Female blowflies can scent the moment of death. I don’t understand how this works. But like the blowfly, I had a premonition that the woman I’d come to kill was already dead. I sensed it from the moment I slipped into the darkened room.
Yet I couldn’t be certain.
Senses alive, I crossed the floor without sound. Silence is important in this wicked game. And preparation. I’d memorised the precise location of the wardrobe and dressing table and the rocking chair that crouched in the corner. I’d charted the distance from the doorway to the bed: four point eight seven metres. A man my height and build with a smooth gait and a size eight shoe should cover it in less than six seconds. Basic law of motion. I had no fear of interruption. On entry I’d double-locked the front door.
The room was November cold. I could smell booze, brandy at a guess, the fainter scent of expensive perfume almost entirely smothered. When watching her I’d noticed the target appreciated expensive clothes, good quality shoes. She was particularly fond of a charcoal-coloured leather jacket. Personally I never wear leather for a job. It makes too much noise. I’m a clean, crisply ironed open neck dress-shirt with jeans and loafers kind of guy. When flush I buy my suits from Cad and the Dandy, Canary Wharf.
She lay on her back, one limp arm hanging down. Light from a fading four o’clock moon illuminated her face, neck and the fleshy slope of her shoulders. I leaned over – my eyes are pretty quick at adjusting to night vision – and stretched out a hand towards her, the same hand that would have smothered and suffocated and extinguished life. The cool skin felt inert against the latex of the surgical glove. No breath. No movement. No pulse.
Did I feel cheated? No. Was I angry? No way. I was confused and bunched up with alarm. I had been sent to kill her. Chances were so had someone else. And maybe they’d come for the same reason. Not easily fazed, something coiled slowly in the pit of my stomach.
I crouched down beside her. In death she neither looked serene nor at peace. Her mouth was ajar as if she were mid-snore. Marionette lines ran from each corner to her chin like two deep incisions. The blonde hair splayed across the pillow, dark at the roots, indicated a woman who once cared about her appearance but had lost interest. To establish the rigidity of her flesh, I touched her mouth and jaw. There was some stiffness but not much. There were no visible signs of violence that I could see. No vomit or bruises. No broken nails. No lacerations. I suppressed an involuntary shudder, an earlier memory threatening to erupt. This was now, I reminded myself, not then, not with the blood on the wall and…
Part of me wondered if by strange coincidence she’d died from natural causes. Unusual, not impossible, but as a general rule people in middle age don’t succumb with the same unexpected haste as those in the first flush of fickle youth. There was, of course, another possibility.
I took out a pocket torch, slid open the drawer of the bedside table and found a pack of Temazepam. Commonly used to treat those with a history of severe depression, the pills are seldom prescribed for insomnia although many insomniacs take them. Habit-forming and potentially dangerous when mixed in large enough quantities with alcohol and other medications they can kill you. Had she taken her own life? I checked out the blister pack and saw that only three were missing. Not suicide then.
A glance at my watch told me that ninety-five seconds had passed, eighty-five to go. Ideally, I like to be in and out within three minutes.
Moving noiselessly across the floor, I glided out onto the thickly carpeted landing and headed for the study. Ranks of laptops and a high-security computer, massive and squat, glowered accusingly as I sped past. The intelligence stated that the safe, concealed by a rug, was set into the floor at the back of the room. As I approached the combination numbers clattered through my brain like windows in a fruit machine. It would take twenty seconds to open, leaving a little over a minute to steal the portable hard drive and escape. With fingers pumping like a honky-tonk pianist, the door opened and I reached in and connected with empty space. I peered inside, shone the torch around.
Nothing.
Then it hit me; this was no ordinary killing. Anyone can commit murder, but to fake death, to make it look like natural causes, requires skill and subtlety. Whoever had carried it out was a professional assassin, a class act, someone like me.
Footsteps.
Retreating into the shadows behind the now open door, I slowed my breathing, listened hard. This was not part of the plan. But the plan was already fucked. Anything could happen. In readiness I took out the length of cord carried in my jacket pocket for emergencies.
Then I heard the sound of singing, low and haunting, like a chant.
It was so unexpected, so out of key with the situation, my mouth dried as though I’d swallowed coffee grinds. Stranger still, the quiet desperation of the lyrics coupled with the singsong melody awoke sleeping and painful memories of my mother. At that moment it felt as if her ghost were right beside me. But this was not my mother’s voice, not even a woman’s.
The singing stopped. So did the footsteps. I held my breath. I could almost hear the brain of the person less than a metre away making the calculations: door open, rug askew, safe open, trouble.
The light went on. On reflex, my hands flew up, each end of the cord coiled around fists prepared to viper-strike. Raw adrenalin spurted through my veins as the figure shambled into the room. It gave me a couple of seconds to observe the back of my quarry: male, around five nine, a couple of inches shorter than me, wearing a denim jacket, skinny jeans hanging low and exposing the top of the boxers beneath, trainers. I lunged. He turned. Christ.
Pale blue eyes stared out of a long-jawed and heavy-lidded face that had only recently made the transition to manhood. His hair was a mess of bleached blonde over brown. In that split-second I recognised that he was his mother’s son.
He