Six feet away, Trent watched him writhe and begin to bleed to death.
When the man no longer moved, Trent stepped over him and climbed into the back of the ambulance. He cleaned up the self-inflicted wounds on his arms with antiseptic wipes and dressed them with bandages. He undressed himself, towelled himself clean, and got into the ambulance driver’s gear which fitted him well — a green overall and trainers. Over the top of this he put an anorak from which he cut off the epaulettes. He threw his prison gear into the ambulance and then helped himself to the wallets belonging to the dead paramedic and prison guard. This added another forty-five pounds to his stash of cash, four credit cards and a driving licence.
He briefly considered setting fire to the ambulance, but realised all that would achieve would be to draw attention to the fact he would not be very far away. It was a good decision because the ambulance was not discovered until after midnight, giving Trent ample time to do what he had planned.
He strolled boldly towards the retail park, posing as an off-duty paramedic; he knew he would find an ASDA store open until ten. Before entering the store he went to a hole-in-the-wall cash machine on the outer wall where, using the ambulance-driver’s card, he withdrew the maximum allowed that day.
Three hundred pounds richer and armed with a nice, new, non-squeaky trolley, he went shopping.
In the ‘George’ clothing shop within the store he selected a couple of smart new outfits and two pairs of shoes, with underwear, socks and shirts to match. Next he bought a selection of tasty food and drink which could be consumed on the hoof and finally a few toiletries and a large holdall.
Feeling his luck was still in, he pinpointed the busiest check-out with the most harassed-looking till operator and joined — the queue. He presented the ambulance driver’s credit card and looked the young girl directly in the eye. There was no problem. Being under severe pressure, the girl swiped it through and couldn’t even be bothered to give a cursory glance at the signature on the receipt as opposed to the card. It was as well she didn’t. Trent’s was nowhere near that of the man he had murdered.
He sailed through on a high, bearing two hundred pounds’ worth of clothing. He went directly to the toilets and changed into a new outfit, washed, brushed his hair, cleaned his teeth, emerged a new man.
Clean. Unruffled.
Even with the time to buy a newspaper at the kiosk and linger over sausage and chips at the in-store cafe.
Twenty-five minutes later a taxi dropped him off at the railway station where he boarded the next train north.
And here he was, only minutes away from his home town, his old stomping ground, Blackpool. It had gone like a dream.
The old lady had nodded off.
Trent smiled indulgently at her. Bitch.
Next stop along the line was Poulton-le-Fylde, the last one before the end of the line at Blackpool.
Guessing, rightly, that there were likely to be cops waiting at the terminus, he decided not to push his luck too far. He looked slyly around the almost deserted railway carriage — no one was paying any attention to him — and dipped his hand into the old lady’s shopping bag, helping himself to her unguarded purse.
It went straight into his pocket.
He hit the platform running as the train pulled into Poulton-le-Fylde and trotted away, carried by his own momentum.
In a cubicle in the public toilets he examined with glee the contents of a well-stocked purse. Trent blessed the stupid old woman who probably did not have a bank account and kept all her savings underneath her bed. There was almost five hundred pounds stuffed into the purse, plus a large handful of loose change.
He transferred the money into his pockets and wedged the purse behind the toilet block.
A few minutes later he was settled in the snug of a nearby pub, a pint of bitter in one hand, a cumbersome-looking sandwich in the other. He estimated he probably had about half an hour before he needed to move on. When he did he would simply catch a cab into Blackpool, book into one of the thousands of guest-houses, and disappear amongst the great unwashed.
Home and dry.
A dithery Steve Kruger put the plastic cup to his lips and took a sip of the scalding-hot black coffee.
With Tapperman and Myrna, he was out in the sultry street, about a hundred yards away from the Armstrong brothers’ apartment building. The trio were leaning on a semi-permanent burger stall from which they’d bought their drinks.
Myrna looked very ill. Her normally lovely golden-brown skin had developed a tinge of grey and her eyes were tired and sunken.
Tapperman was talking at the same time as inserting a greasy onion-laden cheeseburger into his mouth.
‘ Fuckin’ incredible.’ He shook his head and wiped the dribble of fat from his chin. ‘To do that to somebody. I mean, hell, Texas Chainsaw Massacre eat yer goddam heart out.’ The last of the burger disappeared.
‘ Okay, Mark, we get the picture,’ Kruger cut him short. He breathed out long and hard and tried to manage the memory of what he’d experienced in the last hour.
On recovering from his vomiting fit in the corridor, Kruger had gone on to witness the rest of the carnage in the apartment which had belonged to the Armstrong brothers. After edging past their heads on the coffee table, he was treated to a tour so he could see where the remaining parts of their two bodies had been scattered.
Their limbless torsos had been dumped in the bath; their arms and legs were distributed around the living room, kitchen and two bedrooms. The final, nice touch, was that their private parts had been sliced off and placed side by side on a plate in the icebox.
Kruger didn’t linger. His experienced eyes saw everything they needed to see. He urgently required fresh air. But the atmosphere of the late afternoon in Miami was clammy, making pleasant breathing a difficulty, even on the sidewalk. The air from the apartment stuck in his lungs; he seemed unable to expel it.
‘ They were good boys,’ croaked Myrna, the first words she had spoken for some time. ‘Good boys and good workers. They didn’t deserve to die, not like this.’
Kruger looked at her. Some of the colour was flowing back into her face now that anger was beginning to replace shock.
‘ Yeah, they were,’ Kruger agreed. The Armstrongs had been two of his first employees and had stuck with him through the early days. Both had been tough professionals and superb investigators. Both were good friends to Steve Kruger. He had spent many nights in their company, particularly during the dark days of divorce, and had crashed out several times at their apartment when he’d been too drunk to get home. The apartment, therefore, held fond memories for Kruger. The three of them had hit it a few times with willing ladies.
Kruger’s eyes returned to Tapperman. ‘Any leads?’
The big cop shrugged. ‘I guess you an’ me are thinking pretty much along the same lines.’
‘ Yeah — Bussola. He’s supposed to be a whizz with a chainsaw.’
‘ Only rumours,’ Tapperman cautioned.
‘ No smoke without fire.’ Kruger frowned. ‘Anything from the other tenants? To do that with a chainsaw must have made a hell of a racket.’
‘ So far, no one’s heard a mouse’s fart and no one saw nuthin.’
‘ But a chainsaw in that place! Must’ve been like a lion roaring in a cookie jar.’
‘ Nuthin’ — yet. But these state-of-the-art chainsaws can run almost silent.’
‘ Forensics?’
‘ Again — nuthin’ yet. Crime-scene guys reckon whoever did it was wearing plastic gloves and overalls… which’ll all be destroyed by now.’
‘ It was Bussola,’ Myrna blurted out. ‘He warned us we’d regret it — and now we do.’
‘ Myrna, honey… I know it was Bussola, you know it, and so does Steve here… but provin’ it’s gonna be one helluva godamned difficult thing to do.’
‘ In that case, Mark — “honey” — you’d better get your ass into gear,’ Myrna retorted.