Tilelli held court with his usual flair, this time and to my relief he imbibed coffee. Around him, a coterie of hangers-on, or liggers as I sometimes described them. It included one man with whom I’d regularly done business. I called him Guy. Small, dapper, shiny-shoed, he looked more financial advisor than small arms dealer. He met my eye, winked and moved away. The others, whom I didn’t recognise, took one look at me and fled as though they had the Grim Reaper stalking towards them. In a sense, I suppose that’s exactly what I was. Tilelli stayed put, met my gaze with a smile. We got on as well as I get on well with anyone.
‘Hex,’ he said, clapping me on the back. People called me Hex because it had connotations of witchcraft. Considered first-rate at what I did, I was clearly no magician. ‘Good to see you,’ Tilelli enthused. ‘Say, what happened to you?’
‘A minor collision with a door.’
Tilelli was shrewd enough to accept my poor excuse. ‘Drink?’
‘Got one, thanks.’ I tipped my head in the direction of the approaching waiter who put a tray on the highly polished table in front of me. Bombay gin, plenty of ice, tonic, and a slice of lime. Tilelli leant forward, swooped up the bill in his big, fleshy fingers, handed it to the waiter.
‘Put it on my tab,’ he said.
‘Certainly, sir. Are you eating with us, gentlemen?’
‘Not me, thanks,’ Tilelli said, patting his stomach, the buttons under considerable strain.
‘No,’ I told the waiter who disappeared with the speed of a greyhound. Perhaps he, too, was scared of me.
I thanked Tilelli for his generosity. ‘My pleasure,’ he said graciously. Nothing in his bearing suggested he associated me with the man wanted by MI5. I wasn’t surprised. It was a rubbish picture. ‘How’s tricks?’ he said.
I smiled, ‘Average.’ Tilelli didn’t expect a rundown of my latest business ventures no more than I expected him to tell me whose payroll he was on. I had, however, revealed in one single word that all was not quite as it should be. Tilelli picked up on it.
‘There’s a lot of frightened folk out there and when folk get frightened they make mistakes and then those mistakes need taking care of.’
I nodded sagely. ‘Any folk in particular I should know about?’
‘Just making a general observation.’
He was right. Tough times usually meant an increase in my line of work.
I said, ‘Seen Wes lately?’
Tilelli frowned. ‘Not for a while.’ He didn’t ask me why I asked. Wouldn’t have been sensible or clever. Why? Was not a question to which I responded with warmth. ‘I heard he was banging some older broad,’ he added.
‘Wes would bang his own sister if he had one,’ I said, to which Tilelli hooted with laughter. ‘Any idea which outfit he’s operating for right now?’
Tilelli shook his head disappointed he couldn’t help. ‘Like I said, I haven’t seen him in a while.’
‘Nothing about him on the wire?’
Another shake of his head followed by another gulp of booze.
I followed his lead, took a pull. Terrific. The coniferous tang of gin drowned my nausea. Nothing, however, obliterated a sudden vision of mass casualties, the morbid results of a vicious dirty bomb.
‘You all right, Hex? You look a little haunted, if you don’t mind my saying.’
I flashed an easy smile. ‘I’m good. Tired, that’s all.’
‘Doing nothing sure is tiring,’ he snorted, taking out a silver hip flask. He unscrewed the top and poured a slug of booze, presumably brandy, into his coffee cup. ‘Damn cold out there,’ he said as if by explanation.
I leant forward, dropped my voice several notches, baritone to bass. ‘I’m looking for a guy. He carried out a hit two nights ago.’ As soon as the words left my mouth I wondered why the man in the alley hadn’t presented himself to me as a potential candidate. Just because he’d questioned me about the hard drive didn’t exclude him. Maybe he’d killed Wilding but some other party had stolen the information. Then I contrasted the crass, brutish attempt of my attacker to the neatly conceived and slick execution carried out by the assassin: no comparison.
‘This guy,’ Tilelli eyeballed me, ‘Is he pissing on your patch?’
My answering smile was without mirth. I flicked an imaginary mark from my trousers, deliberately suggesting that I wanted to flick the guy who’d rained on my parade out of existence.
‘Got anything else on him?’ Tilelli’s eyes were alight with interest.
‘His working method tells me that he has a high level of skill and nerve.’ Whether or not he bore the scars of his trade with relish, I’d no idea. I didn’t need to spell out to Tilelli that the nature of the work meant that we were loners, anonymous, secretive and deadly.
Tilelli clicked his tongue. ‘Not that many on the circuit with your particular skills, especially for the more exotic gigs.’
I knew. I’d come across a few, foreigners mostly. I guessed Wilding definitely fell under the heading of exotic gig.
‘With regard to the legitimate market,’ Tilelli continued, ‘Governments all over the world, including democracies, employ security services who employ specialists to carry out wet operations.’
I knew this too. The Israelis had kidon. Grey Ghosts carried out assassinations on behalf of the Pentagon, or so Reuben, feeding my boyish imagination, once told me.
‘Reckon there’s a lot of hypocrisy on the subject,’ Tilelli chuckled, clearly on his own pet subject and loving every second of it. ‘There’s not a dime’s worth of difference between their dirty work and your dirty work.’
‘I just happen to work in the private sector,’ I flicked a cool smile, making Tilelli laugh out loud. The politically motivated murder once again took precedence over the criminally motivated, to my mind. Tilelli was still rattling on.
‘Any clue to this guy’s mojo?’
I shook my head. Most were driven by money, some by cruelty. There were a few who, once they had the taste of blood in their mouths, were unstoppable. Neither money nor cruelty made me tick.
Tilelli lifted the coffee cup to his lips. ‘And the victim?’
‘A scientist.’
The cup loitered mid-air. Actually, it shook a little. Tilelli’s eyes widened. Deep furrows appeared on his brow. ‘The scientist, Mary Wilding?’
‘Uh-huh.’
The rim of the cup pressed hard to his lips, Tilelli drained the contents, and returned it with a clatter to the saucer. He paled. For a man in the know it seemed inconceivable that Wilding’s death was suddenly headline news to him. I’d pressed some kind of button, but I didn’t know what.
‘You okay?’ I said.
‘Sure,’ Tilelli forced a smile. He didn’t look it.
‘The man who killed her has something that doesn’t belong to him,’ I said.
Tilelli took a big gulp of air as though about to dive into the deep.
‘You know anything about it?’
Tilelli shook his head, jowls wobbling. ‘What was taken?’
‘Information. It’s been confirmed