A Last Act of Charity (Killing Sisters Book 1)

by Frank Westworth

  ‘Most recently, then, was last night’s dying.’

  The Hard Man didn’t do much in the way of introductions.

  ‘I think I can connect four, maybe six, killings by the same person or team unknown. I also think that there are more, maybe a lot more. I think that there’s a hit man out there, someone unknown to me, and that hit man may be a hit team. I think that if it’s a single man, then he’s getting sloppy and inconsistent, and his security will fail sooner rather than later, but if it’s a team working together, then they will not fail. Not soon, anyway. A team will need detecting. Tracing. Finding. And then they will need a conversation with us, they will need convincing of the error of their ways, and maybe they will need an instruction to desist.

  ‘The killings are messy. The killings are messy because the killer wants them kept private, away from the media. You know what I’m talking about. You . . .’ the Hard Man paused for a flicker of eye contact, a shared moment . . . ‘we, have used this technique before. It’s effective. As you know. Provide so much evidence that the only conclusion is confusion.’

  Stoner met his gaze, without comment. Collected both mugs; refilled them. Returned them, and sat down. All in a curiously companionable silence.

  ‘The only features which link the kills are the targets – they’re all men – and the locations – they’re all hotels – and the fact that the scenes have been messed up. Very deliberately messed up.’

  Stoner rose, stretched, moved to another chair further away, repositioned it so he could stretch out his legs, sat down. He closed his eyes, relaxed a little further.

  ‘The boys in blue cannot make any connections, and in any case they’re being restrained by higher powers. As are the all-knowing hounds of the press. Our mutual friends however, our unattributable mutual friends, can indeed see that there is a pattern, and are interested, curious. Which is why I’m here.’

  Stoner opened a single eye and aimed his gaze at the Hard Man.

  ‘Not entirely a visit brought about by your passionate interest in the wellbeing of youthful shitheads with loud mouths, bad breath and a misunderstanding of how café society really works, then? So why the opening salvo? Why pretend that somehow and entirely mysteriously you have developed some kind of social conscience? I could easily have misunderstood your motives, and that would have been an unfortunate thing.’

  The Hard Man reached once more for his water. ‘Playing, JJ; seeing whether you were awake. Just games. The games we boys play when we’re alone and there is no fucking booze and no fucking women to buy it for us.’

  He laughed, shockingly loudly, and clapped his hands, closing the opening of their negotiation.

  ‘And you’re wondering what I want? You’re wondering why I’m enduring the grim reality of your less than heartfelt welcome and sipping flat tap water from a mug? Do you not have a single glass in this pit? And why are you here anyway? You have at least three other perfectly good houses, none of them over-filled with tenants so far as I know, but you’re subsisting in some miserable squat in a dismal suburb in a crap provincial town. Who was the Chinaman who opened the door for me? The Chinaman with the female family and the pungent kitchen. Are you opening a restaurant? Are you on a job? A job I don’t know about? It seems unlikely, but everything’s possible. Hell, JJ, even for a no-hope like you this place is intolerably grim.’

  ‘It’s comfortable. It’s clean. It’s safe. You tracked me, not the location, which I prefer. I was aware of your trace. I was waiting for you.’

  The Hard Man tensed almost imperceptibly. ‘How come? You know something about these killings?’

  ‘It’s not me.’ Stoner’s words relaxed his visitor. ‘You were always going to show up. I figured that the time was about right. You see a debt you can collect, and collection is your addiction. Your talent. One of your talents. You can pretend that the blue boys are after me and that your mighty powerful personality has deflected them. I’m being kind, and polite, as you can see.

  ‘And you wanted to check that I’m under control. That there’s no danger of unwanted attention, as you said, and I knew that you would need to check, so I arranged an excuse, giving that youth a gentle tap, and I chose a suitably protected venue. Welcome to the world of the mad control freak. It should feel familiar. The youth deserved it, and in any case I was simply looking for a suitable opportunity. Was the family guy on his cell phone in the coffee shop one of yours?’

  The Hard Man laughed. An almost welcome sound, and if it was a genuine laugh then it was also a thing of interest; a curiosity. He waved the empty mug about. Maybe he was making a point. It was hard to tell. Stoner stood, collected the mug and refilled it with cold, bottled, aerated and expensive water. Water which cost more than his own instant coffee. Returned it. The Hard Man sank another cup, waved it again and watched its next refill with satisfaction.

  ‘You’re too suspicious, JJ. I know your work. I’m a fan. An admirer. This is far too messy for you. If you wanted to confuse the scene then you’d confuse it. Doubt that you’d spray blood onto the ceiling, though. That’s excessive, and you’re never excessive.

  ‘We’re supposed to think that this last effort was a crime of passion. Businessman in hotel. Business girl. Negotiation. Man tries something unwelcome – hard to imagine, knowing the girls who work those places, but there y’go – and she stabs him. Hits him with a bottle, perhaps. But that’s where it would end. Stabbed. Bottled. A couple of times, maybe, if things were a bit desperate, but I have never heard of a whore ripping some mark to shreds over a bit of too-rough stuff. Did you?’

  He appeared almost interested in Stoner’s reply. Just for a moment, but he wasn’t, because he had more to say.

  ‘What would fire up some whore enough to make her kill her john, anyway? You know whores better than most men, dealing with them in your own unique way, JJ; share with me?’

  Stoner glared at him. The Hard Man ignored it and continued.

  ‘I’ve asked our blue-suited friends to let me see the autopsies of unsolved single-man killings which match this one. Hotels. Places whores go. Also apparent natural causes without a cause. Healthy guys who’ve keeled over like the Monty Python parrot with no previous massive attacks. There won’t be many. Hopefully. An epidemic of coronaries would be a surprising thing. And in any case, I would have heard of it.’

  Stoner supplied more water.

  ‘And you want me to do what?’

  ‘You’re going to be my faithful Indian scout, JJ, you’re going to invisibly go where I cannot. I have been invited to dig deeper than the blue boys and to dig wider. The blue boys have been told to stay away, so there won’t be press leaks. I am visible. I need to be visible. You’re unknown at this point, and I’ll try to keep it that way. You can do invisible. You can do silent. I will tell you of individuals I find suspicious and you will invisibly befriend them. You will live their lives in parallel, and invisibly, and you will find out whether there is a killing team in place. I think there is. I have no problems with that, but I want to know all about it.

  ‘The blue boys want to catch a killer. I just want to find out who it is. When we find him, then we can decide what we do. No point in planning to spill milk unnecessarily. I can always use fresh talent.’

  ‘Clues? Hints? Tips? Leads? Suspects?’ Stoner decided upon the constructive approach. ‘And what was all that crap about the kid in the coffee shop about? Really?’

  ‘Him? He’ll live. He might come looking for you. Don’t know. Don’t suppose you need worry about that. But he might. His dad’s a copper, so he might be able to find you. That was the point. You bothered?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No leads. Too many clues. None of them make sense. The guy – the most recent guy, the guy topped last night – he was truly worked over. Not a good job. Horrible. Pointless.’

  ‘You saw the scene?’

  ‘Only photos of the body. The scene had been cleared before I got there. That won’t happen again; you’ll be
free to enter the scene as soon as I hear about another crime in the pattern. I’m claiming national security, only specialists allowed. Mucho secrecy, skulduggery, cloaks and daggers; nothing the blue boys want or need. You going to do this for me?’

  Stoner nodded.

  ‘OK. Take a walk around the scene. Let yourself in. Can’t have you visible. Knight’s Inn; know it?’

  Stoner nodded again. ‘Is the scene guarded?’

  ‘Only by tape. The big clean will start after SOCO have cried enough, and that will be a day or so, I guess. Walk around the place. Feel it. Smell it. Tell me what I’ve missed. You’ll want the body shots?’

  ‘After I’ve seen the scene. I’ll see how accurate I can get with that reconstructive talent you keep telling me I have.’

  ‘Be invisible, JJ. Just be invisible . . .’

  And then the Hard Man was gone.

  *

  The door to the room didn’t close behind him; it didn’t get a chance to close. There was a foot in the door. The foot belonged to the listener at the door, the eavesdropper. The eavesdropper who had tried to hide when the Hard Man left suddenly; his leavings tending to be as sudden and unannounced as his arrivals, but who had been unable to get away and had been forced to accept the departing greeting . . .

  4

  FIRST PERSON PLURAL

  ‘That man is a twat.’

  The dirty blonde has a gentle way with words. There’s no point in arguing with her, either. Once she’s made up her mind about something, someone, chances are that only some radical new information will change her view. It’s a charming characteristic . . . possibly . . . but not a particularly helpful one.

  ‘I mean . . . every time you see him, you get nervous. And when you get nervous, you’re just tiresome company. A pain in the arse. Why do you bother with him?’

  Not a question. A statement in disguise. How could I answer that? For a start, it is so obviously a true statement. So I say a sweet nothing. These things help at moments like this.

  ‘Beer? Fancy a beer?’

  I know how to impress a girl. Years and years of practice. Nowhere near a town named Perfection, but possibly I’m on the way there. Equally possibly . . . I’m not, or I may be on the road to nowhere, but let us not seek out defeat and disappointment; those bitter twins can always find you all too easily on their own.

  Beer always cheers the dirty blonde. She grins at me in approval. She may be quick to anger, but she’s quick to forgive, too, and despite suffering from an excellent memory, she rarely remembers that she has forgiven. Which is a good thing, not least because she’s had a lot to forgive – too much for most folk to forgive – in the time we’ve been together.

  ‘What did the twat want, anyway?’ She warms to her theme. ‘He never drops by for a simple chat, does he, that twat? There’ll be an angle, like always, and he’ll be richer, you’ll be poorer, then it’ll be time for him to vanish again.’

  Which is the truth, although not exactly the whole truth. Because if the Hard Man has one redeeming virtue, it is that he pays his way. Financially, that is. Which is his only currency. Spiritual well-being – his own or anyone else’s – is rarely high on his list of concerns. It’s one of the nebulous notions, like morality, although he does possess loyalty and a refined and occasional sense of integrity, too, if the circumstances demand it.

  I’ve known him – worked with him – for a long time now. Longer than you would think, given that I look so youthful. That’s an attempt at humour, as you would know if you knew me. No one has ever told me that I look youthful. Even when I actually was youthful, somehow I managed not to look it. It’s a talent. Possibly. A singularly pointless talent. I remember a description given to a bystander after a moment of fractious collision with some fool. They described the assailant – which was me – as looking like a man of about forty. I was twenty-eight. But this is of use; the plods searched for a man who looked about forty. Which I did. Like I said, it’s not a useful talent. Maybe I should disguise myself. Sport a wig, dye my hair, grow a beard. Maybe I truly do not care enough to bother.

  Working with the Hard Man almost always involves bodies. In fact, I think there’s no need for a qualification there; there are always bodies. He is either responsible for causing those bodies to be dead ones rather than the lively kind, or he is responsible for finding out who’s responsible for their deadness. On one particularly wry occasion he was hired by an interested party to find himself, for it was he himself who was responsible for the bodies in question. He failed to find himself, except possibly in a Zen sense. Although that would be unlikely, given his personal chosen path. But he did find someone else, someone who was indeed responsible in a direct way but who had pulled no trigger, twisted no garrotte. And he also shopped that person, sold him to his inquisitive customer and then offed him to prevent unhappy personal embarrassment. Life is packed with humour. It is often a challenge to find and accurately identify it, however.

  Today’s visit had found the Hard Man being unusually non-specific. He claimed to be checking on my availability, although he could have used the phone to do that. There’s no need to perform the actual face-to-face talk-talk business these days. It’s possible, if unlikely, that he was concerned that someone as-yet unspecified could be listening in to a phone call. On the other hand, it is equally unlikely but equally possible that the same as-yet unspecified someone could be listening to us passing away the day via some high-tech eavesdropping kit fitted somehow, somewhere, in this apparently unlovely apartment. Paranoia is a terrible thing. Round and around it goes, and where it stops . . . everyone knows. Everyone who’s been down the paranoia highway, that is. And that includes everyone in this fine line of work. Indeed it does. It is impossible to survive otherwise. Trust me on this.

  In a light moment, I once suggested to the Hard Man that we should name our little joint venture something witty and pithy and relevant. The Kompany of Killers, or maybe The Kuddly Killer Kompany; something subtle, something fashionably alliterative like that. I even suggested that this was so stunningly simple that no one would see through such a subtle double bluff; folk might even believe that we were a charity dedicated to something noble. Like saving whales. Those handsome piebald black and white ones . . . orcas. But we’re not. Unless the pursuits of wealth and leisure are noble in themselves. And you can debate that in your own time.

  The dirty blonde pretends patience. A sure sign that a little temper is imminent. I know the signs. Sometimes I ignore them, because she can be a whole load of fun when she gets worked up. And even more fun when she recognises that I have been winding her up, and then . . .

  But let us not go there. You might be shocked. And we wouldn’t want that. Not here. Not now. And not yet.

  ‘And while you’re not telling me why the twat was here, parking his filthy feet on my sparkling clean carpet, you can also tell me that he’s going to make you rich and immortal. Rich or immortal, should I say.’

  Rhetoric, as always, is a fun thing; a good clean game between friends, and like the best of games played between the best of friends, it’s best played in private.

  Being possessed of a surprisingly strong desire to enjoy the rest of my time in this life, I refrained from reminding her that not only was the carpet neither particularly clean nor particularly hers, but also that the Hard Man had never to my knowledge done her wrong, as the song might have it. I also crave neither riches nor immortality, although a careful balancing of these two might be nice.

  It would also have been inappropriate to mention that the Hard Man was one of the very few men of my acquaintance who would have been entirely delighted to remove his footwear in the noble cause of domestic bliss. He would have no concerns about that. He tends to be concerned about things more deadly than the state of the soles of his shoes or their potential for carpet contamination.

  ‘There’ll be a body,’ I tell her. ‘There’s always a body. That’s what we do. Bods R Us. Someone will be dead. He’ll expec
t me to go look at it, and then have a go at understanding it, so we can work out whodunit and he can thus become even more famous in his own secret circle. This is what we do. You know this. Nothing strange, nothing sinister, just a pair of amiable eccentrics going about their daily duties, making the world a better and a safer place.

  ‘Beer? Or curry?’ I truly do understand the pathway to my best girl’s innermost self.

  ‘Fuck off, JJ.’

  She could be a poet if she’d only work on it a little harder.

  ‘Curry. And then you can tell me what the twat is lumbering you with this time.’

  I have been close to the dirty blonde for a decently long time now. In a long life packed with irony, she is possibly the greatest irony of them all. For a start, she’s not exactly what the pedantic among us would describe as being naturally blonde. I know this to be true, and now so do you. We should perhaps keep that quiet intelligence to ourselves. She might not thank me for revealing her little stubbly secret, but in truth she most likely wouldn’t care, either.

  Self-presentation is not her greatest concern. Although she does claim to value honesty. This in itself is an amusing notion, bearing in mind that she presents herself as being a blonde, when she is in fact otherwise.

  Likewise, she isn’t dirty; she is demonically hygienically obsessively clean. I also know this, and in the great spirit of sharing which is currently afflicting me I will let you into this other little secret. I know the reasons for these charming disguises, too, of course I do, I investigate things, I crave understandings, but they’re not relevant at the moment. If it is unclear to you why anyone might present themselves as being something which in fact they are not . . . play with your own imagination for the time being. I may reveal more later. Or I may not, of course.

  ‘JJ!’