Kill Me Again (39 page)

The woman didn’t move. Maggie could see her mottled face and knew she didn’t have long.

‘There’s a policeman. They say he’s really clever. Tom Douglas, he’s called. He’ll find us.’

Maggie was amazed to see the girl’s eyelids flutter open for a second, and she was certain that she saw hope in her eyes. Whether that was true or not, it was better that the girl died with hope in her heart.

Maggie stopped talking. She could hear voices. Samil was coming back, and he had somebody with him, somebody who clearly didn’t want to be there. And it was a voice she recognised.

Samil kicked the door open and pushed a man in front of him into the room, his hands also tied behind his back.

‘
Duncan!’
Maggie gasped. How on earth had they found him? She must have been followed the previous night. Surely not? There had been nobody about – the roads were empty – but how else could they have known where he was?

Duncan looked at her, his face showing no surprise that she was there. His features were set into hard lines as if he was sucking in his cheeks. His eyes were dark and unreadable.

Samil pushed him across the room until he was standing a few feet from Maggie.

‘Maggie, meet Michael. He’s a man of many names, aren’t you?’ he said, prodding Duncan hard in the back. ‘I knew him as Senka online. I bet you didn’t know that, did you, Maggie? Senka means “shadow” in some foreign language or other. So to me he was Senka, then I saw him in the newspaper and discovered his name was Michael, and now it’s Duncan. I’m sure he must confuse himself with all these names.’

Duncan continued to say nothing. He didn’t look at Maggie, but stared into an empty space in the room, his eyes blank.

Samil lifted his right leg and put his foot against Duncan’s back. He pushed him towards Maggie and walked across to a bag in the corner. He pulled something out, and Maggie recognised it instantly. A taser. Samil could keep his distance and still control Duncan. Maggie and the girl – Leo, he had said her name was – were restrained by the pillars.

Samil pulled a mobile phone out of his pocket.

‘I gather your husband gave you a flavour of what he set up all those years ago – those assassinations. No doubt he told you how innocent he was. Do you want me to read you some of the messages he wrote on the website, Maggie? Do you want to know what he fantasised about doing to the girl who had betrayed him?’

Duncan turned his head. He said nothing, but the look he gave Samil was full of hatred. Samil ignored him and consulted the screen of his phone.

‘Let me see.’ Samil flicked his finger up the screen a couple of times. ‘Ah, here we are. It appears your husband wanted his ex-girlfriend drowned. That was his method of choice. He wanted her head held under, then pulled out when she was almost unconscious, and then pushed under again. He wanted that repeated until finally her strength ebbed from her body. I didn’t do that. It was too messy and would have taken too long. But that was his fantasy. I would have slit her throat, like the first one, but in the end she was strangled. Bad, but not as bad as what your husband had planned.’

Maggie felt hot tears streaming down her face. This wasn’t Duncan he was talking about; it was somebody else.

‘You see, Maggie –’ Samil’s voice was tight as if he could only just resist the urge to shout and scream, ‘– what that girl did to your husband was nothing. It was a blip in his life. His failure to stick to his side of the bargain, to kill my stepmother before she got her hands on my father’s money, has condemned me to a life of penury. Oh, I have enough to live on, but I should have been so very, very rich. And your husband
ruined
that for me. That’s why I’ve brought him here. I’m going to condemn him for the rest of his life to something that’s possibly even worse.’

What could he mean? There was no point in asking. Samil seemed to be in a different place. His pupils had dilated and his eyes looked fierce and black, the words spat from his mouth with venom.

‘He has to make a choice. He has to kill – that’s only fair given what I did for him – but I’m going to let him choose. He can kill you, Maggie, or he can kill Leo. That’s an easy choice, really. She’s almost dead anyway. But you see, you’re going to have to watch him do it. You’re going to have to listen to her scream. And then if you stay with him, every day for the rest of your lives you will picture him killing an innocent woman because she had the misfortune to look like you.’

Still Duncan didn’t speak. He kept his hate-filled eyes on Samil, and never looked at Maggie.

‘Don’t do it, Duncan,’ she begged. ‘He can’t make you.’

‘Of
course
I can make him.’ Samil spat the words out. ‘I’ll start carving chunks out of you until he agrees. It looks like an easy choice, but it’s not. Think about it.’

He said no more. He didn’t need to, but Maggie had heard enough. She remembered one of the articles she had read about psychopaths. Control was everything, so she had to break it – destroy Samil’s confidence. As a psychopath, he was a master manipulator of other people’s feelings, but was unable to experience emotions himself. She knew she wouldn’t be able to make him feel guilty, but she could belittle him. And psychopaths were planners and hated their plans to be upset or derailed. That was what she had to do. Maggie took a deep breath.

‘What sort of a man are you, Samil? Oh, I know. The sort that has to hide behind a pathetic fake name. The Angel of Death?’ She barked out a laugh, and hoped Samil didn’t hear the terror hovering just below the surface. ‘For God’s sake, you sound like a character out of a children’s comic. I’ve no doubt you’re an evil bastard. Let’s face it, you’ve killed enough innocent women. But what do you get off on? That’s what I can’t work out. From
what I can gather you’re not getting any sexual gratification out of your kills. Or is that it? Is thinking about the deaths of these women at your hands the only way you can get it up? Or is it the thrill of the kill? Well, I’ve got news for you. Your plans are going to fail. It’s all going to go wrong, Samil, and you will be exposed for the pathetic specimen you are.’

She had to stop before her voice cracked with the strain of trying to sound strong. She swallowed and fought to hold her gaze steady. She had done her best, but her outburst hadn’t produced any signs of the confusion she had tried to create. All she saw was a slight narrowing of Samil’s eyes.

‘Maybe I have a better idea,’ he said. ‘You’re a strong woman, Maggie, so maybe the choice of who dies should be yours. Duncan can kill Leo or kill you, or you can kill Duncan. But let’s make this
your
choice – let Duncan see what hell he has brought into your life. Remember, Maggie, your husband has fantasised about killing. Maybe he still does – have you thought of that? Maybe if we search the site to find someone who fantasises about drowning people slowly – that fantasist could be Duncan.’

The back of Maggie’s neck tingled with a memory and she turned her head to look at Duncan. He didn’t return her stare, but the fury in his eyes as he looked at Samil was chilling.

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ he said, spacing out each word. ‘I was never serious. You’re the psychopath, the thrill killer. Not me.’

Samil turned back to his phone. ‘Well, we’ll see, shall we. There are some wild fantasists on this site – and yes, the site’s still going, Maggie. The numbers swell year on year. This one that I’m looking at right now wants to kill all lesbians. A mission killer. They’re so interesting, like Peter Sutcliffe and the prostitutes. Or Carroll Edward Cole – his mission was to kill women who cheated on their partners. I think you would be a mission killer, Michael. But what would you want to rid the world of? Any ideas, wife? We can search the site, and see if we can find any more of your husband’s fantasies. What do you say?’

Maggie was silent. She wasn’t sure her legs would hold her up for much longer. Samil stared at her for a few seconds longer, waiting to see if she responded. She didn’t, and he appeared to become bored with the idea, sticking the phone back in his pocket.

He folded his arms and stared at Maggie, a small smile betraying his pleasure at the torment he was inflicting.

‘Okay, Maggie, who’s going to die here today? You, your husband or that poor scrap of a woman who hasn’t done a thing to hurt anybody?’ He pointed his taser in Leo’s direction. ‘I want an answer. Or I’m going to start hurting people.’

Maggie had no more ideas – no other ways to deflect Samil from his goal. What was she going to say to him? Why hadn’t she absorbed more of those articles on psychopaths? She might have had a clue then.

Duncan moved towards Samil. The taser was immediately pointed and charged. ‘Don’t even think about it.’

‘So give me a knife,’ Duncan said.

Maggie was jolted from her thoughts of how to divert Samil.

‘
Duncan
,’ Maggie gasped. ‘Don’t.’

‘He won’t be doing anything until you give him the word. I’ve told you, Maggie. The choice has to be yours. You, your husband or her.’

Maggie put her head down.

‘Give me the fucking
knife
,’ Duncan said, his jaw clenched. ‘Let’s get it done.’

Samil waited a beat.

‘I
will
free your hands, Duncan. And you can have the knife. But the decision is Maggie’s. If you as much as move before that decision has been made, I will bring you down with this.’ He waved the taser in the air. ‘Turn your back. The taser is right up against your heart, so nothing clever.’

Maggie watched as Samil ran the knife quickly between Duncan’s hands and stepped back. He got well out of Duncan’s reach, dropped the knife on the floor and kicked it over to him, pointing the taser all the time.

Maggie watched her husband pick the knife up. He looked at her, but she couldn’t see any sign of her Duncan. His face was devoid of expression, his jawline rigid.

‘What’s it to be, Maggie?’ Samil asked. ‘If you choose Duncan, I’ll taser him first, and I’ll be only too happy to finish the job for you if you don’t have the stomach for it. That makes the choice easier, doesn’t it?’

Maggie’s head was spinning. This couldn’t be happening. How could she choose between herself, her husband and this poor defenceless woman who – as far as she knew – had nothing whatsoever to do with any of this.

Duncan started to walk across to where Leo lay on the floor.

‘Maggie, it’s an easy choice, surely?’ Duncan said. ‘She isn’t going to survive. Tell me to kill her, and then we’re done. He’s not going to stop until you choose, and what other choice is there?’

Maggie stared at her husband. He didn’t appear to have an ounce of reluctance about killing the girl. It was a solution to a problem for him, not a young woman’s life. What did that make him?

‘Do you think he’s going to let us go after that? After everything we could tell the police about him?’

Duncan closed his eyes for a moment and shook his head slightly. ‘Don’t you get it? If we do this, he will have as much on us as we have on him. Rightly or wrongly, I can’t ever go to the police. You know that. So let him have his revenge, and let’s get out of here. Just don’t watch. Then you won’t ever have to think again about what I’m about to do.’

‘Shut it, Duncan,’ Samil said. ‘Maggie, it’s decision time.’

Maggie knew that if she told Duncan to kill the girl, she would never be able to look at herself in a mirror again. And she would never let Duncan’s blood-covered hands near her. But she couldn’t kill her husband, the father of her children – and he had always seemed such a
good
father. How would she ever live with herself if she condemned him to death?

She was about to open her mouth and give her answer when she heard a noise. It was the sound of running footsteps on the stairs.

The door burst open and a man stood in the open doorway. Maggie could see his chest heaving as he tried to regain his breath. His arms were at his side, but held away from his body, his legs taut. She recognised the voice.

‘You fucking shit.’ His voice was low, but there was no doubt about the fury.

It was the second man, the one who had been left to guard the pipe.

‘You left me with no transport, no money – nothing. You treat me like shit, and yet none of this would have been possible without me.’

‘Stop being such a girl,’ Samil said. ‘You enjoyed the ride. You got off on killing people on Daddy’s property, didn’t you? Didn’t have the guts to do it yourself, though. You bottled that, didn’t you?’

The second man advanced into the room, and it was only then that Maggie noticed he was carrying what looked like a short metal pole in the hand that Samil couldn’t see. The
two men were both well over six feet tall, Samil having the edge. The newcomer’s perfectly cut blond hair was at odds with his muddy jeans and boots, and the look of fury on his face in stark contrast with the controlled arrogant stare of Samil, whose chiselled features and thick bottom lip appeared to be set in concrete. Only his intense blue eyes showed that he was alive, burning every surface they touched.

‘Invictus was right about you,’ the second man said. ‘You’re the real deal. The dark triad of personality disorders all combined in one person. Psychopath, narcissist, Machiavellian. You’ve got it all. But you’re a user. And I’m sick of being used.’