I Was Dora Suarez (27 page)

But all the killer remembered from time to time was the crisp smack of his axe severing her arm at the shoulder when she sought to reason with him.

As I went up through the dark to Spavento’s place, Dora spoke and said: ‘It’s all right, I held Betty right to the end and we saw each other through, all right, even through the fire, and she’s just resting now.’ She added: ‘It’s wonderful for us to know that you
love us.’

I said: ‘I do love you.’

‘Our door’s always open.’

‘It’s finding it’s the problem.’

‘It’s there.’

‘I wish we could have met while we had time,’ I said.

‘It’s always the same,’ she said, ‘we never do.’

‘Why, Dora?’

But she only said: ‘Good-bye now, and good luck,’ just as Stevenson had.

When I got up to Spavento’s floor, I saw, well before I had reached it, that his door some seven feet above me was open, a pale square in the blackness lit by the city beyond. I made sure that the gun was loose, easy in my waistband, just how I wanted it, then I walked up the rest of the stairs. When Spavento spoke from somewhere in the dark room, saying he was armed, I said: ‘I am a police officer and I have a warrant for your arrest, so whatever you’re holding in the way of fire irons, sonny, drop it.’

‘It doesn’t work like that with me at all,’ said Spavento, and fired at wherever he thought I was.

It certainly wasn’t one of those pistols you drill defaulting gamblers with across a coffee table. The bullet was a huge one: it flattened itself into an iron stair rail just behind me; bits that were left of it whined off into the darkness of the silent floor above and did a lot of damage to glass and plaster that had already been ruined – stuff fell, rang, showered and tinkled downwards till they hit the ground floor.

I didn’t draw my own gun but just went straight into the place. I was in a state where I found I didn’t care. I said to Spavento: ‘Do you make me?’

‘I make you.’

‘Well, in that case,’ I said, ‘you can see I’m armed.’ I cocked the pistol and said, as if introducing two people at a party: ‘This is a Smith and Wesson .38.’

He said: ‘Are you a police officer?’

I said: ‘The way you’re placed now it makes no difference to you who I am; I’m here.’

‘Why?’

‘Suarez,’ I said. ‘Carstairs.’

‘What are you going to do about them?’ he said, aiming at me in the blackness.

‘I’m going to kill you,’ I said. ‘Now either drop that gun you’ve got or else fire it. Go on, go on!’ I shouted. ‘Let’s see who’s fastest, fuck you.’ He aimed at me, hesitated, then turned half aside. ‘All right,’ I said, ‘if you’re not going to fire it, throw the fucking thing on the floor; come on, I haven’t got all night.’

He dropped the Quickhammer on the floor. ‘I loved Dora,’ he said, ‘I couldn’t let her alone.’ He added, with a hint of shy pride: ‘She loved me, too, of course.’

‘I know,’ I said. ‘I saw the proof of that in the morgue; don’t let’s go into it.’

I went up closer to him; for the first time I noticed how both he and the place stank. ‘What are these dishes doing on the floor here?’ I said.

He said: ‘There’s no secret – I stood their heads on them so they could watch me while I punished myself.’

‘How many?’ I said. ‘Ten. Twelve maybe. I’m not sure.’

‘What happened to the heads when they finally got tired watching you?’ I asked him.

‘Well, you know what it is,’ he said. ‘Confidentially speaking, they started to smell so bad that I had to junk them in the death. Pity, but there you are.’

‘Let’s have judge, jury and accused all on a friendlier basis here,’ I remarked. ‘After all, we’re all in the same room, so let’s chat for a minute before any action’s taken.’

He didn’t seem to mind, just said: ‘Excuse me if I hold my balls in for a moment, I’m bleeding there rather hard.’

I took no notice of him; I was poking about in a heap of
dirty rags with my gun barrel. Finally I said: ‘What are all these filthy old knickers doing here?’

He said ‘They’re my souvenirs. You know, like a photograph album kind of thing. I like sniff them and so on sometimes when I’m in the mood, I sort through them at times, they kind of remind me of things that are over.’

‘You should have gone for treatment,’ I said, ‘but it’s too late now.’ I added sharply: ‘Get up.’ Spavento had gone to sit down on the rags he had for a bed; there he had splayed his thighs apart and stroked away the blood from the crotch of his grey jogging trousers with his finger ends, sniffing it, considering it, even licking it from them. But the dull light still caught the Quickhammer which lay too near him for me. I said to him again, louder: ‘I said, get up.’

He moved with the speed of a snake for the Quickhammer. I aimed at his heart and said: ‘Forget it, Tony, you can’t win.’

‘Aren’t you afraid I’m going to let you have dumdum number two?’

‘No,’ I said, ‘I’m not. Now get up.’

When he was on his feet, I said: ‘Now pick up that gun of yours. Go on, pick it up.’

‘Why?’ he said.

I said: ‘Don’t ask questions, just do as you’re told.’

He picked the gun up and I said: ‘Now I want you to hold that gun very tight, Tony.’ Once he was doing that, I said: ‘Now you could fire that at me if you liked, couldn’t you?’ I said: ‘You’d be dead before you’d taken first pressure, but you could still have a sporting go.’

He didn’t say anything, so I said: ‘Now here’s your second chance – are you going to try and kill me with that or not?’

He said: ‘No.’

‘Because you’re frightened to?’

He said: ‘No.’

‘All right, then,’ I said, ‘well, in that case you can put the gun down now if you want to. Throw it away into any old corner, that’s
right, away you go.’

So he threw it away; it made an appalling clatter on the concrete floor by contrast to our quiet voices and the black, silent room.

‘All right then,’ he said, ‘now what?’

I said: ‘Right, now move over to by that window there where I can get a shot.’

He moved over. ‘One thing,’ he said.

‘Are you asking for favours?’

‘Two,’ he said. ‘First, don’t look at my privates.’

‘All right,’ I said. ‘If that’s your will, strip with your back to me, then I’ll throw these smart new cycling shoes of yours over to you and you can come over here and cover yourself with them. Just simply string them on that band you’re wearing on your lower belly there.’

When he was ready, I said: ‘Well, then? And what’s the other favour? Don’t be greedy.’

He said: ‘No, just do it quickly, before I have time to think.’

‘Right,’ I said. I had already aimed, so I fired immediately and cut him down. My bullet hit him in the top left of his chest with the added roar that all loud noise makes in places built of cement. The killer’s face assumed a severe, numbed expression as though he had come in to find his wife in bed with his brother. His right hand, already dead for a quarter second, slapped itself to the wound while the force of the bullet spun him backwards as if he were dancing a tango at twice the speed of the music. Then he slammed into a wall and fell on the floor face downwards on all fours in a crouching position like a runner suddenly turned lazy; his fingers scrabbled busily in the dirt for a second as though they were trying to write, stopping as I shone my flashlight on him to see if he needed finishing off.

I took the magazine out of the pistol and dropped it and the .38 into my pockets. I felt nothing.

A fresh-looking young sergeant in uniform from the local law appeared in the doorway with two other police officers behind
him and hurried over to look at the body in the corner with a torch. When he had had enough, he stood up and, turning to face me, said: ‘You?’

‘That’s right,’ I said.

‘Are you a police officer?’

‘Yes,’ I said. I showed him my card.

‘Self-defence, was it?’

‘The facts will speak for themselves.’

‘Did you fire that shot with a police weapon?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I fired it with my own weapon.’

He said: ‘I see.’ He held his hand out. ‘I shall have to have that gun of yours, I’m afraid.’

I gave it to him. ‘But don’t forget the nine-millimetre in the corner,’ I said.

‘The others are on their way over.’ He coughed and said: ‘You’ll have to come down with us, I’m afraid.’

So then I put my hands in my pockets and followed the sergeant down and out into the pouring rain. It was dawn on March 1, a season of storms, and there was a near hurricane blowing in from the east up the Thames. I had tears in my eyes for the first time since I had broken my arm at sixteen playing football, but my tears were not for me – they were for the rightful fury of the people.

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