Free Business of Dying by Simon Kernick

them was. The civilian. When you know what his involvement was, I think you'll have the motive, and with something like this, once you've got the motive, you're two thirds of the way there.'
    'It's proving it, though, isn't it? This was obviously well planned so you'd assume whoever was behind it has covered their tracks pretty well. You might find out who they are, but it's building a case against them that matters.'
    Malik nodded. 'You've got to get someone to talk, that's always the key. Something like this, there's got to be a fair few people involved, and one or two of them are bound to get cold feet.'
    I thought of Danny. Would he break? I doubted it. He'd known what we were going to do and had been happy enough to get involved. But Malik was right. There were a fair few people involved, some of whom I didn't know from Adam. Any one of them could end up talking, although it was a bit late to worry about that now. I was glad that, through Malik, I at least had a means of finding out how well the investigation was going.
    'One way or another, it's going to be a difficult one to crack,' I added. 'Time-consuming.'
    'Perhaps. But definitely interesting. I'd love to talk to the man who did it. You know, the one who actually pulled the trigger.'
    'Why? What'll he tell you? I expect he did it for money; something nice and mundane like that.'
    Malik smiled. 'I'm sure he did - it's almost certainly a professional hit - but it takes a special kind of man to shoot dead three people without a second's thought. Just like that.' He clicked his fingers to signify his point. 'People he's almost certainly never met before. People who've never done him any harm.'
    'You'd probably find that whoever did it was pretty normal underneath it all.'
    'Normal people don't murder each other.'
    This time it was my turn to smile. 'Normal people murder each other all the time.'
    'I don't agree with that. Most murderers might look normal, but there's always something rotten inside that makes them do what they do.'
    'I don't know. It's not always as cut and dried as that.'
    Malik stared at me intensely. 'It is always that cut and dried. Murder's murder, and the people who commit it are bad people. There's no two ways about it. It's a black-and-white issue. Some murders aren't quite as horrific as others, but none of them are justifiable. Under any circumstances. They're just different shades of black.'
    I could tell he felt passionately about what he was saying and thought it best not to say too much more on the matter. You never know when such conversations can be regurgitated and used against you somewhere down the line. So I conceded the point and the conversation drifted on through the awkward avenues of small talk before inevitably coming back to the case. After all, what else was there to talk about?
    We both concluded that Welland was right about momentum. If we didn't turn up clues in the next few days, and it really did turn out to be someone unknown to the victim - which I have to say is what everything seemed to point to - then thebottom would fall out of this case very quickly and we'd be left with nothing. Either waiting for our mystery perpetrator to strike again (a worrying enough scenario in itself) or losing him for ever amid the vast ranks of the unsolveds, which somehow I felt would be even worse.
    Malik stayed for two drinks to give him the opportunity to buy me a brew back, then it was time for him to return to the family seat in Highgate where his pretty wife and two young children awaited him. He offered to share a taxi with me but I decided to stay put for a while. I was hungry, but I fancied one more drink before I headed back to the flat. I'd got the taste of beer now.
    One of the regulars, an old guy with a raspy voice whom I knew vaguely, came and joined me and we chatted about this and that for a while. Normal shit: football results, the price of beer, what a fuck-up the government was making of everything. Sometimes it's