He’d stumbled across a Tesco on the ring road. He’d been queuing at the checkout, clutching a Leeds A-Z, when the enormity of what he was about to do engulfed him. He quickly paid and rushed to the toilet, his legs almost buckling with nerves.
Outside, the cool air helped revive him. He waited in the car and browsed the A-Z, taking time to familiarise himself with his destination. He took a carrier bag from the glove box, gauging its weight in his hand. He drew back the plastic opening and admired the pistol inside, careful not to touch it with his fingers. The two-inch barrel looked deceptively harmless. It had been originally manufactured in Brazil; standard issue for the Singapore Police Force. The serial number had been filed down. This particular model — the Taurus 85—had an ornate pearl handgrip. He’d paid £600 for it from a man in his local, a transaction that had come with unspoken conditions attached: the weapon was untraceable — there would be no incriminating trail—but Cowan better keep his mouth shut if things went wrong. He swallowed and wrapped it back up.
Soon Cowan was back on the road, Fisk’s address seared indelibly into his mind. He was headed for a tower-block in Gipton called Coldcote Heights. He pushed other thoughts away and tried to concentrate on driving.
Eventually he spotted an ugly, brooding building on the corner of Beech Lane — the Church of the Epiphany — and realised his destination was close by. He parked on the roadside and switched off the ignition, listening to the patter of rain on the roof as it synchronised with the ticks of the cooling engine. The wipers — frozen in the act of clearing the windscreen — helped to divert him as the raindrops obliterated his view.
He removed the carrier bag from the glove box and tucked it into his jacket pocket. Then he paused for a few moments to gather his nerves before climbing out of the car and locking it.
A row of shops slouched to his left, rendered almost identical by the metal grilles obscuring their windows. Two elderly women in headscarves stood chatting outside the off-licence. An Asian man was talking loudly on his mobile phone, glaring through the window of the bookies. Cowan drew up his hood and set off across the grassy incline towards the kids’ playground.
The squat, redbrick council houses surrounding the muddy expanse seemed to stare at him reproachfully. The play area was in a poor state. Cowan stepped between used condoms and rusting syringes. The rungs of the slide’s ladder were blackened with fire. Spray-painted obscenities adorned the side of the toddlers’ climbing frame. Nearby, a heavily-muscled skinhead waited patiently as his Staffordshire Bull Terrier shivered a pale turd onto the grass. Cowan glanced away.
Ahead, his destination loomed like a beacon for the destitute. He hurried up the slope. Coldcote Heights towered broodingly above the roofs of the surrounding houses, seeming to watch over Gipton like a guardian. The cold impassive building almost made him shudder.
A chain-link fence at the top of the grassy square had been breached, its posts skewed by force. Empty cigarette packets and McDonald’s cartons wilted in the rain. The sign on the Bangladeshi community centre had been vandalised, clearly by someone lacking the use of a spell-check. Youths loitered around the industrial bins at the rear.
Soon he had negotiated the warren of faceless tenements and found himself approaching the tower-block. He crossed the quadrangle of concrete, suddenly feeling exposed by the countless windows that watched his progress. A burnt-out car stood in the centre, rusting on four flat tyres. From somewhere nearby came the frantic barking of a dog. He pushed open the door of the building and entered the dark foyer.
The smell of piss was overpowering. To the left, a flight of concrete steps rose out of sight. A CCTV camera was positioned at a weird angle — possibly made ineffective by some wrong-doer. Signs on the walls promised direction but did nothing more than bewilder him. He scanned for the address that Jimenez had supplied, seeing that he needed to trek to the ninth floor.
The steel door of the lift was so scratched it looked as if ancient runes had been etched into its surface. Someone had smeared a foul-smelling substance over the call button. Wrinkling his nose, Cowan glanced down and spotted the neck of a broken beer bottle discarded in the corner. He picked it up and used the lip of the glass to press the button. The noise of the lift’s approach sounded ominous, as if the action had tripped some unseen signal.
Inside the lift, the smell of piss was just as strong. He used the glass shard to press the number 9 on the panel. A furry patch of mould stained the floor and a lower section of the compartment. Cowan stood as far away as possible from it as the lift bounced its ascent. The red LED above the panel flickered aggressively. Presently the door opened and he stepped out onto the ninth floor, taking time to carefully deposit the glass in the corner where he might later retrieve it.
A narrow corridor led into the heart of the building. Cowan wandered down it, glancing at the door numbers to check he was headed in the right direction. The light was meagre. Shadows scuttled in the corners. Windows at evenly spaced intervals looked down into the quadrangle, accentuating his dizzying height. From further down the landing, he heard the sound of someone singing in a foreign language, the staccato rhythm of the words suggesting a football chant. Cowan hurried along until he reached an intersection, heading to the left according to the door numbers.
He could feel his heart pounding as he drew close. The bag in his pocket felt like it was getting heavier. He stopped outside a door and stared at the plastic numbers screwed to the wood, licking his lips to alleviate the dryness. A quick glance both ways up the corridor eased his nerves. He pressed his ear to the door and listened.
Indistinct music was playing inside. Somewhere beyond the sound, a child was crying. Cowan considered the two bullets loaded in the pistol; for the first time worried that he ought to have requested more. The original intention had been for one bullet for Fisk and one for himself. The bloke in the pub had warned that it was difficult to silence this type of weapon; he’d need to make every shot count. He took a deep breath and tried the door handle.
He peered into a deserted hallway. The music was now recognisable — The Style Council — and he slipped inside the flat and closed the door.
From this angle, he had a narrow vantage point into the living room. He could see the crown of someone’s head as they sprawled on the sofa. The weeping child now sounded like it was coming from next door. He crept closer. As he drew near, he could see that the prone figure was indeed Fisk. But not as he’d remembered him.
The man had his eyes closed tight, his face screwed up like a wrinkled cloth. His forehead looked unnaturally pock-marked. Sallow. The skin was pale and gaunt, stretched over the bones like tissue. His thinning hair barely covered the skull. His hands clutched the side of his head, accentuating the tendons in his rail-thin arms. He looked depleted.
Cowan swept a quick glance around, noting the signs of disarray. Empty beer bottles and cans littered the floor. Discarded pizza boxes and the misshapen trays from microwave-ready meals. Boxes were stacked in the corners, filled with brightly coloured objects. Light was pouring through the curtainless window. There was a powerful odour of stale sweat and booze. Relief surged. The pokey flat seemed otherwise empty. Cowan’s fingers curled around the handle of the gun.