A Reason to Kill by Michael Kerr Page B

shootings were not even mentioned. It was old and cold news now, superseded by other fresh atrocities and political intrigue. Today’s main events were the discovery of a teenage girl’s body that had popped up in a reservoir near Croydon. She had been snatched on her way home from school, three months prior to washing up on the shore in her rotting birthday suit. Next up were details of more killing in the Middle East; boring, repetitious crap. Would the west, and in particular the Yanks, give a flying fuck what happened out there if oil was taken out of the equation? No way, Jose.
    After watching the dumb-looking weather girl wave her hands about and give details of the expected high pollen count, he turned the set off. It was obvious that the cop who had survived the shooting could not have seen him. Their investigation was a non-starter.
    “Don’t count on it,” a voice said, startling him with its loudness, even though it came from within his own mind. He dropped the tumbler, heard it shatter, and felt fragments of the glass sting his legs, as they and the chilled milk splashed off the vinyl floor covering.
    “You clumsy, pitiful, disgusting little boy,” the voice rasped. It was his mother speaking. She was dead, but had taken up residence in his head – which was a crowded place – where so many voices were a constant background static. He would take his medication and be rid of her.
    “What do you mean, don’t count on it?” he asked himself.
    “I mean that the police won’t let go of this. You murdered six people, four of them cops. And the one who lived did see you. Remember? He looked straight into your eyes before you shot at him. And the woman from the house next door knows exactly what you look like. They’ll convince her to talk and describe you.”
    “That wouldn’t help them. Outwardly I look average. And I have no criminal record. If the bitch had talked, or the cop had got a good look at me, they would have been showing photofits on the box.”
    “That’s it, Gary. Put your head in the sand like a fucking ostrich, and you won’t see any bad shit coming till it bites you in the arse.”
    “You’re dead, you stupid bitch. I don’t have to listen to this crap.”
    He got up, turned on the tuner of his midi-system, cranked up the volume and sang along to the old Beatles’ number that was playing; “I NEVER NEEDED ANYBODY’S HELP IN ANY WAY,” he shouted, drowning out the voice of John Lennon. The lyrics of the Fab Four’s song were true. He needed no one, or any help. He opened a wall unit cupboard and took out the box containing his clozapine tablets. Popped a couple from their foil blisters, swallowed them and washed them down with water that he drank straight from the tap. That would shut his mother’s and all the other voices up.
    After cleaning up the glass and mopping the floor, he waited for the drug to kick in and mollify him.
    His mother was up front in his thoughts now. One of the best days’ work he had ever done was to push her down the stairs of their terrace house at Streatham. The incident coalesced in his mind. He was back there, a fourteen year old again, standing at his bedroom door, listening to the grunts and moans and heavy breathing.
    His mother finished up with the punter, led him down to the front door and saw him out, before locking up for the night. She trudged back up to the landing, wearing only a flimsy red nightdress and fluffy, pink slippers. He despised her. His father had been one of her countless clients, who she had obviously allowed to ride her bareback, so to speak. To know that he was the result of a quickie for money with a total stranger was not conducive to a healthy, balanced state of mind, or the basis for a normal mother and son relationship.
    “Do it,” an authorative voice in his brain had insisted. “DO IT, NOW!”
    It was as if the act had been sanctioned by a higher power. He ran across the small landing, to meet her as she reached