Killing Mum_Kindle (9 page)

The little fucker.
Carlos clambered out of the van, feet thudded on the ground when he landed.

"Get back in your car,
M
ama
," he said.

"Charlie?"

Carlos rubbed his forehead.

Jordan gave Carlos's mother his torch.
Take a look
.

"Don't do that."

"Let go of me."

Carlos let go of her and she stepped into the van. He grabbed Jordan's arm, steered him away.

"Why are you doing this?" Carlos whispered.

You know what you have to do.

"What the fuck are you saying?"

You haven't worked it out yet?

"The fuck do you mean?"

Your mother.
She was the one.

"The one?
You mean the one who set herself up? Like fuck she was."

Who else could it have been?

"Could have been anybody."

You don't believe that, though. If you did, you wouldn't have planned what we've done tonight.

"I didn't fucking plan —"

Yeah, yeah, it got a bit fucked up. But you planned on finding out the truth.

"I hoped."

You've just succeeded.

"Suppose I believed you. Why would Mum take out a contract on herself?"

To see how far you would go.

"She didn't know what I did. She had no idea."

Yes, she did.

"How would you know?"

Jordan waited a moment.
Maybe I told her.

"You don't know her."

Maybe I found out about her.

"How?"

Not so hard.

Carlos thought about the
Glock
he'd tossed into the front of the van. He shone his torch at Jordan's face, made him blink. "Why would you go to the trouble?"

Squinting.
Because I thought she should know.

"Nah," Carlos said. "I don't believe you. She was shocked when I told her what I did. She wasn't faking it."

Don't believe me. I don't care. But maybe it's the truth.

"What's the truth?" Carlos's mother said. She stretched out her arms, a gun in each hand. "You shouldn't leave dangerous weapons lying around."

"Mum," Carlos said. "You want to put those down."

"When I'm ready," she said. "They're loaded, I know. I checked. Maggie's dead, Charlie. I really didn't think you'd do it."

"It's not her."

"Charlie."

"It was an accident.
Sort of."

"God knows I didn't have a lot of love for her and she certainly had none for me. But, bloody hell, you killed somebody.
And not just somebody.
You killed your wife."

Carlos looked at Jordan. "Tell her what happened."

Well
, Jordan said and started to explain about the police car and Bob and how Maggie had run away and how Carlos had shot her.
In the leg
, he said.
And twice in the body.

"You little fuck," Carlos said. To his mum: "He's lying. He's the one who shot her."

"Make sense, Carlos," she said.

"He's thirteen years old. He thinks
it's
fun. That's why he's lying."

"God help you, Carlos."

"I know what
it's
like to be thirteen.
Doesn't take much."

Fuck you
, Jordan said.
You know what it's like?
he
spat.
Just like you know how I feel? Fuck you.
Second half of payment on completion of job.
Right, Charlie?
His arm shot out and there was a crack and a flash and Carlos's mother fell to the ground.
Think I wouldn't carry a spare?
He laughed.
I knew you'd get me some piece of shit.

Carlos switched off his torch, dropped, rolled towards his mother and scrabbled about for one of the guns. His hand touched grass and earth and fabric and skin and something wet and sticky. He retched, just bile, swallowed it down, the taste lingering on his tongue.

He heard Jordan coming towards him.

Carlos's fingers traced down his mother's arm, to her hand.
Empty. But right next to it he touched something metal. He grabbed it.
Rolled.
Turned on the torch.

Jordan was bearing down on him, gun pointed right between his eyes.

Just before Carlos squeezed the trigger, the smell of petrol hit him, and he wondered if there was some on the gun. He wondered if it would light up, the petrol on it igniting. Flames would spread over his hand, a fiery glove. He could feel it blistering his flesh.

But the gun fired its bullet and didn't burst into flames. Still, his hand felt like it was being held inches from a raging coal fire.

***

Carlos scanned the ground, sweeping the light around in arcs. He spotted the petrol-soaked t-shirt and lobbed it in the van.

He struck a match with his good hand, let it burn, then when the flame had taken hold, he tossed the match onto the t-shirt. The petrol ignited straight away. It was tempting to stay and watch it burn. He had to go, though.

He picked up his mother, slung her over his shoulder.

He ran halfway towards the road before he had to stop for breath. His thighs felt like someone was digging about in them with razor blades.

He looked over his shoulder. Flames leapt into the air. Somebody would spot the fire eventually, get the fire brigade out. But Carlos and his mother would be long gone by then.

They had to go home, get some sleep.

***

He sat his mother up in the car.
Fastened her seat belt.
The key was in the ignition, or he'd have been fucked.

"Didn't exactly go according to plan, Mum," he said. "Let's get you home.
You comfortable?"

I'm fine,
he heard her say.

***

He tried not to make too much noise as he entered the house.
Didn't want to wake up
whatsherface
, the babysitter.
But it was hard going. His mother was the wrong kind of shape.

He was stinking like a monkey with all the sweat, and the skin on his burnt hand was stinging as the sweat popped through the tender pores. He needed to put something on it. And he would, just as soon as he'd got his mother to bed.

He was dog-tired, his adrenaline spent. He'd shower in the morning.

He laid his mother on the floor while he worked out where to put her.

He opened the sitting room door, peeked inside. The babysitter was on the couch, snoring,
a
harsh rattle. Maggie had told her she could use the spare room. The girl must have fallen asleep where she was. He wouldn't disturb her now. It was handy, in fact. He could put his mother in the spare room.

The door shut softly and he crept back along the hallway.
Had to be careful.
Wasn't just the babysitter he didn't want to wake
up.
Didn't want to wake Sofia either.
He gently pushed open the door to her room.
Stepped inside.
His daughter was snoring too. Ever so lightly, though. Like wind in the trees.

She sounds like you.
Maggie's voice, right behind him, her hand on his arm.
She squeezed.

"She'll be awake in a couple of hours," he whispered.

Let's take her to bed.

"Don't wake her. Not now." He bent over the cot, smelled the baby sweetness of Sofia's warm head.
Kissed her brow.
Six months old and he still couldn't believe it. Here lay this little person who would one day call him Daddy.

Come on,
Maggie said.
We need to get your mother tucked in.

***

He ought to have slept soundly—he was tired enough—but sleep wouldn't come. He enjoyed lying there,
though,
Maggie curled up against him, his baby across the room on the other side of the bed.
Pair of them snoring in harmony.
Everybody in the house snoring apart from him.

Enjoyed, that is, apart from the images that kept flashing into his head.

Nightmare images.
Bob, his thick fingers wrapped around a gun.
Maggie dead, a hole in her side.
His mother dead, gunshot.
So vivid that he put on the light at one stage to check that Maggie was there. She vanished when he turned on the light. He went cold all over for a moment, but it was okay, because he thought of turning off the light and when he did so she came back right away. She told him to go check on his mum. He went through to the spare room and his mum was sound asleep.

He tried to squeeze the unpleasant images out of his head. They were making him sweat.
Making a speeding drumbeat of his heart.
And yet when he turned on the light once again, it was enough to soft-focus everything, enough to cushion his brain, enough to skew reality but not so you'd notice straight away. But not for long before he felt the loss of Maggie and he snapped the light off again.
A cold fire in his veins.

Maybe there was a gas leak.

Maybe it was the petrol.

His brain was going to rip apart.

Fuck it. There was nothing to worry about.

Forget it. Go to sleep. Listen to the girls snoring.

Forget about the fact you still don't know who wanted your mother dead.

It was Jordan.
Had to be.
He'd quoted the letter, almost verbatim.
Called him Charlie, taunting him.
Carlos was as sure as he could be.

But he didn't know for sure and it made him think. Made him worry about what it might mean if it hadn't been Jordan, or Maggie, or his mother. He wasn't accustomed to worrying.

Anxiety.
Was that it? Was he having an anxiety attack? Maybe he should get out of bed, turn on the computer. Look it up, see if the symptoms were—no. That wasn't it. He hadn't experienced any shortness of breath, no pain in the chest. He hadn't felt faint.