Lady of the Shades (17 page)

I thought the first would be the worst, that I’d grow accustomed to murder and take the subsequent assignments in my stride.

I was wrong.

Second time, Carter sent me to kill a woman, a reporter who’d been waging war on major drug cartels. I begged him to give it to someone else, but he said hit men couldn’t afford
sensitivity. If I turned the hit down, he wouldn’t offer me another.

I tracked her for a week. From a technical point of view, it was a fascinating exercise. The authorities knew she’d been targeted, and an armed guard travelled with her everywhere. I
treated it like a game of chess. I was able to distance myself emotionally until the time of the actual execution. But when I outwitted her guards and the moment came to pull the trigger . . .

I shudder at the memory. Instead of taking my shot, I hesitated, which gave her time to beg for her life. If she’d stopped at that, I might have crumbled and let her go, but she made the
mistake of breaking for freedom. Acting on instinct, I fired. Hit her low in the back. Brought her down but didn’t kill her. As she lay there like a wounded crab, gasping, sobbing, begging
for mercy, I had to walk across and fire directly into her face, finishing her off.

‘Please,’ Andeanna interrupts with a trembling wave of her hand. ‘Spare me the details. You’re a sick son of a bitch. I don’t want to know how you killed
them.’

She gets to her feet. I gently pull her down. ‘I’m almost finished,’ I promise. ‘You have to hear me out.’

‘I don’t want to.’

‘I know. But you must.’

She stares at me, then nods. I continue, quicker now, rushing to the finale.

I sank into depression after killing the journalist. I hated myself. I hated Carter Phell. I hated Belinda. I tried to leave her and drink myself to death. We’d both die young and
horribly. It would be simpler than way. More humane.

I got as far as the airport. My feet wouldn’t take me any further. Try as I might, the lure of Belinda was too strong. I slunk back to her, ashamed of myself for almost deserting her. I
accepted another assignment and went about it mechanically, listlessly, professionally.

The third hit went without a hitch. A gangster, deserving of death. Not that it made much difference to me. Innocent or guilty, what did it matter? I’d abandoned morality and given myself
over to the darkness. At least I thought I had.

The fourth hit broke me. A minor Russian politician who had made too many enemies. The locals didn’t dare tackle him by themselves – he had powerful allies – so they hired me.
As with my first hit, I had to make it look like an accident. But after ten days of trailing him, I realized he was too closely guarded at home and work. It took another week to figure it out. He
owned a villa in the mountains and went there most weekends. The road climbed steeply. A sharp drop if you went over the side.

I didn’t hit him on the way up. Instead I chose my spot and settled in, rifle trained on the road, until late Sunday evening, when he started back. He was alone in his BMW – or so I
thought – sandwiched between two other cars. I sighted on a rear wheel, waited for the ideal moment, then fired. The tyre exploded, the car veered off the road, down the cliff. I returned to
my hotel.

The next day, waiting for a taxi to take me to the airport, I saw his photo in one of the papers. There was a photo of a girl too. I asked the guy behind the counter to translate the headline
–
Family Horror! Two Die In Tragic Crash!
– then paid him to read out some of the article for me. The mark
hadn’t
been alone. His nine-year-old daughter was
asleep on the rear seat. Killed along with her father.

That was the end. It didn’t matter what happened with Belinda. I couldn’t go through something like that again. I was out of the game. I told Carter and he accepted my decision. Paid
me the money I had coming. No hard feelings.

Belinda didn’t argue with me. She was a tower of strength. Told me I could cry on her shoulder if I wanted, but I still couldn’t find tears within myself. I felt nothing but
self-loathing. I spent the days numbly studying the faces of my five ghosts, especially the young girl I’d inadvertently killed, as they swept around me in a hateful whirlwind, silently
trying to break my mind, drive me to suicide or nudge me towards having a fatal accident.

I was in the process of withdrawing completely from the world, waiting for the visions to break me, at my lowest ebb, when I had an unexpected visitor. A face from the past. And that was how I
learnt the brutal, crushing truth about how low I had actually fallen.

Belinda had gone away for another treatment. I was asleep, dreaming of the people I’d killed, unable to escape them even when I retired at the end of the day. An alien
click brought me snapping back to my senses. I awoke facing up into the barrel of a revolver. A man said, ‘It won’t trouble me in the slightest if I have to use this, so I’d keep
still as a corpse if I was you.’

I didn’t recognize the voice. It was only when he stepped back and switched on the lamp that I realized who it was.

‘
Simon Dale?
’ I gasped.

‘Wait,’ Andeanna interrupts. ‘The guy who killed your friend in the army?’

‘Yes.’

‘What the hell was
he
doing there?’

‘I’m coming to that.’

I thought I was still dreaming. Then Dale fired and the pillow where my head had been resting exploded in a shower of feathers. I knew then that this was real.

‘That bullet was meant for
you
,’ Dale said, grinning viciously. To my surprise, I wasn’t afraid. Dying didn’t bother me. In many ways it would have been a
relief. The ghosts pressed in eagerly, faces alight at the prospect of my execution. ‘Is this personal or business?’ I asked.

‘A little of both,’ Dale replied.

‘Did Carter set you after me?’

Dale shook his head. ‘He doesn’t know about this.’ Pulling out a chair, he sat and made himself comfortable. ‘Did you ever try to find out what happened to me after I got
out of prison?’

‘No. I didn’t give a fuck. You don’t matter to me.’

‘I do now,’ he chuckled. ‘Carter recruited me.’

‘So you’re still in the assassination business,’ I noted bitterly.

Dale’s smile dropped. His gun didn’t. ‘Wise guy,’ he snarled.

‘
Bored
guy,’ I said. ‘If you’re going to kill me, get it over with.’

‘But I’m not going to kill you,’ Dale said softly. ‘I’ve been paid to, but for once I’m going to renege on a deal. It’ll be more fun this
way.’

My eyes narrowed. ‘What the hell are you talking about?’

‘A woman came to see me.’ He lowered his gun, but I made no move to attack him. ‘She knew about the bad blood between us. Asked if I’d accept a lower rate than usual for
the privilege of bumping you off. I’m not sure how she found out about me. I guess through Carter. I have a feeling she tracked him down, seduced him, humped him senseless and got him to talk
when he’d spent his load and was feeling groovy. You know what guys are like — please us in bed and we’ll tell you how many times we wipe our ass after we shit.’

‘Who was she?’ I asked hoarsely, knowing already but hoping – praying – he’d prove me wrong.

‘I thought it was a trap,’ he smirked. ‘I checked up on her. Found out she was a scam artist with a taste for exotic risks. Her latest scheme was a doozy. She’d convinced
some sap that she was dying of cancer. Hired a fake doctor to fool him. Persuaded her distraught husband – yes, the dumb bastard only went and married her – to become an assassin. Took
the money he earned, said it was for treatment, then squirrelled it away. When he lost his nerve and
retired
, she came to me.’

‘No,’ I moaned softly, pointlessly.

‘I wasn’t going to accept the hit,’ Dale went on. ‘I try not to mix business with pleasure. But then I had an idea.’ He got up and crossed to the door. Paused and
looked back. ‘What if I accepted, but instead of killing you, I told you the truth? You and your asshole friends fucked up my life, Severs –’

‘That’s my real name,’ I interject. ‘Brad Severs.’

‘Very American,’ Andeanna says drolly.

‘– and now it’s time to return the favour,’ I continue in Dale’s voice. ‘Killing you is too easy. This is far sweeter. Say hi to the missus from me.’ He
winked and slipped away, leaving me to suffocate in the coils of the vile, inhuman truth.

There’s a long silence. I’m thinking about that night. Andeanna is putting all the pieces of my story together. ‘It was a set-up?’ she finally asks.

‘A beauty,’ I whisper, staring dead ahead at the pond, through the misty shapes of my ever-vigilant ghosts. ‘She planned it all in advance, once she found out about my secret
past. Fake cancer, make a fortune by tricking me into becoming an assassin, use Dale to get rid of me when I was of no more interest to her.’

‘There must have been easier ways for her to make money,’ Andeanna objects.

‘Sure. But the cash was secondary. She got off on the danger. The game. The thrill. That’s what she lived for.’

Andeanna gulps. ‘Did you kill her?’

I close my eyes. My head aches. I wish I had something to drink.

‘I tracked her down the next day. Found her sharing her
doctor’s
apartment. They were fucking in the living room when I arrived. I kicked in the door, put a bullet through
her boyfriend’s forehead –’ my eyes open and I gaze at the angry-looking shade to the far right of the six ghosts – ‘then took aim at Belinda.’

She didn’t plead for mercy. Just sat on the couch, naked, covered in her dead lover’s blood, staring at me with eyes as cold as diamonds. There were so many things I wanted to say,
but nothing would come out. Eventually I told her to wash, get dressed and take me to the money. ‘No need,’ she replied without missing a beat. ‘It’s here.’

It was in a safe, ready cash, eight hundred and twenty thousand dollars, not just the fees I’d been paid, but funds she’d squeezed from other suckers too. The price of my soul, plus
a bonus. I emptied it all into a large plastic bag, then tried to kill her.

I couldn’t. For all that she’d done, part of me still loved her and I wasn’t able to finish her off. At the same time I couldn’t just walk away and leave her. She had to
be punished. Binding her tight, I fetched a knife from the kitchen and went to work on her face.

‘Ed!’ Andeanna gasps, hands flying to her mouth.

‘She had to pay,’ I croak. ‘I carved her up until I was sure she couldn’t be stitched back together again. I had to neutralize her, so she’d never be able to play
another guy like she’d played me.’

Andeanna stares at me. To fill the silence, I complete my tale.

Leaving a wailing, ruined Belinda behind, I walked away with the money. For more than a year I lived in a daze, contemplating suicide, tormented by ghosts and memories of the past. (I still
don’t mention the ghosts to Andeanna. We don’t need to go there.) But I didn’t have the strength to kill myself, and gradually my will to live returned. Fear of what I’d
assumed to be my inner ghosts turned to interest when I considered the possibility that they might be external, supernatural phantoms. I embarked on a quest to prove that ghosts were real, hoping
that if I could do that, I could find a way to deal with my own half-dozen. As I played around with all sorts of crazy ideas, I began to write short stories, thinking I might find the truth through
fiction. In time I moved on to write
Nights of Fear.

‘And the rest is history,’ I conclude blithely.

‘And Belinda?’ Andeanna asks.

I smile bleakly. ‘She changed her name and went to work for Simon Dale.’

Andeanna’s jaw drops. ‘
What?
’

I shrug. ‘Intrigue and killing are what she excelled at. Once she recovered, she approached Dale and offered her services. Told him how much more he could be making if he ditched Carter
and set up on his own, with her running things behind the scenes. I’m sure he was wary of her, but he gave her a chance, she made the most of it and they’re still together. Doing very
nicely from what I hear.’

‘You’re something else,’ Andeanna laughs. ‘Christ!’

The rain has eased, but Andeanna hasn’t lowered her umbrella. She holds it at an angle, shielding her face from me, thinking. I want to know what’s going through her mind and whether
we have a future together now that she knows the truth about me, but I hold my tongue and wait.

‘Would you have told me?’ she asks in the end. ‘If Axel hadn’t stumbled in on us, and we’d run away together, would you have come clean?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘That’s not good enough,’ she growls.

‘It’s the truth. My past was a closed book. I never intended reopening it. Then again, I never thought I’d fall in love again. I’d have carried on lying to begin with,
but whether I would have continued . . . I honestly don’t know.’

Another long silence. Then she says, ‘I don’t think I can love you. You killed people. I understand that it’s not black and white, and I want to accept you, but you murdered
for money. I could never forget that.’

‘Then go back to your husband,’ I respond harshly.

Her gaze drops. ‘I don’t know if I can do that either. You’re part of my life. You killed for
me
. I can’t cut you out and pretend you never happened.’

‘What do you want?’ I snarl, growing exasperated. ‘Just tell me. If you want me to stay, I’ll stay. If you want me to go, I’ll go. It’s your call.’

‘Ed,’ she says, shaking her head, tears falling. I wait for her to continue, but she doesn’t.

‘Is that it?
Ed?
’

‘Yes,’ she sobs, rising. ‘I have to think about this. I need time alone, to work out where I stand.’

‘What if I’m gone by then? I’m not going to stick around for ever, waiting for you to make up your mind. You want me or you don’t, it’s as simple as
that.’

‘No,’ she disagrees. ‘I want you but I might not be able to have you.’ She turns to leave.

‘Andeanna,’ I call. She stops and waits but doesn’t look back. ‘Now that you know about me, you know what I’m capable of. I can eliminate the Turk. If he’s
the only obstacle between us, he can be removed.’