Final Target

by E. V. Seymour

‘Can you see that Darren is all right for booze and blow?’

  Barry let out an asthmatic noise, midway between a laugh and cry.

  ‘I’ll drop by with the cash,’ I said, believing this would make a difference.

  ‘No point,’ Barry said.

  ‘Don’t mess with me. You’ve had your cut.’

  ‘He’s dead.’

  ‘What? How?’

  ‘Someone slashed his throat.’

  In the old days, this would not have disturbed me. These were not the old days. I was disturbed. ‘You know who?’

  ‘Not yet, but we will.’

  ‘Barry, I –’

  ‘Spare me the apologies. This is your fault. What did you ask him to do?’

  ‘It hardly matters now.’ I wasn’t about to confide in a man like Wall.

  ‘I don’t like my boat being rocked. I’ve got a nice little number going and I don’t need the spotlight of an enquiry shining in my direction.’

  Typically, Wall was covering his sizable rear. Not that I was in any position to take the moral high ground. Wall was right. In spite of my good intentions, it was my fault that Darren had been killed. Following my visit and revelation about Konstantin, Hayes must have got word to one of his men inside to shut Darren up for ever.

  ‘If you want to find the man who killed him, check out anyone from China Hayes’s firm,’ I said, my final words before I hung up.

  Guilt clung to me. I have done many bad things in my life, especially to cruel and vicious men, who thought nothing of torture and depravity. But I have never liked collateral damage. You do the job right and there shouldn’t be any. Doesn’t mean to say I haven’t cocked up on occasion, this being was one of them. Riled by Darren’s death, I decided on a change of plan.

  If China knew that Leonid had failed, he would expect me to come looking for him. With up to two men down, he’d call in favours and max out on security. This meant his new guys would be hastily assembled and probably third rate. Nevertheless, it wasn’t a reassuring prospect. Third rate with a gun is better than first rate without one. I wished I’d pocketed the Makarov – not to use, but to prove I’d lost none of my edge and still meant business.

  Undeterred, I returned to the lock-up and picked out false ID, and a stack of cash. My first call was to the barber’s in the Caledonian Road where Hayes hung out. The only people there were the barber with his cutthroat razor, a guy in the chair and another reading a tabloid. Next, I returned to the Kingston apartment. No concierge at the desk. Nobody manning the lift. It was as quiet as an abandoned town in a nuclear disaster zone. Sensing trouble, I took the stairs. Straightaway, I could see that the door to China’s apartment was open. I imagined a booby-trap or some fat, unfit guy on the other side of the door waiting to do his thing. Only one way to find out.

  I sneaked in, alert for sound and movement. No trap and nobody, only a very fine view over the river. A quick search told me that computers and phones had already been shipped out. It seemed unlikely that China would conceal or leave anything behind. Just to be sure, I systematically tore the place apart, ripping up carpet and furnishings, checking for signs of redecoration, areas where the skirting might have been repainted, hunting for clues, for information, for weapons, anything that might join the dots and create a comprehensible picture. I was clean out of luck.

  The morning lost to me, I retraced my journey to Waterloo, paid for another ticket and took a ten-minute walk across a covered walkway and down an escalator to Waterloo East. From here I took a train to New Cross Gate, changing at London Bridge. It should have taken me around twenty-five minutes, but the connecting train was late. I didn’t arrive in Deptford until almost forty minutes later. I couldn’t say why, but I had a bad feeling, stronger than before. The eyes of my fellow travellers didn’t tell me anything out of the ordinary. Even so, I wondered whether someone was watching and monitoring my every move. It made me think back to the lights going off in the rental at Montpellier, the crypt and Titus, the red wig over the dead man’s hair, the unwritten message that came attached to it, a message addressed to me.

  On arrival, I stepped out of the overly warm train and onto the platform and, following the exit, headed for the taxi rank. A couple of minutes later, I was staring out of the rear window of a cab. I had no idea whether the driver was ripping me off by taking me on a roundabout route, but we drove through some depressing-looking streets crammed with too many people, with litter in the gutter and imaginative graffiti on the walls. If these were the lungs of the borough, they had emphysema. I settled back and briefly closed my eyes to ease the tension in my head and the sensation of the walls closing in. When I opened them again the urban landscape had cheered up and I told the driver to pull over, that I’d walk the rest of the way. Stepping out of the cab, I paid the fare. A chill, bitter easterly wind gusted into my eyes, making them smart. I set my face against it and passed rows of tidy terraced houses and neatly tended allotments that spoke of hope and dreams – or maybe they simply whispered them.

  The trading estate was off a main road, a collection of terraced industrial and warehouse units built in brick and concrete. Ground floor and two-storey elevations stood side by side, with metal doors and grilles at the windows. To me, it brought to mind a place with sheds and old buildings housing helicopter parts, bad men chasing me, fire and devastation, carnage and death. I shut down the memory. It wasn’t wise to seek similarities with another place and time.

  Not wanting to be boxed in, Hayes had sensibly taken an end unit. I imagined his men, ready and possibly with a bead on me now. It would take a person with strong guts to shoot a defenceless man out in the open in the middle of the day – or a weak, frightened one. Putting myself in China’s shoes, I reckoned he’d have the small fry in the downstairs section, guys pretending to run a legal enterprise, the hard-core loyalists upstairs to protect their boss once the alarm was raised. My strategy was to get inside, one way or another, and ‘borrow’ a firearm for the rest of the afternoon.

  Rating my chances as seventy/thirty in China’s favour, I crossed the generous car park, walked up to the door with a purposeful stride, tapped on the glass in the door of the open-plan office and, armed with nothing more than a smile, entered.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  Two lads in jeans and hoodies, around nineteen years of age, turned their cold, stony gaze in my direction. One lounged in an office chair, his size tens resting on the desk in front of him. He had a bad case of acne and his peroxide hair did little to improve his pizza-face appearance. Everything about him spoke runt of the litter. The other, skinny like his mate, moved straight towards a filing cabinet the moment I tapped on the door. He stood, one leg twitching, not because he was nervous, but, I suspected, having observed these scenarios dozens of time before, because he was juiced up. Unpredictable as hell, he was the guy I had to watch. As he rested his back against the cold steel cabinet, I had no doubt that, if I presented a problem, a weapon lay within easy reach inside one of the drawers and he wouldn’t hesitate to use it.

  I flashed another smile and put one hand up in a rough approximation of ‘parley’.

  ‘Wondered if you guys can help me.’

  They remained expressionless. I got it. These were the kind of kids who wouldn’t help their own mothers if on fire.

  ‘There’s been a break-in at one of the units further up. Wondered if you’d seen anything or clocked anyone unusual hanging around?’

  ‘You a copper, or what?’ Pizza-face either had a south London accent or he was faking it to make himself sound hard.

  I put my hand inside my jacket and fished out my fake warrant card. ‘DI Benson,’ I said. This could go either way. It might make them co-operative, might make them resistant. I watched the shutters descend over their faces. The card had the effect of non-surgically wiring their jaws shut.

  I smiled some more. ‘I’m guessing you haven’t seen anything untoward.’

  They both blinked. Maybe they didn’t underst
and untoward. ‘Who’s the boss around here?’

  The guy by the filing cabinet twitched and shrugged his bony shoulders. He had a concave chest. I had him down for being bullied as a child. Guys like him either sank or swam. This one was a swimmer.

  ‘You don’t know who you work for?’ There was grain in my voice.

  Pizza-face looked across at his mate. A form of communication took place along the lines of: Let me take care of this tosser.

  ‘The boss is out.’ He pronounced it ‘owt’.

  ‘Anyone else I can talk to? Someone upstairs, maybe.’ I angled my gaze towards the staircase at the back of the office.

  ‘They’re out too, man,’ he said.

  I hate being called ‘man’ by people I don’t know. In the great scheme of things, it was a minor irritation. More importantly, I had no idea if he was telling the truth. It seemed highly unlikely that China was somewhere else when he should be lying low. Unless of course Leonid had lied to me or had made a mistake. I needed to be certain.

  ‘So, nobody at home,’ I said without expression, my eyes fixed on Mr Unpredictable. ‘All right if I take a look around?’

  ‘No, it is not fucking all right, man,’ Pizza-face said. ‘You got a search warrant?’

  ‘I’m not looking to turn the place over.’

  ‘You’re not even peeking inside an envelope. Know what?’ he said, with venom, ‘you’re bang out of order, pig.’

  There was absolutely no point debating the issue, or openly taking offence, although I was seriously pissed off with dancing a two-step with these low-grade, talentless sidekicks. ‘What would you say to a little incentive?’

  For a second the leg stopped twitching and Skinny man’s eyes glazed. It would be fair to say that he looked like he was going to come.

  ‘Money for information?’ Pizza-face said.

  I nodded and withdrew my wallet.

  ‘How much?’

  ‘Depends on the level of information.’

  ‘Nah,’ he said, waggling a bony finger. ‘Doesn’t fuckin’ work like that, man. We decide what we’re prepared to accept.’ He stared at me with feral eyes. The freak show over in the corner let out a laugh, his grin splitting his miserable face in half. Aren’t you just the hard man? I thought.

  ‘£250 buys me the answer to three questions. Another £250 buys me a walk upstairs.’

  ‘Two questions and a walk upstairs, £700 in all.’

  ‘£650,’ I said. ‘If I find out you’re lying, I’ll have you set up and banged up before you can say China.’

  They issued a collective ‘whatever’ but I had them. Greed glinted in their eyes. They carried out another wordless exchange. Two-bit nobodies, they had no idea of the world they inhabited. I’d give them each a couple of years before they either got rubbed out or wound up in prison. I’m ashamed to say it, but I hoped it was the former.

  ‘You have a deal.’

  Very generous of you and thank you very fucking much, I thought. ‘All right if I take a step forward?’ I held my wallet high in the same way a dog owner brandishes a ball.

  ‘’Course,’ Pizza-face scowled.

  I counted out £250 in fifties. Skinny man peeled himself off the filing cabinet and came to see for himself. As his hand shot out to pocket the cash, I clamped mine over his. We had five seconds of deadlock.

  ‘Protocol,’ I spat.

  Skinny man looked at his friend for a translation. It occurred to me then that if words were weapons, I could wipe them out with a finely turned sentence. Whether or not he understood, Pizza-face had his eye to the main chance, told his friend to back off and said, ‘Let the cop do his thing.’ So I did.

  ‘When did China leave?’

  ‘A couple of hours ago.’

  ‘Did he go alone?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Strange behaviour for a frightened man, and it wasn’t what I wanted to hear. If he went alone, someone was upstairs holding the fort, except that, in all the time I’d been there, I hadn’t heard a squeak of activity. Judging from the fabric of the building, it would be hard to disguise movement. Perhaps his bodyguards had deserted their posts.

  ‘Who did he go to meet?’

  ‘That’s three fucking questions.’

  The only words to pass his lips, I turned and stared at Skinny man, surprised by his numeracy. He stared back, dead-eyed. I slapped down another couple of fifties and repeated the question. Both lads grinned. Pizza-face answered. ‘We don’t know.’

  Hoodwinked, I let out a sigh and motioned that I wanted to check out the upper storey.

  ‘Money first,’ Pizza-face said.

  ‘Not until I return in one piece.’

  ‘There’s nobody up there,’ Skinny man burst out, copping a furious look from his friend.

  ‘Cool.’ I banged down the rest of the money.

  On a scale of one to ten in the mess stakes, upstairs scored a six. Among the remnants of office furniture, there were several sleeping bags, a wall of sealed packing boxes similar to those I’d seen in the backroom of the barber’s and, in the far corner, a pile of clothes, including a tropical shirt, a pair of jeans and sneakers. An aerosol of inexpensive, branded deodorant, its top off, also lay on the floor. It looked like China had dressed for an important occasion, or he was worried and sweating with fear, or both. Lunch somewhere? I glanced at my watch. He might be back at any moment.

  I went over to inspect the boxes and found two open. Expecting to find guns, I discovered a portable makeshift wardrobe containing underwear, more patterned shirts and soft-soled shoes. The second was more interesting. Underneath a layer of clothing and books, a laptop. My spoils of war, I took it and went downstairs. The kids had other ideas.

  Alarmed, Pizza-face leapt to his feet. ‘You can’t take that. It belongs to Mr Hayes.’

  Skinny man broke off from examining their recent windfall and fell into line next to him. I estimated it would take him seven steps to get to the filing cabinet and a couple of seconds to wrench open a drawer and pull out a gun. Wrong place, wrong time, man, I thought.

  ‘It belongs to me now,’ I said, crossing the floor.

  A flash of steel pulled me up short.

  Skinny didn’t need a gun. He had a blade.

  Contorted and ugly, Pizza-face snarled, ‘Shank him, Skins.’

  Skins came at me with all the flair of a carbon-fibre racing car. Strong, light on his feet and very fast, he sliced the blade within a millimetre of my face, missing me only because I took a step back. Instead of freezing, he came at me a second time, this time feinting with his free arm. He didn’t want to frighten me. He wanted to kill me. With the next thrust, he caught my good arm, carving through leather. Pain seared through my nerve endings and I let out a gasp. Scenting victory, Skins lunged, connecting again, this time with the lower part of my body. The pocket of my jacket split but my mobile phone took the brunt of the impact. I’m fit but my breathing felt laboured, my limbs slow. Blood rushed through my heart so quickly it was pounding against my ribcage as if it wanted to explode. Everything about the situation told me the best thing I could do was run, but I couldn’t leave without the laptop. The laptop was my only piece of hard evidence, a connection that might lead me to McCallen. It was also a shield, a battering ram and weapon.

  His blood up, Skinny launched a third time, cheered on by his co-partner in attempted murder. As he struck, I raised the laptop, deflecting his blow, steel striking aluminium. He grinned, unfazed and cocky, and danced lightly on his feet. Another vicious jab and he sliced through the leather in my other sleeve. I didn’t know whether or not the gash was deep but now my adrenal glands were on full pump, dulling the pain. Triumphant, Skins faced me front on. Bad move. Always stay side-on to protect vital organs. Jabbing the blade at my face, his other hand balled in a fist, intent on landing a blow, his eyes signalling the belief that his knife gave him a clear advantage. Ordinarily, I’d agree with him.

  Powering forward and using all of my body weight, I sw
ung the laptop across his jaw in one choreographed move. It connected with bone-shattering intensity and did the equivalent of shoving his brain in a tumble dryer. On impact, the blade flew out of his hand as he hit the deck, unconscious. One man down, I turned my attention to Pizza-face who, stunned into action, scrabbled to wrench open the drawer in his desk. Before he had a chance to withdraw whatever was inside, I kicked it closed, trapping his hand, possibly breaking fingers, his scream rebounding off the walls. Yanking the drawer back open, I withdrew the weapon, an old-style Beretta that no sane and self-respecting gunman would ever think of using. I released the catch at the left side of the butt behind the trigger, removed the magazine and pulled back the slide to eject a round in the chamber and pocket the ammo.

  ‘You’ve broken my fucking hand,’ he yowled, bloodied fingers tucked up underneath an armpit.

  I slow-glanced over my shoulder at Skins. ‘Think yourself lucky.’

  ‘You’re dead, motherfucker.’

  I breathed a big, indulgent sigh – so young and so much to learn. ‘The slide often fails on a model as old as this,’ I said dropping the Beretta at his feet. ‘Can prove dangerous to the user.’ Then I scooped up my money and, point made, strode out.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  My leather was in tatters. Blood ran down my arms. Adrenalin is a wonderful natural anaesthetic and I knew that the damage might be worse than it felt. I didn’t have time for another visit to Mace and I didn’t fancy my chances trying to get back to the hotel on public transport to assess my wounds. My fellow travellers might not pay me the least attention. I couldn’t expect the same indifference from London Underground staff. For all I knew MI5 could be tailing me, although my gut told me that the action was back in Cheltenham, not here in London. Fortunately, I now had all my cash back in my possession. For the right price, I was sure a minicab driver would be more than happy to pick up a few necessaries from a chemist and ferry me back to the hotel. Violent crime in the borough wasn’t exactly an unknown and ferrying the wounded was almost part of the job description. Sure enough, Zap Cabs were happy to oblige and I was soon on my way.