Shooting Elvis (32 page)

‘I’ll just move this out of the way, eh.’ Stanwick picked up the sniper rifle and moved it forward a few feet. I’d have put it on the counter, but decided he was probably right: it was safer on the floor, where we could see it.

‘OK, Charlie,’ he said. ‘Let’s see you put a pattern of five between his eyes.’

‘Five?’ I queried. I was taught to shoot in groups of two or three.

‘That’s right. If you’re going to kill someone you might as well do it properly.’

I clicked the magazine into place and raised the gun two-handed. The sights on the Glock are three white dots: two on the rear sight, one on the front. You focus on the front dot, place it over the target, and bring the two dots on the rear sight in line with it on either side. Like this:

Then you pull the trigger.

I was slow. The gun boomed in my ears and jerked upwards. I dragged the dots back in line and kept firing, the ejected cartridge cases brushing my cheek as they flew out. Bang…bang…bang… bang…bang.

Elvis had five bullet holes in his face. I lowered the gun, more than satisfied with my handiwork.

‘Pretty good,’ Stanwick told me. I thought so, too. He raised his gun and banged off his five in about half the time it took me. He was slightly more accurate, too, but not much.

‘You win that one,’ I conceded.

‘Practice, Charlie. That’s all it is. It’s you to nominate, my turn to fire first.’

‘Um, his sternum,’ I said.

He rattled five into the cardboard cut-out, all as near on target as would make no difference. I lifted my gun and put five into my Elvis slightly more smartly than the first five. He wouldn’t have come back for more.

‘You’re getting better,’ Stanwick told me. ‘We’ll make a marksman of you yet. Your turn to go first. Let’s see you put the last five into his heart, finish him off.’

I was taking a few deep breaths, calming myself, letting the adrenaline level settle down, when I heard a mobile phone ringing. ‘That sounds like mine,’ I said, turning towards the counter. I’d recognise it anywhere. Dave’s son set it up for me, so it plays the first stanza of ‘Like a Rolling Stone’.

‘Let it ring,’ Stanwick said.

‘I’m expecting a call,’ I told him. I picked the phone up at about
Throw the bums a dime
and spoke my name into it.

‘It’s me, Chas,’ I heard Dave say, breathless with excitement. ‘I’ve cracked it. I’ve cracked it.’

‘Go on,’ I said.

‘I’m outside the dentist’s. It’s on Brighouse Road, near the magistrates’ court. They offered to run their entire list off for me, after I’d convinced them how important it was, and I sat down to wait. I was looking through today’s appointments when I noticed a name. You’ll never guess who.’

‘So tell me.’

‘A lady called Dorothea Stanwick. She rang in and made an appointment for emergency treatment at exactly the right time this morning. I’ve checked her address and it’s Mark Stanwick’s wife. Superintendent Stanwick. He’s on the books, too, but the appointment was for her. She rang on the
same phone that the Executioner uses, Charlie. It’s him. It must be. I was wrong. I’d have gambled it was…well, you know who, but I was wrong, and it all fits.’

I turned and looked at Stanwick. He gave me a half-hearted, impatient smile and I rolled my eyes as if annoyed with the caller. Stanwick was holding his Glock down by his side.

I was pressing the phone to the side of my face so no stray sound waves could escape from it, and said, ‘OK, no problem. What time’s the kick-off?’

‘What?’ Dave demanded.

‘Eight? I’ll be there. Do I have to bring my own whistle?’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘See you there, then.’

‘Oh my God,’ Dave was saying. ‘Oh my God. Are you at the range?’

‘Yes.’

‘He’s with you, isn’t he?’

‘Yes.’

‘Oh Christ! Have you got a gun?’

‘Yes.’

‘Shoot him, Charlie! For Christ’s sake shoot him. Now, while I’m listening. I’ll take the blame. Shoot him!’

‘I’ll see you there, then,’ I said, and broke the connection.

‘Your pal Dave?’ Stanwick asked as I pulled the ear defenders back in place.

‘Yes. His son’s playing in a five-a-side competition at the sports centre and they need a referee. Dave coaches them; I help out now and again.’

‘Sounds fun, and highly commendable, being engaged with the community. Your turn to shoot first, I believe. Let’s see you put the last five in his heart.’

I took my place at the line and raised the gun. The middle o swam about, hovering around the target. When I thought it was as steady as I could hold it I brought the two outer o’s in line with it and pulled the trigger.

Four times.

The echo died down and the smoke drifted away. I stood there, gun aloft, and lined the dots up again. The fifth shot hit plumb dead centre. If Elvis wasn’t dead before, he was now.

‘Your turn,’ I said.

Sparks flew from the end of the barrel as the gun kicked. Stanwick stood for a moment, as if frozen, and slowly turned to face me, the gun still held aloft. I felt an icy dampness creep up my legs and clutch my loins.

‘Hey,’ I said. ‘This is dangerous. Put the gun down, Mark.’

‘Superintendent to you,
Inspector
,’ he hissed.

‘What’s all this about?’

‘It’s about you and me, Priest. That’s what it’s about.’ The gun wasn’t wavering, and I knew that
the central spot was somewhere between my eyes.

‘I don’t understand.’

‘Oh, yes, you do. You’ve blighted my career, right from the start. Old Mother Twanky. You couldn’t resist going to the press, could you? “There’s no such thing as spontaneous human combustion”, you told them, ridiculing what I’d said. I was first officer on the job. It was my case, and you took it over and belittled me.’

‘That was a long time ago.’ I wondered what Dave would do. He ought to organise the FSG and surround the place, but he was just as likely to come blustering in all by himself. It was a worry I could do without. And Damian. Where was Damian?

‘I’ve followed your career,’ he went on. ‘Mr One Hundred Per Cent, they call you. Detective Inspector Priest, scourge of the murderers. Well now you’ll go to the grave with three unsolved cases on your record.’

‘Where’s Damian?’ I demanded. ‘What have you done with Damian?’

‘Damian had an accident, like you are going to do.’

‘
You’ve killed him
,’ I hissed. ‘Just like that? You’ve killed him to suit your pathetic mind game?’

‘Not quite. The official line will be that he killed himself. There was a tragic accident and you were shot. He was showing you the sniper rifle and it went off. He couldn’t face the disgrace it would
bring upon him, so he took his own life. There’ll be no blame on you. They’ll give you a big send-off. Coffin bearers, best uniforms, the works.’ He laughed silently at the thought, his shoulders shaking but his expression not changing,

‘So why did you kill Alfred Armitage?’ I asked. I reckoned it would take at least half an hour for an FSG to get here. They might drag a couple of ARVs off the motorway and send them, but they weren’t trained for a shoot-out. Their job was to contain a situation until the real gunslingers arrived. Still, I thought, they’d be most welcome. Right then, Osama Bin Laden would have been most welcome. Stanwick still had the Glock pointing at me, with four bullets in it. My arms were down by my sides, and I was still holding my weapon.

‘Alfred was a strange case, don’t you agree? An unfortunate man. As far as I’m concerned it was Terence Paul Hutchinson that I killed, aka the Midnight Strangler.’

‘That’s ridiculous,’ I protested.

‘Not to the parents of his victims,’ Stanwick claimed. ‘Not to them. They’d lived their lives in anguish for what had happened to their children. All that pain. All that bitterness. I helped them get over it. I brought some comfort into their lives. As far as they knew, it was the Strangler who’d been killed, and good riddance to him.’

‘So why the pantomime with the electric flex?’ I asked.

‘Simple. I thought even you would realise that. It had to be in the papers, with photographs, so they knew the deed had been done. Same with that black piece of shit. A nice touch, don’t you think, hanging him over the toilet?’

‘And what about the doc?’ I asked. ‘What about John Williamson?’

‘Same again. To get in the papers, so the world would know that Acting Detective Inspector Priest, scourge of the murderers, wasn’t as clever as we all thought he was.’

‘But why the doc? What had he done to deserve that?’

‘Yes, it does seem odd, doesn’t it? Let’s say it was just an indulgence of mine. I chose the doc to hurt you, Priest. To jolt your complacency, you and that celebrity woman of yours. What’s she called:
La
fucking
Gazelle
? You like skinny women, do you? They turn you on, do they?’

‘You’re mad!’ I told him, spitting the words out like they were poisonous. ‘You’re stark raving mad. You’re crazier than anyone I’ve ever had the pleasure of arresting.’

‘Don’t say that!’ he yelled at me. The gun was wavering wildly but he brought it under control. ‘Don’t ever call me that again.’

‘You’re as mad as a fucking hatt—’

He fired and my head exploded. I clutched my left hand over my ear and the protectors had gone. He’d hit one side and sent them and the safety
spectacles spinning off. I looked at my hand and there was blood on it.

I was thinking forensic, now. His story was a good one, but that was one bullet that didn’t fit the screenplay. I could feel blood running down my neck and under my shirt. That wasn’t in the script, either. I said, ‘You’ll never get away with this.’ I wanted to tell him about Dave’s phone call, but it might have put Dave in danger. It was pathetic, but the best I could do, so I said it again, ‘You’ll never get away with it.’

He bent down and picked up the sniper rifle. ‘It’s got to be this one, I’m afraid,’ he told me. ‘And a body shot. I’d be happy to shoot you in the head, but one in your guts will look more like an accident, don’t you think. You shouldn’t take more than a minute or so to die.’

He slid the bolt to rack the next cartridge into the chamber. It’s the sickliest sound on earth when you know it’s for you. I lifted my Glock and pointed it at his head.

‘Put the gun down, Stanwick,’ I said.

This time he laughed out loud. ‘Sorry, Charlie, but three fives are fifteen. Your gun’s empty.’

I placed the dot on the front sight right between his eyes. The eyes of the Executioner. A definition came into my mind:
Executioner: noun, one authorised to kill on behalf of the state.
Murderers kill for gain, or because they are mad, or for a variety of other reasons. Stanwick thought he was
doing society’s dirty work, at least to begin with. Until the madness took complete control. Up to that point he thought that he, Mark Stanwick, was the state’s executioner.

But he was wrong.

I brought the outer dots up until all three were in a line, like Orion’s belt across his forehead. Stanwick’s shoulders stiffened with renewed purpose and he levelled the rifle at my stomach.

The explosion sounded like two express trains colliding head-on in my skull. Stanwick’s head snapped back and he kept right on going. His feet didn’t move or stagger to keep him upright because there was nothing sending signals to them. There was a brief flash of a white triangle under his chin as he went over backwards and a wet thud as he hit the floor.

I lowered the Glock and saw the effigy of Elvis swaying slightly. He had a new, bigger hole through his head, surrounded by bits of brain, bone and blood that were already running down and dripping onto the concrete. I looked down at the man who wanted to kill me and noticed that even the soles of his shoes were polished. That’s an arrestable offence in itself.

‘Seventeen,’ I said. ‘I lost count. I put seventeen in.’

Sonia ran in a 5,000 metres track race at Birmingham the following weekend. She’d joined Oldfield Athletic Club and taken part in an
inter-club
league event. It was a good field, with a couple of invited competitors sharpening themselves for the Athens Olympics and others hoping for a last chance to catch the selectors’ eyes. I went with her and we travelled down on the Friday. I was suspended from duty, so having time off wasn’t a problem.

The wind was blustery for the race, and it caused problems for Sonia, her tall frame being knocked about by it. She finished mid-field, but was happy with her time. She said she didn’t have the depth of training to do much better, but it would come. When we arrived home there was an email on my computer for her from her contact in South Africa. It said that Cape Town University was still looking for an athletics coach for their women’s team, and
she had to get her application in.

‘What do you think?’ she asked, showing me the copy she’d made.

‘Like it says,’ I told her. ‘Get your application in.’

Dorothea Stanwick didn’t need any encouragement to spill the beans on her husband. What clinched it for me was when Dave told me she admitted that Stanwick had stopped at the bus station on their way home from the Rotary spring ball to make a phone call, saying that his mobile battery was flat and refusing to use hers. That was the triple-nine telling us to go to Lapetite’s address. He also, she said, had asked for his clothes to be washed that day, and they were covered in white dust, ‘like plaster of Paris’.

We – well, they – found scrapbooks in his den, containing cuttings of major cases going back over twenty years. The Midnight Strangler and Lapetite were in there, their stories bordered with highlighter pen. Somebody called William John Hardcastle had been singled out, too, but we found him alive and kicking. Dave went to see him and he remembered a caller who came to his door a few weeks earlier, but Dave didn’t tell him how lucky he was. They also found cuttings from the
Gazette
about Sonia and me.

After I’d shot him I carefully laid my gun, with its one remaining bullet, on the concrete and went looking for Damian. He was curled up on the floor in the control room with a bullet through his head.
I went outside and sat on the ground for several minutes, where the golfers couldn’t see me, and wondered what sort of a world I was living in. When all this is over, I vowed, I’ll be out of it. I rang HQ and set the wheels in motion.