by Lex Lander
The second, only months after, was Gina Gregg, widow of the same mobster, with whom I had the ill-luck to fall in love. Her demise was my doing. I shot her, mistaking her for someone else. It was an accident, and it crucified me.
The third, the following year, was a girl of about fourteen. Italian, gorgeous, the daughter of a seriously bad man. She got in the way of a bullet that was intended for him. His fault as much as mine, but that didn’t help at all. My conscience racked me for months afterwards and hasn’t really recovered to this day. I never even knew her name, which somehow made it worse.
Finally, there was Annika de Bruin. Oh, yes, the lovely, licentious Annika, my only true, intended victim. Evil in a desirable package. Trader in the corruption of innocence. A woman with no morals, no scruples, and every vice under the sun – like the world in which she operated. I put a bullet in her at point blank range. She died in agony and I watched her with joy. That was one death I was proud to lay claim to.
These deaths were in consequence of the work I did. Except for the de Bruin woman, I regretted them in varying degrees. It was on account of these regrets that this latest edict from Il Sindicato, the anonymous organisation that employed me, caused me such heartache. A contract to kill a woman was a first, and would shatter the moral code that had governed my actions these past fifteen years.
My unplanned trip to Sardinia arose out of a call I made to Giorgy, two days earlier. I didn’t get to speak to him right away. His French wife, Dolores, always charming, the perfect answering service, told me he was away and wouldn’t be back for at least a week.
‘In Sardinia?’ I asked, grinning at the mouthpiece. The island of Sardinia was where Il Sindicato’s centre of operations was located, aptly sandwiched between the Mafia on Sicily and Unione Corse on Corsica.
‘André,’ she said, a thread of reproach in her voice. ‘You know better than to ask.’
I did too.
‘However, he is carrying his cell phone. He won’t answer it, but you can text him a message to call you, if you wish.’
‘Which one?’ Giorgy had three cell phones, each with a different function.
‘Why not leave a message on all of them,’ she suggested, tight-lipped as ever. ‘Then he is sure to get it, n’est-ce pas?’
I could imagine the little smile tugging at her lips as she gave me this advice. She was a lovely person. Just telling me how to make contact was sticking her neck out. But Giorgy worshipped her, so she could take liberties and get away with it. Up to a point. Always, where Il Sindicato was concerned, up to a point.
Instead of texting I called Giorgy – Giorgio du Poletti – my liaison man with the organisation. High up in the game, perhaps two levels down from the summit of the pyramidal, hierarchical structure. Not quite a member of the board of directors, but in the top stratum of management. A decision maker, yes, but his decisions subject to ratification.
The three voice messages I left were short and sour and identical.
‘This new contract is outside my terms of reference.’
He would divine from my tone and my terseness that I was displeased, and why. Not that would care. Ever since I behaved badly and flouted Il Sindicato’s rules a couple of years back I had been their puppet. Literally do or die. If I stepped out of line again, I would be listed for disposal. And it wouldn’t be quick. As a deterrent to other would-be renegades, the elimination of miscreants was always long drawn out and messy and may be presumed painful.
His return call came just before midnight, as I was contemplating the ascent to my bed.
‘Hello, André,’ he said, cheery as always, his greeting warm and mellifluous, his English impeccable, just one of several languages in which he was fluent.
‘Giorgy,’ I acknowledged, a little less cheery, a little more frosty. ‘Thanks for returning my call.’
‘I knew if I didn’t you would not leave me alone,’ he joked, although it wasn’t a joke and he was only pretending to be amused.
‘You’re right. I can’t accept this new contract.’
‘Because she’s a woman?’
He was familiar with my moral codes.
‘Correct. Find someone else.’
He tutted, though I sensed a whisper of humour lurking in the admonition.
‘You didn’t have any qualms about shooting Annika de Bruin.’
‘That was different. I didn’t do it for money. It was personal.’
‘Ah, yes, personal. Then do this one for no money.’ He was being flippant, unusual for him. ‘Won’t that salve your poor, long-suffering conscience?’
‘You know it won’t. If it were so simple I would do it.’
Silence. He was thinking, trying to come up with another argument before resorting to orders and threats.
I pre-empted them.
‘It’s no good, Giorgy. I won’t accept a contract to kill a woman.’
‘I see.’ For a couple of beats all I heard was the sound of his breathing. ‘Well, if you really feel so strongly about it, you had better come here.’
‘To your place?’ I had only ever visited his house in Antibes once. So I was surprised. Not only that, I was suspicious.
‘No, not to my place. I am in Sardinia.’
It was late afternoon and the shadow of the Coma Pedrosa was sliding down the hillside towards the house. The door was open and Keith Jupp strolled in without using the buzzer, calling out for me. We shook hands. We weren’t friends, but we respected each other as businessmen operating outside the law with a consequent need for secrecy. He was about the same height as me, but carrying too much gut for his own good. He had chubby lips and rosy cheeks, and his brown hair had more grey streaking it and more pink scalp shining through it than I remembered from our last meeting. Liverpool was his birth town.
He didn’t look like a gun runner. The proof that appearances often deceive was in the two resealable bags he was toting; the shape of the gun and a pair of magazines were visible through one of them. The other contained a small box, ammunition probably. He had just transported them across the Spain-Andorra frontier.
‘Have you had something to eat?’ I asked him.
‘Yeah, I had dinner in Spain.’ Dinner to him meant lunch. He sounded just like Ringo Starr.
‘Drink, then?’
‘A beer would go down a treat. Some of that fucking Bavarian stuff you like.’
‘Bavarian? Oh, you mean Bavaisienne Blonde. Actually it’s Belgian, brewed in France. Coming right up.’
I fetched two bottles from the fridge and popped the caps. We toasted each other and made serious inroads into the bottles’ contents.
‘It’s a little fucking beauty,’ he enthused, opening the bag and passing the compact automatic across to me. He used expletives as frequently as the rest of us use the definite article.
The Bond-Boberg XR9-S is the ultimate carry gun, so I had been told. It was light, I would say that for it. Barely 1lb without the mag in place, was my estimate. The finish was black. The calibre was 9mm. Stopping power enough for my purposes.a
‘Double action only,’ Keith said, gulping beer.
‘Is that a fact?’
It sat snugly in my clenched fist. It was very truncated, with a long overhang at the back that made it look even shorter. Like a bullpup pistol in fact, which it isn’t – the magazine loads conventionally through the grip. When I positioned my index finger alongside the trigger guard it extended past the end of the barrel. I wondered if my fingertip would get scorched by the muzzle flash.
‘What else do you know about it?’
He shrugged. ‘Accurate for its size. The barrel’s three and a half inches, which is long considering the overall length. I tried the little fucker out on the range. At thirty feet I took out six bottles in a row. No tendency to pull left or right. Light recoil. A word of warning though – don’t use fucking cheap ammo. There’s a quirky loading system, with some sort of claw gadget that can detach the case from the bullet if its badly crimped. I t
ried it with PMC, which as you know isn’t the best, and it was fine, but I’d recommend you stick with Remington or Winchester, better still Hornady, if you can fucking get it.’
It felt solid and the machining was top notch. Snag-free surfaces, all parts fitting flush with no bumps and ledges. The grips were textured polymer.
‘It’s not loaded,’ Keith said, though its weight already told me that.
I nodded and racked the slide a few times. The action was really smooth and the effort required was minimal. The trigger action was short and equally smooth. I squeezed off a few imaginary rounds.
‘Let’s look at a magazine,’ I said.
He chucked one over. It looked different from your standard automatic magazine. I commented as much.
‘You’re fucking right, matey. You load it nose first, for fuck’s sake.’
I stared at him. ‘Nose first?’
‘Yeah. Don’t worry, it works fine, just seems a bit fucking weird.’
‘You can say that again. What’s the load failure rate?’
‘Dunno,’ he said, airily – a shade too airily for my in-built caution about the infallibility of automatics vis-à-vis revolvers. ‘You were in such a fucking hurry I didn’t get chance to test it properly.’ He made like he was thinking, then went on, ‘Better assume one in a hundred.’
That was high. I wasn’t happy about it, but it was too late for a change of heart. Size, or rather lack of it, was king for this particular requirement.
‘Give me the ammo,’ I said, and he shook the box of Remington ammunition out of the second bag into the palm of my hand.
‘Seven rounds capacity,’ he told me.
That was the second surprise. Seven was a lot for such a small gun.
‘Plus one up the spout gives you eight.’
‘Handy.’
He sniggered. ‘Handy, he says. You’re fucking right, it’s handy.’
Next step was a session in my basement, part of which I had recently converted to a miniature firing range. I put the Boberg through its paces, using up thirty of the 9mm shells Keith had brought. Thirty rounds, no FTFs – failures to feed – one FTE. Not good. One failure-to-eject out of thirty rounds was an unusually high ratio. No sense quibbling though. The Boberg was my choice, not Keith’s. On the credit side it was more than just accurate.
After some haggling over the price and his travel expenses, I parted with €2500 in hundreds, and he took off back to his horse breeding farm near Barcelona, where he lived and which provided a cover for his bespoke gun running operation.
Not since my very first contract for Il Sindicato, some five years ago, had I been invited to their HQ, a mansion in Simius, to the east of Cagliari, the Sardinian capital. My recall of the setting was still vivid. From the back of the building, located on the south side of a hill, you had a travel brochure view of the Mediterranean and a section of sandy coastline. Closer at hand, on the vast terrace, was an infinity pool shaped like a clover leaf. That particular view had been enhanced by an array of ripe female bodies, sparsely clad, draped about the pool perimeter. I had only experienced this visual feast on the one occasion, but Giorgy had confirmed that a succession of maidens – or not – were on permanent stand-by, supplied by Il Sindicato for the titillation of members of the hierarchy and favoured guests. These girls were paid to be good looking, promiscuous, and to expose plenty of flesh. They were commendably adept at the last mentioned. Basically, they were hookers, but during their terms of employment at the villa, be those terms short or long, they were for the exclusive use of Il Sindicato and friends.
My lowly status as outsider, at the time of my previous visit, had not entitled me to do more than ogle. Even touching was verboten, let alone fucking. Whereas at that time, my hedonistic phase, I was game for any sexual adventure, be it paid or unpaid, these days my primeval urges were in retreat. I was pining for Maura, making do with Jacqui, and my conduct generally was of the primmest. In short, I was not in the market for one-night stands.
The process of getting to this idyll of debauchery was a matter of routine, though as ever when international borders were to be crossed, not without some risk. My personal security criteria required me to limit the number of times I used my passport. Flights and ferries were therefore to be avoided unless unavoidable. Trains and cars were the only forms of transport that allowed me to go forth without leaving an electronic trail. Transit through Andorra was not passport controlled at the border except for vehicles bearing non-EU licence plates.
So I left the tiny country I called home, and entered France in my Spanish-plated Ford Explorer SUV, unmolested and unrecorded. I meandered down through the foothills of the Pyrenees to sea level, joining the autoroute north of Perpignan for a fast run along the coast, by-passing Montpellier and Marseilles. I used only cash to pay the outrageous toll levies and replenish the tank and my stomach.
It was dusk when I exited the A50 to enter the city of Toulon, with its naval port and ferry service to Sardinia. I muscled into the clogged traffic on the Avenue de la République, where the streetlights alternate with tired-looking fan palms, escaping at the first opportunity via a sharp right into the Port Maritime. Two ferries were parked there, their yellow hulls the only bright spot in the fading light. Along their sides the inscriptions Corsica Ferries – Sardinia Ferries.
Now for the tricky part. Sardinia could only be reached by air or sea. France had reimposed border controls in the wake of the Paris bombings and the immigration crisis, so I would have to present my passport at the point of embarkation, and possibly at the other end. When on a contract, I travelled under a false identity, created for the duration only, and carried a full set of documents to prove it. After the job was done, I destroyed them. When on legal or quasi-legal business, as now, I was the alternative me, name of Jack Henley. This was an identity I had set up two years before to exist in parallel to my real self, for use on those occasions when André Warner needed to preserve his incognito. This trip was such an occasion. My blond hair and patently Anglo-Saxon looks further lessened the prospects of a proper check.
Here at the Toulon ferry point, all it took was a flash of my red United Kingdom passport, and I was waved through. The yawning officer didn’t even take it from my hand. So much for the tougher security measures. I drove on to the ferry check-in. Here my passport was needed to confirm I was the same person who had made the on-line booking. No avoiding it, but no matter. A check-in clerk was not a policeman, and therefore not a threat.
‘Allez-y, monsieur,’ he said, as he handed back my passport and boarding card. Go ahead.
It was dark when I entered my cabin, on the port side of the vessel. The lights came on as I opened the door with my card. I dumped my overnight bag on the left hand of the two beds. First I would eat, then I would sleep. The ferry docked at about six am, so I would be rising early.
First phase accomplished. Tomorrow I would be in Sardinia, throwing myself at the mercy of a gang of men who would kill me without compunction if I refused to do their bidding. All I had to do was persuade them to cut me some slack, bend a little. Not a lot to ask. You would think.
THE MAN
WHO HUNTED
HIMSELF
Contents
Cover page
Title page
Copyright
HUNTER HIRED
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
THE HUNT IS ON
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THE HUNT IS OFF
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
NINETEEN
TWENTY
TWENTY-ONE
TWENTY-TWO
TWENTY-THREE
HUNTER HUNTED
TWENTY-FOUR
TWENTY-FIVE
TWENTY-SIX
TWENTY-SEVEN
TWENTY-EIGHT
TWENTY-NINE