| |
The next day I took stock, which is to say I moped around the house doing very little of consequence. It was Thursday and I could not try to get into Sandra’s flat again until late that night. I had no clue as to where the money was, so there was no point in searching somewhere just for the sake of it. I could only deal with Sandra after dark when I was less likely to be seen and she was well under the weather. Given how much she drank, that would happen most nights. Additionally, I had to make sure that Vale was not around.
Once again, late that night, I dressed in my wet suit, checked the kit in my haul bag and threw the leather gloves into it for the moment. In the mirror, all I could see were my eyes. I put on a coat to cover the neoprene suit and found a hat that perched on top of the hood. I intended parking my car well away from the flat and would have to walk several blocks in public view, so I had to disguise my fish-out-of-water appearance.
For a moment I wondered how, if I ever had the chance, I would explain to Juliet what the real reasons were for doing this. She would never agree to it, even though she had been at the receiving end of Sandra’s vicious nature. ‘Two wrongs don’t make a right,’ she would quote, but I still held to what I’d told Felipe weeks ago in Chile - an eye for an eye, no more, no less. However, the way things had gone between us up to that point it wasn’t likely that I ever would have to tell her.
––––––––
Felipe; my young pilot friend who was far away in Santiago or maybe down south in the camp. The way he had ridden the world of a paedophile and salvaged some honour for his sister and his family had impressed me. It had been clever and almost undetectable as long as nothing had gone wrong during the event; and it hadn’t.
We had sat together that night slowly downing a beer after a day’s training. The other pilots had gone to bed in preparation for an early start the following morning, but we were off the next day and could afford to stay up late. The Porta-Kamp hut which was used as a crew room was insulated and virtually soundproof, and we were not likely to be disturbed. Even so, Felipe spoke softly and kept looking at the door.
He was finding it difficult to talk about it. The details came slowly, in bits, but it was clear how he had done what he felt he was honour bound to do. He called the paedophile Carlos, but told me it wasn’t his real name. Carlos’ death had to look like suicide, so Felipe ran through many ways to achieve that before settling on the easiest means, the one that suited him. Carlos could be thrown off a bridge, but there was always a possibility of Felipe being seen. Carlos lived in a single storey house, so throwing him off his own roof top might not kill him. He considered an overdose of sleeping pills combined with an excess of alcohol, or for Carlos to hang himself. Both of these could be done out of the public view, in the man’s home, but would involve some element of violence or a struggle, which had to be avoided. Then he thought the easiest way to do it was to gas Carlos; have him sit in his car with a hosepipe from the exhaust stuffed through the window and he would die of carbon monoxide poisoning. The difficulty of how to get Carlos to sit in the car without a struggle which would leave tell tale signs of bruising remained, however. He would have to be unconscious before he was put in the car, and it was the way that Felipe had planned and carried this out that sowed the seeds for my idea.
First Felipe had to draft a letter from Carlos that showed remorse for what he’d done and that he could no longer live with the guilt. No names of the victims should be written down, Felipe decided, the note must remain vague enough to avoid identification. He completed this draft on a sheet of paper before he even went to the house, because it was carefully worded and he wanted to make sure he didn’t make a mistake when he retyped it in the heat of the event. Because Carlos was supposedly a family friend, Felipe would be able to use the man’s computer and printer to type the suicide note while he was there.
Felipe bought a new car every year because he enjoyed sampling different models and he had the money to do so. A new car was no good for his purpose, but he had a friend called Enrique who had WW2 Jeep which he used as a girl trap. It was considered really sexy, and Enrique could be seen on summer weekends cruising the corniche in Valparaiso with two or three girls, showing off and waving at the crowds.
Claiming he needed to impress a new find and managing to sidestep Enrique’s probing questions, Felipe borrowed the Jeep. Over the course of a week, he assembled all the tools and equipment he needed: an empty gas bottle, an electric tyre pump, a length of garden hose, duct tape, some rags and a face mask with suitable tubing. He modified the tyre pump so that the air intake would accept the garden hose and he changed the outlet tube so that it fitted the head of the gas bottle. With the hose wedged into the Jeep’s exhaust he opened the valve of the gas cylinder and switched on the pump. Slowly the needle on the pressure gauge began to rise until the pump slowed down and could not force any more of the noxious gas into the bottle. The pressure gauge read 18bar, close to the pump’s maximum output. Felipe closed the cylinder valve, exchanged the hosepipe for the face mask and, nervously, put it on. ‘I was very scared, Alastair. What if I became unconscious when I tried it out?’
The gas gave a low, rather hollow, hiss as it entered the mask. Felipe lost courage and ripped the deadly contraption off his face. Instead, he waited to see how long the cylinder would last, because the little tyre pump could not pressurise the bottle to anything approaching its normal level. It took about five minutes at the low rate of flow until the gas stopped. He summoned the courage and repeated the exercise, but this time held the mask over his mouth and nose and opened the valve. Apart from the familiar smell which made him want to choke, he felt nothing. Then he became unaware of how much time was passing and started to feel drowsy. Immediately, before he lost control, he dropped the mask and gulped in clean air. The gas was still hissing gently. Good, it meant that there was enough in the weakly pressurised cylinder to render Carlos unconscious.
On the night, Felipe put all his equipment into a holdall, grabbed a bottle of Central Valley merlot and went round to Carlos’ home. He was a rich man, Carlos, and owned a rambling single storey house with an attached garage, a door from which led into the kitchen. Fitting the climate, there was a veranda that stretched the length of the house from the kitchen, past the living room, the bar and on past three bedrooms to the end. Every room had access to the outside through its own door, and guests could wander out onto the veranda and join others at the barbecue on the adjoining patio, or go further down the path across the extensive lawn to the swimming pool, where there was another bar and shade. Carlos lived alone but entertained frequently, and often did not know whom he had invited. There was always a surplus of young women, Felipe told me. This night, however, he had asked to see Carlos alone.
Felipe took a long time to get around to telling me about the actual event. It was as if he could not bear to remind himself of what he’d done, let alone confess to it. He paced up and down the cabin in silence, picked up the bar book with its pencil on a string, opened it, closed it without reading anything and put it back. Then he opened the door and had a quick look around outside before continuing his story.
Carlos and Felipe had a good dinner and drank a lot of vodka and a lot of wine, although Felipe managed to keep his intake down without Carlos noticing. When the man started slurring and kept nodding off, Felipe said he was going to the bathroom, but instead took his kit out of the holdall, put on some gloves and went behind Carlos’ chair. Carefully, he turned the tap and listened for the hiss of gas. He applied the mask very gently to Carlos’ face, holding it just off his cheeks to avoid him fighting it. Carlos coughed at the smell but was too drunk to object to the exhaust fumes and didn’t push the mask away. Felipe was sweating and trembling, he admitted, but he continued to hold the mask with an increasingly firmer grip as if his effort would accelerate the death. Eventually, after a what seemed an eternity but was probably just a minute or two, Carlos slumped to his left and Felipe had to lean right over the back of the chair to keep his hold. He pulled the mask away and heard the flow getting weaker, so he closed the valve, leaving some gas in reserve.
He opened Carlos’ computer, took the suicide note he had drafted from his pocket and typed it out. He saved it to the desktop so that it would be easy to see, then switched on the printer. There was a whole page of confessions of abuse of unidentified young girls. In them, ‘Carlos’ admitted his carnal desires had ruined the lives of these vulnerable creatures. He understood their pain and their fears and loss of ability to have normal relationships. He expressed unlimited remorse and felt the only way to atone for his deviations was to take his own life. Felipe had written the letter in the long winded way that Carlos would talk, had gone over it time and again, convincing himself that it looked genuine.
Once again he opened the cylinder and put the mask back on Carlos’ face. He wanted to exhaust the cylinder and make doubly sure this revolting paedophile was completely unconscious. Unconscious was all Felipe needed him to be at this stage, death would follow later. He was past the point of no return now, Felipe thought. There was no choice but to carry on, but he could not settle his nerves and continued to tremble.
The gas exhausted, he took the paper from the printer, read it again as it quivered in his shaking hand and took it over to the man himself. Carlos was still breathing, just. He pressed the limp fingers onto the paper to leave genuine fingerprints and put the sheets on the desk. The computer keyboard worked with Bluetooth, so was portable. Again, Felipe took Carlos’ fingers and pressed them to every key and around the unit. Finally, he used his handkerchief to wipe where he had left prints and deliberately smudged the on/off switches on the computer and printer. He reasoned that a man about to commit suicide would not bother to shut down his machines, so he left them on.
Felipe went into the kitchen and opened the garage door. There were two cars there, a BMW X6 and a 1969 American Ford Mustang with a big, fat engine in it. Felipe knew the BMW would have a much cleaner exhaust with less carbon monoxide than the old gas guzzler which, like the Jeep, was made long before the days when catalytic converters were brought in. He turned the key in the Mustang and the engine churned over easily, but didn’t fire. He swore, on the verge of panic, but at the third attempt it thumped into life with that unmistakeable rumbling of a V8. He left it running and the driver’s door open. Carlos was fat and heavy, but Felipe was a big lad and managed to carry him through the kitchen and into the garage. Somehow, he fed him into the driver’s seat, opened the right side window a little and went back into the house to fetch the hose pipe and rags. He folded Carlos’ hands around the hose at both ends and a few random places then rammed it into the exhaust and wedged it in place with the rags before feeding the other end into the window gap.
Then the tidying up began, he went everywhere he had been in the house and wiped it clean of finger prints. He washed his wine glass and put it away in the cupboard. Had he touched Carlos’ glass? Had he poured him a drink? No, he had avoided doing that for just this reason. The chair he had sat in was covered in leather, so a wipe was all that was needed there. If there was anything left which he had forgotten, and he was questioned about his presence, he could genuinely claim that he often went to Carlos’ house.
Back in the garage, the car was full of exhaust fumes and Carlos was surely dead, but even if he wasn’t, there was no doubt he would be by morning which was the earliest he’d be found. Felipe left the house unlocked, Carlos usually did, even though it was a stupid thing to do. He left by climbing over the garden wall beyond the pool and walked slowly down the hill to where he’d left his car. The enormity of what he’d done had not yet sunk in, but he was feeling a sense of accomplishment. There was relief it was over, of course, but a great mass of anxiety hung over him as well. ‘Guilt, Alastair? Guilt? I don’t think so. I was pleased, but I was scared. I still am scared, I don’t want to be a murderer.’
‘It’s a bit late to feel that, Felipe,’ I had replied.
––––––––
This night, Thursday, was much the same as the one before, except the wind was much stronger and the rain was almost horizontal. Knowing that Vale might be there, I drove around the block as well as one on either side to see if his Vauxhall Astra was parked nearby. I could not see it so assumed he was either on duty or maybe he had left already. After all, it would take a great deal of stamina to keep up with Sandra on a nightly basis. I eventually parked two blocks away on a different road.
Once again I peered into the basement parking to make sure that her Porsche was there, but it wasn’t. Damn! I waited around for an hour, but she didn’t return. I went home.
I repeated the exercise on Friday night, but she still had not returned. Where was she? Was she staying at Giles’ house or her brother’s house? Had she taken the money and escaped, gone abroad perhaps? If so, I had lost. Then doubts as to the viability of my plan began to niggle at me. Was I being childish and hoping for too much, would it ever work? I put the negative thoughts behind me. There was nothing else I could think of doing, and at least I was doing something.
The next morning I phoned Giles’ house, and Henry answered. ‘Hello Henry, how are things? Are you and Mrs Potter all right?’
He assured me that they were fine, but were frustrated at not knowing what was going on. I told him that Giles was improving slowly, so there was hope, then asked if Sandra was there.
‘No, sir. We haven’t seen her since she gave us the sack.’
‘Henry, please do me a favour. If she does appear, or contacts you at all, please will you let me know straight away. But it’s quite important that she doesn’t know I asked you to do that.’
I could almost hear him smile, please to be conspiring against the woman. ‘Don’t you worry, sir. We’re on your side, we won’t say a thing. I’ll tell Mrs Potter.’
It was Saturday. I tried again with the rain pouring down for the third night in a row. Wherever it had been for the last few days, the Cayman was back in the basement. Good, I could now shake off my doubts and take action.
Leaving the haul bag on the ground, I shinned up the cast iron waste pipe. I had not done any climbing for a year, and was seriously out of practice. It did not matter; the rubber booties, wedged between the wall and the pipe, gripped well. The pipe was solid and provided a firm hold. Thank goodness for the gloves, the leather had good friction on the smooth wet pipe and it wasn’t long before I reached the second floor. On my previous visit, Sandra had left the bathroom window open beyond the safety catch, there being no children, and it was still the same. I wedged my left foot into the crack between the pipe and the wall, held on with both hands and used the greater reach of my right leg to push the window as wide as I could. Then I leaned over, got a firm grip on the frame and pulled myself across. From there it was a simple job to clamber up into the bathroom.
The door was ajar, and light from the TV flickered through the gap. Canned laughter switched on and off with irritating and unrealistic precision. Pause, listen, there were no signs of movement. The rain was coming in the wide open window. I hauled the bag up with the line, unclipped it from my belt then pulled the window closed to its original position. A towel dabbed at the wet suit stopped any drips. Conscious that my boots were wet, I dried them with toilet paper as I didn’t want to leave any debris from them on the towel or footprints on the carpet. The soggy bits of paper went in the bag.
I peered out of the bathroom into the living area. Sandra was watching the TV and facing away from me. There were two glasses on the table in front of her and what was left of a bottle of champagne. Two glasses? Where was the other person? Was Vale here after all? I waited a while, but there was still no sign of anyone else. Working as quietly as possible, I slipped a nitrous oxide canister into an empty dispenser and screwed the top on, puncturing the cylinder. Then I pushed the tubing from the mask over the nozzle and gave it a quick test. A hiss confirmed success, so I repeated the preparation with the second dispenser.
Slowly, ever so slowly, I moved up behind Sandra and stood over her. She was so still I wondered for a moment if she were dead, but she gave a brief, unladylike snort and sagged over to her right. The TV quiz show had an orange stage setting, which lent a warming glow to her creamy skin. She was drunk and began to snore. Hopefully she would feel nothing but, very gently, trying not to touch her, I held the mask over her mouth and nose and released some nitrous oxide. No reaction, so I released some more. I wanted her totally pliable, unable to fight and with no signs of a struggle on her. This had to look as if it was self inflicted.
When inhaling from a balloon, the recreational user typically takes a breath of air in between hits from the balloon and so does not overdose. If a mask is used however, because it is stuck to the face, the user inhales the neat gas on every breath and so can quickly go unconscious. Over four minutes of this and death can occur, but in the latter stages of that time there will most likely be brain damage due to oxygen starvation. I had to be very careful that Sandra did not die. I did not want her to die, and I did not wish to be a murderer - No, Felipe. Rather, I wanted her to be sufficiently compliant to tell me where the money was.
Her eyes opened slowly, at first they remained mere slits, then they widened and she looked around the room, dazedly taking in her familiar surroundings: the drinks cabinet, the TV, the white hairy rug, the chrome and glass coffee table, and finally the abstract pictures on the wall opposite, which held her attention for a while. She didn’t seem to register me standing over her. I held the mask in place. She suddenly realised it was there, but was too fuzzy and, probably because she was used to breathing this gas, did not fight me. Instead she relaxed and closed her eyes again. I took the mask away and let her breathe to recover a little.
Trying to imitate Vale’s accent, I whispered to her, ‘Sandra, what are we going to do with our money? When do you want me to get it?’ Her expression was puzzled, she didn’t seem to understand. I pressed her, ‘Sandra! Where’s the money? We need to get it to launder it.’
Uncomprehending, she focussed on the strange, unrecognisable character in black with only his eyes showing, but she could not register what was going on and started to giggle.
She squinted at me, curious and puzzled, ‘Why..., why are you dressed like Ratman, or are you Bobin?’ She laughed with a sudden ‘Hah!’ and collapsed giggling onto the floor, her body shaking with hysterics.
I moved quickly round the sofa and knelt beside her. Perhaps she needed to recover so she could talk sense, I thought and waited for appropriate signs. She fell asleep. This was going nowhere, so I decided to conclude the other purpose of my visit and switched cream dispensers to use a full one then packed the mask to her face again, gently squeezing the trigger to let the gas flow. She didn’t struggle, and I kept a close eye on the time. Three minutes and she had not moved. She was breathing steadily, though. Another thirty seconds was enough, any more and she could die. I took her hands and put them on the mask and around the creamer and then let her fall naturally back to the floor.
Her phone was on the table. I found Vale’s number in her contacts and sent him a text: I’ve had enough, I’m going to end it. It was a lovely time. S That should summon him and implicate him by virtue of his fingerprints everywhere, his number in her phone and his DNA in the flat. If it worked, his future in the police would be over.
That was how I imagined it might go, loosely following my plan. Unfortunately for Sandra, it did not happen that way.
