Judgement and Wrath

by Matt Hilton

  Dantalion was engaged in lifting his coffee cup to his lips. Some of the coffee slopped down his coat, leaving a stain like a month-old knife wound. ‘Wait a minute … Bradley Jorgenson’s refusing to speak?’

  ‘Yeah, he’s got some top-dollar attorneys holding off the cops with a verbal smokescreen. Of course that’ll only go on so long; doesn’t matter how much money he has, the police are conducting a homicide investigation and—’

  Dantalion slammed down his cup.

  ‘I killed Bradley Jorgenson,’ Dantalion hissed. ‘Have you forgotten, Gabe?’

  Gabe blinked rapidly. He slumped backwards in his seat, gaining distance from the anticipated lunge he could see building in Dantalion. It never came. He hoped that Dantalion – despite his jokes – valued his associate’s help too highly to give in to base anger. Emboldened by that assumption, Gabe said, ‘Not according to CNN. They say that he’s currently at his home on Neptune Island.’

  ‘And the girl? Marianne Dean?’

  ‘Yeah, she’s with him.’

  ‘Son of a bitch!’

  Dantalion stood up swiftly. He ignored the pull in his wounded leg. Anger overrode the agony.

  ‘I guess that’s why the client was remiss in making payment?’

  ‘I guess so,’ Gabe said. ‘Sorry, Dan. I thought you knew.’

  ‘No, Gabe, I didn’t know.’ He reached into his pocket, toying with the spine of his book. Withdrew his fingers and wiped them on his coat. The book had lied to him. The numbers were all wrong. ‘But it looks like I’m going to have to do something about that.’

  So, Jorgenson and Marianne had both survived the explosion. As had the damn gunman who’d been sent to kill him. Now they were all making pow-wow at Neptune Island. Suddenly he wasn’t so clear on how many enemies he was going to have to kill.

  ‘You have access to a thermonuclear device, Gabe?’

  Gabe sniggered. ‘You’re joking, right?’

  ‘Do I look like someone with a sense of humour? There are a lot of people on Neptune Island about to die. Maybe every last one of them.’

  Gabe gulped his soda in one continuous slurp. Smacking his lips, he said, ‘Can’t get you a nuclear missile, but call me if you need anything else, Dan.’

  Dantalion stooped low, hooking the backpack with one hand.

  ‘I’ve everything I need right here.’

  He walked quickly away, leaving Gabe to sweat a lot more.

  19

  Jorgenson’s people conducted a background check on us. Rink came back fine. He had a private investigator’s licence and his business was registered at the address in Tampa. On the other hand, my own legend was a tad more difficult to come up with. I told them they’d just have to take my word for it. No one argued.

  Jorgenson left with an entourage of vehicles, heading down to Miami Beach to meet with his legal advisers, and then with officers from Miami PD’s homicide department. His father’s body had been pulled from the wreckage, but unlike those on the ground floor, his corpse wasn’t so burned or torn to shreds by the blast: it was obvious he’d been shot.

  Marianne stayed with us. Just the way I wanted it.

  Whatever it was that she had to get on with, she was doing it in her bedroom. I’d conducted a cursory sweep of the room, checking that an intruder couldn’t gain access, and had told her to keep the blinds closed so she didn’t offer a target to anyone outside.

  ‘We should move her,’ Rink told me. He’d said the same thing about a dozen times previously.

  ‘I agree.’ I’d also said the same thing numerous times.

  ‘So what are we waiting for?’

  ‘Marianne doesn’t want to move.’

  ‘So we convince her.’

  ‘She won’t budge. Despite everything, she loves Bradley.’

  We were sitting in the hall on the second-floor landing. Marianne’s room was about three doors up. We could see the entrance to her room, but we’d placed ourselves so we could guard the main stairs and also see the door that led to a secondary stairwell further along the hall. Seagram’s men were keeping well out of our way.

  ‘While Bradley’s outa the way, why not snatch Marianne, and have done with it?’ Rink demanded. ‘She’ll get over it. When she comes to her senses and sees what an asshole he is.’

  ‘Two things, Rink. We’ve made ourselves public coming here. Bradley would scream kidnap. We’d be hunted down by law enforcement, despite our good intentions. Plus, I’m beginning to think that Richard Dean hasn’t told us everything. Neither has Marianne.’

  ‘It’s not safe here,’ Rink said.

  There were armed guards in the grounds, armed guards in the house, more CCTV cameras than the Big Brother house. But he was correct.

  ‘I’ll speak to her again,’ I offered. ‘But we have to respect her wishes, Rink. I know we’re looking at her like she’s a child, but she is eighteen years old. She has her own mind, and a right to make her own decisions.’

  Rink rolled his shoulders. ‘She isn’t thinking with her head, though. She’s smitten with Bradley. She’s got herself into a position where she’s afraid to walk away. She’ll take the violence from him, twist it round, blame herself. Try harder to be the good little wife. You know how these things work.’

  I did. I’d seen it too many times. Women too afraid to walk away for fear of losing everything they’d worked so hard to achieve. Not realising that whatever they did, they’d never be good enough. They’d be caught up in the circle of domestic violence that spun on through their lives until one day he wouldn’t stop hitting her. Sometimes that was when the woman finally broke. She’d pick up a knife and jam it between her abuser’s shoulder blades. Or the man would hit her too hard and that would be that. More women were killed by their intimate partners – or other family members – than by all the strangers or serial murderers in the world.

  ‘I’ll speak to her again,’ I repeated.

  Rink stood up. Walked along the hall. He checked the door to the secondary stairwell. Still locked. He walked back to the head of the main stairs. Peered down them. Turned and came back. It made sense to stay vigilant, but Rink was conducting a patrol just to be doing something. It wasn’t like him. Rink could sit in the same position for hours on end without giving any signs that he was anything but an inanimate feature of the landscape. On seek and destroy missions we’d often be dropped miles from our targets. We’d make our way in, find an observation point, then sit tight while gauging enemy strengths and weaknesses. Once we were conducting surveillance on a terrorist training camp in the deserts of Libya. Rink took point and dug himself in less than twenty yards from the enemy base. He was there undetected for seventy-three hours before we launched our assault and wiped the bastards out.

  His unease had nothing to do with our current mission.

  ‘You shouldn’t be here, Rink.’

  He looked down at me. ‘None of us should.’

  ‘You know what I mean, buddy. You should be in San Francisco with your family.’

  He nodded slowly, his gaze staring off to somewhere very distant. ‘You’re family, too.’

  ‘OK.’

  I didn’t say another word on the subject. The decision was Rink’s.

  ‘Maybe we should draw on a few contacts, see if we can find out who this hit man is. We know him, we know his MO. We’ll have a better idea of how to stop him.’

  ‘I’ll get Harvey on to it.’

  Harvey Lucas was our friend out in the Midwest. He was an ex-Army Ranger who now ran his own private investigations outfit in Arkansas. He’d been an invaluable ally during a case we’d been involved with last year. He’d backed us up when the bullets were flying, and he’d got the job done. He was also damn good when it came to gathering the kind of information not generally in the public arena.

  ‘I’ll leave you to it. I’ll go and speak to Marianne again.’

  Rink brought out his mobile phone and hit a hot key.

  I knocked on Marianne’s door.


  She answered it immediately. Almost as if she’d had her ear to the door. Her hair was pinned up again, and she’d changed her clothes. Tight blue jeans and a pale yellow sweater that bared her shoulders and the upper swell of her breasts. Her neck made a long sweeping curve towards the cream skin of her chest. I couldn’t help a quick glance.

  Marianne caught my look and she stirred uncomfortably.

  ‘Come in.’ Her arms folded, and I couldn’t help but notice they went above her breasts this time.

  ‘Mind if I ask you something?’ I said as I followed her into the room. It was a well-appointed room, but I was more conscious of the delicate perfume that hovered in the space. The scent of her shampooed hair and freshly scrubbed skin. She’d been showering again. I felt a little awkward. A little like a father who is used to walking into his young daughter’s room unannounced, until that day when suddenly he realises that this isn’t a child any more. She’s a woman that I don’t recognise! After that he always knocks and hesitates in the doorway, shucking off the offer to enter.

  ‘What would you like to know?’

  ‘Your necklace,’ I pointed out. ‘I noticed it was missing.’

  Her hand crept up to her throat, fluttered there like the beating wings of a butterfly.

  ‘In the photographs you were wearing a small cross on a chain.’

  ‘My mother’s necklace,’ she offered. I saw a shadow flit behind her eyes.

  ‘You aren’t wearing it now.’

  ‘No,’ she said. Her voice went to a whisper. ‘It got broken.’

  ‘It couldn’t be fixed?’

  ‘I … I don’t have it any more.’

  She didn’t want to speak about it. I guessed it had been torn from her throat during the assault. A sore subject that she didn’t want to acknowledge, let alone revisit. Quickly, I changed tack. ‘It’s not safe to stay here, you do realise that?’

  ‘I’m not leaving without Bradley.’

  ‘Bradley can come with us, but I think that it would be safer to take you somewhere that isn’t associated with the Jorgenson family.’

  ‘Not home.’

  ‘No, Marianne, not home. Somewhere that can’t be connected to you.’

  ‘Why is this man after us?’

  ‘Truthfully? I don’t know.’ I wondered how much of my suspicions I should lay on her. Decided that she had a right to know. ‘There’s been a suggestion that some of Bradley’s family resent the fact that he’s been named as sole heir to the business.’

  ‘He has the right,’ Marianne said. ‘His father handed it on when he was too ill to continue, just as his father did before him.’

  ‘I’ve no problem with that. But from what we’ve been able to gather, his father had two brothers. They also have children. They believe that they have been as instrumental in building the family business as Bradley has. They think that it should have been shared equally among them.’

  ‘I know all of his cousins. Jack and Simon are brothers. Then there is Petre. He’s the eldest. I can’t believe that they would have anything to do with harming either Bradley or me.’

  ‘Petre would stand to inherit the business if anything happened to Bradley?’

  ‘Yes … but …’ She shivered involuntarily.

  ‘Envy among family members is nothing new,’ I told her. ‘Under the surface even the closest of siblings can be concealing a deep-seated hatred. It can stay hidden for life and taken to the grave. Sometimes it erupts into anger and violence. Especially where huge amounts of money are concerned.’

  ‘And you think Petre may be responsible?’

  ‘Petre doesn’t like you, does he?’

  ‘No.’ I saw her fiddle again with the non-existent cross. Wondered why she wouldn’t just come out with it. She asked, ‘Do you think Petre would really go that far?’

  ‘Could be any one of the cousins. Or all,’ I said. ‘Maybe I’m wrong and it’s none of them. Regardless, there is a man who has tried, and will try again, to kill you and Bradley.’

  ‘When he came to the house last night, he shot Bradley’s father. He didn’t know who Valentin was. That doesn’t sound like someone working for any member of the family.’

  ‘Maybe he knew,’ I pointed out. ‘But he just didn’t care.’

  ‘But why kill the man whose wealth is the bone of contention? Surely that only speeds up the process of dropping it into Bradley’s lap?’

  ‘Good point,’ I conceded. ‘Perhaps the killer has nothing to do with any of Bradley’s family. Maybe it’s got nothing at all to do with the business. Can you think of anyone else who would want the two of you dead?’

  ‘No,’ she said, but I could tell she wasn’t being truthful. Something about the way her fingers again went to her throat, seeking solace from the missing crucifix, told me so.

  20

  Dantalion was under the same bridge on the same beach, but the family with the crabby kid had long gone. The sun was a bloody slash on the western horizon. Out to the east, the first stars were twinkling in the purple evening. Above him the sky was a brown-yellow colour where day fought night, but was rapidly losing ground. Dantalion wished that night would get on with it, sucker-punch day, and then stamp it into surrender. He needed the darkness. It was his greatest ally.

  He was sitting on a hummock of grass, his feet sunk in sand. Around him lay the flotsam cast up by the sea, sun-bleached twigs and the cast-off shells of crustaceans. There was also the ubiquitous plastic bag, dropped by someone careless. A soda can, ferrous-red around its lip, was buried to the shoulders in the sand. Between Dantalion’s splayed feet was the backpack delivered to him by Gabe Wellborn.

  From the bag he pulled out the sound suppressor. The one he had used last night was useless now. Suppressors didn’t have an infinite lifespan, each successive shot robbing them of their effectiveness. He screwed this fresh one into place on his specially adapted Beretta. He disengaged the magazine from his gun, inserted a new one, slid the loading mechanism to place a round into the firing chamber. He then fed a round into the magazine so that he had the full seventeen-round load ready to go.

  Placing the gun across his left thigh, he reached back into the bag and took out a second gun. This wasn’t nearly as effective a man-killer as the Beretta, but as he’d said to his associate, ‘Don’t worry, Gabe, I won’t be using it on humans.’ The gun looked like something patched together from a plumber’s offcuts. A pipe and valve and a canister. A simple trigger mechanism was the only item that looked as though it had been gleaned from a genuine firearm. It was a dart gun powered by compressed gas and could deliver the ketamine cartridges over a space of fifty yards.

  Next came the night-vision goggles. They were advanced Generation Three goggles, military grade with image intensifier capacity, bright source protection and wide exit pupil design. They came with a fully adjustable, padded head rig to allow hands-free operation. With these in place he would have the ability to move through the darkness as though it was high noon. His enemies would be blind to his presence even when he was standing in front of them.

  Last out of the bag was the EMF meter, a device for measuring electrical and magnetic fields. This particular device was distinct in its very wide frequency response and sensitivity. Any pressure pads or trip wires hidden in the grounds of the compound would set off an audio sounder not unlike the Geiger counter, increasing in intensity the closer he approached the hidden alarms.

  The sun was almost down now. Under the bridge the shadows had thickened and swarmed around him like furtive confederates. He slipped out of his coat, bundled it and placed it into the backpack. In went his hat and sunglasses and he strapped the goggles on to his head, flipping up the dual-tubular-optics so that he could still use his own vision for now. He was dressed in close-fitting sweatshirt and cargo pants – the type with numerous deep pockets – tucked into laced-up boots. In the daytime Dantalion dressed in white or cream clothing, but his current garb was as black as the night folding around him. He holste
red the Beretta on his hip; the wound in his thigh made it too uncomfortable to carry the gun in its normal position. Extra magazines were fed into the deep pockets on his left thigh. The EMF meter had a clip and he fixed it to his belt. He swung the backpack across his shoulders and cinched the straps tight. Lastly he picked up the compressed-gas gun and inserted a ketamine-charged dart into it, then thumbed the canister control.

  He straightened, took a couple of steps so he could peer from under the bridge towards the gate he’d reconnoitred earlier. He couldn’t make it out in the dark, not until he slipped the goggles in place. Twinkling green light played on the interior of the goggles. Now he could clearly see the dark bulk of the boundary wall on the horizon to his left.

  Ready now, he set off, keeping low so that he was nothing but an amorphous shape against the swaying grasses. Earlier he’d picked his way painfully through the tall grass, but now he went more swiftly. The sunlight on his delicate skin was no longer an issue, and the cargo pants staved off the prickling edges of the grass stems.

  Cars moved along the coastal highway, their lights streaking across the elevated bridge like a flight of UFOs. The sound was hushed by the fall of night; even the Atlantic made only the faintest of whispers where it caressed the shoreline.

  Dantalion made his way through the grasslands, coming to the wall slightly east of the gate. Using the magnifying capacity of the goggles, he studied the CCTV camera mounted over the gate. It was angled away from him. Seemingly static, as though the controller within the grounds was taking a nap. The likelihood was that with a system of a large number of cameras, the controller rarely used this one. Wasn’t much to look at during the dark hours. He’d probably be concentrating on the traffic outside the estate, or taking voyeuristic peeks into the bedchambers of the Jorgenson women.

  Dantalion decided against shooting out the camera. Whereas a malfunctioning camera along the wall near to the road wouldn’t be of immediate concern, a broken camera at this remote corner of the grounds could call for immediate investigation. He scanned to the right towards the beach end of the wall, saw that the wall ended in a right angle, but that a tall fence extended out across the sand and disappeared into the Atlantic. The gate remained his best choice for entry unless he wanted to swim a couple hundred yards.