Chapter 18
Anderson swung his legs over the side of the bed and, before he had rested them on the floor, he had the impression that something had been decided. It had happened to him before – the clarification of some problem or decision following a good night's sleep – and normally he welcomed it. ‘Sleep on it’ that was the cliché but it had worked for him many times. Now, this time, he allowed the idea remained below the level of his consciousness. Or rather, he made an act of will to keep it there.
He moved quietly to the bedroom door and cautiously turned the knob. Lately, even pills did not prevent Clarissa from waking when he got up but this time she didn’t stir and he was pleased. The fear in her eyes as she reached consciousness was one of the reasons for his decision.
Outside in the hall he realised that it was already there in the front of his mind and that he had begun to argue with himself. It was not much of a debate. He knew that the argument, if there had been such a thing, had already been settled. It didn’t mean that there wouldn’t be anxieties and regrets. He saw himself as a virgin who had lost their virginity or perhaps had decided to lose it and was feeling a little ashamed in anticipation. The thought brought a wry smile to his mouth. That sort of moral debate dated him. He couldn’t imagine that many young girls and certainly no young men went through that sort of struggle these days.
Later he would look back and try to decide when the idea had come to him and how it had escaped the censor that he imagined had saved him in the past. He had always imagined that it was his well-developed conscience that had separated him from those in his own force who allowed crime to creep over them.
Turney would have to die.
He allowed the thought to become concrete in his mind and then, as if he were taking some sort of vow, he spoke the words aloud: ‘Turney must die‘. But it was a passive vow: it didn’t seem to commit him to anything personal, he could still contemplate the words without feeling he was implicated in the act.
Afterwards, what would happen afterwards? Could he remain in the police force if he killed a man, if he killed Turney? There it was: he had put it into words — silent words, he wasn’t sure whether he would ever be able to say them aloud. Perhaps he would have to but it would be only to Clarissa. There wasn’t anyone else he could ask to do the job for him and so there would be no collusion, no one else that needed or should know. ‘Job‘, was that what it was? Murder the man — that was what he really meant.
He busied himself. There was the coffee to make the breakfast to prepare. He let his mind concentrate on those things. He got the newspaper out of the letterbox and read the headlines as though they were important. He gave himself a respite, a sort of moral respite. But it was short lived. How was he going to justify it? Clearly it would be easy to do so to Clarissa but impossible to anyone else. And he didn’t want to be caught. He was no Raskalnikov. There would be no confession.
It wasn’t so much a decision he had made; it was more an inevitability that had overtaken him. Not that he could or would pretend to himself that he was not responsible. However it was arranged, however he managed to provoke the man, however he camouflaged the event, it would still be murder. He took his first sip of coffee that day — he had crossed the line. For him the thought was equivalent to the act itself — morally to have decided to cross that line was the turning point. Whatever might come between him and the finality of Turney’s death now mattered little to the judgement he must make about himself.
He sat at the table for a while and considered. Murder was murder but perhaps there were degrees of murder? Maybe he could distinguish the act he was set upon from the crude slaying that constituted the raw material of his work. It was worth the attempt, since he had no way of knowing how he would live the rest of his life now that he had decided to make his life’s work a nonsense. So, he tried, much as a judge who was sympathetic to a plaintiff might subtly allow his feelings to alter the course of his legal judgement and so seek the obscure precedent for what he had wanted to do all along.
He tried on some obvious defences: was his act worse than killing for self-defence? If not then he could exonerate himself completely. But where was the immediate threat? He would not have accepted such an excuse from others. Was he doing it to save his loved ones, as though he were a soldier sent to war? But was the danger as real as that? Was it Clarissa’s or his own welfare that was at stake? What use to him was a woman too scared to live?
Was his decision like those others: driven by some overwhelming necessity or temptation into corruption? He had hoped he was better than they were. But then stealing was not the same as murder. If he couldn’t excuse corruption that was concerned only with money, how could he forgive the taking of a human life?
By the time he had taken his first cup of coffee of the day, he had given up. Killing Turney is what he wanted to do and must do. Morality did not come into it, so justification was irrelevant. All that counted now was how to do it and get away with it. He had thought himself as a man ruled by ethics — his particular version of moral behaviour. Was that not why he was a policeman? But it wasn’t so; it was a hard lesson and a salutary blow to his pride.
By the end of his second cup of coffee, he had put the philosophy behind him. It would take planning and he couldn’t be distracted by his conscience if he was to pull it off. Then he discovered that while he had been debating so seriously with himself, another part had already made certain practical decisions. He would have to shoot Turney and he would have to do it in ’the line of duty.’ Turney would have to be provoked and he would need to have a gun in his hand when the provocation had born fruit.
The first thing to do was get firearms issued to himself, Comben and Fielding. Not that he wanted to involve the two younger officers but, if they were not armed too, then his own decision to draw a weapon would look suspicious. It was a sort of thin smokescreen. He would want to provide an excuse for his superiors to forgive him — to exonerate him. They may then chose not to understand his true motives. In public they could expound with a straight face the pretext that Anderson would provide for them.
He felt calmer now. The principles of the affair had been laid out. He felt confident about filling in the details. Once he had developed his plan he would then decide what to tell Clarissa. It would be safer to tell her nothing but he might need her cooperation. And then he couldn’t expect to succeed immediately. Clarissa would have to wait for some time and knowing his intentions might help her survive the strain. He couldn’t imagine that she would regret Turney’s death.
It would all depend on offering Turney his chance. Anderson was sure Turney would try to kill Clarissa once he thought she had been left unguarded. It would take a little time to set the situation up since Turney would wait patiently until he imagined Anderson had forgotten about him.
But Anderson knew the man. He was mad, of course, but inexorable. Anderson could see that Turney would not rest until his enemies had been vanquished. It was a war the man was waging against the world and those in it who stood against his desires. He had revenged himself on Kevin and would want to do the same with Amanda and Clarissa. Yes, Anderson felt he could set Turney up and he was sure he could pull the trigger when necessary. All that needed to be decided was how long to wait and then how to signal to the man that his chance had apparently arrived.
In the end, it was Clarissa’s health that decided the timing more than Anderson’s judgement. Turney hadn’t been seen for three weeks and Anderson was due to go back on duty, Comben and Fielding had gone back sooner. Clarissa’s growing hysteria when the time came for her to be guarded by others rather than Anderson himself made him decide to act.
Throughout the waiting period, Anderson had been careful to stick to a routine. He wanted Turney to know exactly what he did and when. When the time came for him to deliberately alter that routine then he wanted Turney to know about it. A trip to the off-licence alone, an early morning visit to the dentist or even the station, an evening excursion to buy some item forgotten earlier — that was the sort of variation Turney would be looking for and Anderson had every intention of providing it. But first he wanted to know where Turney was watching from; for that was what Anderson knew the man must be doing. But he had stopped his obvious surveillance. His car was nowhere to be seen in the streets outside the flats and he had never been seen inside one of the houses opposite. For some time Anderson had realised that the rear of the flats must be providing Turney with a vantage point. He had made no attempt up to then to find out exactly where Turney was positioning himself. He hadn’t wanted the man to be frightened away.
The bins for the rubbish were kept at the car park level at the back so that vans could drive down a service road each week and empty them. The caretaker kept them neat and the surrounding area clean; residents had no need to visit the are since their own rubbish was left out each day and was collected. That Saturday morning, early, Anderson took his own rubbish down an hour or so before the caretaker would begin his round. He waited behind the bins.
He got lucky. A short while before the caretaker was expected, Turney drove past the back entrance to the flats and parked further down the service road. The road ended fifty yards or so along and had been used by the owners of two garages, which had fallen into disuse for the same reason as the space under his own block to remain empty of cars: vandalism.
Turney opened one of the garage doors and drove the car inside. He didn’t come out. Anderson waited awhile and then worked his way along the fence dividing the refuse area from the next door garden. Finally, he was close enough to see the side of the garage and the window through which Turney was watching. He got even closer and saw that the window was very clean and then he saw the binoculars. From where Turney was sitting there was a direct view into Anderson’s kitchen. Nothing would have been easier than to open the door of the garage and shoot the man. Anderson caressed the pistol in his pocket. But that would not do. He needed a reason. Turney would not be armed. The man would use his hands when the time came as he had before.
But how would Turney know when Clarissa was alone? The man would need to know that and Anderson needed him to know it.