If I’d said to Conor stuff like: the law’d do me for putting Lucille through an abusive orphanage system, but that same law had no notion of doing the hundreds of so-called innocent clergy who stood by and watched thousands of kids being handed in, knowing their peers would abuse them, he’d have looked at me as if I was talking a foreign language. The sort of stuff people who hadn’t been through it tell you should be forgotten.
I’m rambling here. Didn’t mean to do that. Facing him after all this time had sort of got the old nerves jumping.
‘Bye, bro.’
I locked the door on my way out.
Now this tack room of my brother’s had no windows in it, but it did have a small ventilation hole in the door. And the method I’d come up with for him had to do with a virus called strangles. It can live on tack. You can pick it up on your hand and pass it on to a horse, and that’ll be the end of it. A growth swells in its windpipe and it dies gasping for breath – no cheese wire or ropes required – unless it gets a dose of modern antibiotics, though that doesn’t work in all cases.
While Conor had been out checking his stock, I’d found an ice-cream container in the tack room and nailed it to the inside of the door. And now it was time to pour the formaldehyde in through the hole into the container. Then came the potassium permanganate. I’d brought my own in case he was out. But I’d seen his supply on the shelf and used it. Better for the law to think his had been used. It wouldn’t point to an outsider. It would point to Lucille.
Potassium permanganate looks like coal particles. Mixed with formaldehyde, it forms what’s called formalin. It’s a gas. Though Conor didn’t think so. He wasn’t laughing anyway. Mind you, he was the one breathing it in. Formalin gas kills strangles. And anything else. That’s why it’s best to do it from the outside. Go in there and you won’t come out. It acts in seconds. White smoke everywhere and bonk! down you go.
Now I don’t know if you’ve ever heard a man being gassed. But it’s a noisy business. I suppose you’d have to imagine some cunt locking you in a room then tossing in a canister. Going mad to get out pretty much describes how people react to it. You’ve never heard the like of it in your life. Grabbing and tearing at that ice-cream container he was, trying to get it off. Which he did. Well, ice-cream containers aren’t that hard to remove. I think he was exploring the possibility of bunging his mouth in the hole for a breath of nice country air. Then again, they say the night air’s not good for you. I felt fine though. Of course, while tearing the container off, he had to come into closer contact with it, which rather defeats the object. He was breathing it in all the more. Once the formaldehyde and that other stuff make contact, as the saying goes: ‘What I have mixed together let no man put asunder.’ Didn’t do much for his nails, I can tell you that. Some of the gas escaped through the hole, as gas will, but there was plenty left for him.
Interesting what good screamers men make at times like this. I’d never heard no woman scream like that. Still, it didn’t last. It turned into a croak before very long. The old ‘aaghhhh … aaghhh … aagh’ becoming an ‘aa … a …’ until he hadn’t an ‘a’ to his name. With no window, it had nowhere to go but him. It’s a question of physics, y’see. You have to be up on that stuff to be able to pull a stroke like this.
I didn’t wait much after Conor’d stopped. No point. I’d other things to do. I wiped my prints off the door handle and bolt and withdrew the bolt, so it was almost open but not quite. Part of that method thinking I mentioned.
I didn’t go out and celebrate. This wasn’t about victory. Just clearing up some outstanding business.
All I had to do now was go back to my car, get my laptop out and contact Cornelius.
‘Anne Donavan is awaiting your immediate attention,’ I typed. ‘She’ll make a good model for you.’
PICASSO
It had occurred to me that my position, still tenuous, would fortify were I to withdraw my services in their entirety. Amy and Edna Donavan’s deaths were not attributable to me. Were their niece, Anne, however, discovered bearing my signature that perception would alter. I therefore ignored instructions to proceed to the riding stables post haste. In short, with reference to earlier conjecture, I was now convinced that my visiting Anne Donavan would be the knell of my usefulness, not my arrest, resulting in my experiencing some prearranged fatal mishap, courtesy of my blackmailer, whereupon the police would deduce that I, and I alone, had been responsible for all three deaths chez Donavan, leaving him to benefit unhindered and beyond apprehension. I confess that I could not elucidate upon this hypothesis, except to propound that it was abundantly clear that my welfare would be low on his agenda. Such was my reading.
I ignored the communication, hoping to prolong our association further, until I had taken ameliorative steps to safeguard my personal safety. Alas …
RED DOCK
Well, well, well. So Picasso was double-crossing me again. I dunno, y’give a man two names to blackmail and what appreciation do you get? I mean if a man can’t rely on his own personal killer, who can he rely on? Sure now. Life’s full of little disappointments.
‘“Apropos”, what the fuck’s the crack?’ I typed him.
Nothing. He never answered. The cunt was probably still in
