KILL ME GOODBYE Read online

  I brought the car to a halt. I was tempted to finish off my work with a steering lock applied with enthusiastic vigour to the skulls of my erstwhile killers. I even took it out of the footwell. Then I put it back. Murdering them would be over the top. Besides, I’m not a killer, I’m a woman of reason.

  Climbing from the car I went through the pockets of my attackers. They were all wearing puffa jackets over their hoodies. Consequently there were a lot of pockets to go through. I went about my work briskly, mindful that someone could walk past the end of the alley any second and see what I’d done and jump to the erroneous conclusion that they were the victims.

  None of them had any form of ID on their person. They had ammunition for their handguns. Enough for a prolonged shoot-out, I imagined, but I was no expert so I couldn’t be sure. It shocked me to think young people could walk the streets carrying firearms without fear of apprehension by the police. Each of them also had what looked like a large quantity of drugs to my untrained eye. Probably for sale rather than personal use. They had rolls of cash on them. Thick cylinders of greasy ten – and twenty – pound notes secured with rubber bands. Being a criminal lawyer I’m no expert in the law of Tort, but I reckoned they owed me compensation for what they’d done to me, so I took the lot. I also confiscated their mobile phones. I didn’t want one of them to take a photo of me or my car, or call up his gangbanging mates and get one of them to follow me and do me in. The police didn’t concern me. I figured there was little chance of these gangbangers reporting me.

  When I recovered my purse, mobile phone, and credit and debit cards from the ringleader, I established he was dead. It didn’t take a doctor to work it out. He wasn’t breathing and it seemed unfeasible that anyone could have survived the injuries he’d sustained. For a start his face was practically unrecognisable. His two colleagues were nearby, gently groaning where they lay. Hopefully those two were regretting what they’d done. I reckoned that if I’d made them think twice about their behaviour, I’d have done them and society a favour.

  With a conscience that was admirably clear, and enough money to pay for the repairs to my car and to compensate me for my cuts, bruises, injured feelings, missing tooth, and possibly a broken rib or two, I drove out of the alley. It wasn’t covered by any cameras, which was just as well.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The route I chose took me along Lever street in the Northern Quarter to the ring-road, which was almost deserted by Manchester standards. As it was 10 p.m. on a midweek night most honest people were at home watching television. I’d have been at home myself if I hadn’t been working late at chambers, trying to get my head around the demanding case I was due to continue defending the next day. I decided I wouldn’t be defending it. The little bastard I was scheduled to represent could fuck off and find himself another barrister. I needed a day off. At least a day. Every last bone in my body was aching.

  Even though I was driving at a leisurely pace a gale was howling through the interior of my car, courtesy of the shattered windscreen. I could only hope I didn’t get stopped by the police because of that windscreen. If I did, the whole story could come out and life as I knew it would possibly be over. The courts are not great fans of people – barristers especially – taking justice into their own hands.

  Taking a minor detour, I turned left up Houldsworth street and stopped near City Therapy to call for an ambulance. Not for me, for the victims. My victims. I’d decided to play the role of the good Samaritan, but I didn’t want to do it using my mobile phone because I didn’t want the call to be traced back to me. So I used one of theirs. It reeked of sweat and piss, which I was somehow able to smell, in spite of the blood crusting up my nostrils. I dialled 999 and waited a moment. Glancing in the rear-view mirror I saw my reflection. The scar on my face was oozing red tendrils. It made me feel sick. Still, I waited until the call got answered.

  ‘Emergency Services. Which service do you require, please?’

  ‘An ambulance,’ I replied. ‘There are three young men lying in the alley off Faraday street in the Northern Quarter. They need medical help immediately.’

  I hung up. I didn’t need to tell them that one of the young men was already dead and needed an undertaker not a paramedic.

  I removed the Sim cards from all three mobile phones and set off again.

  The nearest Accident and Emergency department was in the Manchester Royal Infirmary as far as I knew, so I headed south by a roundabout route imposed on me by the one-way system, found my way onto the A34, and then turned onto Grafton street, to finally enter the car park by the A&E’s entrance, an impressive glazed structure running the full height of the hospital building. The building itself was a depressing grey concrete affair resembling a prison. Even so, it was a relief to get there. I was horribly aware of my face leaking blood. In the pouch in the driver’s door was a cloth which I used to wipe the windscreen in cold weather. I grabbed it and pressed it to my face, hoping to staunch the flow. No doubt I was introducing all kinds of unhelpful bacteria into my wound, but that was a risk I had to take in order to stop the blood-flow.

  Before getting out of my car I called Sarina on my own mobile phone.

  ‘Where are you?’ she said. ‘You said you’d be here by 9 p.m.’

  She wasn’t cross with me. She was worried, because she knew I could normally be relied on to get home exactly when I said I would. My mouth was so swollen I had difficulty responding.

  ‘Something’s happened,’ I told her. ‘Sorry.’

  My wife had great instincts. She immediately knew something bad must have happened to me.

  ‘What?’ She had something close to fear in her voice. ‘What do you mean, Jo? Are you all right?’

  I couldn’t keep the truth from Sarina, so I told her enough of it to put an end to her questions, and – I sincerely hoped – stop her from worrying too much.

  ‘I got mugged and beaten up. But I’m all right. I’m at the A&E department of the Manchester Royal Infirmary. I’m having a routine check-up to make sure I haven’t got any serious injuries. But I’m convinced I’m okay.’

  I felt it best to keep to myself the little matter of how my attack had ended.

  ‘You don’t sound okay.’

  She was probably right about that. With my lips swollen the way they were, and my recent unscheduled dental work, I was slurring so badly it’s a miracle she understood a single word I said.

  ‘Honest, I am okay.’

  ‘How badly were you beaten up? What did they do to you?’ She sounded desperate. I suppose if it’d been Sarina calling to tell me she’d been mugged and physically assaulted, I’d have felt the same.

  ‘Not too badly. I’ll have to hang up now and get to triage. I think I might have a broken rib and I’ve lost a tooth. I’ll get myself patched up and get home as quick as I can. It could take a few hours, though.’

  ‘You’ve broken a rib and lost a tooth?’ She sounded close to hysteria now.

  ‘I said I might have broken a rib.’

  ‘I’m coming down there in a taxi to see how you are. I can drive us both back in your car.’

  The thought of Sarina seeing the Megane’s broken windscreen set off alarm-bells. I’d have to explain it. I didn’t want to tell her bullets had gone through it. That could open up a massive can of worms. I wasn’t in the habit of lying to Sarina but felt I had no option.

  ‘Please don’t bother coming to see me Sarina. I’m not hurt as badly as you think. And I don’t want to put you out. I’ll be okay driving myself.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ She didn’t sound convinced.

  ‘Yes I’m sure. You get to bed. I’ll be back as soon as I can.’

  ‘I won’t be able to sleep. You’re such a brave soldier. Please don’t keep me waiting, Jo.’

  ‘I’ll be home as soon as I can. Don’t wait up.’

  ‘I will wait up. I’m worried about you.’

  ‘Don’t be. I’ll see you soon.’
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br />   As I climbed from my car I noticed again I was aching all over. The full enormity of the pain I was in hadn’t hit me before, probably because I’d been in a state of shock. Barely able to remain upright, I hobbled across the tarmac to the entrance, stepped through the automatic doors which closed behind me with a hiss, and presented myself at the reception desk. In front of it was a large waiting area filled with rows of cheap-looking grey plastic chairs, most of them occupied by people sporting ugly-looking injuries, none of them as eye-catching as mine. To the side of it was a long corridor with doors leading off it.

  The reception desk itself was modern and made of beech with a glass partition separating me from the two young women in white coats in charge of admissions. They were both sitting in swivel chairs. One of them ignored me. She was busy inputting data into the NHS computer system. The other looked up. She was about twenty-five years old with an attractive round face and abundant blonde hair held in check with a high ponytail.

  ‘Yes?’ she said.

  ‘I have a problem or two.’

  My wound was concealed beneath the grubby cloth I was pressing against my left cheek, so I pulled it away momentarily, allowing her to get a good look at it. She raised her eyebrows. Apart from that, she betrayed no emotion. I supposed she was used to drunken idiots coming in with their faces in a worse state than mine.

  ‘I’ll get you seen by triage immediately,’ she said. ‘That scar on your face looks as if it needs urgent attention. But first we have to go through the formalities. Name please?’

  ‘Josephine Finnegan.’

  She seemed to understand me in spite of my slurred speech, the result of lips that looked as if I’d had a triple dose of fillers injected into them.

  ‘Date of birth?’

  ‘Twenty-third of February 1988.’

  ‘Address?’

  ‘4 Scales Avenue, Chorlton.’

  ‘How did you get your injuries?’

  ‘I was mugged.’

  ‘Please take a seat. Someone will call your name very shortly.’

  As I headed for one of the cheap-looking plastic chairs I saw a hospital porter pushing a wheeled stretcher through a door along the corridor. A black youth was on the stretcher. His eyes were closed and his body was twisted every which way. Another stretcher came through as I watched, this one occupied by a hoodie-wearing youth who was bulked up with unnatural muscle, conscious and alert. He looked at me and our eyes met. I held his gaze. I wasn’t going to be stared down, not by him.

  Our eyes remained locked for several seconds.

  The little bastard recognised me.

  CHAPTER THREE

  He half sat and made a gesture with his hand, drawing it across his throat like a knife. It must’ve taken everything he had to threaten me like that, because he collapsed back on the stretcher as soon as he’d done it. Still, my heart missed a beat. What if he went to the police? What if he somehow found out who I was and where I lived, and came to visit me with his friends? But then, he won’t go to the police. He’s got as much to lose as I have, maybe more. He probably avoids the cops. He’s probably been busted more than once even though he’s so young. As for paying me a visit, well, if he does, I’ll just have to deal with it.

  ‘Josephine Finnegan!’

  The shouted invitation to go to triage interrupted my thoughts. I walked over to the triage station, a small room with half-glazed walls, an untidy desk, and an overworked dark-haired dark-skinned female doctor. She had a stethoscope looped around her neck, the ends dangling over her large bosom. A name badge told me she was Dr Yasemin Aksoy. Her brown, heavy-lidded eyes moved slowly and deliberately down me and back up, assessing my condition.

  ‘Please sit.’

  I lowered my butt into the chair next to hers, being careful not to inflict any unnecessary pain on myself.

  ‘You were in a fight?’ she said in an accent that might have been Turkish.

  I supposed in her line of work she must have seen a lot of people who’d been in fights.

  ‘More of a mugging. I was attacked with a knife and then I got kicked in the ribs.’

  She nodded.

  ‘Please let me see your face.’

  I lowered the cloth I was still pressing against my cheek so that she could examine the scar concealed beneath it. She looked closely at the wound and made a few notes on her computer. Then she shone a bright torch into my eyes, looked at my pupils, and said, ‘Stand up please.’

  I got to my feet and so did she. My light grey jacket had acquired contrasting brown-smeared lapels. I took it off and put it over the back of the chair I’d been sitting on.

  Dr Aksoy put on her stethoscope.

  ‘Breathe deeply.’

  She listened to my chest.

  ‘Turn around and breathe deeply.’

  I turned my back to her and felt the stethoscope through my shirt. When she was done with listening, she pressed my ribcage gently.

  ‘Does this hurt?’

  ‘Yes.’ I winced.

  She pressed in a different place.

  ‘This?’

  I winced so much I didn’t need to say anything.

  ‘We’ll stitch your face up and send you for some x-rays.’

  A nurse appeared with a concerned expression on her face and led me to a treatment room. It was one of several which were in a long line next to each other, along the corridor where I’d seen the stretchers with the hoodies on them. The treatment room contained a bed, a desk, two chairs, and a cabinet containing medical equipment. The nurse got me to sit up on a bed then she opened a sealed pack of something that smelled of antiseptic which she used to clean my wound.

  ‘Do you want anaesthetic when you have your stitches?’

  I remembered seeing an old Clint Eastwood movie called Dirty Harry in which the central character, Harry Callaghan, had been offered anaesthetic when he’d had to have his face stitched up. He’d refused it. Callaghan was too hard to need anaesthetic. Not me. I was no Harry Callaghan.

  ‘I’ll take all the anaesthetic you’ve got.’

  She smiled and gave me a couple of injections into my cheek.

  ‘Wait here. A doctor will be in once it’s started to take effect.’

  She left, and I was alone in the treatment room, next door to the hoodie who’d threatened me. I decided to pay him a visit. I got off the bed, a simple action but it hurt like hell, opened the door and looked both ways along the corridor. The coast was clear. Walking confidently, if somewhat unsteadily, I went into the neighbouring treatment room. My plan was that if there was a doctor in there, I’d say ‘oops, sorry, wrong room,’ and quickly withdraw. I didn’t have a plan for if there was only the hoodie in there on his own. I was going to make it up as I went along. As luck would have it, there wasn’t a doctor in the room, just a young man on a bed. He was the bulky one with the very pale skin who’d been sniggering just before I ploughed into him with my car. He was lying there with his eyes open and a pained expression on his face. When he saw me his expression changed, It turned into something I recognised all too well: hate.

  ‘What do you fucking want?’ he groaned.

  ‘I want to see you laughing on the other side of your face. And you know what? I think I will.’

  ‘You’re dead meat.’

  I smiled, but it cost me. My whole face seemed to explode with pain.

  ‘I don’t think so. You’re the one who’s dead meat. Look at you. I’m the one who’s still walking around.’

  ‘Not for long,’ he said in a hoarse whisper.

  I could kill him now, while he’s helpless, and he’ll never be a danger to me or anybody else again. I could be the judge and jury in a very simple case. Verdict: guilty; sentence: death. All I’d have to do would be to get a pillow and hold it over his face. He’s too weak to resist. It’d only take a few minutes. I probably have a few minutes before the doctor comes back.

  I reached out and grabbed the p
illow his head was resting on, pulled it out from under him, and raised it over his face, then I stopped. I couldn’t bring myself to kill him. I wasn’t ruthless enough.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  WEDNESDAY

  Returning to my own treatment room I got back on the bed. Then I started thinking about the question the ringleader had asked me: ‘Where is it?’

  He’d been looking for something. That gang hadn’t been waiting there by accident. I hadn’t been the victim of an opportunistic mugging. They’d targeted me because they thought I had something they wanted, something so important they were prepared to torture me to get it, or to get information about it, and kill me to cover their tracks. What was going on? Was it a case of mistaken identity? Or did I really have something they wanted, without being aware of what it was?

  My thoughts were interrupted by the arrival of the doctor, a white-haired man with careworn shoulders who looked to be on the verge of retirement.

  He grunted, ‘Hello, I’m Dr Thorndyke,’ and set about me with a needle and thread.

  He pulled the skin of my face this way and that, and I felt the needle he was wielding penetrate it, but thankfully I couldn’t feel any pain because the anaesthetic had kicked in.

  After a while he said, ‘You’re good to go. Someone will take you to the x-ray department in a minute.’

  He left, moving quickly, presumably because he had a lot of emergencies to deal with. I duly had my x-rays, and, some hours later, learned that I had only severe bruising. I hobbled to the car park with the gait of a woman fifty years my senior. My plan was to tell Sarina someone had vandalised the car while it’d been in the hospital car park. As long as she didn’t ask too many awkward questions I reckoned I’d get away with it. I drove home stopping briefly to hide the three mobile phones and their Sim cards I’d taken from the hoodies in a dustbin en route. I made sure to bury them good and deep under the rubbish. By the time I pulled up on the drive in front of my house, it was 3.40 a.m. The curtains were drawn downstairs but a faint glow coming through them told me the lights were on.