by Lex Lander
What I was playing at was standing in the road, lit up by a pair of rectangular headlights. Through the glare I distinguished a head, thrust out of the side window of a high sided truck.
‘Tryin’ to get yerself killed, are yer?’
I tendered a placatory flap of my hand. ‘No such luck,’ I muttered, and backed onto the sidewalk.
The truck drove on to an angry clash of gears, revving hard all the way to the STOP sign, some couple of hundred yards ahead.
No death wish had guided my feet into the truck’s path. I had strayed unaware. Deep as my depression was, I no longer had any taste for oblivion as a purgative. What I needed right now was a stiff drink, followed by a beautiful woman, expert in the process of arousal. Placebos both, but they would help me cross a personal Rubicon, commit me to go on, to return to the highway I was so used to travelling. To regard the last few months as a mere detour. Or better still, as if they never happened.
I was getting soaked. I turned up my collar and headed for the station.
IV
Nobody
Thirty-Six
My inclination, on unlocking the door of my house late on a Wednesday evening, was to make for the bar. To pour a vodka and toss it down my throat. To relish its warmth in the pit of my stomach and be comforted by it. Then to pour another, and another, and another.
And so on, down that old easy familiar route. Instead, I opened my mail. Two weeks of it, neatly stacked on the hall table by Señora Sist. I sat in the kitchen and sifted through bills and circulars and a couple of airmailed Sunday Times newspapers. It wasn’t until I had worked down to the bottom of the heap that I came upon an actual letter. Not just any old letter, but a letter with a Nigerian stamp, postmarked Port Harcourt, three weeks earlier give or take. The handwritten address was incomplete: Mr Alan Melvill without the ‘e’, La Messana, Andorra. A miracle it had found me at all. Especially addressed to my alias. I slit it with my ornate Moroccan paperknife. Inside, a single sheet of lined notepaper, a creamy colour, grubby and stained. I glanced at the signature.
It was from Clair.
I stared at that signature for long while before starting on the letter itself. Unable to accept that it wasn’t simply an illusion. Half afraid to read what she had written. Why? Was it because I had failed to keep Lizzy safe from harm? Because, thanks to my incompetence, the carefree, happy girl Clair had involuntarily left in my care was now a drug addict? Now superficially aged ten years and almost certain to be damaged psychologically.
It was true I had much to castigate myself for and that telling Clair would come hard. Yet that wasn’t the real fear, the big fear. As I sat there in my house of memories, Clair’s letter under my outspread hand, little by little that other, bigger fear crystallised: I was afraid because of my feelings for her daughter, and hers for me.
Yet the content of the letter, when I nerved myself to read it, blew away my guilt.
Dear Alan
Excuse my handwriting, I’m working by candlelight with a pencil stub. I hope this letter gets to you. I’m giving my last $20 to Mostafa to put a stamp on it and mail it. He’s always treated me OK so I’ll have to trust him.
I’m being kept on an island off the African coast. Some sort of staging post for kidnappees I think. All young girls, some very young. Lot of crying, you can imagine. Last night I overheard the three men who guard us talking about killing me. Writing it cold like that makes it seem unreal but it’s real enough and I’m so afraid. They speak a kind of pidgin English but I think I understood what they were saying. Somebody called Hassan has been given the job. Oh God I can’t believe this.
I must stay focused. Reason for writing you is Lizzy. After they grabbed me and Lizzy got away I assume you took her under your wing. If you didn’t that makes me a bad judge of human nature. I sincerely believe you’re a good man. (Here I winced.) If you’re in a position to do anything for her please contact my old friend Suzanne Rissmeyer who lives in Brighton in the UK. Can’t remember her exact address. Her husband Stephen is something big at the US Embassy. Do it for me please please please. Don’t let me down, I beg you.
That’s all I guess. Thanks for everything. Funny thing is I’m worrying about Lizzy not myself. Tell her the insurance papers and will are in the desk top drawer. Give her all my love and a big hug and be kind to her. I can’t believe I’m really writing this. My best to you. Clair X
The letter was six months old give or take. So Commissaire Ramouz had only been wrong by a couple of months when he surmised she was dead, way back in June. It wasn’t the same anyhow as this in-your-face confirmation that they had killed her. Even the letter wasn’t a hundred per cent conclusive, but if “Hassan” hadn’t followed through, if the order had been rescinded and Clair had been spared, she would have found a way to write again, even without twenty dollars to bribe her guard.
A life ended then, a door closed. It saddened me, not so much on my own account as for Lizzy. Her hopes had dwindled, but never quite to vanishing point. Her acceptance never quite absolute. Now this, the quietus. Kinder perhaps not to tell her? Let the half-healed wounds scar over naturally. Certainly it would be easier for me if I mailed the letter to Julie, and let her decide. Better that such devastating news came from the mouth of a woman, a mother with daughters of her own. More empathy there.
Yeah, right. Nice cop-out, Warner.
‘André?’ Very few people called me by my given name these days, but I would have known her anyway.
‘Who else?’ I said into my cell phone. ‘Hello, Lizzy. How are you? Are you still with Julie?’
‘André … my mum’s dead, you know that, don’t you? I mean really dead, like for-sure dead. That letter you sent Julie …’ Her voice cracked. Seconds crawled by. I didn’t speak. Couldn’t. ‘Anyhow, I want to come back. I want to come home.’ Straight to the point, as ever.
I glanced involuntarily at the half-packed suitcase on the bed. I was booked on a night flight from Toulouse to Rome, thence to Florence. The “home” Lizzy wanted to come back to would be unoccupied an hour from now.
‘Does Julie know you’re calling?’
‘It’s nothing to do with Julie. It’s to do with you and me and us. I miss you so terribly.’
‘Freckles …’
An angry hiss travelled along the waves. ‘Don’t say it! Don’t fob me off with your tired old bullshit.’
‘I was going to say this isn’t your home. Your home is … is … well, not here, that’s for sure.’
‘You’re doing it,’ she groaned. ‘You’re talking as if you were my father. I’m coming just the same, whether you agree or not. I belong with you.’
‘I won’t be here,’ I said coldly, ducking for cover behind an uncaring front. ‘I have to go to Italy.’
That threw her, but only for a couple of seconds.
‘Italy? What for, on vacation?’
‘Business.’
She demanded to know what kind. I declined to say. My secretiveness didn’t go down well. I was reminded of our pact. Avowals of love came down the line, battering at my sang-froid.
‘Tell me why you have to go, André. Please!’
Dare I tell her? Would it be enough to destroy her love? Half of me would have been glad, the other half desolate.
While I still vacillated, she blurted, ‘You’re going to kill somebody, aren’t you? Don’t deny it! Is it because of me, or my mother, or what? Tell me, tell me, tell me!’
‘No, Lizzy, it’s not because of you or your mother,’ I said, and even to my ears I sounded tired and defeated. ‘That’s all done with. But yes, I am going to kill someone. For money. A lot of money.’ A long pause, then I went on, ‘That’s what I do. That’s my job, killing for money. Do you understand what I’m saying? I kill.’
The reaction I expected – a cry of horror, revulsion, maybe a rebuttal – never came. On the contrary what I heard sounded very much like a chuckle.
‘I know you do, my love,’ she said, and in a tone so
tender and full of loving that my sense of shock was instantly dissipated. ‘I know all about you.’
My silence was longer this time as I came to terms with her declaration. Finally, though, all that remained was to say goodbye.
So I said ‘Goodbye, Lizzy,’ and tapped the red bar to terminate the call.
Back to my packing, only now my actions were no longer precise and leisurely. I tossed items of clothing into the suitcase any old how. I had to leave, and fast, before my heart overruled my head.
The cell phone summoned me again, and in my mind there was an imperative in its tone.
I couldn’t bring myself to switch it off, so I left it on the bed and walked out and down the stairs, away from its summons. I went out onto the terrace, to sit by the pool and try to restore order to my emotions. Water has always been good therapy for me. The sun was peeping from behind clouds that resembled scraps of torn cloth. Daffodils were pushing through, spring’s advance guard, making no concessions to the snow that still carpeted tracts of hillside.
This would be my premier visit to Florence. I was even looking forward to it. A city stuffed with Renaissance works of art, birthplace of Dante and Machiavelli. An opportunity to improve my mind, no matter that the purpose was to kill a man. The contract had been offered as an olive branch, in atonement for the death of the de Bruins. No pay, despite what I had told Lizzy. Just peace of mind. Just life instead of death. To refuse would be to take on the dogs of retribution. And they were large fierce dogs, many to my one.
In time I returned to my packing. No more calls came. Only an accusing silence and the sense of an unseen presence that I was sure would be still be here, waiting for me, when I came home.
END
Andre Warner is a former operative of the British Secret Service, turned contract killer. He kills bad guys and only bad guys. His next victim will be his forty-fifth.
An approach by Robert Heider, an American racketeer, whose elder brother, Jeff, was assassinated two years previously, seems routine enough at first sight. Heider is resolved to avenge his brother’s death, as are Jeff Heider’s son, Nick, and his nephew, Robert, who together with Robert Heider, control a Houston and Las Vegas-based business empire. Despite exhaustive enquiries, Heider Sr. has been unable to identify the assassin and is willing to pay Warner a $1 million fee to find and execute the man responsible.
This kind of assignment is Warner’s meat and drink. Killing one of his own kind doesn’t trouble him. On the contrary, he welcomes the challenge of pitting his skills against another professional. Unfortunately it’s not a straightforward as that. A complication arises that he can see no way around. Nor is walking away from the contract the answer.
Reluctantly, he agrees to go ahead. The customary fifty per cent of the fee is paid over, and he flies to Las Vegas, ostensibly to glean information from Jeff Heider’s stunning widow, Maura. If seduction is required to win her over, he will take this hardship in his stride too. However, making enquiries will only be going through the motions, putting on an act to keep the Heider’s satisfied. In reality he must find a fall guy for the killing, which itself presents a further problem: to meet Warner’s moral code of conduct the fall guy must himself be on the wrong side of the law, ideally a killer.
In Las Vegas, with Maura Heider proving receptive to his advances and unexpectedly falling for him, the enormity of the challenge becomes apparent. As his relationship with Maura arouses the suspicions of the Heider family, and the net tightens around him, he has only two choices - fight or run. Or maybe there’s a third option …
This is how it begins …
The girl was alone and the four guys had backed her into a corner. The way it was shaping up they were hell bent on rape.
Standing in the forecourt of the filling station, I watched the scenario unfold behind the glass front of the brightly-lit office. The guys were too preoccupied with their intentions to notice me. The girl was gutsy all right. No yelling her head off, no cringing at their feet. In her right hand a large pair of scissors, wielded dagger fashion. She wasn’t going to surrender her virtue without a fight.
The guys were young and uniformly dressed in jeans and windbreakers. Their taunts came to me through the glass, though my Spanish wasn’t good enough to translate them all. One, possibly the ringleader, was wearing an olive green baseball cap back to front; fists on hips, his whole stance reflecting his arrogance. Even as I took an uncertain step forward, another of the group produced a switchblade knife, taunting the girl with it. She subsided against the wall, her bravado tested to its limit.
Noble dragon slayer I was not. For starters, could I take on four young thugs and come through without serious injury? For seconds, however this ended up it was likely the Guardia Civil would be dragged in, and I had good reason to stay clear of the law and all its works.
Consequently I hesitated. Until the girl did finally cry out when they wrested the scissors from her, and the ringleader flicked a slap at her face that was audible from the forecourt. A sense of ignominy thrust me forward. When I opened the door to the sound of ripping of clothing, nobody heard me. By then the girl was down on the floor, making sobbing noises, and they were stooping over her, pumped up and cawing with excitement, egging each other on.
So I announced myself.
‘Buenos tardes, señora, señores!’
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ANDRÉ WARNER, MANHUNTER – Volume IV
SHE KILLS
To be published in Spring 2017
I KILL
Contents
Cover page
Title page
Copyright
Also by LEX LANDER
Part I - Clair
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Part II - Lizzy
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Part III - Annika
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Part IV - Nobody
Chapter Thirty-Six
The next volume