Perfect Kill

by Helen Fields

  ‘I don’t believe you,’ he said, and that time he could hear the smile in his own voice. It sounded foreign.

  ‘It’s true. And one of my ears is slightly larger than the other. My brother always teased me about it. He called me Lopsy for years when we were little.’

  ‘What’s his name?’ Bart asked.

  ‘Nick. He’s kind. I mean, he’s a pain in the ass, right? But he used to hug me when I cried and if he was here now he’d beat the shit out of these bastards.’ Skye laughed and sobbed in one go, sucking and spluttering air, thumping her forehead against the glass. They were both silent immediately, waiting for someone to come and investigate. No one did.

  ‘Skye,’ Bart said gently. ‘Would you talk to me about Malcolm?’

  A pause.

  ‘What’s the point?’

  ‘I guess, because I want to figure out what we’re doing here, what they might have in store for us. Don’t you want to know?’

  ‘No,’ she said, her voice hard. ‘It’s nothing good. There’s not going to be any happy ending. Figuring it out won’t do any good. It’ll just mean contemplating the worst before it even happens to us.’

  ‘Are you telling me you’re not doing that already?’

  ‘I just want to forget it while we talk.’ Her breath hitched.

  Bart understood. He felt the same. Having a conversation was real and normal. Hearing about someone else’s life – even someone locked in a room in the same corridor where you suspected your life might end quite soon – was better than being realistic about your own mortality. But he needed the reality check and that had to start with information.

  ‘Let’s make a deal,’ Bart said. ‘One question about all …’ he motioned around him pointlessly ‘… all this.’ He didn’t want to put a name to it. If he did that, she would never open up about Malcolm. The only reason he even knew the other man’s name was because Skye had called him Malcolm by mistake in their first conversation, and then gone on, briefly, haltingly, to explain why. The details had ended there. ‘And then one of us tells the other something personal. From home.’

  Skye sighed heavily. The sound – and the emotion – were like a curtain coming down. He started on a positive.

  ‘I was in a play at the Fringe festival last year,’ he told her. ‘Not exactly a starring role. I was the back end of a hippo. It was a mock-up of a pantomime, and they thought a hippo would be funnier than the traditional cow.’ A belly-laugh. That was great. Bart found himself grinning more than the audience had at the jokes in the show. ‘So Malcolm – what can you tell me about him? Where he came from, how old he was?’

  ‘He was twenty-two. He was from Glasgow originally but his parents moved to Edinburgh when he was twelve. He talked about skiing a lot. I think he was on some sort of team. He was here when I arrived.’

  ‘Did you ever see him?’

  ‘When he was being walked to the shower and back each morning. Then there was a day when a load of people went into his room, all dressed in medical scrubs and masks. They had a load of medical equipment and a video camera with them. Two days later they walked him out of his room. He smiled and waved as he walked past my window, but I think he knew …’

  ‘What?’ Bart asked.

  ‘That he was never coming back.’ Her voice broke on the last word, and Bart gave her time to recover from the memory.

  ‘What did he look like, physically?’

  ‘He was normal, you know, fit and healthy like you’d expect from a skier. He was a bit battered, but then he’d done the journey.’ The journey. Skye had talked for a minute or so about ending up in the box then made it clear she never wanted to discuss it again. ‘What’s your favourite bar in Edinburgh? Mine’s The Newsroom on Leith Street. They do this amazing burger with chilli con carne.’

  She sounded a long way away.

  ‘Is that the bar that has all the jars with lights in the front window?’ he asked.

  ‘It is. My friends took me there for my last birthday. My only regret is that I had too many cocktails and can’t remember the last hour, but the next day my face was actually aching from laughing so much.’

  ‘I like Dishoom,’ Bart said.

  ‘Amazing Indian food,’ Skye joined in.

  ‘I’m more a restaurant person than a bar person, not that I have the money for it very often.’

  ‘You’d hate where I work then,’ Skye said. ‘It’s a bar in a hotel on George Street. Most of the time it’s fine but on a Friday and Saturday night it gets a bit out of hand. That and hen parties.’

  ‘Really? I work in a restaurant. Skye, how much do you remember about when you were taken?’

  ‘Do I have to?’ she asked, her voice younger, reluctant. Bart wished he could put his arms around her.

  ‘Could you try?’

  ‘Fine,’ she said. ‘I was working. It was a really late shift because the bar doesn’t close until the last guest goes to bed, and some film crew had been celebrating in there. They went through every type of vodka we had until two in the morning, then I closed up. The next thing I remember is waking up. I don’t want to talk about that again.’

  ‘That’s okay, we don’t have to. At the bar, before you left, did anyone buy you a drink? Either someone you knew, or a stranger?’

  ‘No, we’re not allowed to drink at work. We can take tips but not be bought anything. The management doesn’t like the way that looks, even if it’s just soft drinks. I always have a bottle of water around and sip it while I’m working. You get really dehydrated during an eight-hour shift, you know?’

  ‘Is that something you did all the time?’

  ‘Uh huh.’

  ‘So anyone who’d come into the bar more than once might have seen where you put the water bottle back down?’

  ‘I suppose,’ she said.

  ‘Was it accessible – the bottle – if you’d been busy serving people, or clearing tables? Could anyone have reached it?’

  There was a long silence.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Even from across the bar. I wasn’t that careful. Shit. Oh shit. I work in a bar. I know what people do. Fuck it, this is all my own fault.’

  ‘Skye, no. It’s not. You could never have anticipated this. Not in a million years.’

  She was crying.

  ‘A woman I’d just started seeing bought me a drink after my shift and invited me back to her place. She left before me, said she was going to bring her car round. It’s all fairly dim in my mind. I remember putting my jacket on, and I must have left on my own two feet or someone would have stopped me … then nothing.’ Skye was quiet. ‘What about Malcolm? Did he remember anything?’

  ‘He was at the gym. That’s all he told me. He’d seen plenty of people he knew there so he figured the police would be able to trace his movements. He was freaked out about losing his mobile as he wanted to have his signal traced.’

  ‘You know, it’s possible that Malcolm isn’t dead. Maybe they were just moving him somewhere else.’ Bart did his best to sound convincing and failed.

  ‘For what purpose?’ Skye replied.

  ‘Maybe they just decided to let him go,’ Bart offered.

  ‘Or maybe not,’ she replied. ‘I’m tired. I’m going to try to sleep now.’

  The inch-wide image of blonde hair disappeared from his view.

  ‘Skye,’ he called after her. The blonde mass filled the crack of window again. ‘When we get back to Edinburgh I’m taking you to The Newsroom. We’ll eat whatever we want and drink cocktails, and I’ll make you laugh just like your friends did. That’s a promise. First thing we’ll do when we get home.’

  ‘Sure,’ she said. ‘Right. Only I’m not even sure anyone’s looking for me. I’d just split up with my boyfriend who was a total jerk, if I’m honest. I’d had a fall-out with my parents over him. I’d threatened to go off the grid and just travel for a year to teach them all a lesson. I’d even started looking up destinations on my laptop. If anyone checks it, the last thing they’ll fi
nd is me researching flights. The worst thing is, the night I left, I had my passport in my bag. I was thinking about going into one of those high street flight centres and picking a cheap holiday to anywhere.’ There was the sound of a fist hitting the wall. ‘I’m screwed. We’re screwed. We both know it.’

  Bart thought about it.

  ‘Your brother will know,’ he said. ‘Nick will know you’d have been in touch by now. He’ll be wondering what happened to Lopsy, right?’

  A hand appeared at the glass where the hair had been. Bart could just make out her thumb and forefinger.

  ‘I hope so,’ Skye said. ‘God, I really, really hope so.’

  Chapter Seventeen

  Three clients stood at the door to the flat. One was a regular, although he’d never been sent to Elenuta. He had a thing for another of the women, and made sure he was always there before the late-night rush. The second Elenuta had never seen before. He was large, and his eyes were slightly turned out from one another. The effect was disconcerting. As the women arranged themselves in the corridor, little more than tins on a supermarket shelf, the third man stepped out from behind the other two. Elenuta recognised him immediately, even with his top on and the scar on his stomach hidden.

  ‘Scalp, my man,’ Finlay shouted from the doorway to Elenuta’s bedroom. ‘How’re you doin’? I’ve been meaning to call.’ He exited, fist extended, fingers to the floor, and stood waiting for the man he’d called Scalp to respond in kind. His knuckles remained unbumped.

  ‘Were you meaning to?’ Scalp asked. ‘That’s fine then, only I was worried you were avoiding me.’

  ‘Avoiding you? You’d have to be my ex-missus for me to bother avoiding you.’ Finlay tried to raise a laugh.

  When none of the men at the door obliged, Elenuta took a half step back. The other women looked on, some craning their necks forward to get a better view of the action. Scalp stayed where he was outside the flat. The other men who’d arrived with him remained at his side. The timing was no coincidence, Elenuta decided.

  Scalp grinned. Finlay beamed back.

  ‘I want my money back from the race,’ Scalp said.

  ‘I see.’ Finlay rubbed his chin. He might as well have declared that a time out for thinking was needed. ‘Let’s talk about this in the kitchen, shall we? No need for my girls to be wasting time when they should be on the job. You two lads can go and get yourselves comfortable.’

  ‘They’re okay,’ Scalp said. ‘Pussy can always wait.’

  ‘Right, well, my place my rules so, like I said, we’ll go in the kitchen and the bitches can mind their own. Let’s get a dram and find a way to sort this out.’ Finlay moved along the corridor towards the kitchen, stopping when he realised Scalp wasn’t following.

  ‘The girls can stay where they are,’ Scalp said. ‘Like you said, your place, your rules, so we’ll discuss this out here, neutral territory if you like.’

  Elenuta kept her head low, watching Scalp from beneath her hair and her lashes. She knew better than to give him cause to notice her after what she’d seen of the race. He was wiry, his hair receding and thin on top. There were bags under his eyes that told a tale of insomnia, and his chin was weak. His eyes, though, were darts, and Elenuta wished he would just leave. Finlay was a bastard, but at least he was a predictable bastard.

  ‘Sure, mate, sure,’ Finlay said. ‘But as far as the money for the race goes, you played fair and square. You knew what the price was …’

  ‘The girl I caught did herself in. By rights she was mine to kill.’

  ‘A girl died at your hand. That was the agreement,’ Finlay said, his overly jolly voice a perversity relative to the subject matter. ‘You had a knife, pal, let’s not forget that it was you who broke the rules.’

  The women around Elenuta took in a shocked breath all at once, like an outgoing wave over pebbles. They knew nothing of the race, certainly not the details, even if they’d heard rumours.

  ‘Did I sign something?’ Scalp asked quietly, matching Finlay’s false grin with a quiet smile of his own. ‘I must have missed that.’

  ‘Come on, you’ve been to the race before. You knew the rules. You use your own hands, or anything you pick up there. You can slam their head into the wall, or shove their neck between two cupboard doors, but no weapons. If some twat decided to bring a gun, how would that be fair?’

  ‘Two thousand, and I want it today,’ Scalp announced, moving the conversation on as if he hadn’t heard a word Finlay had said.

  ‘Would you go fuck yerself? You didn’t pay that much in the first place,’ Finlay said, the talk of so much cash dissolving his facade instantly. ‘There’ll be no return of your money, Scalp, and I think you’re forgetting who you’re talking to.’

  ‘Interest is due, Finlay. Enough time has passed, and you made enough on the door to return ten times that to me. I looked like a cunt in front of all those people. I’m owed something for my reputation.’

  ‘That’s a different thing, now,’ Finlay said, rolling up his sleeves as if readying himself for a playground fight. His own men were at either end of the corridor, out of Scalp’s line of sight, but Scalp had to have known they were there. Elenuta took a half step towards her bedroom. ‘She saw it,’ Finlay said, pointing in her direction. ‘She saw the video. What do you think?’ He reached out a hand, took Elenuta by the wrist and pulled her into the space between Scalp and himself. ‘Do you think Mr Scalp there was made to look like a twat because of something I did, or do you think he managed that all by himself?’

  Elenuta looked from the men hovering just outside the flat door, to Finlay and his men who were now approaching slowly and quietly.

  ‘I not understand,’ she muttered with emergency diplomacy. The lie was hidden effectively beneath her genuine sense of panic. Standing between two rabid pit bulls had that effect.

  ‘The thing is, Finlay, there’s an awful lot of your punters that owe me. Money, favours, secrets, you name it. Your cash-flow’s going to take a hit if you can’t maintain your reputation hereabouts. If I spread the word, for instance, that no one was to go to your next race, sure you’d get a few idiots turning up, but generally speaking you’d struggle to break even. Then there would be the knock-on effect with your flats and your women. And there are alternatives, you know. Other pimps offering more exotic flavours than these, if you know what I mean. Or I could tip the wink in your direction. Put your competitors out of business. But only if you did the decent thing and refunded me for my disappointing experience.’

  Finlay hesitated. He looked up the corridor to his second in command who shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘All right then,’ Finlay groaned. ‘But I want your word that you’ll send people our way. My girls give as good a servicing as any they’ll get in Edinburgh. I test them all personally.’ The woman nearest him shrank back into the wall as he reached for her. ‘And I keep them good and scared so we don’t get any shit from them. They do whatever anyone wants.’

  ‘Really? I heard one of them escaped recently. Something about a dead body stinking up the road.’

  ‘Aye, well, that bitch has been taught a lesson she won’t forget. Stay there, I’ll get you your money.’

  Finlay scowled as he walked past Elenuta to his tiny office in the boxroom at the end. He motioned to his men as he unlocked it and they stood, hands in their pockets, the unsubtle bulk of guns deliberately visible.

  It took Finlay a while to emerge clutching a thick handful of twenties and fifties. He looked pained, but the tension of the previous minutes had passed. Elenuta gave the other women a half smile. It’ll be all right now, her expression said.

  ‘Shift yourself,’ Scalp told her. ‘Let me shake your boss’s hand. A deal’s a deal. Starting now, I’m going to be telling absolutely everyone that this is the only place to come for whoring.’

  Finlay held out the cash in his left hand, and extended his right to seal the deal. Scalp took the cash, stuffed it in his jacket pocket and took Finlay by the h
and, pulling him sharply forward. The man to his right squatted, grabbing Finlay’s ankles and lifting them. Stepping aside, Scalp shoved Finlay towards the railings. His body went up and over, headfirst. There was a cracking noise, as if a giant nut had been forced open, and at the same time a dull thump. One of the women screamed, and another slapped a more experienced hand over her mouth. Finlay’s men ran forward, stopping just short of taking action. It was pretty clear that whatever they did was going to be too late.

  Scalp stepped into the corridor through the open doorway.

  ‘Right, gentlemen, we’re open for business as usual. You two,’ he looked at Finlay’s men. ‘You can keep your jobs if you can also keep your mouths shut. You might even get a pay rise. Down you go and fetch your former employer. Gloves on, wrap him in clean plastic sheeting – there’s some in the boot of my car – and we’ll get rid of him tonight. Open up his office, too. Now we know he keeps his stash here, we’ll be able to figure out a little bonus for you all.’

  Elenuta kept her eyes on the carpet.

  ‘And ladies, I have a gift for each of you. We’ll be visiting Finlay’s other flats after this to distribute these more widely but you get to model them first, so be appreciative.’ He motioned to one of his men who opened up a backpack he’d had at his feet, pulling out several plastic neck collars each with a small plastic box attached. ‘These little beauties will help you remember your boundaries. We’ll be running a length of wire around the apartment. Try to leave when the current’s on and you’ll get a nasty electric shock, probably a burn, and we’ll know exactly what you’re up to as it’s been modified by a pal of mine to set off an alarm.’

  ‘Like for dogs,’ one of the women said.

  Scalp grinned.

  ‘Exactly, only I have a dog and there’s no way I’d put one of these fucking things on him, but then he’s irreplaceable to me.’ He walked up to the woman and shoved a hand between her legs. ‘You lot are just walking, money-making pussies, and as I understand it there’s a fresh supply coming in every month through the docks. Finlay had a great set-up here, but no idea of how to scale it up. So consider this a hostile fucking takeover. There’ll be more of you in each flat soon, so expect to make room. Client hours will be twenty-four hours a day. Sleep when you can, and keep yourselves clean. I don’t want any complaints.’