To Kill For Read online

‘I hope I’ve started a war. I hope you all die.’

  ‘Why, Joe?’ Eddie said. ‘Why would you do that? I know you. You don’t care about anyone. Why do you care about Cole? And Paget? Why destroy yourself like that for them?’

  I shrugged.

  ‘Why not? At least if I go down, you go down with me.’

  ‘Jesus, that doesn’t make sense.’

  ‘Doesn’t it? Did you know Dunham ordered my death?’

  Eddie’s eyes had narrowed now, and I could see a throbbing in his throat.

  I said, ‘They were waiting, your men. They had Cole in their sights, but they were waiting for me. Only then did they hit us.’

  Eddie’s hand flexed and tightened into a fist. He tried to smile through it, but he couldn’t quite get his mouth to work. He didn’t look at his boss. Instead, he shrugged.

  ‘You were in the wrong place. Simple as that.’

  ‘Yeah. It’s all so simple.’

  ‘Joe…’

  I turned back to Dunham.

  ‘Paget was buying your protection. But there was only one way you could give him protection: kill Cole, and kill me. That was the deal, wasn’t it?’

  ‘You’re in over your thick fucking head,’ Dunham said, the words coming slowly, darkly, sounding like echoes from a deep pit.

  ‘I wondered what your price was. When I realized Glazer was a copper, I thought it must be him that Paget was giving you. He’s a good contact, valuable. But he works vice, and you’re into bigger things. Glazer wouldn’t be anything to you. So, you were after something more. Couldn’t have been the drugs because they went to Carl. If not Glazer, if not the drugs, then something else.’

  Eddie pushed himself away from the wall.

  ‘Christ, Joe. Leave it, before it’s too late.’

  ‘It was too late a long time ago.’

  His hand clenched and unclenched. I looked at Dunham, straight into his cold flinty eyes.

  ‘I’ve seen the DVD.’

  His face froze.

  ‘What DVD?’ Eddie said, trying to sound casual.

  ‘You know what DVD. The bloke. Who is he?’

  Dunham looked like he’d stopped breathing.

  ‘Kill him, Eddie.’

  There was something here I wasn’t getting. Dunham was scared. That didn’t make sense. He shot a glance at Eddie. I looked at Eddie. His eyes were flicking from Dunham to me and back again. He didn’t understand it either. Then I knew.

  ‘You haven’t seen it, have you?’

  ‘Pack it in, Joe.’

  ‘You don’t have it. You can’t have. Sure. Paget would need something to hold back, otherwise you’d have killed him. So all of this shit – wiping me out, wiping Cole out, dealing with Cole’s nephew – all because you haven’t got that DVD, and you want it.’

  Eddie’s face was flat, his eyes cold. Here it was, the professional, pushing everything else out of his mind because a killer can’t afford to feel guilt, can’t afford to care. He was forcing it, though. We all knew it.

  ‘Do you know what’s on there?’ I said to him. ‘Did you know there’s a girl in the film? Huh? Do you know what he does to her?’ I pointed to Dunham. ‘He knows. Look at him.’

  ‘And you care?’ Dunham said to me.

  I glanced at the photo of Dunham’s daughter, smiling with Eddie in that sunny country garden.

  ‘Eddie might. Right, Eddie?’

  Eddie followed my gaze and quickly looked away. I saw it in his eyes then. He and Dunham were dealing with a cunt who destroyed children, and Eddie hated it. And that was what Dunham feared; that Eddie might not go along on this one, that he might draw a line, that he might, after all, care.

  I’d seen that look in Eddie’s eyes once before – only once. It was enough. I knew then where Paget was. I should have known before.

  ‘It’s just business, Joe,’ Eddie said, his voice tight. ‘You know that.’

  ‘Well, your fucking business is all a waste of time. I’ve got a copy. I can fuck you up if I give that copy to the law. Whoever that bloke is will go down and your power over him will go with it.’

  Dunham was standing now. His face was red.

  ‘Give us that fucking disc.’

  ‘You’d better give it to us, Joe,’ Eddie said.

  His voice was low and weary now. He was resigned to it. He sounded to me like he was damned, and knew it.

  ‘Can’t do it.’

  Eddie shook his head slowly.

  ‘We go back, Joe. Don’t do this. You don’t want to make an enemy of Vic.’

  ‘Fuck him and fuck you. You want to make a deal with Paget? With that cunt? Do you, Eddie?’

  ‘Joe, don’t do this.’

  ‘Shoot him,’ Dunham said. ‘Shoot him. He’s got a gun in a casino. Shoot him. The law won’t touch you.’

  ‘Vic—’

  There was sweat on Eddie’s brow.

  ‘Shoot him.’

  ‘You know what Paget is,’ I told Eddie. ‘You know what he’s done.’

  Dunham was breathing heavily through his mouth; his chest heaved. I wanted to rip his lungs out.

  ‘Shoot him.’

  ‘You know what he did to Brenda.’

  ‘Don’t.’

  Eddie looked at me, held me in his eyes.

  ‘Shoot him, Eddie. Now.’

  The room crackled.

  ‘Joe…’

  Dunham’s face was a mass of fury. I’d stopped breathing. Eddie was frozen, watching.

  We hung there, silent, waiting.

  Then Dunham blinked and I knew that he was going to murder me. He made a lunge for his desk drawer. I went for my Makarov but Eddie’s gun was in his hand before I made it.

  ‘Don’t do it, Joe. Wouldn’t want to use this.’

  My hand hovered. Every muscle in me, every sinew and pulse and throb was shouting at me, screaming to unleash the gun. I wanted Dunham gushing blood. I wanted him to suffer. But, behind all that, my mind told me to hold off. I knew that Eddie would drop me before I fired a shot. They had the advantage: we were in Dunham’s casino and Eddie had a licence for his piece and they knew people on the force. And I was in Dunham’s office with an unlicensed Makarov. Eddie could have unloaded into me and they would’ve claimed I was trying to rob the place. Nobody would have believed them, but that wouldn’t have mattered, they would still have got away with it. People like Dunham always got away with it.

  But.

  I pulled the Makarov from my waistband, and held it by my side. It was a stupid thing to do. Eddie’s finger was a millimetre from depressing the trigger. I felt like I was fighting my own body. The strain of holding back shook me. Eddie was steady, his feet firmly planted, properly spaced. He was in the marksman’s position, his left hand supporting the grip of his Beretta. I focused on his eyes. They were steady, and dangerous, but there was something else there, something I’d never seen from him, something I would never have expected. There was pain. It was a long way off, deep inside, but it was there.

  ‘Shoot him,’ Dunham shouted. ‘Fucking shoot him.’

  I tightened my grip on the gun. It felt a part of me, cold and hard like the hatred inside, itching to be let go, begging for freedom.

  ‘Don’t,’ Eddie said quietly.

  I heard him, but it was like my mind wasn’t working. Don’t, it said. Fuck you, my gun said.

  Don’t.

  Finally, my mind broke through, forced apart the hatred. I wanted Paget more than I wanted Dunham. If I was dead now, I couldn’t wipe Paget out. Dunham could wait. I let my muscles relax. I eased the Makarov back to my waistband.

  I turned to Dunham.

  ‘Cole’s outside. I don’t come out, he comes in.’

  ‘Bollocks.’

  ‘How do you think I got here? Half an hour ago I was in Barking dodging bullets. I got out. Cole got out. His men got out. We all got out and came here.’

  ‘Fuck Cole. Shoot him.’

  ‘You’re short-manned, Dunham, you’ve spread you
rself too thin. You’ve put your men in Barking, here, your house in the country. Cole’s got you outgunned.’

  ‘Shoot him.’

  Eddie hadn’t holstered his gun. He was still aiming it at me. Still a millimetre from putting a half dozen holes in me.

  ‘Shoot him. Or I’ll take your fucking gun and do it myself.’

  ‘Back off, Vic. I’ll handle this.’

  ‘Go on, Eddie. Shoot me.’

  ‘Shut up, Joe. Will you for God’s sake shut up.’

  Dunham slammed his fist on the desk.

  ‘We should have killed him from the word go, instead of trying to deflect him. Don’t fuck it up now. Shoot him.’

  ‘You can’t, Eddie. You can’t because if you do you’ll be as guilty as Paget, and that’s not in you.’

  Dunham said something, but I didn’t hear it. I don’t think Eddie did either. It wasn’t about Dunham now. It wasn’t really about Paget. Eddie’s gun was steady, but his insides were wavering, screaming at him.

  I said, ‘You can’t do it. There are people who care about you, Eddie. What would they think of you if they knew?’

  ‘Nobody cares about me, Joe.’

  ‘There’s someone you care about, though, isn’t there?’

  Sweat was running down his face. His eyes were scared.

  ‘Nobody cares about me,’ he said through gritted teeth.

  I could’ve said something, then, I suppose. I could’ve told Dunham what I’d seen on Eddie’s face when we’d passed Dunham’s wife. And what I’d seen on hers: the coldness, aimed at Eddie. Only a woman who knew a man was in love with her would do that.

  Instead, I nodded to the photo of Eddie and the girl.

  ‘That man can’t do it,’ I said.

  ‘And you, Joe?’

  ‘Me? I want Paget to pay.’

  ‘Why?’

  Why?

  Revenge? Was that it? And for what? For a woman who’d used me, clung to me because I was a monster in a monstrous world, because I had a reputation that could scare the people she was scared of, because I was violent and deadly, because I was useful? Was it for her, the woman I’d seen smile at me like a child smiling at its parent? Was it for Browne? Because he always had hope for me? Because he always had his lousy dying fucking hope for the world, sour as it was and mixed up with his hatred and burning Scotch? Or was it for Kid? Was it for that small thin girl, used and thrown out like something broken, as she had been?

  Was it for all of them? For any of them? Or was it, somehow, for me? For this lumpen thing, this battered and torn wall of muscle?

  I heard Dunham slump back in his seat. We’d forgotten about him. He didn’t matter.

  ‘I don’t know why,’ I said.

  ‘Not good enough. I know you, Joe. I know you. You don’t care about anyone. You always need a reason to risk your neck. What’s the reason, Joe? Why does this matter to you? Why the fuck would you stick your neck out for a dead woman?’

  It didn’t matter what I said. Eddie wasn’t asking me why I’d stick my neck out. He was asking me why he should. I didn’t have to answer him. The question was enough.

  Before I left, I turned to look at Dunham. I hadn’t known before how much he needed Eddie, how much he relied on him. Dunham looked then like what he was: an old man, hollow at the centre with a shell cracking under the weight; an old man whose fear of losing his power was the only thing that kept him desperately clinging to it.

  He sagged at the desk and stared at his cigarette, resting in the ashtray and burning away to nothing.

  I went out the back way and into the side street. At the end of the street were three cars. I got in the back of the front car. Next to me was Gibson. Cole was in the front passenger seat. I told him where Paget was. We pulled out.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  The weak sunlight seeped through the grey cloud cover and gave everything a dull light that was more night than day.

  We drove in silence. Cole looked lost in grim thoughts of betrayal and revenge. He stared out the window and barely seemed to care what we were up to.

  For men like Cole and Dunham power was their blood; it crawled around their bodies, filled their guts, their muscles. But it was a force that fed on itself – the more power they had, the more they wanted, the more they needed to keep down the others who wanted it. But, when it came down to it, it was all front; they died like anyone else. They had only as much power as people believed they had, and when, in moments like these, the mask slipped, the power slipped too. Cole’s nephew had betrayed him, he’d been stupid, had been set up like a mug and almost wiped out. His mask was falling off. Now, staring out the window, he looked old, like Dunham.

  When we went through the village, we drove more slowly until I could work out where we were. After a few minutes, I saw the high long brick wall with its iron spikes like teeth. I told the driver to stop. We were still a few hundred yards from the security gate.

  Cole turned to me.

  ‘What do we do?’ he said. ‘Can we rush the place?’

  ‘No. His men’ll be looking for us. There’s a security gate up ahead. Even if we get past that, there’s a hundred yards of clear ground before we get to the house. We’d be out in the open for too long.’

  Gibson said, ‘How do we get in?’

  ‘We don’t. I do.’

  I expected Cole to put up a fight about that. He’d wanted Paget for himself and I was taking that away from him. But he didn’t argue. He didn’t seem to care. He said, ‘Tell me what to do.’

  ‘Over the far side the wall is close to trees. I’ll get over that way. You hit the front gate with everything. They’ll send men to reinforce it and I’ll slip in the back. I’ll need a car to take me there, round the back way.’

  ‘Why the car?’ Gibson said. ‘We don’t want to split our forces.’

  ‘The wall’s too high for me to climb. I’ll need to stand on the top of the car and jump over. When I’m over, the car can come back to you. Then you attack.’ Cole stared ahead. ‘You hear me?’

  ‘When the car comes back, we attack.’

  ‘Right. When I hear you, I’ll head for the house.’

  I got out of Cole’s car and into the rear one. I told the driver what to do and he turned around and followed the wall for a few minutes. When I could see trees overhanging the top of the wall, I told him to get as close to the wall as he could. He parked and I got out and climbed onto the roof. I was still short of the top of the wall, and those spikes were going to make it difficult to get over. I got the two men out of the car and onto the roof. I told them to boost me up higher. They muttered and sweated and cursed my weight, but they got me up high enough so that I could reach the branches of the oaks overhanging the wall. There was a squeak, then, from behind us and we turned to see a teenager on a bike, paper bag over his shoulder. He slowed and gaped up at us. One of the men underneath me said, ‘We’re pruning the trees.’

  The kid cycled away from us fast. I reached up and took hold of the thickest oak limb. It was damp and slippery with some kind of slime. I couldn’t get a hold. I tried a thinner branch. It bent under my weight but it was strong enough. I moved along, hand over hand, lifting my legs over the metal spikes. I dropped down and tried to do a parachute landing that I hadn’t done in over thirty years. I hit the firm ground hard and it knocked the wind out of me. I rolled over onto my back and lay there, knowing I was too old for this stuff, knowing that I was on a fool’s errand, knowing I was dumb, wondering why the fuck I was bothering.

  I heard the car start up and drive off. After that it was quiet. Above me, the bare branches rattled in a slight wind and looked like cracks in the sky. Crows, silent, sat and watched me, waiting to feed on my guts.

  The sky slid slowly along like a slick of oil on filthy water, like the wasted hours of a wasted life, like Browne’s hopeless hope, like the smile in Brenda’s face when she remembered something she’d seen, like my chances to help her, like the world, a mass of people caught
in that oil, like me, crawling somewhere, anywhere.

  Fuck.

  My head was clear for once, like the icy air that stung my eyes; clear, now that I wanted it to be dull and far off; clear, now that I wanted to murder and hide the deed in murk. My bastard head, clear, setting it all before me, crisp and cold: my failures; my debts unpaid. Yes, it was all clear.

  Then I heard a far-off crash. Cole had rammed the gate. There was another crash. The world had slid on.

  I got up and moved forward through the trees, stopping short of the open grass. From where I stood, I could see the back of the house. There was fifty yards of open ground. There was a swimming pool there that I hadn’t known about, tables and chairs around it. Beyond that, French windows that opened onto a patio.

  There was another crash at the front gate. Lights came on in the house and the front door opened. Two men ran from the house, weapons at the ready. There were shouts from somewhere. The crackle of automatic fire carried on the thin cold air.

  I pulled my Makarov. I looked around once more. There was nobody my side of the house. I moved, running straight for the patio.

  The French windows were locked. I moved along the wall, trying other windows as I went. It was the kitchen door that let me in. Someone had left the key in the lock on the inside.

  I used the butt of my gun to break the glass, my jacket muffling the sound. I opened the door slowly and stepped in, crunching glass. I closed the door and stood a moment, listening. I heard nothing except clatter of gunfire that sounded far off now. I moved through the kitchen and into the gloomy, curtained dining room. Light came from somewhere beyond the open doorway. I neared the light and stopped again. I’d heard something. The stairway was to my right. A creak had sounded there. I stayed in the dim doorway.

  A ghost passed me and I caught a smell of creamy flowers, like the kind of smell Brenda’s face lotions had. It was Dunham’s wife. She wore a thin white nightdress that flowed around her like mist. She stopped a couple of feet from me, as if she’d sensed something. I held my breath. She turned slowly. For a moment, she saw me and did nothing, didn’t even breathe, and I thought she was going to turn away and walk off into the night, disappear like that mist surrounding her. And then her eyes widened and her neck muscles tightened and I knew she was going to scream her head off. I flung out my hand and grabbed her by the throat and pulled her into the dining room. She thrust her hands up to mine, trying to claw them off. Her nails dug in deep, and she scraped, and all the while she was doing this I was lifting her off the ground and her feet were kicking my legs, scrambling for a hold. I pulled her close to me.