Consequence (26 page)

“One million is a lot, someone would have to have pictures of him having anal sex with the pope whilst fingering the Queen to ask for so much.”

“I thought about that too,” Richards agreed. “What about a hit?”

“A hit?”

“He could have been paying to have someone killed.”

“Dodgy location to meet a hitman who asks for a million a head. And who in Price’s life would be worth killing for that amount of money? He’s a business man, and a good family man,” Phillips paused and stopped putting the money into the cases.

Richards noted this strange act and shot him a quizzical glance, “What?” he asked.

“Nothing,” he paused, “I don’t think, it’s just--” another pause and an effort to bring forth a memory.

“Just what?” Richards wanted to know.

“Well, when I was speaking to him,” he said slowly, still recollecting the moment. “He was acting a little
more
than strange.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, at first I didn’t thought anything of it. I thought he was hyped up on drugs. I mean he was shaking, his eyes were black and when I shook his hand I got a handful of sweat, weird at the time but when we found the money it all clicked that he was on drugs, only he kept mentioning his daughter...” Phillips looked at his friend. “He said he just wanted her to be safe, he wanted her back.”

They looked at the piles of money simultaneously.

“You don’t think...”

“He was nervous, tired, a little scared. It wasn’t drugs, and the money--” he paused and bit his bottom lip.

“Ransom,” Richards blurted, he felt like he had a brick lodged in his oesophagus, his words came through his throat as a harsh, barely audible gurgle. He found it hard to swallow.

“
Holysweetfuckingmotherofgod,
” Phillips cried softly. A note slipped from his grasp, he watched it float to the floor where it settled on the upturned duffel bag which still bore mud stains from the park. “We’re fucked.”

86

All hospitals stink of death. The stench clings to fabrics and walls; it’s everywhere and it’s unavoidable. The smell is always overshadowed by a sickly, lemony antiseptic odour, but beyond that, death lurks; poking through the walls, hanging around the wards, lying beside the patients and grasping in hope at the visitors.

Howard Price hated hospitals, but the smell was just one of the reasons. He had seen his father die in hospital. He had also watched the slow demise of his grandfather as a child, a memory that had stayed with him through the years.

The hollow halls, the echo of unseen footsteps, the brightly painted, spacious walls and the spreading sickness -- he hated it all. He had only been to his local hospital twice since his move to the countryside. The first time he was forced to go by the doctor who wanted to use the hospital equipment to run some detailed health checks; the second time was two years ago, he had been playing football with Lisa and she had taken an awkward tumble, fracturing her arm.

This time -- his third time -- was for Lisa again. Detective Inspector Brown drove him there, an awkward journey of silence and pity, fragmented by heavy breaths and sighs as the detective tried and failed to start a conversation or offer any words of consolation.

As they walked through the front doors Howard wasn’t in the mood for cringing as the stench hit him like a brick. He barely even noted the numbers of people walking around the halls: nurses, doctors, patients in gowns, injured people waiting to be examined and numerous visitors.

He caught the eye of one small girl who was playing in the empty halls with another youngster. She smiled at him and he returned the gesture with tears in his eyes.

Detective Brown walked through the swing doors of the morgue and ushered Howard inside. Shaking, tears still in his eyes, Howard slowly moved forward, walking into the wall of cold as his shoes tapped the blue tiles of the morgue floor.

The doors swung shut behind him, the room was blanketed by a deathly silence. Death, unsurprisingly, was a pungent force in the air.

He paused, his feet rooted to the spot, his body didn’t want to move. He didn’t know if his daughter lay in that very room, minutes from now his world could crash down on him.

Elizabeth had been asleep when he left the house. He had taken a quiet walk upstairs, sobbed gently over her sleeping figure, kissed her softly on the forehead and then left.

He didn’t want her here, her tearful, sorry self would only make him more melancholic. He realised that he was probably being selfish, but he didn’t want her to have to see her own daughter lying dead on a cold plate.

How he would break the news to Elizabeth if it
was
Lisa hadn’t crossed his mind. He didn’t want to imagine a world where his daughter had been murdered and he was the one who had to break the news to her mother.

“Just over here Mr Price,” the detective stood beside him, both men were still. Brown was pointing down a corridor in the long room where a man in a white jacket stood over a slab near a child-shaped sheet.

Howard nodded, feeling somewhat unstable he managed to walk to the white coated man.

His face was sombre and sorrowful, and -- like Detective Brown had done at the house -- he tried to smile at Howard, offering his sympathies in expression without actually holding his gaze for more than a few seconds.

The sombre face of the man in the white coat, the placid face of the detective and the black-eyed, depressed face of Howard Price all looked down at the sheet. The body underneath looked unbelievably small and fragile.

With a nod from the detective the mortician reached out his hands and grasped the top of the sheet. Howard found himself subconsciously grabbing the detective’s arm.

The mortician lowered his head and slowly pulled back the white sheet to unveil the beautiful, cold staring face of Lisa Price.

Howard loosened his grip on the detective’s arm and collapsed in an explosion of sorrow. His legs turned to jelly at the sight, his mind whirled and he crashed to his knees. Crying loudly he wrapped his arms around the cold head of his little girl. He stroked her hair, he kissed her, and he spoke to her with rivers of tears streaming down his face.

She was gone, he had lost his daughter. Only now did the realisation fully strike him.

He’d never felt so much pain.

87

“Wouldn’t something like this be on the news?” Michael Richards paced the floor of the flat. The television blared in the background. The channels, along with the internet news sites, had already been fully scoured.

“Obviously not,” Phillips replied as the current news program was concluded with a minor piece on recycling.

“Wouldn’t the police have been there?” Richards questioned again, his tone filled with worry. “They should have been watching the park, keeping tabs on Price and what not.”

“Maybe.”

“There could have been fucking marksmen on the roofs of the local houses,” he worried.

“You’ve been watching too many movies.”

“But it still happens right? A high profile kidnapping like this, the armed response unit would be all over.”

“Maybe,” Phillips repeated unsurely.

“What if we were caught on camera? Maybe the area was rigged; they could have been tracking us to this very location. They have the equipment to do that sort of thing right? What with all this satellite bullshit.”

“Maybe,” Phillips muttered for a third time.

“How could this happen anyway? What happened to the real kidnappers? Aren’t they supposed to have been nearby, checking out the area?”

Phillips shook his head in a defeated manner, “Look Mickey,” he began tiredly. “I don’t have a fucking clue okay? I can honestly say I’ve never kidnapped anyone before, this is all new to me.”

“This is not a time for jokes.”

“If we can’t laugh when we find a million quid when
can
we laugh?”

“That money is not ours.”

“None of the money in this flat is ours,” Phillips reminded his partner in crime. “In fact, if you want to look at it that way, this
flat
isn’t even ours. Neither is the house, the car
or
the clothes on our backs. We’re fucking criminals Mickey; everything we own originates from someone else’s bank account.”

“But we’re not kidnappers,” Richards asserted.

“We didn’t kidnap anyone.”

Richards held his stride in the middle of the room and stared at his friend. “We took the money Johnny,” he said sternly. “Then we beat him up and escaped the scene. We didn’t kidnap anyone but I can guarantee we’ll be prime fucking suspects.”

“They have no proof against us.”

“What about that!” Richards gestured to the two cases on the floor and the notes still scattered around them -- the job of unloading the money hadn’t been finished.

“So we stole a bag, big deal. Petty theft that’s all.”

“And assault,” Michael Richards remembered.

“We’ll get a warning and a fine.”

Richards nodded and calmly took a seat beside his friend on the sofa, both turned their attentions to the money on the floor.

After a long thoughtful silence Michael Richards spoke slowly, almost in a trance, “If we hand over the money, we’ll get away with minor charges,” he said.

Phillips nodded.

They both continued to stare lustfully at the money, it seemed to call to them. In Phillips’s eyes he saw the money being transformed into the betting shop of his dreams. He saw all his plans for high paying cons being pulled off. He saw expensive cars, crates of champagne, big houses and loose women. He saw the life he had strived to achieve since he was a teenager.

Richards’s mind circulated with the same ideals. They would only need a small amount of the stolen money to put to the rest of their cash to get the lease to the betting shop. The rest of the money could easily be used to cover their tracks. They could live the high life whilst building up a strong, highly profitable business. He saw a change, a break from the mould, and a snap into the life of Riley. The money would transform their lives for the better.

They both looked at each other.

Richards spoke first: “We can’t give the money back,” he said. “We’ve been waiting for this all our lives. We need this.”

Phillips nodded; his head moved methodically, his mind was elsewhere.

Richards pursed his dry lips and wet them with the tip of his tongue; he could feel an anxious lump swell inside his throat. “What do you think?”

Phillips turned his attention from Richards to the money and then back again, “I think we should keep it,” he said clearly.

88

Walking back through the hospital Howard’s face was a creation of anger and despair. His body had been drained as he had struggled through the day and the ordeals that had been thrown his way. On seeing Lisa he had been instantly fuelled with sorrow. Soon, that fuel ignited and anger flared inside him, anger towards the bastards who had killed his daughter. They had taken her life and taken a part of his, he wanted to avenge her death, and he wanted her kidnappers to die by his hands.

After seeing her body he had requested to be alone with her. He had smothered her in his arms, crying into her beautiful blonde hair. Half of him hoped he was dreaming, the other half hoped
she
was dreaming, and she would suddenly wake up and forgive him. All of this was his fault, that much he was sure of, and for that he apologised as he cried into her fading locks.

On her forehead, above her cold stare and below her mattered fringe, someone had carefully attached a thick white plaster. Howard knew this for his sake, she had been executed, shot in the head at point blank range, the bandage covered up the nasty wound and would reduce the horror in his nightmares.

His sorrow had ignited when, after lifting her upper body from the table to hug her more intensely, he noticed ligature marks around her wrists. Inch-thick blackish blue strips were wrapped around her tiny wrists like sadistic bracelets.

His time alone with her didn’t last long, after five minutes he was escorted -- half carried -- out of the morgue in fits of tears and screams of rage.

Outside the hospital Detective Brown paused as Howard grasped onto a nearby wall and unleashed the contents of his stomach onto the tarmac below. He wretched until his starved body was dry and could offer nothing more than chunks of its own bile. His body was sent into spasms as his stomach tried to expel something that wasn’t there. His chest burned and his throat ached as the motions of sickness continued.

Many people walked passed, pretending not to notice -- their eyes fixed on the roads ahead of them. Some people nearby -- visitors and a few residents of the hospital -- were standing around a side door smoking cigarettes. Their conversation halted as Howard continued to gag.

The smokers spared a sombre moment as they put themselves in his place. They didn’t know if he had received a bill of bad health, a threat to the health of a loved one or if his was suffering from the death of a loved one, but they shared a mutual and respectful silence as they watched him spill his guts.

Minutes later he finished; his face red as fire, his stomach pained and empty.

Inside the unmarked police car, a slouching Detective Brown offered Howard a mint which was gratefully accepted.

His mouth was dry and he could taste a slimy sickness encroaching on his stomach every time he swallowed. Popping the mint straight into his mouth he sucked on it erratically, covering his taste buds with a layer of strong peppermint.

Taking a mint himself, the detective pushed the packet back inside the glove compartment and started up the engine.

“I know there is really nothing I can say or do,” he began, in a consoling tone. “But I truly am sorry for your loss.”

Howard nodded and wiped a stream of perspiration from his forehead. The detective acknowledged his actions and, pressing a switch near the steering wheel, he opened the passenger side window. The cold evening air rushed into the car.

“What did they do to her?” Howard asked as the detective started the car. “I saw marks on her arms, cuts, bruises...” as he recalled the sight he felt another storm of sickness and he pushed his face closer to the open window.