Killing Mum Read online

  No, stuck.

  Carlos took the torch out of his mouth. "Suck," he said. "Add 'suck'."

  Okay. Jordan shook the can, sprayed out the word. 'Firemen suck.' Sounds a bit lame.

  "Cock," Carlos said. "Add 'cock'."

  Nice.

  When Jordan had finished, Carlos said, "Beautiful. Now scribble something else on the other side."

  Like what?

  "I don't fucking know."

  Jordan paused for a moment, then disappeared.

  "You mind opening that door while you're there?" Carlos said. He opened the driver's side door himself. Apparently that helped get the oxygen flowing. Thanks, Bob. Nearly ready. Just had to wait for Jordan to finish his final touch of graffiti. Carlos picked up the petrol can, walked round to the passenger side to join him, and stood back, listening to the cshh cshhhp of the paint leaving the canister.

  Done, Jordan said, finally, torchbeam directed at his graffiti. He'd written: BOB WAS HERE, placing the joyrider here committing arson rather than out in the country getting shot. Course, his body was in the van, clearly shot. As was Maggie's. But the more there was to confuse the police, the better.

  "Inspired," Carlos said. "Chuck the spray can inside."

  Jordan tossed the can.

  "And your gun."

  You think?

  "Can't keep it. It's a murder weapon."

  Yours too.

  Carlos wrenched the gun out of his waistband, lobbed it into the van.

  Jordan nodded, threw his in too.

  "Out of the way," Carlos said.

  He drenched petrol over the seats. Damn stuff stank. Not what you wanted to smell when you'd been up half the night and you'd just started smoking again and you'd had a bellyful of bloodshed. He went round to the back, jumped inside, splashed more petrol around the interior. Splashed it over Bob. Hesitated as the torchlight spilled from his mouth and onto Maggie. It didn't look like her. Not in the least. He poured petrol on it.

  The can was feeling much lighter when he heard a voice say, "Oh, my God." The voice came from the darkness outside the van. But it was unmistakably his mother's. Mierda. He put down the can. Only then did he twist his head, caught his mother in the narrow beam, hands pressed over her mouth. What the fuck was she doing out of her car?

  "Is that a body?" she asked.

  It's Maggie. Jordan was suddenly right beside her. And a friend of hers.

  The little fucker. Carlos clambered out of the van, feet thudded on the ground when he landed.

  "Get back in your car, Mama," he said.

  "Charlie?"

  Carlos rubbed his forehead.

  Jordan gave Carlos's mother his torch. Take a look.

  "Don't do that."

  "Let go of me."

  Carlos let go of her and she stepped into the van. He grabbed Jordan's arm, steered him away.

  "Why are you doing this?" Carlos whispered.

  You know what you have to do.

  "What the fuck are you saying?"

  You haven't worked it out yet?

  "The fuck do you mean?"

  Your mother. She was the one.

  "The one? You mean the one who set herself up? Like fuck she was."

  Who else could it have been?

  "Could have been anybody."

  You don't believe that, though. If you did, you wouldn't have planned what we've done tonight.

  "I didn't fucking plan --"

  Yeah, yeah, it got a bit fucked up. But you planned on finding out the truth.

  "I hoped."

  You've just succeeded.

  "Suppose I believed you. Why would Mum take out a contract on herself?"

  To see how far you would go.

  "She didn't know what I did. She had no idea."

  Yes, she did.

  "How would you know?"

  Jordan waited a moment. Maybe I told her.

  "You don't know her."

  Maybe I found out about her.

  "How?"

  Not so hard.

  Carlos thought about the Glock he'd tossed into the front of the van. He shone his torch at Jordan's face, made him blink. "Why would you go to the trouble?"

  Squinting. Because I thought she should know.

  "Nah," Carlos said. "I don't believe you. She was shocked when I told her what I did. She wasn't faking it."

  Don't believe me. I don't care. But maybe it's the truth.

  "What's the truth?" Carlos's mother said. She stretched out her arms, a gun in each hand. "You shouldn't leave dangerous weapons lying around."

  "Mum," Carlos said. "You want to put those down."

  "When I'm ready," she said. "They're loaded, I know. I checked. Maggie's dead, Charlie. I really didn't think you'd do it."

  "It's not her."

  "Charlie."

  "It was an accident. Sort of."

  "God knows I didn't have a lot of love for her and she certainly had none for me. But, bloody hell, you killed somebody. And not just somebody. You killed your wife."

  Carlos looked at Jordan. "Tell her what happened."

  Well, Jordan said and started to explain about the police car and Bob and how Maggie had run away and how Carlos had shot her. In the leg, he said. And twice in the body.

  "You little fuck," Carlos said. To his mum: "He's lying. He's the one who shot her."

  "Make sense, Carlos," she said.

  "He's thirteen years old. He thinks it's fun. That's why he's lying."

  "God help you, Carlos."

  "I know what it's like to be thirteen. Doesn't take much."

  Fuck you, Jordan said. You know what it's like? he spat. Just like you know how I feel? Fuck you. Second half of payment on completion of job. Right, Charlie? His arm shot out and there was a crack and a flash and Carlos's mother fell to the ground. Think I wouldn't carry a spare? He laughed. I knew you'd get me some piece of shit.

  Carlos switched off his torch, dropped, rolled towards his mother and scrabbled about for one of the guns. His hand touched grass and earth and fabric and skin and something wet and sticky. He retched, just bile, swallowed it down, the taste lingering on his tongue.

  He heard Jordan coming towards him.

  Carlos's fingers traced down his mother's arm, to her hand. Empty. But right next to it he touched something metal. He grabbed it. Rolled. Turned on the torch.

  Jordan was bearing down on him, gun pointed right between his eyes.

  Just before Carlos squeezed the trigger, the smell of petrol hit him, and he wondered if there was some on the gun. He wondered if it would light up, the petrol on it igniting. Flames would spread over his hand, a fiery glove. He could feel it blistering his flesh.

  But the gun fired its bullet and didn't burst into flames. Still, his hand felt like it was being held inches from a raging coal fire.

  ***

  Carlos scanned the ground, sweeping the light around in arcs. He spotted the petrol-soaked t-shirt and lobbed it in the van.

  He struck a match with his good hand, let it burn, then when the flame had taken hold, he tossed the match onto the t-shirt. The petrol ignited straight away. It was tempting to stay and watch it burn. He had to go, though.

  He picked up his mother, slung her over his shoulder.

  He ran halfway towards the road before he had to stop for breath. His thighs felt like someone was digging about in them with razor blades.

  He looked over his shoulder. Flames leapt into the air. Somebody would spot the fire eventually, get the fire brigade out. But Carlos and his mother would be long gone by then.

  They had to go home, get some sleep.

  ***

  He sat his mother up in the car. Fastened her seat belt. The key was in the ignition, or he'd have been fucked.

  "Didn't exactly go according to plan, Mum," he said. "Let's get you home. You comfortable?"

  I'm fine, he heard her say.

  ***

  He tried not to make too much noise as he entered the house. Didn't want to wake up wha
tsherface, the babysitter. But it was hard going. His mother was the wrong kind of shape.

  He was stinking like a monkey with all the sweat, and the skin on his burnt hand was stinging as the sweat popped through the tender pores. He needed to put something on it. And he would, just as soon as he'd got his mother to bed.

  He was dog-tired, his adrenaline spent. He'd shower in the morning.

  He laid his mother on the floor while he worked out where to put her.

  He opened the sitting room door, peeked inside. The babysitter was on the couch, snoring, a harsh rattle. Maggie had told her she could use the spare room. The girl must have fallen asleep where she was. He wouldn't disturb her now. It was handy, in fact. He could put his mother in the spare room.

  The door shut softly and he crept back along the hallway. Had to be careful. Wasn't just the babysitter he didn't want to wake up. Didn't want to wake Sofia either. He gently pushed open the door to her room. Stepped inside. His daughter was snoring too. Ever so lightly, though. Like wind in the trees.

  She sounds like you. Maggie's voice, right behind him, her hand on his arm. She squeezed.

  "She'll be awake in a couple of hours," he whispered.

  Let's take her to bed.

  "Don't wake her. Not now." He bent over the cot, smelled the baby sweetness of Sofia's warm head. Kissed her brow. Six months old and he still couldn't believe it. Here lay this little person who would one day call him Daddy.

  Come on, Maggie said. We need to get your mother tucked in.

  ***

  He ought to have slept soundly—he was tired enough—but sleep wouldn't come. He enjoyed lying there, though, Maggie curled up against him, his baby across the room on the other side of the bed. Pair of them snoring in harmony. Everybody in the house snoring apart from him.

  Enjoyed, that is, apart from the images that kept flashing into his head.

  Nightmare images. Bob, his thick fingers wrapped around a gun. Maggie dead, a hole in her side. His mother dead, gunshot. So vivid that he put on the light at one stage to check that Maggie was there. She vanished when he turned on the light. He went cold all over for a moment, but it was okay, because he thought of turning off the light and when he did so she came back right away. She told him to go check on his mum. He went through to the spare room and his mum was sound asleep.

  He tried to squeeze the unpleasant images out of his head. They were making him sweat. Making a speeding drumbeat of his heart. And yet when he turned on the light once again, it was enough to soft-focus everything, enough to cushion his brain, enough to skew reality but not so you'd notice straight away. But not for long before he felt the loss of Maggie and he snapped the light off again. A cold fire in his veins.

  Maybe there was a gas leak.

  Maybe it was the petrol.

  His brain was going to rip apart.

  Fuck it. There was nothing to worry about.

  Forget it. Go to sleep. Listen to the girls snoring.

  Forget about the fact you still don't know who wanted your mother dead.

  It was Jordan. Had to be. He'd quoted the letter, almost verbatim. Called him Charlie, taunting him. Carlos was as sure as he could be.

  But he didn't know for sure and it made him think. Made him worry about what it might mean if it hadn't been Jordan, or Maggie, or his mother. He wasn't accustomed to worrying.

  Anxiety. Was that it? Was he having an anxiety attack? Maybe he should get out of bed, turn on the computer. Look it up, see if the symptoms were—no. That wasn't it. He hadn't experienced any shortness of breath, no pain in the chest. He hadn't felt faint.

  He'd just felt ... different. Like he was dreaming, even though he knew he was awake. He dreamed he'd shot Jordan. He dreamed he'd burned his hand. He had burned it. The dream was so vivid it made it happen in the real world. Maybe Jordan was dead too.

  Carlos got out of bed and walked through to the en-suite and threw up in the sink. This time he didn't hold it back.

  ***

  He must have gone back to bed and fallen asleep because he was jolted awake by a scream. He fumbled around for the light, scrambled out of bed, flung on a dressing gown, opened the door. The babysitter was standing in the doorway of the spare bedroom.

  "Is problemo?" Carlos said.

  She stood there, her head jiggling and her teeth chattering.

  "What?" he said, after a bit.

  "On the bed," she said, pointing.

  Carlos sighed, padded over to her, peered inside the room. His mother was lying there, fully clothed, sprawled out, on top of the quilt. She didn't look cold or anything, just a little unladylike. "Let her sleep," he said. "She's tired."

  "But..." the girl said. "But she's..."

  "How much do I owe you?" Carlos said.

  "Where's Maggie?"

  "She's still asleep."

  "Maggie," the girl said, quietly. Then when Maggie didn't appear, she shouted her name.

  "How much?" Carlos said.

  "I'm getting the fuck out of here." She sprinted for the door, not even bothering to put her shoes on.

  Carlos watched her go. Then he went through to the kitchen to get Sofia's feed ready. He'd let Maggie sleep on a bit. It was still early and she'd be tired too. It had been a long night for everyone.

  ###

  Allan Guthrie is an award-winning Scottish crime writer. He was born in Orkney, but has lived in Edinburgh for most of his adult life. His debut novel, Two-Way Split, was shortlisted for the CWA Dagger award and went on to win the Theakston's Crime Novel Of The Year in 2007. He is the author of four other novels, Kiss Her Goodbye, Hard Man, Savage Night and Slammer; and three novellas, Kill Clock, Killing Mum and Bye Bye Baby.

  Visit Allan at http://www.allanguthrie.co.uk

  Or follow him on twitter at http://twitter.com/allanguthrie