Stoner’s musical circle was its usual boisterous self; self-indulgent as only performing artists can be, entertaining, tempting as only audiences can be. There was private mail from Bili the Bass and a ring-me note from Stretch McCann, pianist at the Blue Cube. Bili’s mail would require more than a single mug of coffee, but Stoner replied at once to Stretch’s note with a terse text: ‘Now’. He undocked the musical phone and dialled. Stretch answered at once. Some folk never sleep. It was just past six-thirty of that bright morning.
‘Someone was after you, JJ.’
Stretch was straight to the point. Silence stretched. Stoner thought.
‘Who? Was she nice?’
A gentle joke in case the big man was concerned for his slightly strange friend, the friend who always, but always, needed to know if anyone showed any interest in him.
‘She was, brother. Indeed she was.’
Sat sipping on his own, Stoner’s eyebrows rose gently and a smile tickled his lips.
‘Care to share? Brother?’
He aimed a wide and audible grin through the ethers.
‘She missed you by minutes the first time, and Bili handled her with her customary grace and diplomacy.’
The sound-only grin was returned. The morning was starting well enough.
‘Did she stay long?’
A chuckle. And a negative reply. A head shaken invisibly but definitely.
‘She’s a fan, though. Plainly a convert.’ Stretch warmed to his theme. ‘She was in at the opening last night. Sat by herself. Watching the doors. Just like you do. But you . . . did not come.’
A pause there, in case Stoner wished to share his whereabouts. His silence declined for him.
‘Drank expensive water diluted with whisky for an hour. And is brave. She asked Bili whether you were coming in. I do believe that Bili suggested that she fuck right off and ask you herself. No hard response. None at all. Didn’t twitch. Asked for your number. Bili gave her a number. Probably a local cats’ home. You know what she’s like.
‘She asked me the same thing when I’d finished the first set. She said that no, you weren’t friends, and no, she didn’t know how to find you, but a couple of her pals had told her that you were handy with the guitar, and she’d like to hear that. I told her the usual; we never know when your great genius would grace us with your strident string-stretching, so all she could do was keep on coming back and buying our oh-so-affordable water. Maybe something stronger to steady her patience.
‘She asked whether you were that good. I lied and told her that you were. I am your true friend and you are a man who owes me much.’
Stoner grinned again. ‘Yep. That is of course true. The big black book of my life, your debt is recorded therein. That kinda thing.’
‘She’s no muso, JJ. She’s plod. Narco maybe. I dunno. You know these people. I don’t. I’d be happier if it stayed that way. She was too quiet. One of these spooky types, y’know? Sat there sipping one minute, gone leaving a half glass the next. I didn’t see her go. I didn’t see her come in. Know what I mean?’
Stoner agreed that he did. Agreed also that he owed Stretch a bottle of something. Suggested that it should be a strong something to soothe the jealousy, as the lady was plainly a talent scout, come to seek him out. And, finding no other talent in the Blue Cube, she’d left. Easy. They laughed and left it at that. Almost.
‘When you next here, JJ? Soon?’
‘Gotta see the blonde, y’know?’ Stoner was a master of the non-committal. ‘Maybe she’ll be free and fancy a loud night out, huh?’
Then it was the time to dig into the little phone’s memories to see what Bili had left.
It was short and to the point. The first message was a text version, abbreviated, of that from Stretch. The second read: ‘Need to see you. To talk. When?’
He finished his first coffee of the day. The cell screen lit with an incoming call. It was Bili. It was remarkable how often Stoner found himself thinking of her just before she called him. Spooky. Or maybe he just thought about her a lot. That was less spooky; more strange. He picked up.
‘Who’s your fan?’
Direct. To the point. Early in the morning, possibly pre-caffeine, maybe even unshowered. Her voice echoed sleeplessness.
‘No idea. Sorry.’ Sometimes the truth really is the only reply. ‘I spoke to Stretch. He thought she was a plod. Drugs, maybe. Which would not be a problem for me. Did you get a take on her? A feel for her? Maybe she is a fan. Hey, Bili, I do play good enough to have at least one fan.’
Levity attempted, an offer of a humour truce accepted.
‘Yeah, yeah. Painted class, JJ. Very striking. She was a model. A model what, though? I dunno. She worried me. More last night than this morning. She looked like . . . y’know . . . a predator. Not a muso. Not a player. Really not a listener. You the morsel, huh? Nothing new there, man.’
She didn’t sound as though she were smiling. The words smiled, but not the mouth that spoke them.
‘Stretch said you gave her a number. Whose? Not mine, hey?’
‘Can’t remember. It would have been right for the night. Maybe the AA? Can’t remember. Really. You OK, JJ? Not being chased? She did smell like plod. You’re not in trouble. Not been fighting again? Slapping guys around too much?’
She really did sound concerned. It was a talent.
‘Don’t think so. . . but thanks. You around tonight? At the Cube? Just checking up on you, y’know. I do believe you owe me a glass or two.’
Stoner was well into the second coffee. Was considering a second whole brew.
‘Love you, that man! Me? Owe you a drink? I been lying for you, man. Hey! Your shout. My drinking. Get used to this, JJ.’
Bili sounded better.
‘Hey to you too, Bili. The day is early now. Get some sleep. I’ve got running to do. People to see. Rents to collect. Strings to fit and a motorcycle to fix.’
Pleasantries and a low tension sign-off.
Stoner’s several email inboxes revealed a common theme: incoming from the Hard Man. They would wait. His cell lit again. The Hard Man. Synchronicity in action. It’s overrated.
‘Yes.’
He was running out of politeness, inspirational guidance also.
‘Yes yourself, Mr Stoner. I have a package for you. A physical in your hands, for your eyes only package. Where do you want it? You’re not at home, so far as I can see, and I’d not like this to go adrift.’
‘The Cube. I’m aiming to be there later. Stretch some strings, ease my worried mind. That kind of thing.’
The Hard Man pretended no interest whatsoever in Stoner’s musical meanderings. But they agreed that the package would rendezvous with Stoner that evening. Stoner sensed that there was more to come.
‘Have you had another body?’
The subtle, indirect approach sometimes paid off.
‘Not exactly. Not exactly. You recall the movie of the dead head on that website?’
Stoner agreed that he did.
‘Have you looked at the site again recently?’
Stoner confessed that he had not.
‘Then do so. Murdermayhemandmore.com. Go gaze. Then try murdermaybemore.com. This is beginning to feel like an epidemic in waiting. This evening. Love to the missus. Pet the dog.’
And he was gone. Stoner contemplated further caffeine. Considered visiting the websites. Stripped off his ancient pullover, pulled on shorts, socks and a tee, and let himself out into the morning, ready to run. Always ready to run. Whenever there was no time to walk, if he could, Stoner would aim for a run. And Parkside, being the elderly pensioned-off military area that it was, was surrounded by a perimeter. A real perimeter, with the remains of a road. A challenging and interesting running track. All his own, too.
Stoner ran.
In almost instant company
He was running in synch with another runner: all senses so advised him and he listened hard. Feet behind him. Exactly his pace. Exactly his speed. No one
to see unless he stopped and turned around. A neat technique. He had used it himself occasion ally, although few criminals could run in any meaningful way. Heroes of fiction stop and retie shoelaces. Runners’ shoelaces never came undone. Stoner ran on, settling into his comfortable perimeter stride. He felt good. Followers are fine. If harm had been the intent then it would have landed by now. He ran.
A lap. Just over a mile. Steady pace, settling into the stride, the running rhythm. Common time. Guitar music howled unbidden and exuberant in his head. Other runners wore headphones. Stoner’s internal system provided more entertainment than he would ever need. Clyde the Slide’s grunting intro to ‘Bayou Teche’ scratched and clawed again and again through his inner ear. His feet hit the beat exactly, as did those of his follower. No slacking.
A second lap.
The problems of transposing slide guitar music to conventionally fretted finger-playing are always a challenge, and challenges are what make things rewarding. So Clyde the Slide slid the heavy glass bottleneck which wrapped his left-hand little finger to make the shrill scream, while letting the open strings play chords behind it. This is less than easy on a conventionally-tuned guitar. The music echoed and howled; patterns formed in Stoner’s innermost ear and his left-hand fingers flexed. He could feel and hear how the chords and solo notes played out on the fretboard of his own Stratocaster.
A third lap.
Well into the third mile. The feet pounding in synch to Stoner’s own grew no louder, no softer. He was unworried; unhurried. The finger positioning of the song’s structure became clearer in his mind; the fingers of his left hand sketched the notes into the air. A joy rose in his heart. Cajun rhythms could do that. But so indeed could many others.
Parkside was deserted at first glance. It was early. The regular residents would still be deep in their pits, either in the strange land of domestic suburbia or, as in Stoner’s case, tucked away in a private hideaway, invisibly close to where they earned an equally private dollar or two. It was a land for night-owls, not for early risers. Which suited Stoner just fine. An unpopulated world was a world without problems, without strains. Over the four-footed pounding, the rasp of chill air whistling through his lungs, the solid double rhythm of his heart and the internal soaring of his incessant guitar soloing, he could hear the singing of the birds. An island of industry surrounded by waves of birdsong should always be unthreatening. He had based heavyweight decisions upon such lightweight thinking before. And running is a great leveller of men. The more he ran, the more tired his muscles became, so it would be worse for his invisible companion. Unless that hidden runner was in fact as much a runner as Stoner himself, in which case . . . well, they would both be enjoying a shared pleasure. Where’s the harm?
A fourth lap.
Curtains, shutters, blinds, windows and some doors were opening. Life was returning to the strange wasteland that was Parkside. Coffee was calling. Stoner ran on, heading for base. He stretched his stride, raising his pace without altering his rhythm. The gentle interference pattern of the following feet remained steady. His companion was as fit, as tireless as he. He passed his own units and ran on. A door slammed. The second set of footfalls was gone, suddenly. Stoner ran on. At the half-lap he slowed, stopped, stretched and gazed around him. Smell of bacon on the crisp air. He turned and walked through the park’s buildings, approaching his own from the rear.
‘Shard.’
Stoner nodded and grunted his greeting to the big man sitting still and silent on the wall which flanked the rear of the old buildings. That individual continued to watch, to observe, as he had been doing for some time. Since Stoner had started his morning’s running. He appeared no more distressed by the encounter, or by the activity, than did Stoner himself. He waved an arm.
‘Head filled with flowers and birdsong, JJ? You are one slow and unrewarding fucker to run with.’
Stoner smiled. One of those quiet mornings.
‘Coffee? Bacon? Muesli? Sacrificial goat?’
He let them into the unit, reset some alarms, locked some locks. Revitalised the coffee maker, waved at the fridge and sat down in front of his email. More, ever more of the same thing. Nothing significant, nothing too new. The same message: go look at this murderous website. In time. In time.
‘Always a pleasure.’
Stoner was cautious. Shard was a master of his old profession, and although he had once claimed to be as inactive professionally as Stoner claimed to be, the latter had doubts in his mind. But that was nothing new. And Shard did not live locally.
‘You moved? Are we neighbours now?’
A friendly enough query, but answers were called for.
Shard pulled his shirt over his head and draped it over a chair-back. He was military-standard man, just like Stoner himself. Bigger at the shoulder, narrower at the waist, but not by much. And he was a decorated man. Not only in the military sense, although his time in the military had developed the decorations. His pants followed the shirt onto the furniture and he strode into the shower, ignoring social norms and domestic per missions in the barrack-room way. Water rushed. A cleaner man emerged.
No concealing modesty here. Shard flexed his tattoos, jumped for a rafter and offered a minor display of gymnastics to heat his muscles and dry his skin. Stoner, who’d seen it all before, prepared breakfast, accepting that his guest was unarmed. Unwired. A cell phone buzzed. He ignored it. Set out two plates of bacon, a rough loaf and a bowl of fruit. Two settings. Facing each other. Opposing.
Shard opened the negotiation. ‘On headlessness.’
An unusual gambit to start a conversation, but the occasionally taciturn Shard did possess a noted sense of the oblique. And a sense of humour, black as coffee, black as befitted his calling.
‘I take it that you’re not referring to the Douglas Traherne Harding poetry?’ Stoner could do oblique right back. He’d been OK with cryptic crosswords as a youth. ‘“When I was born, I had no head. My eye was single . . .” that kind of thing?’
Shard smiled over his food, shook his cropped and decorated head.
‘Nope. Nice try, though. Your master’s voice, more like. You’ve got a body with no head. And a head with no body.’ It was not a question. ‘And so have I. It could be that they match. Do you have hands?’
Stoner’s cell was once more flashing and buzzing in a mindlessly encouraging way.
Stoner smiled. ‘No hands.’
Shard smiled back. There was no humour, shared or otherwise. There may have been mutual respect. A respect tinted with caution.
Shard was a serious killer. He had killed for contractual reasons for a long time. Originally he had worn a uniform and killed out there in the open, as and when his military masters demanded it. No argument, no conscience, no hesitation. He killed whoever, whenever, wherever, with speed and efficiency and with no discernible trauma or emotion. Occasionally . . . very occasionally . . . Stoner had been on the same team. When Stoner had been a military man, Shard had too. When Stoner became once more a civilian, Shard remained military, although he stopped wearing a uniform and a uniform haircut at the same moment that this sartorial transformation also gripped Stoner. The difference was that Stoner left the military’s sheltering machine, preferring to ply his trade in his own way, his own selection, his own man, so far as he could. Shard had never cared about the niceties, the subtleties; he was ordered to kill, so he did. He was the perfect military machine, a predictable and reliable asset. He was always happy to serve his country and to take his country’s shilling.
The last time their paths had crossed had been an odd event. It was Stoner’s last, but probably not his final, kill. While he was setting up the hit, which was contracted to appear as an accident, at least for the media-viewing public, Stoner became convinced that he was being followed. Shadowed. At no point could he achieve the sense of solitude he preferred when undertaking the considerably serious business of removing someone’s life.
But although he set traps and baited th
em, waiting for his follower to make mistakes and to reveal himself, no one was there. Until, quite suddenly, there he was. Shard. Again, Shard.
Stoner had returned from a day of sighting and observation, cementing the fictitious accident which would take the life from his victim. The day had passed well. Plans were laid, tripwires set. Stoner had returned to an anonymous lodge to sleep, to prepare for the victim’s last day. He habitually employed anonymous lodges, anonymous locations far enough away from the termination to make his identification improbable at best. He travelled between them, setting up a pattern of movement which would appear unsuspicious to any subsequent investigating officers of the law. He rarely stayed at the same motel twice while setting up a job, and never more than that. Modern hotel monitoring systems are efficient, but relatively risk-free for anyone aware of their procedures.
He had checked in at the desk, been allocated a room. Had been promised a good, sound night’s sleep and invited to dine at the character-free restaurant next door. He had declined. Politely. Shard had been sitting waiting for him in his room. Shard’s gun had been resting in his lap. As Stoner had turned from closing the door he had been aware of the gun first. Aware that a gun was being raised to point at him. Aware that he was unarmed. This is how it will end. This is how it will end for just about all contract killers.
‘Sloppy, JJ.’
Stoner recognised the voice, immediately accepted the futility of resistance, the pointlessness of heroism, and raised his gaze from the gun to the eyes of his better. Because better he was; Shard had demonstrated this simply by being there.
‘Sloppy. Bang. Bang. Double tap. You’re gone. Hey there, dead man, welcome back. I’ve booked us a table at eight.’
‘That is just so subtle. You want to kill me with kindness? Or poisoning by grease?’
Stoner’s voice did not tremble. He was as unafraid as he appeared to be. His imagination was dormant. He swung his luggage, a pair of motorcycle pannier bags, onto the bed. Sat down next to them, heavily. If Shard had wished him dead, dead is what he would already be. The understanding acquired in that moment had remained with Stoner ever since. He occasionally decided that if he was destined to die a violent death, the hands delivering it should be Shard’s hands. It would be quick, because that was Shard’s way, and Stoner could allow himself to feel grateful for that.
A Last Act of Charity (Killing Sisters Book 1) Page 15