by Jay Stringer
In a few seconds he was level with me. We locked eyes and I saw he wasn’t looking to back down. His hands turned sharply on the wheel, and the cab veered toward me. I moved as far over as I could, keeping a few inches between us, as he drove down the middle of the road now, straddling the two lanes.
There was no divider along this stretch of the road. Nothing to stop me turning into the other lanes of traffic, heading in the other direction. I steeled myself, and did just that, finding a gap between two oncoming cars. Once again I heard horns as the taxi turned after me.
What was it with this guy?
I took a sharp left into McAlpine Street and got a sprint going. I could hear him turn in after me, but I’d figured out a way to shake him. At the top of the road is an MOD building with a gated car park. As I reached the barriers at the entrance, a guard stepped out from the security hut to stop me. I turned past him and bunny-hopped up onto the kerb, squeezing in between the metal fence and the barrier. I heard the guard shouting for me to stop.
I headed straight for the far corner of the car park, where a low wall separates the grounds from the next street over. I climbed off the bike, took a breath, and heaved it over the wall, then climbed after it.
The good news was the taxi was long gone.
The bad news? I had two minutes left to make the delivery.
The extra bad news? The office was a mile away.
I’d been getting faster with each month. I may have given up running, but I still had the same instincts. I was always pushing for a personal best. I’d managed to start doing two-and-a-half-minute miles. I was determined to push on, to try and hit the two-minute mark, but so far it was beyond me. I knew I couldn’t make the delivery in time, but I could hear Phil’s voice saying I told you so, and that was all I needed.
I raced down Argyle Street. My lungs were burning and my heart was still threatening to climb out of my ears. I took the third left, straight into Blythswood Street, then powered up the hill. I mounted the kerb in front of the main entrance to the building I was looking for, and dropped the bike onto the pavement.
The law firm was on the fourth floor, but luckily for me, and my lungs, I only needed to get it signed for at the ground-floor reception.
The receptionist was a petite woman named Tina. She was always neatly styled and hidden away under a layer of fake tan, hairspray and lipstick. I was sure her ideal visitor wasn’t a sweaty woman in cargo shorts and a vest, especially one breathing so heavily, but she was used to me by now. This was one of my regular delivery spots, and I’d been to this building a few times in my other job, dressed up much smarter in a business suit.
‘Hi, Sam,’ she said. ‘What we got today?’
‘A heart attack, I think.’
She pretended that was funny while I rummaged in my messenger bag. I pulled out a heavy package wrapped in Manila paper and handed it across. ‘No idea, but it’s for Nicolay & Turner.’
She took the package and placed it down out of sight beneath the desk. I handed over the docket for her to sign and checked the time on my phone. I was one minute late.
‘What time did they want it by?’ Tina said, as she printed her name next to her signature.
‘Four.’
Tina checked her watch and then shrugged. She wrote 16.00 in the space for the time the package was received. She tore off the part of the form that needed to go to the client, and handed the docket back to me, offering up a mischievous smile. ‘Sod ’em.’
‘Thanks, Tina.’
Out on the street I sat down next to my bike and took deep breaths. As soon as I was convinced the world wouldn’t start spinning again, I pulled out my water bottle and took a long swig.
My phone beeped a few notifications. One was confirmation on our courier app that I’d made the delivery. The other was from a dating service my best friend, Hanya, had signed me up to.
The website was vLove.co.uk. It sounded like a Swedish car. Hanya had downloaded the app to my phone and signed me up. We’d recorded my profile video in a bar a few nights earlier. She’d needed to get me drunk before I’d play along.
People could watch my video, then decide whether they liked me or not. If they told the app they did, I’d get a notification to watch their video and see if the interest was mutual.
Every like I’d had so far seemed to be from a guy who was obsessed with showing me his penis.
No thanks.
My earphones beeped. I pressed the button on the phone, and Phil’s voice came on the line.
‘I hope you’re not skiving,’ he said. ‘Because we just got another job.’
FIVE
FERGUS
15:00
You’re only as good as your most recent kill.
Frankly, mine was a bit of an embarrassment. Some rich old boot paid me to kill her eldest son, ensuring her estate would fall to her youngest.
Families, right?
It’s really hard to take pride in settling a stupid domestic squabble with some faked auto-erotic asphyxiation. Even harder when I fucked it up. It took three attempts to strangle the guy, because he was heavier than he looked. I’d tailed him for a couple of days before the hit, but he must have practised using posture to hide the pounds, because, oh boy he was a solid lump.
The truth was, I’d been sloppy. I hadn’t taken the job seriously. I usually wouldn’t have taken something like this on. I mean, I kill people for money, so I can’t pretend to be a moral crusader. It’s just a job. And I’m good at it. Some people spend their careers developing plagues and diseases. Some people sit in parliament coming up with ways to take money off poor people. Bankers take money off everybody.
They do what they do, with no regard for ethics.
At least I have rules:
No children.
No pets.
No disabled people.
I try to avoid domestics. They’re small and petty. I can’t pretend that everybody I’ve killed has been a bad egg. I can’t even say they all had it coming. But you want the real truth? We could all be said to have it coming. Write down the worst things you’ve ever done. Just the top ten. The silent little moments of guilt sitting at the back of your eyes in the bathroom mirror.
Did you break someone’s heart? Were you a bad husband or wife? Lousy mother or father? Was there a time you stole some money from the till at work? Maybe you just cheated on a test. We’ve all done things. One day, these things might come to the attention of the wrong person, and you get me knocking on your door.
Morals have to be flexible when you’re self-employed. Sometimes I can turn jobs down if I think they’re shady, but I’ve still got bills to pay.
So I took a bad job. I didn’t take it seriously. I made a mess of it.
I’m making up for it right now. This one is a more interesting target. Martin Mitchell. A retired politician. ‘Retired’ is a bit of a euphemism. He lost the election. Martin is the kind of figure who is known by his first name. Say Martin in Glasgow, and everyone knows who you mean. If you want to put in the extra wee bit of effort, you can call him Marxist Martin, the name the press gave him a couple of decades ago.
Back then he was the poster boy, raging against the establishment with dark hair and a commie cap. But years do funny things to a person, and he’s become just another self-serving shill.
If you’ve been an MP for a few years and you get voted out, you get a thirty-grand payoff. He’s been blowing through that with cocaine and hookers at sex clubs, and I think he’s been pissing people off with the amount of attention that’s been drawing.
Bad for the party and all that.
Case in point for the stupid things he’s doing. Right now, at three in the afternoon, in the middle of a heatwave, he’s shacked up in his apartment with a hooker. His dealer was the one who tipped me off. Hookers and dealers are fine to work with. They’ll sell information, and they rarely rat on a hit man. They talk to the cops all the time, sure, but they’re telling tales on each other, not on p
eople like me. It’s just basic common sense not to grass on the professional killer.
Martin lives in a secured building in Glasgow’s Merchant City. That expensive bit where all the wankers live. (Okay, I tried to buy a place there once. I’m a wee bit jealous.) The door on the ground floor has an electric lock, something you need a key card to open. Unless you’re me, and locks are a piece of piss.
He lives on the third floor, but I take the stairs rather than the lift. I like time to think, to plan. Also, I’m a control freak, and I don’t like being in a lift on my way to a job. I made that mistake on a job in New York. The lift got stuck between floors for twenty minutes, and by the time the mechanic fixed it, the target had already gone. It was three more days before I tracked her down.
I took her out in a lift, in tribute to the great gods of irony.
When I get to his floor, I can already hear the sex. Insistent and frantic. Most of the noises are male, but I can hear a woman in the mix, too. There are three locks on the door, but each of them is the same Yale design. That’s utterly pointless. I spring each in turn, and then ease the door open, covering the lock mechanisms with my forearm to muffle the sounds as each latch springs back out. I listen for any give or wobble that might lead to a squeak in the door, but it’s solid.
The hallway is stark, and very white. There’s no furniture out here. The only thing is a small bowl full of pebbles on a dark wooden plinth in the middle of the hall. He probably thinks it’s Chinese or something. I bet he spent thousands on it. The bedroom door is open a small crack. The sounds are coming from in there.
I take a look in through the opening. The window on the far side, the front of the building, is covered by thick curtains. Good protection against paparazzi. Great cover for a hit. Martin is on his back, being ridden by the woman. She’s facing away from me. Her frame is small, with narrow shoulders, and a tattoo of a snake runs down her spine. That must have hurt. She’s resting on her knees and rocking back and forth. No excitement or passion in what she’s doing, but Martin’s into it. There’s bad sex, and there’s guy sex. This is both. But for someone like Martin, the sex he’s currently having will always be the best he’s ever had.
He’s making most of the noise, commentating on his own adventure.
It’s all:
‘Oh yeah, I’m fucking you.’
‘Yeah, I’m in deep, baby.’
‘You’re riding me, bitch.’
What a charmer.
I step back and look to my right. The door to the kitchen is half open. I can see sunlight from the windows falling on the counter top and a large silver fridge. I head into the kitchen and open the fridge. There are twelve bottles of a trendy German beer. I take one out, making sure not to make too much noise, and then pop the top off with a bottle opener that’s lying out on the counter, taking care not to rip the plastic of my gloves.
I lean back against the fridge and start taking slow sips from the cool beer. I can let him finish.
Even a fud like Marxist Martin deserves the chance to finish one last time, before he’s finished for the last time.
SIX
FERGUS
15:10
I’m halfway down my beer when Martin cums. And he doesn’t do it in silence. I hear a loud grunt, almost like he’s been surprised by something. Then he starts to announce what’s happening. ‘I’m cumming,’ he says. Then he repeats it several times, as though she didn’t believe him before. Given all the build-up, the actual end is disappointing. I just hear a long soft whimper, barely above a child’s strangled cry, and he says, ‘Yeah.’
I drain the beer and slip the empty bottle into a jacket pocket. I pull out my Ruger.
There’s a muffled conversation, and Martin steps out into the hallway. I move away from the fridge and over to the sink, out of sight. He wobbles past the kitchen door and into the next room over. He moves on unsteady legs, like he’s just run a marathon. I hear a cough, and then the sound of him pissing into a toilet. Then I hear him start up a shower without flushing.
The bedroom door opens again, and the woman comes out. She lights up a smoke, a cheap-looking brand, and doesn’t pay attention to where she’s going. I hope she’s just going to leave straight away, but she walks into the kitchen. She squints against the sunlight, then let’s out a small yelp when she sees me. It’s not loud enough for Martin to have heard. I put a finger to my lips and raise the gun; she stares at it and stays quiet.
She’s got dusty brown eyes, and her short black hair is slicked down close to her scalp. There’s another tattoo winding up her front, but this one is some kind of dragon, with grey wings that spread out over her breasts.
She’s a lass with a dragon—
Never mind.
‘You professional?’ I say.
She nods.
‘You been paid?’
She nods again.
‘Then pretend you never saw me, and get out of here.’
She doesn’t move straight away. Maybe she’s not used to people being nice to her. I nod my head to the side, indicating again that she can go. She mouths a silent Thank you, then turns on her naked heels and heads back into the bedroom. Just over a minute later she walks, still naked but holding her clothes and a purse in a bundle, out the front door.
I head into the hallway when I hear the shower stop, and push open the bathroom door with my foot.
Martin is stood next to the bathtub, with one foot up on the edge, rubbing his cock with a towel. It’s bright red and stood to attention, flapping up and down a little as if there’s a passing breeze. He must be popped up on Viagra. He looks up at me and his eyes go wide. I’m used to that. Most people who spend their last seconds looking at me are surprised when it happens. Not because they don’t deserve it, but because their egos make them think it’ll never happen.
‘Hang on, wait,’ he says. He puts both hands out toward me, palms out, and the towel falls to the floor. ‘I’m not worth it.’
‘Probably not.’
I raise the gun.
He does something I don’t expect. He gets angry. Indignant. He balls his hands into fists and puts them to his hips, looking like a child having a tantrum.
‘Don’t you know who I am?’ he says.
‘Of course I do, ya fud. Joe Pepper sends his regards.’
I fire twice. The gun sounds like a metal bolt slamming home on a heavy door, and my hand recoils between each, but I’m used to it. The first shot cuts through his throat. Insurance that his body doesn’t let out a yell before noticing that his brain has stopped talking. The second puts a small red dot on his forehead, and a larger red dot on the mirror behind him.
I wait while he hits the deck. Sometimes I’m paid to make a hit look like something else. For a little extra, I’ll even frame a specific person. But for this one the client wants it to look like a hit. He’s sending a message.
I walk back out into the hallway, and hear movement in the bedroom.
Shit.
There’s someone else in the flat.
How did I miss that?
I stride into the bedroom. There’s a blind spot. Behind the door, a whole side of the room that I didn’t check out. Basic fucking stuff. A real schoolboy error. I must be losing my edge. In that blind spot, slumped in a chair facing the bed, is a fat guy wearing nothing but a dog collar, and I don’t mean he’s a priest.
He’s got a mobile phone in his hand, and I can hear it dialling out. Whoever he’s calling, they’ll pick up any second now, and then this whole thing will be out of control.
The fat guy is staring up at me. He’s drugged up to his eyeballs, and his reactions are slow, but he’s seen me and his brain is trying to figure out what facial expression is appropriate. He looks familiar, but I can’t quite place him. And right now, that doesn’t matter. He’s a witness. I don’t like killing people if I don’t have to. Usually, if there are bystanders nearby, I walk away from a job and try again later, or figure out a way to do it without being seen.
But I’ve fucked up on this one.
Like I said, you’re only as good as your most recent kill, and my record is getting fucking embarrassing.
I pull the phone from his drugged-up hands. He puts one up to ward off what’s coming. I fire the same one-two pattern I used on Martin. Shut him up vocally, followed by permanently. I look down at the number on the phone.
It’s not 999.
Someone picks up at the other end. A female voice. Maybe a slight accent. I break the connection and pocket the phone. I’ll dump it in the Clyde on the way to my next appointment.
His clothes are on the floor by the chair. I go through the suit trousers and find a wallet. Credit cards. Photo IDs. Dominic Porter.
Shit.
I know the name. I can place him now. My local councillor in the East End. He’s a member of a different party to Marxist Martin. They’re pretty much rivals. I think I even voted for the daft cunt at the last election. You’d think he had better things to be doing at twenty-past three in the afternoon. Like, say, running a city?
Killing a city councillor was not part of the plan.
Time to get out. Draw a line under this one. The target is dead, and the collateral damage can’t be helped.
I’m a professional, though. Even if my current record doesn’t make it look that way. I was hired to do a job, and, though I’ve done it, there were some complications. I need to tell my client. In this game, you’re always thinking about the next job, always maintaining good working relationships.
I call my client from my current burner. When he doesn’t answer, I leave a voicemail, in a code that I hope he can figure out.
‘Joe. It’s me. Dropped your passenger off, but there was a problem. Someone else was along for the ride, had to make an extra drop. Call me.’
I step out of the flat and pull the door closed behind me. I pause for a second, listening for any movement around me, or on the floors above and below. Nobody in the building seems to have noticed, and there are no sirens yet.