Killing With Confidence (19 page)

Harris knew a fellow
psycho when he saw one. He wasn’t scared – he never was –
but he also knew just how unpredictable they could be.

There was a knock at
the door.

Before Crosbie got up
to let the lawyer in, Harris stared at the detective and said,
‘That may be so, but I’ll still catch my sister’s killer before you
do.’

37

An Unexpected
Guest

‘Hello,’
Osiris said without emotion, as Martin opened the lodge door to
him. ‘We need to talk.’

Martin said nothing
and calmly closed the door behind the killer. It was almost as if
he’d been expecting this moment. ‘Tea? Coffee? Something stronger?’
he asked his uninvited guest.

Osiris stood casually
by the woodburning stove, an elbow on the old railway sleeper that
had been converted into a mantelpiece. His right hand was thrust
deep inside his waterproof jacket. He stood poker straight. His
thin build and posture made him look taller than his five foot
eight frame. He never once took his eyes off Martin, who was
slumped exhausted in the couch facing him.

Osiris wasn’t an
emotional being, certainly not in the conventional sense at least.
He had feelings, but for all the wrong things. He loved being in
control, having the power to manipulate people and their
circumstances. He thrived on having the choice over life and death,
but he had a use for the broken shell of a man who sat before him,
who barely had the energy to make eye contact.

Martin would either
agree to his proposals or die right here tonight in the lodge. As
far as Osiris was concerned, it was a no-brainer. He hoped Martin
wouldn’t force him to kill him, but he had a feeling Seth might
choose death as the easier option.

38

The Pussy Cat

April was
exhausted. Everything from being bundled into a builder’s sack to
her suspension was beginning to take its toll. But it was the
thinking, the constant whirring of her brain as she tried to work
out who did what and what to do next that really drained her. She
often wondered what it would be like to have a simple job like a
shelf-stacker where she wouldn’t have to engage her
brain.

April had once made
the mistake of expressing this to Connor, who had snapped back,
‘Working in Asda wouldn’t have bought you your big house.’ Of
course, he was right.

Whenever she was
feeling down she would visit her rich friend Flo, who lived in
Bearsden, one of Glasgow’s more salubrious suburbs. Like April, Flo
had been married and divorced a number of times, too. Her last one
hadn’t been a total disaster though. Her husband owned a
substantial steel company and had cheated on her with his
secretary. Unfortunately for the wayward husband, new divorce laws
had seen partners entitled to not only fifty per cent of previous
earnings, but of future earnings, too.

Flo’s £17 million
divorce settlement had set a Scottish record. As she had said to
her ex as they left court, ‘Your secretary was one expensive fuck.
I hope she was worth it.’

Since then
Austrian-born Flo had turned into a Cougar – a mature, rich
woman who pursued younger men. She had loved the freedom her
independent wealth had brought her and enjoyed clubbing and having
sex with men who were often younger than her sons. As she had once
said to April, ‘I don’t feel guilty at all, darling. Men have been
screwing woman half their ages since time began. It’s time we
caught up.’

Flo looked fabulous.
She had an air of someone with money. She was slim, trim and toned
from gruelling sessions with her personal fitness trainer –
‘Both in and out of the gym, darling.’ She had new breasts and even
a ‘designer vagina’ she had once shown April with pride.

April had never
thought front bottoms were particular attractive, her own
especially, but she couldn’t help but admire Flo’s. ‘That is one
perfect pussy,’ April had observed before they dissolved into fits
of laughter.

Although their lives
were now worlds apart, the pair had remained firm friends for over
thirty years.

As Flo opened a
second bottle of chilled Chablis, April poured her heart out about
work, being suspended and then bound and gagged.

‘Oh, I knew I had
something to tell you, darling,’ Flo suddenly remembered. ‘Selina
was screwing your boss.’

‘What!’ April
spluttered.

‘Ya, your editor.
Fair hair, side parting, slippery sort – married, of course,
can’t remember his name, such an inconsequential man.’

‘Nigel Bent?’

‘Ya, that’s him.’

‘Flo, are you
absolutely
sure? This is serious.’ April was back in
professional mode.

‘Yes, darling. I met
them at some function. They were trying their damnedest to ignore
each other so people wouldn’t suspect, but he couldn’t take his
eyes off her. I think the poor man was in love. I was sitting next
to Selina. She’d drunk a fair bit and she told me. She was like
that, you know, very boastful. Frankly, I didn’t see much to boast
about. But, as we all know, love is blind.’

April took a while to
digest all this information – she knew it was dynamite. ‘I
need more drink, more nibbles, Flo. Come on, make with the nibbles.
I need brain food,’ she demanded.

‘Oh, you’re such a
glutton, my chubby little darling. But I do love you,’ Flo grinned
as she headed to the kitchen. She always made sure she was well
stocked when April came to visit.

39

The Angel of
Death

Wanting to
die is a very strange feeling. Martin didn’t want to share his
suicidal feelings with anyone because he knew what their advice
would be: see your doctor, get a course of antidepressants, talk
about it with a counsellor. Martin wanted none of these things. The
thought of taking ‘happy pills’ just depressed him more and he was
never the ‘Let’s get your feelings out in the open’ type
either.

It wasn’t a cry for
help. Martin really did want to die. He was a shell of a human
being. Where there had once been love, hope, ambition, excitement,
there was now nothing but apathy and failure. He had failed
hopelessly at being a husband. He had failed to fight to save his
marriage, allowing his wife to come and go as she please with
whomever she wanted.

He’d often wondered
how it had all come to this. They had once been so in love. Now he
was a widower he couldn’t even face up to being a parent and all
the duties that went with it. He didn’t want to think about his
kids, painfully aware that he planned to leave them orphaned.

But he could feel
Osiris’s eyes boring into him and somehow felt the stranger was
looking directly into his soul.

‘I know who killed
your wife. I saw him with my own eyes,’ Osiris said, staring
straight at Martin.

Martin momentarily
lost his dead-eyed look. There had been a flicker of light as his
old confident self tried to resurface. Osiris knew he was taking a
gamble, but he’d calculated it was worth it. His self-help guru had
encouraged him to make a ‘life plan’. He could hear the whining
American voice say, ‘If you don’t know what you want in life, then
how the hell will anyone else?’

How ironic, he
thought, that he was now using these mantras for evil. But with a
steady income from Seth International for professional services
rendered for the revenge killing of Selina’s murderer, Osiris would
be free to roam and kill around the country at will. He would no
longer need to lead his double life as a transport manager by day
and serial killer by night.

And if Martin said
no? He’d hang him from the rafters of this very chalet, as who in
their right mind would think it was anything other than the suicide
of a guilty man. ‘So, what’s it going to be, Martin? Stick or
twist?’ Osiris felt a little corny trotting out such a phrase but
it seemed to fit the moment. ‘Are we going into business? You, the
widowed entrepreneur. Me, the silent partner. Or silent assassin if
you like.’

But Martin’s eyes had
returned to their trance-like state. The man simply wasn’t capable
of bouncing back off the ropes. In Osiris’s dark heart he realised
the man who stood before him must truly have loved Selina, even
though Osiris had seen for himself the slut she really was.

He gently placed the
noose over Martin’s head. The widower didn’t even flinch, almost
welcoming the actions of his angel of death. This would most
definitely be a mercy killing. But, all the same, Osiris would
still enjoy watching him die.



Out of all
the hundreds of erroneous pieces of information Colin Harris had
received, he finally took the call he had been waiting
for.

‘Are you sure?’ he
said, trying to contain the excitement rising in his voice. ‘Where
was it and what did he look like?’ Colin jotted down the details.
‘And the car? I need to know what he was driving.’ His face fell.
‘What d’you mean you can’t remember what type of car it was? Come
on, think. You must recall something about it.’ A smile slowly
crept across the face of one of Glasgow’s most feared gangsters.
‘Yeah, I guess that’ll do instead,’ he said, chuckling to himself
as he wrote down the full licence plate number the caller had
memorised. The tip-off would cost him £100,000 if it led to his
sister’s killer, but for Harris to have his revenge it would be
worth every penny.

The money he spent
keeping one of Scotland’s leading lawyers on a retainer was also
worth its weight in gold. He was out on bail after being charged
with the attempted kidnap of Martin Seth. It meant Colin Harris was
once again a free man. But now he was angry. And when he was angry,
he was even more dangerous.

40

An Indecent Proposal

April had
just enjoyed a long, leisurely lunch at Risotto, an easygoing
Italian restaurant where she often spent entire Sunday afternoons.
Sometimes she would take Jayne, but they would usually end up
bickering. Therefore, if she truly wanted to relax, eat and read
the
Sunday Times
over a bottle of wine, then she went to
Risotto alone.

April knew the owner
Luigi well. Sadly, Luigi’s wife had died six months ago from
cancer. April had lent a sympathetic ear on her regular weekend
visits, hearing in minute detail how the aggressive form of lung
cancer she’d contracted had rampaged through her body. She could
always connect with other people’s sorrow, as she had suffered too
with the loss of the child she never, ever talked about to anyone.
That’s what made her writing so heartfelt.

Luigi pulled up a
chair and sat down next to April. He had aged terribly over the
last year as his beloved Maria had fought in vain against the
disease. He now had sad, baggy eyes. The twinkle had long gone out
of them. ‘Aw, April,’ he sighed, ‘Am-a feeling right sorry for
masel, so am are.’

Luigi’s accent was a
curious mix of strong Napoli Italian and broad Glaswegian.
Sometimes he’d switch between the two mid-sentence.

April put a consoling
hand on his knee and said, ‘I know, Luigi. You’ll never forget
Maria, but it will get better. And she would hate to see her Luigi
so depressed.’

He managed a half
smile. ‘You’re right. She’d say to me, “Hey, Luigi, your-a face is
scaring all the customers away – now cheer-a up-a.”’ He
changed the subject. ‘Now, April, tell-a me. How is the hunt-a
going for this-a mad-a-man you are writing about in the
news-a-paper?’

April actually hated
talking about stories in her time off – more so now she was
suspended from duty. She was an old-school journalist in that when
something was written and filed, it was instantly forgotten about.
She didn’t even like recalling stories for people socially. All the
detail had gone into her copy, and she actually couldn’t recall
most of it, even if she’d wanted.

On more than one
occasion April would take a call from someone and it would be clear
that she didn’t have a clue who they were. When they explained they
were the subject of April’s centre spread that day, the penny would
finally drop. ‘Oh yes,’ she would lie, ‘of course. I know who you
are.’

The fact was, April
had written the story a week before it made the paper and it was
long gone from her mind.

Luigi continued, ‘I
may-a have-a some-a news for you. My cousin visits the red-a
light-a district. He likes-a the whores. He’s an arsehole. But he-a
saw something one-a night that might be useful to you. He cannae go
to the cops, of course. His-a wife would a kill him. And no bloody
wonder.’

Luigi told April that
his randy cousin had witnessed a prostitute being attacked in a car
then dumped in the street. It was important enough for April to
fish out a dog-eared notepad from her handbag and jot down some
shorthand.

‘That’s very
interesting. Very interesting, indeed,’ April told him
truthfully.

‘It’s-a even better,
my dear. He has this …’ Luigi showed April his mobile phone.
After rooting around in her handbag she eventually found her
reading glasses and could see the image he was trying to show
her.

The information which
had cost the ruthless gangster Colin Harris £100,000 April had just
got for free.

‘There’s-a something
else, April,’ Luigi said, suddenly looking sheepish. ‘Will you
marry me?’



It had
barely gone nine o’clock on Monday morning when Connor received his
first text message of the day:
B R N jst a month. Tel Marvel 2
gt back on on ;)
. He loved trying to decipher April’s text
messages. They were a typical mix of abbreviations and emoticons,
some of which he was convinced were just typos, but what made them
so unique was that April had been unable to switch off her mobile’s
predictive text option. Unfortunately, there was no software,
however advanced, that could predict what April was
thinking.