Double Indemnity

The woman with the auburn hair got out of her Fiat Panda, clicked the lock and padded over to the high-rise tenement block bearing the name Falcon Crest. The building could not have been named more inappropriately: it looked ancient and run-down, its grey paint faded on the face overlooking Bayliss Avenue. Fiona halted before a short flight of steps that lead to the lobby and looked left and right before entering.

Although it was not yet dusk, the chilly temperatures of the English winter had forced all sensible residents indoors. Few people lingered in the street. The weather app on her phone had forecast possible snow for the following morning.

Seeing nothing to alarm her, Fiona pulled the fur-lined collar closer to her throat and then walked up the steps. Pieces of plastic litter were strewn on the landing and she noticed a puddle of vomit in the corner near the door. Within, one ceiling light fixture was missing. It all looked depressingly similar to her last visit, only forty-eight hours ago.

She took the steps two at a time, ears peeled for any unwelcome sound. The paper bag in her left hand contained a thick bundle of currency, all used notes held together by a rubber-band. It would not do to run into some lowlife lurking about a darkened corridor.

The door she was seeking was four floors up and she rapped on the wood with a gloved fist. There were the sounds of television from within, and then it was muted abruptly and someone called out: “Who’s it then?”

She didn’t reply, using the time to glance about, making certain there was nothing out of place. A baby was wailing somewhere close by and a woman shouted out in anger. Fiona heard sounds of someone moving heavily within the apartment and she stood back, waiting for the door to open.

The door was cracked open and a dark face peered out, eyes widening when they fell upon Fiona. “Bloody ‘ell! What you doin’ ‘ere, and dressed like that?” he blurted out in shock, and she used the moment to push the door fully open with her boot and barge in.

As it had just two evenings before, the smell hit her like a blast. So did the chill in the flat. It was almost as cold inside as it had been out on the road below, she thought, pulling her coat around her.

She turned as she heard the door shut firmly behind her.

The short bald man who lived here looked at her angrily. “Why are you ‘ere, ay? Ah told you ah got the hit set up like ya wanted, didn’t ah? Ah made contact with Shrike, like we agreed. Ah gave ‘im the money after ‘e agreed to do the job.” He looked nervously at the closed door. “No good reason for ya to be ‘ere; there’s no telling what them blokes ‘cross the corridor will think, ya keep comin’ in ‘ere like this.”

“Shut your trap, Mercer, and sit down.” Fiona looked distastefully at the lumpy green sofa planted in front of the muted television then positioned herself gingerly on the edge. “Something’s come up.”

Mercer quickly scooted over to the sofa. He had a scowl on his face. “Uh don’t like the sound of that.”

“Oh, I haven’t changed my mind, you ba##urd…” she muttered, savagely motioning for him to be seated. “But the timetable has advanced. I need Fred to be killed before eleven AM tomorrow.”

Mercer’s whole face became one big frown. He shook his head uncertainly. “Shrike don’t work that way. Ah jus’ give ‘im the details and the bread. Once that’s done, uh got no say in what ‘appens next.”

Fiona had a vexed look on her face. “Look, I’m not asking you to make any decisions here. Just call this- Shrike, and tell him the deadline has been advanced. If he’s the utter professional you claim he is, there shouldn’t be a problem. He’s already had two whole days to plan how he’s going to make it happen.”

Mercer scowled at her but seeing her grim stare reached out and found his cell phone. He went through his contacts and then dialled the number he was looking for. He stared at the far wall while he waited. Evidently he didn’t get the desired result because he then put down the phone. “The bleedin’ number’s bin cut…” He shook his head slowly. “No way to contact Shrike now, not before yer deadline.”

A vessel high in her forehead began to throb almost painfully as she contemplated what she had heard. If Fred survived to make his eleven o’clock appointment, then all her efforts would go down the drain, and her days of freedom, perhaps even survival, would be numbered. Unable to conceal the desperation in her voice, she blurted out: “There must be someone else who can get the job done!”

Mercer stared at her, surprised at how her tone had changed. He shook his head. “It’s too late. And Shrike’s the best in the business.” His eyes narrowed. “How bad d’ya need this?”

Fiona squinted at him, suddenly noticing the gap in the front row of his teeth. “Are you asking me how much?”

He continued to stare at her, saying nothing, but the greed was evident in his eyes.

She lifted her hand and put the brown bag down on the table. “The same amount I gave you two days back – for Shrike.” She pushed the bag toward him. “It’s yours if you can kill Fred.”

His eyes were fastened to the bag but he made no move to touch it. His breathing had gotten a bit faster. His eye twitched as he continued to stare then he nodded and finally looked up at Fiona. “Uh’ll do it meself, love. Uh’ll kill yer ‘usband for ya.”

Fiona walked down to the lobby almost as if she was in a trance. A swarthy hooded punk smoking on one of the lower levels looked up on hearing her footsteps. He eased his hood back and she got a glimpse of gold earrings. And he got a glimpse of her policewoman’s uniform and he quickly got to his feet and disappeared into the shadows.

Fiona’s breath misted in the night air as she made her way to the Fiat. She climbed in and started the engine and revved up the heater. Fiona and Fred, she was thinking, a great-looking couple if you ever saw one, even after four years of married life. And now she was trying to get him killed…

She shook out a cigarette and lighting it, drew deeply. It was a habit she had picked up lately, along with several other vices, all on the job. She certainly hadn’t been a smoker when she’d gotten married, and she definitely hadn’t been indulging in the sort of activities her current line of work demanded of her. But not all of that was in the line of duty, and not all of what Fiona was involved in was mentioned in any Police manual, in this country or any other. Somewhere down the line, Fiona had crossed over to the dark side. Along with five or six other men and women in uniform, she used her badge and the blue uniform to extract payments from all manner of life-forms, ranging from drug pushers to pimps, from small-time crooks to businessmen with interests that were off the books. In the beginning, it had been about the money, and with her introduction into this other world came offers she found difficult to turn down. And so she was sucked into a vortex of dark pathways and forbidden delights. It was a world where she suddenly realized she belonged to, a life she wanted to embrace body and soul. That aspect of her existence stayed hidden from Fred, and her husband suspected nothing of his wife’s secret life until one day when he found her hard drive.

She realized the moment she entered and found him in the study, gazing in revulsion at her open laptop. Her heart sank as she remembered leaving it on the desk after entering the details of the latest collections. For the past several months, deciding it would be useful to have some sort of leverage against her partners in crime should things suddenly go bottoms-up, she had made a back-up of all the data she was able to accumulate. This data included figures, dates, names and places, and there also were over two dozen video files, all recorded surreptitiously on her smart-phone. And Fred was now poring through all this information. It wouldn’t take a genius to figure out what was going on. And Fred was a stock-broker, and by his expression it was clear he had made the connection.

The conversation after had not gone well to say the least. In a shaking voice, he had told her that she had to exit the group of corrupt police officers and she had told him very softly that there was no way out of this outfit, except in a body-bag. He had stared at her, stony-faced, but had said nothing more. It was at that point that Fiona realized that her husband had become a liability. Fred might decide to take matters into his own hands and try to force the issue out into the open. If her partners discovered the disk existed, then her days were numbered. It was then that she had reached out to Mercer, one of her many Confidential Informants. The man moved among criminal elements the way a medical rep associated with doctors and when she told him what she needed done, to have her husband killed in such a manner it seemed like an accident he had known the man for the job. He had taken a retainer, with the balance to be paid after Fred was dead.

And she might have allowed events to take their course had it not been for the message she found on Fred’s mobile phone only an hour earlier. In the last two days since he had found the disk, she had taken to checking his phone, looking for anything to alarm her. This evening whilst he was in the shower, she found a reminder in his calendar for an appointment at eleven the following morning. The office was of a barristers in Birmingham City Centre and when she Googled the name of the firm, she found that it was a law practice dealing in divorce proceedings.

Pulse racing, she knew she could not allow the meet to take place. Once he spoke to the barrister, a record would exist, one that could very well return to haunt her after he died. There could be no sign that theirs had been anything but a happy marriage. And when Fred died, it had to be an open-and-shut case, with nothing to necessitate an investigation. And so Fred had to die before eleven the following morning.

Rolling down her window, she flicked the butt onto the road. Peering up, she could see the lights in the fourth floor apartment, where Mercer lived. She wondered what was going on through his mind, and just how he was going to murder her husband.

At eight o’clock the next morning, Fred stepped out of his front door, carrying his case in one hand. He walked past his wife’s Fiat Panda which was parked in front of his own Honda in their driveway. On a regular day, Fiona was the first to leave and the last to get back home and as a result it was always his Honda that was closer to their front door. But last night, after Fiona had left without saying a word to him he had taken the opportunity to slip out and make his way to a pub for a pint of bitter and lamb pie. After the discovery of the disk, recollecting the horror of what he had seen on the computer screen, he had felt himself shrinking away from his wife. It was now apparent to Fred that his life had been at least partly a lie and that the woman onto whose finger he had once slipped a ring was in truth a total stranger. This line of thinking had made it easy for him to decide on his next course of action, which was to file for divorce. The appointment was still some time away, but he found it too painful to linger in the house while Fiona was there.

He opened the door of his car and kept his case inside. The windscreen was caked with ice and he would need to scrape it off. It was one of the pains of having your own vehicle in this part of the world, he thought grumpily as he made his way to the front.

He began scraping off the ice from the back glass first. The slight curvature made the job easier and he was able to move onto the side windows without much effort. While laboring away, he saw a woman walking her dog. Her step was slow and cautious, no doubt because of the ice coating the pavement. She stopped to let the animal investigate a patch of grass outside his house and he turned to stare, wondering at the lunacy involved in taking a dog out for a walk in this weather. She saw him looking, and waved.

He waved back, giving her a half-hearted smile. The smile faded when he saw her turn in his direction. He frowned to himself. Did he know her? Perhaps she was one of the neighbours. She tugged at the leash, and then walked toward him. Just a few steps away, she pointed to the front of the Fiat. “There’s something under your car.” She called out.

Fred whipped around, instantly annoyed. Those damn kids from next door! It was probably another of their balls. Despite the high hedge that divided his property from the offending neighbours, the darn toys still managed to find a way into his garden.

He leaned forward, trying to see what she had spotted. Seeing nothing, he bent some more, one hand holding onto the cold metalwork of his wife’s Fiat for support.

She was already behind him, having dropped the leash moments ago. A fleeting look about convinced her she was alone, and she closed in on him. She kicked him in the back of his right knee, and his whole frame buckled and he dropped to his knees with a cry. Her right hand caught the back of his head as it was coming backwards and cupping it, she slammed his forehead with great force against the left side of the Fiat’s bonnet.

Fred swayed and then aiming for the dent his skull had made in the metal, she swung his head back a second time. This time, her hand came away and she took a step as the man crumpled sideways onto the driveway. She had chosen the Fiat intentionally. Parked in front of the Honda, it was further from the road and thus afforded more concealment. And when it came to toughened steel, she always opted for European over Japanese.

She looked down at his open eyes. His mouth was moving slowly, as if with great difficulty. Gazing at him, she could imagine the crack in his skull and the vessels at the site of impact leaking blood where blood should not collect, forming a hematoma and inexorably pressing down against brain tissue until critical body systems began shutting down, one by one.

When she was sure he was dead, she took another long searching look around. Her dog came trotting up, and she picked up the leash. She walked up to the front door of her victim’s house and rang the chimes. With her hands in her jacket pockets, she watched a shape materialize on the other side of the etched glass door. Then the door opened inward and a woman in a police uniform appeared.

“Can I help you?” asked Fiona politely.

“My name is Shrike.” said the stranger quietly. She stepped aside, allowing Fiona to see beyond her and out into the driveway. “I’ve completed the contract. He’s dead. The poor man slipped on a patch of ice and bumped his head.”

Fiona had stiffened on seeing Fred’s body. Her eyes were fixed to the form, and noting its utter stillness, a shudder ran through her. Then she turned back to the woman. “I thought you were a man.” It was the only thing she could think of to say at that point.

Shrike gave her a smile that didn’t reach her ears. “Now that we’ve got the pleasantries out of the way, I’ll be happy to collect the balance of my fee and be on my merry way.”

Fiona blinked. “Wait…” She shook her head, confused. “I gave Mercer the money last night.”

The woman’s eyes narrowed and she shifted backwards slightly, shoulders tensing. “Mercer only handles the retainer.”

The police-woman nodded. “Yes, but after the timetable was advanced, I had no choice but to meet him again. And fortunately he was able to contact you last night.”

Shrike’s eyes were like two chips of blue ice. “He didn’t.”

Fiona faltered, her composure slipping. Something was not computing. “But then- how did you get my message?”

“What message?”

She stared out at her dead husband, as if suddenly unsure if this were all just a dream. She heard the woman repeat her words, only this time she was gripping Fiona’s forearm in a vise-like hold. The words sputtered out of her mouth and as she explained Fiona was trying to make sense of what was happening. “And then I left the money there, on his table, because he promised me he would get the job done this morning…” She shrugged. “That’s why I thought…” Her voice trailed off.

Shrike stared at her steadily, trying to gauge whether she was being set up, or if Fiona was telling her the truth. The story seemed so unlikely that it had to be true. “Well, as you can see, I killed your husband. And as I mentioned before, I’m here to collect my fee.”

Fiona realized she had no choice in the matter. She would have to make the most of a bad deal, pay up what Shrike was due and then handle Mercer later. But after paying off Mercer last night, Fiona had no funds in the house. There was cash stashed in a locker facility at her club, and she would have to take the woman with her. Looking at the body she realized she would need to be quick. And since Shrike had used her Fiat to kill him, Fiona would need to take his Honda.

She nodded once, feeling herself regaining some semblance of control. “Let’s go get your money.” She closed the door of her house and crouching over the body, searched for the Honda key. “If you want your money, you need to come with me.”

Shrike followed her to the car with her dog, mind racing. Fiona’s revelations had come as a shock. But now the payment was crucial, damage limitation could come later. Mercer must have tried to contact her last night, but he would have failed: once Shrike took up an assignment, she went black, shunning all communication devices for security reasons.

So Mercer had promised Fiona he would take care of Fred, she mused as they got in. The money must have been too much to resist. Or perhaps Fiona had been desperate. Quite possibly a bit of both, thought Shrike, stroking her dog’s head.

She smiled in the coolness of the Honda’s interior, and wondered how an amateur like Mercer, recruited to kill the husband within the next two hours, would have gone about it. And then her smile froze, blood chilling over so that she could feel the hairs standing erect on her neck.

Because she knew…

And before she could utter a single word of warning, Fiona turned the key in the ignition of her late husband’s Honda, and blew them into countless pieces across the driveway and into the distance beyond.

–END–