A Last Act of Charity (Killing Sisters Book 1) (35 page)

‘Right.’

‘And you don’t get to do the James Bond thing with magnetic tracking devices stuck to the car, either. You try to fix one, I shoot you. That’s not a game you can win.’

‘Right.’

‘And you can’t follow me. That old van is too slow and the bike doesn’t have the range. Neat touch, the bike, by the way. I like that. I should get one.’

‘And the car’s not listed in your name.’

‘No idea. It could be. It’d almost certainly in someone’s name, but the odds are long against it being mine. I don’t think the number plates are altogether genuine. But I could be wrong.’

‘So why are we here? Joyous conversation aside. Why are we talking? Are you working up to offing me as well?’

‘No. You’re not on the list. In any case it’s entertaining to have you around.’

‘You didn’t find Dave Reve entertaining enough, then? You had to off him. He was OK.’

‘He was OK. I tried to let him go. Had you worked that out? I . . .’ There was a pause. An interruption in her flat tone. She looked down at the gun. ‘I liked the guy. He was OK. He was funny. He sang stupid songs. He was supposed to make it. You killed him.’ She looked up. Shadowy emotion had appeared around her eyes. It was a bleak emotion. Cold.

Stoner felt the familiar prickle, tickling of adrenaline building up.

‘I killed him? How do you work that out? You sliced and diced with that machete of yours and you put his head on the net. I wasn’t there. Remember? Is psychosis setting in? You altering realities now?’ He kept his tone level, with maybe a light touch of mockery.

‘You told Charity who he was. I’d taken out some other accounting twonk. They’re mostly the same in the dark. Mostly.’ The balance was restored to her tone. ‘He died fast and easy. He didn’t hurt. He didn’t even see it coming.’

‘How did you find him?’ Stoner didn’t expect a reply.

‘You expect me to tell you? OK. Quality of intel. Our intel is excellent. Charity told me of my error. Our employer told me how to find him. Dave. He died.’

‘So you just killed a guy you liked. Just like that. You feel good about that?’

‘Don’t go silly on me, Stoner. The world is filled with men. And women. None of them matters much more than any of the others. None has much value. Some have value to me only if they’re dead. No real worries there. I’m sure you’re fun, and I’m sure Chas . . . Charity likes you in her own way. But if I need to kill you I will kill you. She’d find some other guy soon enough. There’s a lot of you around.’

‘OK. Where to now? It’s great to chat, so forth, but the night’s drawing along, and I would like to understand what we’re doing, where we’re going.’

‘Yes. You’re going to leave. You’re going to drive away. But before you do that, I’m going to supply you with a little information which may help you in the future.’

‘If I have a future. Threats like that?’

‘Nope. You can drive away from here untouched by me.’ She shifted position, but only slightly. Comfort rather than weakness. ‘You should step back from this investigation, such as it is. If not, you will get too close to us, to me or to Charity, and you will be instructed to take us out. You will claim to me at this point that you no longer do wetwork, but you’re an operating psychotic – it takes one to know one, I guess – and when your buttons get pushed you will always go bang. And if you decline, then someone
else will step up and take a shot. That’s how these things work, as you know as well as I.’

‘I can’t stand back from this. I’ve accepted the job, and it’s not the way I work.’

‘OK. Fine. Charge me now, make your best move and get shot through the gut. That would be so stupid, so very stupid that I might make it nastier for you. There really is no need for this. You are not my target, I need not be yours.’

‘Well thank you for today’s great suggestion. Top idea. Why not save me all the tiresome rushing and just shoot me now? You sound like you want to.’

‘Not even tempting. Don’t bother with the provocation thing, it won’t work.’

Stoner shifted, worked forearms and calves to boost the almost static blood flow.

‘Your sister says you’ve gone mad. Insane. Is that true?’

Chastity paused a moment. Slowly and deliberately shifted the aim of her weapon until its single dead eye was staring at Stoner’s crotch.

‘It could be. It could just be.’ She drew an audible breath. ‘It surely feels that way. Feels . . . good. Comfortable. You need to know that there are a few more names on the list. Just a couple. I don’t know who they are and I don’t know where they are. Not yet. Then when they’re done we’re gone. This is not our city. You should wander about in your own particular state of confusion and avoid getting killed. We intend to work with you in the future. That is what this is all about. In a way.’

Stoner stared, speechless.

‘I’m speechless,’ he muttered. ‘What have you got against accountants, for the love of God? I mean . . . accountants?’

‘Until I met Dave Reve, I’d no idea we were targeting any profession in particular. It doesn’t matter to me. All I care about is the who, the where, the when and the how, the how much.’

‘You don’t choose the how? The method?’

‘No. If Chas. . . Charity is correct and I am losing it – which feels likely enough – it’s the fucking bloodthirstiness of it which is doing it to me. You think I enjoy hacking some poor fuck’s head off?’

‘I have no idea. It never occurred to me.’

‘Would you do it? Can you imagine how cracked it feels? Broken? Dislocated?’

Stoner raised his eyes to the heavens, to the darkness above.

‘I take your point.’

Her shadow moved behind the twin glare of the headlights. Her voice was quite suddenly a different voice, some other person’s. It snapped, ‘What?’ It was not a friendly interrogative. Stoner understood at once that she was no longer speaking to him. A cell phone. Both her hands were in obscure view; an earpiece. An opportunity. Chastity aimed the gun again, slightly higher; higher gut entry point, just as lethal. She could take a call and aim a gun at the same time, could possibly also walk, talk and chew gum simultaneously. Making a move at this point would be foolhardy or fatal, probably both. Stoner relaxed back against the Transporter, drawing no more comfort, feeling no less at risk . . . but no more, either. Had he had some gum to chew, he would have chewed it at this point. This was, he mused, a gum-chewing moment if there ever was one.

Chastity gazed at him with shadowed, expressionless eyes. Not blank eyes, there was nothing blank about them. She said ‘OK,’ and returned to listening in stillness, concentrating. Stoner lidded his own eyes, leaned his head back and stared upwards, away from the blaze of the lights. Chastity’s one-sided conversation continued. And then it was over. As silently as it had begun. She was moving again, out of the lights and away from her car.

‘You going to follow me again?’ Her query sounded almost disinterested.

‘You going anywhere interesting?’ Stoner could do disinterest also.

‘Would you believe me if I said no?’

‘No. Probably not. Such is the world of grim suspicion in which we are fated to move.’

‘Most poetic. You write songs, too, I gather. Talented. Must restrict your fighting skills, needing to watch out for those delicate guitarist’s fingers.’

‘Yup. Also fingernails. They do suffer in a struggle.’

‘So shooting you through your hand would deter you from following me? You’d need to get it fixed pronto then?’

‘No. Shoot me through the hand and I will kill you. Malice like that has no place here.’

‘Oh you are clever, Mr Stoner. You are too clever. How did you know that? Do tell.’

‘Elementary, my dear witless.’

‘No no. Do tell. I insist.’

‘Mercenaries always work for all sides. You know that. But steady your heaving bosom, I just guessed. And I have no idea what that strange soul wanted to tell you. I doubt it concerns me much; I pay them too much to be the target of serious betrayal.’

Chastity paused. Then spoke again, her tone amused, faintly questioning.

‘It did in fact concern you. Completely. Mallis and Menace, our technomagicians, know we’re talking and have issued an instruction concerning your future.’ Her amusement was plain now. There was almost a smile in her voice.

‘So they called me first.’ Stoner forced a similar level of amusement into his own voice. ‘They assumed that I’d be in command of the situation, as would any sane individual, and when they received no reply they worked out who had the whip hand. But issuing orders? Orders? Really? I’ve never known that. Not from them. Who are their real masters in this, I wonder? And if you
were going to shoot me, you would have shot me by now, so can I relax and walk some blood into my legs again? My arse is getting numb from sitting on cold steel.’

‘Stay right where you are. Exactly where you are. They have traces on both of us. Clever people. Clever, clever people.’

‘You going to tell me why you’re topping accountants, before you go? Apart from an attack of public-spirited social conscience?’

No answer.

‘I’ll catch your trail again at some point and I will reel you in. You know that, and I know that.’

The gun spat once, twice. Headlamp glass shattered and exploded into the air either side of Stoner. He hid his double flinch; he’d not seen the gun move, only a pair of dim muzzle flashes prevented his looking around for another shooter.

‘Yeah. Go home. Go somewhere you call your own and relax with a friend. Or without one. It makes no difference. I’m avoiding you for forty-eight hours, it says here; a voice through the ethers, as you just observed. Maybe seventy-two. If we meet in that time it will be a bad result for you. So we won’t meet. We’ll leave that pleasure for another day, and maybe things will be different. Charity says you play a mean guitar. She says your club is good. If I catch you after me in the next three days I’ll destroy your club.’

‘Kind of you. So when I find you I’d better be better than you?’

‘One of us is holding a big gun, Mr Stoner, and that person is not you. You may have a cannon in your pants, but I really don’t think it’s much of a threat to me.’

‘Was that a joke?’

‘Yes. Cool, huh? As cool as the three charges set in your club. They’re funny, too. If I were you, I’d go and have a nice lie down and then I’d find them. They’re not on a timer. They’re just there to keep you busy while I get stuff done. A distraction. You can
make like the headless chicken without actually losing your head. See? I do jokes. So I can’t be mad. Not very. Mostly.’

Two more muffled muzzle flashes; the spotlights either side of Stoner destructed into splinters, the grains of glass flying glittering into the beams of the car opposite, raining down like an angry artificial hailstorm as the car reversed, swung into the road and accelerated away.

Stoner levered himself into the cab, fired up the engine, pulled his cell phones from their resting places. No missed call from Mallis. None from Menace. None from anyone. No friendly thoughts. Nobody loved him. He considered his drive through deserted streets under the bleak streetlighting and wondered whether he would just kill the first cop who pulled him over to book him for his lightless ways. Road safety is a serious concern.

As was the tap at his window. A face there in the night’s light. Shard. He tapped again, some urgency this time. Stoner opened the door, stared the question.

‘Come on. I bugged her wheels while you were doing the seduction routine; young lovers, you two, huh? Time to go. Time to see where she goes.’ Shard was rarely a man who spoke volumes. But his own dull saloon car fled through the night while its satnav displayed the location of the car they pursued.

‘Oxford?’ Shard’s tone revealed his incomprehension. Stoner considered, but did not enlighten him. The trace stopped, ceased its movement.

‘Can you save those co-ordinates?’ Stoner’s question was a quick question. Shard nodded and did so. ‘She’ll move off again. Then she’ll ditch your tracker. Fascinating. Tells me she’ll kill me if I follow her, then sets a clear trail, to a place she wants me to see. Fascinating.’

‘You said that. She can’t have seen me.’ Shard sounded affronted.

‘She didn’t. She just knew you’d be there – or if not you then someone just as effective. Why waste time chatting in the street-lights
like that if she wasn’t giving you time to stick on a bug or two? Neat. She’s not very mad, is she? Clever. Subtle, too. She wants me to go where she’s showing . . .’

Shard interrupted. ‘She’s on the move again.’

‘Yes. Drop me where she waited. Then follow her. She wants me there on foot and she wants you away from there. Wheels within wheels; yours and hers. Very clever. I like this.’

‘You know where she’s leading you, then?’

Stoner’s expression was bleak, bordering on grim. ‘I believe so. But I don’t know why. It’s an address I’ve been to before. Do you know it?’ Shard shook his head.

‘No. Too posh for me. Businessman land.’

The car drew up. ‘She’s stopped again.’

Stoner opened the door and nodded. ‘She’ll leave your trackers there. If I’m correct in this wild goat chase, that’s what she’ll do. It’s what I’d do. She’s read me perfectly, matey. Fascinating really.’

‘You want me to wait here? Cover your back?’

Stoner shook his head. ‘No need. If she intended hurt, she’d have tried it back there. She had a better chance. She wants me to see something, and I – really – have no idea what it is. Must be important, at least to her. Get going. I’ll catch up later.’

Shard hesitated, wound down a window, ‘How you getting back?’

Stoner just smiled. ‘Plenty of cars around here, I’d guess. I’ll borrow one. Like I’ve borrowed your bins.’

He waved the binoculars in a gesture of thanks and headed off into the night, moving rapidly towards a large house he recognised too well, with a long gravelled drive, well-trimmed lawns and several well-lit and uncurtained windows. A night for observation, then. Maybe confrontation, too.

33

STEPPIN’ OUT

‘It was supposed to be a time without lies. No lies at all. Not one fucking lie. Just . . . just the truth. The truth between us.’

Stoner’s face was flushed. Stubble glittered like frost in a field of burned wheat. His eyes stared without focus at nothing . . . into nothing.

‘Her whole life had been a lie. No whore lives with the truth. No sane whore.’ He looked around him, eyes apparently searching for something which would never be found. ‘“I do it for the money, just for the money,” they say. Or “It’s just for a short time, just to get me on my feet.” Or “I enjoy sex, so it’s not like it’s really working. I just get paid to do something I’d do for free anyway, so it’s like being paid just to do what you want to do, like playing in a rock ’n’ roll band.” But it is not like that. That is a lie. A crappy, tragic and utter lie. “It pays really well, so I don’t need to do it because I need the money, and I get to choose anyway, so I don’t have to screw guys I don’t want to screw.” That’s just lies. That’s just shit.’

Stoner glowered across the table at his companion. Gestured to an anonymous nobody behind the bar, a female nobody, for another drink. She gestured back with added vulgarity.

‘We don’t do table service.’

Stoner half-rose to his feet. The bartender watched his face closing, his eyes gaining an unwelcome focus, his limbs gaining a growing purpose, and she recognised the coming storm for what it was; she’d seen too many of them before, and she raised a bright and totally false smile. ‘But in your case . . . what would you like? Same again?’

She brought double doubles. And two bottles of light beer, which had not been ordered but which seemed like a good idea.

‘These seemed like a good idea . . .’ her words trailed away into the hard atmosphere as Stoner locked her eyes. Their gazes held firm as his hand drifted into a pocket, emerged and presented her with a large denomination banknote.

‘I don’t need change. Keep them coming. An empty glass is just an excuse . . . for violence.’ He sat down, dismissing her. Two paused seconds and she was gone. Money in one hand. Tray swinging like a defensive shield from the other. Her hips swayed as she left the two men, and before she’d reached the working side of her bar Stoner had re-seated himself and resumed his monologue.

‘The truth was all of it. It was all that it was and it was all that we had together. She would not lie to me and I would not lie to her. Simple as that. I found peace in this. She did what she needed to do, whatever, and I did what I do. It was supposed to be no more than that. Is that too hard? Is that too difficult? Why does everyone lie to everyone? All the time. All the damned time. All she said she wanted was honesty. All I could offer was honesty. And the other way around. I could buy her out of the life. She knew that. She always knew that. The house she lives in, that flat of hers. That’s my house. That’s my flat, my apartment. It’s yours, I told her, yours to live in. There’s no fee. No need. I don’t need that.

‘But she needed to pay. I don’t know why. She paid me rent.
After a year she paid more. I told her there was no need. None. She paid more. Money transfer. I told her, she wanted out of the life, then she’d get out of the life faster if she saved the money. Didn’t waste it on me. Honest. Simple. I do not need the money. She did not need to work. She did not need to do anything. Unless she wanted to do it. Which is a different thing.

‘But I trusted that, because she said it, so it was true. She needed that independence. She did not want ever to be dependent on me. She said that if I gave her the house I could always take it back again. It would always be mine. She wanted to be her own woman. I respect that. I still respect that. She was talking shit. She knew me better than that. Why would I give her something and then take it back? I’d just write it off. She decides she’s out of my life? Well that is fine. I’d hurt, we all hurt when things go south, but I’ve known worse. I’ve watched friends bleed out in front of me. I’ve held their heads in my hands, told them more lies and watched the light and the life just fade away. I’ve popped enough people. Plenty of people. It’s not hard. It’s not easy but it gets more easy. Easier by the day. Easier with practice. She made me talk to her about it. There was no force. It was so damned good to talk about it. She’d seen a lot of killing. The deed caused her pain, not the words. Words, she’d say; words are the defence, the barrier between the unacceptable and insanity.

‘The problem with the talking, though, is that the feeling returns when you talk out the numbness. When we were first a thing, a big thing, the biggest thing, y’know, then we’d talked about the honesty by then, it was as though I couldn’t shut up. It just poured out like the gods’ own toilet flushing. Poured out. It was brilliant. No nastiness. No shading black into a subtle very dark grey. None of it mattered to her. When I told her I was surprised she wasn’t running away, when I told her about the pornographer – remember her? – when I told her about that I told her the full
thing. What I did to her. Do you know what I did to her? Have you ever cut strips off someone’s face while they stood and screamed and bled like a fountain? And as they faced themselves in the mirror and watched your hand do that thing? And felt good about it? Have you? Don’t tell me. I don’t care. This is all about me.

‘When I told her that, and I asked why she was still there, still leaning back against me and being my friend, she said, “I fuck strange men for money. That’s what I do. You kill strange men for money. That’s what you do. There is no difference. Not to me. They’re just flies. They’re just not there. They don’t matter. In my black Africa they have to fuck all the time so they can keep the population up, there are so many guys like you who kill so many guys. Just flies.”

‘Those tattoos on her cheeks? The tears? They’re for her family. All dead. Every one. Killed by men like me. She didn’t cry. She couldn’t cry. But she believed that tears were called for, tears, her tears, were needed before anyone could get any rest. So she had her own tears stitched to her own cheeks.

‘She told me; “I know that if I knew who had killed them all, and if I told you, then you would catch that plane to Africa. That you would be the hellhound I’d set on their trail and you would not return before you’d killed them all, and if you did not kill them all or if one of them got to you first then you would not come back.”

‘I agreed with her that this was so. That is who I am. That if she wound my spring and told me who these men were then I would fly me to Africa and they would die. All of them. Bad deaths. Pain-filled deaths. And I would return to her, all her debts would be paid, all my debts would be paid and we could start over.

‘I would build up the club and I would set up a house band and we would be normal. As normal as fuck-ups like us can be.
The properties bring in the rent. I don’t need more money than that. You know that. She knows that. I told her the truth. She told me the truth. Her life in Africa? Jesus holy god. And she came from a decent family, a family with enough money for her to get out and come here. I asked her to tell me who her family’s killers were, but she didn’t know. She knew why they were killed and when they were killed and how they were killed, and she worried a little that they would come here and kill her too, but she felt safe with me.

‘She is safe with me.’

He drank more. Emptied both his glasses. Signalled for more. The bar was filling, but the drinks were prompt. He paid again with another large note. The tramp stamp on the girl’s ass moved with her walk. He’d not noticed it before. An eagle gripping the Harley-Davidson logo. Biker chic by a biker’s cheeks. He would have smiled. Another time.

‘Drink up.’ It was an instruction, not an invitation.

‘It was good for a long time. Very good. She’d talk about the johns, the clubs, the fuck-ups she pleasured. Serviced. Fucked. Whatever. She’d ask me about the jobs I did. I’d tell her where I could, tell her when I wasn’t able to, so I could be honest.

‘I asked her to tell me when she’d saved enough to stop, maybe to buy me out of that house so she could call it home . . . hers . . . her home. She said she would. She would do that. We agreed that if she had the money there would be no need for her to spend it; she could simply consider the house to be hers, stop paying rent and simply pay me for it if and when we split up. Which we both felt was inevitable. It has to be honest. At this stage of my life I want nothing less than honesty and I want nothing more than honesty. With her. If we were honest together then everything else . . . everyone else could just go fuck themselves. Everyone else were just bit players in this dreamland, this stupid childish fuck-up of a fantasy.

‘I don’t believe in anyone, in anything but me. That’s kept me alive and it’s kept me sane. I like some people. They’re OK. You. You’re OK. Usually. But Lissa, my own dirty blonde Lissa? She is apart from that. She’s my own noble whore, my very very own tragedy queen, she’s my opposite number, the black to my white and a heart darker even than mine. But we could make it all work, redemption through honesty. Just us. No lies. Childish, isn’t it? Dreamy hippy shit. Nonsense.’

Stoner sounded almost angry, the intensity of his mood shining through the words, although his delivery was quiet, his manner calm, his expression placid and flat. He drank. His hands did not shake. His fingers did not clench with the anguish of it all.

‘The only thing we demanded of each other was truth. Honesty. Call it what you want. I was straight. I’m not monogamous. I suppose I could be. I suppose anyone could be. But why bother? Why construct some stupid fantasy world of two perfect people? It’s not possible. I’ve never met a perfect person. I think they only exist in fables and bibles. She’s the same. She gets paid to fuck. I hate that. Really hate it. Before her I would never have cared about it. I’d have cared about the diseases, the squalor of it, but not the fucking. Everyone fucks, anyone who doesn’t gets fucked up by that. So why must everyone pretend? Why must everyone pretend?

‘So it’s great and it’s groovy. She lives in one of my houses. She pays me a fair rent. She never takes her johns there. That would be too crap. It’s my house; I turn up when I need to be there. It’s my house; I do not make appointments. She’s a decently high-class hooker, if you can believe in that thing. She charges enough to rent a good room in a good hotel. Most of her regulars have houses of their own, and when their wives are away – because they all have wives – the johns invite Lissa to stay there. How can they do that? That’s bizarre. Doesn’t bother her at all. She says she finds it fascinating, that she understands them a
lot better when she sees where they live, how they live. It’s not too easy to pretend to be a secret millionaire when you live in a two-room flat. But if you lived in a two-room, you couldn’t afford Lissa. Oh no.

‘She almost never comes to the club. Almost never listens to the music. Music comes from boxes, big boxes and little boxes, boxes filled with the stuff, all of it has no value because it’s in a box. It has no life. None. None at all. Blue Cube is filled with real music, but she doesn’t like it. I like that she doesn’t like it. Reminds me that I do not know everything about music, that what is music for one guy need not be music for another.

‘The crowd might love me for what I play and how I play it, but she loves me for what I am. Who I am. She is brilliant company. She is brilliant at many things. I long ago gave up asking her why she chose to whore rather than to work. She says it’s the money. A lot more for a lot less effort. And she says she takes a lot less shit. OK. I can see that.’

The bar was filling, the noise level rising with the crowd. Big hotel, expensive rooms, expensive drinks, bargirl with an eagle tattooed to her ass cheeks. Stoner stood, waved her over. She came. Stood and waited. There was an unserved crowd waiting for her, waiting at her bar.

‘Two bottles,’ Stoner said. ‘Two of the best; still capped, still sealed. Takeaway.’

She left silently, returned silently. Stoner gave her money; she pocketed it without even looking at it.

‘I get off at one,’ she said.

‘That’s nice.’ Stoner walked away and headed for the stairs.

Led the way up the stairs to his room.

‘Hold this.’

He passed the second bottle to his companion who took it, waited and watched while Stoner carded the lock and walked inside, stepped to one side and held the door for the other, who
followed him in, walked to the table, reached down to steady the bottles against his inebriate unsteadiness, against the effort of climbing three floors on foot, turned to wonder why the climb when the lifts were easy and empty and stopped dead in his tracks as the long black blade entered his neck. Smoothly. Silently.

‘Sit down.’ Stoner motioned towards the bed.

‘Sit down carefully. Do not touch the blade. If you move it, you’ll slice the carotid and that would be that. Curtains. The goodnight call.’

The Hard Man sat, slowly, carefully. Placed a flat hand to steady himself against the mattress. Blood oozed from the wound. He raised his right hand to the handle at his neck, ran his fingers over it. Dropped the hand back to the mattress. His eyes, bright with fury, glared at Stoner.

A whisper. ‘Just. Like. That.’

Stoner sat at the table, unscrewed the cap from the first bottle. Poured himself a generous measure.

‘Best you ease off on the drink.’ He smiled with no humour at all. ‘This stuff can kill you. The demon drink.’ He sank half the glass and turned his chair so its back was between himself and his guest; folded his arms along it. A second blade was visible now, longer and just as black, lying with muted threat on the table beside the half-filled glass.

‘You’re in no immediate danger. It’s the short blade. Very clean. Not much chance of an infection. Move it and you’ll die. A military medic will be able to remove it for you, no trouble. Triangular blade, three edges. Nasty things. You might be able to talk, but quietly, and I would consider how important it was before I started speaking, were I in yours. Think how much you need to tell me what you tell me. I’m going to ask a few questions, just a very few, and a little calm yes or no will be fine. No need to shout, and shaking your head would be a bad move.