He lowered the gun and looked outside instinctively, his mind on the thunder clap. He laughed, a soft, harsh sound that mocked his own instincts. “Fucking weather,” he spat.
“Terrible, isn’t it?” Jester emerged from the cupboard, his gun aimed at the assassin.
The blue eyed hit man quickly lifted the assault rifle and steadied his aim.
“What do you plan on doing with that?” Jester asked, nodding towards the machine gun.
The assassin smiled and pulled back on the trigger. It slammed hard against an empty chamber, the subtle noise echoed throughout the room, followed by Jester’s words, “You have a really short memory.”
The semiautomatic in Matthew’s hands fired three shots. The first two shots sunk into the assassin’s chest, he hit the floor clutching the wounds, the rifle falling clumsily by his side. The third shot popped a clean hole in the centre of his head, right between his blue eyes.
“Execution,” the words came from the doorway. Jester turned quickly to see the second assassin walking back into the cabin, aiming his rifle directly at Jester. “I like it,” he looked down at the dead assassin, a faithful colleague of three years but no emotions crossed his face. “Takes guts to do that.”
“Pulling a trigger doesn’t take guts,” Jester said.
The assassin smiled and moved closer to him. Jester backed off slightly, making the gap between him and the hit man as big as possible.
“It does when they’re on their knees, pleading for their lives.”
“He wasn’t pleading for his life.”
“He was ... you saw that look in his eye,” the assassin pushed. “They all have that look.” He looked down at his colleague again, spat in his direction, the saliva landing on his blood-stained suit. “Everyone, no matter how ruthless in life, turns into a fucking sissy when they’re facing their own demise.”
Matthew Jester stopped. He had retreated enough. Both of the men were training their guns on each other, none of them willing to pull the trigger.
“I could kill you right now,” the assassin threatened. “Maybe I’ll shoot your kneecaps off first, and then work my way up.”
“You can’t kill me.”
“Would you bet your life on that?”
“Nope, but I’d bet yours.”
“What?” the assassin asked, bemused.
“If you pull that trigger and kill me, what do you think will happen?” Matthew challenged.
The hit man had stopped in his tracks. He was in the centre of the room, the door to the cupboard south-east of him, the fallen body of his partner in crime lying behind him. “You’ll die,” he said blankly.
“As soon as you hit me, I’ll pull back on the trigger. As soon as my body feels the pain of a bullet, it’ll pull back on the trigger. Even if you hit me square between the fucking eyes, my body will still pull back on the trigger. Hell, technically, I can be dead and still kill you.”
The hit man looked confused. He had heard what Jester said and understood it, but what struck him as odd was the demeanour of the man in front of him. For someone with a gun pointed at their face he looked incredibly easy-going. Something in his eyes suggested he didn’t care anymore, and that worried the assassin.
“Put the gun down,” the assassin ordered.
“No,” Jester said plainly.
“Put it down.”
“Go fuck yourself.”
“Put it down or I’ll shoot.”
“I have a fucking gun too, I can shoot as well.”
The two men locked stares, none of them willing to drop their weapons.
“Where’s your friend?” the assassin asked, breaking an intimidation-filled silence.
“I don’t have any friends.”
“The driver, where is he?”
“What driver?” Jester said.
“Don’t fuck with me,” the hit man warned. “Where’s the driver, Charles Edinburgh. Tell me where he is and I’ll let you go.”
“Who sent you?” Matthew asked, refusing to comment.
“No one sent me.”
“You came here of your own accord? Just fancied a rainy holiday in a bullet-ridden cabin, did you?”
“Where is the driver?” the assassin shouted, losing patience.
“He isn’t here.”
“If you tell me where he is, I’ll let you go free.”
“Bollocks.”
“I will, just tell me where he is.”
Jester seemed to ponder on this for a moment. “Okay,” he said slowly. “So if I tell you where he is, you’ll promise to let me go?”
The hit man nodded hurriedly.
“How do I know I can trust you?”
“We didn’t come here for you.” The assassin’s words were quick. As soon as he said them, he began to regret it. He quickly coughed the remark away. “Just tell me where he is.”
“Okay,” Jester said. “If I tell you where he is, what are you going to do to him?”
“I just want to have a word.”
Jester hummed and hared. “Okay,” he nodded in acknowledgment. “He’s behind you.”
“What?” The assassin turned, something flashed across his eye-line but things were moving too rapidly for him to intervene. Pain exploded from the back of his legs as something sharp sliced across his calves.
He screamed out in agony, throwing himself to his knees. The gun skidded across the floor, resting next to a pillow filled with holes and bleeding feathers. Charles emerged from the back of the assassin. In his right hand, he held a Swiss army knife currently worked onto a three inch blade that dripped with fresh blood.
The hit man watched as Edinburgh rounded him and then stood beside Jester. He was shouting curses and obscenities at such a pace that even he wasn’t so sure what he was saying. The pain inside his body controlled his voice, the pain dictating his actions and his emotions.
He looked Jester directly in the eyes. “You,” he stuttered. He seemed to be laughing, or at least trying to. “You,” he repeated. “You’re fucked.” He looked Jester directly in the eyes. “Fucked,” he repeated, the word carried on a saliva train.
“Don’t worry,” Jester said calmly, aiming the semiautomatic pistol at the assassin’s head. “I know,” he pulled the trigger and watched the figure slump.
25
Jester slowly walked to the far wall and sat down. He put the Beretta to one side and stretched out his legs, his foot lolled near Charles who was looking down at him.
“Did you have to kill him?” Charles asked.
Jester peered upwards, craning his neck to see. “What else could I have done?”
“You’re the good guy in all of this, remember? You’re the innocent fugitive … innocent people don’t kill.”
“Self-defence.”
“You executed him, and from what I heard when this guy was talking ...” He kicked the dead body of the second assassin. “You executed the other one as well.”
Matthew Jester shrugged his shoulders calmly. “Okay,” he began. “The first one was self-defence, maybe the second as well … I admit,” he said leisurely. “After that,” he drew an invisible line with his hand, swiping it across his view, “I stopped caring.”
He dug his hand into his pocket, retrieved a couple of pills and popped them in his mouth.
“You’re popping pills now?” Charles accused.
Matthew Jester laughed, his mood was defeated, his body exhausted. “Give me a break, would you?” he said softly. He allowed the conversation to trail off and then said, “They were here for you.”
“What?”
“You heard me.” Matthew looked down at the dead assassin. “And you heard him,” he added. “They were here for you, Charlie. Why?”
Charles Edinburgh paced up and down the floor, Jester’s eyes on him all the way. He passed the body of the second assassin six times – back and forth – before he spoke. “Maybe Chambers didn’t trust me, maybe he thought …” He lost touch again and the sentence traile
d off. He continued to pace back and forth.
“Your father-in-law doesn’t trust you.” Jester said, slumping to one side.
“The bastard!” Charles spat. He stood rooted to the spot, his forefinger resting on his lips. Suddenly his expression changed and he looked to Jester with fear in his eyes. “The kids!” he said. “If he’s sending hit men after me … what about my family?”
“He is your family, you fucking prick,” Jester said lightly. “He isn’t going to touch your kids. Now sit down and stop worrying, you’re giving me a headache.” His words were slow and sedated.
“You’re right,” Charles shifted uneasily. He looked around for a place to sit, realising the furniture was now toothpicks. “You’re right,” he repeated, settling down. “He wouldn’t hurt them, I should calm down.”
“When I met you,” Jester remembered, “you were the calmest fucker I’d ever seen. And the way you handled that guy in the pub, amazing.” He turned his head to Charles who had taken up a position beside him, leaning on the wall. “I guess fear changes everyone, huh?”
Charles’s expression changed to acknowledge the comment but his worries rapidly returned. “What are we going to do now?”
“You came here to help me,” Matthew said. “You tell me.”
“I came here to warn you,” Charles corrected. “I came here to tell you what was going on.”
“And you brought friends,” Jester said dryly.
“I didn’t know Chambers would betray me.” Charles looked at the assassins. He pushed himself off the wall, dug around in the dead man’s pocket and found a mobile phone. He jabbed away at the device, electronic beeps and musical tones followed each jab.
“What are you doing?” Jester wanted to know. “You gonna phone his wife and tell her not to bother putting the tea on?”
Charles took his eyes away from the phone and looked sternly at Matthew. “You shouldn’t speak ill of the dead,” he said, quoting a saying passed down by every mother and grandmother.
“Why not?” Jester questioned. “What’s he going to do? He couldn’t kill me when he was alive. You reckon he stands a chance now he’s dead?”
“It’s just respectful,” Charles asserted. “It’s the done thing.”
“But shooting at people isn’t the done thing.”
“Of course not.”
“And he shot at me.”
“What’s your point?”
“He had no respect for me in life so I’ll show the fucker no respect in death.”
Charles looked blankly at Jester and then nodded a simple, confused nod. “MC,” he said aloud, momentarily taking his finger away from the buttons. “There’s a number in here marked MC. That’s got to be Chambers.”
“Probably, why does it matter?”
“I just need to know that it was him behind all of this. I need clarification.”
“Fair enough,” Jester agreed with a lazy shrug of his shoulders. “Do you recognise the number?”
“No,” Charles said quickly. He had already typed something in on the phone and was now raising it to his ear. “He uses too many phones for me to keep track of any numbers.” He pressed the phone to his ear, waited, and then quickly pulled it away.
“Well?” Jester offered.
“It’s him,” Charles said with a nod of his head. “Definitely him.”
“Okay, now what?”
“We need to get out of here, quick. Chambers knows we are here and if he knows, it means the punters know and if the punters know …” He allowed the sentence to trail off.
“Then I get shot at again,” Jester finished the sentence for him and slowly climbed to his feet, using the wall as support.
26
Jester walked outside and Charles Edinburgh watched in disgust as he returned seconds later, donning a very wet hat.
“Did you steal that from the dead guy outside?” Charles asked, his voice fuelled with distaste.
Jester smiled. “Technically, I stole it from the owner of this place.”
“It’s been on his head … it’s probably still got bits of his skin on it.”
Jester nodded. “More than likely,” he agreed.
Charles watched the younger man in opened-mouth disbelief before he spoke again, “My car is parked around the back of the cabin, amongst some trees.” He dropped the mobile phone onto the floor and picked up one of the fallen assault rifles which he held unsurely in his hands. “We should take these.”
A loud mechanical sound blasted nearby and caused him to divert his attention from the gun to Matthew who was standing near the blue eyed assassin with an assault rifle in his hands. He had just finished loading the chamber. “Way ahead of you,” Jester said, loosely. In his other hand he held two magazines. “Here,” he said, throwing one of the magazines the driver’s way.
“Check him for ammunition,” Jester nodded towards the assassin at Charles’s feet.
Edinburgh did as instructed and found another magazine clip. They loaded their guns, made sure bullets were chambered, and then left the cabin and entered the dark, abysmal outdoors, where a storm continued to wash through the forest.
The wind rushed at them and threatened to knock them over. Charles pushed his hand over his temple, forming a salute to keep the rain at bay. It rushed directly at them, carried on a flight of ferocious wind.
Jester’s hands were dug deep into his pockets. His head was lowered into his chest so that the top of his head – protected by the hat – faced the rushing wind.
Edinburgh steadied the assault rifle with his right arm, aiming it ahead of him, ready to shoot at any moment. Jester’s gun hung loosely in his right hand, the butt reaching up to his bicep and down to his palm, the barrel aiming just ahead of his feet.
They found Charles’s car, a black Toyota MR2, hidden on the edge of the clearing around the cabin. Charles rushed up to the car, opened the front door and ushered Jester into the passenger side.
Jester didn’t move. “What the fuck,” he said slowly, smiling. “Mate, you drive a woman’s car.”
“What?” Charles was frantically trying to speed things up. Jester’s comment threw him off track. “Just get in.”
Jester shrugged his shoulders and climbed into the passenger seat.
In seconds, the car had pulled out of the clearing. After weaving around a few awkward mud paths, they emerged on a country road, relieved to be back out in the open.
“It’s not a woman’s car,” Charles said, breaking a silence that had lasted for a few minutes. “A lot of men drive them.”
“Yeah,” Jester nodded, “hairdressers.”
Charles laughed softly. “I’m sorry,” he said solemnly. His foot lifted slightly off the pedal, the car cruising in the rattling storm. “For everything that’s happened,” he clarified, his tone serious and empathic.
Jester removed his eyes from the road, lowering them to his lap. He nodded a bleak reply.
“It takes a lot of guts to do what you’ve done,” Charles continued. “If people really do get what they deserve, you have a lot coming to you.”
“I’ve had it all already,” Jester said sombrely, his tone still sedated. “Money, fame …” he paused and sighed. “I had a beautiful girlfriend, a perfect home. What more could you want?”
Charles didn’t reply.
“You see, I’ve already had what’s coming to me. I had the best things in life and I threw them away, all because I was greedy.” His eyes returned to the road, he looked distant. “There’s more to come though.”
Charles nodded slowly.
“Where are we going anyway?” Jester asked after a moment’s silence.
“In all honesty … I don’t know,” Charles admitted. “I just wanted to drive away. Anywhere but there.”
“As long as it’s not the police station,” Matthew said. “And don’t stop at any farm houses around here either,” he warned.
“Why not?”
“Because they’re all fucking crazy,” Jes
ter explained. “If you see any fucking farmer, you just run the bastard over, okay?”
Charles raised his eyebrows and then nodded anyway, deciding against probing into Jester’s absurd comments.
Running Stupid: (Mystery Series) Page 17