Cat & Mouse

by Jason Vanez

  If he was after them at all. Maybe it had been an idle threat made by the man while Jimmy was sitting by the pool with a gym weight around his ankle. A statement meant to panic Jimmy. Because he hadn't seen anyone pointing a sniper rifle at them, had he? He had burst in and yanked them away without seeing any kind of threat. Maybe his family had never been in danger and the guy was long gone.

  "So what do we do now?" Maria said, snapping him out of his thoughts. "We drive all the way to my parents' house? What do we tell them? I don't like that idea. Not if you really think some guy is after you and willing to track you wherever you are."

  She was right. Whoever this guy was, he was a contract killer just like Jimmy. And Jimmy knew first-hand what kind of research went into a hit. He had spent three days delving into the life of Alfo The Destroyer, just for five thousand pounds. He had known the guy's habits, his local haunts, where his mum shopped and played bingo. And Jimmy was not big league. If this guy was, and Jimmy thought a weapon like a sniper rifle was pretty good proof of it, then who knew what resources he had. Jimmy tried not to imagine a map full of pins, showing everywhere Jimmy liked to eat, drink, shit. Every playground Louise had visited in the last month. Every friend that Maria went to visit for lunch. The Marsh life, mapped out.

  "Hey. Snap out of it. What the hell do we do now, Jimmy?"

  He looked around at the large service station at the far end of the car park. Beside it was a taller structure, the hotel. Service stations were like little towns. You could live and eat here. And no matter how long you stayed, you were always a stranger because the clientele changed hourly as people entered and exited on their journeys elsewhere. It was perfect. Here they would not stand out, not become known. At least for a few days, they could stay here and think about what to do. Everyone was anonymous here. There could be war criminals, paedophiles, and hitmen on the run with their families, and no one would know.

  ***

  Sometimes Einar had had to call an employer and admit that he needed more time, but never before had he had to admit that he had failed. It was all because of the one-hour deadline he had set. He was embarrassed, but this was a call he had had to make. Admitting failure sat easier in the mind than lying about a target's death. Imagine if the truth got out? It would throw doubt upon every kill he had ever made. It would probably guarantee his own placement upon someone else's target list. Contract killers the world over would converge upon him like vultures upon a carcass.

  "But you sent me a photo," the voice on the phone said. "I saw James Marsh in a pool, weighted down."

  "Somehow he got out," Einar said. He was driving aimlessly until he had gotten this phone call out of the way and had decided on a new course of action. "But I keep to my promise to complete the job for free. My own fault. The Chopper was a straight takedown, but with James Marsh I decided to have some fun. I suppose it was like when the villains leave James Bond in some kind of predicament that leaves the capability for escape."

  Silence. Einar had hoped for a laugh at his joke. He wasn't taking this as seriously as the man on the phone because he knew it was just a setback. He wasn't claiming Marsh was free and clear - just that Einar had been foiled in his first attempt to off the man.

  "Your services are not needed any longer, Einar. I will use my own men. If this man has now fled London, like you say, then he will leave a record of wherever he goes. I will have him found. But you may still keep the money that was left for you, for your time. Thank you for your time."

  He hung up and Einar stared at the phone with shock. Thank you for your time? As if he had done no more than completed a market research survey. He drove for a few more minutes and got slowly more concerned. He could not let this lie as it was. Even now the man on the phone might be calling someone else, arranging another killer. If he had a middleman, that man would need to know why another killer was needed. Oh, because Einar failed. Failed? Einar? That's not like him. Oh well, I'll make a note of it.

  Word would spread. Important people would hear about it. His name would be blackened. He would slip down the rankings. Money that ran like a river would start to trickle like a stream. And all because Einar had underestimated a supermarket assistant manager.

  Angry, he called the number. The connection was made but no voice spoke.

  "You were doubtful that I could find these men within an hour. But I did. I will find James Marsh again, long before your own men do. I have a reputation to uphold, and I do not take kindly to being told I failed. You will refrain from assuming I failed and spreading such a claim. And I will send you a photograph of James Marsh's head without his body."

  He hung up and called another number. The employer wasn't the only man with resources. Einar hadn't hunted hidden men across the world purely by utilising LinkedIn and a phone book.

  ***

  They bought new clothing and a pair of pay-as-you-go mobile phones and then went for a look around. Louise was quickly convinced that they were on holiday. There was an adventure playground in the back yard of the hotel, but the gate was locked after six. She spent a few moments in tears about this, but was soon calmed by an assurance that she could play there tomorrow. The family ate at a Pizza Hut inside the Services and then Louise was let loose to play in a ball pit inside Macdonald's. Two hours flew by. Jimmy bought a bunch of snacks from a shop while Maria bought a book. They hardly spoke, except when they got moments out of earshot of their daughter. Maria asked over and over why Jimmy was being chased by someone who wanted to harm him, and he was sure she didn't believe his assertions that he had no idea. They went to the hotel and rented one of the fifteen out of sixteen empty rooms. The receptionist, a sweet young lady who was running the entire hotel alone for this evening since the chef had left at seven, got them a travel cot from another room. After Louise was put down for the night, they watched TV for a while, and then Maria said she wanted a drink, and ordered Jimmy to go fetch her a bottle of wine from the bar downstairs.

  "Maybe it's not wise to drink, in case we..." He stopped, but the damage was done.

  "In case we have to run again? That makes me want a drink even more, Jimmy. I was at home, comfortable, and now I'm stuck in a crappy hotel in the middle of the motorway, and my husband thinks someone wants to hurt him. So, I think that deserves a drink."

  He didn't argue after that. It was past eleven and they were settling in for the night, so maybe he could have a glass of wine or eight himself. He went downstairs. The receptionist was playing with her phone and looked up when he approached. He was wearing jeans and a cardigan now and had showered. The receptionist smiled at him in a way he would have loved twenty years ago. She looked no more than nineteen.

  "I need a bottle of wine from your bar, if I can."

  She shook her head. "We can't sell them. And I don't have the key for the bar. I'm not trained and they don't trust me."

  "So they let the customers go without a drink all night? Great customer service."

  She shrugged. "That's because the manager is a..." she looked around, as if the manager might be lurking "...bitch. And the Services don't sell alcohol."

  He raised his eyebrows, surprised.

  "But if you get me a packet of fags from the paper shop inside, maybe I could find the key for the store room. They have wine in there that we sometimes let guests buy."

  "Christ, customers can't buy cigarettes here, either? Your boss allergic to money?"

  She giggled. The deal sounded good, so he held out his hand for some money.

  "I'm risking my job here, sweetie," the girl said. And it was all she said. He got the message. He saluted and left the hotel.

  ***

  Einar was enjoying an evening latte in a former public toilet now coffee bar in Oxford Circus, London's West End, when the call came through. His man had earned his fee. A debit card belonging to Maria Alannah Marsh had just been used in a WHSmith at Toddington Services in Bedfordshire. Einar was a frequent visitor to Britain, but he had infrequently ventured outs
ide the capital. So he had no idea where Bedfordshire was, but feared it was far away. It wasn't, according to a map app on his phone. Forty miles or so. He left the cafe and rushed to his car. A long trip had been his fear, because he knew he was competing against a former employer who might have fingers all over Britain, and nearby teams who could reach the location long before he got there. But forty miles was nothing, and it was one motorway. It was just closing on ten p.m. He got to the Services close to eleven.

  Earlier, Einar had visited an associate to stock up on things he thought he might need. In his inner jacket pocket was a Bersa Thunder .380 pistol. There were so many fine small pistols on the market that it was hard sometimes to pick one. He liked the green rubber handgrips on this one, and that name. Thunder! In another pocket was a Batangas butterfly knife, named after the Philippine region where it was made. This item he liked also for two reasons: a fine picture of a deadly spider when the two handles were closed together over the blade - and the fact that the website he purchased it from called it a "deadly weapon" right on the homepage. He had a bag of other items in the boot, but those were fail-safes, in case things went awry.

  He parked as far away from the Services building as possible, in a far corner of the car park. He had made good time and could afford to slow down now. The carpark was busy even at this late hour, which was good because he wouldn't stand out.

  The card belonging to Maria had been used at WHSmith's, and there were plenty of better places to buy food, including those that made sandwiches to take away. So he figured she had bought a book or magazine, and if she had, that meant they were here for the night. And who would spend the night in a car when they had a child and there was a hotel nearby? So he looked across the car park, eyes settling on the hotel. It was two storeys. Many of the windows he could see were black, only a few lit. For sure the family would be in one of those.

  A green Nissan Qashqai drove by him and parked three spots down. Far from the shops, just like the spot Einar had chosen. That perked him up. He watched out of the window as the doors opened and three men got out. All wearing jeans and jackets. Big men around Einar's age. They didn't stretch their limbs the way he expected of people who had been travelling a long time cramped in a car. And although the Nissan was a big 4x4, these guys would be cramped in anything other than an ocean liner. So their journey had been short. Maybe as short as his own.

  They congregated by the boot. One opened it. They crowded each other and Einar saw items from the boot being passed between them, although he couldn't see what. He opened his door and got out. The guys jerked, probably expecting the Audi to have been empty. Einar stretched.

  "What a bloody ride, eh?" he said in a Scottish accent. "Non-stop from Glasgow. Need me a bloody coffee."

  "Traffic, eh?" one said without looking at him. Another slammed the Nissan's boot, and all three moved away. Einar locked his car and followed them. He let their brisk pace carry them far ahead. One guy looked round at him, probably just to make sure he was out of earshot. He saw them pointing, knew they were discussing their plan.

  So, if these guys were part of the employer's team, they had obviously gotten the location of the debit card Maria had used here at roughly the same time he had. And they had left London at roughly the same time.

  A paved path lined both sides with lighted bollards led to the main entrance of the Services building. Another branched off across grass and towards the hotel, which had its own mini-car park with an entrance somewhere else. Only two cars there in that car park.

  The three guys split up, one striding ahead, one hanging back. Trying not to look like a group of three headed towards the hotel. But all definitely heading towards the hotel. Einar stopped at a bin on the path and hunted in his pockets, finding only a couple of receipts. He tore them up and made a performance of wasting time tossing the scraps in the bin. The guys didn't look round at him. One by one they rounded a corner of the angled hotel building and vanished.

  Here lay the tricky part. Clearly the three guys, unless he had this all wrong and they were genuine guys seeking a room for the night, were heading in search of James Marsh and his family. If he was in that hotel, they would have him. Maybe they would drag him out of there, take him somewhere secluded, and kill him. Maybe they would slaughter the guy right in front of his wife and kid and give housekeeping some overtime. Either way, what mattered was that Einar got the credit. Normally he wouldn't take the credit for another's kill, but he had been stuffed on this job and his morals had changed. So what he needed to do was make sure the three guys never got the chance to tell their boss the job was done. They needed to disappear, leaving Einar alone to make the phone call telling the employer that the target was dead. So he couldn't just wait for the guys to reappear. If they made the call in the hotel room, standing over Marsh's corpse, it was game over.

  Einar took the path that led to the hotel.

  The double doors whizzed open automatically. Einar stepped into a reception area lit only by peach-coloured wall lights arranged everywhere. Cosy, he thought. There was a reception desk on the left, a cafe area on the right, and ahead an area with a bar and sofas and a TV tuned to some shopping channel, although the bar was closed. He saw no doorways to bedrooms or even to a corridor containing the bedrooms. Just doors to toilets and a kitchen and one for the stairs. So only the upper floor contained the guest rooms. There was a lift at the back of the cafe area, its up arrow lit.

  The place was empty. Very empty. Not even a receptionist. He went to the high desk and peered over. There was an empty swivel chair with someone's butt impression still in it, and a magazine laid across a keyboard, and a mobile phone with the Facebook app open on it. The receptionist had left her post recently, quickly. No way the three guys had booked rooms and gone up that fast, but they had definitely gone up. And would the lone receptionist have escorted them up? Or even let them up if they weren't booking rooms?

  Of course not, Einar determined. So she had gone unwillingly.

  He couldn't risk calling the lift, because then he would be announcing himself to the three guys. If they had guns and trained them on the lift doors, he would be a sitting duck. So Einar went to the stairs, pulled the door and listened. Nothing. But he got just a few steps up when he heard the door at the top open, and two voices. Quickly he rushed out and behind the reception desk. He sat on the floor and pulled his Bersa. That was when he noticed a CCTV camera above him, but thankfully it was smashed. By the guys.

  Fifteen seconds later he heard the stairs door. Footsteps and voices. Two sets of feet, two voices. Not three. The footsteps moved quickly and were gone. Einar realised what had happened. The guys had found James's room quickly, but he wasn't there. But at this hour no parents would drag a four year-old around the shops, or leave her alone in a hotel room, so child and mother were upstairs. And if they were dead already, as well as that luckless receptionist, there would be no reason to leave a guy behind. Simple deduction: wife and child were alive and being guarded by one man while the other two went to hunt James Marsh in the Services.

  And best of all, why leave a guy behind unless they planned to return with their target in custody?

  ***

  Out of habit grown through his hitman role rather than his years as a Marine Commando, Jimmy watched everyone he saw in the Services, looking for something off, waiting for an internal alarm to sound. Nobody stood out. At this hour there were no children younger than teenagers. Mostly young couples who had the stamina to drive all night and maybe didn't mind snuggling up on a back seat in a lay-by somewhere. A few old men. Most of the women seemed to be workers at the shops, most of which were open. Jimmy headed for the intersection, took a left and stopped at the convenience store, which was just closing. He rapped on the lowering shutter and showed a twenty pound note. The shutter went back up and he bought a packet of cigarettes and some chocolate. The guy took his money as if it were smeared in shit. Neither man said a thanks and both parted ways.

  H
e turned at the intersection and headed back towards the exit. That was when two men walked in from the dark and immediately one veered away from his pal and stopped at the window of WHSmith's. Jimmy had caught the guy's eye in the moment before he veered off. His pal walked a few paces onwards before he realised his pal had stopped. He looked round at his colleague, then forward again, right at Jimmy, and then down at the strap of his watch, which had suddenly developed a problem. Jimmy didn't automatically assume they were amateurs. They just hadn't expected to run right into the guy they were after within three feet of the entrance. But expecting him, here in this building, they clearly had been.

  A cleaner was heading towards Jimmy. Jimmy stopped the guy and asked where the toilets were. He already knew where they were. Back down the corridor and right. Thankfully the guy added a description with his hands. Jimmy said thanks and turned and strode away. He needed to warn Maria about this new trouble, but he had left his brand-new mobile in the hotel room.

  At the intersection was a pedal bin with a metal dome for a lid. He tossed in the chocolate bar he had bought, using the bin's reflective surface to determine that the two big guys were striding together again, right this way.

  The Services was a large area with a domed roof and shaped like lollipop, the stick being the entry-exit corridor. The circular area was ringed with shops, while the central portion was divided into four eateries, each one wedge-shaped. The serving booths for each were set against a thick pillar right in the middle, like a food hub. Jimmy knew that the only other exit, apart from fire escapes and the rear doors of shops, was an external smoking area right at the back. But he chose the toilets because he didn't want to make a scene.

  So he turned the corner and ran on his toes to avoid making noise. The toilets were a quarter of the way around the circle, too far for him to reach before his pursuers got to the intersection. But at least the toilet doors were set recessed from the main wall, so he pushed through and into the ladies', knowing neither man had seen which door he'd chosen.