Die Twice (3 page)

More than once I'd felt like taking him up on the offer.

It was getting close to eleven o'clock when I got home that night, home being a rented one bedroom flat at the southern end of Islington, not too far from City Road. The first thing I did was take a long hot shower to wash the cold out of my bones, before pouring myself a decent-sized glass of red wine and settling down on the lounge sofa.

I turned on the TV and lit a cigarette relaxing properly for the first time that day. I took a long slow drag, enjoying the fact that a potentially hazardous job had been completed successfully, and flicked through the channels until I found a report on the killings. It didn't take long. Murder's a numbers game. Kill one person and you barely make the inside pages. Kill three, especially in a public place, and it's big news. It adds a bit of excitement to the mundane grind of people's lives, even more so when it bears all the hallmarks of a so-called gangland shooting. Shootings are entertaining because they're not too personal. They make good conversation points.

Understandably, details were still very sketchy. The programme I was watching had a young female reporter on the scene. She looked cold but excited to be involved in what was potentially a meaty, career-enhancing story. It was still raining, only now it had turned into that light stuff that always seems to soak you more. She'd positioned herself in the rear car park and you could make out the Cherokee in the background about twenty yards away, behind reams of brightly coloured scene-of-crime tape. There were a lot of police and forensic staff in lab coats swarming all over it.

The report didn't last long. The girl confirmed that three people had been murdered – no idea as to identities – and speculated that they'd been shot. She then wheeled over the hotel's deputy manager, a tall, spotty young man who looked like he'd just got out of school, for his comments. They weren't, it has to be said, very enlightening. Squinting through his spectacles, he explained that he'd been working in the reception area when he'd heard a number of faint popping sounds (they all say that) coming from the rear car park. He'd thought nothing more of it but then one of the kitchen workers had come running in screaming and shouting that there'd been a murder. He, the deputy manager, had bravely gone out to investigate and had immediately discovered my handiwork, which was when he'd called the police. ‘It was very shocking for all of us,' he told the reporter. ‘You don't expect this sort of thing in a quiet area like this.' They all seem to say that as well.

The reporter thanked him before turning back to the camera and breathlessly promising further information as and when she received it. She then signed off, and it was back to the studio. It seemed I'd made her night anyway.

I took a drink of wine, taking my time swallowing it, and switched over. There was a programme about great white sharks on the Discovery Channel, and I sat watching that for a while, not really paying too much attention. Although I tried to empty my mind of the day's events, it was difficult not to think about the murders. I suppose it was only now that the full enormity of what I'd done was beginning to sink in. Three lives snuffed out, just like that. It felt like I'd crossed a threshold. I've killed before, I suppose that's obvious by now, but only twice, and in vastly different circumstances.

The first time was twelve years ago. I'd been one of a number of armed officers who'd turned up to a domestic incident at a house in Haringey. A man was threatening his common-law wife and their two young children with a gun and a carving knife. They'd got people trying to negotiate with him over the phone but the guy was drugged up to the eyeballs, shouting incoherently, and they weren't really getting anywhere.

Siege situations are the most frustrating a police officer can get involved in. You've got very little control over events so you can never really relax an inch, just in case something happens. But more often than not, nothing does. The suspect mulls over his actions, finally works out that he's trapped and that he's not going to get out of there except in handcuffs or a box, and eventually releases his hostages and simply walks out the door. It's frustrating because you want to be doing something to help end the situation, yet in most ways you're pretty much irrelevant to it.

On the day of the Haringey siege I remember it was hot. Stiflingly hot. We'd been on the scene about an hour and had the place completely surrounded when, without warning, our hostage taker had suddenly appeared in the front window, naked from the waist up, holding his gun. He was a big guy with the beginnings of a pot belly and a tattoo of an eagle straddling his chest. He'd shouted something from behind the glass, then opened the top part of the window and stuck his head out, shouting something else unintelligible. I was ten yards away behind a car on the street. Another officer was crouched down beside me. He was about fifteen years older than me and his name was Renfrew. I remember he got pensioned off a couple of years later after he got a glass in the face trying to break up a pub fight. Renfrew cursed the guy under his breath. You could tell he wanted to shoot him. Why not? The guy was just a waste-of-space dope-head who caused a lot more harm to the world than good. But Renfrew was a pro and, like a lot of coppers, he had one eye on the pension, so he was never going to do anything that might jeopardize his career. I was still a bit idealistic in those days. I didn't think about the pension. I thought about the wife and kids stuck in there with an unpredictable maniac.

I'd had an earpiece on. The chief superintendent spoke into it. Don't fire, he said. We're still negotiating. Keep him in your sights, but don't fire.

Then, just like that, our target had brought the gun up and pointed it wildly towards us. The chief superintendeant hissed something else into my earpiece, but I didn't hear it. It looked like the suspect was going to pull the trigger. I knew he wouldn't hit me from where he was standing. I had good cover, and he looked too stoned to aim straight, but I was still nervous. And angry. This bastard was just showing off his power, knowing we'd have to stand there like lemons, hamstrung by our limited rules of engagement. That got me, it really did.

So I'd fired. Two shots from the Browning. Straight through the window and into his upper body. One of them got him in the heart, but the autopsy confirmed that either of the bullets would have been fatal on its own. He died instantly, I think. Certainly before anyone could administer first aid.

I was offered psychological counselling and I took it because I was told that if I didn't, it would look like I didn't care that I'd killed a man. It didn't do me much good, mainly because I genuinely didn't care that I'd killed him. In fact, I was quite pleased. He'd wanted to kill me and I'd got in there first. But of course I didn't tell the counsellor that. I told him I deeply regretted having to take a life, even if it was in the line of duty. I guessed that was what he wanted to hear.

There was an inquest, and I was forced to give evidence. There was even talk about a criminal trial, especially when it was discovered that the gun he'd been holding was a replica, and I was suspended for close to two months, although that at least was on full pay. On the second day of the inquest, I was leaving the building by a side door when I ran into the common-law wife and her brother. She spat in my face and called me a murderer while the brother punched me in the side of the head. A uniformed officer intervened before things went any further, but the incident taught me two things. One, never rely on the support of people you're trying to help. As politicians have often found out to their cost over the years, the hand that pats you on the back one day can just as easily grab you by the balls the next. And two, never rely on anyone else for support either. In this world, you've got to get used to the fact that, in the end, you're always on your own.

No blame was ever officially attached to me over the killing of thirty-three-year-old Darren John Reid (who, it turned out, had a grand total of twenty-nine convictions, including eleven for violence, four of which related to his missus), but it might as well have been. I was taken off any further firearms duties (and have been to this day); banned from keeping guns privately; and my path up the career ladder slowed down one hell of a lot over the next few years. Crime, it seems, only pays when you're a criminal.

I'm not a bad man, whatever those who like to sit in judgement may think. When I started out I really did believe I could make a difference. My sole motivation was to take the bad guys off the street and bring them to account for the crimes they'd committed. After the Reid shooting, I slowly stopped caring. I suppose I finally realized what all defence lawyers know: however well intentioned its designers may have been, the law in practice only serves to help the criminal, hinder the police, and ignore the victim.

Having got to a point when I was as cynical as that it was only a matter of time before I fell in with the wrong company. The wrong company being, in my case, about as wrong as you can get, although when I first started doing business with Raymond Keen, one of North London's more colourful entrepreneurs, I wasn't to know quite how far it would go.

I've had a business relationship with Raymond for about seven years now. At first it wasn't too serious; nothing like that ever is. Just a few tips here and there, a helpful advance warning of impending police action, a sale of the odd bit of dope that went missing from police custody. Small things, but like cancerous lumps, small things that inevitably grow bigger. I wasn't even that surprised when two years ago he asked me to kill a bent businessman who was refusing point blank to pay him the twenty-two grand he owed him. The businessman was a nasty piece of work. One of his sidelines was importing kiddie porn. Raymond offered me ten grand to get rid of him. ‘It'll strike a blow for creditors everywhere,' he'd said, although I wasn't quite sure how many creditors would follow his example and write off their debts with that degree of permanence. But ten grand's a lot of money, especially when you're on a copper's wage and, once again, he wasn't the sort of bloke anyone was going to miss. So one night I waited for him outside the lock-up he used. When he came out and walked over to his car, I emerged from the shadows and followed. As he opened the door, I pushed the silencer against the back of his hairless head and pulled the trigger. One shot was all it needed, but I added a second for good measure. Pop pop. All over. And I was ten grand richer. It was very easy.

But three men dead in one go? Danny was right, there was going to be a lot of heat over this one, although Raymond, who was the instigator of the whole thing, didn't appear too worried that any of it would get back to him. But then Raymond wasn't really the worrying type – which, I suppose, in his line of business, is something of a plus.

It was getting late. I drained my wine, drank a glass of water from the tap so that I didn't dehydrate myself, and made my way to bed. Looking back now, I already had a bad feeling about the whole thing but I was trying hard not to admit it to myself. Raymond Keen had paid me forty grand for killing those men. It was a lot of money, even after Danny had got his 20 per cent cut. Enough to justify a lot of things.

But nothing like enough to justify what was to follow.

3

Things started going downhill at exactly ten past eight the next morning. I'd been up for about twenty minutes and was in the kitchen making myself some toast for breakfast when the landline rang. It was Danny, which was a bit of a surprise. I hadn't expected to hear from him today. He sounded agitated.

‘Dennis, what the fuck's going on?'

‘What the fuck's going on what?'

‘Have you not seen the news this morning?'

I experienced the first stirrings of fear in my gut. ‘No. No, I haven't. What's the problem?'

‘The targets, that's the problem.'

‘What do you mean?'

‘They weren't who you said they were, Dennis. Just switch the TV on and you'll find out.'

I paused for a moment, trying to collect my thoughts. This wasn't what I wanted to hear. The most important thing, though, was not to say too much over the phone. ‘All right, listen. Sit tight, don't worry about anything. I'll check things out and call you back later.'

‘This is bad, Dennis. Very bad.'

‘I'll call you back later, OK? Just stay calm and carry on as normal.'

I rang off and immediately looked around for my cigarettes. I needed to think things through, to try to locate what the fuck had gone wrong.

When I'd found them, I lit one, went through to the sitting room and flicked on the TV. I didn't hang about, I went straight to the news channel, but they were already on to something else. So I flicked on Ceefax, unable to suppress the feeling of dread at what I was going to see. I knew it was going to be bad, it was just a case of how bad.

It was the top story. Unlike the other stories, the headline was in bold block capitals, telling even the most shortsighted viewer that this was big news.

I had committed these three murders for Raymond Keen. Raymond had told me that the men were drug dealers, violent drug dealers, who were causing some associates of his serious trouble. But the headline staring back at me wasn't saying that at all. It was saying, TWO CUSTOMS OFFICERS AND ONE CIVILIAN GUNNED DOWN OUTSIDE HOTEL.

For a couple of seconds, I had this irrational idea that I'd opened fire on the occupants of the wrong Cherokee, but a couple of seconds was all I needed to scupper that particular one. I'd shot the people I was meant to shoot all right. Raymond Keen had set me up. For whatever reason, he'd wanted these men out of the way and had duped me into killing them. He knew that if he told me they were violent criminals whose business was supplying the masses with hard drugs, I'd have no problem pulling the trigger.