The mobile phone I used for the job vibrated. I snatched at it. It was Wes. Coldly furious, I pictured the pretty-boy American with his dark hair, and soft brown down-turned eyes inferring sensitivity that he didn’t possess but rendered women helpless. Part of me was looking forward to breaking the news that I’d aborted the job. It would be Wes’s stupid fault for screwing with me. The other part was not so keen.
‘You didn’t call,’ he said.
I said nothing.
‘What the fuck is going on?’
Good question. I didn’t answer. You learn more from staying quiet and letting others do the talking. Frankly, I was too livid to speak.
‘You all right?’ he began, clearly mystified.
No, I was not all right. ‘There’s been a problem.’
‘What sort of problem?’
‘She was already dead.’
‘Shit, you sure?’ I pulled a face at Wes’s loss of volume control. ‘What about the merchandise?’ he ranted.
Wes had an annoying tendency to imitate lines from the latest action adventure film or crime show. This was not an episode of The Wire. ‘The safe was empty.’
‘Fucking holy hell.’
I dislike excitable reactions, but often they lead to the kind of loose mouth talk that yields vital information. I wasn’t to be disappointed.
He lowered his voice in a way that I imagined he might if he were phoning Dial-A-Wank. ‘What about the boy?’
I felt a pulse in my jaw tick, Wes’s lapse in intelligence unforgivable. ‘What boy?’
‘The fucking son, you moron.’
I let the insult pass. I’d been called worse. I kept my voice low and controlled to conceal my rage. ‘You never mentioned a son,’ I growled. ‘The deal was for one target only. If there had been two the price would have been considerably more. Your lack of attention to detail could have compromised me. It could cost me my life.’ I didn’t admit that I, too, had screwed up, that I’d made monumental mistakes.
Faced with the irrefutable logic of my argument, he backed off. I also think he was afraid of me, which was good. ‘Look, I knew about the kid, right?’
‘You fucking lied to me.’
‘I’m sorry, man, but I was ordered not to tell you,’ he whined.
‘Who by?’
‘The guy who’s paying.’
What sort of half-brained lunatic was this man? I said something to that effect.
‘I know,’ Wes said, trying to appease me. ‘So there was no boy?’ he pressed.
One good lie deserves another. ‘No.’
‘Holy Christ, that’s going to be a problem’. Yours, not mine, I thought. ‘The boy is a loose end. He has to be removed.’
This was the equivalent of pouring a can of petrol over my very personal fire. ‘Fuck you. I’m out.’
Wes let rip with what could be best described as a full-on curse. I maintained a contrived and dignified silence so that he could calm down, which he did. ‘Can’t, man. You have no idea who you’re dealing with.’
‘Who am I dealing with exactly?’
‘One nasty son-of-a-bitch.’
My laugh was cold. They were all nasty sons-of-bitches. Came with the territory.
‘And there’s the small matter of the merchandise,’ Wes said.
‘Which is missing,’ I reminded him.
‘Says who?’
I neither cared for the tone nor the inference. ‘Says I. Don’t get smart, Wes. I can track you down any time I like.’ And kill you, I inferred. Wes got the drift.
‘Hey, I’m not taking a pop at you, I’m only saying how the employer is gonna see it, bud. He’s one suspicious dude.’
Most of them were paranoid fuckers. ‘So who do you think beat me to it, apart from me, that is?’ I added acerbically.
‘Search me. You really sure it’s missing?’ The whine had returned.
‘Certain,’ I said, clipped.
Wes let out a big sigh. ‘You gotta find it.’
I swelled with anger. ‘I’m not a private detective.’
‘Yeah, I know, but please, you’ve gotta help me out here. I…’
‘What was on the hard drive?’ I now realised that the hard drive was more than straight business. The hard drive held the key.
‘I don’t know.’
Wes was the kind of guy who says no and does yes and vice-versa. I didn’t believe him. ‘If you want me to find it I need to know.’ I had no intention of doing Wes or anyone else a favour. I was done with them. I was only concerned with me.
Silence descended like a safety curtain at a theatre. I imagined Wes feverishly trying to worm his way out of the mess he was in. Finally, he spoke.
‘Data.’
‘What kind of data?’
‘Chemical, drugs, just stuff,’ he said unconvincingly, ‘Look, I’ll see what I can do, talk to the employer, or something. So you’re in?’
‘It will cost. Stay tuned.’ And I hung up.
First rule of the game: don’t botch the job. Second rule: don’t get caught. I’d broken the first and had no intention of breaking the second, but for what I hoped would be the only time in my life I was going to break the third. Insane, maybe, but I had no choice.
Finishing my tea, I stepped outside. Sun trickled through the cloud. My breath made smoke-rings in the cold morning air. Nice day for a walk. Me, I had other ideas: I was going back.
Less than four hours after I’d fled, I was holed up on the upper storey of a small boutique hotel, and on the opposite side of the road with a clear view of Dr Wilding’s home, a modest but attractive 1930’s red brick semi-detached property with a casement window in the front and triple-glazed French windows at the rear. Cutting corners on the job did not mean I’d failed to carry out basic groundwork. Days before, I’d already ascertained that her next-door neighbours were away on holiday and the attached property the subject of a repossession order, the occupants long gone following the collapse of their electrical business.
I’d expected the area to be cordoned off. I’d anticipated rafts of police officers. The view before me was a picture of the mundane, ordinary and commonplace. It spooked me.
As I saw it there were a couple of explanations for the lack of activity. Perhaps the killer had returned, or maybe Wes and his employer had interpreted my response as too negative, swung into action and appointed another assassin to finish off the boy. Doubtful, I thought. Too knee-jerk, too dangerous. Involving more people than you need always fraught with risk. And pointless – the boy’s death would not reveal the whereabouts of the hard drive. The gnawing desire to know what was on it made my skin itch, and it occurred to me then that Wilding’s murderer had come within a split-second of crossing my path, an awesome thought. If we’d both showed up for the same job at the same time we’d probably have ended up killing each other.
So who was he and who had employed him? If I could trace the guy I’d find his employer and then I could get my hands on the information.