She scooped blood into the broken body of the bottle and flicked it as high as the ceiling. A little more blood scatter should add to the confusion, as should the final part of her performance. A performance, that is what it was; she smiled and bowed to her audience, her audience of one, her audience of one whose attention would wander no more, whose eyes were fixed on her as she dressed her scene, macabre in her pallid nudity, calm and measured in her actions.
The audience blinked.
Had Charity been a girl given to demonstrating wild emotions, like shock, alarm, she would have done so at that point. Instead, she stared at the body. She stared hard, unblinking, into the eyes across the room. They stared right back, equally unblinking. Unfocused. Unresponsive. The naked, hairless woman stared hard at the broken, bloodied man, wondering whether he was alive, conscious, and if so what he made of the sight he saw. He blinked again, just the right eye, and from that eye there rolled a tear. Just one.
From Charity’s eyes rolled tears of her own. She dropped her broken bottle, stood and walked to the body, shaking her head slowly from side to side. She leaned against the spattered wall and slid down it until she was sitting by the body, leaning against him, against his cooling side. She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and held that hand by his mouth. She could feel no breathing. She pressed her bloodied fingers to his bloodied throat, felt for and found a pulse. Not much of a pulse, but enough of a pulse. What a tale this man could tell. What a tale . . .
Gently, almost fondly, for he was an audience who had paid a fine high price to watch her perform, she clamped a hand over his lips, and squeezed his nostrils tight with the other. Gently. He meant nothing to her. Another tear fell. His left arm lifted, slowly, reaching perhaps for Charity’s killing hands, but stopped, dropped to her thigh. Slid the hand to the joint of her legs, pushed against her warmth . . . and so he died.
Charity screamed in silence. She arched her back against the wall and stood, then she stamped across the pain-filled room to the bathroom, climbed into the shower and sluiced the pain from her body, mouth gaping, silent anguish echoing, rubbing at herself until shuddering release found her and she sank to the floor of the shower, eyes closed at last, as the waters washed away the surprise, the unwelcome surprise, and she washed and wiped down the walls and she washed and wiped down her body, and she climbed soaking from the bath, swilled bleach from the maid’s bucket around the bath and the drain, dressed herself, still soaking, turned the aircon to full heat and left the scene.
And as she stalked away, her phone called to her . . .
The plan ordained that although it was fine to manage more than a single contract at once, executive actions – terminal actions – were significant standalone events. These things were important, and should always be planned; hence the existence of the plan. Without the plan there was a strong probability of failure, with all the unhappiness for the sisters which would then be inevitable. Communication was crucial. Without communication, confusion would take over; control would be lost. Charity was unamused at being summoned to another action. She was unaware of any other mature contracts. She found no comfort in the unexpected, quite the opposite.
2
ONE MORE CUP OF COFFEE
‘Did you see that? Did you just see that!’
Three young men pushed and jostled and shoved their way to the head of a vaguely chaotic queue for coffee. Their leader, the speaker, walked backwards towards the counter, widespread arms underlining his enthusiasm. Collision was inevitable. And collision occurred.
Stoner saw it coming, as was his way. He saw it all in anticipatory slo-mo but waited, fresh, large coffee in his hand, for the outcome. He almost always welcomed an outcome; had not expected to find it in a coffee lounge, but he had no problems with the location. Or with the participants. Arms flailed. Youth and coffee connected. Coffee hit the floor. Stoner stood. Silent. Impassive. Inactive. Waiting.
The young man, the leader, the talker, spun around.
‘Guy! Look where you’re going! What the fuck! This mess. Everywhere. Shit! Oh shit . . .’
Stoner watched it happening, as was his way. He saw it all in dreamy soft focus but foresaw the inevitable outcome as a hard reality.
‘Shit, guy! You’ve soaked me! You fucking drunk?’
The lounge was silencing fast. Families were looking away; sudden interest in anything else, anywhere else. Mothers collected children; fathers pretended tough, hands-off attitudes. The doors only opened to let customers leave; the staff just stared, resigned.
‘Aww . . . shit . . . Look at this. Who’s going to pay for this?’
The young man was plainly a master of the rhetorical question. By now he was facing Stoner, whose costly coffee was soaking into the offended young man’s clothes. Stoner stood, impassive, expressionless. Eye to eye.
‘You gonna clean this?’
Another pointless question, another suggestion of intent. Three young men faced Stoner, more anger on their leader’s face than there was coffee on his bootleg knock-off football shirt. Stoner stood, impassive, expressionless. Neutral.
Bright-eyed with anger, red-faced with outrage, the young man shoved Stoner hard.
‘This shirt’s a hundred quid, guy. A hundred!’
He shoved again, harder. Shouting. Stoner stood his ground. Resigned. Afterwards, coffee drinkers agreed that he’d not said a word up to that point. Although he did shake his head, slowly, looking the young man, the much younger man, straight in the eye.
Stoner glanced down, mapped the positions of the participants, then looked up again at the perfect moment to observe the swung punch, the wide-armed brawling bully fist approaching, walked inside it, one single pace, snapped his forehead into full-force contact with the bridge of the youth’s nose, slapped his open palms against the young man’s shoulders, kicked his leading foot along the carpet and moved forward two more steps, hooked his left foot around the youth’s ankles and pulled it back. One long movement, not a series. Fluid.
The young man squealed, an unattractive sound, and fell flat.
In the sudden uneasy quiet, the coffee machines hissed their sympathy, their support. Their loyalties were unclear, but their irritation was obvious.
‘Don’t get up.’
Stoner spoke for the first time.
The young man was going, ‘Jesusjesusjesus . . .’ in a raising wail as he failed to understand what had just happened.
‘Don’t get up.’
Stoner spoke softly, but with noticeable clarity and force. The young man ignored this generous advice, and through a rising tide of what could have been misunderstood to be a religious incantation, was wrestling himself to his feet. His companions, sometime friends and potential allies in arms, stood wide apart, staring in shared surprise. Stoner stamped down on the young man’s ankle. There was an ominous and obviously painful crunch and the torrent of ‘Jesusjesusjesus’ soared through tenor to soprano. Blood was running freely from the nose by the carpet.
Stoner looked up at the nearer of the two upright young men.
‘His ankle’s broken. It will need setting. His nose is broken. It’ll be fine, but it will be hard to breathe through it for a while. It would be a kindness to take him to a medic, or call for one.’
Silence. Bewilderment. The invincible superiority of youth facing the demonstrable superiority of a single older man.
‘A doctor? A nurse? A hospital? Hello?’
Irritation and impatience were fighting for prominence now. He was bored with this. Amusing while it lasted, the fight was complete.
The pair of friends stared at Stoner. The further started to speak, to strike an aggressive pose. Stoner looked at him. Cold. Quietly.
‘Don’t even think about it. Not for one moment. Take your friend to a doctor. A&E would be good. You have five good legs between you. Let’s keep it that way? You will need to help him. He will be in some pain.’
Gently. No raised voices. The nearer of the two upright friends s
tarted to move towards Stoner, opening his mouth.
Quite suddenly, Stoner was far too close to him, moving fast, leaving him nowhere to go but in reverse, spluttering.
‘Do not,’ Stoner repeated himself, ‘even think about it. Take him away. Maybe his mother will love him. He surely needs some love.’
The suddenly silent pair, all confidence gone, lifted their fallen hero and negotiated the lounge door, the exit. Gone. Talk restarted. Quiet. Staring.
Stoner turned back to the counter. The teenaged server smiled at him.
‘The guy over there . . .’ she nodded to a table, ‘. . . just called the law. Sir.’
She smiled some more. Stoner took out a twenty, handed it to her.
‘Sorry for the mess.’
He turned for the door, exit stage centre. Turned back, a plainly and obviously exaggerated hard look wiped across his features; ‘I’ll be back . . .’
The server clapped, and laughed, and hid the twenty.
‘Who’s next?’
The lounge manager, previously invisible, hurried by with a brush, collecting the fallen crockery shards. Coffee lounge life continued, and by the time the law arrived there were no witnesses left, just third-party comments on other-third party comments.
All done.
3
SAME OLD STORY
‘Let me’, said the Hard Man, ‘tell you a story.
‘Let me’, said the Hard Man, ‘tell you a tale . . .’
He stood facing Stoner, whose impassive expression matched that of the slight Asian gentleman who was standing to the left of the speaker and a little behind him. Stoner spoke to him, acknowledged him: ‘Mr Tran.’ And he nodded slightly.
The Hard Man pushed past the door, pushed into the room, pushed on into a place where he was unwelcome. Considerably unwelcome. But he was the Hard Man. That he was unwelcome made no difference to him. If he recognised that he was unwelcome, he ignored that recognition. It may have mattered nothing to him; there was no way of telling. It was unimportant anyway.
‘Another fight.’
The Hard Man’s statement lay slab-flat between them.
‘Another fight, JJ.’
Not a question. No room for doubt, just a simple statement of fact. So there was no need for a reply. A reply could only have been an agreement, and there was no room for one of those. No need, either, The Hard Man stood. Stoner stood too, impassive, although all the space in that hallway was his own, the Hard Man an intruder, an uninvited visitor, no kind of guest at all. There were times when it was right to make a point of property, of possession, but this was not one of them.
‘Some thug,’ the Hard Man’s tone was neutral, no edge nor inflection; ‘smacked around a young boy in a coffee shop.’
The Hard Man looked around the hallway, not like he was looking at anything, for anything, more that he was exercising his eyes, flexing their muscles, lubricating their spheres, performing maintenance and keeping them rolling, ready for a call to arms.
‘The boy needed attention.’ Not help. Help might have been useful at the time of the action, but it had not been forthcoming, and after that it had been too late.
‘Stitches.’ The Hard Man’s tone of voice fell with the second syllable, disapproval, possibly, although why he would have cared either way would have made for another minor mystery. ‘Stitches carry questions with them, and questions carry further questions, and questions we would always prefer to avoid.’
The Hard Man raised his gaze, Stoner returned it. But he offered no words in reply.
‘Hospitals, JJ. You know this. You know that hospitals cause attention and you neither need nor want that. Something we share is that neither of us wants attention. But still, still you put the boy into hospital. There’s no sense to that. None.’
Neither man blinked. Neither man was tense. This was not a confrontation. This was a negotiation. Or at least the introduction to a negotiation. Neither the Hard Man nor Stoner cared about a careless youth in a hospital. Football followers did it to each other all the time. He was just another. A negotiation; rules of engagement.
Stoner dropped his fighter’s gaze to signal his unwillingness to engage, then raised it again to reboot the conversation.
‘Come in, then. Tea? Coffee? Glass of beer? Are you having a nice day? Is life being kind to you? How’s the wife? Kids doing well?’
The Hard Man gazed, smiled. A thin smile and only with his lips, but a smile all the same.
‘Keeping it bottled and with a lid on it, JJ? That’s good.’
Stoner stood his ground.
‘No, really, how is your wife? Kids? Car? Cat? And how is the kid in stitches? Really. Has he learned a lesson? Will he share it with all of his friends? These things are important. Understanding and knowledge are always important, and I feel I have simply helped a misguided youth to tread the pain-filled path of understanding. And what do you care? You moving into social work? Scourge of the crims turns into saviour of the stupid? Lawdylawd, it’s a miracle.’
The Hard Man eased a little. His smile softened.
He walked towards Stoner. ‘Water. Just water. Have you noticed how dying is plainly unpleasant? People seem to do it only once.’
Stoner eased a slow smile of his own.
‘Is that some kind of threat? Have we reached that point? Again? Already? Dying? Who’s dying? Why are they doing it . . .’
The Hard Man stopped dead. Looked up. Caught the return stare and fielded it cleanly.
‘No threat, JJ. No threat at all. Other people are dying. Not you. Not me. No one we know nor even care about. But they are dying. They’re being killed. By persons unknown for reasons unknown . . . although the reason is almost certainly financial reward rather than personal passion. Although that is not entirely the view of our friends in the high places.’
Stoner stood aside. Let the Hard Man pass. Custom and caution kept his hands from his pockets, open, in plain sight. The Hard Man appeared to notice nothing, glancing around the cluttered, clean, comfortable room as he entered.
‘Did you mention water?’
There was warmth . . . almost warmth . . . in the request.
Stoner backed towards a kitchen. Hands still in plain sight. The Hard Man shrugged free from his coat; dropped it over the arm of an easy chair, sat down. Stared at the ceiling. Stoner stood. Watchful. Reserved.
‘Pax, JJ. Take it easy. Be . . . calm.’ The Hard Man rolled the vowel in that last word. Folded both of his hands behind his head. No threat. Eyes still on the ceiling. ‘We have no problem here, you and me.’
Stoner passed over a clean coffee mug half-filled with clean cold bottled water. The Hard Man glanced into the mug. At the bottom was the image of an open hand, palm towards the drinker, fingers straight.
‘We may have . . . concerns. Unresolved business.’
He looked again at the open hand at the bottom of the mug, and smiled a sort-of smile.
‘But not here, not now, and not serious. Not yet. Although it would help us both if you were to control your hitting boys impulse a little. It’s all a bit adolescent. All a bit teenage testosterone. Nice mug. Familiar. The Red Hand of Ulster? That was a while ago. Got any more water? Water with bubbles? Or is that restricted to more welcome guests?’
Stoner fetched two mugs; one coffee, one water. Placed them on a tidy polished table. Leaned back against the wall opposite his visitor. The Hard Man took his water, sipped, smiled.
‘And sit down. You own the place, man.’
Stoner sat on the table, rocking himself slowly, steadily, on his hands.
The Hard Man sighed theatrically. Drank more water.
Stoner waited in coffee-sipping silence. There would be a reason for the visit. There would be a request for service, and there would be an offer of recompense. A negotiation would take place. The outcome would be a task, and politeness would insist that the instruction would be presented as a request. British is as British does, and even in the killing business politeness wa
s somehow important.
The Hard Man was a long, long-term preferred employer. From military days, through paramilitary days, through mercenary days to civilian contracting days, he and Stoner had partnered each other. The Hard Man was an invisible arm of government, a deniable limb; Stoner was one of his entirely detached hands. While the Hard Man stalked with deniable transparency through the shadows of the corridors of power, he did nothing he couldn’t deny, should that need arise. Stoner and others like him performed the dirty but necessary manual labour; manual, as a good hand should be.
And as hot conflicts had cooled and as wet work dried up, so the Hard Man had appeared less frequently in Stoner’s life. The jobs he requested changed from the purely physical and final to the mainly operational; Stoner was also ageing, and while younger, fitter, less scrupulous characters dug the holes for most of the bodies, he found the lost, retrieved the hidden and protected those who the Hard Man decided were worthy of the expense of an off-book contractor.
It was plain that the Hard Man’s star shone in a high remote place, and that he moved in stellar clusters which were wholly alien to Stoner – who had only twice attempted to trace him back to a family, friends, hearth and home. Both attempts had failed, both failures resulted in warnings of imminent terminal ill health, and Stoner had heeded those warning. His research had uncovered only well-established and impenetrable falsehoods, lies and deceits. It might not suit a macho image, but Stoner rationalised that he would only seek out the Hard Man if he needed support, documentation, resources he could not provide for himself, and he had never felt those needs. Following his last failed attempt at discovering a lot more about him, the Hard Man had explained that without an effective cut-out between them they were of no use to each other, and in any case it was simply unacceptable that Stoner knew personal details which he could pass on to a mutual enemy or to a new best friend should he change employers. Stoner didn’t care enough to argue. It worked well for them both.
A Last Act of Charity (Killing Sisters Book 1) Page 2