Cold Kill (30 page)

‘Okay. Say it's five and if someone makes an offer, give them a grand on account.'

‘And let them whistle for the rest.'

‘Exactly.'

‘It doesn't help my reputation – for the next time.'

‘It doesn't help mine when I'm standing in front of the commissioner, cap in hand.'

‘Okay,' Stella said. Then, ‘It's not all I need.'

Sorley grimaced. ‘Oh, good.'

‘Silano's in for Greegan and Marilyn Hayes is covering for DC Chapman, but now Pete Harriman's on sick leave and I need more bodies on the street. Someone knows who Mister Mystery is. We need to keep asking questions, keep talking to our sources.'

‘He's out there,' Sorley told her.

‘He is. Which is why we need to be out there too.'

Sorley looked at her and shook his head. ‘What?'

‘I'm agreeing with you.'

‘About what?'

Stella thought back along the conversation, looking for the fracture in logic but unable to find it. She said, ‘Are you delirious or am I tired? Who are we talking about?'

‘DC Harriman,' Sorley said and gestured towards the squad room. ‘He's out there.'

The dressing had been removed and the scar was a barbed-wire tracery that went from just under the earlobe to halfway along his jawline. Stella took him out into the corridor and
they stood by the drinks dispenser, like all office conspirators.

‘Where were you when I came in?'

‘In the car park,' Harriman said. ‘I saw you arrive.'

‘In the car park –?'

‘Talking to Marilyn.'

‘Of course. Have you been cleared?'

‘Totally.'

‘By the doctors?'

‘By DI Sorley.'

‘If you're on sick-leave, I can replace you and get someone who's fit.'

‘I'm fit.'

‘Yeah? You look like a Frankenstein offcut.'

‘I didn't say beautiful, I said fit.'

‘What did Marilyn say?'

‘She thinks it looks distinguished.'

‘Well, it distinguishes you from guys who haven't taken a beer glass in the face, that's for sure.' Harriman laughed, then fell silent. Stella said, ‘Why the car park?'

‘She's talking about leaving her husband.'

‘Of course she is, you fuckwit.'

‘Do you think she means it?'

‘Does she say she'll leave him before Christmas or afterwards?'

‘Before.'

‘She means it.'

Harriman sighed. ‘I thought so.'

Stella said, ‘Organize a door-to-door on Harefield. As many uniforms as Notting Hill can spare. Issue mugshots of Kimber. Let's see if anyone at his old address wants to earn a Christmas bonus.'

‘Someone always knows,' Harriman said, the murder-squad truism.

‘You're right,' Stella said. ‘Mister Mystery knows.'

Mister Mystery walked through Holland Park, starting from the Kensington High Street side. The last light showed as a thin lilac glow in the western sky and people were leaving before the gates closed at dusk.

He remembered when he'd done this before, walking the park, finding a place to hide, a place on Valerie Blake's jogging route, feeling the weight of the hammer in his pocket and the weight of his heart banging his ribs. He thought of Robert Kimber, also waiting for Valerie, waiting to follow her. He thought of the way life had somehow arranged to bring them all together at just the right time.

Slipper Wilkie was sitting on a bench close to where the path went into woodland. Bloss sat down with him and they waited for a couple of strollers to get clear. The gun was in a small document case along with the spare clip, all packed in bubble-wrap. It was a Glock ·45. Wilkie passed it over, took an envelope in return, then walked away.

Bloss called Billy Souza on his mobile. He said, ‘The girl will be with him, yes?'

‘She'll be there. She's your way in.'

‘It's important. She's needed… the way I'm going to set things up.'

‘For sure,' Souza told him. ‘You ask, I deliver. Make sure you do the same.'

‘She won't take a walk. She knows she has to be there with him?'

‘Jesus Christ!' Billy's voice took on an edge. ‘What did I just say? She's been told. She'll be there.'

Billy Souza put the phone down. Bloss sat on, watching the dusk settle. It was his favourite time of day.

He made a call to the number Billy Souza had given him and the blonde picked up. She called him Maria and said she couldn't talk just then. Half an hour later, she called back and said, ‘We're at the Belvedere and he's just asked for the bill. Give it half an hour.'

‘What do I do?'

‘Ring the bell.'

‘You're expecting a friend, are you?'

‘We're expecting a man with some very high-grade Charlie.'

‘This would be your contact, not his ...'

‘Of course. He's not expecting to know you.'

After leaving the park, Bloss had gone to a pub on Kensington Church Street and had a few whiskies. The place was crammed with people who were on their way to parties or were between parties or had started out for a party but decided to go no further. They were shoulder to shoulder and face to face and back to back, yelling to be heard over the music. Bloss had a stool by the wooden window-shelf that ran the whole perimeter of the pub. The reflections of faces in the windows seemed to mingle with the faces that passed in the street.

He didn't mind making the hit, and the fee he and Souza had agreed on was good money, but it was too much action in too short a time. He'd make a plane reservation to a warm place. Anywhere that was somewhere else.

He drank off the last of his last whisky, shouldered a small
rucksack that contained all he needed for the night's task, then pushed through the crowd and started up towards Notting Hill Gate.

Oscar Gribbin looked up smiling when Bloss walked in behind the blonde, but his smile faded fast when he saw the gun. He looked from Bloss to the blonde and back again. He said, ‘You fucking slag.' Then, to Bloss, ‘Name your price.'

Bloss was dressed for business – industrial overalls zipped to the chin, a woollen beanie, cotton gloves, rubber overshoes. He said, ‘It's not like that.'

It was a big room in a big house, lots of pale wood and leather, plasma screen, style-supplement paintings, a free-standing, three-foot-square plain glass aquarium on glass stilts right in the middle. It was a feature. Luminous fish cruised amid forests of weed.

Oscar knew what they meant: the overalls, the rubber shoes. He said, ‘Is it Billy Souza? Tell him I'll bring the stuff in for him. Tell him we're back in business.'

‘See,' Bloss said. ‘It's easy if you try.'

‘Tell him no problem.'

‘Tell him yourself,' Bloss said, and smiled encouragingly. Then, ‘Where's the tape?'

Oscar looked towards the plasma screen and a steel-fronted cupboard below it. Bloss nodded and Oscar hurried across to get the tape. He put it down on a glass and steel table. Everything shiny and transparent.

‘Play it,' Bloss told him.

It was genuine. Oscar and Billy, Billy and Oscar. Talk of guns and dates and offshore transfers. Oscar ejected it and slipped it back into its cover, eager to do the right thing. He handed it to Bloss, who sapped him with the Glock, putting him down hard on a dove-grey leather sofa.

Oscar said, ‘What?' but the word came from a long way off and his eyes had slipped out of focus.

Bloss's rucksack had contained the overalls; he'd changed before going in. It also held some other, basic equipment: duct tape, plastic handcuffs, a lock-knife, a hammer. When Oscar was cuffed and gagged, Bloss turned to the blonde. He said, ‘This is going to look like a burglary, like I had to make him tell me where the stuff is. Maybe you should leave.'

She said, ‘I know where the stuff is.'

‘Meaning?'

‘It's a burglary, right? Someone has to burgle.' A little flush had come to her cheeks and she was smiling. ‘What are you going to do to him?'

‘Go,' Bloss told her. ‘Take what you like.'

He opened the rucksack and removed a plastic envelope, inside of which was a green contamination suit. The overalls, the rubber shoes, the beanie, the gloves – they were fine first protection against shedding DNA. Wet work was a different issue.

He put the suit on over his overalls and snapped the press-stud fasteners. The legs ended in plastic foot-pods that went over his shoes and there was a hood with a draw-string. He removed his cotton gloves, put those into the rucksack, and pulled on a pair of surgical gloves, working his fingers into the latex. He was a workman getting ready for the night-shift.

The blonde said, ‘Jesus. Jesus Christ.'

Bloss told her to go and this time she went.

Oscar was speaking from behind the duct-tape gag. Bloss knew what he was saying even though the words were faint and distorted. He was saying, ‘Please.' He was using a lot of words but they all added up to ‘Please.'

Bloss opened the lock-knife and stabbed Oscar a few times in the fat of his thighs. Oscar arched and tried to backpedal but there was nowhere to go. He wanted to scream, but that's difficult to do breathing through your nose and choking on your own saliva. Bloss held his man down with one hand and a knee. He stabbed his biceps. When Oscar turned over to protect himself, Bloss stabbed his buttocks. Oscar flipped like a fish and fell on to the floor.

Bloss stepped back and caught his breath. In the same moment, the floodlights came on in the driveway and the doorbell rang. Oscar's eyes bulged and thin, thready sounds emerged from behind the duct tape. Bloss hit him across the temple with the gun and Oscar's eyes rolled to show the whites.

There was a moment when everything seemed to be held on a drawn breath, then Bloss left the room and went upstairs, moving fast but silently. The blonde was standing by a back-bedroom door: the master bedroom. She said, ‘Who?' He waved a hand to shut her up. Then he went into a bedroom that overlooked the front of the house and made a curving approach to the window so that he could see without being seen. Out in the street, people were singing carols, barely audible thanks to Oscar's double-glazing, a well-organized charity group with their accordion-player, their Santa hats and their antique lanterns. The doorbell rang for a second time. As he watched, a man and a woman, with lantern and collecting box, moved back from the front door of Oscar's house, pausing in the hope of getting a response, then turned and set off back towards the street. Bloss watched them down the drive and out on to the street. His laugh was almost silent,
huh-huh-huh-huh
. The blonde was behind him at the door. She said, ‘What?'

‘They've gone,' Bloss told her, and she moved away,
heading for the master bedroom and whatever she could find there.

When Bloss got back to the living room, Oscar Gribbin was on his feet, leaning heavily against a roll-top desk on the far side of the room. His trousers and shirtsleeves were dripping blood and he was shaking like a man with a fever. The handcuffs had restricted him and he'd worked hard to get the desk open and pull out the drawer above the writing-space in order to get the gun, a neat Smith & Wesson .38. He was holding it with his handcuffed hands, trying to support the barrel with his left while going for the trigger with his right, but his fingers were tangling.

There was no time to get across the room. Bloss shot Oscar, taking him lower and more to the side than he'd intended, putting the bullet between rib and hip. The force of the shot half turned Oscar and brought him to his knees, but he held on to the gun. Bloss got off a second shot as he crossed the room; it went to the side of the throat. Oscar was down now and fighting for breath; he heaved himself up on knuckles and knees like a sprinter taking to the blocks. Bloss stood over him and shot him in the back of the head. Oscar came unstrung; everything left him and he seemed to sink into himself.

Bloss kicked Oscar in the side, then in the thigh. He said, ‘
Bastard!
' Oscar was supposed to die that night, yes, but the weapon should have been the hammer. A gun broke the pattern. Bloss had needed the gun in order to be able to control the situation when he first walked in behind the blonde, but that was all. Now he'd had to use it and that made a mess of things.

He looked round and the blonde appeared as if on cue. She was wearing a full-length ranch mink and holding a diamond
bracelet. She put the aquarium between herself and Oscar like a child peeking at a scary TV show from behind a sofa. Trickles of blood seeped round the glass pillars.

Bloss joined her, still wearing the transparent contamination suit, which was slick with blood. He looked like something newborn. ‘Did you find what you were looking for?' he asked.

She held up the bracelet. ‘Wifey must have taken the rest of the good stuff with her.' She was speaking to Bloss but looking at Oscar, who was on the floor, legs spread, body arched. He looked like a skydiver braced against the wind. She said, ‘I have to get to the West End. There's a cabbie going to say he took me straight from the restaurant to a club. The doorman saw me go in an hour ago. Him and some friends.'

Bloss nodded. He said, ‘Billy set it up.'

‘That's right.'

‘Okay. I'm going to mess the place up a bit.' He took the hammer from his bag of tricks and moved a step or two away from her as if making for a further room, then swung round and hit her on the turn, laying the hammer sideways against her temple. She walked a pace or two, her knees buckling like a drunk's, and he hit her again. When she went down, he pulled her back to the aquarium and propped her against one of the glass stilts, then put the garrotte round both her neck and the stilt before taking up the slack with the steel bar. She seemed to leap as he put both hands to use on the bar. Her body shook and her heels rattled the floor. Her eyes popped and there was a sound in her throat like the sea dragging stones.