Random Targets (22 page)

‘Y
OU SHOULDN’T HAVE
come here, Megan. It was too risky.’

‘But you said I could.’

‘That was before Temple hauled you in for fuck’s sake. How the hell do you know you weren’t followed?’

He stamped across the room to the window and looked outside for the umpteenth time. The flat overlooked the road at the front. Beyond it was a small, untidy park. There was a man walking his dog in the park and cars were parked bumper to bumper along the road. But there was nothing unusual going on. No sign of any cops.

‘I’m sure I wasn’t followed,’ Megan said. ‘I went back to the hotel first.’

He turned to face her, his features rigid.

‘This is not good,’ he said, his voice hoarse. ‘Are you sure you haven’t fucked up? Did you say something to make the police suspicious?’

She shook her head vigorously. ‘I swear I didn’t. I said exactly what you told me to say.’

‘Then how do they know that Renner wasn’t alone in the house?’

‘He said they had evidence.’

‘What kind of evidence?’

‘He didn’t say.’

As he paced the room he reeled from what Megan had told him. It was a devastating blow and it had come as a complete shock. It didn’t make sense. He was so careful. After shooting Renner he had slipped upstairs and into the loft, then into the neighbouring property. Half an hour later he walked out on to the street and away from the scene. There were no mistakes. The set-up was perfect. The sniper took his own life because he was cornered. Case closed.

So what had the police discovered to make them think that it wasn’t so straightforward?

‘What do you think we should do?’ Megan asked him.

He knew what they should be doing right now – and that was celebrating their success with a bottle of champagne. The £2.5 million reward money should be in the bag. It was supposed to herald a new beginning for both of them. No more money worries. No more struggling and taking shit.

But now there was a risk that it might all fall apart. Temple was bound to carry on probing. He already knew about the Rohypnol and the escape route through the loft space. It would only be a matter of time before he found out that Michael Corley didn’t exist, that Megan had made up the name in a moment of panic.

The detective would then discover the truth about her boyfriend. The neighbours would be bound to recall the name of the man who was a frequent visitor to the house over many months. And then the game would be up.

‘Shall I make us a drink?’ Megan said through trembling lips. ‘I could do with one.’

He rounded on her, his eyes blazing.

‘Will you shut the fuck up?’ he yelled. ‘I need to think this through. This is not how it’s meant to be and I’ve got a really bad feeling about it.’

Tears welled up in her eyes and she started to cry. He’d never seen her cry before and it made him even angrier. He had a sudden urge to slap her, but he resisted it. Instead he slumped down on the sofa and buried his face in his hands.

He couldn’t believe that this was where they were after all that had happened.

He’d met her ten months ago when he’d been in Southampton for a reunion with some old army pals. The venue had been a pub in the old town and Megan had been serving behind the bar. They’d got chatting and at the end of the evening he’d asked her out.

At the time he’d been at a low ebb in his life: sick of feeling that he was an outcast, with no place in society. And he’d been taking medicine for depression.

She understood him and she was sympathetic because she too was struggling to contain the flames of anger and resentment.

They were both down on their luck. Both skint. Both traumatized by past events. And both resigned to the fact that they would never get any help or support from anyone.

Their relationship quickly blossomed and they were soon talking about moving in together and maybe getting married. When she fell pregnant they’d both been delighted.

And that was when Cole Renner turned up.

He was on the run with nowhere to live. They said he could stay in the flat which was empty at the time. Soon after moving in he got drunk and told them about the rifle he’d stolen from the army base.

‘I’m going to kill myself with it,’ he’d announced. ‘But not before I make my mark on this fucked up world.’

He was an emotional cripple, his mind twisted out of shape by post-traumatic stress disorder; a disaster waiting to happen.

‘I plan to target a motorway,’ he told them both. ‘Drivers are sitting ducks. I found that out in Afghanistan. I lost count of the number of rag-head truck drivers I shot out there. This time I’ll just keep on shooting until there’s only one shell left in the magazine. And that shell will be for me.’

He was serious. They saw that. At first they urged him to dump the rifle and seek counselling. They said it was an insane idea. But then he told them he got the idea from a news story on the internet. It had been about an army vet in the States who shot and killed two motorists on a highway. It caused such alarm that a huge reward was immediately offered.

‘The only reward I want is to be remembered,’ he said. ‘I want everyone to regret what’s been done to me.’

The next day he told them he’d come to his senses and couldn’t go through with it. He begged them to forget that he’d even mentioned it.

But they couldn’t forget. A seed had been planted in their minds and they couldn’t stop thinking about it. They were intrigued by the possibility of how easy it would be. And by the prospect of a huge reward.

They were spurred on by the fact that they shared the same values and harboured the same resentments. Neither of them believed in God or the concept of a Judgement Day. And they both knew instinctively that they’d be able to live with what they were planning to do. After all, in a world where life is cheap, killing is no longer such a big deal. It’s just a means to an end.

The secret is to remain detached, he told her. Never establish an emotional connection with your victims. Where possible kill only strangers. And preferably from a distance. It was stuff he’d learned in the army.

She understood and accepted what he said. Partly because she was a woman who lacked compassion. Partly too because she’d always regarded herself as a victim – and blamed everyone else for the fact that her life had been so shitty.

And so a plan began to take shape: a plan that would entail targeting more than one motorway in order to generate a big reward. And with the money they were going to secure a better life for themselves and for their unborn child.

They talked about how they would spend it and where they would live. First it was France and then Spain. And when the reward pot grew beyond their wildest expectations they began contemplating somewhere more exotic.

A
FTER INTERVIEWING
M
ARTIN
Renner, Temple was summoned to the Chief Super’s office to take part in a conference call. The three other participants were Vickery, Hampshire’s Chief Constable and a bod from the Home Office.

They’d been briefed by Beresford and they wanted Temple to update them and provide all the details.

They listened in stunned silence as he outlined the facts about the bloodstains on the stairs, the Rohypnol in Renner’s system and the problem with the shoe print found at the scene of the attack on the M27.

‘If you put it all together then you have to conclude that Cole Renner might not have been the sniper,’ he said. ‘And he might not have committed suicide.’

It was hard for them to accept that everything was suddenly up in the air. There were all kinds of implications. They had already announced that the motorway sniper was dead and that the task force was being dismantled. To backtrack now would be a major embarrassment.

But even worse would be having to reveal that the sniper was probably still out there and perhaps planning another series of attacks on motorways.

‘With hindsight we should have played it down until after all the forensic evidence had been analyzed and the post-mortem completed,’ Temple said. ‘Instead we were too anxious to allay public fears. We accepted the situation at face value because the evidence that presented itself seemed irrefutable. Renner had been cornered. Then he shot a police officer before shooting himself. He used the rifle that was used in the attack and his flat was crammed with incriminating evidence. So it was the obvious conclusion to draw.’

‘Then maybe he was set up,’ Vickery said.

‘That’s certainly a possibility,’ Temple said. ‘The drugs could have been used to control him. For all we know he might not have been aware of what was going on.’

‘What about the landlady?’ Vickery said. ‘Surely she must know something.’

Temple told them about his conversation with Megan Trent.

‘I intend to talk to her again,’ he said. ‘Meanwhile we’re running some checks on her.’

The conference call concluded after several decisions had been taken. The Home Office guy said he would brief his boss and the Prime Minister. Vaughan said he would return to Southampton straight away. And the Chief Constable said he would talk to the press department about the best way to handle the fall-out.

They also agreed not to go public with the latest developments until they had to.

Temple returned to the incident room in a state of high anxiety. He felt responsible for what was happening. It was a right fucking mess and he was struggling to make sense of it. He decided to retreat to his office and start reviewing the evidence again. What had they missed? Who hadn’t they talked to? Could he really rely on the forensic evidence that had been presented to him?

DC Marsh collared him as he was grabbing a coffee from the machine. Her face was flushed and she was clearly excited.

‘I’ve found something, guv,’ she said. ‘You need to come and see it.’

He followed her across the room to her work station. She’d been reviewing the video from two police cameras that had recorded the scene in Purbeck Road after the raid.

‘You asked me to look out for any familiar faces or for anything unusual,’ she said. ‘Well, take a look at this.’

There was an image on her screen showing the front of Megan Trent’s house. Marsh tapped her computer keyboard and rolled the footage.

‘This sequence was recorded about half an hour after the shooting,’ she said. ‘As you can see there’s a lot going on.’

Indeed there was. The area in front of the house was packed with uniforms. Temple got a glimpse of himself as he emerged from the house shortly after looking at Renner’s blood-soaked body.

‘Now check this out,’ Marsh said as she touched her finger against the screen. ‘The house to the left is supposed to be empty. But look – there’s a man coming out of the front door.’

Temple felt his heart leap as the guy closed the door behind him and strode on to the pavement where not a single officer paid him any attention.

Then he turned left and walked along the street away from all the commotion.

‘Do you recognize him?’ Marsh said.

Temple nodded. ‘Too bloody right I do.’

H
E WAS STILL
pacing the room trying to decide what to do. Every couple of minutes he looked out of the window. The evening was drawing in and it was dark. He was relieved to see that the street was quiet: no sign of uniforms or squad cars.

Megan had stopped crying at least. She’d poured herself a beer and was sitting on the sofa drinking it whilst watching television. On the news they’d mentioned her name several times. They were making her sound like the hero of the day because she’d tipped off the police about Renner. And a police spokesman had said she was in line to receive the huge reward.

It bolstered her confidence and made her think that they could still get away with it.

‘Maybe we should just hold our nerve,’ she said to him. ‘I don’t see how they can prove we were involved.’

He could see that she didn’t appreciate the gravity of the situation. It was like she was in denial, blinded by the thought of all that money, but he was fully aware that things had changed dramatically and it made him feel nauseous and dizzy.

The police had discovered things they weren’t meant to and their suspicions had been aroused. He could no longer predict what would happen next. Which meant he couldn’t be certain
that Megan would eventually collect the reward money. Despite what they were saying on the TV.

He knew the police would persist and they might eventually piece together the whole frigging jigsaw. They’d be bound to concentrate on Megan because Renner lived and died in her house.

From what Megan said about her chat with Temple it was clear the detective had doubts about her story. He’d be checking and double checking everything she’d told him. He’d find out she’d lied about her boyfriend. And then he’d try to apply enough pressure to make her confess.

And if she did confess she’d tell him about the plan they’d hatched together which entailed convincing everyone that Renner was the sniper. This included leaving an empty drinks can in the stolen car he drove to the M27 and riding Renner’s motorbike to the M4 so it’d be caught on CCTV.

And then she’d tell Temple how they’d kept Renner in a drug-induced state until they were ready to fake his suicide. All so that the police would believe he acted alone and cease their investigation.

It had all gone so fucking well too. Like a perfectly choreographed stage play. After Megan had been to see Temple his reaction had been predictable. He’d ordered his officers to descend on the house. Then the raid had played out exactly how he’d hoped it would. Everything came together so smoothly. Or so it had seemed.

‘What is it?’ she asked him. ‘Why are you looking at me like that?’

‘Because you need to wise up, Megan. Everything has changed. I think maybe we should cut and run.’

Her eyes widened. ‘Are you really serious?’

‘Deadly.’

‘But what about the money? You killed thirty people so that you could get your hands on it.’

‘Don’t you think I know that? But we won’t be able to spend a penny of it if we’re banged up in prison for the rest of our lives.’

He didn’t have a back-up plan because he didn’t think he’d
need it. He assumed the police would simply accept the evidence in front of their own eyes and that would be it. With hindsight it had been a big mistake.

‘Do you really think they’re on to us?’ Megan said.

He looked at her. Her face was as white as a sheet and he could see that it had finally dawned on her that they wouldn’t be sailing off into the sunset with over two million quid in the bank.

‘We have no choice but to assume they are,’ he said.

He went to the fridge and took out a beer. His hands were shaking and he could feel the adrenaline gushing through his veins.

He sipped at the beer as he walked over to the window. He peered out, hoping and expecting to see that the view hadn’t changed.

But it had.

Several police vehicles were blocking the road out front and men in dark uniforms were piling out of them.