Kill Who You Want

Chapter Seventeen

Plot reminder: Alan Peters, who features in the second part of this chapter, is the diminuitive headmaster (principal) of the local school. Vince, who features in the first part, is a brand new character introduced here. In the previous chapter Heather Gilchrist had received another letter from the murderer. Crippled with guilt at not ending the 'game' when she had the chance, she was last seen staggering off into the morning.

~~~~~

Vince Holloway stood at the usual corner, usual time. His feet were stamping, his arms crossed, huddled into the parka which covered his paint-splattered overalls.

"Come on, come on.," he muttered impatiently under his breath.

It was bad enough that Reg had him on minimum pay, let alone that he also had to wait around in the freezing cold for old sod to show up.

Painting walls, pasting up tiles... It was hardly what he'd dreamt about as a boy, no. Still, as his dad always said, he was lucky to have a job at all. Two solitary passes in the national exams weren't much to show for all those years at school, and his former classmates who'd also left at 16 were either on benefits or else chopping up lettuces at Findlay Fine Foods. At least with painting and decorating there was a bit of skill involved. It was even rewarding sometimes when you finished a job and everything looked a whole lot better than it had done before you started. And Reg, he wasn't such a bad old bugger when all was said and done. Between them, they managed to break up the monotony with a few laughs.

And finally there it was - the van floating up the street, the tyres as bald as Reg's head slipping and sliding through the sludge. The current job was a shop refurbishment over in Croxley. At that speed it would take them hour and a half just to bloody get there.

"Surprise!" greeted Vince as he opened the passenger door, his right hand letting loose the snowball he'd been hiding behind his back.

But Reg was not amused, a fact communicated by a simmering glower, a theatrical hand-brushing away of the snow which now powdered his coat and the driver's seat.

"What you playing at lad? Christ you're an idiot sometimes."

"Just trying to have a bit of fun Reg."

"Hardly the day for it."

Frowning, Vince clipped the passenger seatbelt. "Why, what's happened?" The old sod hadn't had another funny turn like that other time he hoped.

"Haven't you heard?"

"Heard what?" His mum and dad had already gone off to work by the time he'd made it down the stairs. He hadn't heard anything.

Reg waited until the corner had been somewhat swayingly negotiated before filling him in.

"That pyscho bloke. Struck again."

"Oh Christ."

"Teenage girl this time, only a couple of years younger than yourself. Shot her in the forehead as she stood at her bedroom window."

He would know her face most probably, reflected Vince sadly. Ravensby Comprehensive was hardly bloody London.

"Sniper job. Around ten o'clock last night it was."

The spark of a memory flickered in his mind; the sound of shattered glass somewhere in the mid-distance, muffled and refracted through the falling snow...

"Where?" he wanted to know.

"One of them posh streets off West Road. We did a job there a couple of months back, remember? Near that abandoned house where Lord what's-his-face's hippy son used to live. Was there the bastard shot her from."