A Reason to Kill (26 page)

“If the two of us are going to be a real couple, then you’ll have to be bloodied, like a youngster at the kill of a fox,” he said.

Marion’s bladder was suddenly full, cramping with the fear of her own potential. She actually wanted to change, to shed off all preconceived notions of good, bad, right and wrong. In renunciation of all acceptable behaviour, and as if it would affirm that she could eclipse her past and be reborn spiritually, she parted her legs and relaxed, to flood the bed in rebellion against common decency.

Gary watched the act, and then looked into her eyes. He saw the avid gleam of anticipation, and moved over her again, his ardour rekindled by the unspoken pact that they had made. He now had a new-found companion to share in his exploits. The sense of belonging was a new one. He had always been a man apart. Now, he was half of a soon to be double act, though would always be the dominant partner. Oh, what an unstoppable, deadly force they would be. Together, there would be nothing that they could not achieve. The world was suddenly a far more dangerous place for other people to live in.

MAYBE
the combination of too much coffee and Scotch was keeping him awake. He’d told Ron that he would be checking out in the morning. He was supine, staring at the ceiling. The bedside lamp was on. He glanced at his wristwatch. It was almost three-thirty a.m. Turning over, he reached out to switch off the light. Had he been at home, he would have had a shower, then gone down and made a pot of coffee. His mind was too active, overriding the weariness he felt.

The events since the slayings at the bungalow in Finchley kept replaying, gnawing, eating at him, and giving him no respite. His life had radically changed, and a lot of people had died at the instigation of Santini and the subsequent actions of his hired assassin. And yet despite being besieged by an almost debilitating sense of culpability that he could not rid himself of, – even though he knew that his comrades’ deaths had been the direct result of a bent cop selling them out – he felt, in contradiction, more alive than he had done in years. He wasn’t just living the current case. There were other considerations and dynamics, and Beth was the inspirational force at the centre. Up until very recently he had not thought of the possibility that life had a grand design. It had been little more than a haphazard series of unrelated experiences. Now, he felt more grounded. He had survived near death, and it had changed him. He had become mellower, and concluded that he was truly in love for the first time. And with that knowledge came a sense of vulnerability and weakness that frightened him. His heart was committed to someone. That he once – quite recently – thought he was in love with Linda, could now be recognised for the misconception it had been. He was able to differentiate, and knew that although very fond of her, something unfathomable had been missing from the equation. What that something was, he could not begin to comprehend. He tried to work it out, but gave up. Why one person could magnetically unlock such a powerful emotion in another was a mystery of such magnitude that it was beyond comprehension. Hate, greed, envy and other sentiments could be examined and understood. There was usually a rational explanation for them. But the power of love was as invasive and indefinable as the most potent virus. It was no wonder that writers and poets used such words as smitten when referring to it. It was in some way an affliction, however pleasant. He accepted that he had been struck, seized and infected by it, but was not complaining. Was Beth his Achilles heel? She had the potential to unintentionally bring about his downfall, by weakening his resolve and distracting him from all else.

He snatched his hand back from the light switch as his mobile chirped. It was a few seconds before he answered it. He was sure it would be Beth; in the same instinctive way that he had sometimes been humming a tune, just before turning the car radio on to hear that self-same tune playing.

“Matt?”

So much for premonition. “Yeah, Tom.”

“Get dressed.”

“You mean this isn’t a social call?”

“I don’t do social at this time in the morning.”

“So who’s dead?”

“Frank Santini.”

“Hit?”

“Yeah. His car went off the road, through a fence, and nose-dived into a quarry. It went up like a Roman candle.”

“Fitting for an Italian.”

“You a comedian now?”

“Yeah, a regular Ben Elton.”

“He’s passé‚ like platform shoes and kipper ties.”

“What about Santini?”

“I’m informed by the local uniforms that he’s charcoal. The pathologist is on the way to the scene, but I doubt we’ll get spit till he does the cut.”

“How can you be sure it’s him?”

“Because Nick Marino gave me a call. Santini got shot off his bedroom balcony. Dom arranged for the body to be relocated, to keep us at arms’ length.”

“Where are you?”

“Two minutes from your hotel, and closing. Meet me out front.”

“Where’s the scene?”

“A few miles east of Santini’s drum. It’s meant to look as though it went down before he got home from town. The shooter, who just had to be Noon, also capped two of the muscle and a guard dog as he made his getaway. Nick and Luther Tyrell drove the bodies and a Heckler and Koch assault rifle – that had been left behind – over to the coast. Nick says a couple of fishermen took delivery and were going to dump the bodies out at sea. Luther told Nick that there was a deep trench four miles offshore that they used to ‘vanish’ people in. He reckoned that there had been at least thirty burials at the site to his knowledge. They get weighted and wrapped in chicken wire, not canvas. None of them get washed ashore.”

“Isn’t Nick’s evidence enough to run with?”

“No, Matt. We’ve only got his word. He won’t come out from cover until he can give us Dominic Santini on a plate, with an apple in his mouth.”

The sun was up when they reached the quarry. Tom drove through the now open gateway, down the narrow road that dropped steeply to where the twisted, burnt-out wreck of the Mercedes was lying like a crushed cockroach in an amphitheatre of chalk.

There was already a white Incitent up, almost invisible against the backdrop of the chalk. A forensic team was picking through the surrounding rubble and pieces of the car for evidence. Tom brought the unmarked Cosworth to a halt next to a Portakabin, and he and Matt got out and went inside the prefabricated hut, where an ashen-faced old man was sitting in a grubby easy chair, nursing a mug of tea in his shaking hands. A uniform was with him.

Tom looked to the officer and raised his eyebrows questioningly as he flashed his ID.

“This is the night-watchman, sir,” PC Gavin Walsh said. “He’s given us a statement.”

Tom turned his attention to the trembling man. “What’s your name, sir?”

“Eric Crompton.”

“What exactly did you see, Eric?”

“Like I told the other copper, er, policeman, I...I ‘eard it land. It was like a bleedin’ bomb goin’ awf. An’ then the place lit up like a Christmas tree. Blew the fuckin’ window in. I went out, but there was noffink I could do. Some poor bastard was arf out of the windscreen. He was burnin’up, an’...an’ he was writhin’ about.”

“Anything else?”

“Ain’t that enough, fer Gawd’s sake?”

Tom nodded and followed Matt outside and across to the tent. They could both smell burnt flesh and petrol as they approached. Tom fished his cigarettes out and offered Matt one. They lit up, sucked in the smoke and blew it out of their nostrils to nullify the stink a little, before entering the tent.

The Home Office pathologist, Hugh Foster, looked up from where he was squatting next to the grisly spectacle of the corpse. It was curled in a foetal position. The clothes had been burned off, and the body was an overall black with bright red flesh showing through the cracks in the flame-grilled skin. The heat had contracted the muscles, causing the arms to bend at the elbows in ‘begging dog’ fashion. The hands were grotesque claws; Twiglet fingers grasping at the air. Worst of all was the head. It reminded Matt of a hairless, wizened Al Jolson. A cascade of what appeared to be melted pink and white nougat protruded from the lip less mouth, and had set on the chin in a thick patina
¯
Santini’s reformed dentures. Matt’s stomach threatened to unload its contents. He was not normally squeamish, but a lack of food and the stench and sight combined to make him feel nauseous.

“This is the passenger, Tom,” Hugh said. “The driver needs to be cut out. He’s part of the vehicle at the moment.”

“And I suppose there’s nothing you can tell me, yet,” Tom said.

Hugh pulled the face mask he was wearing down to below his chin and smiled. “As a matter of fact, I can. This, and he pointed a finger of his gloved hand to the cinder-black forehead, is a bullet hole. If you move around to my side of the barbecue, you’ll see that the back of the skull has been blown out. Sometimes extreme heat will boil a brain up and the cranium will explode. But this was definitely caused by a gunshot. I would think we’ll have problems identifying the remains.”

“We know who he was, Hugh,” Matt said. “Frank Santini.”

“Santini, the gangster?”

“The one and only.”

“Give me a bell when you get round to checking out the driver,” Tom said. And to Matt. “Come on, let’s get the smell of roast pig out of our noses and go break the good news to Dominic. See if he puts on an award-winning act of shock and grief for pops.”

Tom drove up to the gates of Villa Venice, opened his window and thumbed the intercom button that was set beneath a grilled plate on a post at the driver’s side.

“Yes?” A tinny Dalek voice crackled through the concealed speaker.

“Detective Chief Inspector Bartlett and Detective Inspector Barnes to see Dominic Santini.”

“Wait.”

Over a minute passed. Without any further communication the gates swung back to admit them. Tom followed the long, tree-lined drive, to eventually arrive at the front of the impressive house.

“And they say crime doesn’t pay,” Matt said.

Tom grinned. “Frank might know it doesn’t, now.”

A sallow-skinned, middle-aged guy in a sharp, dark blue mohair suit opened the door before Tom had time to press the bell.

“Follow me,” Carlo said, and led them through a large open hall, past a grand staircase and beneath a glittering chandelier that would have graced Buck House. They were directed into a split level lounge of enormous proportions, which was more like the foyer of a swank hotel than the reception room of a private residence.

“Well, if it isn’t DI Barnes,” Dom said, approaching them from where he had been standing in front of a large, Gothic-style stone fireplace. He wore a blue oxford cloth shirt, cuffs turned back, a pair of navy trousers, and cream loafers. “And you’ve got your own driver. You must be on the take. A cop’s pay don’t stretch to that.”

“Where’s your old man, Santini?” Tom asked.

“How the fuck should I know? I’m his son, not his keeper. Maybe he’s at the club. He sometimes stays over. What do you want with him?”

“Nothing, anymore. We just left him about five miles from here. He’s brown bread, Dom,” Matt said. “In fact he’s toast.”

“What the fuck are you saying?” Dom shouted. The muscles in his cheeks tensed, his hands clenched into fists, and he fixed a suitable expression of both surprise and distress on his face.

“I’m afraid his car went off the road and ended up at the bottom of a quarry,” Matt said with undisguised levity. “It exploded on impact. Frank and his driver look like overcooked Sunday joints.”

“And guess what, Santini?” Tom added, taking over smoothly from Matt. “Your dearly departed dad had been shot in the head. So I think it safe to say he was dead before the impromptu cremation.”

“You both think this is highly amusing,” Dom seethed. “I wonder if you’ll still be smirking when I...” He bit his lip.

“Was that going to be a threat, Dom?” Matt asked. “Or are you just lost for words at this sad time?”

“Get the fuck off my property, now. I have nothing else to say to you two morons.”

“You’re next, Dom,” Matt continued. “Gary Noon will get round to you when he’s ready. And nowhere is safe. The boy’s good at what he does.”

“Gary who?” Dom quizzed.

“The shooter who hit Lester Little for your father,” Tom said. “I think you must have done or said something to get on his wrong side.”

“I don’t have a fucking clue what you’re talking about. But if you think you know the identity of my father’s murderer, then do your job and lift him.”

“No rush. This way we save a lot of taxpayers’ money,” Tom said. “Noon can do what we’ve been trying to for years; make London a Santini-free zone.”

Dom took two paces towards Tom, then stopped and reined in his anger.

Tom nodded. “Wise move, you piece of shit. Without a gun in your hand, I’d break you in two.”

As prearranged, Tom turned on his heel and made his way back through the house to the front door. Matt stayed.

“Between you and me, Dom, Noon is gunning for both of us,” Matt said. “He shot your old man here at the house. Don’t bother to deny it. Point is, he was giving a demonstration. If you know how to contact him, or anything about him we don’t, get in touch. I’ll be back at my own house today, and my number’s in the book.”

“Why would I phone you, cop?”

“Because on this we should work together. I appreciate how dangerous he is, and so do you, now. The sooner he gets his, the better. Every minute he’s on the loose we’re both at risk.”

“It might not be in my best interest for you lot to pick him up. And after what he’s just done, he doesn’t get his day in court. He’s mine.”

“That’s fine by me. I had no intention of trying to arrest him.”

Dom smiled. “You won’t get the chance to. I’ll find him and make him wish he’d been stillborn. I might send you his head as a consolation prize. And be advised that if you don’t stay out of my face, you could easily wind up the same way. Don’t try to be a fucking hero, Barnes. I have ears and eyes everywhere. If I’d given the nod, you would’ve been hit at that crummy hotel in Tottenham, where you’ve been lying low.”

Matt left. He had been taken aback to be told that Dom knew where he was staying. If he’d been followed, then the tail was much better than just good.