Love Story, With Murders (44 page)

I turn my attention to McCormack’s lock.
My tools are probably good for about 90 percent of the locks in the UK, maybe more, but they’re good for all the cheap ones. And these are
cheap. Probably just five pin. Easy.

The light is poor, but in a way that helps. Lock-picking is all about feel.

I slot a torque wrench into the lower part of the lock, the part where the shaft of the key would normally fit. Work it in both directions
till I figure out which way the lock normally turns,
then place a little gentle pressure on it. Inside the lock, the pins will be pressed tight against a ridge in the locking barrel. That’s the way I want ’em.

I take a raking tool – something whose business end looks not unlike the grippy half of a hairclip – and slot that into the lock above the torque wrench. I jiggle it in and out,
applying upward pressure all the time. I can’t exactly feel any pins releasing, but there’s a little give in the torque wrench, so I’ve probably scored a couple of successes
already.

Then start the more detailed work with my picks. I’ve chosen a fairly basic pick, because I don’t think this lock will have any real complexity. And sure enough, it’s not long
before I feel the first definite
pin-release. I work a little more, then feel a second one go.

I rake the lock again, looking for an easy win. Don’t get it, but try a couple of different picks on the remaining pin and it gives too. The torque wrench moves all the way round.

I turn the handle, open the door, and walk on in.

I haven’t known what to expect. But it’s just ordinary. Vinyl flooring in the little kitchen,
tacky underfoot from poor-quality cleaning. Beige carpet in the living room and
bedrooms. Charity-shop furnishings. A big plasma TV.

There are curtains in the flat – thin, unlined things in orange and red – but McCormack hasn’t drawn them, so his windows offer more empty rectangles. Darkness, streetlamps,
snow. Red tail lights, moving slowly.

The interior doesn’t offer much. Some bottles
kicking around. Whiskey. Vodka. Some DVDs, action movies mostly. A bathroom which could do with a good clean.

I start to probe the apartment more closely. It’s all very well finding Hamish, but I want Olaf too. Hamish will have his phone with him, most likely, and I don’t see a computer. But
still. People commit things to paper too, even now.

I start opening drawers, searching the desk.

I don’t find anything much. It’s oddly hard searching like this while wearing latex gloves. They don’t grip properly on paper and I can’t use saliva to moisten them, so
I’m obliged to work slowly.

I find things like utility bills and grocery receipts. Not filed, just shoved away in a drawer. I look through the receipts, find nothing interesting there.

I do, though, find a postcard
mailed from Norway. A village tucked away somewhere in the mountains. Wooden houses, painted rust-brown and ochre. Forested slopes sweeping right down to a huddle
of green fields. On the back,
Greetings from Norway!
Nothing else, except Hamish’s own address. There is a postmark, but it’s not decipherable. The slogan on the card says, in
English,
Experience Norway
.

I want to take the card,
but think I shouldn’t.

Look behind one door, to find a junk room. A small boxy room, with an old bed, a sleeping bag, a heap of clothes. Not a lot.

I have the same impulse that I had in Khalifi’s apartment. An impulse to make a mess of everything. Play loud music. Open the windows.

Not a good idea.

Go into Hamish’s bedroom. He has a built-in wardrobe with a wonky door and an old
pine chest of drawers. The wardrobe has some shirts, a coat, a couple of casual jackets, a suit. Shoes
kicking around on the floor. There’s a smell of something indefinable. Probably what happens when a mould-vulnerable apartment gets too little cleaning for years on end.

I look at the shoes and shirts closely. The shoes aren’t overly clean, the shirts not overly new. The coats and jackets
are also not new. There are marks which could quite well be
bloodstains, but could quite well be curry sauce or motor oil or Glaswegian mud. They’re just marks.

The chest of drawers is altogether better. Socks and underwear. T-shirts. Trousers. Jumpers and sweat shirts. And a plastic grocery bag containing a boiler suit. Also leather gloves. Also some
socks and boots. The boiler suit looks
washed but has plenty of stains.

Khalifi’s blood, I’d bet a million pounds.

Quite likely other people’s blood too.

These look to me like Hamish’s work clothes. What he wears when he’s on a job. A messy job, that is. Killing a girl in a snowfield should have been nice and clean.

DNA is normally destroyed by washing. Not one hundred percent guaranteed, but most of the time. If a
commercial washer was used, or particularly if a high-chlorine washing powder was used, the
chances of usable DNA surviving, even in a seam or zip, are pretty much nil.

That might rule the boiler suit out as evidence, but it’s very hard to clean boots well enough. You need only one drop of blood in a line of stitching or soaked into the leather and
that’ll be enough for the forensics guys.
If Hamish had dunked his boots in bleach, or microwaved them, or boil-washed them, they’d be clean but unusable as footwear. And these are
usable.

So the betting is that McCormack has left enough evidence here for us to secure a conviction. But that’s all it is: a bet.

I have Watkins’s evidence bag in my pocket.

That, and a dilemma.

All I need to do, to make certain of my target,
is to drop those three body hairs in that bag. Secrete them in a fold of clothing. Close the bag. Close the drawer. Walk away.

Then just wait. Let McCormack come back to his apartment. Wait for him to go to bed, go to sleep. Then call Strathclyde. Tell them where to find him. Watch for long enough to make sure they
don’t cock it all up. Let the forensics guys find those hairs.

Justice.

I feel myself watched by an invisible gallery of spectators. Ayla, Theo, Watkins. Watching to see me choose.

And I find I can’t quite do it.

Perversion of the course of justice.
I can’t quite do it.

In a way, I’m amazed at my own scruples. After all, I don’t doubt that McCormack is a killer. The fucker tried to kill me. I don’t need a court to tell me that. And the blood
on this
clothing might not be Khalifi’s. It might not be blood. If I don’t plant this evidence, I might well be waving farewell to my only chance of securing a conviction.

But.

Although I hang over that damn boiler suit with my latexed fingers holding Watkins’s evidence bag above it, the bag stays closed. The body hairs encased in their little plastic prison.

I can’t do it.

And because
I can’t, I don’t. I just close up the bag, close the drawer, put the evidence bag back in my pocket. It feels strange. Not bad strange or out-of-body strange, or any of
those other versions of strange that have wandered through my life. It just feels weird to be in the apartment of a man who tried to kill me. To be here and not to plant those hairs. I wonder
vaguely if this is Buzz’s influence.
Turning me into the sort of officer he would want me to be.

The blank window rectangles open onto the night and give me no answer.

They do, however, give me a view down onto the path that cuts through the snow to the road above the apartment building. A path down which two men are walking. One of the pair is, I’m
pretty sure, Hamish.

Fuckety-doo-dah
. Who ever heard of a Scotsman
returning so early from the pub? Do killers have no drinkers’ pride these days? I watch the two until they step out of sight beneath
me.

What now? I could try to bolt for it, but I don’t know whether to use stairs or lift. I certainly don’t want to deal with two men at once.

I hesitate a little, trying to decide what to do, but because I’ve hesitated, I’ve run out of options. That’s
annoying, but also liberating. At least it means I know what to
do.

I go out onto the landing, take the bag of rubbish and empty it out, kicking bits down the steps. If Hamish isn’t a total slob, he’ll pick it up.

Go back into his flat. Get out my picks. A good locksmith would probably be able to lock this door in fifteen seconds. I’m not as good as that, but I’m not awful and I’ve only
recently picked this lock, so I know the feel of it, which tool to use.

In twenty-five seconds, maybe thirty, I’ve locked the door again, myself on the inside. I hear the wheezing of the lift, so could probably have just walked downstairs.

Ah well.

I take one of the bottles from the the back of Hamish’s stash. A bottle of rum, mostly full.

Go into the junk room, roll under the
bed. I’ve got a knife with me, the one I normally have behind my bed, and I get it out, just in case. But I’m not really in a knifey sort of
mood. I don’t think I need to be.

Hamish is obviously a tidy soul, because it takes a while before the apartment door opens. I can hear him talking to someone. Presumably the guy I saw him walking with. I’m curious to see
what follows. Is it possible
Hamish is gay? That his current companion is a partner picked up for the night?

I don’t know why, but the thought tickles me. Prompts a silent chuckle. But I doubt it. I hear gruff voices. Someone pissing. The fridge opening and closing. Then the TV coming on
loud.

That’s all I hear for a while. Some kind of action thing, all chases and shootouts. The apartment walls are as soundproof
as damp cardboard, so I hear every squeal of tyres, every beat of
dialogue. I follow it for a while, but I’m not interested. Just drift off. Not asleep by any means, but trancey. I should have brought something to eat. Sandwiches or something. But
I’ve got nothing at all, so just lie there, staring up at the bed, knife in my right hand, bottle by my left.

Time passes.

I remember lying
on the car engine beneath the starlight. Wondering if I was dying.

That places feels very remote from me now. Other people, I think, would have feelings like anger or vengefulness. Maybe if I was more whole as a person, I’d have those feelings too.

But I don’t. I wasn’t kidding when I told Buzz that I hadn’t got him a Christmas present. Him or anyone else. So I lie there figuring out who
should get what. I decide I should
cook Buzz a big festive meal and try to think of a menu that will feel Christmassy but will still be simple enough for me not to cock up.

At around nine-thirty, the movie ends and the TV switches to boxing.
LIVE from the O2 Arenaaaaa
.

I’ve studied fighting, obviously. Indeed, I’ve learned from, I guess, one of the world’s leading authorities on that
unkindly subject. But my interest is purely practical.
I’ve never watched boxing. I dislike the whole aesthetic of it. The shiny shorts. The giant belts. The boasting.

It’s gone eleven before the damn TV turns off. It’s given me a headache.

Hamish and his buddy stomp around a bit – there’s a bit more fridge action – then the front door is opened and closed. Hamish remains behind. He’s
got a heavy tread.
Thuggish.

He crashes through to the bedroom. There’s a thump and a swearword, which are both good. The drunker he is, the better.

I roll out from under the bed. I’m stiff, so it’s nice to be able to stretch. Roll my shoulders. Ease the knots.

He goes from the bedroom to the bathroom. I hear the shower run.

I stand outside the bathroom door, where I’ll be concealed
as it opens. There’s a tune in my head – Adele’s ‘Chasing Pavements.’ I don’t know why.
It’s all I can do to stop myself singing it.

I’m in a pretty good mood, I notice. Is this happiness? It might well be, but I can’t absolutely tell. I often need to concentrate to figure those things out, and right now I need my
attention for other things.

The shower stops. A tap runs. Toothbrushing.

He seems to take a long time in the bathroom. Longer than me, I think, and I’m a girl. I’m half minded to go in there and tell him to get on with it, but I don’t have to.
Hamish, finally, is ready for me. He steps, naked, out of the bathroom.

I allow myself a second – a half second actually – to be present in this moment. To enjoy the sensation of being alive, here and now, in a place
I want to be.

It’s not an idle moment, though.

I study the side of Hamish’s skull. Somewhat above, and forward from, his ear. The pterion, is what doctors call it. What Lev called it, in his darkly accented English. It lies at the join
of four bones. A major artery lies beneath. The skull wall is thinner there than anywhere else. God’s little joke, as it’s known. A spot so weak that
blows to other parts of the skull
often end up causing fractures here.

I mark the spot. Say, ‘Hi, Hamish,’ and, as he turns, hit him as hard as I can with the bottle of rum.

He drops, almost silently, to the floor.

He’s not dead. It wouldn’t massively bother me if he was, but he’s not. And it’s better like this.

I saw some duct tape in a desk drawer – one of your contract-killer basics, I suppose – so I get it out and tape his hands and forearms together. I don’t piss around. I
don’t circle his arms once or twice but more like fifteen or twenty
times. Cut the tape with a knife, not my teeth – I’m still being as DNA-conscious as I can. Next, carefully,
tape over his mouth. Then, more confidently, tape round his ankles and knees. Because there’s still spare on the roll, I lash his ankles to the sofa leg and stand back to admire my
handiwork.

He’s not going anywhere and he still has a pulse. There’s some blood oozing from his temple,
but not copious amounts as you sometimes get with a skull wound.

Good enough.

I roll him into the recovery position. Don’t want the fucker swallowing his tongue. But even as I roll him, he starts to wake up. His eyes groggily search the room. I wait until he’s
alert enough to make sense of the world, then bend down so he can see my face.