THE PERFECT KILL

The Perfect Kill

A. J. Quinnell

He was not like the others. The doctor in the makeshift mortuary noticed that immediately. As he looked down at the two bodies the man’s face showed no expression. No grief. No tears. He looked at the girl of four whose body was totally unmarked. She lay on the table as though asleep. Even her long dark hair had been combed. The man’s passive face shifted to the body of the woman. The sheet was drawn up to her neck. The man reached down and pulled the sheet back. The body was naked and terribly mangled.

The doctor murmured, “It must have been very quick, sir, a matter of seconds only.”

Later the doctor was to wonder why he had called the man “sir”. He was not in the habit of doing so. A uniformed policeman came forward, with a pad in his hand. He looked down at the woman’s body then he looked away. He handed the pad and a pen to the man, and said, “Would you mind, sir?”

The man signed his name on the pad, nodded at the doctor and the policeman, and walked out past the long rows of other bodies. The doctor and policeman watched him go. He was a tall, bulky man, with cropped, grey hair. He had a curious walk; with the outside of his feet making first contact with the ground. Both men would always remember his face. Eyes, seemingly without interest, set deep and wide into a square face. Heavy lidded and narrow, as if to avoid cigarette smoke, even though he was not smoking. He had a vertical scar over his right eye, and another, deep and wide, from his right cheekbone to his chin, but the doctor knew that they were old scars. As he went through the door, the policeman said, “He didn’t show much.”

“No,” the doctor corrected him. “He showed nothing, absolutely nothing.”

He pulled the sheet up over the woman’s broken body.

Although a farmer all his life, and though long used to hardship, Foster Dodd was an emotional man. He ran sheep over a hundred and fifty acres of low hills near the small Scottish town of Loccurbie. When the Pan Am jumbo jet blew up at thirty thousand feet, many of the bodies fell onto his fields, among his sheep, together with the almost intact nose cone of the aircraft.

And so began a night of horror that would stay with him for the rest of his life.

It was two days later when the man came to the farm. He was accompanied by a sad-faced young policeman. Like the men in the mortuary, Foster Dodd noticed that this one was different. The others, and there had been many others, had been in a state of shock and total grief. They had invariably wept, and Foster Dodd and his wife had wept with them.

The man did not weep.

The policeman introduced them and asked, “Would you show him where you found the young girl? The one in the bright red jumpsuit?”

They walked half a mile across the fields. It was cold, with a north wind blowing, and the farmer and the policeman were warmly clothed under their raincoats. The man wore grey corduroy trousers, a woollen checked shirt and a denim jacket. They looked as though they had been slept in. In the distance, a long line of soldiers was walking ahead of them, each one scrutinising the ground.

They reached a small group of bushes. The farmer pointed.

“I found her here. In amongst the bushes. I spotted the red of her clothing.” His voice dropped a decibel. “It must have been instantaneous. She must have felt nothing.”

The man was looking around the fields.

“It must have been a hell of a shock for your livestock,” he muttered.

That began a conversation which would live in Foster Dodd’s mind forever. For ten minutes they chatted about sheep and farming. The man was knowledgeable. He spoke with a slight American accent, in a deep, measured voice. Several times the farmer glanced at him. The slate-grey, deep-set eyes never lifted their gaze from the clump of bushes. Suddenly, Foster Dodd saw again the splash of vivid red, remembered clawing his way through the bushes, and finding the girl. Since she had no marks on her and thinking she might be alive, he had picked her up and run stumbling through the fields to the farmhouse. It had only taken seconds for the waiting doctor to examine her and shake his head. The farmer would never forget the serenity of the child’s face. The memory brought back tears to his eyes and his voice broke.

The man put a hand on his shoulder and gently turned him, and they walked slowly back to the farmhouse.

Later that night, lying in bed, Foster Dodd told his wife.

“He comforted me.”

“Who?” she asked.

“The father of the little girl in the red suit. He lost his child and his wife and he comforted me…and he said he was sorry about the sheep we had lost.”

Peter Fleming had set up a temporary office in an empty plant that belonged to a chemical company. He was the senior officer and as Pan Am Flight 103 had come down in his district he was the man in charge of the operation. Over the past two days he had managed to snatch only a few hours’ sleep. His body was tired to its bones and his mind was numb. His district was normally quiet, with one of the lowest crime rates in Britain, but no policeman in that country had more determination or tenacity.

Yet again his eyes were perusing lists; passenger manifests; next of kin; identifications list after list. He looked up as the policeman brought the man to his desk and then stood up when he was introduced. As he shook hands, he said, “I’m terribly sorry. You will have been told that it must have been so sudden that they could not have known much at all.”

The man nodded. “I guess not.”

Fleming gestured at a chair. The man sat down and the young policeman turned away.

“Any idea what happened?” the man asked.

Fleming shook his head. “Far too early,” he replied. “The wreckage was scattered over a vast area. We think at least two hundred square miles. It will take many weeks before we find everything and piece it together.”

The voice that came back at him over the desk was flat and cold. “It was a bomb.”

It was not the statement that riveted Fleming’s attention; it was the voice. Low, deep and vibrant. A voice of certainty.

Fleming looked into the man’s eyes and said, “We cannot know that yet. And I can make no statement until we have all the facts.”

The man nodded and stood up. “It was a bomb,” he said. “That’s what all the facts will eventually tell you.”

Fleming also stood up. “If it was a bomb, it will be my job to find out who put it there and to bring them to justice.”

The two men looked at each other for a long moment, then Fleming said, “I hope you’ll be able to claim the bodies within forty-eight hours. Is there anything I can do in the meantime?”

“I’d like a list of all the passengers and the names and addresses of their next of kin.”

“I’m not sure I can do that.”

“Why not?”

The policeman shrugged. “Procedures. This kind of thing has not happened in my district.”

“Let’s hope it never happens again. Anyway, for insurance purposes the next of kin will have to form an association…will have to be in touch with each other.”

The policeman nodded.

“I suppose you’re right, I’ll try and get it for you before you leave.”

They shook hands and the American turned and threaded his way through the desks towards the door.

Fleming noticed something strange. There were a dozen or more policemen and policewomen sitting at the desks and manning the radio centre. They had all stopped what they were doing and were watching the man. They only resumed their work when the door had closed behind him.

Fleming pulled another list of names in front of him. It was of the next of kin. He ran a finger down it until he found a name.

Then he beckoned to an assistant, handed him the list and said, “Call Jenkins at Special Branch. Ask him to check out that man.”

The assistant turned away. Peter Fleming remained standing, looking at the closed door. He shivered slightly. He would have to order some more heaters.

It was dark and the Doberman bitch saw nothing, heard nothing and smelled nothing. But she felt something. A sharp, stinging pain in her side. She erupted to her feet with a puzzled growl, managed to move a few paces beside the swimming pool and then her legs collapsed and she rolled onto her side. For half a minute her body twitched and then she stilled.

Thirty yards away a black-clad figure slid down a rope from the top of the high garden wall.

For several minutes it crouched, watching and waiting. There was only a faint illumination from distant street lights. Finally the black figure moved, crossing to the swimming pool, pausing for a moment to check the dog, then moving on to the rear of the house, enfolded in darkness.

Miguel was watching television: an antique episode of “I Love Lucy”. Miguel was fascinated by Desi Arnaz’s Spanish accent and assumed it paralleled his own. He was halfway through a long chuckle when he heard the click of the door. He turned in surprise. The chuckle died. He saw a man in black. Saw a squat handgun rising. Heard a compressed phut; felt the sting in his chest. He pushed himself up, terror on his face, a hand groping at his chest. The man in black became hazy. Miguel heard a voice: low and vibrant.

“Don’t worry. No harm. You are just going to sleep.” Miguel crumpled. He was asleep before he hit the carpet.

The dinner was boring, but necessary. There was no way that James S. Grainger, Senior Senator for the State of Colorado, could have decently avoided it. When the Governor gave a dinner for the Secretary of State for Defence his presence was expected.

As usual of late, the Senator had drunk too much. Too many whiskies before dinner, and too much wine with it. But he knew that none of the dozen people around the dinner-table would have noticed anything. Only Harriot would have noticed, but then she would have had thirty-five years of experience to draw upon.

James S. Grainger was an intelligent and practical man. He had been taciturn during the dinner. None of the guests had expected anything else.

He was the first to leave. None of the guests was surprised. The Governor saw him to the door. Taking him by the arm, he said, “Jim please reconsider. I’d like you to chair that finance committee.”

They stopped in the hall. The Senator said, “Craig, give me a couple of days to think about it…it’s a hell of a lot of work.”

The Governor looked at him with sympathy. These past months there had been sympathy in everybody’s eyes.

“Jim, maybe a heavy work-load is the best therapy.”

The Senator shrugged, “Maybe; give me a couple of days…listen, Craig, I took a little too much on board tonight. Could you have your guy call me a taxi? It wouldn’t be good for this Senator to be stopped by the Highway Patrol.”

The Governor grinned and looked at his watch, “It’s no problem, my driver is waiting to take the Secretary to the airport and for sure he won’t leave for at least an hour and four more brandies.”

The Senator let himself into his house, which could be called a palace. In his younger days he had made a fortune out of real estate, and although he himself had simple tastes, Harriot, for all her many virtues, had a taste for grandeur. As he walked down the marble hall he wondered yet again whether he should sell the place and get something infinitely smaller.

He instantly dismissed the thought. Harriot was somehow still in this house. She had worked with the architect and with the builders. It was her house. He would never live anywhere else. He opened the door to the drawing-room. The lights were on. Miguel had forgotten to switch them off. It was an elegant room in the European manner.

Crystal chandeliers, heavy, comfortable chairs and settees, and a Louis fourteenth bureau, which Harriot had never let him take up to his study. It was a large room and at the very end of it, after a major argument with Harriot, he had installed a mahogany bar, with four black, leather-topped barstools. A man was sitting on one of them. He was a big man, dressed in black slacks and a black polo neck shirt.

He had a drink in his hand. He had scars on his face. His hair was close-cropped. He was middle-aged.

The Senator’s eyes swept the room. Nothing out of place. The edge of drunkenness left him. He was instantly alert. Before he could speak or move the man said, “Senator, I’m sorry to intrude, I mean no harm. I just need ten minutes of your time and then I will leave.”

The Senator’s eyes flicked to the telephone on the bureau.

Apologetically the man said, “I disconnected it.”

The man’s voice carried a faint accent from the deep South. It was a low voice, reaching up from his belly.

“Who the fuck are you? Did Miguel let you in?”

The man shook his head.

“Miguel is comfortable in his room. He will sleep quietly until the morning.”

James S. Grainger was not immune to fear. He had fought in Korea and been wounded and much decorated. At first sight of the man he had felt fear, but now it washed away. As he walked to the bar, he asked, “Why the hell didn’t you make an appointment?”

The man said, “I rang your secretary three days ago. She asked me to state my business. I said it was personal. She told me to leave my number, which I did. I rang again the next day, twice. I told her it was personal and urgent. I know that you are leaving for Washington in the morning.”