A Reason to Kill (16 page)

GOOD
or ill fortune has its part to play in almost if not every aspect of life. That had been the case when Gary had made his assault on the top floor flat where Penny Page had been ensconced.

It was lucky for Gary or DC Andy Williams – no relation to the late crooner – or perhaps for both of them that a car in desperate need of a new tail pipe was driven by the house at precisely the time Gary struck.

The roar of noise escaping through the rusted exhaust overlaid the sound of the silenced shots and splintering of wood.

Andy was sitting in darkness at the side of the stairs on the ground floor, with a clear view of the front door. A street light illuminated the corrugated glass panel in it. No one could enter without him being forewarned.

Andy was not happy with the gig. They had been drafted in from Romford, not been given any background on the case, or even the ID of the woman upstairs. All the Serious Crimes DCI told them was, to speak to no one but him. He also advised them that there was a likelihood of an attempt to kill the woman, which would be made by a professional hitman.

“You still awake up there?” he whispered into the radio.

No reply.

“Karl, you okay?”

Still silence.

The voice of DC Craig Lodge cut in. “What’s the problem?” he asked. He was in a car up the street, on the opposite side, watching all comings and goings.

“I can’t raise Karl,” Andy answered.

“I’m coming over. Get up there.”

Andy drew his Heckler & Koch USP, pushed off the safety and chambered a round. He ran to the front door, unlocked it and then turned and made his way quickly but warily up the stairs. As he reached the top landing, he saw the flat’s door open and damaged. He swallowed hard, approached the door and pressed up close to the wall, cautiously edging along. He waited, heard Craig in the house, bounding up the stairs two at a time to join him.

One each side of the door. Andy mouthed “On three,” to Craig, and nodded twice before they both entered fast and low. Neither uttered a word until they were positive the flat was clear.

Didn’t you hear anything?” Craig asked.

Andy didn’t answer. He was standing, gun hung loosely in one hand, checking Karl’s neck with two fingers of the other for a pulse. There was a lot of blood.

“You must have heard something, for fuck’s sake,” Craig insisted.

“He had to have used a silencer,” Andy replied woodenly. “Call the DCI, Bartlett, and ruin his night.

Craig took a deep breath as he took out his cell and phoned the contact number they had been given.

Tom was too shocked to lose his temper. “How did he get past you?” he asked.

“He didn’t, guv,” Craig answered. “He had to have been in the house.”

Tom was at home. He said that he would attend, and then rang DS Pete Deakin. Told him to get the crime scene team and duty pathologist rolling, as he dressed and headed for the door.

Andy met him on the landing, pointed out the gunshot-damaged door before leading him into the flat to see the vics. It was like a mini guided tour of a chamber of horrors.

Tom felt a crushing sensation of guilt. Penny Page’s body was supine on the top of the bed. Her eyes were wide open. He imagined an expression of accusation in them. He had failed her, totally. With all the careful planning, the killer had still somehow found her; just walked in and blown her away. The hole in her forehead was neat, but he could see by the mess on the light blue bedspread that the shot was through and through, and had no doubt removed a large portion of her skull’s contents. He checked the cot. The baby was unharmed. The drying spots of blood on its face were spatter from Penny.

“Get hold of child services or whoever the hell it is we need to look after the baby,” he said. It was heartbreaking. The little feller was still asleep. He would never know his mother or father. Life was capricious. It was as if every event was part of an unstable, ongoing chain reaction. One domino pushed over to topple millions of others that had been set up in a complex pattern. Either that or just fickle fate. Once informed, the baby’s grandparents would in all probability take the child and raise it.

Tom phoned Matt and then Beth as he waited for the techies and the pathologist to arrive. His DI and the psychologist would want to walk the crime scene. They may see more than was immediately evident.

Craig Lawson had been investigating. He knocked on the jamb next to the open flat door before entering, not wanting to startle his partner. The situation was tense, and he knew that Andy was wired. He was not about to risk looking down the barrel of a hair-triggered cannon.

“He came in from next door,” Craig said to Tom. “I found a kitchen window forced and the back door unlocked. Inside, there was a larder door wedged shut with a chair. There was an old guy bound and gagged inside it. He’s the landlord, who also owns this place. He said the shooter wore a Balaclava, and that the gun he had was fitted with a silencer.”

“How did he get in here?” Tom asked.

“Loft to loft. He came at us through the roof, guv.”

“Shit!” Tom’s brain produced the picture of a man in black dropping down on a line like a fucking spider.

“I called an ambulance for the guy. He looks crap. In shock.”

Tom nodded. “Go and stay with him until it arrives. See what else he can tell you.”

Beth arrived before Matt. She studied the scene, absorbing the residue of the double murder. Felt sadness for the cop, and something akin to devastation at the loss of the young mother, who had survived one murderous attack, but lost her husband, and had been targeted again and murdered in cold blood.

Tom left Beth to it, stepped outside onto the landing away from the door and lit a cigarette. He thought of the attack as a Special Forces-style assault on a hostile position. The hitter had executed a perfect operation, disposed of the cop and his prime target, and made egress without further confrontation. A lot of questions begged answering. He’d had the intel and the advantage of surprise to make the kill. The officer and Penny had proved easy prey.

Matt needed to climb three flights of stairs about as much as he needed a malignant tumour. Even with the cane, he only made it up to the top with the help of Pete Deakin.

Tom told him how it appeared to have gone down as Matt studied the dead cop, then Penny.

“He’s good,” Tom said.

“He’s a lot better than just good,” Matt observed. “We’ve got an expert shot who doesn’t seem to know what fear is, or if he does, thrives on it. He plans, prepares, and carries out his hits like an iceman.”

“He doesn’t necessarily have to be an expert shot,” Beth said.

“Yes, he
does
,” Matt replied sharply. “The cop’s hand is still on the butt of his gun. When the door was blown open, he will have reacted immediately. That means the perp fired from at least eight feet away and without hesitation as he entered the room. And a silencer greatly reduces accuracy.”

“He may have got closer than that. He had the element of surprise going for him.”

“No, Beth. Look at the wound. Tell me what you see.”

Beth approached the corpse of the young cop and examined the hole above his left eyebrow, not the body shots. The wounds to the chest were all but invisible due to the amount of blood that saturated the T-shirt.

“It’s a clean, round bullet hole,” she said, surprising herself by being able to view the dead man with such detachment: remembering how a decade earlier she had almost freaked out when viewing the body of her grandfather in his coffin. It’s always harder with someone that was close to you, that you loved, she mused.

Matt nodded. “Right. If it had been from close up there would be a contact wound. There’s no tearing of the skin from the initial explosion of gas. No burning. No soot. No particles of gunpowder. The shooter had to be at least four to six feet away, and I believe double that because of the absence of gunshot residue. He would have entered the room, searched out his target and fired from a stationary position. As cool as a fucking cucumber.”

“If he’s that good, then he must have had training,” Tom speculated. “Could be he is ex-forces.”

“I very much doubt that,” Beth argued. “He wouldn’t have got through the physical with self-inflicted scars on his wrists. Never mind the psychological tests. This man is unstable. He could not project the level of competence required to fool anyone for long.”

“He could have lost the plot and started self-mutilating after he left the army. Or maybe he’s a member of a private gun club,” Matt offered. “His proficiency isn’t just natural ability. He knows his way around firearms.”

“That would be more likely,” Beth agreed. “For short periods of time he could affect a superficial personality that would appear to be within normal parameters.”

“How will he react to his likeness being splashed all over the late editions, and on TV?” Tom asked.

Beth winced. “His paranoid delusions of being persecuted will go off the chart. He will already have an abnormal tendency to suspect and mistrust everyone. Add to that seeing the artist’s impression of himself and hearing details of what he has done, and something might pop in his brain.”

“An artery, I hope,” Matt growled.

“Forget the artist’s sketch,” Tom said, reaching into a pocket, pulling out a folded sheet of A4 and opening it up. “What do you make of this, Matt?”

Matt stared at the full colour digitally-generated image that had been created from the original drawings made by Dick Curtis, the police artist. “I thought that what Dick came up with was as close to the mark as anyone could get, but this is awesome.”

“Somebody has to recognise him from this,” Tom said. “With any luck, the phones’ll be ringing off the wall sixty seconds after it goes out.”

“He’ll drop out of sight,” Beth said. “This will force him to run.”

Tom shrugged. “I know. But I’d rather have him concentrating on saving his own skin, than feeling free to carry on killing with impunity. What do you think, Matt?”

“Beth is the expert on these psychos,” Matt replied, looking to her to expand her theory.

“I can only predicate an assertion of the subject based on known symptoms that I’m confident he suffers from. He’ll go to ground, change his appearance and hit back at whatever or whoever he decides is to blame for the adverse attention. If he lives with someone, and I doubt he does, then there is every likelihood he will kill that person. I suggest he has had plans in place for just such an eventuality as this. A few days growth of beard, contact lenses and a change of hairstyle, backed up with paperwork, and he could travel to anywhere in the world.”

“I don’t think he’ll run,” Matt said. “He’ll wait, grind it out and try to finish what he started.”

“Finish what?” Tom asked. “He hit Penny because she could ID him. Once we show the picture, he needs to try to cover his arse.”

“No. He’ll be even more motivated to find me. I’m the only person who can stand up in a witness box and put him away. A picture by itself isn’t enough to get a conviction. I’m the only bait we’ve got left.”

The three of them looked at one another but said nothing. Matt was right. They may need to hang him out, and do a better job of watching his back than they had done for Penny.

“I need a cup of coffee,” Matt said, standing to one side as the forensic team filed into the room looking all dressed up for a Klan meeting in their white jump-suits, but carrying aluminium cases, not lit torches. The Home Office pathologist followed up the rear, looking decidedly pissed-off at being called out.

“They’re both fresh. Gunshot victims,” Tom said to the sour-faced little man who nodded at him and Matt in recognition.

“So I should be out of here in ten minutes,” Richard Burke said.

“Where’s Hare?” quizzed Matt. “You left him with the pickaxes and shovels in some graveyard?”

“Comments like that weren’t even funny twenty years ago, Barnes,” the pathologist said, but gave him the hint of a smile.

“So change your name.”

“And spoil a copper’s chance to be a poor stand-up comic?”

Tom’s phone chirped. “Okay,” was all he said into it. Then to Matt and Beth, “Let’s go next door and visit with the landlord. He refused to go to the hospital for a check-up.”

Jacob was over the initial shock. He was getting too old and life-weary to be fazed by being tied-up and stuck in a larder for a short period of time.

“Take a seat, why don’t you?” he said to Tom, Beth and Matt. “I’m sorry about whatever has happened. The other policeman would not tell me anything, but I have a bad feeling. Did someone get killed because of me?”

“Why because of you, sir?” Tom asked.

“A masked man with a gun breaks in and quizzes me about a woman who is being guarded by police. Reluctantly, I tell him what he wants to know. And now I believe I am an accessory to some violent act.”

“He already knew she was there, Mr. Goldman,” Tom said. “That’s why he was here. With or without what you told him, he would have got done what he came here to do.”

Jacob’s head dropped low between his narrow, bony shoulders. He had put a shirt and trousers on, but they were three sizes too large for his slight frame. He looked as though he was shrinking within them.

“You got coffee?” Matt asked.

Jacob nodded, but didn’t move from his chair.

“I’ll make it,” Beth said. She went over to the grimy units and found the kettle next to three canisters labelled coffee, tea and sugar.

“We need to know exactly what he said to you.” Tom said to Jacob.

Jacob gave a detailed account of the conversation that had taken place.