John Harvey - A Darker Shade of Blue

When finally he arrived home, it was near dawn.

The heating in the house had just come on.

Upstairs, in the twins’ room, it felt cold nonetheless. Each bed was carefully made up, blankets folded neatly back. Just in case. He stood there for a long time, letting the light slowly unfold round him. The start of another day.

Snow drifted, soft, against his face.

Earlier, the wind had whipped each succeeding fall into a virtual blizzard, slicing into him as he stood, barely sheltered, on the edge of the fen.

Now it was this: the snow of fairy tales and dreams.

A pair of swans floated, uncaring, along the shuffled surface of the water, at home in the gathering white.

Malkin checked his watch and continued to stand.

Fifteen minutes later, Fraser’s SUV appeared on the raised strip of road, headlights pale through the mist of falling snow.

Malkin waited until, indicator blinking, the vehicle slowed into the left-hand turn that would take it along a narrow, barely made-up lane to where the new house was in the process of construction, further along the fen.

The main structure was already in place: varying shades of yellow brick at each end and to the rear, the front partly clad in as yet untreated wood. The frames for the large windows that would dominate the upper floor had recently been set. No glass as yet. Ladders leaned against scaffolding, secured with rope. A bucket half-filled and frozen fast. Tarpaulins that flapped in each catch of wind.

Fastidious, Fraser changed soft leather shoes for green Wellingtons and pulled on his sheepskin coat. Lifting back the mesh gates that guarded the site, he moved inside, and, after a few moments, disappeared into the building’s shell.

Snow continued to fall.

Malkin stood no more than forty metres away, all but invisible against the washed-out sky, the shrouded earth.

Cautious, Fraser climbed the ladder to the upper floor and stared out. He’d expected the architect to be already at the site, not limping in late with some excuse about the weather. A bit of snow. February. What else did he expect?

Treading with care across the boards, Fraser eased aside a length of tarpaulin and stepped inside what would be the main room, running almost the entire length of the floor. Views right out across open land, unimpeded as far as the horizon. But not today. He failed to hear Malkin’s foot on the ladder’s bottom rung.

Angry, Fraser pushed back his cuff and double-checked his watch. Damned architect!

Hearing Malkin’s footsteps now, he turned. ‘What sort of time d’you call this?’

Malkin stepped through the space of the open doorway and out of the snow.

‘Who the hell…?’ Fraser began, words fading from his lips.

Malkin smiled.

‘Remember Sharon Peters?’ he said.

For an instant, Fraser saw a tousle-haired girl of eight, playing catch ball up against the wall as she waited for her bus; her face, at the last moment, widening in a scream.

‘You do remember,’ Malkin said, ‘don’t you?’

The pistol was already in his hand.

‘Don’t you?’

Ashen, Fraser stumbled back, began to plead.

For jobs like this Malkin favoured a 9mm Glock 17. Light, plastic, readily disposable. Two shots were usually enough.

Or sometimes one.

At the sound, a solitary crow rose, shaking snowflakes from its wings, and began to circle round.

Blood was beginning to leak, already, from the back of Fraser’s head, staining the untreated wood a dull reddish-brown. Snow swirled into Malkin’s face as he descended the ladder, and with a quick shake of his head he blinked it away.

The train was no more than a third full and he had a table to himself, plenty of room to spread the paper and read. Every once in a while, he looked out at the passing fields, speckled as they were with snow. Hedgerows and rooftops gleamed white in the fresh spring sun.

He read again the account, all too familiar, of a prison suicide: a nineteen-year-old who had hanged himself in his cell. According to his family, the youth had been systematically beaten and bullied during the weeks leading up to his death, and prison staff had turned a blind eye.

‘My son,’ the mother was reported as saying, ‘made complaint after complaint to the governor and the prison officer in charge of his wing, and they did nothing. Nothing. And now they’re as guilty of his death as if they’d knotted the sheet themselves and kicked away the chair.’

Poetic, Malkin thought. A good turn of phrase. He tore the page from the newspaper, folded it neatly once and once again and slipped it into his wallet. One for a rainy day.

When the train pulled into the station, he left the remainder of the newspaper on the seat, pulled on his coat, and walked the length of the platform to the exit, taking his time.

The first thing he saw, stepping into the broad concourse, was a police officer in helmet and body armour, submachine gun held at an angle across his chest, and he was glad that he’d disposed of the Glock before boarding the train. Not that any of this was for him.

Two other officers, similarly armed, stood just outside the station entrance, at the head of the pavement steps. Anti-terrorism, Malkin thought, it had to be. A suspect being brought in that day for trial. Some poor bastard Muslim who’d made the mistake of visiting Afghanistan, or maybe just sent money to the wrong cause. Most likely now he’d be slammed up for a couple of years in Belmarsh or some other top-security hole, then released without charge.

But that wasn’t why Malkin was here.

He crossed close to a Transit holding as many as ten officers in reserve and descended the cobbled slip road leading to the canal. A short distance along, the high glass and polished stone of the new courthouse was guarded by yet more police.

All it needed, Malkin thought, was a helicopter circling overhead.

He showed his ID and explained his reasons for entry. The case he was interested in was due to conclude today.

A little over two years before, Alan Silver had been woken in the night by the sound of intruders; he had armed himself with the licensed shotgun that he kept close by the bed, gone to the head of the stairs and emptied both barrels into the two youths he surprised below. One took superficial wounds to the arm and neck and was able to turn and run; the other was thrown backwards on to the tiles of the broad hallway, bleeding out, a hole torn in his chest.

Silver phoned emergency services, ambulance and police, but by the time the paramedics arrived, less than ten minutes later, it was too late. Wayne Michaels, seventeen, was pronounced dead on arrival at the hospital.

Alan Silver — a sometime song-and-dance man and minor celebrity — was both hero and villain. The more righteous of the media spoke of unnecessary force and questioned the rights of any civilians to own firearms at all, while others championed him as a hero. Right-of-centre politicians strutted in reflected glory, crowing about the right of every Englishman to protect house and home, his proverbial castle.

When Silver, described in court as a popular entertainer, pleaded guilty to manslaughter and was sentenced to three years’ imprisonment, there was uproar. ‘Is this all a young man’s life is worth?’ demanded the Independent. ‘Jailed for doing what was right!’ denounced the Mail.

Outside the court that day, Wayne Michaels’ father, Earl, sweaty, clinging to his dignity in an ill-fitting suit, was asked how he felt about the verdict. ‘My son is dead,’ he said. ‘Now let justice take its course.’

More recently, Silver’s lawyers had earned the right to appeal; the sentence, they said, was punitive and over-severe. Punitive, Malkin remembered thinking: isn’t that supposed to be the point?