People Die (21 page)
Authors: Kevin Wignall
It was a relief to get to the hotel and off the crowded streets. This was no longer a friendly place, the people no longer just tourists. The hotel was on the fourth floor of a building near the Duomo, a budget hotel but clean, the rooms with bathrooms, even TVs, a lot better than the one they’d booked for themselves.
Lucas introduced himself as Mr. Wright. He’d reserved two rooms, but once the manager had left them in the corridor he said, “We all stay in the double.” They didn’t respond, just followed him into the room.
Chris dropped the knapsack on the bed and Lucas immediately opened it and took out a gun, then something else that he attached to the barrel, a silencer. His movements were spare and methodical, but somehow he looked unpredictable, dangerous.
Ella felt her stomach tighten, a sense that maybe Lucas had set a trap and now they were in it. But with the gun assembled, he turned to Chris and said, “I have to go out. I won’t be long. When I get back, I’ll knock once and say, ‘It’s Dad.’ Anyone else knocks, don’t answer. Anyone comes in, you shoot them. Safety’s off. Just aim it at the middle of their chest and shoot. If you’re in any doubt, shoot again, keep shooting till they go down, and then shoot them in the head.”
Ella said, “You think we’re still in danger?”
He turned to her and smiled, his face coming alive, taking on form, warm, friendly. His eyes were startlingly blue, something she hadn’t noticed before. “No. It’s just a precaution.”
He turned back to Chris. “Okay, you understand what I’m saying? You want to hold the gun to get used to it?” Chris shook his head, looking lost, like a child. “I’ll put it here on the table.” He walked to the door but stopped before leaving and said, “And remember, no phone calls, no nothing.”
That was it, he was gone, and the two of them were left standing in the confined hush of the room. It was as if for the first time since it had happened they suddenly had the space and the quiet to take it all in. Ella wanted to cry and for Chris to hold her, but he still looked lost, distracted.
“I need a piss,” he said, as though becoming aware of his own body again. He went into the bathroom and shut the door.
Ella sat down on the edge of the bed and looked at the gun, sitting there on the night table like it was the most natural thing in the world. She didn’t want to cry now, she just wanted Lucas to come back.
Chris was a long time in the bathroom, and when he came out his eyes were red. She’d never seen him cry, had never even seen him upset, and she wanted to hold him and comfort him the way she’d wanted to be comforted a few minutes before. He looked embarrassed, though, and laced with hostility, all anger she couldn’t help but feel was directed at her.
“Are you okay?”
He didn’t answer, saying instead, “How do we know who this guy is? I mean, How do we really know what’s going on here? You never told me your family was this rich.”
“They’re not.”
He shrugged, as if that proved his point. “And yet you’re willing to believe this guy’s being paid by your father to act as a bodyguard, protect you against kidnappers. How do we even know those two guys were kidnappers?”
“They had guns.” Though now that she thought about it, she couldn’t remember seeing guns.
“So? Maybe they were the police. That would explain the body armor. Because why would a kidnapper wear body armor? What, he thought you might be packing a gun?” It troubled her, but he had a point. They didn’t know anything about Lucas, if that was his real name, and they had only his word for it that he’d been paid to protect them, to protect her. “For all we know, he could be out there calling your dad right now and demanding a ransom. What a classic trick for a kidnapper—you convince your victims they’re in danger and that you’re protecting them.”
She thought about it, all the question marks, the apparent unwillingness of Lucas to provide answers for any of them. The sum of their knowledge was that Lucas had been following them, that he’d killed two men without hesitation, that he had false passports with their pictures. All the same, he had an air of someone who was being straight with them.
“I believe him,” she said finally. “If he was lying, he’d have tried to convince us, but he hasn’t. He just assumes we believe him because he’s telling the truth and he can’t see why we wouldn’t believe. I know this is all crazy and, trust me, I really wanna speak to my dad, but I think Lucas is telling the truth.”
Chris looked at her, not saying anything. He nodded then, seeming to accept that she was probably right, and he looked down at the gun. “Then we’re in some really deep shit.”
Ella looked at the gun too, but in her head she was silently correcting him;
they
weren’t in really deep shit,
she
was. Whatever this was, sooner or later Chris would be able to walk away from it if he wanted to, and from her.
they
weren’t in really deep shit,
she
was. Whatever this was, sooner or later Chris would be able to walk away from it if he wanted to, and from her.
She had an uneasy feeling, though, that sitting on that night table was a reality she’d been shielded from, a reality that her father hadn’t wanted to taint her childhood or youth. But it had surfaced now, and even if she came through this, if nothing ever happened again, she’d be forever on her guard, always scanning the crowd for another Lucas.
Please turn the page for an exciting sneak peek of
Kevin Wignall’s
WHO IS CONRAD HIRST?
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Dear Anneke,
I should have written to you like this ten years ago and I should have kept writing. The night I found out you were dead, I should have run back to the house and started writing and never stopped. But I ran the wrong way, I never put that loss into words, and all the horrors of the last decade, all the murders—yes, I’m a murderer now, many times over—all of it arose, in one way or another, from that failure.
I can imagine you remonstrating with me, telling me that it was a war zone, that similar horrors befell many of the people who were foolish or unfortunate enough to be in Yugoslavia at that time. It’s true, the shells that fell on you in the market square also fell on countless others, and I was not the only one to get caught up in the fighting, to cross over from observer to participant in the squalid chaos that reigned there.
And I have no doubt that I was scarred by the things I did and saw, but none of it, none of what happened to me excuses my failure to get help and leave that violence behind. None of it excuses my betrayal of the person you knew and everything he stood for.
Think of that person, the English boy who wanted to be a photographer—he was kind, wasn’t he, and gentle and funny? Do you remember him? Then you should hate him, because for the past nine years that same person has been a professional killer, working for a German crime boss, killing people for money be didn’t need, remorseless, empty of any kindness at all.
The most recent was only yesterday afternoon in Chur. Yes, yesterday afternoon I killed a seventy-six-year-old man called Hans Klemperer. I don’t know why they wanted him dead, and at the time I didn’t care. To me, he was no more than a set of instructions, his death no more important a detail than the destruction of his computer.
Now, though, now I feel bad for the first time in ten years, a gnawing discomfort in the knowledge of what I’ve done. Call it conscience, if you will; all I know is that it’s a sadness for which I’m profoundly grateful, no less than if my sight had been restored to me after years of blindness. What overtook me yesterday was a longing to be the person I once was.
I’ve already changed, and I swear Klemperer is the last man I’ll kill for money. I can’t promise not to kill again, not yet—I wish I could, but I’ve thought it through endlessly over the last twenty-four hours, and of necessity there are still four more murders I have to commit, four more deaths that lie between me and the person I was on the day you died. Of course, in many respects, I’ll never be that person again, but this is my opportunity to at least end the sickness.
If there were another way, if I could start afresh without killing another person, I’d take that path, because I see now what I always should have seen, that it’s what you would have wanted me to do, what we would have wanted. As it is, four more deaths will count for nothing in the context of what I’ve done—they’ll bear no more significance than the burning of this letter a few minutes from now.
What matters, surely, is that I’ve written this letter! The process has started, and there’ll be no turning back. In some perverse way, I did the things I did in the last ten years because I lost you. Perhaps you’ll think it equally perverse, but these final four killings, everything I’m about to do, it’s all because I loved you, because I still love you, and because I always will.
Conrad
1
The snow had smothered the town, not with the deep drifts that would come and go through the Bavarian winter, but enough to give the evening a sense of enclosed stillness. Between snow and lights there was a comforting glow around the houses. Even Frank’s house, a brutal 1970s chalet that Conrad had never liked, looked picturesque in its winter clothes.
Yet as soon as he got out of the car, Conrad was drawn from the houses around him to the half-hidden view of the mountain above, its trees and slopes and outcrops all dusted in shadowy blue light. The cable car station was lost in the clouds and the dense thickets of lazily falling snow, but the knowledge that it was up there was soothing, maybe for no other reason than that it reminded him of the distant past, a time when he might still have been able to turn back, before the irreparable damage had been done.
For a minute or two he didn’t want to move and surrender this peace. He didn’t want to spend time with Frank and he didn’t want the dream of the last two weeks to be snatched away from him, for Frank to tell him that he’d miscalculated, that escaping this business would not be so easy.
He’d been a ghost, that was the fact at the center of his plans, a fact that he’d convinced himself of, and as long as he stood out there in the clean coldness of early evening, he could hold onto it and believe it true. The trouble was, he’d remain a ghost unless he confronted whatever alternate truth Frank might have to offer him.
Even if there were more than four, even if every crime boss and police force in Europe knew about him, he needed to hear it. He liked the cool simplicity of killing his way out of the business, but if the facts suggested that it would be impossible, he was still determined to find another way, whatever it took.
He followed the vague line of the path that was still showing through the snow and knocked on the door. Frank opened it almost immediately, took the briefest moment to place him, and then beamed a smile, pointing at Conrad with both hands like they’d once been in a band together.
“Hey, man! This is unexpected,” he said in his West Coast surfer accent.
He almost felt sorry for Frank. He was over fifty now, his stockiness running to fat a little, but he was squeezed into clothes designed for skinny kids half his age, and his short hair was dyed a yellowy blond, a high-maintenance operation that only served to make him look even older than he was. He could imagine Frank being offended by every deeply etched line in his own perma-tanned face, like they were all personal betrayals.
“Good to see you, Frank.”
As if double-checking against his own knowledge, Frank said, “You’re not on a job?”
Conrad laughed. “Did you send me on a job?” Frank shrugged and looked scatterbrained, a goofy act he’d perfected over the years, one that belied the dangerous truth, the early years in some elite U.S. Army regiment, the two decades as one of the operational hubs around which Eberhardt’s criminal empire revolved. “I’ve been away for a couple of days, thought I’d call in—I need to pick your brain about something.”
There was that look again, hinting that there wasn’t much to pick, but he stepped back and said, “Come on in. You hungry?”
“No, thanks,” said Conrad as Frank shut the door behind him. He walked into the sitting room, took his coat off, and put it on one of the sofas.
“Port wine?”
“Sure, I’ll have a glass of port with you.”
Conrad sat on the sofa next to his coat. Frank poured two glasses of port, handed one to Conrad and sat on the opposite sofa. The fireplace between them was loaded with logs but Conrad had never seen it lit—perhaps just as well, because the room was already suffocating under the blanket of central heating. Even so, a crackling fire would have been a nice touch for two old colleagues of sorts, looking back on their decade’s acquaintance.
Conrad sipped at his port and nodded appreciatively, but before he could comment aloud, Frank said, “So what’s on your mind, Conrad?”
“I’m thinking about quitting.”
He’d said the words and it was done now. Even if he changed his mind immediately, they’d have him marked as potentially volatile, someone who might become a liability or a threat further down the road. With those four words he’d started a process that, in one way or another, could not be stopped. The challenge now was to keep himself moving and hold the advantage.
“I didn’t know you smoked.” Frank looked sheepish, an admission that it hadn’t been funny; maybe a realization, too, that Conrad wasn’t much of a foil for witty banter. Seriously, that’d be a shame, not least because you’re good. But you know, I’ll guarantee this has something to do with turning thirty—everyone has a wobble at thirty.”
“I’m thirty-two. Anyway, that’s not it. I just want to do something different with my life. I can’t do this anymore.”
“Have you been reading Charles Handy?” Conrad looked baffled by way of response. “You know, the business guru?
The Empty Raincoat
? This whole idea of the multicareer life.”
The Empty Raincoat
? This whole idea of the multicareer life.”
On several occasions in the past, at times like this, he’d wondered if Frank was a junkie of some sort—prescription drugs, that kind of thing—but he knew it was an act, that a person couldn’t do Frank’s job without being mentally above water. This was just one of Frank’s games, and Conrad knew he had to play along to get to what he wanted.
“Frank, what are you talking about?”
“I guess that’s a ‘no’.” Then Frank sprang his little verbal ambush and was pleased with himself, like he was a dazzling trial lawyer working a witness. “So, would this have anything to do with killing a certain old man in Chur two weeks ago?”
Conrad smiled, thinking back to Chur, to the sun shining on the cafés in the square. As unusual as this snowfall was for early November, it was nothing compared to the Indian summer they’d experienced two weeks before.
Frank took Conrad’s smile as an admission and said, “At least you killed him. But I’ll be straight, I never dreamed he’d get to you. He was a wily old bastard, a talker, but I never dreamed he’d get to you.”
“It wasn’t Klemperer, as such. Something did happen in Chur, but ... I just had a moment of clarity, you know? I can’t do this anymore.” Frank looked troubled, possibly by the logistics of replacing him, possibly by something more sinister, but either way, Conrad was eager to move on now. “Changing the subject, I was thinking of all the people I’ve dealt with over the last ten years, all the people who know what I’ve done, who I am.” He laughed as he added, “All the people who could pick me out of a lineup.”
“And?” Frank seemed genuinely intrigued by the shift in the conversation.
“It’s amazing really—Brodsky, Carrington, Deschamp, Steiner ...”
“Who’s Steiner?”
“The guy I first worked with for you.”
“Schmidt,” said Frank, correcting him.
“Of course. I don’t know why I thought it was Steiner. Anyway, he’s dead, just like all the others, just like Lewis Jones.”
“You’re an unlucky guy to be around,” said Frank, smiling, seeing this list of names as some sort of humorous parlor game.
“Or it’s a line of work with a very brief life expectancy. By my reckoning, the only people in the business who know me and are still alive are Julius Eberhardt, Freddie Fischer, and Fabio Gaddi.”
There they were, all introduced to him by Frank back in the early days—Eberhardt, his employer; Fischer, who supplied him with arms, Gaddi, who provided documents when he needed them. He didn’t know if Fischer and Gaddi worked for Eberhardt or if they were independent operatives—he’d never needed to know and had never been curious.
He’d dealt with them only as they’d related to him and he’d deal with them in the weeks ahead on the same basis. They’d been his world for nine years, a closed and claustrophobic world that he was about to dismantle piece by piece.
“When did you meet Gaddi?”
“I didn’t, but we’ve spoken on the phone, and the guy makes my passports and papers—I’d say that counts as knowing me.”
Frank seemed to take the facts in now, and said, “You’re right, that really is amazing. But then, that’s why we always liked you—you make yourself invisible.”
“So you agree, you can’t think of anyone else?” Frank shook his head questioningly, clearly wondering where this was going. “Don’t you get it, Frank? It means I can start afresh and never worry about this world coming back to haunt me.”
Frank looked suddenly troubled and said, “You’re serious about this? About quitting?” Conrad nodded, causing Frank to look even more uneasy. Hesitantly, he said, “Look, Conrad, it might not be as straightforward as all that. You have to understand the underbelly of this business—it’s more complicated than it seems. What I mean is, getting out isn’t always as simple as saying ‘I quit.’ ”
Conrad realized Frank hadn’t been taking him seriously, that Frank had really believed he was experiencing nothing more than a “wobble.” Now, too late, he was trying to hint at some labyrinthine structure that was hard to escape.
He was missing the point, of course, because the complexity of Eberhardt’s empire, and the criminal underworld that it was a part of, was irrelevant when set against the simple fact that Frank had already confirmed: Conrad didn’t have to find his way out of the labyrinth, just punch his way through four walls.
“Do more than those three people know who I am?”
He looked pained as he said, “No, that’s not what I’m saying.”
“What you’re saying doesn’t matter. I’ve killed a lot of people in ten years, Frank. Killing a few more to get out of the business seems like a good equation to me. The way I see it, the underbelly of the business counts for nothing if no one’s alive who can connect me to it.”
Frank seemed to take a moment to catch up, then looked askance at Conrad and said, “You’ve got to be joking, of course.” He was smiling, relaxed, but his tone was vaguely threatening, maybe because he understood that there were four people in the frame, not three. “Okay, just hypothetically, say you were crazy enough to go down this route, and I don’t think you are, Conrad, not by a long way, but say you were, how would you get Eberhardt?”
Conrad smiled to himself, because he knew he’d calculated correctly. If Eberhardt’s security was the only obstacle Frank could come up with, he was as good as free. He’d never thought any of the killings themselves would present a problem; his only concern had been the possibility of being known by people he’d never actually dealt with.
“It’s funny I couldn’t remember Schmidt’s name because I’ve always remembered something he told me, something about the one constant weak spot in Eberhardt’s security. You do remember that Schmidt was one of his bodyguards for a while?” Frank looked unimpressed, waiting for something more substantial. “The country estate near Birkenstein.”
“I’ve been there many times,” said Frank with satisfaction, which in itself exposed how rattled he was. “Julius spends most of his time there, I know, and despite what Schmidt might have told you, it’s probably the most secure private residence I’ve ever seen. I mean, don’t get me wrong, Conrad, you’re good in the sense that you’re reliable, discreet, detached even—but you’re not James Bond.”
“Maybe I’m a little closer to James Bond than you think.” The words sounded ridiculous, but he knew he had one over on Frank. “It’s not the estate itself. Apparently, our friend Julius has a religious streak. Every Sunday that he’s there, he goes to the chapel in the village, only two bodyguards, in a place that Schmidt told me is a sniper’s paradise.”
Frank nodded nonchalantly, though Conrad could see he’d surprised him. Frank then said, “I knew a couple of snipers way back when. Takes a lot of training and a very particular mind-set—not the same as killing a man at ten feet, not the same at all. It’s not just a question of picking up an M24 off Freddie and hiding in a tree. So tell me, Conrad, where did you get your sniper training? I’m curious.”
Conrad didn’t bother to tell him he’d once known a sniper, too, in Yugoslavia, a guy he’d heard them call “Vasko.” He remembered him, lean and sinewy but smiling a lot, an easy smile, and the muscles in one eye always itching toward a squint. He’d had no specialized training, only years of hunting in the hills, and yet if he could see it through his sights, he could shoot the cigarette out of a man’s mouth. For all Conrad knew, Vasko had survived the war and was back hunting in the hills and forests that were his home.
“I don’t plan on being a mile away, and I won’t be relying on one shot.”
So you’d risk hitting innocent people,” said Frank with a hint of completely unearned moral outrage. If it suited him, Frank would have blown up the whole church.
Conrad ignored him, not least because he’d long since lost the discernment necessary to tell an innocent person from a guilty one. “I’ll drive to Birkenstein tonight, check the place out, do Freddie on the way home, get the hardware, hopefully do Eberhardt a week tomorrow, then Gaddi.”
Frank shook his head, an expression of disbelief, but he was still acting as if he wasn’t in danger himself. He knocked back his port and then looked down, contemplating the glass. Conrad guessed he was wondering if the time was coming to throw the glass, and in Frank’s hands that could prove enough of a missile to give him the edge.
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