Time to Die

21

The first time Clarissa had seen, felt and handled the Makarov handgun (Eastern European, as predicted by Corrigan) had been a moment of true love. She had never seen a handgun in real life before. She was so used to the visual reality from TV and film that she expected it to have no real resonance, for it to be just a tool, like a cooker or an iPod. Far from it.

First of all was the physical beauty of the weapon, which she hadn’t been expecting. Form follows function and good design has a timeless, classic grace. The gun had grace. It was a fairly standard-looking automatic and quite small, an ideal size for Clarissa. Its black metal body was sleek and functional. It smelt of oil, a scent she was unused to, slick and heavy. It gleamed dully when she held it to the light. She had balanced it in her palm and felt its weight with fascination: 700 grams, she learned later. That 700 grams was nearly the weight of a large bag of sugar, but concentrated in the small frame of the gun it felt supernaturally heavy.

Conquest had shown her how to load the magazine, sliding the 9 mm bullets into its spring-activated mechanism. He knew the Makarov well. It had been a standard-issue firearm in Eastern Europe in the old communist days, and a large number of the guns were still in circulation. They were cheap and reliable. This one had cost Conquest 300 pounds, coincidentally the same sum he’d spent on the same night entertaining a client at the Ritz.

In Clarissa’s eyes, each glowing copper-jacketed bullet with its lead tip looked like a miniature, deadly, metal lipstick. Loaded, it felt physically not that much heavier, but emotionally, well, that was a different story. Holding the handgun, she was now more than the equal of any unarmed man. She could walk up to someone like Mike Tyson, pull the trigger nine times — the gun was semi-automatic — and there would be no need of a referee’s count to decide the outcome. Holding the gun was power. Holding the gun was freedom. Holding the gun was heaven.

Firing it for the first time was a sexual thrill. She felt it in the same visceral, physical way. In some ways it was more exciting than that physical act. Even the actions were arousing. Pulling the trigger was like a metaphor for sex. Even the wording, ‘pulling the trigger’, sounded like a sexual reference.

He showed her on the range he had on the island how to shoot. The stance, ‘You can always tell a good shooter, he stands like a gay man,’ he had told her. The grip, how to pull the trigger; most importantly, how to breathe when she aimed. Hold your breath when you align the sight, he’d said. She’d taken it all in and then almost cried out in frustration as the empty glass bottle and cans he had put out at a ten metre distance stood unscathed as every shot she fired missed.

Conquest had smiled at her incompetence. Don’t snatch the trigger, he had said, be gentle. Squeeze it gently. The gun will do the work.

She had improved since then, and today she would be firing into a man’s body from a distance of probably under a metre. She couldn’t miss.

Bald Paul, another of Conquest’s employees, a mate from the old days, who lived at the lodge house opposite the island, had dropped her off a mile away from Whiteside’s in Upper Holloway. She checked her reflection out as she walked past a shop window: shoulder-length, blonde hair, large red-framed sunglasses, short denim skirt, ankle boots. Anyone looking closely at her face would not have seen the scar between her eyes, she’d foundationed over that, she would never make that mistake again. She knew that soon all the CCTV around here would be searched again and again. She was carrying a canvas tote bag with her, the gun inside. She walked round the corner into Whiteside’s street.

It was now lunchtime and the pavements were eerily deserted. The day was unusually hot and hardly a breath of air moved in the streets of Holloway. The lime trees stood like silent silver pillars, their bark bleached and peeling in the bright sunlight. It was fairytale-like, as if North London were holding its breath, as if some enchantment had sent everyone to sleep.

She walked up the steps to the heavy front door of the house that Whiteside lived in and rang the bell that had his name beside it and the words ‘Flat One’. There was a noise from the buzzer and a click from the lock as it sprang open. She was obviously expected. Conquest’s text had done the work. She walked into the spacious hall, through the door with his flat number beside it, which stood ajar, and then gently closed it behind her with her foot. She was careful not to touch anything. After she’d finished, the place would be forensically examined in minute detail. She walked up the narrow flight of stairs to the first-floor flat, heart thudding, hardly able to breathe.

Lights. Camera. Action. She thought: take one. The victim’s flat.

‘Hi!’ she said brightly to the figure framed in the doorway above, filling the space, who stood looking down at her. In the flesh the journalist looked frighteningly unstoppable, the kind of man who could absorb bullets. She hadn’t expected him to be so big; he looked huge. The Makarov had been highly effective against tin cans and empty wine bottles. It had punched holes in paper targets. Would it be any good against him? Her heart was racing now and her mouth was very dry. She badly needed some water. She wondered if she would be able to speak.

‘Come in,’ he said and she suddenly thought, what if he’s not alone? What am I going to do then? She started sweating and she felt faint. Clarissa’s training as an actress meant she was unusually good at detecting what was real from what was false in the image that people projected. She was really good at detecting bullshit. There was none here. He wasn’t playing a role. He wasn’t just tough-looking; he was tough. She had a mad desire to just give up, run out of the door or, even more crazily, give him the gun and surrender herself to him. I must do this quickly before I lose it, she thought to herself.

She slid her right hand inside the canvas bag she was carrying and tightened it around the butt and the trigger. The feel of the gun lifted her spirits. She remembered Conquest getting her to shoot a watermelon, the massive damage the small bullet had inflicted. There was a tiny hole on the outside but when they’d looked inside, there you could see what it had done. Whiteside’s formidable muscles would no more deflect the bullet than the skin of the fruit. He led the way along a short narrow corridor, past a bedroom and a bathroom. Both had their doors ajar; both, she noted, were empty. Then a narrow galley kitchen to the right, again, unoccupied. Ahead, at the end of the corridor was what looked like a study. This had no door, it had obviously been removed to create an illusion of more space, and that too was empty. She felt her spirits rise.

They moved into the living room, its huge windows flooding the room with light. They were alone. Relief flooded through her. Clarissa felt calm and in control. She knew now everything would be all right. She smiled at the man standing before her.

‘So,’ said Whiteside. It was the last word, the last syllable he would say to Clarissa. He had turned away, maybe to open a window, and his back was to her. She took the gun in a calm, easy motion from the bag, slid the safety off, and — remembering to squeeze, not snatch, the trigger, be gentle and let the gun do the work — shot him in the back at a distance of a metre and a half.

The gun kicked in her hand and the shot made a noise like a loud, dry crack. The bullet caught him, not in the spine which was what she had aimed for, but in the side. The shiny, bright copper-coloured shell casing was spat out by the gun and she caught an intoxicating smell of the smoke from the gunpowder as it rose out of the pistol. Whiteside felt as if he’d been hit with a sledgehammer. He staggered forward as if pushed by an invisible hand and turned. Clarissa took a step forward, and this time shot him in the stomach. Whiteside’s legs gave way and he crashed backwards on to the floor as if he’d sat on an invisible, non-existent chair. She was smiling now. Everything was working brilliantly. He made no sound. Automatically, he put a hand over the entry wound and dark-red blood seeped through his fingers. He watched as it soaked into the carpet. He felt no pain. Stupidly, he found himself thinking, that stain’s going to be hard to shift. There was a roaring in his ears and he felt as though he was falling. He had an overwhelming sense of unreality crashing over him like a wave in slow motion. This can’t be happening, he thought.

He turned his head to look at Clarissa. She looked down at him triumphantly, sprawled on the carpet of his flat, which was gently absorbing his life blood. She had won, he had lost. All that muscle, all that experience, all that character, all that crime-fighting expertise reduced to, what? A human rag doll. Her lips were parted and her eyes glinted with excitement as she carefully sighted the gun, and that was the last thing Whiteside saw as he lay there helplessly, the black hole at the end of the handgun’s barrel, the eye of the Makarov. Then her third 9 mm bullet hit him in the face and he knew no more.

She shook her head to clear it. Time had ceased to mean anything. Clarissa felt as if the last couple of minutes had extended for hours, but a glance at her watch confirmed that it really was only a hundred or so seconds. She glanced briefly at the man lying on the floor, dead or dying. Blood was still oozing out of him and she avoided looking at what was left of his face, which was now a bloody mask. She slid the safety catch on to the pistol, put it in her bag and pulled on a pair of latex gloves that she had in her pocket.

First of all she quickly retrieved the three casings from the shots she’d fired and put them in her bag. His mobile was ridiculously easy to find, lying on the coffee table. She had his number programmed into hers and she quickly called it, just in case he had more than one phone, but it rang immediately. That was the phone she was after. She switched it off and put it into her bag. Next to where the mobile had been was his wallet. She added that to the bag. Then she pulled off her blonde wig and dropped it into her bag too, followed by the sunglasses, and slipped a pair of small, heavy-framed glasses on to her face. Transformed from blonde siren to dark-haired intellectual, she let herself out of the flat, peeling off and pocketing the gloves at the last minute as the front door closed behind her.

As she walked down the street, she passed Constable Childs on his way to Whiteside’s flat. Childs didn’t notice her. He was a man very much in love, with sex on his mind. His libido was rampant, he was as hot as the surrounding streets. He put it down to the sunny weather.