Marcus saw the love between him and Samantha as eternal. And her father’s offer of a job, once the man had been released, and enough money to buy a small place, was just what he needed.
For two years, peace reigned, but Samantha was flawed. An indulgent father, a husband who was at work, or only wanting to be at home with her and their child, was not what she needed: she needed a life.
A violent psychotic was how Marcus had come to see her father. No one could do what he did to a fellow human being and be sane. He had witnessed the slaying of a rival, the knifing of the man, the smile on Hamish McIntyre’s face when he had finished.
‘No other bastard is going to cheat me,’ he’d said to Marcus. As strange as it was, Hamish enjoyed Marcus’s company, and the two would spend time together. One patting the other on the back, telling him to drink up; the other frightened that one wrong word and he’d be minus a part of the anatomy that wasn’t getting much attention from Samantha, and none at all for the last five months.
Hamish had not yet been told of the fancy man that Samantha preferred over her husband. He was eventually when, after a few too many beers, Marcus had opened up to his father-in-law.
The fancy man skipped town, or so the story went. That was what Samantha was told when her father instructed her to return to the marital bed and to do her duty.
It would be three years before the man’s body was found. By then, Samantha was still honouring her marital vows, and Marcus had become Hamish’s right-hand man.
***
Outside the small room at the top of the house, the sun was setting. It was going to be a clear starlit night, the night that lovers crave. However, Marcus Matthews was sure that it would be the night that he would die.
He had been a day and a night in that room, and apart from visiting the bathroom, he had not left it. He knew that he could; the door was not locked, and there was no one watching the house. No one would question if he left the city or the country, and he had money. Others might have questioned his reason for staying, but he did not.
He sat down at a small table and opened another chocolate bar, his diet since he’d made his way to the room, climbing stairs that were almost too narrow for a person to navigate. Samantha had been back with him for fourteen years since her lover had vanished, and, on the whole, they had been good years, he reflected.
A creaking on the stairs, the door opening. Marcus stood up as the person walked into the room.
‘A man who could always be trusted to keep his word.’
‘A man’s word is his bond,’ Marcus replied. He felt a sense of unease as a gun was pointed at him. ‘Come in. There’s always time to talk.’
‘It would be best if I do what I must and leave.’
‘Why so soon? We have much to talk about, you and I.’
‘It pains me to do this.’
‘It is what was agreed.’
The two men sat down at the small table. Marcus produced a bottle of wine and two plastic cups. He poured the wine into the cups and handed one to the man who was going to kill him. ‘Here’s to you,’ he said.
The other man laid his gun on the table and held his plastic cup up. ‘Here’s to better times,’ he said.
The air was charged with emotion, the tension palpable, yet the two men, one a murderer, the other a victim, passed the time talking and laughing and reminiscing about people they had known, people that had died. For nearly ninety minutes the conversation was animated and emotional, and then the bottle of wine was empty.
It was Marcus who spoke first. ‘It’s time,’ he said.
The man opposite offered his hand, which Marcus shook. He then picked up the gun and shot Marcus twice in the chest and once in the head. He then put the weapon in his jacket pocket and left the room.
If anyone had seen him, they would have seen the tears in his eyes. If they had been able to hear, they would also have heard, ‘I did what had to be done.’
With that, the man closed the door to the small room and descended the stairs.
Chapter 2
It had been the mother of one of the youths who had phoned the police after her son came in screaming about what he had seen. Billy Dempsey, the more daring of the two boys, a skinny youth with bad acne, had been the first through the window at the back of the house; the preliminary details relayed to Homicide by a Constable Hepworth who had answered the call.
‘We’ve had trouble with him before, stealing from shops, so we didn’t believe him at first. That’s why we checked before we called you,’ Hepworth said.
A pair of amateurs was what Gordon Windsor, the senior crime scene investigator, had called Constables Hepworth and Lipton, although he had added a few angry expletives. ‘They’re told there’s a body, and still they have to stick their collective noses and feet in.’
Detective Chief Inspector Isaac Cook, the senior investigating officer in Homicide at Challis Street Police Station knew that Windsor was right. A phone call in the late afternoon from Katrina
