A Reason to Kill (35 page)

As life ebbed, his power to deny the pain evaporated. The reality of the situation struck home and froze his heart as he experienced a level of anguish and fear that was in small part commensurate for the suffering he had meted out to others. And in the last instant, that seemed a small eternity before he found escape, Gary looked up as if drawn to where Matt Barnes was still standing high above him on the balcony. He saw no absolution, pity, or even pleasure in the eyes of the man who had in effect been the end of him. There was only an expression of impassive remoteness.

He tried to swallow against the outpouring of blood, but could not stem the flow, and died with the sound of his own liquid, guttural scream ringing in his ears.

IT
seemed that heaven cried out in blessed relief, matching the sudden sense of deliverance Matt experienced. It was only rain, spearing down to paint every surface. But the canvas of colourful distorted reflections from the car park lights and police vehicles was in some way meaningful; symbolic.

He was too far away, but in his mind he could see the silvered raindrops rebounding as small explosions of spray from the glazing black orbs that were Noon’s unseeing eyes. The summer storm was a cleansing interlude; a hiatus to indelibly mark a moment between two points; before and after, or then and now, denoting a significant happening.

Matt felt drained, without an ounce of energy. All the strength had been sucked from him as the adrenaline withdrew from his muscles. This was how he could imagine anybody snatched from the closing jaws of death at the last second must feel. The Yank had appeared from nowhere, got the drop on him, and could have shot them all. Being a true pro, and believing, rightly so, that his contractor was void, he had spared them, not out of any compassion, but because it was no longer a viable venture to conclude.

“Are y...you a policeman?” Janice Barker asked, and he spun round to face her. She had picked herself up, pulled on a robe, and was now standing at the bedroom door, undecided as to whether she should run for her life, or not.

“Uh!” Matt stepped back into the room, gun now held loosely at his side.

Janice swallowed hard. “I said, are you a policeman?”

He nodded. “Yes, love. Sorry if I was a bit rough, but...” He shrugged and walked past her, out of the flat and onto the landing. He went to the lift, pressed the call button and waited. He needed to be with Beth. Everything else was now immaterial.

Tom knocked once and entered the office without waiting to be invited. Jack was standing next to his aquarium, almost silhouetted by sunlight shining through the window. He had his back to the door and was tapping food flakes from a canister. The fancy fishes swam up to the surface. They relied on him for their continued existence within the glass-walled universe they inhabited. Tom saw that it was a control thing. The man enjoyed the power he could exert, even over a tank full of poxy guppies.

Jack turned to face him. “You look tense, Tom. No wonder you’ve got a bloody ulcer and a dodgy ticker. Lighten up, for God’s sake. We just got one hell of a result. How are Barnes and the cop you had on the inside?”

“Barnes is fine. And Nick Marino is stable, but might be in a wheelchair for six months,” Tom said stonily.

“He’ll be well looked after, and he’s earned a promotion if he doesn’t take medical retirement and walk. Sit down, Tom, you’re making me nervous just standing there and looking like you’ve got a funeral to go to. It’s over. We brought Santini’s firm down, and he, his son and the cop killer are history.”

Tom remained standing. “There are some loose ends, Jack. You know that,” Tom said, flipping a flash drive onto his boss’s desk.

Jack frowned. “What’s that?” But he knew. Could see the accusatory look in Tom’s eyes.

“It’s a copy of stuff that was on a disk we lifted from Santini’s place. A list of names, dates, offshore bank account details, and a breakdown of services rendered. Frank kept everything on file.”

“Spit it out, Tom. Get it off your chest before it chokes you,” Jack said, walking across to the windows and looking out at the sun-kissed city skyline as he spoke.

“You’re scum, McLane,” Tom replied in a quiet, matter-of-fact tone of voice. “You’re worse than the lowlife we try to scrape off the streets. At least with the Santinis’, what you saw was what you got. You sold out your own. It’s arseholes like you and Vic Pender that are our worst enemies. But now it’s over. We’ve got enough to put you and a few other bent cops and politicians away for a long time. And being a cop in Belmarsh won’t be a picnic.”

Jack was a pragmatist. He hadn’t got to be chief superintendent without possessing the ability to assess facts, understand their significance, make hard decisions if need be, and act on them. It would serve no practical purpose to say anything. It had been many years ago that he had withheld some damning evidence against Frank Santini, at a time when ten grand was too much to pass up for a DC with a family to support and a mortgage that was crippling him. It was not as if he had actively colluded in the commission of a crime with the gangster. He’d just sat on a few facts, taken the money, and the rest was history. Call it his private pension fund. Greed is a powerful stimulant. One thing had led to another over time, and he’d got in way above his head. Santini had owned him. When he had – early on – attempted to walk away from it, he’d been told that not only would he go down, but that his wife and children would suffer fatal accidents if he didn’t play ball. Once you’d taken the first few coins of Judas’ silver, there was no turning back.

Tom waited, expecting a denial, explanation, or some attempt to justify the acts McClane had profited by. The unexpected silence was disconcerting.

Jack hiked his meaty shoulders and gave Tom a wan smile as he slid open the window. The following few seconds would subsequently haunt Tom for the rest of his life, until at the age of seventy-eight, in a rest home near Epping, Alzheimer’s would finally steal away all memories, good and bad, leaving him as empty as a freshly squeezed orange skin.

Even as he realised what was about to happen, Tom was too late to intercede.

Jack got up onto the windowsill with the drum of fish food still clutched in his hand and just stepped out, to vanish from sight and plummet down past the office windows of the lower floors.

Tom ran to the window, gripped both sides of the frame and leaned out in time to see Jack hit the pavement far below.

A middle-aged passer-by was confronted with the spectacle of a man compacting in front of him, to be converted into a bloody mound. Jack somehow landed feet first. His thighbones punched through his pelvis to lodge under his armpits, and his backbone was driven up through his skull. He felt and thought nothing as a small cloud of beige-coloured powder drifted down, discharged from the fish food canister to coat his corpse in a fine layer.

Backing away from the window, Tom checked his watch, so that he would be able to correctly state the time, as well as the date and location of the...incident.

“Charming! Fucking charming!” Tom said, knowing that he would be stuck behind his desk making out reports and filling in forms for days. And yet a part of him grudgingly admired McClane for having the balls to do the right thing. Though he hated the man for his duplicity, which had no doubt cost many lives over his years of association with Santini.

The bar of the Kenton Court Hotel was the venue Matt picked for a get-together with Tom, Pete Deakin, Kenny Ruskin from CCS, Nick Marino – who was on the mend – and, of course, Beth.

“Nice to have you back, Mr Gabriel,” Ron Quinn quipped as he set a tray of drinks down on the tabletop. “Will I have to check the place for hidden weapons when you all leave?”

Matt grinned at the big, red-bearded Cornishman, who was now his friend.

Ron didn’t linger. He would join them later, when invited, for what would prove to be a serious late night session.

Flexing his now unencumbered leg, Matt sipped at the single malt and moved his chair a little closer to Beth’s. Over three weeks had passed since the face-off with Noon, and in that time his life had changed considerably, and for the better. He and Beth were making plans together, and he was more content than he had ever been. Marriage, kids, family holidays and old-fashioned Christmases were on the cards, though they had not discussed it, just both knew it was a real possibility. The ties that now bound them were too tightly knotted to be picked free. When something is right, it’s right.

As for the immediate future, Matt and Beth would stay the night in Ron’s best room. It was Saturday tomorrow, and after a late breakfast they would drive down to Hove. Matt’s dad was not well, but had sounded perkier on the phone of late, had cut down on the cigarettes, and was even taking regular walks along the front. Miracles
can
happen. Arthur Barnes was mellowing, coming to terms with how things were, and not how he wished them to be. It was called adapting. He wanted to meet Beth and chew the fat. And maybe talk shop and do a little overdue bonding with his son.

Ignorance can be bliss. Neither Matt nor Beth could know that even greater tribulation than they had survived lurked on the horizon, primed to blight their lives beyond any rational contemplation. Like all great mysteries, the future unfolds in its own time, to bring with it all manner of joy and misery in its passing.

# # # # #

Michael Kerr is the pseudonym of Mike Smail the author of several crime thrillers and two children’s novels.  He lives and writes in the Yorkshire Wolds, and has won, been runner-up, and short listed on numerous occasions for short story competitions with Writing Magazine and Writers’ News.

After a career of more than twenty years in the Prison Service, Mike now uses his experience in that area to write original, hard-hitting crime novels.

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A Reason To Kill

Lethal Intent

A Need To Kill

Deadly Reprisal (
sample included
)

‘A Reacher Kind of Guy’ – Aftermath

Deadly Requital

THE
only safe secret is one that no one else is privy to.  Steve Taylor knew that.  Maybe he
would
be safe from retribution, but was going to believe otherwise and keep looking over his shoulder.  He’d seen the results of complacency firsthand, and taken full advantage of those that had underestimated him as an enemy.  One of his main strengths was that he had no real fear of the hereafter, only the here and now.  But that didn’t mean he had a death wish.  Every day above ground was a bonus.

Leaving the cottage, Steve trudged beneath a canopy of palm fronds, out onto the beach; a cooler full of Coors Light swinging from his left hand.  At the small of his back, tucked in the waistband of his shorts – hidden from view under a loose fitting Hawaiian-style shirt – he could feel the comforting pressure of the Browning Hi-power pistol.  It gave him what would soon prove to be a false sense of security.

Sitting on the still warm sand, Steve watched a couple of kids throwing a Frisbee to each other in the fading light, as he drained a can of Coors, belched, and lit a cigarette.

A quarter mile distant, a lone figure approached, stopping every few yards to bend down.  Steve smiled.  They – whoever
they
were – called it the Sanibel Stoop.  Not many tourists could resist picking up the shells that were left high and dry at low tide.  He’d done it himself.  It was a somehow therapeutic and addictive pastime.

He pondered on events that had conspired to lead him to this time and place in his life.  He was on the run from the police, and the mob.  However tranquil the present surroundings, he knew that his life expectancy was in serious danger of being explosively curtailed.  He had done a deal with the cops; his continued freedom in return for ensuring that when Eddie Moscone went to trial, the crime boss would get life for his hand in at least a dozen killings.  But he had slipped his minders in London and flown the coop, to start over in the U.S.  He was out of the loop, living one day at a time, knowing that everyone wanted a piece of him.

Buddy Miller thought that he looked the part.  He was wearing an oversize, straw cowboy hat, mirrored shades, a baggy pair of knee-length shorts, and plastic sandals.  His beer gut and thin, white-skinned legs promoted the appearance of someone no more sinister than a middle-aged guy who’d just hit the beach and was doing what all the other visiting morons did; collect shells.

Less than a hundred yards away from his mark.  There was no hurry.  Buddy picked up a large conch, examined it, and walked across to where the surf fizzed on the wet sand, to hunker down and rinse the shell before popping it into the white plastic bag, on the bottom of which rested a Glock 17 fitted with a suppressor.

Three pelicans glided by, scant inches above the ocean’s surface.  The man who now called himself Jerry Mason thought that they looked prehistoric, like pterodactyls.  The big, dull orange sun was now slipping quickly over the horizon, making a fitting backdrop to silhouette the large-beaked birds.

“Hey, Taylor?”  A voice behind him.

Fuck! 
Even as he turned his head, he knew that it was over.  How he’d been found didn’t matter.  He was going to die:  Knew that the hand inside the plastic bag was pointing a gun at him, but reacted instinctively, twisting, diving sideways as he reached back under his shirt to grasp the butt of the Browning.

Steve’s last image was the reflection of a glorious sunset in the stranger’s shades.  A split second later he simply ceased to exist as a bullet punched through his forehead to pulverize his brain and take the back of his skull out, blowing his twitching body into the surf.  There were no last thoughts, regrets, or even time to feel fear.

Buddy looked both ways.  He’d waited until the two kids had run off, after being summoned by an unseen voice.  It was mid-November, low season, and until the Thanksgiving holiday brought hordes down to infest Florida, it was relatively quiet.  He stepped forward, put another slug in the mark, and released his grip on the pistol in the now holed bag.  Spent a couple of seconds watching dozens of half-inch-long fish glint silver as they darted in to gulp down the blood and tissue that was now liberated from the corpse’s head, before he ambled up the beach, through a fringe of palms to enter Taylor’s cottage and quickly, expertly search it.  He found nothing.

Back in the rented Ford Taurus with false plates, Buddy opened his cell phone and made a call to New York City.

“Yeah?”

“It’s Buddy.”

“And?”

“I made the sale.”

“Sweet.  See you when you land.”

Buddy broke the connection and drove off slowly along West Gulf Drive.  Fifteen minutes later he was crossing the causeway to the mainland.  Sanibel appeared to be a very pleasant island, all low-rise and laid back; the type of place he would like to revisit someday with Muriel, his wife of thirty-one years.

Picking up I-75 north, Buddy planned to spend the night up in Tampa, and maybe get himself laid before flying back to the Big Apple.  This job had made a nice change.  Buddy liked to travel, it broadened the mind.