The Midnight Hour (9 page)

Where did I put the gun? I was sure I hid it in the bedside drawer. Must be getting forgetful with all the stress. Damn, here she is as well, coming up the stairs. This was meant to be the ideal time. Everyone knows I work late in my “home office” while she comes to bed on her own. Where the hell did I put it?

22nd June, 10:20am

I don’t think I can pinpoint exactly when I decided to kill my husband.

I’m not even sure now whether it was before I found his diary or after, it just seems an idea that should have been there all along. Whether it was or not seems irrelevant.

I can almost forgive him for killing my mother, she did tend to interfere and get in the way, and maybe even for the cats, although for some strange reason that seems the harder of the two. But the fact that he did these killings purely by accident while trying to kill me…. well, that’s just too much to bear. I mean, have you ever heard of such incompetence? And then leaving the gun where I could find it so easily?

He deserved to die!

In truth he helped me considerably in the end. The death of my mother and his suitably edited diary both covered the reasons for his “suicide” and for any erratic behaviour by me. Ok, I admit that bursting into laughter at his graveside was perhaps pushing it but I couldn’t help myself, and I think I got away with no more than a few pitying looks! Even the policeman investigating the whole thing put his arm around me and said some comforting words.

I don’t think I’ll be looking for anyone to replace my dear departed husband, not for quite some time anyway. Time to enjoy my freedom. Coming here to the Caribbean is just the start. Just look at how blue that sea is!

Guess all those years of “happy” marriage finally paid off.

ROAD RAGE

“I’ve killed seventy-four men and thirty-three women in my professional life,” said Harry, his voice flat, emotionless. “Seventy-five men if you count Ricky The Rodent, but he panicked and ran and fell into a quarry, so I don’t really feel I can take credit for that one.”

Jennifer Padstow nodded in understanding and listened with a grim and forcefully sustained expression of unflappable interest. She tried her best to ignore the voice inside screaming,
Seventy-four men and thirty-three women… You’re alone in a car with a fucking psycho!

She was proud of the steadiness in her voice as she asked her next question.

“You remember his name? Ricky The Rodent I mean.”

Harry nodded.

“I remember all their names. Just a knack I seem to have.” He hesitated. “Are you sure this is the kind of stuff your editor wants?”

“Oh yes,” smiled Jennifer.
He’d feed his own grandmother to wild dogs and finish his evening with canine burgers to get a scoop like this.
“It’s not every day we get a professional hitman willing to talk to us.”

“Hit
person
,” he corrected her. “We’re very politically correct in our organisation these days.”

“So, you have female hit… people?”

Harry laughed. “Not
that
politically correct.”

Inspiration
, thought Jennifer.
An angle. Wonder if I could get Equal Opportunities to investigate the world of contract killing?

“So,” she said, smiling slightly and trying to compose her voice to its best detached reporter tone. “Tell me what made you decide to come forward and offer us your story.”

Harry sighed. Every time he explained his reasons, be it to another person or to his own reflection in the small mirror of another hotel bathroom, he felt a little older, a little more tired, a little more unsure of his sanity.

But
they
had left him little choice.

“My targets told me it was time to quit, time to come clean.”

Jennifer hesitated, unsure she understood.

“By your targets you mean…?”

Harry nodded slowly, his head heavy with exhaustion.

“Yes. My targets. My victims. My
dead
victims. They made it very clear that it was time to stop.”

They had arranged to meet at the Sandbach Services on the M6 at 7pm. The cold winter night had already closed in as she had waited, as instructed, in the well-lit entry of the shop. He had pulled up outside the doorway in his dark blue Peugeot 407 and, together, they had driven north on the motorway.

They were still on the motorway, climbing the incline through the hills of the Lake District, low cloud sitting over them, rolling down the hillsides, pooling as fog in the valleys and across the roadway.

Neither had spoken for almost five minutes before Jennifer, feeling the interview slipping away from her control, nervously cleared her throat.

“So…” She glanced sideways at the man driving the car. The hitman. The hitman whose dead victims came back and told him to stop killing.

He stared straight ahead, concentrating on the fog-wreathed road, his deep-set brown eyes unblinking, his sharp, ski slope of a nose sniffing occasionally with the beginnings of a cold. His square jaw was set in a firm jut, his lips pressed tight together. She guessed his age to be mid-forties, but he was in good shape for it. If circumstances had been different, she might have found him attractive.

This is insane
, she thought.
Totally insane
.

She cleared her throat again.

“These victims of yours… do you see them? I mean, do they appear in front of you? Solid? Transparent…?” Her voice faded as she felt the danger of a mocking tone edging toward her. She did not want to antagonize this man.

A wry smile twitched at the edge of Harry’s mouth.

“They talk to me. I don’t see them, I just hear them.” He tapped a finger against the side of his head for emphasis.

The man is certifiably crazy. Maybe I can work that angle for the story?

“So, killing all these people over the years must have had an effect on you, yes?” She could hear the slight tremble of fear in her voice and it annoyed her. “It must take some kind of toll on your mind, surely. Do you have nightmares? Do you think about their families?”

“Am I mad you mean?” He laughed. “No, I don’t have nightmares, I don’t worry about their families and I don’t feel any guilt or remorse for what I’ve done. It’s a job. I’m very good at it. Or was.”

“And the voices?”

“Not dreams. Not nightmares. They’re real, I have no doubt about that.”

He flicked the indicator and turned off the motorway, up a dark slip road, turning left at the roundabout.

For a moment neither spoke. Jennifer had not even seen the junction approaching and could not make out exactly where they were. Harry peered through the windscreen, watched the twisting of the narrow, unlit country road they were now on.

“How old are you Jennifer?”

Jennifer shifted in her seat, uncomfortable with the question for reasons she could not fully comprehend.

“Twenty-two. Why?”

“I think we can agree that I’m a lot older than you, and I’ve seen a lot more things in my life.” He slowed the car to navigate a particularly sharp bend and then eased down on the accelerator once more. “I’ve seen so many people die, Jennifer, and if you had asked me if I believed in ghosts six months ago I would have laughed in your face. All those people dead by my hand and not one had come back to haunt me. Ghosts did not exist.”

“And now?”

The wry smile returned to his tight lips.

“Oh, they exist now all right. And they’re not happy.”

With an empty road in front and behind he eased the car off onto a flat, muddy pathway leading to a rusted five-bar gate. As he bumped to a stop he turned off the engine and shuffled in his seat so he faced towards the reporter.

“Have you ever killed anyone Jennifer?”

Resisting the urge to lean backwards, away from him, Jennifer shook her head.

“Do you think you could? If you had to? Self defence maybe?”

“No.” She found her voice, cleared her throat to rid it of the nervous crackle she heard in her own head. “No, I could never take another human life.”

“It’s not hard you know. In fact, it’s surprisingly easy. One you’ve done the first couple, you don’t even see them as human anymore.”

Uncomfortable with the direction the conversation was taking, and that her interviewee was turning into the interviewer, she searched for a way to take control once more.

“Why have we stopped here?”

“I killed people all over the place, but I needed a safe location to bury the evidence.” He turned and looked out the windscreen once more. “This is it. I was burying bodies here when you had to drive across fields to get here. In fact, this road was built on my work.”

Jennifer shuddered involuntarily and was startled when he pushed open the door.

“Where are you going?” She felt suddenly very vulnerable, very frightened. She was with a contract killer at his secret burial ground. How hard would it be for him to add one more body to those already interred here?

He stopped with one leg out of the door and turned, smiling, to her.

“I’ve brought you to meet them.”

“Who?”

“The ghosts.”

The cold soaked through her coat, making her unsure how much was the night and how much the fear that made her knees tremble. Her arms were folded, hands tucked into her armpits.

She stood in front of the car, in the narrow light thrown by the headlamps. The night was quiet, unusually so she thought. Not even the sound of traffic on the motorway. Had they driven further than she thought? Or was it the deep blackness that pressed against the light from the car, smothering all sound as surely as it had smothered Harry the moment he stepped away from her.

“Harry?” Her teeth chattered as she spoke. “Why don’t you come back here and carry on with the interview?”
Like at this moment I care about the damn interview!
“I’m cold Harry. Let’s get back in the car and talk.”

She tried to see into the darkness, anything that might tell her where he was. He could be sneaking up on her right now. He could kill her before she even knew he was there. Maybe he’d changed his mind? Maybe he’d decided not to give the interview, and couldn’t risk leaving her alive with what she already knew about him? Childhood fears of the dark and the very adult fear of being murdered crowded for space in her brain, forcing the rational reporter to the sidelines. She could no longer think coherently. She just knew she had to escape from this alive… somehow.

She turned quickly, first one way, then the other, staring down the beam of the headlights, trying to see beyond where they penetrated. Trying to see Harry. Wondering which way to run, where to hide.

“Sorry.”

His voice came from her left and she jumped, letting loose a small scream that she was immediately ashamed of.

Harry smiled as he stepped into the light.

“Didn’t mean to frighten you. Just wanted to make sure everywhere was clear. I have to be careful.”

“Of ghosts?” She tried to smile, to show she was not afraid, but she could not stop the trembling in her muscles, or the shakiness of her voice. It was all she could do to hold back the tears that filled her eyes and threatened to spill down her cold cheeks.

“No. The ghosts don’t frighten me, not anymore. But there are people who would rather I didn’t talk to you.”

She hesitated, suddenly excited by this new angle. Years of wanting to be a reporter climbed over the fear, pushing it down, if not controlling it then momentarily suppressing it.

The hitman on the run.
This would give her story even more human interest, ensuring more readers and a higher profile in the magazine.
I like it.

He handed her a CD in a clear plastic envelope.

“This has all the names and details of the people buried here. It should help give them the closure they’re demanding. For them and their families.”

She tucked it into her coat pocket and was about to speak, to draw more information from him, when the
pop
, like a firework, echoed in the quiet night air.

Harry stared at her for a moment, eyes wide with surprise and sudden pain, and then fell, almost in slow motion, folding up before her, lying down on the ground with a grotesque gentleness.

She stood, saying nothing, not sure what she felt until she saw the blood oozing from beneath his fallen body. Then she knew the fear she had felt before was nothing, not compared to the terror she was experiencing now. The certainty that, out in the dark was a killer, and that she would be the next target.

She screamed.

The car headlights died, plunging Jennifer into a heavy darkness, intensified by the sudden loss of light.

A hand grabbed her wrist and pulled her sideways and down. She yelped in surprise, stumbled and fell to the mud, jarring her knee and her hip as she rolled.

Another
pop
, strangely subdued in the quiet countryside, and she heard something push through the air above her head. It took her shocked mind a moment to realise it had been a bullet.

“Jennifer.”

The voice was barely a whisper, a croaking, wet whisper that bubbled and spat.

“Harry?” She reached towards where she could see the faintest outline of a huddled body against the skyline. Her questing fingers dropped into thick, viscous fluid and she pulled back for a moment, knowing it was his blood. She reached again, found his barely twitching hand, wet and sticky.

“Jennifer, listen to me.” His voice was weak and she could hear the blood catching in his words, making it difficult for him to speak. “Without the lights he can’t see you at distance. He’ll have to come in close. I won’t be able to help, I can barely move.”

He paused and, for a moment, she thought she could hear quiet sobs coming from him. When he spoke again his voice was even weaker. She strained to hear him.

“Jennifer, I’m sorry this has happened to you. I didn’t mean…”

“Harry…” She was crying herself now, not sure whether it was for her or for Harry.