First Published Worldwide 2016
Copyright © Luke Smitherd 2001
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the author, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the purchaser.
All characters in this publication are purely fictitious, and any
resemblance to real people, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Cover artwork by Luke Smitherd
Books By Luke Smitherd:
Full-Length Novels:
The Physics Of The Dead
The Stone Man
A Head Full Of Knives
Weird. Dark.
How To Be A Vigilante: A Diary
Kill Someone
Novellas
The Man On Table Ten
Hold On Until Your Fingers Break
My Name Is Mister Grief
He Waits
Do Anything
For an up-to-date list of Luke Smitherd’s other books, his blog, YouTube clips and more, visit www.lukesmitherd.com
Acknowledgements
At the time of writing, the following people wrote a nice Amazon or Audible (.com or co.uk) review of How To Be A Vigilante: A Diary. Thank you so, so much. As someone still fairly unknown in the book writing game, those reviews mean everything. I’m only using the names you put on your reviews, as these will be ones you’re happy to have associated with my work… I hope:
451, A. D. Hall, Abigailspider, Adams family, AgirlWaiting, airhugs, Alexandra, Amazon Customer, Angel Colin, Angela Wallis, Anne, AudiobookFan, Bakerstreet, Barbra, Beet Nixon, Benjamin Nessen, Big, BigDog, bladerunner, Blanchepadgett, Bodornic, BoneyD, Book Thief, booknerdsbraindump, Booky Lorra, BSM, CaryLory, cat payton, Cherrie Hacney, cheryl, chrisbobs, CJ, Chris Revil, Claireyclaireyclaire, Cliffnook2000, ConMar62, Crippsy, D. Menashy, Damo, DaveC, David Plank, DavidAllan, Dc Fitzgerald, Don, Drew, Drucilla(Drac)Buckley, Elliot Brown, Emil Despodov, Emma Shawcross, G. Parlee, Garry M, Ged Byrne, Gex, Gilaine, Glen Gilchrist, Gotan the reader, H. J. Battle, Heidi, helen, Henry, I. Burke, J M Dho, Jacque Ledoux, James Liston, Jamie Greenwood, Jan Fisher Sylvester, Janice Clark, Jason, Jason goldsmid, Jason Jones, Jayg324, jek, Jeremy A. Smith, Jinny, JoanneG, John Mitchell, Jon Perry, Jonny Barr, Julian Bosley, Julie Blaskie, Julja, K. Edwin Fritz, author, katrina, Kelly G, Kelly Howard, Kelly Jobes, Kelly Rickard, Kelly Woodward, L. Durden, Lauren, Lorna, Louise Smith, LouiseTheFox, M. Iddon, M. King, madalyn king, Mark Fowler, Mark Ledsom, Mark Say, Megan Hodgkins, melissamcke, MetalHead, Michael Bigwood, Michelle Kennedy, Mike Nolan, Milking Badger, Miss S. A. Munn, Mr, Mr J Whiterod, Mr. Anthony Grayson, Mr. Chris Morgan, Mr. Damian M. Sears, Mr Lee Hopkins, Mr Matt Norgrove, Mr C., Mr. C. F. Gilbert, Mrs Hill, Mrs Kindle, Neil, NelMel, Nita V. Jester-Frantz, P W R Wilcox, P. Conde, P.S. Stephenson, Pamela Goodlad, Pammarshall04, paul, PAUL DENNIS, Paul Hopkinson, Paul Korhonen, Pixel, prettyace, R. GILL, Rachel Jane, Rebekah Jones, Richard Hustwit, Robert, Robert S Kaplan, Robin300378, Roger G, Rosalie Jenifer James, Russ, Ryuto, Sarah H, Saul, SciFiFan, Seamus Bopster, Silversmith, Simon, simon211175, Sir Lister, Steph in Nottingham, Stephen, Steve Blencowe, Steven, stu_999, Sue Phillips, swebby, Tamsin White, tejadab, TerryF, The Dogs Mum, The Fro, Tino1440, TonyM, trev, Troy Linehan, Uncle Lou, UnionJack, valkyrie, Weez, wrayfish, Yetiish
Patreon Posse:
Michelle McDonald, Mike Hands, Patricia Mussone, Frank Larocca, Sherry Diehr, Dean Bones, Michelle Kennedy, Rob Dennis, Marty Brastow, Steve Blencowe, Becky Brock, Glenn Curtis, Pete Hughes, K. Edwin Fritz, Kathy Logan, James Phoenix, Barbra Smerz, Richard Carnes, Jeremy Smith, and Barbara Haynes
Sincere thanks to Sophie, Henna, and Laurence at Audible for giving me my first big break. It won’t ever be forgotten.
Current list of Smithereens with Titles (see afterword on how to get yours):
Emil: King of the Macedonian Smithereens; Neil Novita: Chief Smithereen of Brooklyn; Jay McTyier: Derby City Smithereen; Ashfaq Jilani: Nawab of the South East London Smithereens; Jason Jones: Archduke of lower Alabama; Betty Morgan: President of Massachusetts Smithereens; Malinda Quartel Qoupe: Queen of the Sandbox (Saudi Arabia); Marty Brastow: Grand Poobah of the LA Smithereens; John Osmond: Captain Toronto; Nita Jester Franz: Goddess of the Olympian Smithereens; Angie Hackett: Keeper of Du; Colleen Cassidy: The Tax Queen Smithereen; Jo Cranford: The Cajun Queen Smithereen; Gary Johnayak: Captain of the Yellow Smithereen; Matt Bryant: the High Lord Dominator of South Southeast San Jose; Rich Gill: Chief Executive Smithereen - Plymouth Branch; Sheryl: Shish the Completely Sane Cat Lady of Silver Lake; Charlie Gold: Smithereen In Chief Of Barnet; Gord Parlee: Prime Transcendent Smithereen, Vancouver Island Division; Erik Hundstad: King Smithereen of Norway(a greedy title but I’ve allowed it this once); Sarah Hirst: Official Smithereen Knitter of Nottingham; Christine Jones: Molehunter Smithereen Extraordinaire, Marcie Carole Spencer: Princess Smithereen of Elmet, and Angela Wallis: Chief Smithereen of Strathblanefield.
Kill Someone
By Luke Smitherd
For Oxley
Part One: The Pitch
“To have dominion you must have a genius for organising.” - John Henry Newman
Chapter One: The Man in White, The Dangers Of Video Conferencing, and Some Very Important Rules and Regulations
***
When I was still truly young, The Man in White came to my family’s house on a cold Saturday morning in November. Klaus – although his name was not yet Klaus – was, of course, with him.
At twenty-one years old, I really was a young man, and I don’t mean in terms of age. I mean my attitude, compared to those around me who’d been in my year at school. Although I wouldn’t admit it at the time, I knew it deep down. It was probably why I was still working in a shit job three years after graduating and not attending university. I knew I would have crashed out halfway through the first year. In many ways, I think taking that shitty agency job was my first honest-to-god attempt at being an adult, but I could have worked there for twenty years and I don’t think I’d have handled things any better. I try to think of any adults I’ve known that would have been able to handle what that man had to tell me, and I can’t. I reckon they would have to have been psychopaths to do so, and as far as I’m aware, I didn’t know any.
Of course, I often think about what happened – every day, as you’d expect, but I mean I ask myself, specifically, if I have any regrets. That’s a difficult question to answer because there’s regret and then there’s culpable regret, you see. Active regret, to me, means things that I felt I handled badly, or wrong choices I made for the wrong reasons, you know? Like sleeping in an hour longer when you know you shouldn’t, or eating that extra dessert when you know you want to lose weight. Those are culpable regrets.
For the most part, I know I at least made choices I thought were right; what I thought were the best possible choices at the time. But was I truly culpable? Can I be culpable when faced with an impossible choice? I’ve never truly known. Not even once in the many, many long nights that have followed.
The very last choice, of course. The one that will never, ever leave me, no matter how much I try to make up for it. That’s why I’m writing this journal; to at least purge some of the crap inside me. To fill the Microsoft Word equivalent of paper on a cheap-ass laptop - bought solely for this purpose - that will never, ever, be connected to the internet. Can’t have any hack-happy assholes finding out about this.
That son of a bitch. That son of a bitch and his grinning face.
That morning – following the last day of my life that was still fully my own - the crappy old d
oorbell at my parents’ house woke me from a deep sleep. It took me a minute or two to figure out what was going on. What was the strange drilling sound? Then my cognitive process caught up with reality, the brrrrrrrrrrrr of the doorbell demanding an answer.
Someone has a problem. Maybe I’ve done something wrong. No, someone’s broken down out here, that’s it. The only reason someone’s calling this early is because we’re the only house around here.
The last part was true, at least. As I dragged my bleary-eyed carcass out of bed, the startling and surprising whiteness from the fields outside hurt my eyes as it penetrated the thin bedroom curtains. It had snowed during the night, apparently. The rolling countryside around my parents’ farm (inactive) turned into a dazzlingly harsh whiteness that would be a wonderland to some and an eye-stinging nightmare to first-thing-in-the-morning Chris Summer.
“Hang on…” I called, grabbing my moth-eaten robe from the hook on the bedroom door and angrily thrusting my arms into it. I had a right to be angry, didn’t I? That was a rough time for me. I spent endless days at the call centre and spent the rest of the time being constantly knackered. It was frankly a miracle that I never got fired, such a zombie was I on a daily basis. I was rarely asleep before 2 am, despite my best efforts, and the weekends were my only chance to catch up. On that particular morning, I knew I’d never get back to sleep again, and—
Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.
Now that pissed me off. I froze. What the fuck? Someone leaning on the doorbell like that? Who the hell did they think they were? I was suddenly torn between going back to bed just to ignore such rudeness, and a desire to go downstairs and give the business to whoever was treating my doorbell like some sort of servant-summoning device. In my angry, sleep-frustrated state, I chose the latter. I flung the bedroom door open and pounded my way down the narrow wooden staircase, reached the front door, and gave that door the flinging treatment, too. The brisk late autumn air hit me as a very terse and above-normal-volume yes? was in the process of passing my lips… but one that petered out when I saw the strange sight in front of me. The yes? ended up as simply,
“Yfff …”
In hindsight, when I think about what I was going to say—that I was going to give those guys the roasting and have them scared of me—I almost laugh at the ridiculousness of it.
A smiling man was standing in front of my parents’ doorstep, with a very large and unsmiling man standing immediately behind him. The gravel yard outside, with the chickens milling about (the only animals on the entire property, other than the cat, due to my parents’ fondness for fresh eggs) and the thin layer of snow made the image of the two men before me seem even more surreal. This was because the large man in his black suit and shades stood out in such contrast to the whiteness, and because the smaller man almost blended into it with his white suit, shirt, tie, and grey hair. Both of them wore leather gloves and sunglasses.
The white-suited man’s smile was so wide as to be almost unsettling, and the crisp neatness of the suit surrounded by the farm setting was just… weird. He was about my height of 5’9”, but a good deal older, perhaps in his early fifties. His skin was pale, but he still looked healthy and robust. His smile certainly was. The large man behind him was slowly scanning the exterior of the house, the courtyard, and the distance off to the left. Everything about him—his close-cropped blond hair, black sunglasses, his bulk, his chiseled face, the way he was dressed—said Spook.
What… the hell…?
“Chris Summer?” the man in the white suit asked me, extending a hand. I shook it, feeling the leather in mine, any thoughts of outrage already blasted away. I was immediately very nervous. Who could blame me? I mean, who has people like this turn up on their doorstep this early on a Saturday morning? This was already extremely fucking weird. All of it: they knew my name; the sheer size and formal dress of the large man; this guy’s white suit… Were they drug guys? Had somebody said something to someone? I would occasionally smoke the odd joint, but I never ran with anybody that was really into that kind of thing. My heart rate was already up and my scalp felt loose.
“Yes…” I said, suddenly feeling very vulnerable and foolish in my scabby old robe. Also, cold. The crisp, chill air was moving around my bare ankles and bony toes. “Uh… I don’t think I…” The Man in White held up a hand, smiling, and cocked his head away slightly. No need, the gesture said. I know this is a surprise.
“I understand, Mr. Summer,” he said. “This is out of the blue, I know. I also know this is very early for a house call, but I wanted to make sure you were in. We woke you up by the looks of it. Sorry about that.”
“That’s… fine.”
“May I call you Chris?”
Who the fuck is this guy?
Thoughts of slamming the door and calling the police were clamouring inside my head. You’d be thinking the same thing, right? Was this a dream? I didn’t want to get into a discussion and thought it a very bad idea to get drawn into one, but just as I was about to close the door, I had a vision of the Mr. Black Ops out there busting through it.
Would he do that?
They clearly came here at 7 am to talk to you. Did you really think they’re just going to leave?
What the hell is going on?
I tried to summon up some internal solidity. I’ve never been a tough guy, and I knew that the big unit would easily eat me for breakfast, but my father had always told me never to show weakness in a potentially dangerous situation. If you do, Chris, you’re already screwed. I had to stand up a little bit, if only until I could get my head around the situation.
“Well… I mean… that depends on what this is about,” I said, shifting on my feet, partially due to nerves and partially from the cold.
“Well, I’m not going to lie to you, Chris,” the Man in White said, “what I have to tell you is highly unusual. Pretty weird, certainly. Very weird. And look, I’ll be honest, you’re probably not going to like it. But the good news is that we will leave you alone the second you say so, but I would really recommend - for your own peace of mind - at least hearing what I have to say.”
I felt my blood run that much colder. Not just because of the terrifying phrase you’re probably not going to like it, but because of something even more simple. It was far more subtle, yet hit me the hardest: he was using my first name. He’d asked if he could, I hadn’t given my permission, but he hadn’t waited for an answer. It didn’t matter to him. I wanted to say just that, I didn’t give you my permission, but it just felt like a strange thing to say - impolite.
That’s bullshit. If I can’t be honest now, what’s the point in even thinking about this?
I didn’t say anything because, at that moment, I was scared shitless.
“Why won’t I like it? Who are you?” I asked. Who are you sounds like quite a confrontational and perhaps brave thing to say, but believe me, it wasn’t delivered in that manner. I stammered as I said it.
“May we come in and tell you?” the Man in White asked, with a theatrical, hey-here’s-a-crazy-idea shrug, the world’s least convincing used car salesman. “Again, we’ll leave as soon as you say, but you will want to hear this.” His voice was so ordinary, so-straight-out-of-a-dentist’s-office, that it was almost disarming.
I looked at the hulk behind him, looked at the Man in White’s permagrin, and heard the words leave my mouth on autopilot. Fear response.
“No,” I said. “No… I don’t know who you are.” I felt my legs start to tremble as I said it, scarcely believing that I was disobeying. I’d read about that happening in books, but here it was happening to me for real. I wouldn’t be able to stand if this went on much longer. I’d been asleep three minutes ago; how was it possible that I was in this situation already? “I think I want you to leave, actually. I want you to go away.” I could taste copper on my breath. The Man in White’s grin faltered a little, but just a little.
“Well, listen Chris, that’s fine,” h
e said, holding up his hands. “I said we’d leave if you asked us to leave, and I’m under very, very strict instructions to give you total freedom here.”
Give me total freedom? I thought. You don’t give me total freedom! You don’t give me anything! I already have total freedom and it isn’t up to you! That had really made me angry, but not angry enough to actually say it. Under instructions? Under instructions from who?
“But listen, I think you should at least know what’s at stake,” the Man in White continued, “and then you’ll be better informed. I’d feel very bad indeed if you didn’t know the whole score, as I’m almost certain that if you did, you wouldn’t want us to leave. Not because of any problems you would experience – you will experience no problems from us, directly or indirectly, and neither will anyone you know, but because I’m sure you’re a good person and a good person would want to know, or he’d want to know if, ah, he knew the situation, if that makes sense.” The last part was said with a little chuckle, like a light joke given in the middle of a lecture.
“What situation?” I asked, both desperate to know and not wanting to know at all.
The Man in White’s smile vanished from his face, like it was a living thing that had somehow been instantly shot dead.
“Someone is going to die if you don’t talk to us, Chris. Several someones, in fact. No one you know personally, but human beings, nonetheless. My employer’s associates already have them, and if you don’t hear us out, they will kill them.”
There was silence then, broken only by the light breeze blowing in my ears.
The Man in White’s gaze bored into me, his eyes hidden behind his sunglasses.
The huge man behind him stared at me too, his scanning halted, his eyes hidden behind his sunglasses.
All I could think was:
This is a joke. Or a dream. It has to be a dream.
“That’s all you have to do, Chris, to save these lives,” the Man in White said. “Hear us out. And then if you don’t want any further part of this, we’ll leave. Of course, you could say you want no further part of this right now, but people will die.”
Kill Someone Page 1