Random (2 page)

Three Wednesdays I had watched him and three times he had gone there. What did he tell the blonde wife? Bridge club, business, a snooker match, Rotary? It didn’t matter to me.

When I returned, I had to sit in the cafe for just fifteen minutes before the doors to his office opened and Carr scampered back down the steps onto Bath Street. A man on a mission. He would go to the NCP on Renfield Street and get his TT. He would take Port Dundas Road to the A879 and then Auchenhowie Road to Milngavie. He’d park in the next street to the one where the redhead lived on the edge of the village. He’d leave around 11.00 and be intending to be back at his flat by 11.30. A creature of habit.

I followed him from a distance until I was certain where he was going. I then turned, went home and waited.

I drove to Milngavie, stopping just once, then on through to the other side of the village. The stop took just a few minutes and I was earlier than I’d intended. I had to drive on for fully ten minutes then turn back towards Glasgow.

My eyes were all over the clock, my speed and the road in front. I was a bit scared. My heart raced. So many things could have gone wrong. He might have noticed before he began driving. Someone else might have stopped for him. Someone might drive by. He might have left earlier. Or later.

My plan was full of holes. I’d need to do better.

Then there it was stopped in front of me. The TT. He’d not got quite as far as I’d thought but close enough. I could just pick out the silver Audi in the dark. He was standing by the back wheel with a mobile phone in his hand. I prayed he hadn’t used it yet.

I pulled up behind him and got out. He had a flat tyre, of course he did. He seemed to have driven over a nail. Unlucky, I said.

He didn’t look twice at my false numberplate, paid no attention to the baseball cap that covered my face to anyone driving past and couldn’t possibly be aware of the spare tyres that I had put on the car before I set off to ensure I left no discernible, traceable pattern from my own.

Of course Carr didn’t know how to change a tyre. I did and could help. He was really grateful about that. He had been just about to call someone.

The road was too narrow where he had stopped, I told him. There was a lay-by half a mile up the road that he could pull into. It wouldn’t do the tyre or the car any more harm.

He did so.

The lay-by was hidden from the main road by a row of slim trees. It was perfect.

I told him I would get a jack out of the boot of my car and asked him to have a look at the wheel so he’d get an idea of how it came off in case it ever happened again.

I saw the look on Carr’s face. He had no intention of ever changing a tyre. He’d buy a new car before he did that. Still he’d bend down and pretend he was looking at something if it kept me happy.

That’s how he was when I closed the boot and walked to his car. That’s how he was when I swung the jack and smashed the back of his head.

I felt the impact reverberate through my arms. I hadn’t expected that. I readied myself to swing again but there was no need.

His face crashed into the car’s side with a bang and when he slumped back soundlessly I saw that his face was almost as bloodied as the back of his head. He fell to the ground unconscious.

I took the duct tape from my pocket and stuck it firmly across his mouth, sealing it shut. I then took out the tube of superglue and dabbed spots of it on the inside of his nostrils.

Satisfied that there was enough of it, I then held the sides of his nose and squeezed. A few drops of the glue leaked out onto my surgical gloves but the rest soon locked his nostrils tight.

Carr stirred. Maybe the initial blow had worn off, more likely the fact that he couldn’t breathe had alerted his inner emergency alarm.

He looked puzzled. He fought for air but there was none to be had. His head rolled, his jaws tried to work the tape free, his eyes pleaded. I watched his chest heave as his lungs searched for oxygen and hurled themselves against his chest. He looked up at me. I looked down at him. Looked him in the eyes.

He didn’t seem quite so full of himself now.
Jonathan Carr. Salter, Fyfe and Bryce Solicitors. 1024 Bath Street
. Didn’t look quite so cocky at all.

Air hunger kicked in. An interesting condition. Strangely, it isn’t diminishing oxygen levels that cause it but rising levels of carbon dioxide in the blood. This is detected by sensors in the carotid sinus and causes all hell to break loose in the body. It triggers respiratory distress, provoking the body to find any way it can to get air into the lungs. It is irrational and desperate. Carr’s body thrashed at the air around it.

The hunger didn’t pass but was overtaken by hypoxia. His head hurt. His skin took on a faint blue tinge. He shook. Brain damage was already in motion. Heart failure was minutes away.

His eyes closed over. He still shook, still kicked for oxygen that wasn’t coming.

A few more minutes and he was dead. Suffocated. Asphyxiated. Comprehensively and fatally deprived of oxygen.

Finally, I took the pair of secateurs from my pocket and cut.

Strange. I had expected more blood.

I’d come up with the idea of cutting off his finger after a bit of thought. I wanted something to make sure they knew it was me, something to remember me by. The finger was easy, straightforward and not too messy. It would make me look crazy enough but not a complete psycho. Didn’t want them to think that.

Of course there was a risk in posting it to the cops but I was certain I had covered myself. I bought enough padded envelopes in one go so that I wouldn’t have to go back for more. I bought them long before I began. They were cheap, mass-produced and bought from three separate chain-store stationers.

The postage was correct, a tricky matter given the Royal Mail’s introduction of Pricing in Proportion. Anything thicker than 5mm or heavier than 100g has to be in a large letter rather than a letter and is priced accordingly. Anything thicker than 25mm or above 750g has to be classed as a packet. 25mm could take most pinkies quite easily and the weight was clearly not an issue. I posted two clothes pegs to myself as a trial run.

I wore surgical gloves from start to finish. There wouldn’t be so much as a ridge or a spiral, far less an identifiable fingerprint.

I printed the address labels off on my bog-standard, thousands-sold-every-month PC printer rather than take any risk of handwriting analysis. The labels were self-adhesive.
CID, Strathclyde Police, Stewart Street, Glasgow G4 0HY
.

I didn’t lick the envelope to seal it, I used water. Life must have been so much easier for those of us with things to hide before the advancements in DNA.

I would use a different postbox each time, each of them nowhere near the prying eyes of CCTV cameras. Each posting would be done at a busy time, a baseball cap tight to my face, the package hidden away till the last moment.

The secateurs were bought from B&Q months before. Sharp enough for the job, sold by the thousand, small enough to slip into a pocket.

Above all, the finger meant nothing. They would think it had some other significance, some hidden meaning. It didn’t.

It was my signature but it wasn’t my hand. That made me laugh.

The finger might point them in the wrong direction. Funny.

The little finger is the strongest on the hand. Because it has a dedicated muscle and is the shortest, it gets the most leverage.

The finger hadn’t been mentioned in any of the newspaper reports though. It had probably arrived at the cop shop too late for it to make the morning editions. Maybe tomorrow, maybe next time.

I’d read every one, scoured every line. Watched every news bulletin too. I wasn’t glorying in it though. It wasn’t my fifteen minutes. Not yet.

I wanted to know what they knew. Getting caught was not part of my plan.

They all carried the story. Some had it tucked away, some splashed it. Some just reported the facts as they knew them, others made wild guesses about criminal links, revenge and bitter clients. Mostly it was just bollocks.

That was day one. Day two it got less room in most. By day three there was no mention at all in a couple of them. Still nothing about the finger being cut off. Nothing about it being posted to the cops. There was no way the papers wouldn’t write about that if they knew so it could only be that the police hadn’t told them.

Why?

Procedural reasons. Operational. That was what they always said when they didn’t release information. What the fuck did it mean though? They didn’t want people to know about the finger being cut. Wanted to stay a step ahead. Of me? Yeah, right. OK, I’d watched enough TV programmes. Read enough books. They would get crazies down the station, confessing to the killing. My killing.

The cops would ask them about the finger. Ask them to prove they’d done it. The crazies wouldn’t know about the finger and would be thrown back on the street in two minutes. And the police would worry about copycats. Some real crazy would murder someone and slice off their finger to claim credit for the first one. Fuck that for a laugh.

Day two in the papers had seen a new name. Detective Sergeant Rachel Narey. Robertson was still quoted and he was obviously the main man. But two of the papers quoted this Narey. I liked her.

Yes, I liked her. Feisty bitch. She was on television as well. Robertson spoke and she stood by his shoulder in most of the clips. The camera liked her too.

Four years I’d driven a taxi. Still didn’t feel like a proper job. Still just something to see me through.