Simon Kernick - The Business of Dying

Because we were moving away from Commercial Road, it took a lot less time to get to his house, even though the traffic was still heavy. We went inside in silence and sat down in his sitting room. There were a couple of dirty plates on the floor and various other bits and pieces of rubbish. Nothing like as tidy or as homely as I remembered it.

I motioned for him to sit down. He thanked me sarcastically, putting the holdall down on the floor between us. He was a lot cockier now than he had been, a result no doubt of the fact that he was getting used to the situation.

'Do you mind if I smoke?' I said, lighting a cigarette without offering him one. He shook his head and mumbled something, lighting one for himself. I sat back in my seat and took the gun out of my pocket. 'OK, show me what you've got in there.' He unzipped the bag and gingerly took out a shabby-looking.22 pistol. 'That's no use to me,' I told him. 'Keep going.' He put the.22 on the carpet and reached back into the bag like a miserable Santa, emerging this time with a sawn-off pump-action shotgun. I shook my head, and he carried on. Next up was more in tune with what I wanted: a newish-looking MAC 10 sub machine pistol. There was no magazine in it, but after a quick rummage around Runnion came up with two taped together. 'I'll have that one,' I told him, and he put it to one side.

He pulled out a further three weapons – all hand-guns – and told me that was all he'd got.

I smiled. 'Well, it's not bad for a man who likes to keep away from weapons.' Still holding on to my own gun, I gave each of them a brief inspection and settled for a short-barrelled Browning. 'Have you got ammo for this?' I asked him.

'Should have,' he said, and once again began a search of the bag, bringing out a couple of mint-condition boxes of 9mm bullets which he put with the MAC 10 and the revolver.

I took a long drag on my cigarette and watched him carefully as he put everything else back in the holdall. When he'd finished, I stood up and picked up my newly acquired weapons. I put the MAC 10 in the pocket of my raincoat, along with the magazines, and stubbed my cigarette out in an overflowing ashtray. I picked up the Browning and inspected it again, removing the magazine, checking the bullets.

'You haven't got a silencer for this, have you?' I asked.

'No, I fucking haven't,' he said, remaining seated.

'Well, I hope when it comes down to it, it works.' 'I'm sure it will.'

I released the safety and pulled the trigger. It did.

'I've been hearing some funny rumours today, Dennis.'

'Oh yeah?' I leaned back against the phone-box glass and took a drink from the can of Coke I was holding. All part of the new diet. 'What sort of rumours?'

'That you're involved in a lot of serious shit. That the police are looking for you with a view to questioning you about some very nasty crimes indeed. Possibly even murder.'

I whistled through my teeth. 'Serious allegations. Where did you hear them from?'

'Are they true?'

'Behave. You've known me for close to ten years. Do you really think I'd be involved in murder?'

'And I've been in journalism for close to thirty years and one thing I've learned is that people are never what they seem. Everyone's got skeletons in their closets, even the vicar's wife. And some of them are pretty fucking grim.'

'I've got skeletons, Roy, but they don't include murder. Now, have you got the information we were talking about?'

'I'm concerned, Dennis. I don't want any of this coming back to me.'

'It won't. Don't worry.'

'That's easy for you to say.'

'What do you mean, easy? I'm the one who's on the run. Look, I promise all you'll get out of it is a fucking decent story.'

'When? You keep telling me this, but so far I haven't got a thing to go on and I've put my neck on the line for you.'

I sighed and thought about it for a moment. 'It's Thursday now. You'll have your story by tomorrow.'

'I'd better have.'

'You will. So what's the address then?'

'What are you going to do to him?'

'I need to ask him some questions. That's all. He can solve a puzzle for me.'

'44b Kenford Terrace. It's in Hackney. That's all I know. And don't ever fucking tell anyone you heard it from me.'

I sat for a long time in the cold darkness waiting for Alan Kover. His flat, not the one in which he'd committed the infamous rape, was stark in its minimalism. There was only one chair in the cramped little sitting room. It faced a cheap portable TV which had a small cactus plant on it, the only decoration of any kind in the whole room. I sat with my back to the door, watching the blank screen. Watching and waiting and thinking. Kover was the last key in the mystery surrounding Coleman House and its inhabitants. From the wound on Carla's throat, and the way she'd been attacked from behind, I felt sure that he had also been the man who'd murdered Miriam Fox. But such a scenario still threw up far more questions than answers. Presumably, Kover and Carla had been involved together in Miriam's killing. There was no other way she could have known the details of it. But how the hell had two such disparate personalities come together, and what on earth did they kill Miriam for? And what, if anything, did her death have to do with the disappearances? Kover and me, it seemed, had a lot to talk about.

I wanted to smoke. Badly. But I couldn't risk doing it in his flat so I opened my third can of Coke of the day and took a sip. What depressed me about this place was that there was nothing remotely homely, or even human, about it. It was like a bad attempt at a show home created by some very lazy people. I'd checked it over thoroughly, just to see if there were any clues as to what had been going on, but had found nothing. Nothing at all. Just kitchen cupboards with pots and pans in them, a wardrobe with some clothes, a bathroom with a toothbrush and soap. Not a thing that could tell you anything about his personality. For a few minutes I'd even thought I'd got the wrong address, but then I'd felt about under the bed and had pulled out a load of crumpled, dried-out tissues, and I knew then that this was where Kover resided. They'd said he had an unusually high sex drive, but he was sensible enough, having been on the receiving end of police attention, not to leave anything about that could get him into trouble. There were some unlabelled tapes piled up on the video recorder beneath the telly but I doubted if they contained anything incriminating.

I looked at my watch for the hundredth time since breaking in: 8.20 p.m. This time eleven days ago I'd been sitting outside the Traveller's Rest in the pouring rain with a man who was almost certainly now dead. I'd tried Danny's mobile three more times since the attempt on my life, and he still hadn't answered. The message kept saying that the phone I was trying to call was probably switched off and that I should try again later, but I knew there was no point. He would have answered by now. Even in Jamaica.

Behind me, I heard a key turn in the lock. Slipping out of the chair, I moved through the darkness until I was standing behind it as it slowly opened. A large figure emerged carrying a shopping bag and, though I couldn't make him out properly, I could tell it was Kover. The cosh came silently out of my pocket and, as he shut the door and turned to switch on the light, I cracked him hard over the back of the head.

He went down on his knees without a sound and stayed in that position for a second, so I hit him again. This time he toppled over on his side, and I knew he was out cold.

I worked fast. Grabbing him under the arms, I pulled him over to the chair I'd been sitting in, and flung him in it. He was already moaning and turning his head so I knew he wouldn't be under for long. I picked up the length of chain I'd brought with me and wrapped it three times round his upper body, securing it tightly to the back of the chair before padlocking it and chucking the key into my pocket. Next I produced some masking tape from my coat and used it to secure his legs and gag him.