The Business Of Dying

'One more question. How the hell did you and Roberts ever get involved with Keen?'

'Dr Roberts knew him from somewhere. And I knew Dr Roberts.'

I didn't bother asking again how Kover and Roberts knew each other. Doubtless it was down to their shared interest.

Sighing, I turned and walked over to the window. The view was of a gloomy monolithic towerblock which was so close that it would have blocked out the sunlight, had there been any. Outside it was raining hard, and fog was obscuring the glow of the bright orange street lights. A man, his coat pulled up so it was almost completely covering his face, hurried past on the street below. He was half running, as if simply being outside was enough to put him in mortal danger.

As I stood there looking out, I remembered back to when I'd been a kid of thirteen. We'd had a field out the back of our house with a huge oak tree in it. We used to climb it during the summer. My dad used to come back from work every night at half past six, rarely earlier and never later, and me and him and my sister would go out into the field and play football. We did it every night, unless it was raining, and it was best in summer when the sun went down behind the tree and the neighbours' kids came out and joined in. They'd been good days, probably even the best days of my life. Life's good when you're a kid; it should be, anyway. I pictured Molly Hagger, the little blonde girl with the curly hair. Thirteen years old. Her last hours must have been a confused, terrifying hell. Abducted from the grey, bleak streets of a wet, cold city – a city that had put her on to drugs and stolen any last scrap of innocence she had – and taken away to be used, beaten, destroyed, for the pleasure of men who dripped with the sickness of absolute corruption. Men who would steal a life just to create a better, more satisfying orgasm. She should have been playing football and having fun with parents who cared about her. Instead, her remains lay anonymous and forgotten, somewhere they'd never be found. Forgotten by everyone, even by her best friend, who'd tried to use the situation for her own selfish advantage.

Forgotten by everyone. Except me.

'Look, can you let me out of here? I need a doctor for these fucking burns. I'm in a lot of pain.'

I continued to stare out of the window, puffing thoughtfully on my cigarette. I thought of Carla Graham and wondered if, had she lived, we'd have got anywhere together.

'You know, Kover,' I said, speaking without looking at him, 'I've done a lot of bad things in my life.'

'Look, I've answered your quest-'

'Some of them really bad.'

'Don't do anything stupid, please!'

'This, however, is not one of them.'

I swung round, and before he could react the cigarette had left my hand and the funeral pyre began to burn, the roar of the flames drowned out by his screams.

38

Raymond Keen. The instigator of it all. Like a fat, malevolent spider, he'd watched over this bloody web of murder, greed and corruption, unworried by who got caught up in it and how they met their ends. Only he could supply the final answers to my questions. And only by ending his life could I finally redeem myself in my own eyes, and the eyes of those who would sit and judge me.

I drove across the rain-soaked city, my mind a wasteland of torn images. Somewhere inside I felt fear, a fear that I might die in my pursuit of justice and revenge, that my time on this earth might be only hours from completion. But hatred conquered it. It was a hatred that seemed to rise right up from the unmarked graves of not only the children Raymond had murdered, but from every victim of every injustice in the world. In the end, it would only subside when my revenge was complete.

I stopped at a phone box on a lonely back road in Enfield and put a call through to the number of a restaurant in Tottenham that Roy Shelley had given me. A foreign-sounding man answered and I asked to speak to Mehmet Illan. The man claimed not to know anyone of that name, which I'd half expected.

'Look, this is urgent. Very urgent. Tell him it's Dennis Milne and I must speak to him.'

'I told you, I don't know no Mehmet Illan.'

I reeled out the number I was calling from. 'He will want to speak to me, I promise you. Do you understand?' I repeated the number, and I got the impression that he was writing it down.

'I told you-'

'I'm only going to be on this number for the next fifteen minutes. It's a payphone. After fifteen minutes I'm gone, and he'll regret the fact that he missed me.'

I hung up, and lit a cigarette. Outside, the rain continued to tip down and the street was empty. There were lights on in the houses opposite and I watched them vaguely, looking for signs of life. But there was nothing. It was as if the whole world was asleep. Or dead.

The phone rang. It was barely a minute since my call to the restaurant. I picked up on the second ring.

'Dennis Milne.'

'What is it you want?' The voice was slow and confident, and the accent cultured. He sounded like he was from one of the higher social classes in his native land.

'I want you to do something for me. And in return I'll do something for you.'

'Is your line secure?'

'It's a payphone. I've never used it before.'

'What do you want me to do?'

'I want you, or some of your representatives, to get rid of Raymond Keen. Permanently.'

There was a deep but not unpleasant chuckle at the other end. 'I think you're making some sort of mistake. I don't even know a Raymond Keen.'

'Raymond Keen's going down. I've got evidence that's going to convict him of some pretty horrendous crimes.'

'I don't see what that's got to do with me.'

'If he goes down, he'll talk, and my understanding is you've got an interesting business relationship with him. One you'd rather keep secret.'

'What evidence, exactly, do you have on this Raymond Keen you're talking about?'

I took out the portable tape player on which I'd recorded the interrogation of Kover. 'This,' I said, pressing the play button and putting the machine next to the mouthpiece. I'd wound it forward to the most incriminating part and was pleased at how good the sound quality was. Kover detailed Raymond's role in the murder not only of Miriam Fox but of as many as four other young girls as well. I switched it off before I got to the bit where I incinerated him.

'It sounds like a lot of that so-called confession was given under extreme duress. Surely, then, it would not be admissible in a court of law?'

'Maybe not, but if it fell into the hands of the police, I'm certain they would have to act on it. And I think you'd find they'd leave no stone unturned to put him away, and if they did that… well… I imagine they'd turn up a lot of stuff that would affect other people. And those people might get tarred with the same brush. And who wants to be closely associated with a child killer? Because I can assure you that's exactly what Raymond Keen is.' There was silence on the other end of the line. 'Raymond's at home at the moment. I think he's getting a little nervous about things. In fact, I think he might be preparing to fly the nest even as we speak, so you're going to have to be quick about things. If he's still alive in twenty-four hours the police are going to get that tape I've just played you, plus all the other evidence I've unearthed on Raymond's nasty little sideline.'

'And after that? If Raymond Keen disappears, what guarantees are there that there will be no further repercussions?'

'I'll have got what I wanted. The tape'll be destroyed because, as you say, it incriminates me as well, and I'll disappear off the face of the earth.'

'You could be recording this conversation. What's to stop it being used against Mehmet Illan at a later date?'

'You're just going to have to trust me on that. Whatever happens, if Raymond's still alive tomorrow night, I'm going to the police. If he isn't, I won't. And to be honest, I'd prefer not to.'

'It would be useful if you disappeared sooner rather than later.'