A Last Act of Charity (Killing Sisters Book 1) (7 page)

All stopped. Gumchew had lost his chewing gum. He had probably swallowed it. This is a better alternative than trying to inhale it, although Stoner judged that the time was not right to discuss this.

Gumchew was also looking likely to throw up, which is a common consequence of having the narrower end of a guitar case rammed hard into your abdomen by a very strong man who cares little for your future wellbeing.

‘Handy fucking Mandy? Are you out of your head, you senseless little shit? Do you believe me now when I tell you that I don’t know anyone called Handy fucking Mandy?’

Stoner was not angry. Stoner wasn’t even short of breath. Stoner enjoyed the physical release of an act of violence. Stoner appreciated his own ability to plan a fight and to execute that plan swiftly and effectively. Stoner was, if anything, in a good mood. He stepped away from the unchewing Gumchew, and looked back at Leatherjacket, who was rather optimistically, but with full marks for grit and determination, attempting to rise. Unhappily, the result was more screaming and a further collapse.

Stoner turned back to Gumchew.

‘I can’t stand this racket. All manner of idiots are going to be here in a moment, and they’ll be here quicker if he carries on bleating and wailing. Nothing personal . . .’ And he kicked Leatherjacket hard in the side of his head, landing a clean and accurate shot with his excellent Caterpillar boot and cutting the unfortunate recumbent off in mid-sob.

Gumchew was still and silent. A neat example of role-reversal. His role was as half of a double act; take away the fallen guy and he was confused. A less sensible soul would have run; to give him some credit, he had worked out all for himself that running from an irritated Stoner was unlikely to bring escape from grief. He gained more credit by spreading his arms wide and presenting Stoner with his open hands, palms first.

Stoner stepped a little further back.

‘Speak. Speak sensibly, explain to me how I am the man you’re looking for but how I somehow have no notion of who you are or what you want. Speak rapidly and clearly, because your pal there needs fairly urgent medical help, and if he wakes up and starts that yelling crap again I will shut him up again and there is a limit to the number of times a guy can take being kicked in the head before he either turns into a plant or dies. If he was to do the latter, I would have killed him and you know who I am. This would reduce my options for the immediate future to just the one, and that would be bad news for you.

‘I am certain that you see what I mean. If not, speak now or . . .’

‘Handy Mandy is a posh tart – some sort of escort, some sort of girl Friday for my boss . . . the guy who pays my wages. She’s been talking non-stop about this guy Stoner who plays in this club and she borrowed a decent chunk of money – maybe for this guy Stoner who plays in this club – and now she’s defaulted and she’s gone. We tracked her to this club, the Blue Cube, then lost her. And you are Stoner, yes? You can’t be anyone else, not after what you just did to James, and you can’t help me. So I should call an ambulance and get help for James and I never saw you and James was mugged by some guy after his . . . ah . . . after his wallet. I reckon that it would be bad news getting stuck between my boss and . . . you. No mileage there. None.’

‘We’re doing well. You do have a good grip on things. You’ve learned how hazardous talking to strangers can be and like a good boy you will not do it again. Good stuff. Yes to all of those things. But before I leave you and return to the gentle arms of the evening, I need to know two things, so that my internal alarms can be quiet and so that I can sleep soundly. I need to know that you are unencumbered with projectile weapons, and I need to know your identity. This would be a bad time to become brave or to obfuscate. Believe me. So open your coat and give me your wallet.’

Gumchew obliged with no hesitation at all. Education should be like this; simple and effective.

Stoner returned the wallet, less the driving licence.

‘Tell me that the weight in your inside pocket is your cell phone?’

Gumchew nodded.

‘Then extract it carefully, and call for an ambulance.’

Leatherjacket had started to moan softly, and the sky was becoming light in the east.

‘And if we meet again, please remember that politeness is a virtue and that virtue is its own reward.’

‘Stoner?’

A question, asked quietly in a quiet voice by a quiet man holding a cell phone. Stoner looked appropriately quizzical.

‘The case? Hoods carry tommy guns in violin cases, yeah? What have you got in there? A rifle? A howitzer?’

‘It’s an axe, sunshine. It’s my favourite axe, but it’s done enough work for one evening. Make your call . . .’

Stoner grinned, rolled his eyes like an amdram maniac and walked away. Nothing called him back.

Walking is therapy. A good brisk walk into the early twitches of dawn can raise the soul. His spirits elevated, Stoner decided that rather than head home, he’d leave his wheels where they were, near to the dirty blonde’s house, and would stay with her. Maybe sharing breakfast would make them both happy, and maybe he could grab a little sleep in convivial company.

And maybe not. Standing outside, looking up at a silent window in a silent house from the silent street, Stoner reviewed things, as is only right in dawn’s early light. The dirty blonde might not be back home yet. She may be back but asleep. She might be less than completely happy to be woken by him. She might be . . . conjecture is the enemy of calm, and Stoner needed to sleep. He needed to think.

He walked back to his car, searching his pockets for the keys.

6

MONEY

‘This is how it works,’ said the Hard Man. ‘I give you money. You make me happy. Sometimes, rarely, it works the other way around. You make me happy and then I give you the money. This is life as we know it. As we share it.’

He frowned. He showed no signs of happiness. His tone of voice was flat, monotonous. The delivery of his small speech was disconnected, uncaring, almost uninterested, as though he was thinking of something else, his mind preoccupied.

He loosened, and then unclipped, and then removed the belt from his trousers. His trousers fell around his ankles. It should have been a comic sight. It was not. The Hard Man was far too grave a character and in far too hard a mood for that.

He stepped free of his lower clothes, wrapped the belt around his right hand, squeezed the buckle as he closed his fingers, forming a bulky, misshapen fist.

‘It is,’ he remarked, almost to himself, ‘the purest way of life. It is my way of life. The simple life. An uncomplicated life. Complication always has a tendency to shorten the lives involved in it. In complication there always lies unhappiness. We must strive for simplicity in all that we do. In all that we wish for, too.

‘Complication is an indication of youth. Only youth believes that it has the time, the energy for complication. Complication only distracts from purpose. Purity of purpose is rarely accompanied by complication of execution. Distraction is always a diversion. See past the distraction, and you’ll see the pure purpose.’

The tall black woman was naked below the waist, as was the Hard Man. She gazed at him in silence. He gazed back. She cleared her throat, less than silently.

‘Yes?’

‘Yes fucking what?’

The Hard Man’s tone was shifting from lecturing, dominant, demanding, to irritated.

‘You just keep right on talking, if that’s what you’re here to do, that’s fine by me. It saves on the cleaning up afterwards. But I have to tell you that most folk don’t pay me so that they can talk to me. More’s the pity. Talking is good. You carry right along with the talking. If all you want to do is talk, then you can have a drink for free to help you along with that. Would you like that?’

The Hard Man’s eyes half-closed, his face was dark. His right fist gripped the leather of his belt. He closed the distance between himself and the woman in two long rapid strides and slammed his belted fist into her stomach.

Hard.

Breath fled from her and her eyes closed, then flashed open again.

‘You’re better at talking.’

The Hard Man’s face was set. He swung again, hitting the tall black woman above the bones of her left hip. Her eyes closed briefly as she staggered away from him. She regained her balance and her eyes stared once more into his.

‘Do you feel like that drink yet? You need some inner refreshment, some extra vigour?’

Her tone was flat. No distress, no pain in her voice. The next blow lifted her sideways off her feet; she regained her balance, sprang lithe as a cat across the distance between them, raised both her fisted hands into two attacks and as his eyes followed them, trying to watch them both. As they moved back ready for a strike she sank her teeth into the muscle above his right shoulder, and as he pulled away her right fist flew in fast, catching him below his left ear.

His arousal was obvious, unavoidable, urgent. She seized him with her left hand and pushed him back against the wall, standing on just her left leg as she raised her long, black right leg, opening herself and sliding herself onto him, dropping her raised leg, clamping him inside her, pushing both his shoulders hard back against the wall with her two hands and working him inside her; fast, fluid, controlled movement raising his arousal suddenly and uncontrollably to its pitch. No time, no subtlety, no nothing and as he climaxed she held his shoulders hard, pushing them against the wall as he punched her with both hands into her sides as he came, and he came in silence, and as the final drilling climax shuddered between them she raised her hands from his shoulders and slapped his face, not gently, once on each side. He slipped down the wall, fell from inside her and sat at her feet, her hands resting on his shoulders.

She took the belt from him. Ran its wide side between her legs, wiping herself, and dropped it in front of him.

‘A memento for you.’

There was no warmth in her voice. She hung a dressing gown around her shoulders and left the room, returning within moments carrying a pair of matching glasses, one red wine, one white, and placed them on a small table. She dropped smoothly
into one of the two chairs and looked at the Hard Man, whose satisfied expression told a story she was no part of.

‘Time to talk now, if you wish. Although you never do, do you?’

He was dressed, decent. Completely in control once more. Walked over and took the other chair, chose the red wine and raised it in a silent toast to her.

‘They’re both for you.’

‘You hurting?’

His tone was as neutral as ever.

‘Of course I’m hurting. You?’

His expression was ambiguous, fleeting. Maybe a glimpse of an emotion, and maybe not.

‘No. I’m not hurting. You don’t hurt me at all. No one does. Nothing does. But . . . I feel good. I feel . . . easier. As always.’

He paused, emptied the first glass and raised the second to her.

‘Thank you. As always. Your fee’s been paid. You offer excellent value. If I hurt you, why do you agree to see me?’

‘For the money. You always ask that question, and my answer’s always the same, and will always be the same. I do it for the money. If I did it for love, then I’d be a strange woman indeed. And just to ease you from any need you may feel to provide small talk, I don’t care about small talk, I just want to lie in a hot bath for a half hour so I can feel soothed and relaxed before I meet the next job. That’s it. There is no more.

‘If you want to construct some fantasy in which I enjoy being hit, then go ahead. At some point you’ll move on, or I will. Or maybe one day you’ll hurt me too much and then this will simply end.’

The Hard Man stood, preparing to leave.

‘Or maybe one day we’ll decide to formalise the arrangement, make it permanent, and settle down together to enjoy a peaceful old age.’ He smiled.

‘And maybe I’ll become an astronaut, or possibly king of England. They all seem equally likely.’

She did not look at him as he left, and neither did she bid him goodbye. She simply drew a deep bath, and lay in it for some time, thinking.

7

NO STRINGS

‘Forget yesterday’s crime scene. It’s cold. Try a new one. There’s been another.’

The Hard Man’s voice was soft on the cell phone’s speaker, easy on the ear.

‘And it’s a mess. A real mess. You need to be there. Now would be a good time. While everyone’s asleep. Bar us.’

Stoner checked the time on the message, hesitated. Returned the call. Asked the Hard Man’s own answering robot for directions. Hung up. Walked to the furthest wall, rested his head against it and kicked the skirting, grimly and repeatedly. Kicking a wall, he mused aimlessly, is as useful as banging the head against it, and about as productive, but it is less painful. Even with application, high energy and dedication, any damage is likely to be temporary.

The wall banged a fresh rhythm of its own back at him. Stoner stopped. Stood still. Recalled with worrying slowness that there were neighbours here. That neighbours were likely to object to a madman kicking his stress into their shared wall, even if that madman was the landlord. Although they could be forgiven for being unaware of his identity, given that there was indeed a wall between them.

He focused a little, drew his thoughts back from an imminent encounter with the recently and messily deceased, and surfaced into the world which was real to more conventional citizens than himself. A pair of nice ladies had rented the next door apartment. Quiet ladies, if typically nocturnal in their business habits, which would be why at least one of them was awake and kicking in the pale predawn light. Or maybe he had disturbed one of her customers . . . clients.

The phone buzzed twice. A message. Stoner flicked it open, read the address, ignored the criticism, collected coat, keys, gloves and commitment, and headed out.

04.28. Even the clock on his cell phone had a sense of humour.

Scenes of crime are always protected. They are protected against the long noses and longer lenses of the curious. The professionally curious and the pruriently curious. Both can render a scene useless for an investigative kind of chap. They render scenes useless, typically, by tramping about, by weeping, by sneezing, by vomiting and by cleaning the place up. Stoner had once watched in wonder as a uniform sergeant had righted the downed ornaments, picked bits of broken glassware from the carpets and straightened tumbled books on their shelves. He had occasionally wondered whether a spot of therapeutic carpet chemical cleansing would have come next if the sergeant hadn’t vomited with violence and then sobbed through the aftermath. Shock can be a peculiar companion.

Stoner was prepared for a night watchman. Stoner was in fact prepared for the SOC team to be busily bagging, dusting, observing and generally investigating. But no. This scene was protected only by bright yellow tape. Exactly why anyone should believe that a tape bearing wording suggesting that visitors were unwelcome and should depart hence would have an effect on any but the most accommodating and innocent of casual spectators . . .
well, one of life’s little mysteries. Of which there are so many, so very, very many.

Behind the tape, the door may well have been left unlocked. Stranger things had happened. It was however unlikely. And sadly, the door was indeed locked, secured by more than the No Entry tape. But Stoner was a man of resource. He could pick a lock. He could open a door using a bent hatpin to defeat a lock’s mechanism. This always works in the movies. It rarely worked when the door’s locking mechanism unsportingly included a magnetic code held in a temporary kind of way on a plastic card issued to the room’s renter when he or she rented the room.

In a similar way, sliding a piece of plastic, whether it contained the correct secret magnetic code or not, between the door and its frame in such a way that it pushed the lock’s levers aside, so enabling entry, always popular in the same movies, also rarely works on hotel doors. They are designed to be proof against this kind of thing. And indeed they are. The march of technology is remorseless and unthinking. It is also often effective. Professional breakers and enterers no doubt have subtle skills beyond the imagination of mortal men, and using these would enable them to enter the most securely locked of portals. Stoner was not one of those men. He could break heads with the ease of long experience, but he could not pick a magnetically locked lock. He could not work magic.

‘La Forge.’

The scared receptionist stared at him. Stoner applied studied patience, switched on an approximate smile and repeated himself.

‘Mr La Forge. Do you have an envelope for me?’

The envelope contained the key card. Of course it did. And of course the room was a mess. Of course Stoner arrived much later than the Hard Man had intended and of course the corpse had been removed. Most of the corpse had been removed. But of tidying, vomiting or sobbing sergeants there was no sign.

Stoner closed the door gently behind him and gazed around him with eyes mostly closed. The room stank. Ageing, drying, sweating blood does not smell well. The room was warm and the blood was generously applied to an impressively large area of it. This makes for a considerably bad smell. It is the smell which turns the stomach. Visually, blood is fairly unimpressive, particularly if it’s been left lying for a while. It just looks messy. Like spilled cold gravy, congealing with added strawberry jam, perhaps. It is not particularly frightening. If the room is a warm room, as this one was, then the volatiles in the spread blood evaporate, providing an olfactory assault while at the same time allowing the blood itself to congeal to a texture all its unpleasant own. It is, perhaps surprisingly, not entirely unlike black pudding.

There were other odours. There always are. Stoner breathed normally, eyes closed, allowing the room to breathe through his nostrils. There was hotel-room odour; not-very expensive cleaning agents, not-very harsh bleach. The carpets breathed the familiar scent of wet hotel carpet; walked-in road rubbish and weary cheap polymers. There was sweat in the air also. It was a warm room, the SOC team would have gently broiled in their disposable suits while they laboured, and they would have left the heating controls as they had been set by the deceased because they all knew better than to interfere with things like that. The SOC team would also have been innocent of the strong smell of marijuana and the weaker but equally acrid scent of sex. SOC teams wear masks to prevent contamination and to protect themselves from it, and masks do little to enhance olfactory detection. Stoner was a firm believer in using all available senses as he attempted to understand what lay before him.

Eyes open; lights on. The expected mess. Carefully placed cardboard provided an officially sanctioned walkway. Stoner slipped off his boots. Rested them heels-up against the closed door. Slipped on slippers; he wanted no further destruction of the
scene. Walked slowly into the centre of the room, stood still at the foot of the bed. The body had been on this bed. Its shape, the depression of the dead, revealed its previous presence. Five pillows. One of them in the bed’s centre, soaked and black with blood. The body had been arched over this, face up or face down. Interesting. Mostly hidden under one of the other pillows was an eye, an eyeball. Stoner stared hard, focusing intently upon the trailing nerve and connective tissue. The victim’s pale eye looked away, in a shy, passive way . . .

Above the headboard was a painting. Faintly abstract but rendered more so by the bloody splashing. Stoner stared for a moment. Three pale purple balls on stalks against a purple background. A fourth purple ball hung below the very artificial purple horizon. If that headboard painting, in that room, in this weary hotel . . . if they were the last sights for eyes soon to be forever blind, then it would be a bleak moment indeed, that moment of passing. Another reason for fighting a killer. Die on a beach; die in the sun, die . . . old.

The dead man had fought. This was evident in the scattering of everything. But he had not fought hard enough or well enough. Stoner pondered. He didn’t know anything about the dead man, other than the two facts that he was dead and that he was a man, but subduing a man was not an easy task. Sex in hotel rooms generally involves at least one girl. Girls are usually less muscled than men. Girls often have trouble overpowering men. This is one reason why women get raped. Holding off a fit man is not easy for a slight woman. A fit man who is in a state of arousal should be even more vigorous than might be usual – the experience of illicit sex, hotel sex, tends to produce extra excitement. This is one reason why the few hit men who are really hit women tend to favour the more subtle or remote approaches to that final departure. Poisons, guns, garrottes; that kind of thing. Stoner pondered some more.

For the Hard Man to be interested in this, he must have reasonable
suspicion that the deaths were more than simply random attacks. They were unlikely to be a result of the joy of sex gone a little further than expected; that particular cause of death was a real rarity. Stoner’s pondering brought him to the notion of the accomplice. Could he picture this conversation: ‘Excuse me one moment, Mr Customer, while I open the door to my big bloke buddies?’ Not easily, he couldn’t.

So then; drugs in the drink. Stoner, still unmoving in the centre of the room, looked at the array of smashed glass. A couple of bottles. Cheap wine. Cheapskate. No wonder he got killed. Could the motive be meanness? Some cheap, white, trashy German wine, not even
mit Pradikat
. Not an easy motive, that one. And in any case, the plods had a fine toxicology team in their various pathology departments; if there were soporific chemicals involved – apart from the marijuana, of course – then they would find trace in a trice. If they looked for it.

He could see no indication that a bottle had been smashed over a head, which is an unsubtle and not always effective way of subduing someone. But the edge of the built-in desktop, as well as being smeared with the ubiquitous blood, also wore what appeared to be a tuft or two of short dark hair. That would have hurt, but by the time the hair left the head, that head was already on its way to make unexpected and close acquaintance with the carpet, so damage had already been done.

So then; an errant eyeball and a stray tuft of hair. They both pointed one way; they pointed towards a degree of ferocity which was unusual – most unusual – in a contractor. Professionals kept their place in their business by being dispassionate. Efficient. Ferocity has its place, but if the only way a killer can kill is by becoming outraged, ferocious, then the moment would inevitably arrive when the ferocity was not forthcoming and at that point the professional might falter, might fail. At that point, only retirement beckoned. Or worse.

Stoner looked around him for more signs of far-flung flesh. And of course he found them. Things turn up once you start looking for them. The same thing happens in reverse, too. It is not usually difficult to hide in plain view of folk, especially if they aren’t aware that they’re looking for you. And it is the same with objects. Sometimes things hide themselves from the most professional of searchers. Stoner had never yet been unable to uncover material evidence from a scene after it had been declared clean by a SOC team. And the converse was often also the case: after Stoner had passed his gaze over a scene, a new gaze almost always found evidence
he’d
missed. The more intense the search, the greater the tendency to miss the obvious. Sometimes.

Among the glass splinters and shards, two recognisable fingernails. Make that three; the smaller of them possibly painted . . . and possibly not. There was so much muck, so much bloody mess that without picking it up it was hard to tell.

Much has been written, and more has been said, about the information available to the practiced observer from a crime scene. Stoner’s view was that although all information had a value, the real value lay in the wider view. He was personally acquainted with several practitioners of the SOC expert’s art. He had worked both for and against them in the course of his interesting life. If he had cause to criticise them, which he rarely did, it would be because they tended to look too closely, in too much detail. He felt that as much was often to be gained by the standing back and taking a broader view. His own favoured method involved both, but in most police work involving genuine policemen, resources were an issue. Cost and value had to be balanced. In Stoner’s contracting spook world, these things were less important, funding being politically invisible and always deniable.

He was calm now. The shock of the mess had eased, his own organism had ceased feeling threatened by the circumstances of
the demise of another similar organism. Carpet was just carpet; blood was just mess and an indication of an event, not an emotional decoration . . . or desecration, even. Thoughts of the rights and wrongs of violent death had appeared, said their piece, and then left again. Leaving room for thinking, considering, analysing and concluding, although the latter usually came later. The later the better, Stoner preferred, because conclusions are so often incorrect and so often cloud the case.

On the functional faux timber desk stood a portable computer. A small one. A netbook. It was inevitably spattered a little with drops and fragments of the dead departed, and its screen stood open, if not completely. It was positioned precisely where it should have been, were it to be operated from the chair which usually accompanied the desk, but which in this case was lying on its side on the far side of the blood-soaked bed.

Stoner took a tool from an inside pocket. It was one of three he habitually carried when examining a scene, or when working on a motorcycle. This one was an extendable rod with a decently strong magnet at its end; like many mechanics he used it most often in the workshop, where it was a great way to retrieve small, dropped metallic components. In this case, though, all he wanted was to prod the buttons on the netbook to prompt it back to life.

He was curious to see what a mark who had brought a recreational lady to his hotel would have wanted to see on his computer while he and his guest were exercising in the customary hotel way. It is indeed possible to take one’s work too seriously.