The wood was dense, the trees badly planted too close together, the ground overgrown.
No houses yet, though they were getting close.
They’d need to douse the torches soon, avoid being seen.
‘Fu … ck … ing … hell. This … isn’t … why I … came here.’
The yob was out of breath, short of puff, starting to fall behind.
It’s all your fucking fault, he wanted to say. You let him break loose.
‘You didn’t sedate him,’ he said, instead, not caring whether the fucker heard him or not. There’d be a time for making himself heard soon enough.
‘Sedate him?’ Puff. ‘What for?’ Groan. ‘There was … nothing I could do.’
‘There was one thing you could have done.’
‘Your way,’ the other man said. ‘Not mine.’
‘Shush!’ he hissed, stopping dead.
He held up his arm, stopping the other guy, holding him back.
‘There he is!’
‘Shut your mouth, I told you.’
A ghostly figure staggered across a clearing in the forest.
Naked white flesh flashed silver in the moonlight, a bulging gut, fold upon fold of it, heavy male breasts, his head down, arms swinging ape-like, legs like tree trunks formed out of lard. He moved in slow motion, a fat man on the run.
Not running, though.
He couldn’t manage running.
He zigzagged left, then staggered right, like a ship with no rudder, the wind picking up the sail, pushing the hull forward a bit, then letting go of it again. Stopping dead, then opening his mouth, howling at the moon like a fucking banshee.
It shook the pair of them, seeing him like that in the moonlight, naked as the day he was born, the head-wound open, face covered with blood, a grown man screaming like a baby in the dark.
‘Gotta shut him up,’ he said. ‘There’s a house this side of the hill.’
The last thing he needed was witnesses.
He took a step forward, raising his voice, not shouting though, keeping it calm.
‘Hey there,’ he cooed. ‘Yeah, right, it’s me. Come over here!’
The figure stood still then, dead on his feet. Another kilometre, his heart would have given out. With all the drugs they’d pumped into him. He’d been living on thiopental, pentobarbital, and God knows what else.
‘What was that stuff you gave him?’
‘Desflurane,’ the other man whined. ‘And he’s still on his feet.’
‘You should have given him more,’ he said, ‘a double dose.’
‘And killed him? Is that what you wanted?’
The prey was standing still. The clockwork moving him forward had run right down. He didn’t even turn around. Didn’t try to escape.
‘We’ll take him back, then ship him home …’
‘Sure thing,’ he said, and made a deep slashing cut with the scalpel across the other man’s windpipe. ‘You fuck it up,’ he hissed, ‘you pay for fucking up.’
A gurgling vomiting groan erupted from the other man’s lips.
He lurched down on his knees, both hands gripping his throat like he wanted to strangle himself, trying to staunch the blood tide, knowing there was no way it was going to happen. His life was leaking out between his fingers as the message got through. His eyes bloomed wide like sunflowers before he fell down flat on his face on the ground.
Turning away, he went on slowly across the clearing.
‘Take it easy,’ he said, getting close to the fat man. ‘No one’s gonna hurt you. You come along with me. Come on, that’s right. I’ll take you back, then I’ll take you home. You’ve had a bit of a run, that’s all, a bit of fresh air. You must be knackered.’
The big lump of blubber looked at him, tried to say his name, couldn’t get it out. ‘V … v … – V … v … – V … v …’
There was blood on his face, a gaping wound in his head where the stitches had split.
‘You’ve come a long, long way for sweet fuck-all,’ he said gently to the fat man, walking him slowly through the forest till he saw the place that he was looking for, an old farmhouse he had spotted the day before, talking quietly, keeping him calm.
As they reached the path, he put his arm around the naked man’s shoulder, pulled the scalpel across his throat, digging in deep, giving it muscle, pushing him away as the blood began to spurt.
He watched him die, then he pulled out his mobile phone and made a call.
He hated giving this sort of news. Everything fucked up, and two bodies to get rid of.
‘Jesus H,’ he muttered as the call was answered.
He kept it simple, tried to explain, listened to the voice at the other end of the line.
‘Yeah, yeah, I’ll get it sorted,’ he said.
The silence stretched out.
He waited, listening, the line wasn’t dead.
Then the voice said quietly, ‘We’ll talk it over when you get back.’
It took him half the night, dragging the body through the trees, the big one first, a short distance only, then going back for the other one, half killing himself with the effort. He had made a mistake there. He could have made it easier on himself and walked them both to the farmhouse before using the scalpel. Abandoned, out of the way, it was a perfect place to stow unwanted meat. He could sleep on the plane tomorrow going home.
It was sorted now, over and done with.
That was the important thing.
SIX
The next day, Stansted Airport, UK, 14.15
He was sitting outside Arrivals in a Mercedes C.
It had taken a bit of wrangling to hire a decent black car.
‘We got loads of white ones,’ the snotty kid behind the rentals desk had told him. ‘OK, they’re only Es, but they’re half the C Class price. It’s a special offer, long weekend.’
‘Black,’ he’d said, slipping the kid a tenner. ‘One day only. Cash on the nail.’
A black Mercedes was the only car to use when you were picking someone up. No one noticed a black Merc waiting outside an airport, except the passenger who was looking for the car and the driver he’d been told to expect.
There were other cars parked up in front of him. Three of them were Mercs. All black with smoked-glass windows, just like his.
He glanced at his watch again.
Twenty-five past two.
The mark was taking his time.
Fifteen minutes later, a man came out of the revolving door.
He recognised him straight away. He had his photo on his phone, but he would have guessed, in any case. He had that travelled look about him, a black leather tote bag hanging from his shoulder.
The guy stopped short outside the revolving doors, popped a fag in his mouth, struck a light, then pulled out his mobile phone, and started tapping the keyboard.
His own phone rang inside the car.
He let it ring three times before he answered.
‘Where the hell are you? I’ve been waiting here for ten bloody minutes.’
‘I’ve just pulled in, sir. A black Mercedes. If you cross the road and turn sharp right, I’ll flash my headlights for you.’
He watched the guy come strolling towards him. A snazzy, silvery-grey suit, a nice black canvas mac thrown open, zip-up Belucci alligator boots. Flash, but not too flash.
He jumped out of the car and opened the rear door.
The passenger handed over his luggage, and left him to stow the tote bag in the boot alongside the humble Nike sport sack he had brought up on the train from London before hiring the car at the airport.
He’d caught a whiff of G-and-T as the guy got into the back seat of the Merc. That was why he had had to wait. The fella had gone through Customs, then walked into the nearest bar for a drink or two. He was talking on the mobile now, the rear window rolled down, blowing out smoke in both senses.
‘Yeah … yeah, it’s all dusted. What a fucking caper, Jesus … Yeah, sure … I’m on my own … What a s
hitty job … Thank God it’s over. Yeah … right, then … sure thing. Yeah, yeah, I’m on my way.’
A tap came on his shoulder.
‘Let’s get this motor moving.’
He turned round, touched the peak of a chauffeur’s cap he wasn’t wearing, said, ‘They told me to take the A10, sir. There’s roadworks on the motorway. Is that OK with you?’
The guy smiled, looked him in the eye. ‘Take any route you like,’ he said. ‘Just take me home, and make it slow. Been up all night, working my fucking balls off. I need to kip, if you’ll excuse me.’
‘Certainly, sir,’ he said, as he pushed the automatic shift into drive, checked the wing mirrors, then pulled away, checking the rear-view mirror every so often to see what was happening on the seat behind. The guy was checking his messages as they drove across the motorway flyover and joined the A120. There was traffic, but not a lot of it, more cars heading for the airport than coming away from it.
By the time they drove around Bishop’s Stortford, the passenger was fast asleep.
Next stop, Little Hadham.
He turned off the A120 onto a lane called Horse Cross.
After collecting the car that morning, he’d sussed the area for a couple of hours, picking out places that would suit him along the route. This one was perfect, a dense wood at the end of a forgotten cul-de-sac. There were rooks in the trees, not a soul on the ground. It stood to reason. You live in the country, you don’t need to go out for a walk.
As the car moved into the shadows, he reached the chosen spot, a kind of sheltered bower with bushes pressing in on three sides, the sort of place that poachers, courting couples, and people of the night would use.
You wouldn’t find anyone there at three o’clock in the afternoon.
He pulled off the road, and switched off the engine.
Nice engine, he thought. On or off, you couldn’t hear it.
He grabbed a bottle of fizzy water from the passenger seat, got out of the car, and opened the rear door.
‘Hey!’ he said, tapping the guy hard on the noddle with the plastic bottle.
‘Hey?’ The guy opened his eyes, and looked around. ‘Where are we?’
‘Piss stop,’ he said, and he liked the sound of it.
‘Pit stop?’
‘Something like that.’
He turned away, unscrewed the cap of the bottle, took a swig.
He heard the passenger get out of the car, murmuring something, getting pally maybe, saying, ‘Yeah, why not?’ or something like that as he rambled over to the bushes, unzipped his trousers and let fly. ‘Oooo, yes, I needed that,’ he called back over his shoulder. ‘Ryan-bloody-air, the fucking cheapskates. You know what it’s like. Queues for the loos, you give up in the end.’
He turned around, zipping up his trousers, and saw the bottom of the plastic bottle pointing at his face. His mouth started to form a question, when the bottle went pop and the bullet hit him square in the forehead, knocking him flat on his back.
The Bersa Thunder 9 was a nice gun, but a bit of silencing always helped.
OK, there was a strong breeze, but you never knew where you were with the wind. Sometimes it deadened the sound, other times it carried it a long way.
The passenger looked so peaceful lying there on a bed of grass. As if he’d gone straight back to sleep, except for the big red hole in the centre of his forehead. His eyes were open, fixed and staring, blood trickling out of his nostrils, running down his cheeks.
‘Painless, what?’ he said, as he turned to the car.
He raised the boot-lid, unzipped his Nike bag, took out the two large bottles with glass stoppers and placed them carefully to one side. He dropped the remains of the plastic bottle into the Nike bag, then turned back to the corpse, dragging it into the bushes. There was a tiny clearing where the peepers probably hung out after dark, ogling what was going on inside the cars through night-glasses.
He dropped the body among the empty fag packets, used paper tissues, dead johnnies. Then he took a deep breath, unknotted the passenger’s tie, unbuttoned his jacket and shirt, unzipped his pants and alligator boots, then proceeded to strip him naked.
Everything went into the big Nike sports bag.
Not everything, though. The wallet with four credit cards, his passport, and all the other things that might identify him went into the plastic carrier bag he’d picked up at the airport shop when he’d bought the bottle of water …
Something fluttered away on the breeze like a butterfly, disappearing into the trees.
‘Shit!’ he said.
He thought about chasing it, but what did it matter?
A bit of paper?
It was probably the receipt from the airport shop where he’d bought the water. No one was ever going to trace that back to him.
He tried on the Eberhard Chrono 4, slipping his own watch deep into his jacket pocket. The alligator boots were his size, too, brand new as well.
Some things were just too good to dump.
‘Loot,’ he said out loud, as he stuffed the boots into the carrier bag.
Once they’d emptied the leather tote bag, he’d ask them for that, as well.
There was just one last thing that needed doing.
He went to get the stuff from the car.
He took one of the glass bottles from the boot, removing the stopper as he went back into the trees. He bent close, poured sulphuric acid over the dead man’s face, then he stood well back and listened to the hissing noise it made. The crater in the centre of his forehead started to bubble and spit like a volcano getting ready to blow, then everything just sort of caved in as the flesh and bone dissolved.
The stench was something else.
The white smoke burnt his eyes and made his nose feel itchy.
He went back to the Merc for the other bottle, covering his nose and holding his breath as he poured more acid onto the dead man’s hands, making sure to bathe all the fingers, taking extra special care about that detail, stopping before the bottle was empty, looking down at the body that was laying on the ground.
‘Will anyone recognise this stupid prick?’ he said out loud.
There wasn’t much acid left, but there was more than enough.
He poured it over the guy’s dick, watching the way it shrivelled up, then disappeared in a pall of white smoke.
Now, all he had to do was find a waste bin somewhere, ditch the stuff he didn’t need, then head back to the airport and drop off the car.
SEVEN
Three days later, Borgo Cerreto, Valnerina
‘Me! Me! Me!’
Two hands shot up in the air.
Both kids hoped to win the book that he had brought along as a prize.
One hand belonged to a tubby little girl, the other one to a tiny, skinny boy.
It wasn’t an easy question for such young schoolkids, asking them to remember what he had told them the month before about how the she-wolf chooses the den for birthing the cubs.
Cangio would have pointed to the boy. His hand had gone up a fraction faster. He was the smallest cub in this particular litter, too, so small he had had to jump up to be seen. The girl beside him had not only raised her hand and shouted out, she’d elbowed the boy in the ribs as well. If there was a prize, she was going to have it. The boy’s hand sank as he reeled from the blow, but it was still there, hanging in the air.
‘So, what is the correct answer, Roberta?’
Mother Wolf, as Cangio had christened the teacher the last time, showed off her clean white teeth and smiled encouragement at the girl. The teacher was the Alpha-wolf in this pack, and Roberta was her tubby little pet. Out in the wild, the little girl would have had a tougher time of it. The other wolves would have taught her not to lord it over the weaker members of the family.
Roberta twitched a smug grin at the little boy beside her, then repeated almost word for word what Cangio had told them about the den being hidden, but not too well hidden, the she-wolf marking off the area
with her urine so that other wolves would know they were entering forbidden territory.
‘That’s very good, Roberta,’ the teacher said, glancing at Cangio for confirmation.
He had to nod approval.
Roberta had carried off the prize.
He moved closer to the little boy who had taken the jab in the ribs without complaining. ‘Would you like to say something?’
The kid’s eyes shifted sideways to the teacher. First, he shook his head. Then he took a deep breath, and nodded. ‘I know a story.’
‘Sergio is always telling stories,’ Mother Wolf informed Cangio in a way which made the other kids laugh. ‘He has such a wild imagination.’ She shook her finger at the little boy. ‘Now just remember, Sergio, the subject today is wolves. W-O-L-V-E-S. Facts are what we’re looking for, not silly stories. Roberta won the prize by sticking to the subject.’
‘Maybe Sergio knows something we don’t know,’ Cangio said.
‘We’ll see about that,’ the teacher said.
Clearly, Sergio’s stories didn’t go down well with Mother Wolf.
Nor did Cangio’s enthusiasm go down any better. Mother Wolf pulled another tight smile. ‘Sergio’s tales are often a trifle eccentric, let’s say,’ she said. ‘They don’t always hit the nail on the head.’
And that sorts Sergio out, Cangio thought.
‘Who knows?’ he said, smiling back at her. ‘Maybe this time he’ll be on the ball.’ Then he looked at Sergio. ‘Is it a story about wolves?’
Sergio nodded, then wiped his nose on the cuff of his shirt. ‘’Bout men that turn into wolves when the moon comes up. They …’
‘Goodness gracious! What did I tell you?’ Mother Wolf muttered aloud. ‘Lycanthropes again, Sergio Brunori?’
There was something that rankled between the teacher and her skinny little charge. Maybe Sergio mucked up her plans, taking her lessons into places that she didn’t want to go, into places she didn’t want the other kids to go. There was one in every class, he knew, a rebellious kid, quite often intelligent and hyperactive, who distracted the others.
Give Sergio a couple of years, thought Cangio, he’ll eat Mother Wolf for breakfast,
He had been a bit of a Sergio himself at school. A lone wolf. A ball-breaker. He winked at the kid. ‘Come on, then, Sergio, tell us about these werewolves.’
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