Final Target

by E. V. Seymour

  ‘Four.’ I counted it out, thinking that it would buy him a heck of a lot of paint. At this rate he could erect an extension.

  He eyed the loot in the same way he viewed his lunch. I clocked the greedy gleam in his eye. Money in that quantity looks nice and tempting when it’s laid out.

  ‘And I’ll need you to fix it for Darren to contact me direct by phone,’ I added. It was absolutely forbidden for an offender to receive calls.

  ‘Four and a half,’ Wall said.

  I don’t like people pushing their luck, and scraped back the chair and stood up. ‘Forget it.’ As I went to sweep the cash back into my jacket, Wall’s clammy hand came down on mine. It was not a nice feeling.

  He looked up at me with his small wet eyes. ‘I am not an unreasonable man. Make it three o’clock, ‘F’ wing.’

  The detox unit, I registered. How Wall would manage to pull it off was of no concern of mine. Did I trust him? Yes, I did. He knew the consequences should he fail to deliver.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Darren Marriott looked petrified. I don’t know whether he was expecting to see his brief, but he most definitely was not expecting to see me. Somehow, Wall had managed to get us into an interview room alone with no glass between us, simply a low table, two chairs. No rubdown, no metal detectors, no sniffer dog. The lens on the camera in the corner was blank, unseeing.

  ‘Hello Mr Hex,’ Marriott said, eyes darting, left leg twitching, fingers tattooing a drum roll on the formica.

  I overcame my natural aversion to sitting in a place that I’d spent my adult life avoiding, and leant back, hands in my pockets, and smiled. Marriott junior was a good-looking guy. Dark, with even features, he had a strong jaw line, liquid brown eyes with unusually long lashes for a man. In another life, he could have been a model. I wondered if he was having a bad time inside. Lester, his nondescript brother, was nothing like him. It doesn’t pay to stand out too much if you’re a button man.

  ‘Darren, I want to talk to you about Billy.’

  Darren’s face clouded. His neat nose twitched and his eyes watered. For a moment I thought he was going to burst into tears. I can be frightening but I couldn’t understand why Darren should fear me in here. He couldn’t know that I had pushed Billy under a train. Even if he did, I was there illicitly, the equivalent of Daniel in the lions’ den. Wall could get rumbled. I could get rumbled. If anyone was in danger, it was me. Then it dawned on me. Darren was genuinely upset that Billy was no longer with us. I waited for him to compose himself.

  ‘Billy was like a dad to me,’ he snivelled.

  Yeah, he did that caring, sharing thing so well, I thought.

  ‘Treated me like one of the family. And his poor girls,’ he gulped.

  I arranged my face into one of open compassion.

  ‘You know,’ Darren said, big-eyed, ‘We was really getting somewhere in the film industry. You know Billy helped me, Mr Hex?’

  ‘I’d heard.’ Rumour had it that Billy had once tried to get Marriott Junior into films in the US. I think the pinnacle of Darren’s career was a minor role in a porno version of Snakes on a Plane.

  ‘Got me an audition for a film, a proper one,’ he said, flashing me an honest look, ‘a gangster movie, low budget, British, know what I mean?’

  I nodded. I didn’t need to go to the movies to see stuff like that. I had enough pictures to last me a lifetime.

  Darren reeled off a list of names of actors, a director and a couple of producers; people I’d never heard of and was never likely to. I did my best to look in the know and impressed.

  ‘When he died everything went tits up. Got myself into a bad place, booze and drugs and that. Couldn’t pay my way. Couldn’t see a way out.’ Darren pushed the heel of his hand into his eyes. He was actually crying. He looked at me with his big, pleading spaniel eyes. ‘Got any blow on you, Hex?’

  I shook my head. ‘I’m sure Barry will see you right, if you ask him nicely.’ Barry was not averse to smuggling in the odd bottle of vodka, cigarettes or drugs to the right people as long as there was something in it for him.

  Now we’d got the small talk out of the way, I got straight to the point. ‘Darren, you’re obviously upset about Billy, I appreciate that, but do you know anyone on his team, someone who stood to lose, maybe a supplier, who’d want to exact vengeance?’

  ‘Vengeance?’

  I blinked. He had to rate as the only guy in town who didn’t know that men like Billy don’t die through natural causes, or by ‘accident’. Darren might rate highly in the looks department, but his intelligence was severely impaired. Maybe drugs had stunted his brain. I leant forward conspiratorially. ‘Rumour has it he was pushed.’ I should know, as I did the pushing.

  Darren’s eyes widened. He opened his mouth to speak and closed it again. I could almost hear the cogs slowly turning and misfiring. ‘Shit,’ he whispered finally, ‘wasn’t my no-good brother who did Billy, was it?’

  I shrugged, wide-eyed, spread my hands. Darren, in his addled way, thought that Billy’s killer was the same guy wreaking havoc now. It suited me not to put him straight. ‘Thing is, Darren, someone is out to make trouble, someone professional. All kinds of people are getting whacked.’ I reeled off the names of the most recent players, counting them out on my fingers.

  ‘Can’t be Lester,’ he said. ‘He’s inside.’

  But there could be any number of others. It wasn’t one of the new guys who’d knock anyone off for a few grand – this was an expert, someone who’d studied my methods, and someone trained to fill the void I’d left behind.

  ‘You’ve not heard anything on the wire?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘Of course, there could be another explanation for the current spate of killings.’

  ‘Yeah?’ he said, hopeful.

  ‘Could be Billy’s wife, one of his kids seeking revenge.’ China Hayes thought otherwise but it always paid to corroborate facts.

  ‘Nah,’ he said without hesitation. ‘They haven’t got it in them. His girls are barely into their teens.’

  ‘Did you ever discuss business interests in front of the family?’

  ‘Billy was always careful about that. He’d have killed me if I’d let on about work. We only ever talked about me breaking into films.’

  ‘Did he have any other women in his life?’

  ‘No way.’

  ‘Rent boys, prostitutes, anyone at all?’

  Darren’s eyes blazed with indignation. I was obviously trampling on precious memories. ‘That’s a filthy suggestion.’

  ‘Business associates who’d go down the pan without him?’

  ‘I wasn’t close enough to know.’

  ‘Right,’ I said, disappointed.

  Darren thought for a moment. He’d stopped drumming the table and his left leg was still. Suddenly, his face darkened. ‘But if someone is out for revenge, that’s good, isn’t it? Man should get a medal. Billy never deserved to die like that.’ He gave an involuntary shudder.

  Perhaps I needed to modify my opinion. Darren wasn’t as empty-headed as he seemed and not quite so easy to manipulate as I’d imagined. ‘I agree, but it’s getting out of hand. You know what it’s like. A guy gets killed. Another guy takes revenge. Fair enough, but when it turns into a cycle of violence, it’s not good for anyone. How long are you inside for?’

  ‘Got another thirteen months.’

  ‘You’ll need somewhere to work once you’re out of here and if all the main players are pushing up daisies, where does that leave you?’

  Darren frowned. His tongue peeked out of the corner of his mouth as he was thinking his position through. It always paid to push the numero uno argument. Won every time.

  ‘I’ll make it worth your while,’ I said, appealing to the acquisitive side of his nature. He glanced at the door and lowered his voice even though it was just him and me in the room.

  ‘Want me to ask around?’

  ‘If you could, but take it easy. Be coo
l. Don’t push too hard. I need to know who is giving the orders and who is carrying them out.’ I pushed two twenties and a ten across the table. It wasn’t enough for what I wanted him to do, but any more could look suspicious and draw attention. People might start asking questions. Besides, fifty quid in jail is worth a lot more than on the outside. ‘Barry is going to fix it for you to contact me,’ I added.

  Darren scooped up the cash. ‘You can count on me, Mr Hex.’

  ‘Any whisper in the wind, I’d be grateful if you could keep me informed.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  I picked up a coffee and caught the 17.40 from Paddington via Stroud and arrived back in Cheltenham nearly three hours later due to problems on the line at Reading. Four days had passed since McCallen had disappeared. The longer it dragged on without negotiation or, more commonly in terrorist circles, a threat, the greater the likelihood that she would be killed. I hoped, for her sake, that she was drugged. Spirited by nature, she’d be less inclined to give her captor or captors’ grief.

  Titus rattled me. He knew things about McCallen and me and yet he seemed to be boxing in the dark. I didn’t know whether or not he was bluffing. I didn’t know whether he was on official business or simply watching her back. I couldn’t work out why he’d left me to run when he appeared to tie me to McCallen through the Montpellier rental. What was his game?

  As for the hits, there was no secret club where button men hung out and compared notes. Its shadowy world relied on secrecy. It also relied on a code of honour, along the Mafia lines of omertà, or keeping your mouth shut about criminal activities as well as targets. It was just possible somebody knew something that somebody else had heard about, which was what I hoped Darren Marriott would be able to unearth. Find the shooter, the bomber and murderer and then follow the lead to the guy issuing orders. I let out a weary sigh. Having been here several times before, I’d sniffed out every lead to Billy Squeeze – bending ears, greasing palms, threatening reprisals – and look where it had got me.

  And now others were paying the price.

  I walked back home from the train station, dumped my gear, washed and changed into a suit and tie, put on an overcoat and leather gloves, and was back out around ten, the night still young. I went straight to the rental. I expected signs of forced entry, blood on the carpet, proof of a scuffle, overturned chairs and smashed ornaments. The place was as silent as a monastery at prayer. Everything was as I’d last left it. McCallen had not been abducted from my property. On this, Titus was wrong.

  Working a hunch, I cut into town and back to Cambray Place and Coco’s. A group of eight guys built like rugby prop forwards piled out of the basement restaurant and, planning to make a night of it, headed upstairs to the cocktail lounge. I joined their party, inserting myself at the back for long enough to get a good eyeful. Sure enough, Simone was sitting, her back to me, wearing a crepe dress of dusky pink, long legs crossed and to the side, pink heels to match. Was she waiting to pick up some other unsuspecting male, or was she hoping to corner me?

  Slipping away, I crossed to the opposite side of the square and took up residence in a pub, the bar seven deep with drinkers, my face glued to the window, watching. It took Simone Fabron a little over an hour to emerge. I watched as she paused on the highest step, fastening the top button of her coat, looking right and then left, before setting off for the main drag. I gave her ten seconds and went after her.

  She walked with an easy gait down the High Street, turning left and finally veering into Montpellier Street. No nightclubs, no late-night bars or stop-offs tonight. She didn’t so much as exchange words with a passing stranger, speak on a mobile phone, collect or exchange a thing.

  Taking a detour, she headed into another main road and up the incline towards the Montpellier Chapter, a restored and extended villa, its large glass-fronted conservatory the most visible feature. To me, a chapter is either a division in a book or a division in Hell’s Angels. In Cheltenham, it’s a posh hotel. Fabron was either staying there or visiting. If the former, I had her down for a penthouse kind of girl. She might be a minimalist but she appreciated glamour. The other thing about the Chapter was that the second-floor penthouse suite has its own private staircase and entrance, perfect for those engaged in things they shouldn’t be.

  I watched as Simone crossed the car park and approached a vehicle. I hung back in the shadows and clocked exactly where it was. She bleeped open the passenger door, reached inside the glove compartment, took something out and, locking the vehicle, walked away. As soon as she was out of sight, I checked out the Alfa-Romeo 4C, a fast car that rivalled the Porsche, and made a mental note of the registration.

  I crept up a set of stone steps, passed through a double set of softly-sprung doors and hung back in the lobby. Ahead, an open-plan reception area, minimalist, with a single laptop balanced on what looked like a piece of contemporary sculpture instead of a desk. Within earshot, I overheard a brief exchange between Simone and a male receptionist, after which Simone walked down a corridor and stepped straight into a lift. I waited until the doors closed then breezed through the reception area as though I was a paying guest and took the next lift to the second floor.

  The entrance to the suite offered totally privacy. I listened hard and hesitated. There was no way of knowing whether or not she’d simply walked inside without a knock or greeting, or whether she’d called out ‘Honey, I’m home.’ Estimating it might take her ten or so minutes to take off her coat, kick off her shoes and slide into something more comfortable, I counted down and tapped on the door.

  ‘Hello, who is it?’ She called out.

  ‘It’s me, Joe.’

  ‘Wait one second.’ Hundreds of seconds later, she’d still not emerged. As I was about to tap again, the door flew open. Simone was standing there, fully clothed in her pink dress, high collared and prim. Her hands rested on her hips and although she did her best to scowl, her eyes told me that she was pleased to see me.

  I smiled. ‘Am I forgiven?’ My only intention was to get inside the room. After that I expected straight answers to straight questions.

  Her hands dropped. She broke into a magnificent smile and reaching out, grabbed my tie and yanked me into the room, caveman style. I kicked the door closed behind me and before she could get down to business, I grabbed hold of her and pinned her to the wall. Her breasts heaved beneath me and, misreading my motive, the tip of her tongue darted out, touching her top lip. She gave me a slow, wanton smile. It took half a second for her to register that urgent sex was not what I had in mind.

  ‘We need to talk,’ I said.

  ‘You bastard,’ she snarled. ‘Let go of me.’

  ‘Not until you tell me about your drugs operation.’

  Her eyes shot wide. ‘What?’

  ‘You heard.’

  She wriggled in my grip. ‘Are you crazy? I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘Yes you do.’

  ‘I will scream the hotel down if you don’t take your hands off me.’

  ‘Scream away. I’m sure the management would love to know that they have a drugs smuggler for a guest.’

  ‘I am not a drugs smuggler.’

  ‘I’m only surprised there were no bowls of cocaine alongside the condoms at your party.’

  She flashed with temper. ‘Are you deaf and blind as well as stupid? I don’t allow drugs at my parties. It is the most important rule. It’s why I make a point of checking.’

  All is well. No cameras, no coke.

  I eased my grip slightly. She panted with fury. Her eyes like polished black seed pearls narrowed with suspicion. ‘For a property developer, you ask very strange questions.’

  True, and I was about to fire another. ‘Know a man called China Hayes?’

  ‘Chinois, what sort of a name is that?’

  ‘The sort you swindle.’

  ‘You are talking nonsense.’

  ‘Or maybe you work for someone else.’

  Enraged, she
unleashed a volley of French. Had I paid attention at school, I still doubted I could translate.

  ‘Who is it, Simone?’

  ‘When you are done,’ she said coldly, ‘I am going to pick up the phone, call reception and ask them to alert the police.’

  I searched her face for deception. Couldn’t see it. She jutted out her chin, drew a deep breath in through her pretty nose. ‘Just who the hell do you think you are to question me?’

  In an instant I understood why it had always been better to blindly follow orders with no deviation. There were some who became involved with their victims, either sexually or as a fake work contact, simply in order to kill them. I’d never favoured that approach. Aside from being underhand, it led to too many questions. If you were any good at the job, and I was the best, you got in, did it and got out. Truth was, I never intended to kill Simone, irrespective of what Hayes wanted. By trying to nail her, however, I’d wildly opened myself up to exposure.

  I let her go. ‘There’s no need to call the police.’

  She rubbed her wrists, eyeing me as if she no longer recognised the man she slept with. I felt like a guy who has just hit his girl. It wasn’t a good feeling. I wasn’t sure how were going to make it back through the debris to more solid ground. Luckily, Simone was forgiving. Her face suddenly softened. ‘Joe, what is this all about?’

  How I wished I could tell her.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  She poured out brandy from the minibar.

  ‘Do you swear there’s no truth in it?’ I loosened my tie and collar.

  She handed me a glass, chinked hers with mine and gave me a level look with the smallest hint of a smile. ‘I do not swear, no.’

  I thought I’d misheard, something lost in translation. ‘But you said –’

  ‘That I am no drug smuggler.’ Simone’s smile widened. Enjoying the moment, she appeared to be revelling in my confusion. She parked herself on a low sofa, flicked back a lock of hair and patted the place next to her. I sat down, snookered.