The Sister(72)

While she slept, he emptied her safe. When he’d finished counting the money, a little over ninety seven thousand pounds, he’d already worked out how to double it. Unable to believe his luck, after stowing the money away in a Harrods carrier bag, he began leafing through the diary she kept in the safe. Why keep it in a safe? Poring over the entries and notes, he found it was a meticulous record of her client’s visits. Days, times, what they had done, even what they'd said.

Two in particular drew his attention. One was a police chief inspector who, according to her notes, liked nothing more than having her sing Happy Birthday as part of his foreplay. Alongside his name was the number 1, with a circle drawn around it. The next was someone she described only as the Boss. His name was encircled with the number 2. The other entries too, carried encircled numbers next to them; there were money brokers, city bankers, solicitors. The numbers, he assumed, were based on performance, or the amount of money they paid. He puzzled over it briefly before deciding it wasn’t important.

When he’d reached the end, there was a flyleaf with a key to all the numbers listed in sequence. Adjacent to them, were initials and telephone numbers. It took a few seconds for the capital letters to gel in his mind and then he had a moment of enlightenment. There at the top, next to the phone number, JFK, Mr President. JFK, John F. Kennedy. Could this be DCI Kennedy? He didn’t recognise any of the other initials, but he recognised potential when it presented itself and if it was him, by the time he’d finished digging the dirt, if he played his cards right, he would have his revenge. And he’d be untouchable.

Reaching for a new mobile phone, he always kept a new one in the car; he unboxed it and lit a cigarette. After putting the battery in, he switched it on and keyed the telephone number into it.

It answered almost straight away.

He recognised the voice from the television.

‘Is that you, Jack?’ he said into the handset and disconnected without waiting for a response. Beware the ides of March, Jack.





Oh, if his old man could have seen how his apple had grown bigger than the tree.

When Midnight thought about his old man, there wasn’t much worth remembering. There were no good times; just the bullshit handed down as if it was the wisdom of the ages.

Old Chinese proverb: He who stands still gets caught. Know when it’s time to move on and do it before that!

The fountains of wisdom garnished from a lifetime of lying and cheating were not even correct. His poor mother suffered endlessly, born into a generation where you stood by your man, it never occurred to her that leaving was an option. Her mother’s advice would have been. You just grit your teeth and get on with it.

She tried to put some decent values into him; her determination to prevent his turning out like his father backfired, and in a way, she helped make him the same because he resented her for it. He was too much of a chip off the old block. He smoked like a trooper, not as much as the old man did, having no money of his own to buy them, he was obliged to smoke his father’s dog ends. He would smoke part of the filter too, by his reckoning, it was the best part.





On reaching his teenage years, he had rebelled; no woman was ever going to control him. He exhibited signs of sexual deviancy; he’d spy on neighbours in the hope of catching them undressing, or even catch them having sex, which he occasionally did.

Sometimes, the old man would take him off at night, not coming back until the next morning. When his mother asked where they were going or where they'd been, her husband’s thin lips would pull back into a wicked smile, and he’d tap his nose as if she should know better and say. ‘Just a bit of night fishing, girl, that’s all!’

She knew they were up to no good.

It was easier to say nothing in the end – to turn a blind eye.





So, it was time to move on, he saw it coming clear as day. One more job and that would be him done. No more Mr Nice guy, no more Mr Midnight. Alice Cooper would have been proud of that little addition to his lyrics; he drew his lips back into a wolfish grin.

Having no friends, he kept himself to himself. It was the best way to keep a secret, don’t say anything to anyone and stay away from people. His old man taught him that as well and so far it had paid off. He was much more efficient than his old man, though; he had done bird a couple of times, but then, if he hadn’t, he wouldn’t have been able to pass on what he learned in there, so he supposed it was a good thing.

Yeah, the old man, that shining guiding light. His smile pulled his lips against his teeth so tightly he thought they might split. It faded again as quickly as it appeared.

He wasn’t as bad as his old man. He was worse.

When he was almost sixteen, his mother died of lung cancer. She’d never smoked a cigarette in her life.

She kept it from the two of them, and neither of them noticed just how frail she’d become until the end. The old man said she was always going to die young, always had a f*ckin’ headache, always so sickly.

‘Do you know what, Dad? You’re so f*cking selfish.’

The old man looked at him surprised and considered giving him a beating, but the boy had grown stout; he might turn on him, so he just said, ‘If you feel like that, boy, you know what you can do!’





At the funeral, her three estranged sisters paid their last respects. They all knew the reason she had broken contact was because of him; she wouldn’t have wanted them to fret. The old man undermined her and cut her off from everyone who was close. One by one, the sisters fell by the wayside and his mother had allowed it to happen, fearful of the consequences of resistance. Before she died, she sent a letter to the eldest, explaining – or at least trying to – in as much as her limited vocabulary would allow, so they knew. Not one of the sisters spoke to the old man, or even looked at him.