Authors: Simon Kernick
I stood back up and lit yet another cigarette. 'Well?'
'He says he doesn't want to meet anyone, but if it's an emergency, then I should get up to his house tonight. Before midnight. He says it's at--'
'Yeah, I know where it is.' Raymond's main residence was a mansion on the Hertfordshire/ Essex border. I'd never been there before, but I was aware of its location. I dragged on the cigarette. 'Did he say he was going anywhere? After midnight?'
'No, he didn't say anything.'
'One more question. How the hell did you and Roberts ever get involved with Keen?'
'Dr Roberts knew him from somewhere. And I knew Dr Roberts.'
I didn't bother asking again how Kover and Roberts knew each other. Doubtless it was down to their shared interest.
Sighing, I turned and walked over to the window. The view was of a gloomy monolithic towerblock which was so close that it would have blocked out the sunlight, had there been any. Outside it was raining hard, and fog was obscuring the glow of the bright orange street lights. A man, his coat pulled up so it was almost completely covering his face, hurried past on the street below. He was half running, as if simply being outside was enough to put him in mortal danger.
As I stood there looking out, I remembered back to when I'd been a kid of thirteen. We'd had a field out the back of our house with a huge oak tree in it. We used to climb it during the summer. My dad used to come back from work every night at half past six, rarely earlier and never later, and me and him and my sister would go out into the field and play football. We did it every night, unless it was raining, and it was best in summer when the sun went down behind the tree and the neighbours' kids came out and joined in. They'd been good days, probably even the best days of my life. Life's good when you're a kid; it should be, anyway. I pictured Molly Hagger, the little blonde girl with the curly hair. Thirteen years old. Her last hours must have been a confused, terrifying hell.
Abducted from the grey, bleak streets of a wet, cold city - a city that had put her on to drugs and stolen any last scrap of innocence she had - and taken away to be used, beaten, destroyed, for the pleasure of men who dripped with the sickness of absolute corruption. Men who would steal a life just to create a better, more satisfying orgasm. She should have been playing football and having fun with parents who cared about her. Instead, her remains lay anonymous and forgotten, somewhere they'd never be found. Forgotten by everyone, even by her best friend, who'd tried to use the situation for her own selfish advantage.
Forgotten by everyone. Except me.
'Look, can you let me out of here? I need a doctor for these fucking burns. I'm in a lot of pain.'
I continued to stare out of the window, puffing thoughtfully on my cigarette. I thought of Carla Graham and wondered if, had she lived, we'd have got anywhere together.
'You know, Kover,' I said, speaking without looking at him, 'I've done a lot of bad things in my life.'
'Look, I've answered your quest--'
'Some of them really bad.'
'Don't do anything stupid, please!'
'This, however, is not one of them.'
I swung round, and before he could react the cigarette had left my hand and the funeral pyre
began to burn, the roar of the flames drowned out by his screams.
Raymond Keen. The instigator of it all. Like a fat, malevolent spider, he'd watched over this bloody web of murder, greed and corruption, unworried by who got caught up in it and how they met their ends. Only he could supply the final answers to my questions. And only by ending his life could I finally redeem myself in my own eyes, and the eyes of those who would sit and judge me.
I drove across the rain-soaked city, my mind a wasteland of torn images. Somewhere inside I felt fear, a fear that I might die in my pursuit of justice and revenge, that my time on this earth might be only hours from completion. But hatred conquered it. It was a hatred that seemed to rise right up from the unmarked graves of not only the children Raymond had murdered, but from every victim of every injustice in the world. In the end, it would only subside when my revenge was complete.
I stopped at a phone box on a lonely back road in Enfield and put a call through to the number of a
restaurant in Tottenham that Roy Shelley had given me. A foreign-sounding man answered and I asked to speak to Mehmet Illan. The man claimed not to know anyone of that name, which I'd half expected.
'Look, this is urgent. Very urgent. Tell him it's Dennis Milne and I must speak to him.'
'I told you, I don't know no Mehmet Illan.'
I reeled out the number I was calling from. 'He will want to speak to me, I promise you. Do you understand?' I repeated the number, and I got the impression that he was writing it down.
'I told you--'
'I'm only going to be on this number for the next fifteen minutes. It's a payphone. After fifteen minutes I'm gone, and he'll regret the fact that he missed me.'
I hung up, and lit a cigarette. Outside, the rain continued to tip down and the street was empty. There were lights on in the houses opposite and I watched them vaguely, looking for signs of life. But there was nothing. It was as if the whole world was asleep. Or dead.
The phone rang. It was barely a minute since my call to the restaurant. I picked up on the second ring.
'Dennis Milne.'
'What is it you want?' The voice was slow and confident, and the accent cultured. He sounded like
he was from one of the higher social classes in his native land.
'I want you to do something for me. And in return I'll do something for you.'
'Is your line secure?'
'It's a payphone. I've never used it before.'
'What do you want me to do?'
'I want you, or some of your representatives, to get rid of Raymond Keen. Permanently.'
There was a deep but not unpleasant chuckle at the other end. 'I think you're making some sort of mistake. I don't even know a Raymond Keen.'
'Raymond Keen's going down. I've got evidence that's going to convict him of some pretty horrendous crimes.'
'I don't see what that's got to do with me.'
'If he goes down, he'll talk, and my understanding is you've got an interesting business relationship with him. One you'd rather keep secret.'
'What evidence, exactly, do you have on this Raymond Keen you're talking about?'
I took out the portable tape player on which I'd recorded the interrogation of Kover. 'This,' I said, pressing the play button and putting the machine next to the mouthpiece. I'd wound it forward to the most incriminating part and was pleased at how good the sound quality was. Kover detailed Raymond's role in the murder not only of Miriam
Fox but of as many as four other young girls as well. I switched it off before I got to the bit where I incinerated him.
'It sounds like a lot of that so-called confession was given under extreme duress. Surely, then, it would not be admissible in a court of law?'
'Maybe not, but if it fell into the hands of the police, I'm certain they would have to act on it. And I think you'd find they'd leave no stone unturned to put him away, and if they did that .. . well ... I imagine they'd turn up a lot of stuff that would affect other people. And those people might get tarred with the same brush. And who wants to be closely associated with a child killer? Because I can assure you that's exactly what Raymond Keen is.' There was silence on the other end of the line. 'Raymond's at home at the moment. I think he's getting a little nervous about things. In fact, I think he might be preparing to fly the nest even as we speak, so you're going to have to be quick about things. If he's still alive in twenty-four hours the police are going to get that tape I've just played you, plus all the other evidence I've unearthed on Raymond's nasty little sideline.'
'And after that? If Raymond Keen disappears, what guarantees are there that there will be no further repercussions?'
'I'll have got what I wanted. The tape'll be destroyed because, as you say, it incriminates me
as well, and I'll disappear off the face of the earth.'
'You could be recording this conversation. What's to stop it being used against Mehmet Illan at a later date?'
'You're just going to have to trust me on that. Whatever happens, if Raymond's still alive tomorrow night, I'm going to the police. If he isn't, I won't. And to be honest, I'd prefer not to.'
'It would be useful if you disappeared sooner rather than later.'
'The moment Keen's gone, so am I.'
'OK. Well, thank you very much for your call.'
'One last question. My driver for the hit at the Traveller's Rest. Do you know what's happened to him?'
'I'm afraid I can't help you there.'
I didn't say anything. Maybe he was telling the truth, maybe he wasn't. He hung up without further comment, and I slowly replaced the receiver in its cradle. Would he take the bait? I thought he had enough incentive, but I couldn't be sure, and I wasn't a hundred per cent certain he had the necessary firepower to carry out an assault on Raymond's place. After all, the two men he'd sent against me had hardly been armed to the teeth. One had had a sawn-off, the other a revolver with a badly sighted barrel. And they hadn't exactly been accomplished assassins either. But he was going to
want Raymond out of the way, and badly, which counted in my favour.
I got back in the car and thought about driving back to Bayswater, but decided against it. I hoped that I had just sentenced Raymond Keen to death, but maybe Illan would call my bluff and do nothing. I decided I had to go to Raymond's house, to check that he was there and what the level of his security was. I was armed, so if he was on his own I'd finish him off myself, but only after I'd found out who else, if anyone, was involved in the killing of the kids.
It was a quarter to ten and still raining when I pulled up just down the street from Raymond's residence. It was a big, modern house set behind high walls, part of a very plush new estate built on what was once farmland, a mile or so out of the nearest village. Only he and Luke lived there now. Raymond's wife had died ten years ago, supposedly the result of natural causes, but in the light of what I'd heard about Raymond these past few hours, even that diagnosis had to be taken with a pinch of salt. He had three kids, all girls, ironically enough, and all grown up and moved away, so it would just be him and whatever security cover he had.
I got out of the car, took my raincoat containing the MAC 10 and the Browning from the back seat,
and put it on. The street was empty, with not a single car parked on it, and the houses were far enough apart to give the area a real sense of privacy. I assumed the sort of people who lived here were City bankers and lawyers, high-fliers who liked to think that they'd achieved something in life because their houses had eight bedrooms and walk-in wardrobes. They were going to get one hell of a shock when they found out what one of their neighbours had been up to, but, you never know, perhaps they'd enjoy the controversy. At least it would give them something to talk about.
The wall bordering Raymond's property was ten feet high and topped with short, vertical spikes to deter intruders. I walked up in the direction of the front gate, keeping an eye out just in case this place too was under surveillance. Not surprisingly, the imposing wooden gates were locked and access was via an intercom system. I walked back to the car and drove it slowly down until it was parallel to the wall. I then brought it up on to the kerb and as close to the wall as I could. Hoping that no one was going to pay too much attention to my vehicle and its strange parking position, I listened for a moment and, hearing nothing, clambered up on to the roof. My head was now just below the top of the wall.
I took a deep breath and jumped up, grabbing hold of two of the railings, scrambling upwards until my feet were at the top of the wall and I was
bent over almost double, my toes touching the railings only inches from my fingers. It was a painful position to hold. Below me I could see a thick, wiry hedge that looked as though it would provide an extremely painful landing. Gingerly I stepped over the railings and tried to turn myself round so that I was facing out on to the road, but started to lose my footing. As I slipped, I jumped at the same time, just managing to clear the hedge. I landed awkwardly on the grass, a sharp pain shooting up both legs, and rolled over in the wet, hoping I hadn't broken anything. I lay where I'd fallen for a few seconds, letting the pain in my ankles fade away, then slowly got to my feet. I took the MAC 10 from my pocket and loaded the magazine into it, flicking off the safety at the same time.
The house was about fifty yards in front of me, a large three-storey rectangular structure that looked like an attempt to recreate, with some success, one of those country houses of old. There was a drive that went right down to it before widening to encompass the whole facade of the building. Raymond's blue Bentley was parked outside, along with a Range Rover that I think belonged to Luke. What immediately caught my attention was the fact that Raymond's boot was open, as was the front door to the house. There were a lot of lights on inside and I got the feeling that something was going on.
The lawn leading up to the house was peppered with apple trees, giving enough cover for me to make a cautious approach. When I got to the edge of the driveway, about ten yards from the front door, I crouched behind one of them, shivering against the wet, pondering my next move. I didn't want a confrontation, not if I could help it. Far better to let Illan do the dirty work.