Steven Dunne - The Reaper

‘A few hours. I went to Leeds. There’s nothing to see. My Chief mentioned daughters and then I knew. It all clicked. It’s a place I’ve been. With Terri. With Laura Maples. The Wrigley girl. The anger, the pain. I remembered your pain, Charlie. And then I knew what to look for. It didn’t take long to find out Roddy Telfer lived in Edinburgh, for a couple of years, the same time as Lizzie. He was dealing, wasn’t he, though he never got tugged for it? It didn’t take a great leap to connect him with Lizzie. But it was still a leap. But that’s part of my problem, Charlie. Everything I know about Telfer requires a leap. There are no solid facts. So tell me. How could you possibly have known Telfer supplied Lizzie’s heroin?’

Rowlands shook his head. ‘I’ve written everything…’

‘Tell me, Charlie.’

Rowlands nodded after a long silence. ‘Ay I suppose I owe you that much.’ He sat up now and beckoned for Brook to help with his cushions. ‘I need a cigarette.

In the bureau.’ Brook fetched them and they both lit up. Rowlands nearly retched after the first mouthful and didn’t inhale again but let the smoke curl up into his face.

‘It was about a year after Brixton, you were still on sick leave after your…thing…’

‘Breakdown.’

‘Right. Sorenson contacted me, said he had some interesting information, that we should meet and that I wasn’t to mention it to you. Not that I had any intention, in your state…’

‘And you went along with it?’

‘Not at first. But then he mentioned Lizzie.’

‘Go on.’

‘So I met him. And he told me he knew who’d sold Lizzie the heroin that killed her.’

‘And you believed him?’

‘Course not, lad. Give me some credit. But he had dates, he had times, he knew her friends, her movements and he had Telfer. He knew all about him, told me who he was, what he was like, where he was on the day of Lizzie’s death…’

‘All circumstantial.’

‘I know. But then he showed me this.’ Rowlands fished out a thin gold ring with an inlay of tiny sapphires and showed it to Brook. ‘It was hers. I got it for her eighteenth. Said she’d paid for her gear with it. Then he showed me a pawn ticket with Telfer’s name and a description of the ring on it. And a price. Twenty pounds. A score for my daughter’s life. It cost me four hundred.’

‘But Charlie, how did he know all this? Where does he get knowledge of things he can’t possibly have witnessed and aren’t a matter of record?’

‘I don’t know, lad. But I didn’t need to know. I was hooked.’

‘Then what?’

Rowlands flicked ash onto the floor and had another slug of whisky.

‘Then it was just a question of when I’d kill Telfer. Sorenson offered to do it for me but he wasn’t serious. He knew it had to be me. He knew I had to face Telfer-to look into his eyes. So we started planning it.

‘I needed a gun, so I redirected a sawn-off from some blagger’s car into mine. When the time came, I’d let myself in and wait for Telfer to come home. Then I was supposed to handcuff him to the chair. If not there was the radiator. I was supposed to do the girlfriend too. Sorenson gave me a bottle of chloroform and a scalpel but I was never going to fuck around with that. I think he knew I wouldn’t do it his way.

‘It was already winter so it had to be done soon. Dark nights, bad weather, you know the routine. I had no problem with that. The sooner the better. I wasn’t sure about writing the blood on the wall but if Telfer was already dead…well, why not? I figured I owed Sorenson that much.’

‘Why did he need you to be The Reaper?’

‘I honestly don’t know. I think to get your attention again. He has a great respect for you. For your abilities.’ Brook snorted and Rowlands looked down at the floor.

‘Did he give you music or a picture?’

‘Music-a CD and a cassette. Beethoven’s Ninth. Telfer had to hear it as he died. I didn’t ask why and he didn’t offer to tell me. Listen, Brooky. There’s one thing you’ve got to understand.’

Brook looked at the floor. Finally he returned his eyes to Rowlands. ‘The girl?’

‘Right. You know…you know I’d never…I didn’t mean to…do the girl. Sorenson insisted. For the MO. I agreed but I was never going to.’

‘So what happened? From the beginning.’

He took another large pull on the whisky. ‘I went to Leeds. I stayed in a seedy hotel in Armley. Near the prison. A right shit-hole. Full of hollow-eyed wives and kids on the social, visiting husbands, brothers, fathers in the nick. Two weeks I waited…’

‘Two weeks?’

‘Yeah, I had two weeks leave in ’93. Compassionate, remember. I was having a bad time over Lizzie.’

‘But you went to Leeds…’

‘Damen, my marriage was over. Lizzie had choked on her own vomit. Making sense of her death was all I lived for.’

‘And what did you do for two weeks?’

‘Waited. And watched. Watched that bastard go about his tawdry business, making a living out of other people’s misery. But mostly I watched his girlfriend, to see when she’d be out of the flat so I could be alone with Roddy, so I could tell him why I’d come, watch him squirm, watch him beg me for his pathetic life as I begged God for Elizabeth’s.’ He stopped to compose himself. Brook borrowed the whisky bottle from him and took a slug before placing it back in his bony talon.

‘And then I was ready. Wednesday nights the girl had ante-natal classes and Roddy always walked her to the bus stop. That was the kind of guy he was. He had his own van you know, but he let his eight-month pregnant girlfriend get the fucking bus in winter.

‘So that was my chance to do him, without killing the girl. And the child.’ He paused. ‘I took my bag of fresh clothes and my sawn-off and I let myself in. Nobody saw me. Nobody took any interest in anything but their own business.’ Rowlands began to cough and took another draught of whisky to recover his breath. Brook tucked the blanket tightly around his legs for something to do. He knew the rest but resolved to hear the confession. It was better for Charlie to get it off his chest. There’d still be plenty left in there to kill him.

‘When he came back I sat him down-it wasn’t difficult, he was a snivelling coward. I showed him a picture of Elizabeth.’ Rowlands emitted a strangled laugh. ‘You’ll never guess.’

Brook’s face broke into a sad smile. ‘He didn’t know who she was.’

‘Not a fucking clue. Had me stumped for a while, I can tell you. But then I showed him the ring. The twenty pound ring. And I had him. He remembered the ring. He couldn’t hide that.

‘That’s when he got scared. He realised. And I was right. He begged me. Begged me, Damen. Prayed to me like I was God. You should have seen his face. I’ve never seen anything like it, the look I saw in his eyes that night. That piece of shit begging me, crying for his worthless life. I couldn’t believe it could be so precious to somebody like him.’ Rowlands shook his head in wonder. ‘So precious. After Lizzie died I could have sucked on my gun a dozen times a day and smiled doing it. I don’t need to tell you. But Telfer. He wanted to live so much. It threw me.

‘And I knew then I couldn’t do it. And suddenly he knew it. So he started talking. Talking me down. Trying to get to know me. Make me believe him that he’d finished with all the drugs and the fencing and the nicking. Then he made a fatal mistake. He swore it to me on the life of his unborn child.’ Charlie looked at the floor and tried to get his breath back. He took another pull on the whisky.

‘And then?’ asked Brook after a short silence.

‘Then I blew his head apart.’