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  “Not necessarily. As you noted, the windows were opened, and phosgene has a pleasant odour of freshly chopped hay, and may not even have been noticed by the person exposed to it.”

  “Sounds like an advert for the perfume Lynne always used.”

  “I’m not here to listen to your back-ripping of Lynne. I still like her.”

  “You were my best man at the wedding and godfather to Katie. Where’s your loyalty?”

  “With all of you. Satisfied?” said Tom, diplomatically.

  “Fence-sitters always end up with splinters up their arse. Remember that wise old saying from me, the next time it happens to you.”

  “How is Katie doing in Edinburgh, anyway?” asked Tom, seemingly resigned now to the fact that little work would be accomplished today. “It’s been almost a year since the last time I saw her.”

  “She’s doing great, and has really settled in. To be honest, I was a bit nervous when she left, heading to Scotland on her own. But no, she’s proven me wrong. She’s probably as safe there as she would be here.”

  “And Lynne? How’s she?”

  “You always knew how to kill a good conversation. She’s fine, also, the last I heard, though I haven’t seen her since the split. The last time I saw her, she was looking rather cocky.”

  “Before this conversation deteriorates any further, let me finish this report,” replied Tom, pushing his glasses further up his slippery nose. “As I was saying, there were small stumps of incense sticks found, also. They would have helped smother any unforeseen alien smells lingering in the room.”

  “Are you certain of all this?”

  “Not yet. But I will be. One thing is certain for now: Kerr didn’t die painlessly. In fact, his death would have been extremely excruciating. He would have had difficulty breathing, followed by vomiting and hot diarrhoea. Particles of white to pink-tinged fluid on his lips indicated pulmonary oedema –”

  “Pulmonary oedema?”

  “Fluid in the lungs,” supplied Tom, seemingly annoyed at the interruption. “His blood pressure would have dropped to zero. Suffocation. Heart failure. Death.”

  “Nice way to go,” said Karl, shaking his head. “In all honesty, I don’t like the way this case is developing. I’m not too certain I want to pursue it any further. I should probably leave it to the so-called big boys, upstairs.” Removing a packet of cigs from his pocket, Karl extracted one.

  “There isn’t much chance of Wilson and his brain-dead crew solving anything,” said Tom, dismissively. “There is some good news attached to the condom, though.”

  “What?” asked Karl, resting the unlit cig on his mouth.

  “A tiny tarnish. Hopefully, I can extract some DNA from it,” replied Tom, nipping the cig in Karl’s mouth, removing it like a thermometer. “Smoking is bad for your health. You’re unpleasant to look at fully clothed, as it is. I really don’t want to be looking down upon your bloated, naked body in the not-too-distant future. You wouldn’t make a great corpse.”

  “What is it with you and your preoccupation with death? Even when we go for a rare social drink, your conversation always turns to those no longer with us.”

  Removing his glasses, and rubbing watering eyes, Tom replied, “For your information, my main preoccupation with death is with the moment of transition. One second you are alive, and the next you are dead. Gone. Forever. Dust. Paradoxically, though, if you listen to the dead, they will tell you things the living can only imagine. Sometimes they tell you things you would much rather not hear. You’d be very surprised at what they tell me, sometimes.”

  “That isn’t funny,” says Karl, feeling as if someone had just walked across his grave. “Isn’t funny, at all.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Back To The Nightmare, 1967

  ‘In every man’s heart there is a devil, but we do not know the man as bad until the devil is roused.’

  James Oliver Curwood, Back to God’s Country and Other Stories

  THE TRIAL OF the man dubbed Bibendum by the press because of his resemblance to the Michelin Man, lasted less than a week. Bibendum’s defence team brought in a clinical psychologist, stating that even if the defendant were guilty, he should not be held accountable for any alleged actions because he had a mental illness that interfered with his reasoning capacity.

  Finally, as chief and only witness, the young boy was forced to testify, tell his side of the nightmare and what it looked like to peep through a gap in the door to hell.

  The young boy could not understand what was happening. Why did he have to relive the nightmare? Hadn’t he suffered enough? Did adults have a morbid fixation with grisly details? Or perhaps they simply wanted to see how a young boy, seemingly impervious to such closeness of death, had managed to survive? Perhaps the young boy was not as innocent as he claimed …?

  As the boy took the stand, Bibendum’s eyes followed from the other end of the courtroom. The eyes were dead, betraying the invisible smile hugging the face. The boy remembered well that portly face, pressed uncomfortably close, sinister and terrifying, the smell of the voice.

  The boy’s father told him that justice always prevails, and that the guilty are always punished. His father told him to be brave.

  But he wasn’t brave. The words froze in his throat. When they eventually thawed under cross-examination, they stumbled like ice cubes from a dirty glass: the attacker was bald. No, he had some hair. He was naked. Perhaps he had some clothes on, after all. He used a knife. It looked like a knife. It could have been scissors, a razor, perhaps …

  Bibendum’s lawyer made the terrified boy look like a liar; a liar with an appetitive for wild, imaginative stories. A liar with secrets to hide. The lawyer claimed he was sorry to hear what had happened to the young boy and his mother, but justice, not emotions, had to be served.

  Too many doubts.

  Too much dark weight on the scales of justice.

  Bibendum was found not guilty.

  Returning home, later that day, the boy waited until his father went to bed.

  Removing all his clothing, the boy slipped into his dead mother’s overcoat and quickly wrapped his arms around himself. All that night, he tented in her skin and motherly smells, feeling all the lost parts rushing together again, parts he had never experienced before.

  Eventually he cried himself to sleep. It was the last time he cried for anyone …

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Wednesday, 14 February (Early morning)

  ‘I’ve seen horrors … horrors that you’ve seen. But you have no right to call me a murderer. You have a right to kill me. You have a right to do that … but you have no right to judge me.’

  Colonel Kurtz, Apocalypse Now

  JUST GONE MIDNIGHT and Chris Brown shocked himself awake. Chris rarely allowed sleep to swallow him whole, but sensed something not right in the house. It felt annoying, like a fly that keeps landing on the back of the neck licking greedily the salty sweat.

  Someone in the house?

  Unlikely. No, impossible. He had used all his money investing in a state-of-the-art alarm system. Plus, his loyal – if somewhat illegal – friend, a .41 Magnum ‘Raging Bull’ revolver, primed itself devotedly at his side at all times in the house.

  The combination of all these things should have acquiesced into a whole that made him feel secure. But they did not. He had remained alive by feeling insecure. Once shot, six times shy.

  For a terrifying few seconds his upper muscles went limp and unresponsive, like stretched rubber bands that could not expand or contract. Then willpower kicked in. Control was regained.

  Remaining cautious, Chris edged his body onto the floor and under the bed, his massive upper-body strength controlling the entire movement fluently like a Russian gymnast. A few seconds later, his wrecked body was drowning in its own shadow from the spreading dark beneath the bed.

  The scalp of carpet beneath the bed was crowded with discarded items. It was a tight squeeze. Cramped and claustrophobic. Extremel
y dusty.

  Awkwardly propping himself up on his elbows, he studied the bottom of the bedroom door, trying desperately to focus on the bottom region, its slit of dullness staring directly at him. He felt alone – desperately so – emptied of everything he had ever known or experienced.

  Carefully balancing the gun, he ran his left hand over its metal body. The feel was comforting. Almost.

  He waited. Listened …

  The dull slit beneath the door darkened. Then shaded less. Darkened again.

  Gripping the revolver, Chris slowly calmed his breathing.

  Removing his delicate finger from the trigger guard, he expertly transferred it to the trigger. With his thumb, he cocked the enormous hammer, muffling it with the ham of his palm. He curved his finger slightly, applying imperceptible pressure on the trigger. He could smell the gun’s oil and its dull cordite aroma. Better than perfume or cologne. More trustworthy than any human being, male or female.

  Seconds turned to minutes. Dust from the carpet began to invade his mouth and nostrils. He needed to sneeze, but prevented it by sheer willpower alone. To sneeze could be a catastrophe. His eyes stung, but he did not blink. To blink could mean death. He watched the door, transfixed. It moved. It didn’t. Did he imagine it? Was he hallucinating beneath the bed? Had the dregs of last night’s fix caused all this, flattening his awareness, swelling the imaginary? Possibly.

  As the minutes faded, he considered whether to stay put, or to reveal himself and exact terrifying retribution. Finally, he decided to remain immobile, fearful of diverting any potential conflict unnecessarily onto himself.

  The door eased open. Barely noticeable. Quite crafty.

  Chris could see footwear tiptoeing towards his position, as if on hot coals. Hush Puppies. Campy. He wanted to laugh. The Hush Puppies were edged with dog shit, as if they had shit themselves. The shitty Hush Puppies suddenly stopped directly at his face. The stench of dog shit was unbearable.

  Coming into view, he could just about make out the lean and mean barrel of a pump-action shotgun. He was no longer conscious of his own breathing.

  Ominously, the barrel suddenly disappeared.

  Without warning, a muffled blast and the mattress suddenly exploded into confetti. This was quickly followed by another blast. Then another. Three in all.

  Used shotgun shells fell onto the floor, spinning like hot dice. Even in the suffocating dark, Chris could see smoke oozing lazily from them.

  Another blast.

  The shotgun’s noise popped Chris’s ears, as if on a plane. He could no longer hear the blasts, but could feel their vibrations along the floor with his free hand. He waited for two more vibrations, and then fired. Ka-pamm!

  The bullet from the Raging Bull caught the armed intruder just above the left knee. The wounded intruder screamed like a madman, then dropped his big bastard of a weapon. To add to the would-be murderer’s bad luck, the muzzle flash from Chris’s Raging Bull set the intruder’s trousers on fire.

  Suddenly, the injured gunman was hopping-and-a-bopping, hugging his devastated knee, all the while trying to extinguish the flames eating his trousers. He let out a groan and fell backwards, landing directly beside the bed, face to face beside a weirdly grinning Chris.

  The intruder’s face was shadowed with a balaclava, but unpatched squeezed eyes revealed suffering.

  Boldly, Chris reached and pulled the balaclava off, exposing the agony-filled face of the wounded intruder.

  “You?” hissed Chris. “I should have fucking guessed, you cowardly piece of shit.” A reconciled smile suddenly crawled around the bottom half of Chris’s face, making him look like a witness to an execution.

  The Raging Bull was cocked once more – quickly this time – the muzzle pushed tight between the wounded gunman’s eyes.

  “Do it, you fuck,” hissed the wounded man, defiantly into Chris’s face. “Do it!”

  Chris spotted the other gunman, a split second too late, instinctively ducking as the gunman’s fat handgun fired three consecutive shots. Kabammmm! Kabammmm! Kabammmm!

  The first two dum-dum bullets missed their intended target, lodging impotently in the carpet, inches from Chris’s face. The third dum-dum bullet clipped Chris’s left ear, removing it from the side of his head. He uttered not a sound, but mechanically ran a comb of fingers through his hair. The fingers emerged red and sticky.

  Fuck …

  The standing gunman stepped back, examining the results, before firing two more dum-dum rounds, both hitting Chris in the face.

  For Chris Brown, an unfriendly world became cold and dark again.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Wednesday, 14 February (Morning)

  ‘To darkness and silence and slumber In blood and pain.’

  A. E. Housman, More Poems

  “I’ve made that appointment for you, Karl,” said Naomi, standing at the doorway, gauging Karl’s reaction. “It’s early next Wednesday morning. Nine sharp. Doctor Moore said to make sure you attend, as you’ve got a nasty habit of forgetting. I assured him you’d be there. Isn’t that right?”

  Karl ran a pencil down the list of horses in the morning newspaper, halting at number six, Pretty Pickle. Circled it. Ran the pencil again.

  “Karl? Did you hear what I just said?”

  “Huh?”

  “I said I made –”

  “I know. I’ll be there at nine.”

  “Promise?”

  Karl stretched his legs onto the edge of the table, all the while pencilling in more potential winners for the three o’clock race at Newbury. Take No Prisoners. He’d heard good things about this young filly. Quickly circled another horse. Lady Pride.

  “Promise?” repeated Naomi, leaning towards him at the desk, her face inches away from his.

  “What? Of course I’ll be there. What do you take me for?”

  “You really don’t want me to answer that.”

  The phone rang. Naomi picked it up.

  “Hello? Hold on. Let me see if he’s available.” Naomi nudged Karl, while holding her hand over the mouthpiece. “It’s Wilson.”

  “Tell him I’m busy.”

  “He says he needs to talk to you, ASAP.”

  “He always says that. Tell him I’m with a very important client from Saudi Arabia, discussing a stolen horse.”

  “You tell him,” said Naomi, leaving the phone on the table, before departing from the room.

  “Traitor.” Karl put the newspaper down and lifted the phone. “Hello? Whatever you’re selling, we’re not buying.”

  “Kane?” Wilson’s voice sounded tired. Weary.

  “Why do I have the sinking feeling in my stomach that this isn’t a social call?”

  “Thought you might like to know that Chris Brown was shot dead, possibly during the early hours of this morning.”

  “What?” Karl’s legs dropped immediately from the desk, springing the rest of his body forward.

  “Looks like some of his ex-friends finally caught up with him. Very messy, I believe. Drugs seem to be involved, as well. Some heroin was discovered at the scene. Looks like he was probably trying to double-cross some drug dealers, or perhaps his past finally catching up with him.”

  Karl remained silent. Had he detected a smirk in Wilson’s tone?

  “Kane? You still there?”

  “Yes …”

  “Hate to put you on the spot, but I need you to do something for us. You’re our only option.”

  “Cops must be hard up if I’m their only option. Seems like only yesterday they were telling me I wasn’t good enough to be one of them.”

  “Are you serious? That was what? Twenty years ago?”

  “It hurt,” said Karl, faking hurt.

  “Yes, I can tell that in your voice.”

  “Now that we have that cleared up, what can I do for my police officers, officer?”

  “We need you to call over to Hicks’s so-called castle to officially identify the body of Chris Brown.”

  An ic
y finger suddenly touched the back of Karl’s neck. “What? Why me? He has a big family. Why don’t you just get one of them to do it?”

  “None of his family have shown up, and it doesn’t look like they will. Probably ashamed. You knew him, didn’t you?”

  “Not that well,” lied Karl, his stomach tensing.

  “Well enough, it seems. We found one of your business cards in his possession.” It sounded like an accusation.

  Think! Quickly! “And? My business cards are everywhere. They’re collectors’ items. Anyway, I’m with a client at the –”

  “I haven’t time for dick pulling. I could have you dragged in here, questioned, day after day. Instead, I’m calling in one of the many favours you owe me. We need to get this body shifted. Chief Constable Finnegan is breathing down my neck. He’s taking a personal interest in all this, by the sound of his voice on the phone this morning. Now, are you coming or not?”

  Karl could detect smothered impatience in Wilson’s voice. The added pressure coming from the Chief Constable probably had Wilson’s nerves hanging by a thread – if not his balls.

  “When you put it so delicately, how can I refuse? Give me about an hour,” said Karl, killing the phone conversation with a touch of a button.

  “What was that all about?” asked Naomi, popping back into the room.

  “I really wish you would stop eavesdropping on my phone conversations. I’m paranoid enough without you adding to it. Chris Brown was murdered last night. Shot, apparently by drug dealers.”

  “Chris Brown?”

  “A man with a very murky past, lots of enemies and few friends. He was also a paraplegic.”

  “A paraplegic? God. And they shot him? What kind of person would do that?”

  “The kind of person I always try to avoid.”

  “Any suspects?”

  “Ten phone books,” replied Karl. “Chris Brown wouldn’t be a candidate for free air miles to heaven. Killed an awful lot of people, in his time. Sorrow and tears weren’t part of his vocabulary.”