded into the refrigerator and she slowly slid down the door onto her fat-cushioned buttocks, to leave a glistening poppy-red trail on the white, enamelled metal.
Sitting, legs apart, hands palm up at her sides on the granite coloured vinyl like a marionette at rest, Marion coughed once and stared in disbelief as a stream of hot gore jetted from her mouth to splash into her lap. Her eyes rolled back to show shining white orbs between the wide-open lids. She felt as though hot pokers had been pushed into and through her. And her heart physically ached, felt swollen, too large for the cavity it occupied.
Oh, Jesus fucking Christ
! She could feel the blood draining from her numbed brain. Knew that life was deserting her. She uttered a single, wet, plaintive moan, before her head fell forward and death took her.
Even as Beth attempted to rise from the settee, Gary redirected his attention to her, shot out his left hand and pushed her back.
“Why would she try to hurt me?” he asked, patting at his now matted hair, and then holding his hand in front of him to stare in disbelief at the blood coating his fingers. “She...she loved me, for fuck’s sake.”
Beth was stunned at both the sudden explosion of violence that had resulted in Marion’s death, and by the behaviour of this homicidal fiend, who was now acting like a grief-stricken little boy, unable to comprehend why his pet dog had snapped at him for pulling on its ears.
“I think she saw you for what you really are, Gary,” Beth offered.
She
knew
who I fucking am,” he said, his bottom lip quivering and his eyes shiny with tears. “and loved me in spite of it. She saw us as a modern-day Bonnie and Clyde. We’d made plans for the future.”
“Knowing that you’re a killer is not the same as being present when you do the deed, Gary,” Beth said. “Deep down, Marion knew that what you do is wrong; beyond acceptance. She was incapable of seeing any point in killing for the sake of it.”
“There’s no point to anything, shrink. The same stars shine down that have for millennia, overseeing the rise and fall of empires and the extinction of life in myriad forms. What you, I, or anyone else thinks or does is of absolutely no fucking consequence in the great scheme of things. Don’t you know that?”
“I know about you, Gary. That you were emotionally crippled as a youngster, and that your mother had a lot to do with it.”
“Leave my fucking whore of a mother out of it!” he bellowed. “What right do you have to make assumptions and try to categorise me? You can’t begin to know what motivates me. I think you’re like one of those sad film or book critics, full of arty-farty interpretations of what the director or author was trying to convey through his work: scavengers, who can only pick through the leftovers of someone else’s meal. The reality is, that sometimes what you see is all there is to it. There doesn’t have to be hidden agendas or layers. Not everything is a fucking onion. How can you begin to understand what you’ve never been...never felt, or never done? You’re like a travel writer who produces a guide to somewhere exotic you’ve never visited, from the safety of your office chair. I detest your arrogance.”
Beth sat back under the verbal onslaught. His eyes were bulging like a cartoon toad’s, and his free hand was up at his bearded face, first tearing at the hair, then scratching through it, raking at the underlying cheek until it bled. When he pulled his hand free, his fingernails were rimmed with raw flesh and blood.
“I know what I see, Gary,” she came back. “I’ve spent years talking to and treating people with personality disorders. I don’t have to be a schizophrenic or sociopath to recognise the symptoms. I’ve never put my hand in boiling water, but I know the damage and pain that doing it would cause. You’re obsessed with violence and death. You need to be in control. You’re psychologically damaged, or you wouldn’t express yourself with such antisocial behaviour. You resent what other people have, and has eluded you.”
He actually smiled, became calmer and nodded, as if he appreciated her response to his outburst.
“You’ve got spunk, Doctor, I’ll give you that. I’m what you say I am, and much, much more. But it’s all just words, not worth the amount of breath expended in voicing them. It doesn’t change anything. When Barnes arrives, I’m going to let him live long enough to watch me rape, then kill you. He’ll welcome his own release, but it won’t be quick or clean.”
He knelt before her as if to be dubbed, and then roughly parted her legs and shuffled forward between them, up real close and personal; the way he had with Marion.
Beth stiffened. She thought he was about to take her, and knew that with her hands bound up tight behind her back, she could not fight him. The loathing for, and fear of him made her feel physically sick. Her stomach felt as though it was detached from its moorings, rising up to plug her throat from the inside.
He placed the gun on the carpet and used both hands to rip open her blouse. Beth’s unfettered breasts greeted him and immediately caused a rising discomfort in his pants.
His touch was repulsive, but Beth was already up against the back of the settee with nowhere to go. The expression on his face as he ogled her, made her think of a punter in a dark and sleazy strip joint, who got his rocks off with one hand feverishly working overtime beneath a stained gabardine coat. Oh Christ! His lips trailed across her left breast, latched on to the rosy nub at its centre and began to suck. She could feel his tongue flicking, attempting...then succeeding to bring her nipple to reluctant yet far from pleasurable erection. And then, worse. He raised his head, enveloped her mouth with his, and pushed his tongue between her lips. She clamped her teeth together and tried to withdraw, but was held fast by strong hands that now gripped both sides of her face. Enough. She would
not
let him take her. Would open her mouth to his probing tongue, then bite down and not unlock her jaws until it was severed.
They both jumped as the intercom buzzed.
Gary backed off, snatched up the gun and pulled her upright, fingers digging into the underside of her arm as he guided her out into the hall.
“Saved by the bell,” Gary gasped. “But not for long. We’ll get back to where we left off, real soon. Now, take a deep breath, bitch, and tell Romeo to come on up. And I don’t want to hear anything that I think might give him cause for alarm.”
Beth closed her eyes as he pressed the button. There was nothing to worry about, she told herself. Matt would have picked up on her obscure but blatant warning. He would be ready to deal with Noon. Please God that he was.
“Matt?” she said into the speaker, amazed that she could produce the semblance of an unconcerned, downbeat voice.
“Who else would it be?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe a door-to-door salesman. Or Mormons peddling safe passage to the hereafter.”
“At this time of night?”
“Stop using logic. Come in out of the cold,” she said as Noon released the lock on the entrance door.
“That was neat,” Gary said, opening the flat door just an inch. “Let’s go back into the lounge and get ready to surprise him.”
Doubt hit Beth between the eyes with the same sharp pain that gulping an iced drink too quickly on a hot day will. What if Matt had not cottoned on, and was about to walk in unprepared, expecting Marion to confide in him and give Noon up? Life was a cruel lottery. Who ever knew when they had eaten their final meal, were stubbing out their last cigarette, or turning off the bedside light, never to see another day dawn? The future she had dared to contemplate sharing with Matt might not exist.
KYLE
watched as the car appeared to free wheel into the car park with its lights off. It came to a silent stop under low branches in a murky corner, away from the halogen lamps that blazed from globes atop concrete posts around the perimeter.
He bobbed down so that he could not be seen through the windscreen, snatching glances over the top of the dash. It was the cop who climbed out, to look about him before making a quick phone call and moving away from the SUV.
Good. All the cast was assembled. It was almost time for the curtain to rise for the final act.
The prospect of sleeping in his own bed tomorrow night – an ocean away at the beach house in Boca Raton – warmed Kyle’s heart. Within the next thirty minutes, he would have fulfilled his contract, and would be phoning Santini to tell him that the cop was dead, and also where he could pick up Noon, who would be gagged and bound in the trunk of the rental car. Shortly after that, he would be at Heathrow, booking a flight on the next Miami-bound silver bird.
Kyle felt like how he imagined an ageing rock star might; still touring after decades on the road, but doing less gigs than he had performed as a younger man. Carefully, silently, he exited the rental, and staying in the shadows of shrubbery he skirted the car park and made his way the two hundred feet to the door that Barnes had vanished through.
Taking a deep breath, Kyle readied himself, emptied his mind of all else and adopted the detached, focused mindset of the stone killer that he was. He gained entry using the key card that had cost the life of the old woman and her three pissy-assed cats: a fleeting image of the senior citizen, hoar-frosted and stiff as a plank within the freezer flashed through his mind. He took the stairs up to the top floor, lungs burning. Too many cigarettes.
Gotta quit!
The landing was clear, and the lift had remained quiet as he mounted the stairs. No one had left. He slipped mirrored shades on; a long-standing affectation that had become an almost superstitious act. The Ray-Bans were his good luck charm; a rabbit’s foot, St Christopher medal, four-leaf clover and horseshoe all rolled into one and wrapped around his face to give him what had in earlier years been a cool James Dean look.
Reaching the woman’s apartment, he could hear voices. It was on-the-spot decision time: Wait for Noon or Barnes – whichever of them survived the confrontation – to leave, and if it was the cop, whack him as he left, or escalate the adrenaline rush by shooting out the lock, joining the party and attending to business. The occupants would be too preoccupied to protect themselves against his sudden, Blitzkrieg-style storming of the place.
Tom’s phone trilled again. Caller ID was Matt.
“What the hell are you playing at?” he demanded.
There was no reply. But the line was open. He could hear a voice, and music. It was Eva Cassidy singing
Over the Rainbow
.
“Hello!” he barked, anger rising.
‘...Someday I’ll wish upon a star...’
“Matt. Talk to me.”
‘...and wake up where the clouds are far behind me...’
Tom was about to scream down the line, but his cop’s instinct cut in. He waited for Eva to finish up. It was a radio station: Capital Gold. What did it mean? It was important, for fuck’s sake! Maybe Matt was in trouble, couldn’t talk, but had managed to hit the stored number for Tom’s cell before...Before what?
“Pete,” he said.
“Yeah, boss.”
“I’ve got an open line. It’s Matt’s mobile. Have it traced,” he said, holding out the phone for his DS to take.
Matt had started to get out of the car, then hesitated. He took his Nokia out, called Tom’s number and placed the phone on the driver’s seat as he turned on the radio. Quietly closing the door, he could hear an old Judy Garland number, but not being sung by her. Tom was no fool. Matt knew he would catch on, follow the ‘yellow brick road’, and lead the cavalry to Beth’s. But by then it would almost certainly be little more than a mopping-up exercise. The next few minutes held the promise of violent death, with no guarantee of who would survive. It was like a game of roulette, but the loser would lose more than chips, and leave the table in a body bag.
As he approached Beth’s door, Matt went through his simple plan step-by-step. Noon would not be expecting a sudden and deadly attack; would assume that his adversary would be eager to talk to Marion, unwary of the reality of the situation.
He drew the Beretta and curled his finger around the trigger. The countless hours spent on the indoor and outdoor ranges were about to be put to the ultimate test. As Beth opened the door, he would kick it back, enter low and fast, sight-in on Noon and shoot without hesitation. However fast the killer was, he was human, and would not be allowed the reaction time needed to return fire.
Fuck! No! The door was already open. A shaft of light from the gap cut across the more dimly lit landing.
The pistol’s butt was suddenly slick in his hand.
Noon shouted. “You’re making me nervous, Barnes. I’ve got a gun up against the fragrant Beth’s head, and my finger has taken up all the slack on the trigger. I think you’d better come on in, very carefully, holding your piece two-fingered by the barrel.”
Pushing the door back, Matt entered the flat and made his way into the lounge. Across the room, Beth was sitting on the settee. Noon was hunkered down behind it. He had his left forearm locked around her neck, and as he’d stated, held a semiautomatic pressed to her temple.
“At last, we get to meet, cop,” Gary said. “Now, toss the gun over here, slow and easy.”
Matt had always vowed that he would never give up his firearm to a perp. And yet here he was, doing it without argument, going against all his training and principles as he meekly obeyed the command.
“Now take your jacket off and give me a twirl.”
Matt shrugged the open car coat off onto the carpet and performed a 360º turn.
Gary noted that the shoulder holster was empty, and that there was no sign of a second concealed weapon. “Looking good,” he said. “Lift up your trouser bottoms. I’d hate to think you had a back-up piece strapped to your ankle.
“You must watch all the Yank cop shows,” Matt said as he allayed Noon’s fears.
Gary smiled. “Better safe than dead. I think we can relax now and get down to business.”
“No, Noon. We can’t relax. The place is surrounded. My boss gave me ten minutes to get in and out. I either appear at the front door with Beth, or an assault team will storm the place, suitably garbed in Kevlar, and trigger happy.”
Gary blinked rapidly. His mouth worked but no sound came out for long seconds.
“Y...You’re lying. I’m not buying that crap. You didn’t know I was here.”
“So why did I have my gun drawn? It’s your call, Noon” Matt said with a shrug, trying to sound and look casual, knowing that body language was a powerful tool. “But if you don’t deal, you’ll leave this room feet first. I’m all you’ve got to stop that happening. Think about it. You’re a cop killer. Do you suppose they’re going to try to arrest you? Get real. They
want
you to try and shoot your way out of the fix you’re in.”
Several voices started up in Gary’s head. He narrowed his eyes to slits and drew his lips back against the shrill, insistent clamour. But they would not be dismissed.
One voice said, “Just fucking top them and be done with it...”
Another said, “No! Give it up, Gary. You can’t shoot your way out of this mess...”
A third whispered, “He’s right. Live to fight another day. Don’t give them the satisfaction of seeing you go down in a hail of bullets. Where there’s life, there’s hope.”
Yet another opined, “The cop’s playing for time. He’s desperate. You’re in charge of the situation. Don’t let him fuck with your mind.”
Gary screamed out against the burble. It lessened, and his mother’s voice came through loud and clear, to be heard above the others, that had now faded to hollow unintelligible murmurs like a radio playing in another room.
“He’s lying to you, my brave little soldier. Ignore him. He’s trying to talk his way out of a hole. Fuck his bitch, kill her, then cut his eyes out and leave him to suffer hell on earth. There’s nobody outside. They don’t know he’s here.”
“Okay, Mummy,” he said, adopting the voice of a young boy.
Beth and Matt frowned at one another. Noon was either approaching meltdown, or was sicker than they had thought.
The tension went from Gary’s face and he smiled. His mum’s voice had been so firm and sure; a living, breathing voice, not a product of his mind. She had forgiven him for what he had done to her. She knew how unhappy and ashamed he had become; understood how her capricious fornication left him feeling an unworthy bastard, born and trapped in a squalid quagmire of her making.
Clarity returned. He flicked out his tongue to lick away the thread of saliva that had drooled out from the corner of his mouth.
“Nice try, Barnes. But I know better than to believe a scared and desperate man. You’re grasping at straws, and you just drew the short one,” As he spoke, Gary pushed Beth down so that she was lying on her side on the settee. He then pulled a roll of duct tape from his pocket. “Catch,” he said, tossing it to Matt.
Matt caught it without taking his eyes off Noon.
“Now, pull up a chair,” Gary said. “Sit down and tape your ankles to the legs as tight as a whore’s corset.”
Matt pulled the nearest dining chair to him and did as he was bid.
“Now your right wrist. Wind the tape around it three times. I want to see your hand go white. Then put both hands behind the back of the chair and interlock your fingers.”
Matt obeyed.
Gary walked across the room, giving Matt a wide berth and coming up behind him. “I’m going to fasten your wrists together,” he said. “Twitch, and you take a bullet in that healthy kidney I left you with.”
Matt remained still. He was only seconds away from the moment of truth. Noon’s overconfidence had presented a slender last chance. Once trussed to the chair it would be game over, with no likelihood of inserting another coin and trying again. He knew that Noon would already have shot him if that had been his only goal. The psycho had more ambitious plans. With a dread hardly bearable, Matt faced the awful fate that waited, not for him, but for Beth, if he failed her now at this last hurdle. Her injured face, torn blouse and uncovered breasts spoke volumes. He would not allow himself to be pinioned in a front row seat and be forced to watch while the woman he loved with such passion was violated and murdered.
Noon’s plan was obvious: rape Beth, and almost certainly torture and mutilate her before finally taking her life. Only then would he deal with Matt.
As Gary reached for the dangling reel of tape, Matt lowered his head submissively, and then snapped it back with all the speed and force he could bring to bear. He might have been demonstrating the effects of whiplash after being rear-ended by another vehicle. As he made his move, he threw all of his weight behind it, to tip the chair over. Luck, fate, fluke or whatever fortuitous and intangible forces might exist and have come to his aid, he gave no mind to. The familiar sounding crack of cartilage and the resulting scream of surprise and pain told him that Noon’s nose was broken.
Gary fell, instinctively reaching to cup his fractured, bleeding nose. Before his back hit the floor, he fired wildly at the chair as it toppled down towards him. The bullet smashed through the framework, blasting splinters of wood into the air and into Matt’s neck and cheek.
Matt was convinced that he had been shot, but did not falter. With his last breath he would do everything he could to negate the threat to Beth. Even as he fell through the air – feeling like a jet pilot who had ejected from his plane just seconds before impact – he felt the full power of love infuse his being: Knew that it and not survival was the most potent instinct of the human condition. Self-sacrifice for others was built into the blueprint of many people, to lie dormant and be triggered in only the most untenable of situations, when it would be activated to override all other considerations and produce acts of heroism from sometimes the most unlikely individuals.
Twisting to the right as the chair landed heavily on Noon, winding him, Matt saw the gun with smoke curling from the black eye of the silencer. Noon was still holding it, bringing it up to fire again. Matt instinctively lunged forward, found the gun hand’s thumb, to envelop it with his mouth and bite down, breaking skin, puncturing muscle, until his teeth met bone. For a few seconds he was mindless, trying to tear the digit free. It was as though he were a wild animal feeding on live prey. He brought his hands into play, pulled his mouth free and wrenched the gun from the bloody hand. Noon was going to die where he lay. Matt intended to empty the clip into his face. At that moment, he was totally irrational, driven by a boiling hatred for the man who had gunned down his colleagues: Donny Campbell, Bernie Mellors, Keith Collins and Tony Delgado. It was also for the Page family, who had just been innocent members of the public. But the bottom line was that he was going to execute Noon for targeting his and Beth’s lives; for making it personal.
“Matt!” Beth screamed as he gripped Noon by the throat one-handed and brought the Glock up to aim at a point between the moaning man’s eyes.
Beth had rolled off the settee an instant after Matt launched his attack. She intended to go across to where the two men thrashed in mortal combat, to use her feet to kick Noon and stamp on his head. But as she got to her feet, a stranger appeared at the lounge door. He was in a crouched firing stance, holding a gun. He wore mirrored shades, and was aiming the pistol at the two struggling combatants. Beth knew that the man was not a cop. It occurred to her that he must be one of Santini’s men, and that Matt hadn’t got a cat in hell’s chance of avoiding being shot where he lay.