The 50/50 Killer Read online

  ‘Don’t do this, Colin.’

  ‘Two seconds.’

  He touched the knife to Karli’s cheek again. ‘One.’

  ‘Okay.’

  I relaxed my position and threw the pepper spray and baton off to one side. But I didn’t move. Every second needed to be spun out for as long as possible while I tried to think of a way to turn this round.

  ‘Now get out of the way.’

  Reluctantly, I stepped off the path. ‘You don’t want to talk to me any more?’

  ‘We’re finished.’ He moved closer, edging towards me. ‘I got more than I ever wanted from you.’

  The reference to Lise made my fists clench. But before I could say anything—

  Lights: flashing over us. Red and blue, sweeping across, casting pulsing shadows on the suddenly shifting house behind him. I kept very still. He stared over my shoulder for a moment, then looked back at me, his face full of anger. He pressed the knife into the crease of Karli’s neck.

  ‘It’s too late, Colin,’ I said. ‘You can’t get away.’

  ‘Shhhh,’ he whispered to Karli, not taking his eye off me.

  Behind me, I heard car doors opening. Quick voices.

  ‘Police!’

  The sound of elbows smacking down on bonnets. The crackle of radios. Footfalls. I didn’t need to turn round, and I didn’t dare. It was the sound of the armed unit assembling: spreading out, taking up position. I couldn’t see them, but I was immediately conscious of all the guns that were pointing at us. Barnes, a cop-killer.

  I held one arm up, my hand trembling, and shouted: ‘Detective Mark Nelson. Stay where you are!’

  If there was a clear shot, I half wished they’d take it, but I knew it was too much of a risk. He’d have time to use the knife. Even if they could get him, I didn’t want to think what would happen after that first shot had been fired: the volleys that might explode in its wake, with me and Karli in the firing line.

  Barnes was cradling the baby, nuzzling his head close to hers. He spoke quietly to her, his breath misting the air. ‘Shhhh, now.’

  ‘You can’t get away, Colin. Why don’t you put her down?’

  ‘Shhhh.’

  I glanced up at the brightly lit window above us, the blood there, and it sent a spike into my heart.

  ‘You’ve got everything you wanted.’

  ‘This is Detective Mark Nelson.’ Barnes spoke softly to the screaming baby, but his eye remained on me. He wanted me to see this happen. ‘Do you see him there? He should care about you but he doesn’t.’

  ‘You’ve got everything you wanted, Colin. What will this achieve?’

  Barnes blanked me. The expression on his face was settled. He’d made up his mind what he was going to do, and he was preparing himself. The anger had disappeared and there was something even more horrible in its place. Anticipation.

  ‘They’ll blow you apart, don’t you understand?’ I said.

  ‘I don’t care about that. I can take my harvest home with me.’

  Christ.

  The chill rippled through me again. Karli was twisting against him, but he held her strongly, clenching her with his broken hand. The police lights striped the contortions of her face.

  He whispered, ‘Mark should have been protecting you, but he decided it was worth you dying just to stop me leaving.’

  ‘Barnes, you’re—’

  ‘Shhhh,’ he repeated. ‘I know how bad it must feel.’

  ‘You’re—’

  ‘But this is what Mark always does. Do you see that?’

  You’re deluded. Of course he was. But in his head this all made perfect sense. He couldn’t get away, but he could steal one last thing to take with him. It didn’t matter that it was all based on an absurd pathology: to him it was real, so he was going to do this. There was nothing I could do to stop him. I looked from Karli’s face to his, and my heart fell away as he closed his eye. A smile flickered at his lips.

  ‘Colin—’

  —For the briefest of moments, it was as though I was somewhere else. Just a flash, but it hummed in my head, sensations spreading through me. The sound of the sea roared in my ears, and I clawed at the surface, but it dissolved beneath my arms. I was drowning and everything was blurred, but suddenly I caught smeared sight of the beach, a lifetime away in front of me, and as I went under I knew that he was there on the shore! Thank God! Oh God, he was okay.

  —and then I was looking at Barnes again. Even as I saw his arm tense, preparing to pull the knife across, to cut Karli’s throat, I just stared. Everything else around me faded out.

  You can do this.

  ‘Colin,’ I said, ‘I think you’ve made a mistake.’

  ‘Shhh.’ His voice was so quiet I could barely hear it. ‘It’s coming.’

  ‘You’re in more trouble than you realise. Can you feel it inside you?’

  He didn’t move his arm. It stayed tense and ready, a second away from moving. But he opened his eye and looked at me.

  ‘I can feel it, too,’ I said.

  ‘Can you?’

  ‘Not Karli.’

  I forced myself to look at his bruised chest and watched the way it rose and fell as he breathed. I tried to look hypnotised by it. And I smiled, as though what I was saying actually meant something. Empathy.

  ‘I gave you something in the hospital,’ I said.

  He nodded. ‘And I’m taking it with me.’

  I shook my head, still smiling. ‘You made a mistake, though. You took that into you, thinking that she hated me when she died, that she realised I didn’t love her enough to save her. It’s not true.’

  He stared at me. His expression hardened - almost imperceptibly, but it was there. Somehow I managed to stop my hand shaking as I gestured at his chest.

  ‘You know what she was thinking when she died, Colin?’ I said. ‘You know what you’ve got inside you? Because I do. She was thinking how much she loved me.’

  ‘No, she wasn’t.’

  His smile slowly disappeared. There was something else in his eye now. Was it the beginning of panic? He was thinking through the consequences of what I’d said, and I allowed myself to imagine it with him. It would be like a sliver of light slowly appearing in his chest. It had been lost amongst the darkness there, but now that I’d brought it to his attention it was beginning to grow. Now that he was aware of it, even if he didn’t entirely believe me, I was betting he wouldn’t be able to ignore it.

  I nodded. ‘She saw me on the beach and she was glad that I was safe. She didn’t want me to go back in after her.’

  ‘No.’

  But he could feel it. I saw it on his face. It was beginning to hurt him: to work its way through him, like shrapnel shifting inside.

  Had his arm relaxed slightly? I thought so. The knife had moved a little way from Karli’s throat. His hand was trembling.

  Press the fucker.

  ‘I’m sorry, Colin, but it’s true. That’s what you’ve got inside you now. It’s something you didn’t take account of, isn’t it?’

  His face had grown pale. He’d always been so painstaking, planning everything so carefully. So meticulous. Even the possibility that he’d made a mistake was too much for him. It spoiled everything.

  ‘The flipside of the sacrifice,’ I said. ‘That Lise didn’t want me to die for her.’

  His hand moved slowly down, until the knife hung at his side. I fought the urge to go straight at him. Instead, I glanced at his chest. He was breathing quickly and heavily, and I needed to drive it home.

  ‘I wonder how many more like that you’ve got in there?’

  His chest stopped moving. A second later, the knife fell to the ground, creating a whisper in the snow. He let out a faint noise. A moan.

  I held my hand up again and shouted as loud as I could, ‘Don’t shoot. Hold your fire!’

  I stared at Barnes for a moment. He was still looking right at me, but his face was blank, almost catatonic, as though his mind had shut itself down to e
scape from the horror he realised was there inside him. He needed to poison love before he took it from someone; the idea that he’d ingested something pure was unbearable.

  Karli was fighting against him, and he didn’t seem to have the strength to hold her, so I stepped forwards carefully, and I took her from him.

  His hand, empty now, fluttered uncertainly in the air. Then it went to his chest and he began to claw almost delicately at himself. Fresh blood from his injuries rolled down. Then, without warning, his legs went and he joined his knife on the ground, curling slowly into a foetal position, hugging himself.

  I stepped back, holding Karli tightly and looking down at her with something approaching disbelief. She was alive. Barnes was down. I seemed to be okay, too, although I only realised now how badly my heart was hammering. Christ, I was shaking.

  Footsteps behind me, pounding up the path, the garden.

  I looked up at the window, the cracked glass and the smears of blood. Eileen.

  ‘No!’

  Mercer came plunging past me.

  ‘What have you done to her? ’

  I caught sight of his face, full of desperation and fear and hatred, and before I could do anything he was on Barnes, half kneeling, half falling, his big hands grabbing at his head, his throat, pounding him, then gripping.

  ‘What have you done? ’

  I put Karli Reardon down and grabbed Mercer, but he shrugged me off: almost knocked me over, as though I was nothing to him. In grief and loss, he’d found the strength he’d appeared to lack all day, and he seemed enormous now: the physical embodiment of every emotion inside him, solid and unstoppable as a bear.

  ‘Stop him!’

  But the other officers had approached, forming a tentative half-circle round the front of the house. Their guns were all pointed towards the ground, double-handed grips. None of them made a move towards Mercer. They just stood and watched.

  He had Barnes by the neck and was pulling him up, slamming him down again. Still shouting, screaming, his entire body tensed in concentration on hurting the man. Barnes was as lifeless as a doll: he went where he was slammed, his head loose on his neck.

  I grabbed Mercer again, under one arm and up, getting him in a half-nelson, and I pulled back as hard as I could. He was like a boulder, dead weight. Smack, smack. Then there were other hands on him, the officers around me finally coming to my aid. I stepped back and let them. It took four to drag Mercer up and away, Barnes almost coming with him for a moment, and then they were strong-arming him down the path.

  For a moment, he continued screaming at them to let him go, but his words broke-down into incoherent sobs. I watched as he collapsed under the weight of them, and he simply knelt there in the snow, turned away from us, his hands covering his face.

  I looked down at Barnes. He wasn’t moving, and there was blood all over his face, his head. The snow beneath him was covered in smudges of crimson. I didn’t know whether that was from Mercer’s attack or his earlier injuries. I picked Karli up again. As I did so, the head of the armed unit came and stood beside me, looking down at Barnes.

  He blew out, then nodded to himself. ‘Mercer saved your life there. The bastard was going for you next.’ He stared at me for a second, so we were clear. ‘Just like he did for Andy.’

  I looked back at him. ‘You stupid fuck.’

  He shrugged. I passed him the baby, and he took her and walked off down the path. After I’d glared at his back for a few more seconds, I crouched beside Barnes and felt for a pulse. Then I felt some more. Fucking hell.

  A few metres away from me, Mercer was still on his knees. His sobs had disintegrated into nothing. I stared at him. Even with the circumstances as they were, he would surely go down for this.

  Dear Detective Sergeant Mercer. If you’ve found this note, you’ve made your choice.

  He’d made that choice all right, over and over again: his job over his wife. And now, too late, he’d done the opposite. I felt immense sorrow for him. Sympathy.

  Our job is to support him.

  I glanced up at the quiet, still house, at the blood on the window. Steeling myself. The first thing I could do to support him was go in there.

  ‘Make sure he doesn’t get in the house,’ I called.

  The officers just looked at me. But I guess we could all see that John Mercer wasn’t going anywhere for now.

  I stood up, taking a deep breath and thinking: deniability.

  The knife lay close to Barnes’s body.

  I reached down and, for what it was worth, I moved it closer.

  4 DECEMBER

  TEN MINUTES PAST DAWN

  7.30 A.M.

  Eileen

  Miles away, on the other side of the city, Eileen slept.

  The dream was the same one she’d been having earlier, before she was woken by Hunter’s phone call. In it, she drifted around the house, noting all the absences, the clothes missing from the wardrobe, the books from the shelves.

  Days ago, when she’d talked to John about it, she’d been concerned about him abandoning her - taking his things and leaving her on her own. Now, however, she understood what the dream had been telling her. The missing items didn’t belong to John; they were hers, and they always had been. Over the days to come, depending on how things went, the dream might well become reality. For now, as a start, she had simply abstracted herself. After she’d fixed the phone, Eileen had called Debra, and, as she’d expected, her sister hadn’t hesitated to pick her up.

  The dream drifted her into John’s study; and at this point she frowned in her sleep. There was something different in here; something about the dream wasn’t right. The room was impossibly frozen in the middle of a flurry of invisible violence. John’s papers had been torn off the wall and they hung in the air. Eileen stood in the middle of it all, looking in wonder at the pages suspended around her.

  Crack.

  She turned to the window and saw the starring and blood there. It was as though somebody had punched the glass in rage, injuring himself in the process. A second later, the blood smeared itself across the pane.

  Perhaps it was John: driven to anger upon realising what he’d lost. But that didn’t feel right, either.

  Her sleeping mind took her over to the computer desk. The note was where she had left it, and she looked down at it - then flinched as a mixture of blood and saliva appeared in the centre, spat there in disgust. John would never have done that. The unspoken logic of the dream told her that someone else was responsible, but she didn’t know who.

  Eileen picked it up carefully.

  The blood was unnerving, but it didn’t matter. It was only a dream, and she could remember exactly what the note said, because she’d deliberated over the words for so long. She settled a little. In her sleep, she looked at the piece of paper and read what her husband would read when he eventually returned home.

  All right, John. If this is what you need, I hope you’re happy.

  But you’ve lied to me and you’ve let me down. You couldn’t ring me when I asked you. You couldn’t even tell me the truth. I can’t describe how awful you’ve made me feel, but the worst of it is that I still love you and, because of that, I understand. It’s what’s most important to you, and so you have to do it. But understand that I can’t be here any more while you do it. And maybe not after.

  I’m safe and well. My sister is coming to pick me up. Please don’t contact me. I’ll be in touch in my own time.

  Love, always, E x x

  Asleep in her sister’s spare room, Eileen rolled over and stretched her arm out across the empty side of the bed. And finally, she dreamed of nothing at all.

  EPILOGUE

  The service was due to start at two o’clock, and I made sure I didn’t arrive early. I didn’t want to sit inside the main chapel. For one thing, there would probably be a lot of people attending, and I had no wish to take a seat from someone who had more right to be there than I did. For another, I’d been in two minds about attendin
g at all. Given what had happened, I’d thought I might feel strange and out of place.

  But there were things I was curious about, and in the end I’d bought a smart black suit and practically pulled myself out of the flat. Five to two found me parking up on a stretch of gravel across the road from the church. Christmas was only a few days away, but the weather had been calm since the events of two weeks before. It hadn’t snowed again since. Today, the air was cold and hard; the sky a crisp, clear blue. As I crossed the road, the tarmac glittered, even now retaining a sparkle of frost from the night just gone.

  I walked up the driveway by myself, the envelope in my hand. I hadn’t been sure about bringing that, either. I’d picked it up on the way out, but I didn’t know yet what I would do with it. Perhaps I would just carry it away again at the end of the service.

  There was a bitter breeze. It pressed ice against my face, and rolled my tie across my jacket.

  At the top of the drive, by the church, a line of black cars was parked. The procession had already arrived, the coffin been taken in. Groups of people, young and old, were gathering around the entrance, following the family and close friends who had gone inside. Others waited on the grass verges nearby, finishing cigarettes. Nobody was talking. Everyone seemed hunched around their thoughts and feelings, as though protecting them from the cold.

  A peaked stone archway led into the porch area of the church, with chapels to either side. The doorway to the left, the chapel where the service was taking place, was full of people, the one to the right less so. I moved that way. A video screen had been set up at the far end, so that the overflow could watch the service from there.

  I sat down in a pew at the back, by myself.

  ‘Jesus said, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live. And everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.”’

  The minister paused, pushing his glasses up his nose. Behind him, the choir, wearing plain white sheets, looked like candles, squat and unlit.