Alex Howard - Time to Die

Look at her, she’s a big fat pig.’

Well, she wasn’t at school any more, she wasn’t called Clare Yate any more, and thanks to remorseless self-discipline, she wasn’t fat any more, and people didn’t chant hurtful things about her in playgrounds. Today she was Clarissa Yeats. And today she wasn’t going to eat any more shit in her life. She’d had a bellyful of it growing up. She didn’t take pain any more; she dished it out.

It’s not as if the woman needed her looks anyway, not with her ‘career’. To make matters even more galling, Kathy always seemed to be doing something worthy, baking, yoga, exercise, ironing, reading foreign journals. In the toilet there were The Economist, Der Spiegel, Paris Match and the FT .

Clarissa felt she was a living reproach. Kathy even had tragic glamour as a result of being a widow. Her husband would never grow bald, fat and old, never have hair sprout from his ears, never break her heart by having sex with a girl in his office or her best friend. He would remain an iconic, shining memory.

And then, of course, there was her beautiful son.

When the judge has finished with him, when Robbo has finished with him, he won’t look so beautiful then, Kathy.

I can never have what you’ve got, Kathy, but I can, and I will, take it away from you, she thought. And it starts today.

The Somali girl she had lured into a car where Robbo had dealt with her. The Turkish toddler she’d taken while following Mehmet. She knew the family routine and the gods had smiled on her when the man had left the boy of his own volition in her care.

She shook her head with irritation when she thought of Robbo, huge, packed with weightlifter’s muscle, his shaved head decorated with those three inverted V’s like sergeant’s stripes. He’d really started to go off the rails of late. Clarissa blamed the drugs he took for his bodybuilding. Human growth hormone, extracted from some dead guy’s pituitary gland, as if that would do you good.

The Somali girl he’d left in that bunker where the police had found her. They’d accepted his explanation that he’d thought it would be blamed on kindoku (Just don’t think, OK, said Conquest). Then the boy dumped, highly visibly, in the canal. I panicked, Robbo had said, I thought the Old Bill were going to pull my car. Well, Robbo didn’t know, but his future was under review and it would be a severance package, quite literally. They couldn’t put up with his erratic behaviour any more.

Neither of them even began to suspect that Robbo, in his own way, had been paying tribute to the historic figure he truly venerated.

Today was her third, then, and she knew it would go well.

Peter was more of a challenge. Much more. He was tall and strong and, above all, she guessed he would be a fighter by nature. Not like the others. Destiny had already dealt Mariam, the Somali, a series of dreadful blows so it was almost as if she accepted her fate, she hadn’t fought back. Baby Ali couldn’t. The boy wouldn’t either. Not through choice. The boy wouldn’t know what had hit him.

Earlier that day she had watched from the van as Kathy had left for the airport. Kathy had told her about the trip and her movements. London was such a perfect environment to work in. No one noticed vehicles. She left the van where she’d parked it so she wouldn’t lose its place. She had a council parking permit displayed on the dashboard. The plates on the van were fake. She knew from talking to Kathy — ‘It must be so hard for you when you travel to make arrangements for Peter! How do you manage?’ — the boy would be home about four thirty and was due to shower, change and then go to a friend’s party from seven until ten, then go to a sleepover and stay at another friend’s until Sunday evening when Kathy would pick him up. It would all work perfectly.

She rehearsed it again in her mind.

It was foolproof.

Clarissa came back to the vehicle at four in the afternoon, accompanied by the dog. She had thought about leaving it in the van but was worried in case it started barking. You could commit virtually any crime in Britain and no one would do a thing, but leave a dog unattended in a vehicle and they’d lynch you.

She had thought about taking the boy in the flat where there would be privacy, but he was tall and strong, and in the inevitable struggle she was worried about leaving DNA evidence. Of course, she had been in the flat for professional reasons, as an employee of Albion, so there was no reason why there shouldn’t be traces of her around, but she was thinking about blood or hair, things that shouldn’t be there, things that might look suspicious. There was going to be one hell of an investigation over Peter’s disappearance, that was for sure. A Somali and a Turk both with questionable pasts, both here illegally, were not so newsworthy. There was a public feeling it was almost their fault for being here in the first place. Nobody had asked them to come to Britain. Mariam hadn’t made any of the national papers. Baby Ali had warranted a paragraph. Even the TV footage from the canal hadn’t been used. A photogenic white boy with a beautiful, tragic mother, that would be a gift from the gods to journalists. That would go national.

No, she thought, the street would be best, if all went according to plan, and she could see no reason why it shouldn’t, the whole thing would be over in seconds. She had rehearsed over and over; she had used props. She knew her lines, the direction was thorough and clear, now she was impatient to get on stage.

She looked at the clock in the car. Four fifteen. It was time to get ready.

Showtime.

Peter walked slowly home from school and turned into his road. The street was always quiet at this time. He had a lot to carry on a Friday. There was his PE kit, his heavy schoolbag with his textbooks and exercise books, and today he was further burdened with a papier mâché model of a cat that he’d made in art and had decided to give to his mum as a birthday present. He hadn’t painted it yet; he would do that at home. He was still undecided as to the colour scheme. Black and white would be easiest but tabby more of a challenge. His mum liked cats. She liked dogs too but when he asked, as he often did, about getting one, she’d always say that it would be too much of a responsibility. One day, thought Peter. One day, I’ll have a dog. It was, he decided, an achievable dream. He was a very practical boy.

Not like Kemal in his class. Kemal wanted a horse. Like that was going to happen in Finchley.

As he rounded the corner he saw the woman and the spaniel. It was a cocker spaniel, or similar, with a brown and white coat and one of its front legs was heavily bandaged. He guessed it had to be a stray. The woman, one leg kneeling on the pavement, was wearing a blue uniform and the van had the Haringey Council logo, a kind of asymmetric star, that to Peter’s eyes was strangely similar to the NATO emblem he’d seen on the military channel that he liked watching on TV.

The dog-warden lady had managed to get the animal into a small, portable cage but she had some kind of cast on her hand, maybe it was broken, and would obviously struggle to lift the steel container, now heavy with dog, into the back of the van.

Peter stopped and said politely, ‘Hello. Do you need some help?’ He was a very helpful boy. His school reports usually mentioned this. ‘Peter is very popular with the other boys and always ready to help out.’

The woman looked up at him from where she was crouching beside the dog on the pavement. ‘If you don’t mind,’ she said, and smiled at him warmly.

Peter noticed she was very pretty. He was just beginning to notice girls. There was a U-shaped scar between her eyebrows, which strangely made her look even more attractive. It was a paradox. He thought, maybe when I’m older I’ll understand things like that.