It happened at a place where three roads meet. Junction 1A of the M25, heading east towards Gravesend.
There’s a killer on the road.
Just after dawn on a bright June Sunday morning, Lee Royle was driving his dark blue Land Rover Discovery home from a long night in Essex. He’d crossed the water at Dartford, idly dreaming of his ancient homeland. Kent, he mused as he changed down to ease into the slip road.
Then a red Mazda MX-5 roadster cut him up across the right-hand side, making his foot flinch sharply on the brake pedal. Lee raged and blared his horn. He flashed his headlamps full beam and gave chase, gaining on the impudent little sports car as they approached a roundabout at the foot of the slope.
As he overtook the MX-5, Lee glanced over to judge his tormentor. Just a kid. A boy racer. A baby driver. Royle caught the youth’s eye and gazed a gorgon glare. But the kid just smiled back and gave him the finger. Fucker, Royle thought, and swerved around to block him off broadsides. The kid braked hard, his grin gritting as his head jerked back against the headrest.
For a moment all was quiet but for the low drone of the motorway above and a light descant of birdsong from the embankment. Royle wondered if the dazed look on the kid’s features was enough. He could drive off now, before the little bastard could recover his senses. But some impulse made him linger. That face. Something familiar about it.
And he knew then that he needed more. To humiliate him properly, give the boy a slap if need be. Let baby driver know who was daddy. Just to make sure he reached down beneath the driver’s seat and pulled out the small sheath knife he kept there. He slipped it into the pocket of his zip-up jacket, opened the door and climbed out onto the road.
The kid was already out of his car and walking towards him. Again Lee wondered if he knew him from somewhere. As he thought of all his enemies, Royle was glad he’d brought the blade with him. He stroked its outline gently through the cloth of his jacket as he turned to face his opponent.
‘Get that fucking thing out of my way!’ the kid called to him.
‘What’s your hurry, son?’
‘Just move it!’
They closed in, circling each other in a lethal courtly dance. Shaping up for combat.
‘You want to watch yourself, sonny.’
He said the words softly, and for a curious moment felt a caring tone in his heart. This was just a hot-headed young man, after all. Out of his depth.
‘You don’t know who I am,’ Lee warned him with a grim smile.
‘Just fuck off out of my way,’ the kid spat out the words. ‘Old man.’
Royle was in his late fifties but had kept himself in shape. His loose-limbed frame tensed at this taunt, his forearms raised slowly, instinctively. He stepped forward.
‘Someone ought to teach you some manners,’ he said.
The kid bared his young chest and opened his arms in a beckoning gesture.
‘Yeah?’ he offered. ‘Come on then.’
Royle’s punch was intended to connect with the kid’s chin and floor him in one. But he wasn’t fast enough, age had softened him. The younger man saw it coming, ducked and parried with his left, then came back under his guard to deliver a sharp hook to the stomach. Royle doubled-up, winded, choking, desperately trying to find his footing. Then another fist smashed into his face, and he dropped down onto the tarmac.
He managed to roll away before the kid could give him a kicking and scrambled to his feet. Squatting low, Royle tasted blood and fumbled for the knife in his pocket. As the kid loomed over him, ready to strike once more, he showed him the blade.
‘Want some of this?’ he hissed, still out of breath.
Royle always relished that look of fear on an opponent’s face. He’d never spent too much time dealing with the brutal end of things. He’d survived by knowing the odds. When you might make a killing, when you might just have to walk away. And he’d prided himself of being utterly ruthless at business. Happy to let the others play at being the heavy. To cross the pavement, to do a bank or a security firm, while he’d be the one that managed the proceeds. Let the suckers take the risks and do the time, his eye was always on the profit. This was the key to his success with the Tunbridge Wells Cash Depot Robbery.
But there was business and there was personal. And when the odds were right, he was never averse to taking somebody down. Especially if that somebody had tried to have him over.
And now this cocky little fucker was backing away, trying to hide the terror in his stupid face. Now was the moment. The moment that mattered.
Because he had proved he could do it, after all. He’d never been sure, until that night, nearly twenty years ago. Never been sure if he was a killer or not until that night he found a man in his garden. The undercover cop spying on his house.
He’d been upstairs making love to his wife, Jo. It had been so powerfully primal that night. When he came, his whole being seemed to implode into darkness. Then, as he held her trembling body and caught his breath, he had heard the noise outside.
He’d let the dog out and taken a knife from the kitchen. He hadn’t meant to kill the man. It was instinctive. He’d told the arresting officer: You ask Ray Spinks, he’ll tell you I’m not a cold-blooded killer. But when the blood was up he’d proved he could do it. And now, looking at the kid, he knew he could do it again.
He pointed the blade at the boy in a deliberate gesture of intent. But he was distracted by the look on the face of the young man in front of him.
‘Please,’ the kid implored, his hands up, his eyes darting about, looking for a way out.
That look of fear usually made Royle feel bold. Powerful. But something else happened. He hesitated. Something about the young man’s expression made him think of Jo, the argument that they had had the night before, and the dreadful thing he had made them do all those years ago.
An awful, paralysing sense of compassion took hold of him, and he felt his grip loosen on the knife. He lowered the blade; this might have been the most humane thing he had ever done in his life. It was almost an act of love.
And this moment of weakness was all the kid needed. He kicked the weapon out of Royle’s hand and knocked him to the ground once more. Picking up the knife he stood above the older man.
Lee looked up in horror as he suddenly realised what he recognised in his assailant. What he had feared all along. No, he thought, it’s not possible.
The young man looked wild about the eyes, drugged-up or in a trance of some kind. And Lee’s mind struggled with the awful truth. Of all the people that might want him dead: Ray Spinks, Chris Ipsworth, even his own wife –this was the one person in the world who had the right to truly hate him.
‘Wait,’ he begged.
But the knife came down again and again.
As the warmth of life bled out of him Lee Royle thought of Jo once more. This was her revenge, perhaps, but what a curious way of taking it. With what he had always feared: the killer inside. His blood rival.
The assailant walked back to his car. He looked around briefly, no traffic around or CCTV covering this sliproad. This abrupt and impulsive act would be hidden from sight, even from himself. He could forget it now, pretend it never happened.
But as he drove away he did not see the figure standing high up on the motorway embankment. The solitary witness who had watched it all happen.
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