The Hitnan: A Tale of Blood and Canes

by Wez Wallie

Suddenly the sheets fell back, and a seagull emerged from the bed, pausing to give her a look of nuisance for disturbing his feed and then flew out of the doors with half a jam sandwich tucked in its beak.

  She pulled back the covers and a tray of barely touched breakfast comestibles lay scattered all over the mattress! Mr Sinclair and his busty broads had clearly not been here since the morning and had vacated the boudoir in a restless and frenzied, (or possibly just sexy), state.

  A creak was heard from behind her, and Dotty gripped her cane tight as she glimpsed the reflection of a guard sneaking up behind her in the bedside mirror. He was almost at her back when she spun around and whacked her cane through the air, which smacked against the barrel of a Benelli M4 shotgun wielded in the air by Tilda Matthews. The guard was already zonked out on the floor.

  "I was gonna get that one!"

  "You're welcome, Dorothy."

  Tilda straightened her beret as Dotty poked her stick around the sleeping guard's jacket. "Blimey. Bulletproof vest, laser precision guns and a utility belt full of smoke pellets - these guys are properly kitted out. Wonder what they're expecting on the Isle of Man? It's hardly Bourne Identity. We're twenty minutes from Port St. Mary for fack's sake!"

  "Don't be surprised - you're in the big leagues now. They're protecting him from something that's seriously spooked him. Maybe they told him we were coming."

  Dotty looked down at the photo frame half-hidden under the bed by her feet. Just one man and his sausage dog, heads pressed together in matching white suits, his sideburns already greying in one of the saddest pictures she'd ever seen. "Bet his wife is pleased there's no pictures of her!"

  "Honestly, I doubt she's got much to complain about, he is well fit!"

  "Calm down Tild, you used to fancy Mick Hucknall from Simply Red. There's no accounting for your tastes." She put the photo on the bedside table and turned back to Tilda. "You found this geezer yet?"

  "Nope. Nor the dog. There are however three more heat sigs up on the top level – oh hang about, seems like the pooch is up there too so that's where Rocco must be."

  "Who?"

  "The mark, Dorothy! At least try to remain awake."

  "Oh. Probably with his two bimbos too."

  "Don't worry," she replied, cocking the shotty with a smirk. "Got plenty enough shells to finish the job."

  "Oi," Dotty yelled, grabbing hold of her rival's shoulder as she was about to leave. "The girls are not targets, Tilda!"

  "Oh, grow up Dorothy, we can't leave any witnesses!"

  She looked down at the guard on the floor and realised he wasn't actually sleeping, nor was that just remnants of jam from the breakfast tray leaking out from under him.

  "Cripes, Tilda, have you been offing 'em all??"

  "Did you really jump out of a plane without a helmet?"

  "Yeah. It'd flatten me barnet," she said perming her perm with her palm. "And don't change the subject Tilda coontin' Maffews!"

  "Of course I am. If we just took out Sinclair it would give the game away and they'd know it was a hit. Now it just looks like a robbery of some kind gone wrong. Here, take these."

  Dotty knocked the bundle of scooped up boxer shorts out of her hands.

  "You didn't have to kill them though!"

  "Nonsense. Look how these goons are kitted out - they're ready for an incursion. It's kill or be killed. And if not a burglary, the coppers'll just think it's a rival group or something. Remember, international gangs don't leave their enemies sleeping, Dorothy. Unless it's with fishes."

  "Everyone's obsessed with bleedin’ fishes! Right, let's go get this prick. But I'm warning you - you best leave the other two alone. Non-lethal KOs only!"

  Tilda thought it over for a second as she looked Dotty up and down. "Whatever." She slung the shotgun on the bed and whipped out her electric wand.

  "What the frig is that?!"

  "A taser in the shape of a wizard's wand. Did a bit of tinkering after I got it as a souvenir from the Harry Potter Studio Tour in Leavesden, where I was assigned to eradicate Dame Maggie Smith from the playing field as she opened up a new part of the attraction. McGonnagal's McGonnagone now if you know what I mean! Ha ha Ha."

  Dotty whispered under her breath as she left the room: "And you tell me to grow up!"

  They sneaked up the staircase and emerged out on the top level of the circular Penthouse. Tilda tightened her goggles and confirmed three more hostiles in what appeared to be the spa hut. They stood outside approaching the entrance as the crashing waves below the cliffside grew hungry and their thrashing tantrums covered their steps.

  They paused in front of the small wooden door, cued each other for the count of three as Tilda's elongated ET fingers dropped one by one:

  "...NOW!"

  They booted in the door and ran inside screaming like banshees, taser wand out in front and cane raised high. They stopped after a few moments after taking in what they saw.

  "heyderemswalker,t’anksferfinallycomingtasaveme,like!"

  Peader's muffled voice came vibrating out of a blonde model's tits, his smooshed-up face trapped within bodacious bosoms and slowly suffocating in the midst of soft silicon. His body was suspended diagonally in the air between the low roof and the hot tub below, his legs entangled in the lines of the parachute which was snagged on the jagged glass of the crashed skylight, as a sausage dog gently licked at his exposed ballbag.

  "Peter! This is not appropriate! Take ya face out of the poor girl's chesticles!" Dotty whacked her cane beside the dog who ran out of the hut and down the hill with a yelp. "Honestly, you should know better!"

  "sorrymswalker,icrashlandedcosifiguredoutdesteeringbutnotdestoppin',soitiswhatitisy'know.honestlyi'mnotonetacomplaincositcould’abeenworse,like."

  The two blondes in the tub had been knocked unconscious either side of him, and well, Peader had been stuck all night in what he assumed was now a post-death Heaven.

  Tilda threw her goggles to the floor. "Oh, fuck crumpets!"

  "Tilda! Never heard you swear before!"

  She turned away and threw her beret down in sheer anger. "Look under his chest, Dorothy."

  "What?" She leaned over the side of the tub. "It's just a pair of legs...oh crumbs."

  "everytingallrightmswalker?i'mgrandmeselfhereferawhile,ifyeneedafewminutesbreakan'dat..."

  Dotty thumbed around underneath Peader's half-squashed paunch and dug out the flattened carcass of Rocco Sinclair, playboy gangsta extraordinaire, sent to his final fate by a giant Celtic podge-bomb dropped upon him in the dead of night. (Poor fucker never knew what hit him.)

  "His neck's broken and his skull is the width of a paper clip. Goddamn, you know what this means, Tilda..."

  "Yeah. Neither of us got the target so now we're both in the shit!"

  "Fack that, my man here got the job done so WE WIN, girlfriend! YAY - YOU DID IT PETER! YOU'RE FINALLY USEFUL!"

  "IDON'TKNOWWHATIDID,BUTAMGLADIPLEASEDYE,MSWALKER"

  "Balls did you win," spat Tilda in incensed fury. "YOU didn't kill the mark, he did, and by a total dumb luck accident too."

  "The Lord works in mysterious ways. But usually fun ways, and in ways that benefit me! Gawd, I'm so hyped up I fink I need to do a Dotty's Diary update - no facker's gonna believe this!"

  "nawmswalker,disisasupersecretjobbie!"

  "Come on, Peter, let’s go tell Bognor the good news."

  Tilda stood by the tub fuming. "Damn you, Dorothy Walker! Damn you to hell!"

  "iseverytingok,mswalker?didyegetdatplayboyguynow?"

  "Yep," said Dotty, cutting the canopy cords and letting his legs flop down onto the edge of the tub. "We got him good!"

  Peader lifted his face out of the nice lady's plonkers, which had now left a caricatured impression of his mug within the malleable gel of the silicon.

  "Wowzers," he said, slurping up the waterfall of dribble leaking from his mouth, after spending hours buried in boob and wondering why he hadn't topped himself years ago. "As near deat' experiences
go, Ms Walker, dis is right up dere wit de best of 'em! I can't wait ta go back to de Lord, like!"

  "Yeah, well let's wait a few years until we complete all our contracts, eh?" she said, sharing her post-jobbie Twix and walking him back to the front of the compound, amid his plastic-fumed delirium.

  Tilda Matthews just stood in place, arm-crossed and sulking. She heard their voices rescind as they descended the hill. "D'ye tink Miss Mal will be upset dat I accidentally cheated on her at all?"

  "I 'ardly fink that counts, Petey-boy. You're still a virgin too, my friend."

  Tilda watched up through the open skylight as the stolen Chopper flew off back to London above her.

  "You just wait, Dorothy Walker. I'll get you for this!"

  Tilda dropped her wand into the tub and the three bodies frazzled and went up in flames.

  She pocketed her goggles and picked up her beret, sticking it back on her head with a snarl.

  "No witnesses. No loose ends."

  Chapter 14

  They got through the door and Robert the Builder was alarmed at all the wailing.

  "Oh, God! Please fergive me fer takin' de life'a one of yer children! Oh, Lord! I'll nedder fergive meself!"

  The delirium had worn off on the way home, and Dotty's summary of the night's events had shocked Peader to his podgy core.

  "What was I tinkin'? I should nedder go out on jobbies - dis is what happens! A Handler jus' doesn't belong in de field!"

  Robert was baffled, scratching his scalp and standing at the end of the hallway in his painting gear, wondering why a thirty-eight-year-old man seemed to be shouting and crying about being trapped between titties all night, and also as to why there was a helicopter plonked at the end of the green. "He alright, Mrs Walker?"

  "Ms. And yeah. He got some tit last night and he lost his mind, didn't he."

  "Ah. Poor kid. See that's the thing, Mrs Walker, you've got to get it in early or they develop a complex and then before you know it you're 89 with no grandchildren."

  Dotty didn't quite know what to say. "Thanks, dear - two brews if you wouldn't mind, luv. He's had an eventful night." She walked him into the living room and laid him on the couch.

  "Now listen Peter, you need to pull yourself together, man! You can't help where you land and end up crushing some poor twat's skull in, can ya?"

  "Oh, me word! D'ye tink maybe he might be okey, somehow?"

  Dotty winced. "You landed on his neck, mate..."

  "Ah, naw! D'ye tink it's possible he was already dead, like?"

  Dotty tried to play along and indulge the possibility, if only to make him feel a bit better about crushing a man to death in a hot tub on the Isle of Man.

  "Possibly. Hey, maybe those two girls were Russian assassins 'n had already facked him to death. Whatever helps ya sleep at night, Petey-boy."

  "Oh, Ms Walker, d'ye tink de Big Man will be sendin' me down ta de place where dere's only anguish an' despair, like?"

  "Nah. Pontins closed down last year."

  "I don't mean Pontins, Ms Walker, I mean Hell!"

  "Look. It was God's will, Peter! He guided you to where you needed to be, and he used your great gelatinous vessel as an instrument of his Divine Plan. That mark was a bad man, probably sold weapons and drugs all around the world; destroyed 'undreds of families whilst he enriched himself. He got the reckoning he was owed."

  "Gosh, really?" said Peader, sitting up and drying his redding eyes. "D'ye really tink de Big Man worked t'rough me?!?"

  "I'm sure of it. You were Divinely Touched, my boy!"

  "Y'know, I t'ought I could feel his warm lovin’ down below, Ms Walker! A real tingling in me balls, like..." Dotty cringed. "...God sure has a rougher tongue than I imagined."

  "Here you go, peeps, two brews, and I've thrown in some Jammy Dodgers as a treat," said Robert, laying down two mugs of milky brown tea and half a pack of biscuits that seemed to be half munched already. "Luvly jubbly!"

  "Ooh, you are a good a boy, aren't you dear!"

  "Not to worry Mrs Walker, I shan't be adding it to me final bill, don't fret," he teased with a hearty laugh.

  Dotty just feigned amusement. Fackin' right 'n all!

  "How's the kitchen going, dear?"

  "Yeah, not bad, Mrs Walker, slow going and that but you know, it was practically a Derry & Tom's (bomb) site when I started. Main thing is securing the gas piping, making sure it is all safe and secure as we don't want another incident of someone throwing a wobbly again and blowing you all back to the stone age now, do we!" He teased with a patronising undertone. "Nah, should be done in a fortnight, not to worry yourself, darlin'."

  He took a slurpy sip of his tea and sat back on his plastic chair with a wide man-spread, switching on Good Morning Britain and making 'cor' noises every time Susannah Reid came on-screen. (Affirmations of "she'd get it" were made every few minutes under his breath between a series of tea-gulps and dodger-dunking.)

  Piers Morgan was on the TV now interviewing noughties model Jodie Marsh, asking why this pound-shop Katie Price was having yet another boob job, and it made Peader laugh the tears away. "Maybe dis is exactly what I need: a nice brew, some good telly and a biscuit wit me friends."

  Robert raised his cuppa in agreement, as Dotty just caught his eye and smiled politely, and he went back to fiddling with himself through his pocket.

  Today's other guest on the show was Pamela Anderson, ("Cor she'd get it 'n all!”), who had been brought in to give the downsides of breast augmentations in the debate, and having two botched-up models onscreen ended up giving Peader flashbacks of last night's bittersweet events, and he sat up sweating with a full-on face flush.

  Robert put his tea down and leaned forward towards him. "You alright, lad?"

  Peader was trying to catch his breath through the beginnings of a panic attack.

  "Know what you need?" said Dotty, sitting him up straight. "You need to take your mind off things. Why don't you help Robert in the kitchen for today? Give you a purpose and get you out of your own mind, eh? That alright, Robert?"

  "Yeah, no worries Mrs Walker, I'll take care of him good and right." He slapped a palm on his knee. "Listen mate, it'll be great. Just you and me, some banging choons, and a bit of 'ard grafting. Sort you out nicely, son."

  "Yeh... yeh, okey, why not," said Peader enthusiastically as his breathing returned to normal.

  "Great, I'll get some more crown jewels from the slice pan! (tools from the van)."

  Robert walked outside as Dotty facepalmed and went to the hall to put on her coat and gloves again. "Right, I'm orff out."

  Peader put down his tea and got up to help her with her coat in the hall. "Oh. Where are ye off to, Ms Walker? D'ye need anyting from me now, say a lift down ta de shoppies or some packed sandwiches, like?"

  "Nah. I feel like a bit of a walk. Gonna go wash me sheet then pop to the park and feed the ducks, as they say."

  "Is dat one of dem euphemisms, Ms Walker?"

  "I hope not. Now listen, don't start getting all emotional again and confessing all sorts of secrets to this geezer. Remember, he's a normie and Bognor don't mess around."

  "Not ta worry, Ms Walker."

  "I mean it, Peter, I know what you're like, sometimes! One emotional trigger like Steps coming on the radio and you'll be blubbering out all our state secrets like Paul Burrell to a BBC journalist."

  Outside, the van's door slammed shut.

  "I'll try me best, Ms Walker, dat's all I can do."

  "Yes, well make sure you do because I ain't tolerating anything less. Remember: you start ya squealin', I start the beatin'!"

  "Yes, ma'am!"

  "Good boy. Remember to tape Countdown at 4."

  "Bye now, Ms Walker!

  She opened the door and Robert was standing in front of her with all sorts of tools and equipment in his hands.

  "Great timing, love, I had me hands full!"

  She opened the door wider so he could get through then went on her way.

 
Robert put the tools on the first few steps of the stairs and turned to Peader as he shut the door behind her.

  "You know, you shouldn't let her talk to you that way mate. I know it's none of my business, but if that's how she treats you behind closed doors, then you need to say something, fella."

  Peader was stuttering trying to think on the spot.

  "Oh, naw, Mr Robert, I uh, see she, she's a fair woman in her own way, y'know? She cracks a fine whip but it's wit a flex of best interest, dere."

  "If you say so,” he replied, with a sober tone. “Like I said, it’s none of my business, but if you ever want to talk or get it all off your chest, then I’m a good listener. I've been through domestic violence, so I know what I'm talking about."

  "T'anks fer de offer. So. We gonna get decoratin' or we gonna stand around cuppin' each odder's balls all day?"

  "Heh hey, now you're getting it."

  *

  She was just about to enter the dry cleaners to have her parachute washed, (also not a euphemism), when two baldy blokes stopped her in the street to play the world's most tedious game of real-life Guess Who. The men, who reeked of Wetherspoons and clearly voted Brexit, lifted their silver neck chains up to their lip and with cross-armed determination began conferring between each other as to why they recognise this old fogey-fart.

  "'Scuse me, love, where do I know you from? 'Cor it ain' 'alf bugging me. Is it bugging you, Phil?"

  "Ooh, it's bugging me, Baz."

  Dotty just stood there with her sheet between her legs using everything she had not to twat the punks.

  "Oh, I'm sure I get that all the time, boys. Not to worry... nice meeting you, dears." She went to open the shop door when they carried on debating.

  "Nah, I'm sure I've seen her on the TV!"

  "Have you really, Baz?"

  "I think I have, Phil!"

  "Crimewatch, Baz?"

  "Don't be so stupid! Might have been Time Team."

  "I don't think that's Tony Robinson, Baz?"

  "What, not even in a wig?"

  "True say, Baz, true say. Come to think of it, you know these celebrity types: always in sunglasses and caps to avoid the paps."