The Payback by Simon Kernick Read Free Book Online

put a hand over his mouth while simultaneously twisting his balls with such pent-up ferocity that I’d caused a rupture in one of them. He’d spent three days in hospital as a result, and although my colleague claimed to have heard and seen nothing, my story that he’d slipped while getting into the car was never going to hold up, especially as according to thedoctor who treated him his injuries were entirely consistent with the type of assault he was accusing me of.
    I would almost certainly have lost my job, and might even have ended up in the dock, if it hadn’t been for a man called Raymond Keen – who, after Bertie Schagel, was possibly the least likely knight in shining armour you were ever going to meet.
    I’d met Raymond at a charity function some months earlier. He was a colourful, well-known and, frankly, crooked local businessman who ran a highly successful funeral parlour, but who was suspected of having his finger in a fair few less savoury pies. However, I’d found him good company, and we’d been out for a drink on a couple of occasions, even though (or perhaps because) I knew that associating with a man like him would be frowned upon. One night I told him about the complaint that had been made against me. He listened, asked me where the complainant was being held in custody, then said that he’d get it fixed.
    At that time, I didn’t know the kinds of crimes that Raymond Keen was capable of, or how far his reach extended, and assumed that he was just giving me an empty promise. But a few days later, the complaint was dropped. Just like that. No reason was ever given. The cloud of suspicion remained above me, but at least I was back in the job.
    And that was how Raymond and I had entered into business together. After that, it was difficult to turn down his requests for favours. Most of the time he wanted information, either for his own use or on behalf of other criminals: a warning about an impending drug bust; tips on how to find someone in the witness protection scheme. Small things, but as the years went by, they steadily grew bigger and more serious, like a slow-moving but ultimately fatal cancer, until finally one day he asked me to break the ultimate taboo and kill someone for him.
    The someone in question was a particularly unpleasant businessman called Vincent Stanhope, one of whose sidelines was child pornography. Stanhope apparently owed Raymond a large sum of money, which he was refusing to pay, and Raymond had decided that to protect his underworld reputation, Stanhope was going to have to die. He was offering me ten grand cash to carry out the job.
    I came very close to saying no, and I often wonder how things would have turned out if I had. I’m being honest when I say I truly never wanted to become a murderer. What made me say yes was a case we were dealing with at the time. It’s one that haunts me still, mainly because of the complete lack of any proper motive.
    Tim Atkins was a perfectly ordinary, law-abiding, thirty-three-year-old local government worker. One day, he and his wife were walking along Regent’s Canal with their two young children when they came upon three young men smoking cannabis and blocking the path. Mr Atkins asked them politely to move so he could manoeuvre the youngest’s pushchair through. In answer, the biggest of the three, a complete waster, well known to us, by the name of Kyle Morris, had punched him in the face with such force that Mr Atkins had fallen straight back and struck his head on the concrete, suffering catastrophic brain injuries in the process. He never regained consciousness and died in hospital several hours later. His children, both of whom witnessed the killing of their father, were two girls aged five and twenty months.
    Morris hadn’t given a shit. When we’d brought him in less than twenty-four hours later and told him what had happened, he’d shrugged, said that it was nothing to do with him, and had then answered ‘no comment’