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Pale blue eyes stared out of a long-jawed and heavy-lidded face that had only recently made the transition to manhood. His hair was a mess of bleached blonde over brown. In that split-second I recognised that he was his mother’s son.
He gaped, managed to eject one word. ‘What?’
Instinct told me to kill him. No pointing fingers. No witness. No loose ends. I took a single, silent step forward.
His eyes were wide now, pained, the knuckles on his clenched hands white and shiny. He was probably working out that his mother was either dead or in mortal danger. Suddenly all the dusty years between the boy I was and the man I am now faded away. It was as if the lad had grabbed hold of my sleeve and, against my will, yanked me back to a darker and unholy time. Memories of old grief, misery, rage and helplessness, the seeds for transforming me from an ordinary teenager into a professional killer, swamped me.
‘Who sent you?’ He hissed.
I blinked, confused, the question odd in the context.
‘Are you going to kill me?’ Sweat beaded his top lip. His wild eyes flicked from me to the open door and back again.
My answer should have been yes.
CHAPTER TWO (#u476813bc-3549-5d2f-90c9-e4bc1fec0851)
I fled. Feet punching the stairs, the floor felt on fire, the air around me sucked dry of oxygen. I exited out of the back door the same way that I’d broken in, and tore alongside the fence at the rear, scaling a wall, landing on the other side, feet square. Not too many people about at that time of the morning. Even if there were I’m not sure I’d have paid them attention. The boy had knocked me way off course.
I was more than baffled by my own incompetence. How could I have missed something so fundamental? I did not make mistakes. I was unaccustomed to failure. I did the homework. As the Americans say, I did the math. Except, on this damn job, I hadn’t. Too little time and paid too much money. Greed had made me lazy.
Chill air brought me briefly back to my senses. I needed to get off the streets. I needed cash. Any attempt to access one of my numerous accounts too risky because it would tie me to a location.
I considered my options, which right that moment seemed limited. Truth was, I’d never found myself in this situation before.
It was still dark. Somewhere a dog howled. Shoulders back, I pushed my hands deep into my pockets, affecting a confident stride. No more than five minutes to the underground station, it would allow the wildness to pass and give me time to think. Inexorably, my thoughts returned to the dead woman.
The target, Dr Mary Wilding, a scientist based at Imperial College, London, had crossed up a crime lord. Not so bizarre as it sounds. Fake pharmaceuticals are hot big business, product piracy a prospering market. Without scientists there would be no drugs trade. Rumour had it that Wilding had been paid an exceptional amount of loot and reneged on a deal. My employer clearly wanted what he’d paid for. As for the hard drive, I had no idea what was on it. Not my business. But it was my business to know that Wilding had a son who lived in the house with her. I’d truly screwed up on that score and, if word got out, not only would I be finished, I’d be a dead man. The realisation that I’d committed professional suicide punched me hard in the gut. Whatever could be said about my existence, it beat to its own sick and twisted rhythm. I was used to living out of a suitcase, on the run, stakes high, as if each day were my last. What I’d do if I didn’t do this I had no idea.
What now?
I strode into the underground at Ealing Broadway. It was two minutes past five in the morning. Conscious of close circuit television cameras, I pulled down my cap to conceal my face, and calmed myself that for CCTV to be effective the cameras need to be positioned at the right angle, most CCTV is recorded over every four days so there is a one in four chance the film will be wiped before it is taken out and studied and, even if an image is captured, it still needs to be identified. A lot of film is grainy, of poor quality and indecipherable. Staring at reels of film hour upon hour will send even the most conscientious viewer into snooze-time. I wasn’t really consoled. I’m usually the hunter not the hunted.
Boarding a district line train, I hunkered down in the compartment and glanced around me. My only companions at that hour were solitary, desolate figures wrapped up against the cold and dark, heads down, the kind of people who were scraping by and clinging on by their fingernails, who bust their balls for nothing and knew it was all for nothing.
Like a disorientated homing pigeon, I stumbled out after a couple of stops. Under normal circumstances I’d be covering my tracks and making the all-important call to Wes. I did neither. The boy had seen to that. That I’d let him live when I could so easily have killed him meant that I was unmasked, no longer invisible, that I could no longer hide, not even from myself. From now on it would be like walking down the street stark bollock-naked.
Keen to go to ground, I turned a corner, my eye automatically clocking a café and dossers’ establishment, all white and red plastic furnishings. A wall of heat engulfed me as if I’d walked into a bank in Saudi with the air-conditioning bust. Rammed with men who’d slept rough the night before, their clothes stained, gnarled hands clutching mugs of tea, grease and sweat hung tenaciously in the air. Among the vagabond throng a number of unfortunate Eastern Europeans with beaten expressions. I didn’t exactly fit in, but it was the best place to go to avoid the attention I had no wish to attract.
I ordered tea, builder’s brew, the type you can stand a spade in. When I spoke my voice, so rarely used, felt strangely detached from the rest of me. Low in pitch and without obvious accent, it certainly contained no trace of my middle-class Gloucestershire roots.
‘You, alright, mate?’
I turned towards the man serving, the one who asked the question. He had a fleshy face ripe with folds and creases. All I wanted was a mug of tea. I did not welcome chat. I did not want be his mate. I nodded slowly once. His tongue flicked out, touched the side of his mouth, nervous. As he poured the beverage from an urn the size of a household boiler, I glanced at my reflection in the mirrored glass behind the counter expecting a drastic change in my appearance, some giveaway expression in the eyes betraying the disarray in my head, but I looked the same: cropped dark hair, blue eyes, wide nose that had once been broken in a game of rugby and reset, high Slavic cheekbones care of some genetic kink down my father’s line.
Counting out the exact change, I paid and took the mug to a corner table with a good visual on the door. Wes would be wondering why I hadn’t called. That got me thinking. Wes had insisted that Wilding was unmarried and childless. Had Wes been aware of this crucial piece of information but for darker reasons withheld it from me? Did he presume that any inconveniences would be ruthlessly taken care of? Knowing Wes, he would describe it as ‘collateral damage.’ This did not alter the simple fact that he had a fucking duty to tell me.
Uninvited, my thoughts cascaded, washing me up next to the wretched boy. No doubt about it, he’d supply a description to the police and thereby identify me. My face grew cold at the thought of a squad of armed coppers lifting me off the street, if I were lucky marching me to a station and Wilding’s son picking me out from a line-up. By sparing his life, I’d left myself wide open. I ought to go back, finish what I’d started, except…
Wired, I gulped the tea, scalding the roof of my mouth. By now the lad would have discovered his mother’s body. The thought genuinely appalled me, which came as a surprise. Not because Wilding was female – women can be twice as cruel and vicious and calculating as men – but because I wasn’t accustomed to this level of introspection concerning the relatives of the targets I’d removed. It was as if some unseen force had taken me over and brainwashed my mind. Truth is, over the years, I’d ripped men from life. Some had been rogues and murderers, some cruel and psychopathic. Some were good men who turned into bad men. Mostly motivated by greed and pride, always vanity, many strayed too far on the wrong side of the tracks and paid the ultimate price. Dr Mary Wilding was one of them. But the boy…
He was like a fly buzzing around my head. I couldn’t help but picture his anguish and pain and his devastation at losing his mother. No doubt about it, his life would be changed forever. If he became vengeful one day he’d come after me.
The door swung open and closed. My eyes flicked to the woman who’d entered. Middle-aged, stout, tired around the eyes, something in her manner reminded me of the woman I was sent to kill. Had I not skimped on the job, I’d be able to run through the strap lines of Mary Wilding’s life in my head: what she spent her money on, her medical and family history, her career path, her…
The mobile phone I used for the job vibrated. I snatched at it. It was Wes. Coldly furious, I pictured the pretty-boy American with his dark hair, and soft brown down-turned eyes inferring sensitivity that he didn’t possess but rendered women helpless. Part of me was looking forward to breaking the news that I’d aborted the job. It would be Wes’s stupid fault for screwing with me. The other part was not so keen.
‘You didn’t call,’ he said.
I said nothing.
‘What the fuck is going on?’
Good question. I didn’t answer. You learn more from staying quiet and letting others do the talking. Frankly, I was too livid to speak.
‘You all right?’ he began, clearly mystified.
No, I was not all right. ‘There’s been a problem.’
‘What sort of problem?’
‘She was already dead.’
‘Shit, you sure?’ I pulled a face at Wes’s loss of volume control. ‘What about the merchandise?’ he ranted.
Wes had an annoying tendency to imitate lines from the latest action adventure film or crime show. This was not an episode of The Wire. ‘The safe was empty.’
‘Fucking holy hell.’
I dislike excitable reactions, but often they lead to the kind of loose mouth talk that yields vital information. I wasn’t to be disappointed.
He lowered his voice in a way that I imagined he might if he were phoning Dial-A-Wank. ‘What about the boy?’
I felt a pulse in my jaw tick, Wes’s lapse in intelligence unforgivable. ‘What boy?’
‘The fucking son, you moron.’
I let the insult pass. I’d been called worse. I kept my voice low and controlled to conceal my rage. ‘You never mentioned a son,’ I growled. ‘The deal was for one target only. If there had been two the price would have been considerably more. Your lack of attention to detail could have compromised me. It could cost me my life.’ I didn’t admit that I, too, had screwed up, that I’d made monumental mistakes.
Faced with the irrefutable logic of my argument, he backed off. I also think he was afraid of me, which was good. ‘Look, I knew about the kid, right?’
‘You fucking lied to me.’
‘I’m sorry, man, but I was ordered not to tell you,’ he whined.
‘Who by?’
‘The guy who’s paying.’
What sort of half-brained lunatic was this man? I said something to that effect.
‘I know,’ Wes said, trying to appease me. ‘So there was no boy?’ he pressed.
One good lie deserves another. ‘No.’
‘Holy Christ, that’s going to be a problem’. Yours, not mine, I thought. ‘The boy is a loose end. He has to be removed.’
This was the equivalent of pouring a can of petrol over my very personal fire. ‘Fuck you. I’m out.’
Wes let rip with what could be best described as a full-on curse. I maintained a contrived and dignified silence so that he could calm down, which he did. ‘Can’t, man. You have no idea who you’re dealing with.’
‘Who am I dealing with exactly?’
‘One nasty son-of-a-bitch.’
My laugh was cold. They were all nasty sons-of-bitches. Came with the territory.
‘And there’s the small matter of the merchandise,’ Wes said.
‘Which is missing,’ I reminded him.
‘Says who?’
I neither cared for the tone nor the inference. ‘Says I. Don’t get smart, Wes. I can track you down any time I like.’ And kill you, I inferred. Wes got the drift.
‘Hey, I’m not taking a pop at you, I’m only saying how the employer is gonna see it, bud. He’s one suspicious dude.’
Most of them were paranoid fuckers. ‘So who do you think beat me to it, apart from me, that is?’ I added acerbically.
‘Search me. You really sure it’s missing?’ The whine had returned.
‘Certain,’ I said, clipped.
Wes let out a big sigh. ‘You gotta find it.’
I swelled with anger. ‘I’m not a private detective.’
‘Yeah, I know, but please, you’ve gotta help me out here. I…’
‘What was on the hard drive?’ I now realised that the hard drive was more than straight business. The hard drive held the key.
‘I don’t know.’
Wes was the kind of guy who says no and does yes and vice-versa. I didn’t believe him. ‘If you want me to find it I need to know.’ I had no intention of doing Wes or anyone else a favour. I was done with them. I was only concerned with me.
Silence descended like a safety curtain at a theatre. I imagined Wes feverishly trying to worm his way out of the mess he was in. Finally, he spoke.
‘Data.’
‘What kind of data?’
‘Chemical, drugs, just stuff,’ he said unconvincingly, ‘Look, I’ll see what I can do, talk to the employer, or something. So you’re in?’
‘It will cost. Stay tuned.’ And I hung up.
First rule of the game: don’t botch the job. Second rule: don’t get caught. I’d broken the first and had no intention of breaking the second, but for what I hoped would be the only time in my life I was going to break the third. Insane, maybe, but I had no choice.
Finishing my tea, I stepped outside. Sun trickled through the cloud. My breath made smoke-rings in the cold morning air. Nice day for a walk. Me, I had other ideas: I was going back.
CHAPTER THREE (#u476813bc-3549-5d2f-90c9-e4bc1fec0851)
Less than four hours after I’d fled, I was holed up on the upper storey of a small boutique hotel, and on the opposite side of the road with a clear view of Dr Wilding’s home, a modest but attractive 1930’s red brick semi-detached property with a casement window in the front and triple-glazed French windows at the rear. Cutting corners on the job did not mean I’d failed to carry out basic groundwork. Days before, I’d already ascertained that her next-door neighbours were away on holiday and the attached property the subject of a repossession order, the occupants long gone following the collapse of their electrical business.
I’d expected the area to be cordoned off. I’d anticipated rafts of police officers. The view before me was a picture of the mundane, ordinary and commonplace. It spooked me.
As I saw it there were a couple of explanations for the lack of activity. Perhaps the killer had returned, or maybe Wes and his employer had interpreted my response as too negative, swung into action and appointed another assassin to finish off the boy. Doubtful, I thought. Too knee-jerk, too dangerous. Involving more people than you need always fraught with risk. And pointless – the boy’s death would not reveal the whereabouts of the hard drive. The gnawing desire to know what was on it made my skin itch, and it occurred to me then that Wilding’s murderer had come within a split-second of crossing my path, an awesome thought. If we’d both showed up for the same job at the same time we’d probably have ended up killing each other.
So who was he and who had employed him? If I could trace the guy I’d find his employer and then I could get my hands on the information. Best man to approach for that type of low-down would be Billy Franke. I let out a liquid breath. Easy to say, less easy to do: asking questions would draw attention to my failure, and Billy, one my main employers, didn’t like mistakes. I was still chewing this over when almost twenty minutes later the cops arrived. To tell the truth, I was almost relieved.
There were two police patrol units, an unmarked Mondeo with four plain-clothes guys inside, and a police Range Rover. I watched as the occupants piled out and into the house. Within ten minutes or so, a plod appeared doing what plods do: spooling crime scene tape around the front of the building. My stomach clenched. How many bodies?
I leant back then straight back up as a black Land Rover with tinted windows hove into view. It prowled down the street, paused outside the crime scene area for enough time to be significant, and drove on. The number plate bore the prefix 248D, assigned to all Russian diplomatic vehicles. While I swallowed this indigestible piece of information, another less assuming Toyota Land Cruiser with two men inside pulled up on double yellow lines and parked twenty-five metres from the property. Both occupants watched silently, unashamedly, as though they did this every day of the week, as if they operated by a different set of laws to the ordinary citizen. Next, racing down the road, a navy-blue Lexus, one male driver, and one female passenger. I could almost smell the rubber from the tyres as the vehicle cut and swerved into a tight space and parked between two patrol cars. The driver shot out a split-second before the woman. He glanced up the road, jerking his head in the direction of the stationary Land Cruiser.
‘What the hell is Mossad doing here?’ he said to her.
‘Doing what they do best: watching.’
At this, I froze. I have no particularly fluency in languages bar the bare rub-along stuff that buys me a beer and gets me out of tricky situations, but I can lip-read. I’ve no idea how I do this. Put it down to a predominantly solitary and lonely childhood. Lip-reading aside, I guessed that the woman and her sidekick were British Intelligence. To see so many security services congregated in one place made me more than uneasy. I felt as if I had chipped ice in my blood. Had Wilding been involved in some kind of industrial espionage? Selling trade secrets, maybe? Didn’t really compute with what I’d been led to believe.
But then what I’d been told was a pack of lies.
Painfully I tried to force connections, but my mind was swamped with the boy, the dead woman, the damned Israelis whose attendance closely reminded me of someone who taught me everything I knew. Cold sweat nestled in the small of my back. Feelings, alien emotions, played no part in my life. They were a luxury I could not afford.
Think, for Chrissakes. Think clearly.
I’d learnt a long time ago that Mossad had a habit of showing up either at or in the aftermath of all major events. Most recently and to name a few: the death of Princess Diana, the murder of Robert Maxwell, the suicide or murder, depending on your point of view, of Dr David Kelly. Their presence here confirmed that there was more to Wilding than I’d taken the time and trouble to find out. Now I saw why the hit on the scientist had been a rush job: Wilding was a big fish.
I turned my attention back to the woman. Tall, around five eight, full-figured without being overweight, probably a dress size twelve. She had a pale complexion, with a shock of short copper-coloured hair, side parting so that a lock fell over the right side of her face, which was a perfect oval. The lips matched the full figure, voluptuous with a nipped in waist, and she had a neat nose, neat everything. I couldn’t yet tell the colour of her eyes but I guessed they were green. She moved with feline stealth, fluid, impressive for a woman of her build and stature. From the way she threw her head back at the Israelis and blew them a kiss, the way she strode ahead of her male colleague, the way he deferred, this was her gig.
I followed her path to the door, half-mesmerised, then she took me by surprise. She turned, looked up, eyes scanning. I chilled. It was as if she were looking not straight at me but into me. I stared back, aroused. Then she turned and was gone.
An hour and a half passed. Forensics came. A white van appeared. Two men got out and disappeared inside, re-emerging twenty minutes later with computer boxes. Two trips later they were packed and gone. The patrol cars left. An ambulance showed. The Israelis stayed, mute, unyielding. The driver smoked incessantly. I never saw the Russians again. Then my mobile vibrated for a second time in as many hours.
‘Yes, Wes.’
‘Where are you?’
‘Out and about.’
