Kill Who You Want

Chapter Eleven

Plot reminder: Catherine Butterfield's address was 33 Churchill Avenue. Larkinson is the detective constable who featured in the opening chapters. Kubič has concluded that if the second recipient is a teenage boy, as suspected, he will have equipped himself with a pocket knife. Indeed, two chapters ago Nathan stole a knife from a fishing shop. In the previous chapter he arranged to meet Sophie, the most intelligent student in his class and, it seems, his secret girlfriend. Karen, who features in this chapter, is Nathan's permanently stoned mother.

~~~~~

Thursday, February 15th

The crime scene clean up service arrived early, discreetly, before most of the residents of Churchill Avenue were awake. They would finish their unenviable but entirely necessary duties by mid-morning. As the departing SOCO officers the previous evening, equipment cases were packed wordlessly back into the van. A well-executed three-point turn, then away.

Not enough time had passed for the garden to look incongrously unkempt. Windows were still clean, the paintwork on the frames uncracked and uncrumbled. Anyone with the temerity to peek through them would now, following the cleaners' departure, have discovered everything in order. Both inside and out 33 Churchill Avenue seemed for all the world like any other suburban home. A place where a child could grow in peace. Thirty-somethings grey into middle-age before stooping and withering into their senior years. Where Christmases were warm, the summer back garden evenings cool. A place whose inhabitants would eventually pass the same way everyone passed: old age, a tragic accident, some smoke-related or genetically-inherited disease. Not knifed down like forest prey as they unloaded the dishwasher.

And maybe someone would one day buy the place. A person with an eye for a bargain and little regard for ghosts, for ancient horror stories. Maybe the lawn would always be neatly mown, the hedges trimmed. A cloth be passed regularly over the window panes, a paintbrush once a decade over the frames.

But no matter how well-maintained, no matter how innocuous of appearance, it seemed certain that for many, many years to come people would still pause their step outside 33 Churchill Avenue and turn their heads in momentary remembrance.

Here.

That poor young mother-to-be.

It happened here.

*

Larkinson tinkled open the door, briefly surveyed the array of rods, floats and other paraphernalia cluttered before him. Fishing was a stupid bloody hobby, you asked him. Like watching paint dry.

"Good morning," greeted the proprietor, a stocky, shaven-headed figure in his late-forties. There was a tabloid spread out before him on the counter. It wasn't difficult to make out the headline, even upside down: Terror Town.

"Good morning," Larkinson greeted back. "Not that there's too much good about it though, is there really?" He nodded towards the paper.

The man folded it back up, tossed it to one side. As if by doing so the problem might magically disappear.

"I know a few people who've upped and offed already," he began. "Would do the same myself if I could. Throw a few things into a bag, take myself off to Ireland. You know - a bit of fly fishing. Mayo, somewhere round there. Got salmon as long as your legs floating around in those rivers. A few weeks, an extended holiday let's say. Just till this whole ruddy thing blows over." There was a wistful sigh. "Who's going to look after this place though? All I've got see. If everyone starts leaving it won't be long till the jackals start coming out at night."

Larkinson was with him. "Looters."

The proprietor nodded sadly. "Must be twenty, thirty grand's worth of stock in total. Reckon I'll have to start sleeping here before too long." He squeezed his lips together, forced a flickered optimistic smile. "Fish in the canal won't be going anywhere though. So, how can I help you sir?"