A Last Act of Charity (Killing Sisters Book 1) (17 page)

Stoner rocked on his feet. His sight steadied, as did his balance. A lesser woman would have reached for the tissues. The dirty
blonde emptied him between them and rubbed herself against him, took her hands from him and ran them around his waist.

‘Can you forgive me? Can you kiss me now? Can we go to bed now?’

‘Where is he?’ Stoner’s equilibrium was returning. The moment for bad men in bad suits had passed and he felt more like kitchen for coffee than bedroom for a fuck.

‘He’s had to return . . .’ she switched voices to a thickened BBC radio announcer’s; ‘. . . m’lord has returned to the House. There is a committee or a conclave – what exactly is a conclave? – and he has to be there to make great big important decisions.’ She smiled at Stoner. ‘He’s been whipped, he says. He always enjoys talking about whips but never uses one. Not with me, anyway. Back the day after tomorrow. Sorry; tomorrow now. He won’t be early. He’s never early. Have you noticed that people who think they’re important expect everyone else to be early but never are themselves? Coffee?’

Stoner’s cell phone shook in his pocket. He lifted it out, read the message, flicked it shut again and sighed.

She read him clearly; ‘Wam bam, thank you mam. Off so soon, JJ?’

He rocked his head. ‘Not yet. Not yet. Did you say something about coffee?’

She led him deeper into the house, into a world changing from fake ancient charm to modern honesty; a bright shining kitchen flickered fluorescently into view.

‘Fresh or jug?’

Stoner went through phases where he took his coffee seriously. The dirty blonde had never understood why, but respected any oddity. It had often proved to be a professional strength. Stoner merely grunted. ‘Hot. Wet. Black.’ Nothing too complicated.

‘You cross with me, JJ?’

For a moment, the dirty blonde looked serious. She could do this. Stoner wondered whether it was an act; how far from being another john was he, really? How far from the manipulations? Her serious look stabilised, steadied, still appeared sincere.

‘Not cross, babe. Not angry. Just . . . concerned. You know how it is. I know how you are. You can control men, but not all men and not all the time.’

A familiar chorus. Familiarity eases tensions. Which is not always a great idea. He looked up at her. ‘What do you want? You have a house, a home. You can stay there. Live there as you want. Call it your own. Do with it what you want. Decorate. I don’t know. Anything. Isn’t it . . . grand enough for you? Do you really want something . . . like this?’ He spread his arms wide, taking in the whole gleaming brightness. ‘Do you . . . I mean . . . do you even cook?’

She looked down. Looked at the immaculately expensive floor tiles. ‘The house is nothing, JJ. The place I live is your house. It belongs to you. You can come and you can go. All the others living in the house pay you rent. Proper rent. You visit me in your house and your . . . friends come and go and I am furniture. Fucking furniture. Furniture you fuck. The fucking pays the real rent. I know how it is. I do this, don’t I? I do this for money.’ She was shouting, almost.

He looked as lost as he felt. And he felt anger rising, dully. ‘You want to pay me more rent? Why?’

‘Because then I’d be more than just your whore. I’m everybody’s whore. Take the money out of it, JJ, and what’s left? What is left?’

Stoner sank onto a stool. This was a familiar conversation. He was weary of it, and knew she was too. ‘He’ll be listening, y’know. Your lordly nightshade. Your would-be master. He’ll have the place wired. Cameras too, most likely. Is he really a lord? A real lord?’

‘Not sure. How would I know for sure? If you know who he
is, would that be a problem? Problem for us?’ For a moment, the dirty blonde looked almost concerned. Sad, almost. Cautious.

Stoner pondered. ‘I don’t think so. Depends. I’ve certainly not been here before. I’d have remembered that. But I’ll know the type of guys who do his security, and they’ll all be good guys, efficient guys, and he’ll want to know what goes on in his house and they’ll know how to let him know. That’s the way it is. Men in your lord’s league always work like that. If he lets you alone in his house then he’ll want to know you’re not trashing it, not inviting in strange men, doing parties and stuff. He’ll have watchers. It’s no big deal. I don’t think it’s a big deal. Does he bring his work home? Does he talk work here? If he does, then he’ll most likely record it. He’s a minister, is he? Some serious high-up? The Hard Man might know him.’

‘Yeah, yeah. That twat? Why is he always numero uno in your thoughts, JJ?’ She was suddenly distracted. Off-track. ‘Already you’re talking about him. Again. He is one pig. One pig swilling with the other pigs like him. Dirty snouts fighting for the trough.’ She sounded confused. Oddly worried. Nervous.

Stoner sighed. ‘Oh, fuck this, babe. I didn’t come here to fight. Why would you living here get us closer? That’s all I want to know. I give you all the room you want.’

His cell phone called for him again. He ignored it. As soon as his phone ceased its urgency another phone began to blast out bad music; a phone on one of the shining cutting blocks in the gleaming kitchen. They both looked up, both said ‘You get it’ in unison, both smiled. Stoner picked it up and thumbed the green icon. Listened. Sat down again, heavily. Said nothing. Flicked the device silent.

‘Hope you enjoy being a film star,’ he said, raising eyebrows high enough to peer through them at her. She smiled back, dropped her robe to the floor, rubbed her breasts and performed a stately twirl for the unseen eyes.

‘Oh, I’ve done porn. Everybody films themselves fucking these days. Everybody. They got audio here as well?’ Her gaze drifted to Stoner, who nodded.

‘You know him? The security man?’

Stoner nodded again.

‘So m’lord doesn’t have to hear why I’d be doing this with you? I can negotiate with security. If you want me to?’ She simpered in a professional way.

‘Not worth the bother. If he’s inviting you to stay here . . . to live here, then he’ll make conditions, I expect. But you’d have to agree to them first. Probably. I don’t know. Not my top subject, this. I just don’t see how it’s an improvement for you over what you’ve got. But you don’t need to explain it. Just make up your mind, do what you want to do. It’s best. You want to pretend to be lady someone, then do it. Just do it. Sort out what you want, tell me and we’ll work it out. But you knew that, yes? And . . .’ he sighed, ‘it would probably be best if I keep away from him.’

She nodded.

‘There’s a price.’ Stoner sounded suddenly serious.

‘There always is, JJ, but . . . not with you, not with me. What is it?’

‘If you get serious with him, just tell me. I don’t want to know anything else from this point on. You live here and act like his . . . consort or whatever. I can handle that. You start having . . . feelings, tell me and I’ll step outside for a while. Promise?’

She walked to his side and reached for his hand. Held it. Squeezed it. Pulled him with her through the house.

And in the lonely midnight . . .

‘JJ?’

‘Mmmm’

‘Can they hear me, us, too?’

‘What? Who?’

‘M’lord Posh; can he hear us now? In the dark?’

‘Dunno. Depends. On what he wants to hear.’

‘If you’d done his set-up, would you set it to hear us now?’

‘Yep.’

‘JJ?’

‘Mmmm?’

‘Thanks.’

Stoner sleeps like the dead man he will one day become. Unconcerned. Untroubled. Uncomplicated. Pretty much the only time he sleeps like this is when the dirty blonde sleeps beside him. He tries not to recognise this, to be unaware of it. He just accepts that given the chance he would sleep like this, like the dead man he will one day become, every night.

His cell phone flashes its summons into the warmth and the dark of the piled clothes, discarded along with them. It silently cries into the night many times, with decreasing frequency. No one hears it, no one sees its urgency.

In the darkness, her skin is almost invisibly dark, just a dull gleam; a small gloss moment in a dark mass. Her hair is a golden cap reflecting the tiny light. Like a halo. Like a crown of pale thorns in the darkness.

17

GREEN LIGHT

Driving. Driving again. This time into the big city itself. Endless demands from the Hard Man that they meet, that they resume their several interrupted conversations. Stoner could see little purpose to this. Both he and the Hard Man subscribed to the manwatcher’s theory that the full content of any serious conversation was available only when all the parties to that conversation were in direct line of sight, sound and sensation of each other, but there was nothing new nor meaningful to discuss since their last conversation. Telephone conversations, text messages, email and loudhailers all had their limitations, but any one of those simple, two-dimensional media would have been fine for two folk to agree that nothing had happened. Nothing relevant. Nothing important.

An agreement to say something only when there was something to say was their normally preferred way of working. Less babble, less background, less clutter. More focus, more opportunity to talk about, something worthwhile.

Today his physical presence was in demand. It could be an irritation, but the invitation would be hard to decline.

The heavy Transporter ploughed its way through light traffic
and shrugged off anything bigger with disdain. It was a comfortable way to travel. Quiet, the big engine insulated behind walls of sound-absorbency and performing its motive function in a typically efficient Teutonic way. A lesser advantage of fitting an engine with around three times the original unit’s performance was that the engine was never working hard at any even faintly legal road speed. It idled along major roads in a high gear, no stress, less effort, little noise and no vibration at all. The drive train and the engine’s mountings were specified to handle that engine at full bellow, and at a gentle canter they transmitted no sign of the engine’s presence into the driver’s domain.

Peter Green’s distinctively thin Gibson soloing leaked from several speakers into the hush of the cabin. His weary, world-stained voice wondered why; why don’t you give it up, bring it home to me, write it on a piece of paper, baby, so it can be read to me . . . Stoner’s thoughts wandered uselessly between the previous night and the approaching meet, between fleshy pleasure and fleshy pain, wondering and wandering with an atypical absence of focus. He had nothing to say to the Hard Man, and the Hard Man could have nothing to say that he wanted to hear.

He swung the Transporter from the main road to a suburban cluster, drifting towards his own part of town, watching mirrors as was his habit. No one following. No menace. Nothing to worry about. Stoner was almost puzzled by this. His presence in the parsonage had certainly been recorded as well as observed, by uncertain friends if not by actual foes. His was a small world, manipulated by the media which described and defined it.

A quiet suburban car park, then. The Transporter was as secure as a vehicle can be. Silently locked, silently alarmed, waiting in silence for its pilot to reappear. If vehicles could boast character, then the Transporter would be stoic, dozing doglike dreams maybe, of oil changes and chases, the sudden sprint and the pounce, the growl and the gripping, hanging on.

Stoner slid from the passenger door, slipped into a fast stride away from his house, crossed the road. Stopped. Sat on a wall, flipped open his cell phone, made a clown’s exaggerated performance of reading and sending text messages. Sent not one in fact, but several in fantasy, face pointing hard at the small screen while eyes and ears watched around him.

Nothing. Background noise, the chatter of the living, the mindless random of everyday life. No obviously false patterns and no obvious interruptions to the pointless performance of suburban existence. Folk doing what folk do. As always, Stoner wondered what it was that they did, and why they would choose to do it. But not for long. Life is too short to wonder about the lives of others. Those, the many others, that is. Individuals are more interesting, and stand out from the crowd. There were no obvious individuals nearby. No one of obvious interest.

He walked fast alongside an old wall, mortar and tired brick. A wall of a long-gone building, now a wall containing nothing, hiding nothing apart from Stoner, who strode with the ease and confidence of the long-distance walker toward his own house, a house he claimed to inhabit, but which was not and never had been his home. The dirty blonde lived there, although she was currently waiting for someone to claim her in their own home. Mr Tran lived there, along with a volatile and transient array of companions, fellow travellers and those on the run. And the techno prisoners could often be found nearby, hooked in, as they often were, to Mr Tran’s companionable caravanserai. Stoner owned the house. His name was writ loud on papers supporting this view, but it was never home, not for him.

The habitual paranoia of his trade found him approaching his house more than once and from more than one direction. For no reason he could express, he wished his whereabouts to be less than public knowledge for a while. Privacy felt prudent. The
old wall was cut by a doorway. Stoner pushed through it, latched it behind him. Ran down a short descent of steps to a cellar door, pushed through that and latched it behind him. Complex gimmick locks are great for the movies; a deadbolt is dead simple and dead reliable. There is no silent way to defeat a deadbolt, no way to break in without attracting attention. Underrated, deadbolts and latches.

Mr Tran was waiting for him. Stoner had no clue how this could be. If he wanted to see Mr Tran, to talk with him, then Mr Tran would be waiting for him with oriental patience; if he had no wish to see Mr Tran, then Mr Tran would be nowhere to be found. Another mystery skill, one of many hidden within the quiet Vietnamese features.

‘You have been to see Missy.’ It was not a question. ‘She is well.’ Neither was that. Mr Tran was practising making statements in English, which was neither his first nor his second language. ‘You are working a case for that man.’ No questions today. This was a day of statements.

‘I am.’ Stoner agreed.

Mr Tran bowed slightly, recognising the reply as the truth that it was. ‘Tea.’ He led Stoner through into his own rooms, walking in silence as if it were natural, which it might be among Vietnamese, and leaving the door open behind them. Stoner turned to close it; Mr Tran prevented this with a raised hand and a smile. ‘Your telephone.’ He held out his left hand. Stoner dropped the phone into that open hand, which opened the phone, flicked the green key. Nothing. No glimmer of electronic life. Stoner dropped the battery into that open hand. Mr Tran smiled and returned both cell phone and power cell to their owner.

‘Are you a happy man, Mr Stoner?’ A question at last, albeit an unexpected one. ‘I am told otherwise. She . . . cares for you. Cares about you. She wishes to pay you rent.’

At this point, a lesser man than Stoner may have stared open-mouthed and incredulous. Stoner was not that man.
Nothing, nothing at all was reflected in his face.

‘And the people with whom you wish to speak are on their way here.’ Another statement. Excellent English. Mr Tran’s eyes, the remote eyes which kept watch on others, were less easy to observe than more conventional eyes. Stoner recognised that Mr Tran was not only inscrutable but also invisible, accepted this and accepted the tea. It pays to be polite. ‘Menace and Mallis,’ confirmed Mr Tran. ‘They know you well. And you them also, I believe.’ Statements. Always statements.

Stoner supplied a statement of his own. ‘Rarely met them. But they are excellent to work with. The techno prisoners. Masters of all things digital.’

‘As all should be, Mr Stoner.’ Mr Tran poured, gracefully. ‘But few are in fact. A common weakness and an unnecessary one. Digital affairs are simple enough for very unintelligent folk to master them. Very many very unintelligent inadequate individuals are indeed masters of many things digital. It is real life which is complex and subtle. Digital binary yes and no endlessly . . . mere fools can handle that.’

Stoner accepted both tea and wisdom with an equable smile and a gentle and appropriately slight bow. ‘Understanding how to formulate the questions which require and accept the simple yes or no answer . . . that is the subtle and the difficult business. I find that Menace and Mallis are excellent at sorting meaningful questions from the meaningless mess of other people’s lives.’

Mr Tran bowed gently in return. ‘Reducing many of life’s variables to the question which will accept only a yes or no answer? Philosophers have passed many ages with that one, I think. The tea cools. It is to your liking?’

‘Everything cools in the end, Mr Tran.’ Stoner drank slowly and with appropriately obvious appreciation. ‘Death cools everything in the end.’

‘And cool music provides warmth. Missy is a sympathiser to your own music. She praises it. She plays it when she is alone. She is proud to know you, and to be your friend. As you sometimes appear to misunderstand. Which allows a heated sadness to enter her life, which is unfortunate, because her life, although filled with love-making is not filled with love. Your music is filled with violence . . . to my ears. Amplified music has no subtlety, no art. But it drowns pure music, as violence destroys peace. Violence will destroy all of our lives if we allow that, Mr Stoner. If we fail to understand what violence is. That violence is weakness. It is always weakness.’

This was a colossally long speech for the usually almost silent Mr Tran. Stoner carefully, silently and precisely replaced his empty cup upon its saucer, gazed upon Mr Tran’s calm features.

Said nothing.

Mr Tran rewarded his acceptance with a smile.

‘I lost a war when the USA left my country. I lost my home. I lost most that I held true and dear to me. Violence had destroyed the land and the people who lived upon that land. I was unable to return to my land because the USA lost its war with China. The violence of the Chinese was greater than the violence of the USA.’ Mr Tran looked up from his tea and smiled. ‘And now I have it back. I am welcome in my land once more. The greater violence has indeed proved to be the weakness. The USA continues to lose its world in its struggle with China, and both of them have forgotten me. And my own country. Their violence has left us. They have moved their battle to another ground.’

‘You’re going to return, then? To your home?’

‘No. My return could cause both of those most violent nations to remember a former fighting ground. There is never a need to resume an old struggle. In any case, I do return. Regularly. It is a land of beauty. But of limited opportunities for me. At this stage in this life of mine.’ Mr Tran smiled. ‘What was lost to me when
the USA left my land is forever lost. To me. That loss is also a gain, to me. Everything balances, as you know, Mr Stoner. Fighting against that balance achieves only a loss of energies, a loss of opportunities and the acquisition of perpetually complicated enemies. Which is a lesson unlearned by your usual, your current employer. He knew it all at one time, but has stripped himself of that learning in his quest for greater understandings of smaller details. He cannot be an easy man to work for. I can see no reason why I would work for him. For example.’

Mr Tran looked across the low table with a chill smile directly into Stoner’s gaze. ‘Working with you, Mr Stoner, is not a problem for me. Living in your house is an honour for me. I am pleased at the opportunities for balance which accompany our relationship.’ He looked down at the drying cups. And looked up suddenly.

‘Our guests are here. They await.’

He led the way into the rear of his apartment, into a set of three rooms which Stoner had never visited before, despite having been the property’s owner for several years. He had inherited Mr Tran along with other sitting tenants when he’d acquired the properties, and there had never been an incentive to either intrude or to evict.

Siblings. Maybe twins. Maybe almost identical twins. Maybe brother and sister. Maybe they were unrelated, although that seemed like the least appealing option, the least likely. Menace and Mallis, the self-anointed techno prisoners. Digital gurus of the highest calibre. Permanently unemployed and in receipt of state benefits; permanently occupied and high-earning data delvers; digital deliverance almost guaranteed. No find, no fee. Failures always welcomed; the only way to earn is to learn and the only way to learn is to err. Which possibly made them human, although they made few efforts to appear conventionally so.

‘Mr Tran.’ A pale-skin androgyne spoke softly. No meeting of eyes, no handshakes. Matt black straight hair in a long loose
ponytail, dark downcast eyes, black clothes, the speaker was wearing a black long-sleeved T-shirt with a ghostly image of a ghostly well-washed waterfall. Mallis, then. Probably.

‘Stoner.’ The other seldom spoke. No eye contact, no direct acknowledgement other than a rare vocal interjection. The T-shirt with a pair of washed-out semiquavers dimly visible. Menace. Probably.

Stoner’s tension, temporarily defeated by the Vietnamese calm, returned. He could feel a headache arriving, like the clouds of storms on his mental horizons.

‘Murders. Bad ones. Several. Can you help?’ They either could and would, or could and would not. Conflicts of interest could too easily be fatal in their shared world.

Mallis spoke. ‘Yes. Provisionally.’ Menace looked up briefly. ‘Depends on what you want and who you want it for.’

Stoner ran through the series of deaths. Mr Tran stood by a window, fingered the opaque lace curtains in shadowed silence.

Mallis spoke again. ‘When did you last speak with Shard? Are you working this together or in opposition?’

‘There is no opposition between Shard and me. No conflict.’

‘But there should be. Shard has already entered this investigation, Stoner. Did he talk with you of his own concerns in this . . . this . . . common interest?’

‘He did. He thinks he’s being set up to take the blame. He says he’s not the killer. I believe him in this; he has no reason to lie. Not to me. I want you to link the victims. The way through this mess is through the victims. The fact that there appears to be no link is in itself a linkage. Given the similarities of the attacks and their characteristics it seems impossible that there is no link. Find that link for me and I’ll be on my way.’