“Where to?”
“We’ll go back and take one of the motorbikes.” He was already going. “We need a vehicle, we can’t walk.”
Amelia preferred to follow him without asking any more questions. She had a strange feeling, like a presentiment.
8
She rubbed her face to remove the mud that had dried on her skin, the tiny drops of blood. She would’ve liked to have had a shower, to have washed it all away. But it seemed too much to ask for there to be some soap in the toilet of that country pub.
There were so many places they could have gone to, yet they had gone there. A coincidence is strange, but can happen. Two coincidences don’t exist.
She arranged her hair in a ponytail with a hair tie she had bought from a shop not far from where they’d parked the motorbike, together with some clothes in her size and a pair of shoes. She had changed without any hurry. At that time in the morning there weren’t many people in the pub, and nobody in the ladies’ room. She was presentable now. She added a pair of useless sunglasses and a cap. She took the dirty clothes and put them in the bag that had contained her clean ones. She was about to throw it in the bin, then she changed her mind.
She checked out of the toilet door. Nobody in sight. She detected the rear exit she had noticed earlier and sneaked out through there. A wheelie bin was there a few steps away, full of rubbish. They hadn’t collected it yet. She opened it and dropped the bag inside, then she returned to the pub.
Only a few seats were occupied in the main room. A man was lazily having breakfast in front of a newspaper. Amelia kept her head down and reached an empty table. Mike was nowhere to be seen, but he had to be close.
Hiding her face behind the menu, she cast a glance at the man standing on the other side of the counter. She had noticed him immediately after entering the place. He hadn’t paid any particular attention to her then, nor was he doing so now. Unlike him, a waitress addressed her with a wide smile and approached. “Are you ready to order?” She was holding a notepad.
“I’m … I’m waiting for someone.” She forced herself to offer a relaxed smile.
“Oh, well, I’ll come back later.” As she walked away, she grabbed the remote control resting on another table, and turned on the TV set.
Amelia’s gaze was drawn by the moving pictures, although the sound was so low she couldn’t hear it. The footage was showing a car partially sunk along the coast. A heavy vehicle was towing it out. The line on the screen read: ‘The scuba divers are searching for the body of the missing police officer.’ She gaped as she saw her face appearing in a small square on the top of the picture.
She checked the counter again. The man wasn’t there anymore, so she put aside any caution and rose to reach the remote control. She raised the volume.
A BBC correspondent was speaking. “They’ve just confirmed that the number plate of the car matches the one of the vehicle driven by the man allegedly responsible for yesterday morning’s shooting at Goldberg & Associates. A lifeless body was found inside the compartment. Speculation is that it’s the same man. It isn’t clear whether he was already dead before the car entered the water or whether he had drowned. The man had kidnapped an officer of the City of London Police, Amelia Jennings, and was filmed by a traffic control camera, as he put her in the boot of this car.” She turned slightly to point at the car that was now out of the water, surrounded by a small crowd of uniformed officers and criminologists. The yellow tape cordoning off the area was right behind the reporter. “From a first possible reconstruction, it seems that the vehicle swerved and ended up off the road, then it fell into the sea. The event appears to have occurred a few hours after the kidnapping. Jennings’s weapon was found inside the vehicle. It is also known that the suspect was wounded. The windscreen is smashed, suggesting that Jennings might have been thrown out. The scuba divers will continue to search the area.”
“So does this mean that the police are persuaded that she was still in the car?” a voiceover asked.
“The police are avoiding any comment, but from what I could grasp, the backrest of the backseat was found lowered. It’s impossible to establish whether this happened before the impact, but in this case a possible theory is that the woman had tried to free herself and could have overwhelmed the criminal, who was already wounded, thus causing the accident.”
Amelia muted the TV set. She’d heard enough. She looked around to check whether any other customer had been watching the news broadcast, but nobody was turned towards the TV.
During all those hours she’d been so deeply involved in the events that she hadn’t thought for a moment about what could have happened out there. There was a dark point in all that story, represented by what had happened in the cottage. When she’d woken up alone, she hadn’t found any trace of the man who had kidnapped her, or of his car, but she remembered well the gunshots and when she had been injected with something that had made her pass out. The presence that she’d felt.
The killer’s death was a setup. He hadn’t been wounded so much that he would lose control of the car on a coast road. And anyway, what was he doing there alone? She had heard at least two more voices. Now she knew that one had been Jeff’s.
But there was another matter. Nobody thought she was alive. And with the death of the killer, of the one who was considered the only culprit of the murders in the City, the case was closed. Very convenient. Convenient for whom?
Making sure that nobody was looking at her, she leant on the counter to sneak a peek inside the kitchen. She could see the cook talking to the waitress. Where had the other man ended up?
It was happening now. There was no other explanation.
Forcing herself to walk slowly, she headed for the toilet again and stopped beside the door bearing a sign that read ‘Private’. The low light bothered her. She took off her sunglasses and put them in a pocket, then she placed a hand on the handle, and it opened without a problem. Beyond the door was a stairway. She took a deep breath to empower herself, then she started to climb. The first set of stairs led to a landing. She ventured to the second one. She was almost halfway, when she heard a pop.
“No, please!” a male voice exclaimed.
Amelia sped up and, when she reached the top of the stairs, she saw him.
At the same time Mike turned, pointing a gun fitted with a silencer. Surprise dawned on his face. “Why the hell have you come here?!”
She recognised the owner of the pub curled up against the wall, trembling. He was holding his leg at his knee, where his trousers were soaked with blood. His gaze was attracted to her presence, and the terror on his face seemed to be increasing.
“So I wasn’t wrong,” Amelia said. “You are the killer of the lawyers.”
Mike cracked a bitter smile. “You shouldn’t have come here. I told you. The less you know about this story, the better.”
She watched the current victim of the killer for a moment. She didn’t feel a shred of pity. Then she resumed facing Mike. “I thought you dealt with a higher level of contracts. Ah, no, wait.” She raised a hand to prevent him from replying. “This was a contract of Yasir’s, right.”
He kept scrutinising her, but didn’t speak. His surprise had turned into caution.
“At this point you could tell me everything. You can’t be afraid that I will arrest you, can you?” She spread her arms and smiled at him. “I’m disarmed.”
“Who are you?”
“Oh, I’m nobody. A woman in the wrong place at the wrong time. It has happened to me more than once.” Another brief glance at the man on the floor. “If you are the killer, who hired you? What were you doing at Goldberg’s?”
The lines on Mike’s face relaxed. “Do you really want to know the whole story now?”
“Why not?” She pointed at the owner. “He won’t tell anybody, given that he’ll soon be dead.”
“No, please,” the man murmured.
“Shut up!” Amelia shouted in a surge of rage. And silence was w
hat she got. When she resumed looking at Mike, she could see his bewilderment. “It seems that it’s Goldberg who set an army on you, but I still don’t get one thing.”
Mike was still pointing his weapon at her, but she didn’t care. “Jeff Matthews was a contact of mine in London. Thanks to him I settled here after Afghanistan. I continued doing what I was good at: killing people. But instead of being a killer sent by my country to eliminate some strategic targets, I started killing for hire.”
“And you started the estate agency.”
Her comment left him gaping, but just for a second. “What do you know about the estate agency?”
“I’ve heard you and Yasir talking about it. Go on.”
He didn’t seem satisfied by her answer, but followed her invitation anyway. “And thanks to him I got the contract that would allow me to retire from the business forever. A ten million pound contract.”
“The one for killing the lawyers.”
He didn’t reply, but there was no need to.
“Who was the instigator?”
“I never know who the instigator is. I know the intermediary, at most.”
“Goldberg.” It all fitted now.
“Exactly.”
“First he hires you to kill some people on behalf of a client and then decides to snuff you out.” She frowned. “I don’t understand. He practically had an army, so why turn to you?”
“Because I’m a ghost, because I don’t leave trails that can be traced back to him or his client. I think Jeff and his men worked for his client.”
“And because after your death nobody would come looking for you,” Amelia added.
“Yeah, I’m afraid you’re right.”
“What were you doing there yesterday morning?”
“Isabel had called me …” He stopped.
“Goldberg’s assistant?” she urged him.
“Yeah, she was the person through whom he passed the names to me. Well, actually, she belonged to our agency, she was another old acquaintance from CIA times.” He took a breath, as he stretched out his fingers on the grip slightly and then tightened them again. “This contract started more than a year ago; we knew it would take a long time, because our targets were all well protected and not easy to approach. We imposed a condition that Isabel, only she, would get in touch with Goldberg, so that we remained anonymous; to achieve this he gave her the position of assistant. It was part of the agreement.” He sighed. “When Goldberg proposed an extension of the contract with the addition of ten million, she warned me, but I wanted to learn more anyway. Goldberg wanted to meet me in person, because the target was supposed to be a very high profile person. And I … well … I’ve been greedy, I wanted to believe it was true.”
“And instead it was a trap.”
“I’m not a hack. I was armed, but when I understood who you were, I avoided drawing the gun I was carrying in an ankle holster. Truth be told, I was more worried that they wanted to follow me after the meeting, to eliminate me and anybody else working with me. I didn’t expect them to try to kill me in the firm’s building.” He cracked a smile. “On second thoughts, it made sense. It was their best chance. I was in their territory, they controlled the security system.”
It was true. The security cameras hadn’t been able to film what had happened during the escape of the killer. It was obvious that it was an inside job.
Even Amelia couldn’t avoid appreciating the astuteness of that act. “They pretended it was an attempt to kill Goldberg. You and Isabel would’ve been collateral damage. Meanwhile he was holed up in the panic room and that explained the fact he had survived. The killer would’ve escaped and …” She gestured with her hand. “All sorted! We wouldn’t have heard of any more cases and would have never found out the identity of the killer, least of all the instigator.”
“They hadn’t expected your presence, that is, that of a police officer. And when they understood that the police were around there, they cancelled the plan and ordered the man to get back to safety.”
“And I ended up in the middle. Lucky as usual.”
“If you and your colleagues hadn’t been there, more men would’ve surely come out and chased me inside the building.”
“Don’t give me any special credit,” Amelia mocked him. “You would’ve got by somehow.”
“Maybe yes, maybe not. Anyway I was in your debt. When I understood you had disappeared, I went looking for you.”
Sure, it had been him. The presence in the cottage. “How did you know I was there?”
“The fact I had accepted Jeff’s proposal didn’t mean I trusted him. I’ve learnt to make a virtue out of distrust. And so I made sure to know the strategic places he used together with his thugs. Taking them by surprise wasn’t so difficult, but Jeff succeeded in escaping.”
“You threw the car of the man who had kidnapped me into the sea, with him inside.”
Mike looked at her with intrigue on his face.
She gestured behind her. “They’ve found the body. They were talking about it on TV.” She paused, placing her hands on her face. “They believe I was in the car, they’re searching for my corpse. It’s almost funny, isn’t it?”
“Well, it wasn’t intentional.”
“Why did you pick me up on that road? I don’t understand.” She was gesturing. “You had set me free, I was out of the picture.”
“I don’t understand it either. I was checking you from afar. I wanted to make sure you were safe.” He pulled a funny face. “Then I saw that someone was about to run over you and I thought I had to intervene. I really wanted to take you to the nearest police station … at least in theory.” The expression on his face seemed to say that it wasn’t exactly what he had wanted to do with her, but perhaps he would.
“And you messed me up even more.” She could barely restrain herself from smiling openly at him. He hadn’t really done her a favour by picking her up there, but now she wasn’t sorry about that at all.
“I hadn’t realised they were following me.” He resumed his serious look. “Now both Isabel and Yasir are dead and I got triple what I thought I was going to get in the end.” The brief laugh that followed wasn’t amused at all. “You may tell all of this to your chief; this way you can boast that you solved the case. I don’t care. There’s an island in the Caribbean Sea waiting for me.” He lowered his weapon, which he had kept aimed at her during the whole time.
Amelia glanced at it and then resumed gazing at Mike. “I won’t say anything at all. I will come with you.”
He shook his head. “We’ve already discussed that.”
“If I intended to return to being a police officer, I couldn’t let you kill this man,” she said, indicating the figure curled up against the wall. His face had become wan. Judging from the puddle forming beneath him, the bullet must have damaged a big artery. He’d lost a lot of blood. Weak as he was, he didn’t appear to have the strength to follow their conversation.
She was observing Mike again. It seemed he had a method for his executions. If the victim tried to escape, first he shot at their legs, as he’d done with the biker, then finished them off while looking them in the eye. Did he like seeing his victims suffer? Catching their very last moments of life, their last breath leaving their body? No, she was certain that there was no emotional involvement for him. Perhaps it was simply the fact he followed a procedure that allowed him to remain detached as he carried out that thankless task.
“I don’t see how you could stop me.”
“I’m not even thinking of stopping you. I want you to kill him.”
“What?” Perplexity came to life on his face. For once he was the one who was lacking a few pieces of the puzzle.
Amelia started laughing. “How do you think I know about the estate agency?”
Mike remained silent, waiting for an explanation.
She resumed being serious and stared at him. “I’m the instigator of this murder.”
His astonishment was interrupted by
a moan of the man in agony on the floor. He turned to him for a moment, then looked back at her.
“You know, I’ve been working at the City of London Police for about a week. I was at Scotland Yard before that. And previously … years ago … I was a lawyer. Then, well, I had some problems and I wanted to change my life.” She shook her head to chase that thought away. “I digress. What I mean is that while I worked for the Metropolitan Police in the Flying Squad I was dating a guy, an informer.” She kind of laughed and raised a hand. “I’m terrible at choosing my bed partners, we’ve already ascertained that. Anyway I was doing fine with him and I had told him about the death of my son.” She succeeded in saying those last words without bursting into tears. It was the first time she had managed that.
Mike’s face, instead, contracted as he heard them.
“He was a good child …” She smiled as she recalled his happy face. He really was. He was always happy, he never had a tantrum, and she loved him more than herself. She didn’t exist anymore. Joseph had been everything to her. She lowered her gaze. There they came, the tears. “And he …” She pointed at the man on the floor who was observing her, unable to react. “He caused the accident who killed him … and he has never paid for this.” She turned to Mike again. “When I entered the police, I kept an eye on him, I wanted to find something, anything to make him pay.” She emitted a vexed sigh. “Just think, how silly of me! I thought I could succeed with the law. And instead nothing. A real model citizen, except when he ran that red light, hitting my car. But there were no traffic cameras to prove it, no witness who could confirm it.” She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, so that she could see better.
Mike had approached her, but it seemed he didn’t dare touch her or comment on her words.
“So Sam, my boyfriend, suggested another way to punish him. He wasn’t certainly a model citizen, he used to know a lot of people. Some acquaintances of his acquaintances knew how to contact this estate agency.” She let a laugh escape. “At the beginning I thought he was joking and then, when I understood he was serious, I was horrified by his proposal. But the more time that passed, the more I liked the idea. Until I told him I wanted to do it. I gathered the money in cash, fifty thousand pounds, and I gave him the dossier I had created for this …” She scrutinised the man. She couldn’t find a sufficiently disparaging word to describe him. “Two days later, Sam was killed in a shooting.” As she turned to Mike, she saw he was a step away from her. “And I’ve never known where the money had ended up … until now.”
Kindred Intentions Page 15