One Dead Witness (18 page)

She walked confidently to the front door and jammed her thumb
on the doorbell. The shouting continued. She kept her thumb on. It
rang loudly. The shouting stopped. Footsteps. The sound of crying.
Footsteps getting closer to the door. The door opening.

The woman was very glamorous in a tacky sort of way. She was
in her mid-thirties. Her mascara had run, making her look like a
surprised owl.

This was Mrs Lilton, Danny assumed. She looked puzzled to see
a uniform at her door. ‘What d’you want?’ she asked sharply. ‘No
one’s called the police, have they?’

Danny shook her head. ‘I’m here on another matter ... but are
you all right? Do you need some help?’

The woman stared disgustedly at Danny. ‘Yeah, I’m okay - no
thanks to you lot. As if you care.’ Her breath reeked of alcohol
fumes. ‘You’ve never cared yet, have you? So what d’you
want?’

‘
To see Joe Lilton, please.’

‘
Why? Won’t it wait?’

‘
Not unless he doesn’t want to get a firearms certificate.’ As
she finished the sentence, Joe Lilton appeared behind the
woman.

‘
Come in, come in,’ he said graciously to Danny. ‘There’s
nothing going on here but a little family disagreement.’ He looked
at Danny and their eyes locked ever so briefly and he knew she knew
he was lying to his back teeth.

Danny remembered that face well, now, fifteen years later.
Those pinched, mean features, now fleshed out by ageing.

At the door of the house in Osbaldeston, he had placed his
hands on his wife’s shoulders. She had juddered visibly at the
touch. ‘Come on,’ he said gently to her. To Danny he stated, ‘A
misunderstanding, that’s all.’

Yeah, no mistaking it, Danny thought, closing her
pocket-book.

It was the same Joe Lilton who was now Claire Lilton’s
stepfather.

What a small world.

‘
Oh, fucking hell, he’s bleeding like a stuck pig, for God’s
sake!’ the young, blood-covered prison officer screamed to the
paramedics. ‘And he’s got internal bleeding too, for some reason,’
he blabbered. ‘Christ!’ he mouthed. ‘The bastard puked a whole
gob-full all over me!’

The young man looked down his chest. He retched at the sight
of the thick red globules all down the front of his uniform shirt
which had once been white.

‘
God, I’ve never seen anything so foul. Taken a load of pills
too.’

He was blithering these words to the green-jacketed paramedics
whilst they stretchered the supposedly dying Trent expertly through
the twists and turns of the prison, along walkways, down steep
stairwells.

Finally they emerged at the yard behind the front gates of the
prison where three ambulances, a couple of fire tenders and two cop
cars were drawn up.

Trent was dumped in the back of the nearest
ambulance.

Having listened to the screw babbling on, Trent was having
difficulty keeping a straight face. He desperately needed to belly
laugh, sit up and say, ‘Fooled you, you stupid set of
cunts.’

Instead he continued to play the part of someone who has just
tried to end his own life with a concoction of drugs and the old
opening-of-veins ceremony.

When he heard the ambulance doors clunk shut, he was
satisfied. Then more so when he experienced the forwards motion of
the vehicle. Then orgasmically so, when through his rolling eyes,
he saw the blue lights begin to flash and rotate.

He was on his way to freedom.

It had worked perfectly.

The prison officers, as Trent had rightly predicted, had
reacted to the crisis like a bunch of headless chickens, running
around the prison, not knowing whether they were coming or going.
The fire in Blake’s cell, the discovery of the four bodies - two
burnt-out in the cell, one knifed to death in the adjacent cell and
the other toasted alive whilst suspended above an audience - had
thrown them into utter confusion. No one seemed able to take
control of the situation. Having a suicide attempt thrown in on top
of all that was the last straw.

When they had seen how bad he was, Trent was certain they
would not mess about by transferring him to the woefully inadequate
medical wing. It did not have the staff or facilities to deal with
someone who had tried to shred his arms and taken such a lethal
dose of junk he was bleeding internally and puking
blood.

He knew their reaction would be to get him out of the way,
cart him off to the nearest Casualty unit.

Which is exactly what they did. And to speed things up in the
chaos, they cut corners. Obviously they could not handcuff Trent
because of his injured arms, but nor did they search him. They
seemed happy to believe that the small penknife they found next to
the bed was the one with which he had mutilated himself.

An absolute dream.

Having said that, the task of keeping a mouthful of pig’s
blood ready to cough out onto a screw had created a few trying
moments. That had been a case of mind over matter. It was a good
job the screw had raced into the cell when he did (urged by Vic
Wallwork, playing his part in the scenario), because Trent was
about to puke anyway.

And now he was in the rear of the ambulance.

He moaned. He groaned. He writhed and twisted his body in
agony, ensuring they could not quite find his pulse or clamp an
oxygen mask on him or stick a tube up his arm.

‘
OOOARH - urgh,’ he uttered with deep pain, loving every moment
of it.

‘
Come on, pal, keep still, you’ll be okay,’ the paramedic
fussed caringly and tried to clean him up.

Less than thirty seconds later the ambulance had negotiated
its way through the narrow prison gates, accelerating away
smoothly, then screeching around a roundabout onto a dual
carriageway.

The prison officer who had been tasked to remain with Trent -
the one covered in pig’s blood - looked on with an expression of
worry and repulsion. Over the paramedic’s shoulders he said, ‘I
hope the bastard’s not got HIV, with all this fucking blood over
me. He’s an arse bandit, you know.’

The paramedic put him straight immediately. ‘If you’ve had
unprotected sex with this man and drunk a pint of his blood, you
might have cause for concern. If not, don’t worry.’

Trent continued to squirm realistically, feeling the need to
put more distance between himself and the prison before he took
matters to their logical conclusion.

When he judged the moment right, he suddenly sat up with a
scream as though a great pain had burned through his abdomen. He
reached behind himself, his hand went underneath his shirt and his
fingers closed on the hilt of the knife fastened to his spine with
a couple of Band Aids.

He ripped the instrument from its moorings.

The paramedic, surprised by the sudden sitting up, stepped
back. The roll of the ambulance unbalanced him slightly.

Without hesitation, Trent drove the knife into the unfortunate
man’s neck. The razor-sharp blade pierced the jugular vein as Trent
dug it in and rived it round and round. He withdrew the blade as
the man screamed dreadfully and a glorious crimson fountain
flowered into the air, splattering the inside of the ambulance with
deep red swathes of blood. The paramedic’s hands reached
instinctively for his neck to try and stop the flow.

Trent grabbed the man’s overalls at the chest and threw him
sideways. Then he jumped to his feet and leapt across the small
space at the prison officer. That man’s senses had not been
capable, in those brief seconds, of taking in what had just
happened to the paramedic.

Trent was on the officer, yelling, ‘I’m not an arse bandit,
I’m a fucking paedophile, you pig-bastard.’

He plunged the knife into the officer’s right eye which burst
with a pop as the blade entered the pupil, its watery contents
spurting out. Trent pushed the blade further in, right up to the
hilt, angled it upwards into the brain, killing him the instant the
soft tissue was pierced.

Trent held the knife in there, grinding it round. The dead
man’s jangled nerves reacted by making him dance like someone
possessed by the devil. Then Trent extracted it as the man’s legs
gave way.

Trent slid casually next to the ambulance driver, reached for
the radio and ripped the handset out. He leaned across to the
driver who had not even realised what was going on and pushed the
point of the knife into his neck. A trickle of blood popped out
from the prick.

‘
Taxi,’ Trent said with a smile.

Chapter Seven

Lieutenant Mark Tapperman was a very big guy, even in
comparison to Steve Kruger who was no midget himself. Tapperman was
six-four, built like the frontal elevation of a very substantial
building and kept himself incredibly fit - necessary qualifications
for policing the crime-ridden streets of Miami where a cop needed
all the edge he could get ... and then some.

Despite these credentials, Tapperman looked sheepishly at
Steve Kruger as the ex-cop walked towards him with a slight limp
and an expression of seething anger stamped across his
face.

‘
Oh shit,’ Tapperman mumbled under his breath. ‘He’s mad.’ He
suddenly had the thought that maybe coming to this particular
restaurant for lunch was not the best of choices. Granny Feelgood’s
was not the right place for someone who’ probably wanted to rip a
twelve-ounce steak to shreds; it was more suited to a person on a
diet who wanted to pig out on tofu or spiced tea. Arbetter Hot Dogs
would’ve been a more appropriate place to meet and eat, Tapperman
thought too late.

‘
Mark,’ Kruger nodded curtly. He slumped down on the chair
opposite Tapperman and slung his jacket across the back of another.
He loosened his neck-tie and unfastened his collar, his face
distorting as his fingers eased the button out of its hole. He
tugged the collar loose.

Once again Miami was like a fan oven and that, combined with
his tiredness - for Kruger had not yet had any sleep - meant he was
mega-irritable.

It showed in his body language.

‘
Herb tea?’ Tapperman enquired hopefully.

Kruger eyed the detective critically for a moment. ‘Nooo,’ he
said quietly with an exaggerated pursing of the lips. ‘Just tell me
what you’ve got.’

Tapperman sipped his Perrier to clear his dust-dry
throat.

‘
Nothing we could do about it,’ he said helplessly. ‘Bussola’s
lawyer, Ira Begin, was waiting at the stationhouse when we arrived.
Couldn’t stop Bussola talking to him - y’know, prisoner’s rights
and all that crap; couldn’t stop his lawyer makin’ phone calls
either, could we?’ Tapperman sighed. ‘Anyways, we got the process
going ... then we find out there ain’t no process to get
going.’

Kruger waited impatiently.

‘
Somehow, probably through the lawyer, he’d got to the girl’s
parents.’

‘
So?’

‘
Well, that little girl he was ridin’ when you found him was
only eleven years old. She’d been on the run from home ‘bout three
weeks and somehow got herself sucked into Bussola’s porn system.
Thing is, though, the reason why we got nowhere, was because there
ain’t no complaint. Bussola’s organisation got to her parents
before we did - and this is only an assumption, Steve. I think they
were paid off and delivered a bottom-line threat at the same time.
“You’re dead if you testify”. They’re poor people from Homestead.
Ain’t recovered from Hurricane Andrew yet. In those circumstances,
Bussola’s money is as good as anybody’s.’

‘
Even if he raped your daughter?’ Kruger was incredulous. He
went on, ‘Why not indict without them? It’s serious enough. Do it
on the girl’s behalf.’ Kruger’s voice was cold, hard. He had not
liked one word of what had been said.

‘
If we did, Steve, Bussola would kill the family. You know he
would, and that would not achieve anything.’

Kruger began to hiss steam. He wanted to overturn the table
and rant and rave about injustice.

‘
Let me get this straight: he’s got away with anally raping -
and probably kidnapping - an eleven-year-old girl, and you’re
powerless to do anything about it?’

‘
You’re sayin’ we should force her to testify? The DA wouldn’t
have any part in that, and you know it. A hostile witness, a
terrified witness, and a kid at that. No way.’

‘
What about all my corroborative evidence? My team’s evidence?
Surely that would go a long way to proving the case?’

Tapperman uttered a snort of a laugh.

‘
What’s so goddam funny?’

The detective raised a hand placatingly when he read Kruger’s
face. ‘Hey, I ain’t laughin’ at your suggestion, buddy. It’s a good
idea. Only thing is, Bussola’s legal team are goin’ to sue your ass
for’ - here Tapperman began to count on his fingers - ‘unlawful
entry, invasion of privacy, breakin’ an’ enterin’, unlawful arrest,
assault and battery ... you name it, he’s gonna try an’ plug
ya.’

‘
Shit,’ breathed Kruger. His head dropped wearily. He had been
very tired up to that point, but that extra bad news simply swamped
him with weariness. ‘What about the other girl - the one he was
beatin’ up on?’