A Last Act of Charity (Killing Sisters Book 1)

by Frank Westworth

  I sit and I wait. I know what happens now. It happens now; the cell phone shudders once again. It shudders with an electronic urgency it does not feel for the message which it delivers but cannot read. I read the message, and wish I was walking again. There is a beat, a tempo, a pace to the incoming messages, and that beat is increasing. I need to be elsewhere. I need to be there now or earlier. And I need to wait outside for further instructions. They will be urgent instructions. Further instructions are always going to be urgent instructions when there are corpses involved. And it feels like a night for corpses. It does not feel like a night for driving. It did . . . and now it does not.

  I leave the heavy Transporter where it is and walk to the latest hotel. Another hotel. Another date with the dead. The urgency will wait, as no doubt will I.

  10

  NO RETREAT FROM TIME THAT’S DIED

  Charity stared at the figure standing by the hotel’s entrance. Familiarity knuckled at her. The man had appeared before her before. Not recently, not recently enough for him to register as a known quantity, as a significant item at any rate, but certainly some time. He was waiting for someone, something. His body’s posture spoke loudly and clearly to her. Gentlemen in waiting. They have an air, an attitude. They transmit, they vibrate with an aura of . . . impatience? Concern? Nervousness?

  She’d been observing him for some time now. He’d arrived on foot with the air of a man in a hurry. The air of someone late for an appointment. He appeared hurried but unworried, expecting to be met. By whom? And why? Charity needed access to the hotel. She was also in something of a hurry. After the last mess, and the mess before that mess, there was certainly a need, a serious and pressing need for a long talk. Several long talks with her sisters in arms. The sinister sorority. But talking followed the action at the moment. Which was exactly the wrong way. Exactly the wrong way to run a business like the killing business. Her business. Their business. The business of her partnership. Their partnership.

  To become and to remain an effective elimination service it is important that the partnership operates as a team. Operating as a team involves planning. Planning involves discussion, involves transparent and effective communication. It is important that communication results in decisions, mutually acceptable decisions, a detailed understanding of what was to be achieved, which goals to be met, by whom, how, when and where. It is important that all those involved in the plan understand their roles, their function, their place in the great reality which is a murder, an elimination, a contracted killing. It is important that the team accept and comprehend completely that they are a team, and that they all have positions, places to be, rules to agree and roles to follow. And that they are responsible to each other, individually and collectively, for the successful accomplishment of their shared task. That path leads to a successful conclusion, the results of which include satisfactory remuneration and a degree of job satisfaction.

  And indeed Charity had always found her job to be a satisfaction. She took a certain pride in a job well done. Not just her own job, but the job of her team as an entity. She could accept that hers was an unusual calling, her preferred profession was not for the mainstream. How could it be otherwise?

  The last job had not run according to the plan, and she had no business being summoned to this hotel because there was no plan which involved action of any kind, at any time, in this place. There was no plan which involved her being here; none at all.

  Troubling.

  And here she was, watching a man. An almost stranger. Charity had a decent memory for figures, faces and postures, and she would place him, recall their earlier encounters at some point, in some previous context which might or might not be relevant to her current task. Why was she watching him? Why had she not simply passed him by, entered the hotel, walked the stairway to the fourth floor, to the room where her task – her unplanned task – awaited her? Because the man in her view represented a threat. If she had been asked to justify her almost unconscious analysis of the man and her almost immediate identification of him as a threat, she would have ascribed it to experience. To a deep and subtle understanding of the language spoken by breathing bodies. Even in stasis, bodies shouted out a language of their own. Experienced observers could often read it well. It is how snipers survive, how cats kill.

  The man radiated energy. To the casual eye he was simply standing near the entrance. Not leaning against a wall smoking, talking a fake talk on a cell phone or casting about him for his missing accomplice. He was simply standing. Quiet. That very quiet shouted for Charity’s attention. Almost anyone else would have been blinded by the quiet and would have walked past him and into the hotel. Which would have reversed their roles, she was certain, and the watched man would have become the watcher, she the oblivious watched. Inside the hotel there was a body, a recently dead body, and both she and the static man were waiting to meet it. There could be no other reason for him to be there. He could be here to catch an illicit couple doing the dirty in the deep dark dead of night, but she knew, simply knew, that this was not the case.

  No one is invisible. If the man was actually the threatening presence Charity suspected, then sooner rather than later he would become aware of her. He would already feel observed. Time was passing, as time cannot fail to do, piling up between them. It would be a familiar and an uncomfortable sensation to him. At the moment, in the first several minutes of the long view, he would dismiss his subtle sense as paranoia; the result of over-sensitive perception. But this does not last for long. Too soon, he would start to scan his surroundings for the cause of his concern. And he would find her. No one is invisible. Hunters can always find their quarry. And he was a hunter; she believed that. His very stillness, his silence shouted out his status as a hunter. There needed to be some activity, a little street life, to distract him.

  In his situation, Charity knew, she would be watching windows for reflections, doorways for shifting shadows, patterns of light and dark which were wrong for the angular environment of the building. And once he started to search for the watcher, he would find her. It would not be immediate, but it would be inevitable. She needed to move. But she could not move.

  Stoner was restless. He was waiting for the call, waiting for a signal advising him that he could break whatever door seals were present and break into the crime scene. Because that is what he was doing. Breaking and entering. He could be prosecuted for it. In another life that would have been an amusing thought; at the moment, in this place, it was merely an irritation. He needed to focus. He needed to concentrate on the scene before him. He needed a little access. He needed his cell phone to shake; to tell him that all was clear and that he could move forward. Wasn’t that how the suits referred to it? Were they not always in a state of going forward? Wouldn’t that be a nice place to share . . .

  He felt so conspicuous. There is a limit to the length of time that anyone can stand outside a hotel in the dead of the night, apparently aimlessly, before he starts to feel like a beacon. A fool with a fool’s golden light flashing, saying, ‘Here I am, look at me; I am up to no good . . .’ The only virtue of the current situation was that there was no one else awake. And although there was supposedly a murdered man inside the hotel, no one here appeared to be bothered about that unusual fact. Remarkable. But true.

  The mind plays tricks at times like these. Stoner should have arrived by car. It is so much easier to wait unobserved and observing from within a vehicle, despite the loss of sensory input when surrounded by steel walls, windows and a roof. His need to walk, his need for the exercise and the clarity offered by the walk had overridden his need for efficiency. His call could be an hour away, his wait a long one. There was no reason for him to suspect that the scene was clear of other, more lawful, interested parties, and it was impossible for him to enter it invisibly. The desk was manned. He knew of no envelope awaiting him here; no key. And it would be a bad night for burglary.

  He gazed around. Dark places, almost by definition, a
re interesting places. This was plainly a quiet hotel. It was a couple of hours after midnight and there was no obvious traffic, no obvious activity, no obvious guests. This was in itself interesting, although not in a major way, and Stoner couldn’t see how it affected his view of a crime scene he was yet to visit. But it was of interest. Why was there nobody home? If he was to avoid going mad with the boredom of a pointless wait, Stoner needed to identify a problem and to solve it.

  Why had it been important for him to drop everything and get to the scene? Why had the Hard Man been so insistent upon this? Was he actually alone in the street? Had the officers of the law even been here? They should have been. The crime surely had been called in? Agents of the law would have arrived, sirens wailing, beacons flashing, big boots trampling. It was almost impossible for him to be here first. So, then, how was he alone? Was he in fact alone? Was there an unexpected and unusual operation taking place here? Why was the Hard Man silent?

  He gazed around. Reached into the night, looking hard and listening hard. In the dark, as vision fades, other senses take over. Older, more primitive senses. Not quite sight, not quite sound; something ancient involving fear and survival. Was he alone? All nights have eyes, but those eyes are very often non-human. Cities are filled with feral creatures; foxes, cats on the hunt, dogs lost and lonely. And humans, too, filling all classes of character. Lost in spaces they could never fill. But the night was watching him; of that he was certain. He looked into the shadows. Glanced along the dim-lit roadway. Opened his eyes deliberately too wide to let every available photon bounce off retinas familiar with the unfamiliar moment of movement in the still quiet. The unnatural quiet. He did not feel alone. Stoner felt . . . observed. He yawned, stretched and raised himself on his toes; the actions of the bored man awaiting someone. His own movement should, could, trap an observer into a shift of their own position. As Stoner reached his hands, clasped them behind his neck, and while he rolled his head in those hands, his eyes watched steadily.

  There.

  His cell phone shook. Twice. A text. He opened the phone, the bright screen blinding his night vision. A simple message.

  ‘Enter. One hour. Confirm.’

  Which he did.

  Into the lobby. Straight to the desk. The night clerk was putting down the handset.

  ‘Mr La Forge.’

  Stoner grunted. The clerk slid a key blank into the read/writer, tapped things, handed the keycard across the desk.

  ‘You the police? I thought there’d be a lot more. And the press.’

  ‘If there are press, my friend, it will be down to your indiscretion, and that would be bad for you. This is a little bit sensitive, and noise would be bad. Best to keep quiet until someone important tells you otherwise. Which will not be long. At a guess.’

  The clerk nodded. Stoner did not give off an air of jovial bonhomie. In fact, if asked, the clerk would have claimed that he looked more likely to commit a crime than to solve one. But night clerks see many things, and they know how to be quiet.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘OK. Sorry. 410. Fourth floor.’

  Stoner was heading for the stairway. He looked back over his shoulder.

  ‘Shut off the lift.’

  No police. No scene of crime tape. Nothing. How was this possible?

  Charity sank to her heels. Squatted upon them. The not-quite-stranger was inside the hotel. The flare of his cell phone had both blinded him and called him inside. She watched for fresh lights, fresh fourth-floor lights. None lit.

  Blind eyes greeted him as he entered room 410. Blind eyes staring from a severed head. Hard to read, though they stared with focus, weeping for his attention. Stoner ignored them. A sight like this was a trap set to mislead, to confuse, to shock. He was not shocked. Not by a severed head. Not by eyes staring for his attention. The deliberate is rarely shocking. Provocative; not shocking. Casual violence is shocking; a set scene is a performance. An act.

  The criminal stink of a criminal death. Stoner disliked it. After all these years and all these deaths, Stoner still loathed the stench. A body. Lights on. A scene undisturbed. He set the alarm on his cell phone. Fifty minutes. A lifetime.

  How was the scene undisturbed? A puzzle for later.

  There was more. He knew there would be more. No killer leaves a single deliberate signal. Not unless they were playing a game, and why would a killer do that? Killing is not a game. It has never been a game. Killing is the most serious decision there is. It is a bigger decision than mating, breeding or eating. There are no frivolous killers. No successful frivolous killers. Frivolous folk commit murders, of course they do, but they never become killers. Frivolous folk mate, breed and eat; they also kill . . . but they never become killers. The killer here had left a message. Stoner was unsure who was the intended recipient. How could he know? The only way to discover who the message was aimed at would be to catch the killer and ask him.

  Or to catch the message’s intended recipient visiting the scene. Stoner stood entirely still and considered.

  Forty-five minutes. He should spend them wisely. He should become familiar with the scene. He should understand it, hopefully learn from it. Instead he stood entirely still and considered.

  Outside. He had waited. For a while. Longer than he’d expected. Than the Hard Man would have expected. But Stoner had in fact been much nearer to the scene than that. And so he’d arrived earlier. And as he’d waited outside, waiting for instruction, for permission to enter, Stoner had not felt alone. There was none of the familiar stillness of an observer alone. He had instead felt like an observer observed. Someone had arrived before him.

  There is a school of thought which suggests that when a situation is inexplicable, the best course of action is to file those puzzles into the mental retrieval system for later analysis. That time flies while waiting for no man, that there is no time like the present and that every moment is precious. All schools of thought have their moments. Every dog has its day.

  There is another school of thought. This alternative suggests that when a situation is inexplicable, then the wise man waits for understanding before proceeding further. It is too easy to create a situation where the wise man becomes instead the fool rushing in. No angels necessary in the bible of big mistakes.

  There is nothing at all pleasant about the smell of death. Stoner intended to spend as little time at the scene as he could, even less time than allowed by the Hard Man’s deadline, because of the smell if for no other reason. The unlit lamps of the dead man’s eyes continued to stare. No illumination there. Stoner walked slowly into the room.

  There are many kinds of hotels, and there are many reasons for staying in them. And as hotels go, this one was pleasant enough. It was clean. It was spacious. It was well furnished, had a big bed and a big bathroom with a big bath. Big enough for two friends to share. It had two chairs and a table between them. You can infer many things about a hotel user by the items he brought with him and what he did with them.

  Some folk carry a suitcase at all times, and it is often the same suitcase. The contents vary depending upon the length of stay. Other folk carry a small bag containing almost nothing, relying upon their hotel to provide for them. Some folk live from their luggage, leaving it open from their moment of arrival until they close it again and depart. Other folk establish a home-from-home, hanging up their changes of clothes, positioning familiar items in a familiar arrangement; taking their known world with them wherever they go. There are as many types of hotel and hotel guest as there are hotels and hotel guests. Stoner had no views on hotels nor on those who stay in them. Unless those guests got killed, and only then if grim misfortune or the Hard Man involved him in their deaths somehow.

  Luckless victim had carried a suitcase and a computer with him on his last journey. He had unpacked the suitcase; a travel clock sat on the bedside table along with a novel, the reader’s up-to point marked, the spine undamaged. No book-bender, then; a tidy person. In the bathroom would be the victim’
s preferred soaps, toothpaste and maybe medications in case of headache or hangover. No patent guaranteed cure for death though. The body would be in the bathroom. This was Stoner’s theory, based around simple observation revealing that there was no other room and that the dead head was the only visible body part.

  At first gaze, there was no sign of any other person’s presence in the room. However, it would have been difficult for the victim to arrange his death in such a plainly non-suicidal manner without that other party, so Stoner, on a quest for knowledge tinged with only mild distaste for the fact of the death and a suitable depression at the plainly statemental approach to murder displayed by the killer, cast about him for more clues.

  The computer, a laptop of unfashionably generous dimensions, sat open, switched on but blank-screened next to its case. The severed head sat between it and the edge of the desk, leaking a little and looking exactly as surprised and as accusing as it had ten minutes earlier. Stoner headed for the bathroom, body-hunting.

  No body in the bathroom. The bathroom was a paragon of hotel efficiency and cleanliness. Branded cosmetics had been arranged neatly, and the victim’s washbag stood watch over them. No body. Not even the smell of a body in here.

  The bath stood clean and empty, ready for the next soak. The shower curtains hung neatly from their rail and even the towels were stacked tidily, with only one of them moved and hung over the side of the bath itself. Either the murderer or the victim had washed their hands before or after the murder, depending on who was doing the washing. There were no obvious bloodstains in the bath or the sink, so Stoner left all that complicated forensic stuff to complicated forensic types and returned to the bedroom. A little bemusement was permissible, but not too much, because time was pressing.

  Thirty minutes.

  Stoner walked around the bed and back to the severed head. Its silence told him nothing new, and either the smell of death was fading by courtesy of the air conditioning or he was becoming accustomed to it.