“OK,” I repeated.
Three hours later I was on a train. I’d picked up a magazine from the station and was reading an article on walking in the Lake District. I’d chosen a train that would, after a couple of changes, take me to Penrith in Cumbria.
***
Max had watched Matthew walk up the stairs to leave the club. Something was niggling at the back of his mind and he regretted making the offer to the kid so quickly.
Claudia came back downstairs and walked over to the bar, picked a stool and slid onto it while Max pretended to stack glasses that didn’t need stacking.
Over near the far wall one of the girls was sweeping up the broken glass wearing nothing but a thong.
Finally, Claudia broke the silence. “You did the right thing, Max. The poor boy’s scared to death.”
Max just snorted and shook his head.
Claudia continued, “He can’t deal with this on his own. He needs a break.”
Max replied, “I don’t trust him.”
“Fuck, Max. He’s a homeless kid with no idea about nothing! You could sneeze and blow that boy down.”
“A naïve kid with no idea about nothing that’s just paid someone thousands of pounds to do a hit?”
“What choice did he have?”
“He had the choice to say no.”
“He’s desperate.”
Claudia paused and then, “You thinking of doing it?”
“No.”
“Fuck, Max. It’s all he has left. The kid’s gonna die!”
“Relax, will you; you asked if I was thinking about it. I don’t need to think about it because I’ve already agreed and taken the kid’s cash. I just need to be sure this isn’t going to blow up in my face.”
Max threw a towel onto the bench, lifted the flap and walked out from behind the bar.
He turned to Claudia. “Watch the bar for a few minutes. I need to make a phone call.”
Back in the alley behind the club, Max dialled a number on his mobile phone. As it rang he checked the alley to make sure he was alone. The call was answered.
“Yeah?”
Max said, “I’ve been asked to do some outside catering and I need some info on the client.”
‘Outside catering’ was code. They both knew what was involved.
“Sure,” said the voice. “Pass me the client’s name and I’ll check.”
“Ethan Connelly.”
“I’ll get that for you and be back in touch soon.”
The line went dead.
A breeze rolled an empty Coke can along the floor and Max started.
“Shit,” he said. He hated feeling nervous.
***
Max had suggested I get some exercise and some fresh air and so I’d decided to head to somewhere completely different. The magazine had made the place seem quite attractive and so I’d bought a ticket and I was off. I’d never realised that people walked for fun. I’d always used it to get from one place to another and it never dawned on me that people would make it a hobby; an expensive one too, judging by the adverts in the magazine.
I arrived in Penrith, found myself a cheap bed and breakfast that was small enough for me to be seen and remembered, and settled in. I visited one of the many outdoor shops and bought myself some boots and a jacket and a guide showing me the best places to walk.
So I walked. I walked up mountains and next to lakes. I had breakfast with other people who walked and discussed walking with them. I got to know Mrs Louden, the owner of the B&B, and she started making me sandwiches to take with me as I walked. I bought a new pack to carry them in and I also bought a map and a compass.
I was on a gap year from university, apparently. Mrs Louden asked me if that’s what I was doing and so I’d said yes. I didn’t really know what a gap year was or what I was supposed to be doing but saying yes was all that was required and so that’s what I told people who asked.
Walking through the hills surrounded by the many lakes was an experience I’d never had before. At first it made me feel uncomfortable. I felt isolated when I was walking; being used to having people close by it was difficult to get used to being able to walk for miles without seeing another soul. The summer had gone and with it many of the tourists.
However, as the days went on I began to settle into this new way of operating. I seemed to be running at a different speed to everyone else. Things happened slower up here. Shopkeepers served you more slowly and seemed keen on talking about things that weren’t directly related to the transaction.
I found myself standing in line behind an older woman in a newsagent as she chatted away to the shopkeeper about the parking notices at the library. I started to feel impatient but had this knocked out of me when the shopkeeper dragged me into the conversation and asked me my opinion. I had none; I didn’t know which library they were on about, but I found myself engaging in the conversation despite myself or my lack of knowledge of the subject.
At some point during the conversation the shopkeeper had taken my items and put them through the till. Sometime afterwards I had paid her and was now standing with a bag of groceries engaged in a conversation with the two ladies.
I wasn’t used to this but once introduced to it I started to see it everywhere. People were talking to one another. A walk to the shop wasn’t a functional activity but rather a pastime and a way to catch up on the day’s news.
So I started to do the same. I spoke to people I passed. I stopped next to a man cleaning the gutters above his porch and ended up having a conversation about sheep and the price of sand delivery.
The whole process was different to me and I was beginning to like it. However, in the back of my mind constantly was Ethan. Was he dead? What was happening in London? Will it be safe to return?
I thought about these things often as I walked the hills, often stopping next to a lake to watch the water. It was a Tuesday morning, as I watched the ripples on the surface of a lake caused by a fish coming up to grab something from the surface, that the thought first entered my head – why go back?
I had nothing there to hold me to London. Eventually the money I’d paid for my flat would run out and that would go. My possessions amounted to nothing great. Surely my life would have to be one of the easiest to leave behind.
A duck swam into view and I fished out some crust from a plastic bag I was carrying for my sandwiches and tossed it into the water. My new friend was obviously used to this and made a B-line directly for the floating bread. A couple of other ducks glided into view, alerted to the prospect of a free lunch.
I sat for a while, making some new aquatic friends with my bag of leftover food and considered my options. I was again taken by the silence, punctuated now and then by small noises such as splashes from squabbling ducks, sheep bleating in a nearby field and occasionally a dog barking. These noises, rather than disrupting the silence, seemed to enhance it. When these isolated noises stopped, the silence would ebb back in through the cool air, as if it was more than just the absence of sound but a heavy blanket absorbing background noise so that I existed in a cocoon of peace.
I hadn’t felt as relaxed as this in some time. In fact, it’s possible that I’d never felt this much peace of mind in my life.
I decided to extend my stay. I enjoyed my time at the Lakes and, as the autumn drew in, the place took on a whole new magic as the leaves changed and the landscape toned down in colour; animals and plants preparing for the cold months ahead.
Although I had been able to walk for miles without meeting a single person, the towns and villages had been bustling with visitors, crowding the shops looking for souvenirs, local crafts and outdoor gear. Now, as the seasons changed, with the days growing shorter and the temperatures dropping, the towns began to thin out as the crowds, like the animals, crept back to their win
ter sanctuaries. Some shops closed up for the season but to me the place became even more magical.
I felt at home here and started to feel more like my old self. I purchased a sketch pad and some pencils and spent most of my time walking and drawing.
Mrs Louden suggested that she show some of my drawings to a friend of hers (Agnes) and I agreed. She was impressed with my impressions and offered to buy some of my work for cash as she owned a small gallery in Ambleside.
They say that life has a habit of going full circle and it was difficult to disagree when I found myself on a crisp December morning sitting on the bank of a lake sketching a duck for money. Swap the lake for Trafalgar Square and a duck for a pigeon and I might be back where we started this story.
I looked over my pad at the duck in question. “So, what do you want, duck? What do you desire?”
It tilted its head and regarded me with its other eye, as if to say, “Are you insane? I have bread and a lake, what else is there?”
“I guess you have it all, eh?”
I completed my sketch, turned it around and showed it to my new friend. “So, what do you think?”
I’m not sure whether the duck liked my impression of itself but there was one thing I was sure of.
I was never going back.
11
Jeremiah LaRoche, or ‘Roche’ as he was better known, pulled a handkerchief out of his jacket pocket, wiped his hands and tucked it back. In front of him on the table a glass of 2008 Merlot sat, three quarters gone.
Jeremiah watched as the rivers of wine, the legs, seeped down the inside of the glass and he swirled the glass to create more. He reached into his waistcoat packet and pulled out an antique gold pocket watch (an inherited item from his father) and checked the time. 11:10. Absent-mindedly he wound it as he peered out through the window onto the street.
“Voulez-vous un autre verre?” a voice asked beside him. Jeremiah turned to look at the waitress standing next to him. No, he had no time for another drink. Shame, it was a good wine.
“Non, merci. L’addition, s’il vous plait.”
The waitress walked off to fetch the bill and Jeremiah reached for his wallet. He would ignore the bill as he always did. He always paid what he thought appropriate without looking at the bill. Sometimes people were very pleased, sometimes not. Some argued but with Jeremiah you tended not to argue for very long.
At sixty years old, Jeremiah looked at least ten years younger and what age had managed to get away with only added to his demeanour. He had presence. He spoke softly, he was courteous; a true gentleman who appreciated the finer things.
He slipped thirty euros out of his wallet and dropped it onto the table as he got up. He brushed himself down, straightened his jacket and walked towards the door.
From behind him the waitress called to him, “Monsieur! Votre monnaie!”
Jeremiah smiled at her, nodded and walked out leaving a puzzled, yet pleased, waitress holding thirty euros in exchange for a glass of wine.
Closing the door behind him, Jeremiah walked down the street, keeping the library door across the street clearly in view.
When he reached the end of the block he stopped and turned to face the library, Bibliothèque Vandamme.
He stood and watched people leaving until one of them caught his eye. Male, mid-thirties, short brown hair, red jacket and a baseball cap; a close enough match to attempt a confirmation.
Jeremiah had had what some might consider a gifted childhood, brought up in an upper-class environment in South-East England.
Half French on his father’s side and with an Italian mother, Jeremiah’s parents had moved to the UK to expand their business into Northern Europe, although the business was more a hobby than a necessity, being independently wealthy from old Sicilian and French money earned by their families in ways best not thought about.
Despite a solid education and cultural development, Jeremiah was a troubled child; a callous disregard for anything and everything else, he was an inconvenience and an embarrassment to his father who valued his place in British high society. He would have been ejected from his school numerous times had it not been a coin-operated establishment, funded by the rich and powerful, and it was well within his father’s means to cushion each of Jeremiah’s violent and delinquent falls with copious amounts of cash; enough to keep the school tolerant of his behaviour and determined to shoe-horn Jeremiah into achieving what his father assumed was his potential.
Hence, Jeremiah left school academically qualified far beyond what he would have been without the structure and attention that old money and standing could buy.
After leaving school he spent a couple of years with no direction; driving fast cars, hopping from one party to the next and attempting to satisfy his inner urge for mayhem with more and more extreme sports and activities. His father’s influence over expensive schools gave way to his influence in keeping his son out of prison but his patience with this family embarrassment was wearing thin.
At twenty years old his father had had enough and demanded that he find a future that wasn’t an embarrassment to the family. When Jeremiah showed no interest in settling down, his father resorted to threatening to cut him off from the cash flow and this was enough to make Jeremiah think.
He didn’t want a job and the only thing that held any mild interest for him was the armed forces. Therefore, at the age of twenty-one, Jeremiah joined the Royal Navy as an entry-level officer. He was a natural. The structure gave him what he needed to channel his energy productively so that he soon stood out among his peers as remarkable, until he finally got offered the chance to join a very special group of individuals trained for special operations.
Training pushed him to his limits and he thrived in that environment as discipline was added to his training and natural predilection to ruthlessness; he became a formidable fighting force, travelling the world under the Special Forces banner of the British Royal Navy, albeit that the banner didn’t officially exist and was seen by no one off the classified list.
His career lasted thirty years where he finally received a commendation for his years of exemplary service. At the age of fifty-two Jeremiah was taken off the active service list and was offered a comfortable position teaching with the SAS but he had no interest in it. He fought to remain on active duty but this was denied and so he left the navy with a chestful of medals and, with the contacts he’d made in the forces over the past thirty years, started up in private security.
For the next few years Jeremiah earned a considerable amount of money playing bodyguard to some of the rich and famous, but he didn’t like the petulance associated with such people, and so he moved direction into providing bodyguard services to workers in war-torn countries.
For the next couple of years he worked alongside some big contracts with companies such as British Petroleum, the UK Government’s Foreign Embassy, Sky News and the BBC’s documentary and news teams. It was interesting work and he met some very interesting people, many of which he’d seen previously on TV, but it lacked something.
It seemed more like babysitting than real work and so when he was approached by a man working for a covert organisation in France he jumped at it. As he spent time with this organisation, his interest in its activities grew and he found himself in his perfect environment.
Jeremiah had many unique gifts that set him aside from others. His ruthlessness and determination to complete a task were legendary within certain circles but what made him even more memorable (and more frightening) was his attachment to etiquette and politeness that he’d had drummed into him as a child.
He was chaos and he learned many years ago that chaos leads to entropy which in turn leads to a destruction of all complex systems. To avoid breaking down to nothing, Jeremiah realised that he needed to provide structure to his inner chaos; provide an exoskeleton to support his na
turally destructive character.
Process and reason provided this structure. Integrity and excellence were valued and provided a framework into which he could weave his personality.
So Jeremiah was courteous, direct and loyal to those he worked with. If you gave him a job to do it would be done. There was no risk associated with giving Jeremiah a job. His word was his bond, not driven by any belief in God or feelings of conscience, but because it made sense to live this way. People listened to you and no time was wasted by people trying to second guess your intentions.
Jeremiah believed that people lied for many reasons but one of the main reasons was fear: fear of losing something, fear of appearing to be something you’d rather not be seen to be. He had no fear and so he didn’t lie unless it was necessary to achieve a goal; he was straightforward to those he spoke to and would ask direct questions with no concern for how those questions would be received, save that he was courteous in asking.
So he became ‘Roche’, in more ways than one, and right now he had identified his potential target.
Time to verify.
He crossed the street and began following the man down the street, gaining on him as he walked. As he reached the end of the block the man stopped and waited for the traffic lights to change. Jeremiah came to a stop next to him. He looked across and smiled. The man smiled back, a slight frown crossing his face.
“Hello Dennis Carver,” said Jeremiah. The man’s eyes widened (confirmation) but it was too late. As he turned to break away and run he heard a zip noise and felt his wrist go tight. He pulled his hand away but realised he was going nowhere. His hand was zip-tied tightly to Jeremiah’s wrist.
Looking straight ahead, Jeremiah said, “I’d like us to spend some time together. Shall we?” and he gestured with his other hand for them to walk left around the corner and away from the main road.
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