A Last Act of Charity (Killing Sisters Book 1)

by Frank Westworth

  And she drove like the soldier she surely was. Steadily. No attention-seeking speeding. Well within the limits. All lights lit and clean. Perfect positioning and careful consideration for the few other users out in the evening. Stoner rode behind her, unlit.

  The road led into the countryside, the air cooled. She was definitely leaving the scene. Stoner braked smoothly to a stop. He watched the car’s lights fade into the gloom; when they had vanished he turned, headed back to the Transporter. Why follow further? He knew who she was.

  He neared the Transporter, parked, dark and silent. Switched off everything. Lifted the visor of his helmet and listened to the night. The only audible engines were a way away, a steady drone. None under big throttle, none approaching fast. He fired up and rode to the van, flicked the button on the remote and watched the rear door open. A flip of the throttle wrist, a shift of his body mass to the rear of the seat and a haul on the handlebars; the front wheel rose just enough to ride over the van’s low floor. Stoner leaned forward to avoid decapitation, rolled to a stop, killed the engine, and dismounted. Propped the bike, ratcheted it into the grip of a pair of restraining straps and flicked the remote again. Stripped off helmet and gloves, and slid between the two front seats and into bright – unexpected and unwelcome – light.

  The drab saloon was back, face to face with the heavy Transporter. Stoner shook his head slowly, reached for the driver’s door and stepping down into the road. She was standing away from her car, making the most of the disfiguring shadow. He started to walk towards her. She spoke.

  ‘This is a gun. I dislike them myself, but this one would stop a man who, say, took one more step from . . . now.’

  He stopped. Stood still. It was a night for surprises, not a night for heroics.

  ‘Thank you.’ Her voice was quite, quite different. Not like Charity’s at all. A different pitch. Far, far less inflection. She droned her voice. Tight control then. She would fire without hesitation, of that he had no doubt at all.

  ‘Gut shot?’ He spoke with all the calm in the world. ‘Leg?’

  ‘Gut. Easier target. The light’s not good enough for cowboy tricks.’ No hostility. No emotion he could detect. ‘You got an emergency kit in the lorry? Reckon you’d survive it?’ She sounded genuinely interested. In a way. A remote way.

  ‘Yes and yes, but it would be a considerable inconvenience. I would need to delegate. And I do not like to do that.’

  ‘So I understand, Mr Stoner. That is your reputation. I admire your reputation, and I’m flattered that you’ve been set on me.’ The gun was unwavering, held in her left hand. Pointed directly at his midriff. ‘What should we talk about? We should provide the audience with some creative smalltalk, some badinage before the negotiation.’

  ‘If you say so, Chastity. Is that really your name? Who names their daughters Chastity and Charity? And are you really left-handed? The men you destroyed were destroyed by a right-hander.’ Stoner took a step back, leaned against the mute Transporter. If he needed to move suddenly he could gain traction from both arms as well as both legs. His options were increased.

  Chastity leaned against the saloon’s own front panels. The gun’s dark eye wavered not at all.

  ‘Right-handed, JJ. I’m right-handed. I’m keeping my preferred hand free in case it needs to perform duties of its own. I really do dislike guns. Nasty, noisy, clumsy, toys for boys. Is it OK to call you JJ, JJ?’ There should have been a smile behind the words, but there was none. Just that gentle, smooth, purring and emotion-free voice. Educated. Very English.

  ‘I prefer the intimacy of a blade.’ Her right hand was suddenly and surprisingly lifting a matt black combat knife into a better light.

  ‘That the one you used on the heads?’ Stoner’s voice was as steady as her own. No force, no stresses.

  ‘Yes. Non-stick coating, y’know. The many wonders of science.’

  ‘Saves on the washing up, I suppose,’ Stoner spoke flatly.

  ‘Many unexpected benefits. Easier on the wrists.’ The knife had vanished again. The gun was steady. Both parties stood still.

  ‘You any preferences, JJ?’

  ‘About my weapons of choice or about the way I’m likely to die?’

  ‘Good question. Well done. OK. Enough badinage. You’ve been employed to take me down.’

  ‘Not so. I’ve been employed to find you. As I already told your sister. To find the whacko who chops accountants’ heads off and poses them for the camera. That would be you?’

  ‘Correct. I might have chosen a less dismissive expression than “whacko”, but it really doesn’t matter. You’ve found me. Well, let’s be generous, we found each other. Charity helped. She’s like that. She does like to supply a little kindness now and again. It’s that big sister routine, I think.’

  ‘She’s older than you?’

  ‘Indeed. Doesn’t look it though, does she? It’s the bathing in asses’ milk I expect. I expect she spends her days doing that. And her nails.’

  ‘Sibling rivalry, huh? Must be tough.’

  ‘No. No rivalry. What’s your plan, cowboy? You going to run me outta town? Turn me in to the law? Gun me down? Gunfight at the OK Diner?’

  ‘Not so far. I’m simply reporting that you’re identified and then either I or someone else will receive further instructions. Probably terminal, you know how it is, but you might get an offer of gainful employment. These are strange days. Dangerous days.’

  ‘They are. Yes, they are. But you don’t have a clue who I am. You don’t know where to find me. You have no contact details at all. Ditto for Charity, sweet thing that she is, she isn’t stupid. You know what I look like. What I look like at this moment, that is. Girls can change their appearance, you know. It’s all make-up. Scary stuff for you guys. We’ve met before. Did you know that?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘And you don’t get to do the James Bond thing with magnetic tracking devices stuck to the car, either. You try to fix one, I shoot you. That’s not a game you can win.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘And you can’t follow me. That old van is too slow and the bike doesn’t have the range. Neat touch, the bike, by the way. I like that. I should get one.’

  ‘And the car’s not listed in your name.’

  ‘No idea. It could be. It’d almost certainly in someone’s name, but the odds are long against it being mine. I don’t think the number plates are altogether genuine. But I could be wrong.’

  ‘So why are we here? Joyous conversation aside. Why are we talking? Are you working up to offing me as well?’

  ‘No. You’re not on the list. In any case it’s entertaining to have you around.’

  ‘You didn’t find Dave Reve entertaining enough, then? You had to off him. He was OK.’

  ‘He was OK. I tried to let him go. Had you worked that out? I . . .’ There was a pause. An interruption in her flat tone. She looked down at the gun. ‘I liked the guy. He was OK. He was funny. He sang stupid songs. He was supposed to make it. You killed him.’ She looked up. Shadowy emotion had appeared around her eyes. It was a bleak emotion. Cold.

  Stoner felt the familiar prickle, tickling of adrenaline building up.

  ‘I killed him? How do you work that out? You sliced and diced with that machete of yours and you put his head on the net. I wasn’t there. Remember? Is psychosis setting in? You altering realities now?’ He kept his tone level, with maybe a light touch of mockery.

  ‘You told Charity who he was. I’d taken out some other accounting twonk. They’re mostly the same in the dark. Mostly.’ The balance was restored to her tone. ‘He died fast and easy. He didn’t hurt. He didn’t even see it coming.’

  ‘How did you find him?’ Stoner didn’t expect a reply.

  ‘You expect me to tell you? OK. Quality of intel. Our intel is excellent. Charity told me of my error. Our employer told me how to find him. Dave. He died.’

  ‘So you just killed a guy you liked. Just like that. You feel good about that?’
/>
  ‘Don’t go silly on me, Stoner. The world is filled with men. And women. None of them matters much more than any of the others. None has much value. Some have value to me only if they’re dead. No real worries there. I’m sure you’re fun, and I’m sure Chas . . . Charity likes you in her own way. But if I need to kill you I will kill you. She’d find some other guy soon enough. There’s a lot of you around.’

  ‘OK. Where to now? It’s great to chat, so forth, but the night’s drawing along, and I would like to understand what we’re doing, where we’re going.’

  ‘Yes. You’re going to leave. You’re going to drive away. But before you do that, I’m going to supply you with a little information which may help you in the future.’

  ‘If I have a future. Threats like that?’

  ‘Nope. You can drive away from here untouched by me.’ She shifted position, but only slightly. Comfort rather than weakness. ‘You should step back from this investigation, such as it is. If not, you will get too close to us, to me or to Charity, and you will be instructed to take us out. You will claim to me at this point that you no longer do wetwork, but you’re an operating psychotic – it takes one to know one, I guess – and when your buttons get pushed you will always go bang. And if you decline, then someone else will step up and take a shot. That’s how these things work, as you know as well as I.’

  ‘I can’t stand back from this. I’ve accepted the job, and it’s not the way I work.’

  ‘OK. Fine. Charge me now, make your best move and get shot through the gut. That would be so stupid, so very stupid that I might make it nastier for you. There really is no need for this. You are not my target, I need not be yours.’

  ‘Well thank you for today’s great suggestion. Top idea. Why not save me all the tiresome rushing and just shoot me now? You sound like you want to.’

  ‘Not even tempting. Don’t bother with the provocation thing, it won’t work.’

  Stoner shifted, worked forearms and calves to boost the almost static blood flow.

  ‘Your sister says you’ve gone mad. Insane. Is that true?’

  Chastity paused a moment. Slowly and deliberately shifted the aim of her weapon until its single dead eye was staring at Stoner’s crotch.

  ‘It could be. It could just be.’ She drew an audible breath. ‘It surely feels that way. Feels . . . good. Comfortable. You need to know that there are a few more names on the list. Just a couple. I don’t know who they are and I don’t know where they are. Not yet. Then when they’re done we’re gone. This is not our city. You should wander about in your own particular state of confusion and avoid getting killed. We intend to work with you in the future. That is what this is all about. In a way.’

  Stoner stared, speechless.

  ‘I’m speechless,’ he muttered. ‘What have you got against accountants, for the love of God? I mean . . . accountants?’

  ‘Until I met Dave Reve, I’d no idea we were targeting any profession in particular. It doesn’t matter to me. All I care about is the who, the where, the when and the how, the how much.’

  ‘You don’t choose the how? The method?’

  ‘No. If Chas. . . Charity is correct and I am losing it – which feels likely enough – it’s the fucking bloodthirstiness of it which is doing it to me. You think I enjoy hacking some poor fuck’s head off?’

  ‘I have no idea. It never occurred to me.’

  ‘Would you do it? Can you imagine how cracked it feels? Broken? Dislocated?’

  Stoner raised his eyes to the heavens, to the darkness above.

  ‘I take your point.’

  Her shadow moved behind the twin glare of the headlights. Her voice was quite suddenly a different voice, some other person’s. It snapped, ‘What?’ It was not a friendly interrogative. Stoner understood at once that she was no longer speaking to him. A cell phone. Both her hands were in obscure view; an earpiece. An opportunity. Chastity aimed the gun again, slightly higher; higher gut entry point, just as lethal. She could take a call and aim a gun at the same time, could possibly also walk, talk and chew gum simultaneously. Making a move at this point would be foolhardy or fatal, probably both. Stoner relaxed back against the Transporter, drawing no more comfort, feeling no less at risk . . . but no more, either. Had he had some gum to chew, he would have chewed it at this point. This was, he mused, a gum-chewing moment if there ever was one.

  Chastity gazed at him with shadowed, expressionless eyes. Not blank eyes, there was nothing blank about them. She said ‘OK,’ and returned to listening in stillness, concentrating. Stoner lidded his own eyes, leaned his head back and stared upwards, away from the blaze of the lights. Chastity’s one-sided conversation continued. And then it was over. As silently as it had begun. She was moving again, out of the lights and away from her car.

  ‘You going to follow me again?’ Her query sounded almost disinterested.

  ‘You going anywhere interesting?’ Stoner could do disinterest also.

  ‘Would you believe me if I said no?’

  ‘No. Probably not. Such is the world of grim suspicion in which we are fated to move.’

  ‘Most poetic. You write songs, too, I gather. Talented. Must restrict your fighting skills, needing to watch out for those delicate guitarist’s fingers.’

  ‘Yup. Also fingernails. They do suffer in a struggle.’

  ‘So shooting you through your hand would deter you from following me? You’d need to get it fixed pronto then?’

  ‘No. Shoot me through the hand and I will kill you. Malice like that has no place here.’

  ‘Oh you are clever, Mr Stoner. You are too clever. How did you know that? Do tell.’

  ‘Elementary, my dear witless.’

  ‘No no. Do tell. I insist.’

  ‘Mercenaries always work for all sides. You know that. But steady your heaving bosom, I just guessed. And I have no idea what that strange soul wanted to tell you. I doubt it concerns me much; I pay them too much to be the target of serious betrayal.’

  Chastity paused. Then spoke again, her tone amused, faintly questioning.

  ‘It did in fact concern you. Completely. Mallis and Menace, our technomagicians, know we’re talking and have issued an instruction concerning your future.’ Her amusement was plain now. There was almost a smile in her voice.

  ‘So they called me first.’ Stoner forced a similar level of amusement into his own voice. ‘They assumed that I’d be in command of the situation, as would any sane individual, and when they received no reply they worked out who had the whip hand. But issuing orders? Orders? Really? I’ve never known that. Not from them. Who are their real masters in this, I wonder? And if you were going to shoot me, you would have shot me by now, so can I relax and walk some blood into my legs again? My arse is getting numb from sitting on cold steel.’

  ‘Stay right where you are. Exactly where you are. They have traces on both of us. Clever people. Clever, clever people.’

  ‘You going to tell me why you’re topping accountants, before you go? Apart from an attack of public-spirited social conscience?’

  No answer.

  ‘I’ll catch your trail again at some point and I will reel you in. You know that, and I know that.’

  The gun spat once, twice. Headlamp glass shattered and exploded into the air either side of Stoner. He hid his double flinch; he’d not seen the gun move, only a pair of dim muzzle flashes prevented his looking around for another shooter.

  ‘Yeah. Go home. Go somewhere you call your own and relax with a friend. Or without one. It makes no difference. I’m avoiding you for forty-eight hours, it says here; a voice through the ethers, as you just observed. Maybe seventy-two. If we meet in that time it will be a bad result for you. So we won’t meet. We’ll leave that pleasure for another day, and maybe things will be different. Charity says you play a mean guitar. She says your club is good. If I catch you after me in the next three days I’ll destroy your club.’

  ‘Kind of you. So when I find you I’d better be better
than you?’

  ‘One of us is holding a big gun, Mr Stoner, and that person is not you. You may have a cannon in your pants, but I really don’t think it’s much of a threat to me.’

  ‘Was that a joke?’

  ‘Yes. Cool, huh? As cool as the three charges set in your club. They’re funny, too. If I were you, I’d go and have a nice lie down and then I’d find them. They’re not on a timer. They’re just there to keep you busy while I get stuff done. A distraction. You can make like the headless chicken without actually losing your head. See? I do jokes. So I can’t be mad. Not very. Mostly.’

  Two more muffled muzzle flashes; the spotlights either side of Stoner destructed into splinters, the grains of glass flying glittering into the beams of the car opposite, raining down like an angry artificial hailstorm as the car reversed, swung into the road and accelerated away.

  Stoner levered himself into the cab, fired up the engine, pulled his cell phones from their resting places. No missed call from Mallis. None from Menace. None from anyone. No friendly thoughts. Nobody loved him. He considered his drive through deserted streets under the bleak streetlighting and wondered whether he would just kill the first cop who pulled him over to book him for his lightless ways. Road safety is a serious concern.

  As was the tap at his window. A face there in the night’s light. Shard. He tapped again, some urgency this time. Stoner opened the door, stared the question.

  ‘Come on. I bugged her wheels while you were doing the seduction routine; young lovers, you two, huh? Time to go. Time to see where she goes.’ Shard was rarely a man who spoke volumes. But his own dull saloon car fled through the night while its satnav displayed the location of the car they pursued.

  ‘Oxford?’ Shard’s tone revealed his incomprehension. Stoner considered, but did not enlighten him. The trace stopped, ceased its movement.