Friends to Die For (45 page)

One day in the local paper I read about a Greek Cypriot couple who ran a kebab shop in Muirhouse. Their seventeen-year-old son, Georgios Kristos, had died suddenly of meningitis.
Broken-hearted, they were selling up and returning to Cyprus. It was perfect. The boy was just a year younger than me. I would turn myself into Georgios Kristos. And I knew exactly how I would set
about doing so.

I’d read the book,
The Day of the Jackal
. It had all seemed too simple to be true. Surely it was only in a novel that this method of building an identity could work? But work
it did. In 1998 anyway.

The authorities had found me a job in the packing department of a chicken factory. Not exactly appropriate for someone who had committed a violent crime, but nobody seemed to notice. It paid
little, but I saved all I earned. Then I realized that I could earn far better money by actually killing the creatures. I applied for overtime whenever possible. It caused me no concern to watch
these poor hairless battery hens die. After all, their lives were as full of pain and despair as mine had so far been. And I too had sometimes thought that I would be better off out of my
misery.

But suddenly I had a real purpose. I saw my chance to become a new person, somebody who could at least seem to be normal – and I grasped it.

The newspaper report most obligingly supplied the date of Georgios Kristos’s death. I was able to obtain his death certificate. That supplied me with his date of birth, and I was then
able to obtain a birth certificate. The report also told me which school Georgios had attended. It seemed he had been a precocious student, and at seventeen had already passed four A-levels,
including English and, most fortuitously for me, Drama.

I waited until Georgios would have been an adult. On his eighteenth birthday I left my halfway house one morning and never returned. Neither did I ever see my probation officer again. I was
no longer Rory Burns. I was Georgios Kristos. I dyed my reddish blond typically Gaelic hair a Mediterranean black, acquired dark-tinted contact lenses, and took to using sunbeds and fake
tan.

I have learned well how to pretend to be something that I am not. Indeed, anything at all that I am not. I was not drawn to acting by a desire to become a star of stage or screen. Though I
have found, curiously perhaps, that I enjoy performing before an audience. I chose acting because it seemed the ideal craft for a man who was to live entirely by subterfuge.

The principals of the Willesden Academy for Performing Arts were impressed by my false academic qualifications. And it turned out that I was a natural. While I was there, I learned to drive
and acquired a driving licence, I acquired a passport in the name of Georgios Kristos, I opened a bank account, and I was able to join Equity.

I had succeeded in creating a new life for myself. And I wanted to live it. For my God. In order to keep my vow that there would be no more killings, I researched medications and therapies,
and overseas suppliers who did not concern themselves with prescriptions and legalities, eventually settling on a cocktail of anti-psychotic drugs that allowed me to keep my anger in
check.

Sometimes I almost forgot that I was acting on and off stage. Playing a role. I travelled to London, found myself work, acquired somewhere to live in the heart of the city and nurtured my
new life. I kept it up for thirteen years. Thirteen unbelievable years. There was one little lapse. But only one in all that time. And I doubted anyone would ever find out about it, even now, for
it took place in another country. Not realizing that it would react with my medication, I decided to sample marijuana. My hard-won control evaporated and I was again overwhelmed by the urge to take
revenge. But I did at least make sure that my victim was a prostitute. An evil woman without morality. And God did not seem to mind. The terrible pains in my head and my body did not return. And I
never smoked marijuana again.

God rewarded my efforts. I achieved happiness of a sort. Enough acting engagements came my way to fund my modest needs, supplemented by the various odd jobs I undertook. There were bit parts
on TV, pantomime, a couple of commercials, fringe theatre and occasional provincial tours. I worked out in the gym as a diversion for any sexual energy, and to build up muscle and improve the
appearance of my body. With the help of enhancing jockstraps I became an expert at creating a satisfactory crotch bulge.

I was George Kristos, handsome young man-about-town. I could have any girl I wanted. Or so everyone thought.

For the first time in my life, I made friends. Each week, I would look forward to Sunday Club. I kidded myself I was fond of the others and they of me. Then I learned that I had been sharing
a table with the woman who had brought about my destruction.

My pink lady was Marlena. Or rather, Marleen McTavish.

And it was then I rediscovered my own true identity: Rory Burns.

Now the whole world will know. I have been found out. But that is no matter. I have fulfilled my destiny.

And there shall be no retribution levelled against me except that of my Lord God Almighty.

Parlow and Wagstaff approached Vogel just as he arrived back at his desk.

‘’Fraid we can’t find Greg Walker, guv,’ said Parlow.

‘What!’ snapped Vogel. He glanced at his watch. ‘It’s taken you long enough to not bloody find him, hasn’t it? What the fuck have you been doing?’

‘We went to his flat, then to his mother-in-law’s place in case he’d gone there to see his kids. That’s up towards Camden, sir. She hadn’t seen him all day, so we
drove to Waterloo to check out his lock-up. He wasn’t there either, but there was a bloke in the lock-up opposite who said Walker had been there all afternoon and had only just
left.’

Vogel grunted, bored already with what was beginning to sound like a succession of excuses for failure.

‘I don’t suppose this bloke had any idea where Walker was going?’

‘Not really, guv. He said Walker got in a taxi and he thought he heard him ask for an address in Soho, but he couldn’t catch exactly what he—’

Vogel barely hesitated. He turned and ran for the door, yelling for Parlow and Wagstaff to follow.

‘Have you still got that CID car outside?’ he asked breathlessly.

‘Yes, guv,’ said Wagstaff.

‘Thank God,’ said Vogel, still running. ‘We need to get to the Zodiac on Lisle Street. Parlow – on your radio! Call for backup. And get an Armed Response Unit to meet us
there. I reckon we’re gonna need ’em.’

Wagstaff, proud holder of a police advanced driving certificate, jumped behind the wheel, and with Parlow in the back seat and Vogel next to him shouting instructions, took off with a screech of
rubber.

Greg Walker was at that moment climbing out of a black cab outside the Zodiac. The Browning was tucked into one pocket of his leather bomber jacket. It wasn’t yet cocked.
Nonetheless the gun’s close proximity to his abdomen caused Greg to break into a sweat. He kept one hand in his jacket pocket, holding the pistol in place, almost as if he feared it might
leap out of its own volition and shoot him in the foot.

It was early evening. The Zodiac opened at lunchtime seven days a week and stayed open until three or four the following morning, but it was seldom busy at this hour. There was only one security
doorman on duty, whom Greg recognized from his previous visit. Greg approached him without hesitating. He was beyond fear.

‘I’m sorry to come unannounced,’ Greg said. ‘I have some information for Mr Kwan. I wonder if he could possibly find time to see me?’

The doorman turned slightly away from Greg, bending his head towards his radio mike, clipped, as usual, to the lapel of his black jacket. As he reached with one hand to switch it on, Greg
stepped forward, removed the pistol from his pocket, cocked it by pulling back the top-slide thus springing a cartridge from the magazine, and thrust the barrel into the man’s midriff.

‘Take me in,’ he muttered, ‘or you’re a fuckin’ gonner.’

To Greg’s surprise, the bouncer made no attempt to knock the gun out of his hand the way Greg had so often seen it done in movies and on the telly. Instead he led the way through the main
gaming room, where only a few dedicated punters were playing the tables. Greg walked close to the doorman and kept the gun tucked into the man’s side, hoping nobody would notice it. No one
did. The gamblers were intent only on their own activities.

Perhaps because of the time of day and the relatively small number of punters on the premises, there was no second security operative at the rear door which led to Kwan’s offices. Greg
gestured to the doorman to open the door, which he did at once, tapping in a security code. Greg pushed him through.

As soon as they were on the other side, the doorman made his move. Greg was pulling the door shut, which put him slightly off balance. The man kicked out, catching Greg with a mighty blow at the
top of one thigh, then wrapped his leg around both of Greg’s, behind the knees, causing him to topple backwards, crashing heavily to the ground. It was expertly done. Unfortunately, as Greg
fell he inadvertently squeezed the trigger of the Browning in his right hand.

The bullet hit the doorman straight between the eyes. The tac vest he was undoubtedly wearing was therefore of no use. He died instantly.

Greg scrambled uncertainly to his feet, stunned but determined to finish what he had begun. He ran up the stairs to the third floor. The door to Kwan’s offices was shut. Greg fired three
rapid shots at the lock, then gave the door a shove.

Tony Kwan was sitting at his glass desk, just as he had been when Greg had made his previous visit. But this time he did not rise to greet Greg. He did not move. He just sat there,
unblinking.

Greg aimed his pistol at Tony Kwan’s head. He had no idea whether or not Kwan wore a bulletproof tac jacket, but he was taking no chances. He wanted to shoot the murdering bastard right
between the eyes. As he had the doorman. Only this time it would be deliberate. He began to squeeze the trigger.

The subsequent bang was therefore not a surprise. Then he became aware of a terrible pain in his lower arm. He looked down and saw that his right wrist and hand were a bloody mess of shattered
bone and sinew. His pistol lay at his feet. He had been given no opportunity to fire it at Kwan. He’d been shot. Worse, he’d failed. He’d let his Karen down.

But what had he expected? Greg wondered, as the world started to go hazy and he slumped to the ground.

One of Kwan’s goons, holding a still-smoking revolver, stepped forward and kicked Greg a couple of times in the ribs.

Greg howled in agony. There was little doubt that at least one rib had been broken. But then, that too was only to be expected.

With lights flashing and siren blaring, Wagstaff got Vogel to Lisle Street in four minutes. As they approached the Zodiac all three policemen heard gunshots. Vogel threw
himself out of the car before Wagstaff had brought it fully to a halt. They did not know then, but the first four shots had been fired by Greg Walker at the security doorman and then the lock on
the door to Kwan’s office, and the fifth was the shot fired at Greg by Kwan’s henchmen.

Vogel moved at speed across the pavement to the now unsupervised front door, which stood ajar. He rushed inside. The place was empty, all the gamblers having fled the moment the first shot was
fired. Vogel ran past empty gaming tables, Carlisle and Parlow trailing in his wake.

‘Shouldn’t we wait for the back-up, guv?’ asked Parlow lamely.

‘Yeah, we need those armed response boys,’ Carlisle called after the DI.

Vogel ignored them both. The door at the back of the club which led to Kwan’s private offices was closed but unlocked. Vogel pushed the door and it opened, but not completely. He squeezed
himself through the gap, his pulse quickening as he saw the dead doorman lying at his feet. He stepped over the body and ran upstairs.

The third-floor door to Kwan’s office was also open. Having been decimated by the blast of gunfire administered by Greg Walker, it would no longer close.

Vogel burst through. He just had time to take in Tony Kwan, still sitting at his desk, a bleeding Greg Walker slumped on the floor, and a Kwan henchman holding a handgun stepping threateningly
towards him. Thanks to his police firearm training, Vogel registered that the gun, doubtless illegal, was a revolver of the type favoured by bodyguards and so-called security staff because,
although it could not be fired as rapidly as a semiautomatic, it didn’t jam.

The henchman fired. The revolver didn’t jam. Vogel felt a burning sensation in his left shoulder.

He staggered but managed to stay upright.

‘Put that gun away, you fool!’ Tony Kwan shouted at his henchman. He was almost screaming, apoplectic with rage. ‘You’ve shot a cop!’

Vogel’s knees were beginning to buckle. His legs felt like jelly, and the burning sensation in his left shoulder had become a searing pain. His mind remained absolutely lucid. He’d
behaved like a fool, but perhaps the consequences were not entirely without merit.

‘Yes, indeed Mr Kwan,’ he said, managing a small smile. ‘Your goon has shot a policeman. And in your own office. Looks as if we’ve got you bang to fucking rights at
last.’

Then he fell to the ground alongside Greg Walker.

Parlow and Wagstaff, who were making their way up the rickety staircase, heard the shot that had felled Vogel and instinctively stopped climbing.

‘Shit,’ said Parlow.

Wagstaff, still fired up from his manic drive, recovered fastest. ‘Come on,’ he said, taking another step upwards. ‘We gotta get our guvnor.’

Parlow grabbed his fellow DCs arm.

‘No,’ he said. ‘We could have a dead copper up there. Nobody wants another one. An ARU should be here any minute.’

As if on cue, a tall Chinese heavy with a gun in his hand stepped out of Tony Kwan’s office onto the third-floor landing and peered down the stairwell at the two detectives. He looked as
if he was thinking of making a run for it.