Kill Who You Want

Chapter Thirty-One

Author's note: In order to be able to concentrate fully on my current writing project, I've decided to put out the final chapters all together. Enjoy those final twists and turns!
Readers may be interested to know I've recently started posting a mystery novel entitled The Third Shadow. I will include a taster/extract of this, as well as one for my completed novel The Painted Altar, at the end of this novel.

Plot reminder: Kubič has been following a house burglar recently released from prison called Clive Bone.

~~~~~

Never the calmest of flyers, Mark Brown waited until the plane had successfully taken off into the apparently windless skies above Malaga before relaxing back into his seat and unfolding the newspaper the attractive Spanish hostess had handed him as he'd stepped aboard. As a resident of Ravensby, he was keen to learn of the situation which would await him after his entirely pleasant but wearyingly short golf break on the Andalucian coast.

He didn't even have to rustle through the inside pages, the latest development blaring out at him via the front page headline

TERROR TOWN KILLER KILLED?

Next to the headline was a photograph of a vaguely familiar face - a gaunt-looking man in his early-forties. Yes, he thought, following a few moments' reflection. Now he remembered...

After quickly skimming the opening two paragraphs of the story, his hand was in the air, attracting the hostess's attention. A sudden waft of perfume and latin pheremones signalled her arrival over his shoulder.

"Any chance of getting a call through to England?" he asked. "I need to get a message through to the police see. It's pretty urgent."

*

The dusk which settled over Ravensby was a starless and moonless one. A perfectly black blanket of cloud.

The streetlights along Eastfield Lane were well separated, the only illumination in their intersections the twin beams of Kubič's Audi. Headlights which three-quarters of the way along the road veered to the side, blinked suddenly off.

Kubič peered at the bungalow to his right - now a ramshackle affair with overgrown, untended front garden. His grandfather would never have let the place fall into such poor condition. Even into his eighties he would still be spotted outside, his back straining as he pulled up another weed or else perched precariously on top of the stepladders to clear the guttering from the autumnal moult of the next-door neighbour's overhanging cedar tree.

Kubič had still been in uniform when it had happened, his the second patrol car to arrive at the scene. He could recall it vividly, every detail. The old man strewn across the living room carpet, the trickle of blood emanating from left temple. All around, drawers thrown out from cabinets, strewn papers, upended lamps and coatstands.

A minor coronary, they'd said. And although the old man was back on his feet within a couple days, the truth was he never really recovered. After all he'd been through during his life, after witnessing the full destructive force of war first hand, he'd never lost faith in humanity. It broke his heart to have been attacked like that. He, a war hero, whacked across the head with a mantelpiece ornament as he'd sought to defend his own home.

He just seemed to give up after that, shrivel back into himself. Would be in his grave inside six months.

Kubič restarted the engine, headed back towards the centre of town.

Waited for the jackal to emerge from its lair...

*

The overgrown back garden of the Underhill house was accessible via a v-shaped gap near the top of the rear perimeter wall. The original crack had been caused by poor pointing, a faultline exascerbated by the destructive will of neighbourhood kids eager to have a look inside. A pair of the dislodged bricks had been placed at the foot of the wall to aid the passage of shorter trespassers. Once over, a path had over the years been beaten through the thick unhindered jungle of vegetation towards the partly unhinged back door.