The Hostess

by L. P. Gibbs

  Shortly after, a taxi came plying into the short road and Mark hailed it to a stop. They both got in and as it pulled away, Randall followed. It took twenty minutes to reach the first stop in Streatham where the other man alighted. The cab then continued on to Green Lane, Norbury where it came to a shuddering halt beside a six storey block of luxury flats, the heavy diesel engine chugging away as it idled, waiting for its passenger to get out. Randall pulled in a hundred yards short of the block, and leaving Samantha in the car, walked quickly towards the taxi as Mark got out.

  He walked casually behind the man up to the main door and followed him through. His sharp eyes noticed a security camera above and to one side of the lift and so lowered his head, and covering his face with his hand, pretended to be scratching his forehead as he approached the lift. Mark turned to Randall and simply nodded.

  On entering the lift together, he watched Mark push the button for the fourth floor. Randall pressed for the third, one floor below the other man. As is the norm for most English people, strangers never communicated with each other when meeting under these circumstances and so the only sound that broke the silence was the loud creaking and whirring of the lift machinery as it rose at a sedate pace. Randall casually let his eyes wander around the interior of the lift and made sure there were no cameras inside there either.

  When it stopped at the third floor, he got out, and as the door shuddered closed behind him, he raced through the door to the stairs and ran as softly as he could up to the next floor. Reaching the glass door to the landing above, he was just in time to see Mark fumble and drop his keys on the landing before bending to retrieve them. He then opened the door to number forty-four. Randall watched from his concealed spot behind the frosted glass as the man went inside and let the door close by itself. That was all he needed to put his plan into action. Cautiously poking his head round the door, he swiftly scanned the landing and was pleased to note that there were no cameras here. He went back down using the stairs.

  He got back in to his car and started the engine. Samantha said nothing as Randall drove away. She was very quiet, lost in her own thoughts wondering briefly if she had the nerve to kill again.

  “I mean,” Randall was saying, “I could have taken him out of the picture tonight very easily, but I thought that you would rather do it, if only for Carla's sake.”

  “You're right, Alan,” she told him, her head nodding rapidly. “I want to be the one to rid the world of that scum. The police won't be able to pin anything on him, so it's up to me.” He could tell she was determined.

  It was four-thirty when they reached Camden Town. They went to bed together again and he left at seven-thirty that morning. She accompanied him downstairs and he put his arms around her waist, pulling her to him and kissed her.

  “You know what to do?” he asked. They had spent over an hour going over the plan and any possible setbacks. “Follow my instructions to the letter and we'll be okay. Always remember to leave no trace whatsoever.”

  “Yes, I know, you've told me a million times, I have done this before, remember?” she responded. He nodded. “Now get going before I drag you back to bed again.” Randall was tempted and kissed her once more. “I mean it, you git,” she said. He laughed as he started the car, gave her a wink and pulled away, just as one of the dreaded local traffic wardens entered the street from the Camden Road end. Randall gave the man a mock salute with a grin as he passed him.

  * * * *

  REVENGE.

  In the very early hours of a bitingly cold and breezy Sunday morning just over a week before Christmas, Randall drove an old, dark blue Ford Escort car into the car park beside Mark's block of flats in Green Lane, Norbury. He had collected the stolen the car from Clinton, one of his contacts, and had the number plates changed. Samantha sat in the passenger seat of the car, crouched well down. They both wore gloves His were black leather and hers were Latex, rubberised to give a better grip. She was wearing a blonde wig and had her own long, raven hair pinned up inside a wig-cap. Wearing a pair of black-rimmed, clear spectacles, no-one would recognise her, especially in the oversized waterproof jacket and green jogging bottoms Randall had bought for her from an Oxfam charity shop. The old, ragged pair of trainers completed the camouflage. Randall had been given permission from Harris to take the night off along with the hostess. Harris had not asked for any reasons. He knew better than to ask Randall. He knew that something was afoot but as long as it didn't interfere with the smooth running of his club, he didn't want to know about it.

  The clock in the middle of the dashboard showed two-thirty. The pair knew that on a Saturday night, Mark would be out and about in Central London, most likely Soho, probably not returning home until the early hours of the morning. If he followed his past habit, he would get out of a taxi on the main road and walk down the long paved pathway to the front door of the block. From their position they could clearly see the road. Randall lit a cigarette and opened his window a couple of inches to allow the smoke to drift out. His companion glanced sideways at him and smiled. Alan was always there for her, she thought. He noticed her looking across at him and flashed her his usual smile as he squeezed her gloved hand to re-assure her, causing her heart to skip a beat. She wanted to take his face in her hands and kiss him there and then but knew she had to keep her mind on the upcoming job in hand. She would need to keep her wits about her and be ready to move at a second's notice. They had a long wait.

  Shortly before five in the morning, a black cab shuddered to a halt at the end of the pathway. Samantha held her breath as they both watched the taxi. She sucked in her breath as the door opened and Mark alighted, stopping at the driver's window to pay the fare. He turned and the taxi pulled away, making a U-turn and heading back the way it had come. He took a pack of cigarettes from his jacket pocket, extracted one and lit it, allowing the smoke to drift up into the cold night air then began to walk unsteadily towards the front doors of the block. There was only one street light illuminating the long path and the top of it was shrouded in early morning mist, creating a yellow haze around the bulb. The slight frost glistened on the cold pavement as the dim rays from the light caught and reflected on it. From Mark's slow gait and the way he swayed, they could tell he had been drinking heavily. As he gradually got closer, Randall nudged her thigh gently and she got out, pulling the coat tight around her and slung the strap of her bag over her shoulder allowing it to hang beside her hip, heading for the same doors. Mark arrived at the entrance only a second before her and, seeing her approaching, held the door open for her with a lecherous grin on his face. She smiled back at him and went in, her head bowed slightly as Randall had told her about the camera and, although heavily disguised, she wanted to avoid all possibilities of recognition.

  The lift was standing empty with the doors slid wide open and she entered, Mark following behind. Samantha went to the back of the lift while the man stood just inside the doors by the lift buttons.

  “What floor do you want, darling?” he asked, undressing her with his eyes as he dropped his cigarette to the floor and stood on it. His mind was already racing, considering getting this ill-dressed young girl into his flat, plying her with some drugs from his supply and then having his way with her whilst she was comatose. All manner of ideas were running through his mind.

  “Four, please,” she replied sweetly. His eyebrows went up.

  “Oh,” he said, “the same as me.” She didn't reply but looked down to her grubby training shoes as the lift started its upward journey. She slid her right hand inside her shoulder bag and gripped the butt of the gun. Just as Randall had taught her, she easily slipped off the safety catch with her thumb.

  “Do you remember my friend Carla?” she asked him suddenly as she lifted her head, looking directly into his tipsy eyes. His expression told her that he obviously did not remember her. She continued in the same even tone. “She's the girl you gave the cocaine to and who was found dead in the underpass in Clapham. Now do you remember her?
” Recognition gradually spread across his face as the memory dawned upon him and he slowly pushed himself upright from the wall of the lift. Samantha took the pistol from her bag with her right hand, cupping her left under the butt, raised it up and squeezed the trigger in one swift movement. The silenced pistol made a soft 'phut' sound as it fired, the bullet hitting the man almost in the middle of his forehead at point blank range. He was dead before he hit the floor, his head and shoulders leaning against the doors, his unseeing eyes wide open in disbelief.

  Just then, the lift slowed and came to a stop on the fourth floor. Samantha quickly put the gun back into her shoulder bag. The doors slid open and Mark's upper torso softly fell in slow motion out and on to the landing floor, his hips and legs still within the lift. She stepped over Mark's lifeless body and crossed the landing, heading for the stairs. As she went through the door, she turned to look at the body behind her. Illuminated under the bright fluorescent lighting of the landing she watched, almost in fascination, as the lift doors started to close, nudged against the corpse, then opened again. After a moment or two they began to close once more, hit the body and slid back again. That is when she started back down. The doors would continue this back and forth movement for a number of hours until a shocked young lad, delivering Sunday's morning newspapers came across it.

  Taking great care not to trip and fall, she descended the stone steps as fast as her trainers would allow her. She exited the building at ground level and found Randall sitting in the car with the engine running. She swiftly climbed in and he moved away at a steady pace as she clicked her seat-belt into place. As he changed up to third gear, he looked sideways at her.

  “Everything go as planned?” he enquired almost nonchalantly, as if what had just happened was an everyday occurrence. She nodded, staring straight ahead through the windscreen.

  “I actually did it, Alan,” she said. “The bastard's dead.” Randall said nothing, just nodded and concentrated on driving.

  As they drove, Randall instructed her to put the wig, glasses, gloves, jacket and trainers into the carrier bag he had brought along. He put the gun into his own jacket pocket. She did as she was told.

  Half an hour later, they arrived at her home in Camden Town. Upstairs in her tiny room, she stripped off every stitch of clothing she had been wearing beneath her disguise, including underwear and Randall put them in a separate bag to take with him. She wanted him to stay to keep her company but he told her he had to get the car back to his contact who had arranged to have it crushed. She looked disappointed but understood. He promised to stop by to see her on his way to work the next day and drove off. He stopped the car in Finsbury Park and deposited the carrier bags in a roadside skip that was filled almost to overflowing level. Randall pushed the bags as far down as he could get them beneath all the rubbish and ensured no-one was watching. Even if they were found before the skip was carted away, the chance of them being connected to a shooting on the other side of London was minimal.

  Randall arrived in Edmonton, North London at around half past six, the pavements and grass verges now covered in a sharp frost. As arranged with his Clinton, he reversed the car into his lock-up garage just off Northumberland Avenue, locked the garage door and walked back to Lyon Road to wearily climb the stone steps and enter his flat above the florist shop on Keats Parade. At seven thirty, Clinton would drive the car to a friendly scrap dealer in Waltham Cross for it to go into the crusher and end up as a square block of tangled metal.

  On the Monday, he he drove out to Saffron Walden and found Dave Perrett behind the counter of his shop. Randall stood at the end of the counter with a carrier bag in his hand. The gun was inside, wrapped in a yellow duster. When the customer he had been serving left the shop, Perret walked along to the end of the counter with a smile and took the bag from Randall without a word, placing it on the shelf beneath.

  “Did it do the job?” he asked.

  “Yeah, thanks, Dave. It was absolutely perfect for what was needed. Thanks, mate. I owe you one.”

  “You've been owing me one since we left school, you fly bastard,” Perrett replied with a grin. Randall laughed, gave him a wink and left the shop for the drive back to North London.

  On his way in to work that evening, he dropped in on Samantha as he had promised. She was a little shaky given the previous early morning's events but otherwise appeared to be in good spirits. She had taken to having Mondays off work so she was still wearing her dressing gown as she had been all day. She was glad to see him and he reassured her that everything else had gone according to plan and that there should be no comebacks to either of them.

  Arriving early at Silk's Club, he found the shutters already up and the big glass door propped open. He went down the stairs to check in with Lenny Harris. It was with more than a little surprise that he found Detective Inspector Colin Tiptree sitting in a chair beside Lenny's desk, a large measure of scotch with ice cubes in a cut-glass tumbler nestled in his hand. The D.I. looked up at Randall with a wide smile and Harris with one of his concerned frowns.

  “Alright, Alan,” Tiptree grinned. “how's it going, my son?” Randall recovered his composure quickly and returned the smile, helping himself to a measure from the bottle on the desk.

  “Can't complain, Cole,” he said. “Making a living, you know? Things are picking up a bit with Christmas around the corner.” The policeman said nothing, just continued to look at him with that infernal smile glued to his face. Randall hooked out another chair with his foot and sat down. Tiptree eventually turned to him and spoke.

  “Remember that guy who went off with one of your girls? Carla?” he enquired, his beady eyes squinting slightly as if he was trying to read Randall's expression. “The one who got her stoned on coke?”

  “Yeah, I recall. I seem to remember his name was Mark.” Tiptree nodded as he swirled the ice in his tumbler.

  “The thing is, strangely enough, we've found him.”

  “Oh, that's good news,” Randall said with all innocence. “What did he have to say about it then?” The detective was out-staring him as he responded.

  “Not a lot. He was dead.” Randall feigned shock, his eyebrows raised high to give an astonished expression.

  “Fuck me, Colin,” he said. “That's a bit of a turn up. He wasn't very old; what did he die from?”

  “A shortage of breath. But then he had been shot in the head from a distance of two feet. It happened in the early hours of last Sunday morning on the landing outside his flat in South London.” The policeman studied the other two men seated in the office. “And I don't suppose either of you two would know anything about it, would you?” Lenny Harris started to laugh.

  “Why would we know anything, Cole?” he asked with genuine indignation.

  “I just thought that what with him being possibly responsible for the death of one of your girls, …......” He let the sentence trail off. Randall leaned forward and topped up his drink as he replied.

  “What do you mean, 'possibly responsible'? He was definitely responsible! Got any leads on who killed him then? Personally, I'd shake his hand.” Tiptree pulled a pack of cheroots from within his overcoat and proceeded to light one with care, using Lenny's table lighter.

  “Who said it was a man who killed him?” he asked, looking across the desk at Randall with an inquisitive expression spreading across his face, his lips curled slightly upwards. “As a matter of fact, the officers in Norbury C.I.D. are looking at some CCTV pictures of a woman with long blonde hair who entered the lift at the same time as him. Nobody in his block of flats recognised the woman and she didn't go back out through the foyer, so she must have used the stairs to leave the block afterwards. Seems a bit strange, doesn't it?” He reached over and tapped the ash from the end of his long, thin cheroot into the heavy, blue glass ashtray using his forefinger.

  “Maybe it was a mystery he had brought home for a shag,” Randall ventured. Harris interrupted at this point.

  “This is a very interest
ing story, Colin me old mate,” he began, “but what's all this got to do with us and why are you looking into it?” Without waiting for Tiptree's response, he continued. “I mean, you're working up here in Soho, miles away from where all this happened.” The detective nodded slowly. “It's not exactly on your patch, is it? You're not lookin' to nick someone yourself, are you?””

  “You're right, Len, it's not my patch,” he concurred. “It's just that we've been asked to look into his whereabouts prior to him going back to his flat. Apparently, he always spent a lot of time in our local clubs after he finished work in the City.” Harris brushed off the inferred question with a violent shake of his head and a sneer.

  “You're barkin' up the wrong tree there, Cole,” he informed the man. “The last time we saw him 'ere was weeks ago when he went off with Carla, and we all know how that ended up, don't we?” Tiptree considered what he had been told and drained his glass, placing the empty receptacle carefully on the edge of Lenny's leather-topped desk. He stood and straightened his overcoat, brushing an imaginary fleck of something from the double-breasted front.

  “Well, tip me the wink if you hear anything, Len,” he said. He turned for the office door but stopped in his tracks. “By the way,” he continued, “we've got a new Chief Inspector at the station. It seems he wants to make a name for himself and nick a few old faces on the manor.” Harris didn't like the sound of this new information. He looked up at the D.I. as he spoke.

  “Will he take a drink, Cole?” Tiptree thought about the the man's question and slowly shook his head. A 'drink' referred to the back-handers that Harris was paying out to different C.I.D. men each month. For him, it was worth it just to be able to continue to operate without hindrance.

  “Don't think so, son,” the policeman replied. “At the moment, he seems straight enough but maybe he's just being a bit shrewd, you know? I'll keep tabs on him though and let you know if anything's coming up that might concern you. Alright?” With that, he made his way across the smokey floor and disappeared up the spiral staircase. Harris took one of his Havana cigars from an oiled wooden box, got it going with his gas lighter and looked accusingly at Randall through the blue-grey smoke that drifted up from it to mushroom out as it hit the yellowing ceiling.