The Payback (6 page)

His complaint hadn’t been upheld, but only because all five of us had stuck to the same story, that he’d injured himself trying to escape. But suspicion had still hung over me as a result, and when three years later another complaint was made against me, this one was taken very seriously by the Police Complaints Commission.

The complainant was a convicted paedophile who I’d arrested on suspicion of raping the five-year-old daughter of the woman he was living with. He’d looked so incredibly smug as I’d put him in the back of the car, claiming in smooth, educated tones that it was all a mistake and that the child was lying, that I’d got in after him, and while my colleague waited outside I’d put a hand over his mouth while simultaneously twisting his balls with such pent-up ferocity that I’d caused a rupture in one of them. He’d spent three days in hospital as a result, and although my colleague claimed to have heard and seen nothing, my story that he’d slipped while getting into the car was never going to hold up, especially as according to the
doctor who treated him his injuries were entirely consistent with the type of assault he was accusing me of.

I would almost certainly have lost my job, and might even have ended up in the dock, if it hadn’t been for a man called Raymond Keen – who, after Bertie Schagel, was possibly the least likely knight in shining armour you were ever going to meet.

I’d met Raymond at a charity function some months earlier. He was a colourful, well-known and, frankly, crooked local businessman who ran a highly successful funeral parlour, but who was suspected of having his finger in a fair few less savoury pies. However, I’d found him good company, and we’d been out for a drink on a couple of occasions, even though (or perhaps because) I knew that associating with a man like him would be frowned upon. One night I told him about the complaint that had been made against me. He listened, asked me where the complainant was being held in custody, then said that he’d get it fixed.

At that time, I didn’t know the kinds of crimes that Raymond Keen was capable of, or how far his reach extended, and assumed that he was just giving me an empty promise. But a few days later, the complaint was dropped. Just like that. No reason was ever given. The cloud of suspicion remained above me, but at least I was back in the job.

And that was how Raymond and I had entered into business together. After that, it was difficult to turn down his requests for favours. Most of the time he wanted information, either for his own use or on behalf of other criminals: a warning about an impending drug bust; tips on how to find someone in the witness protection scheme. Small things, but as the years went by, they steadily grew bigger and more serious, like a slow-moving but ultimately fatal cancer, until finally one day he asked me to break the ultimate taboo and kill someone for him.

The someone in question was a particularly unpleasant businessman called Vincent Stanhope, one of whose sidelines was child pornography. Stanhope apparently owed Raymond a large sum of money, which he was refusing to pay, and Raymond had decided that to protect his underworld reputation, Stanhope was going to have to die. He was offering me ten grand cash to carry out the job.

I came very close to saying no, and I often wonder how things would have turned out if I had. I’m being honest when I say I truly never wanted to become a murderer. What made me say yes was a case we were dealing with at the time. It’s one that haunts me still, mainly because of the complete lack of any proper motive.

Tim Atkins was a perfectly ordinary, law-abiding, thirty-three-year-old local government worker. One day, he and his wife were walking along Regent’s Canal with their two young children when they came upon three young men smoking cannabis and blocking the path. Mr Atkins asked them politely to move so he could manoeuvre the youngest’s pushchair through. In answer, the biggest of the three, a complete waster, well known to us, by the name of Kyle Morris, had punched him in the face with such force that Mr Atkins had fallen straight back and struck his head on the concrete, suffering catastrophic brain injuries in the process. He never regained consciousness and died in hospital several hours later. His children, both of whom witnessed the killing of their father, were two girls aged five and twenty months.

Morris hadn’t given a shit. When we’d brought him in less than twenty-four hours later and told him what had happened, he’d shrugged, said that it was nothing to do with him, and had then answered ‘no comment’ to every question we’d asked, looking far too pleased with himself, knowing he had the protection of the attractive, public-school-educated lawyer sitting next to him, who as far as I could see didn’t give a shit about what he’d done either. There
was no fear of the consequences of his actions, no regret for the way he’d casually ruined so many lives, and I remember thinking then how desperate I was to kill him – to put a gun against his head, to make him beg forgiveness, and then pull the trigger – and if I couldn’t do it to him, then I wanted to do it to some other bastard who deserved it.

I was only ten minutes out of that interview when I phoned Raymond and said I’d take the job. Three nights later, I waited for Vincent Stanhope by the lock-up he sometimes used, and when he emerged from it and went to his car, I walked up behind him and, without a moment’s hesitation, put two bullets directly into the back of his head.

It felt easy at the time, but afterwards, when I got back to my poky little flat, I threw up repeatedly before going into shock as my conscience reacted to what I’d done. I didn’t sleep that night. Instead I sat up smoking and drinking, playing the killing over and over again, paranoid thoughts of being arrested by my own colleagues and spending the rest of my days in prison filling my thoughts, until finally a grey, sickly dawn broke over central London, and I threw up all over again.

That was over ten years and perhaps twice as many bodies ago now, and I don’t throw up any more when I kill someone. I’ve become hardened to it. I still like to think that the ones I take out are the bad guys, but now, whichever way I care to look at it, I am a professional killer. And as Bertie Schagel helpfully pointed out, a good one too.

And Kyle Morris? He got four years for manslaughter and was released after just two and a half.

As I boarded the Cathay Pacific flight to Manila that night, stuck in economy with all the guest workers returning home for their holidays, it struck me that there really was no justice in the world.

When Tina Boyd shut the front door of her end-of-terrace cottage behind her and walked through to the kitchen, she felt more like a drink than at any time in the past six months. She had, however, resisted buying a bottle of something on the way home. There was no way she was going back to the booze now. Not after the damage it had done to her over the years. Thankfully, there wasn’t a drop of it in the house. Instead she poured herself a pint of orange juice and sparkling water – her evening tipple these days – and took a couple of sizeable gulps before sitting down at the kitchen table, lighting a cigarette, and contemplating the latest developments in her turbulent life.

From the start, Tina had regretted getting involved with Nick Penny. She knew from bitter experience that affairs with married men never worked out, and caused pain for all concerned. It had happened one night several weeks before Christmas when he’d come round to her place for one of their update meetings. More and more, they were tending to meet at hers. It was easier to talk there without anyone listening in, and at the time she hadn’t
thought there was anything untoward about having a married man round, because their relationship had just been business, even though she found him vaguely attractive. But that night he’d poured his heart out to her about the strains of the libel case, the pressure on his marriage, everything. She’d listened and sympathized, feeling sorry for him, because she knew how hard things could get sometimes, knowing from the way he was looking into her eyes that he wanted something to happen.

She hadn’t made any overt move, but at one point when he was talking, she put a hand on his arm and gave it a squeeze, and then when she’d got up to go to the kitchen to refill her water glass she’d brushed her hand against his – a small but knowing gesture.

He’d followed her into the kitchen, put his arms round her waist, and pulled her to him.

They’d kissed. Hard. The first kiss she’d experienced since a fumbled one-night stand in Costa Rica the previous summer. And though she’d pulled away and protested, the weakness in her tone was obvious, because he’d kissed her again, and this time she hadn’t pulled away. They’d made love on her living-room floor, and it had been everything lovemaking should be: intense, passionate, noisy.

Afterwards, she’d felt horrendously guilty. She’d never met Penny’s family but knew full well what damage she must be inflicting on his relationship with his wife, even if he had been the instigator. And the thing was, she couldn’t even blame the booze. She’d done it all of her own accord.

She’d tried to draw a line under what had happened. Told him that it couldn’t happen again. Yet it had. On far too many occasions. So many that it had soon become the reason for their meetings, and the ongoing investigation into Paul Wise had taken a back seat, something that nagged at her even more. She really
liked Nick Penny, far more than she’d expected. Although he was in turmoil in his personal life, he wasn’t needy, could still make her laugh, and remained driven by his convictions. But she knew it couldn’t last and that one day, probably sooner rather than later, it would end in tears and recriminations. So she’d called it off. He’d begged her to reconsider, but she’d been adamant. It had to end. For the good of both of them, and the good of their case against Wise. Eventually he had accepted the inevitable, and promised to call her only when he had further information.

They’d spoken only once since then, the previous Thursday. He’d told her he missed her and asked if she’d reconsider her decision, but had seemed fine enough when she’d said no. There had been no sign of any deep depression that might have ended in suicide. As she’d told DS Weale, Nick just didn’t seem to be that kind of guy. There had still been too much life in him, even given the knocks he’d taken, for him ever to have considered ending it all. It was one of the reasons she’d found him so attractive.

And now he was dead. Just another name in a growing list of dead people who’d become close to Tina. Her partner in CID, DI Simon Barron, stabbed to death more than six years ago now. Then her lover, John Gallan, an apparent suicide that she knew was the work of one of Paul Wise’s henchmen. Back then, people at work had started calling her the Black Widow – a moniker that would probably have faded if it hadn’t been for the death a few years after that of her boss in CMIT, DCI Dougie MacLeod. He’d been murdered during a case Tina had been heavily involved in, and once again she’d become the Black Widow, this time in the media. God knows what everyone would make of this latest death.

She knew it would take all her self-discipline not to fall off the wagon this time. Given that she had a high-profile history with
the media, her relationship with Nick was almost certainly going to be made public, which would mean lurid headlines; the wrath of Nick’s wife; embarrassment and wisecracks at work. The next few days were going to be tough.

To try to head things off as best she could, Tina had called the station as soon as she’d finished with Weale and spoken to her new DCI, Bob Levine. Levine was a solid enough copper, and was regarded fairly neutrally by those under him, but like a lot of the older male police officers he’d always been wary of her, and Tina knew that he’d have preferred it if she hadn’t been part of his squad. She’d told him what had happened, not leaving out any details, knowing that they’d come to light anyway, and unsurprisingly, he’d been furious. Not so much with the fact that she’d had an affair with Nick, but more with the fact that she’d remained involved in an unofficial attempt to get Paul Wise.

‘How do you think that would have looked in court if Penny had got done for libel?’ Levine had demanded. ‘That you’d been working with him? You might have ended up being sued yourself. You’ve got to learn when to let go.’

Tina had heard this plea plenty of times before. A year back, she would have told him in no uncertain terms that she would let go when Wise was finally convicted of the crimes he was responsible for, but this time she didn’t bother. Instead, she wearily apologized before giving him the rest of the bad news from the day. Gemma Hanson, the single mother who was their witness in the upcoming murder case, had decided to withdraw her statement identifying their alleged killer, even after Tina had spent more than an hour trying to persuade her to relent, and promising to get her fast-tracked into the witness protection programme.

At this point, Levine had become sympathetic, knowing how
much pressure she was under, and had told Tina to take the rest of the day off. ‘Take next week off as well. Have a rest. You’re due it.’

She wasn’t quite sure if this was an order or not, but in any case, she’d accepted. At least it would give her an opportunity to look into Nick Penny’s death.

But she knew she was going to have to be careful. Nick’s killer had known about the affair, even though it had finished a fortnight earlier. Either Nick had volunteered the information or, more likely, the killer had been watching him and had seen the two of them together. Since their last few face-to-face meetings had been here in her new house that could only mean one thing: he’d been watching her too.

She stubbed out the cigarette and walked over to the window, looking out into the blackness of her small garden, unable to see anything, before yanking the curtain across, and repeating the process on every window on the ground floor. The thought of being watched made her feel both violated and uneasy. She loved this house. Located in a pretty Hertfordshire village just outside the M25, she’d bought it because she could no longer bear to live in the apartment that had been her home for the previous three years. There were too many bad memories there. This place represented a new start for her, away from the violence and temptations of the city – a small, friendly community where the air was fresh and where she didn’t need the booze to prop her up. And now it felt like it too had been invaded.