Kill Who You Want

Chapter Thirty-Three

Plot reminder: Kubič is being interrogated by Yardley. Giles Hancock has meanwhile been called away from an intimate encounter with Abigail Gilchrist.
Author's Note: For non-Brit readers, the acronym SAS you'll find in this chapter refers to the crack special ops wing of the British military.

~~~~~

The gaze which Jenny directed out of the back seat window was a vacant one. There was nothing to see anyway, the country road along which they were traveling unlit, the vehicle's headlights sliding along a tight wall of hedgerow broken now and again by a ramshackle gate or junction with an even narrower lane. A hand caressed the silky sprawl of Summer's hair in her lap, the initial five-year-old curiosity and excitement having given way to the natural exhaustion of what had been and continued to be a very long day. They'd come quickly, calmly - theirs not the standard police get up but a sleek all-black affair which had prompted Dave to lean into her ear as they were being ushered into the waiting car and whisper 'SAS'. Save for the indispensable Spotty the panda, no time had been allowed for the gathering of personal items. Out, out, out. The instruction whispered yet heartpoundingly urgent.

She'd understood immediately of course. It explained everything, didn't it? Joe's subterfuge in encouraging Danny to drag Summer with him to Birmingham. His anger that same morning when he'd discovered she was bringing them back home. His return to the bottle too - the fact having been reported to her by the wife of Sergeant Bayliss with whom she was still in regular contact. Lord, one of those letters, a dilemma like that, it'd be enough to turn anyone to the drink.

Clearly, if they were being whisked off to some godforsaken safe house somewhere, then like Nathan Edwardson he hadn't been able to fully go through with it. The officer at the wheel remaining tight-lipped, she could only wonder who the victim had been. Shuddering, she could only wonder too who the murderer would now be targeting...

God damn you Nigel Yardley, she thought. God damn you for making everyone believe that the problem had gone away. That the guy was a complete arsehole had been instantly clear to her that one time they'd met at the senior officers' Christmas ball up at county HQ several years earlier. His eyes all over her, a clumsy drunken pass outside the toilets, his own pregnant wife there inside the dance hall.

Talking of arseholes...

"We've just installed some new software you see. I'm not talking a Windows upgrade here but an all-encompassing operative system." As was his habit, Dave seemed not to notice that no-one, least of all the officer to whom he was principally directing his words, was actually listening. It was something she had clearly been blind to during their brief initial dating period, but which had subsequently become as annoying and incessant as a neighbour's car alarm in the middle of the night. "Quality control registration," he continued in that monotone nasal drone of his, "product labeling, warehouse management, everything." Couldn't he see that there were far bigger things at play here than the bloody computer system at Findlay Fine Foods? The emotional well-being of his stepson, for one...

She glanced across the backseat at him, he too gazing vacantly at the passing hedgerow. Poor sod. The list of wrongdoings committed by his father, already dangerously long, might now have reached tipping point, gone beyond the realms of forgivable. Largely absent, alcoholic, convicted of drink driving with Danny himself at the wheel, figure of public scorn and ridicule, and now attempted murderer. Reconciliation, if indeed possible, seemed several years down the line at best.

In the passenger seat, Dave just wouldn't let up. "It really is fundamental to the smooth running of the factory that I in my capacity as head technician am present to oversee the successful adoption of said software amongst the general workforce. Perhaps you could convey the importance of my role to your superiors. I will need to be contactable of course and during a particularly sensitive period such as this it is unthinkable that I should be absent for more than a day or two." Still the officer showed no sign of interest, focused his gaze directly at the narrow strip of road ahead. "I believe the term they used during the war," Dave persisted, "was reserved occupation. You know, for professional roles such as mine deemed too impor---"

It came as a relief to all when the officer's phone beeped with an incoming call. "For the boy," he announced after a few moments' wordless head nodding, the phone held out beside him so that Danny could reach out and take it. "Your father wants to speak to you."

Jenny watched as her son tentatively pressed receiver to ear. The subsequent conversation was brief and somewhat one-sided, Danny's own contribution limited to a few yes's and no's, a uh-uh, a couple of okays.

"What did he say?" she asked as he passed the phone back to the officer.

There was a glum kind of shrug before turning his gaze back out of the window. She had to pick his reply out over Dave's re-activated drone about how indispensable his job was.

"He said it isn't as bad as it seems. That everything's going to be okay."

She too turned her gaze back out of the window. It was exactly the same thing he used to say to her, she thought, when the drinking had started to get out of hand.

*

Giles never felt more at home, never more like he belonged, than when lurking in shadows. That cast by the oak tree which hung over the driveway of the apartment complex in St Frideswade's Lane was particularly warm and cloaking, a black velvet blanket to draw around his shoulders. A further disguise. A second mask placed over the one he'd somewhat hastily applied at home. It seemed apt somehow that rotating his head 270 degrees he could make out the church tower silhouetted against the surrounding urban glow. As if what he was about to do were some kind of filial homage.

It was just before nine when he heard the side gate squeak open, the faint successive crunch of approaching footsteps along the gravel. Hand clutching the handle of carving knife he'd grabbed from the kitchen drawer, he peered over the boot of the Golf he was crouched behind. The figure picked out by the driveway footlights was too tall however, too clearly masculine. In any case, his prey would almost certainly be arriving by car; the text message had arrived a little earlier confirming that the Renault Clio was still in the station car park.

He didn't mind waiting. Indeed, it was the best part - that delicious heart thud of anticipation.

Resting his back once more against the side of the Golf, his thoughts returned to Abigail... Their next meeting had been planned for dusk of the following day. This, yes, caused another delicious heart thud of anticipation.

He wondered what she'd make of it if she were to find out about all of this. Whether on some sort of level she might understand, even condone. Whether anyone could.

Maybe tonight would be his last, he mused. Maybe, finally, he would be sated. That had always been the agreement, after all. That if either of them desired for whatever reason to back out then the other would simply have to accept it, be left with the option either of calling it quits themselves or else carrying on alone.

There was little time to reflect on it at that moment, however, the rattling, electronically prompted swing of the main gate announcing the arrival of a Renault Clio...