Raucous (17 page)

“You think Rollin stopped that?”  Charlotte asked.

“I know he did because they visited again, much more calmly, and asked us very politely to stop.  We sat down; we even had a cup of tea.  And we said we had already stopped, which we had.  We shook hands and it ended.  Rollins was there.  He made it clear we owed him.  But he never called anything in.”

“Until later.”

McKenzie shook his head.  He looked sad, as if he had tried to explain but Charlotte had refused to hear.

“No, no favors given,” McKenzie said.  “His offer was genuine, great and completely legal.”

McKenzie pulled on his jacket; he struggled because he tried too fast.  He turned away to walk, but stopped and turned to Charlotte a last time.

“I would have made it rich anyway,” he said. “But Geoff got me there quicker and easier than it would have been otherwise.  I don’t have a bad word to say against him.”

CHAPTER FORTY SEVEN

He hated the feeling.  He always needed to know.  He walked to work it out.

Ben couldn’t understand.  She was a beautiful woman, scarred, maybe too masculine for some tastes, but she had that something, a combination of characteristics, what the more Coelho inclined would ridiculously call an Aura.  But there was a fault, there had to be.  She had taken Mitch to bed, she had shed tears.  She knew the past, she knew Christian, but Ben, as he walked, could not remember her.

Ben knew he was being followed.  The man was tall and large and not being overly discreet.  He stayed back, out of the way, a distance that would be short enough to become involved in any problem Ben might face, but far enough away for Ben to feel alone.  Four meters.  Not more than five.  A man of his size, three running paces and he’d be at Ben’s side.

Ben had set out to wander aimlessly.  He wanted to check if the promise of free movement as and when he wanted was a genuine rule.  The receptionist had asked where he was going, made him stop for a conversation, physically blocking his way, creating a diversion of tea or coffee or breakfast until an order could come through.  The receptionist looked disappointed when he declined, but let him walk through the revolving glass door when she had received a signal that all was good. 

Ben picked out the man within a hundred meters.  Ben turned as he walked and stopped.  The man stopped too as if they were two positively charged magnets that physics demanded couldn’t stay close.  The man nodded and smiled, no attempt to pretend to look in the window of a woman’s clothes shop.  He smiled at Ben, Ben nodded in return.  The man waited, Ben turned and started to walk again.  Ben looked back and the man was the same distance behind.  A bodyguard for the day playing both sides.

Ben walked Oxford Street, the bustle and people the same as they always were.  Half foreign, half English, most rushed, some angry, all stressed.  The movement of people, cars and buses like a hive of massive bees, each missing the other as if tuned in by an undecipherable genetic code of non-collision.  Occasionally the code failed as someone looked right and not left, or if someone looked up and not ahead.  A scuffle, a crossed word, a sounded horn, and in rare cases death.   But they all kept on moving, in and out of high-street chain stores you could find anywhere in England, but here was London so they should be something special. 

And the man followed Ben.

Ben walked an hour, then two, circled and climbed, staying close to main streets, following the tourist routes of Westminster, downing street, Trafalgar square and Buckingham palace.  London was nice for a day, maybe two if you liked museums, but living here, with all the noise and movement took a different kind of person, one who wanted to be important, or one who was trapped.

Ben sat down on the grass in Green Park.  He watched people amazed at squirrels, as if they were the rarest of animals and that seeing them guaranteed a life full of happiness.  The squirrels took their food and left.  Tame but not stupid.

Ben sat there, thinking of Charlotte, wanting to know more than the fragments of information he had, wanting to know more of her.  The feeling Mitch experienced, the shakes, the nerves, the stupidity he started to embrace, the strange wonderful futures briefly glimpsed in his imagination were sensations brought on by Charlotte.  She knew more than she said, but they knew more than they had ever said too. 

Everyone was playing, he thought.  Making decisions on the evidence they had available.  Most incomplete, some deliberately misleading, some just no longer available.  But feelings counted for information.  Charlotte elicited extremes, Rollins none.  But here they were, living with the later, and not knowing the former.

Ben tried to drift though a barrier into another person’s past.  Jim was easy to see, as if his death had given permission to his subconscious to explore fully the man’s connection to Christian.  But the woman never appeared, no female ever did with Jim. 

Ben looked up, the sky had darkened, and the park was emptier than before.  Ben looked around and his bodyguard was there.  Ben walked to him, the bodyguard stood.

“What’s the quickest way back?”  Ben asked.

CHAPTER FORTY EIGHT

Raucous knew there would be a complication.  Nothing by chance, although there was still time for an unforeseen to arise, a complication created by design.  And looking into the car as he walked forward, he noticed the set-up immediately.

              The job was simple.  A man speaks, talks out of turn, gives too much information because he cannot keep his mouth shut.  A man who has some power but not enough.  He gained the first because he could talk, convince and charm.  He received no more because he liked his own voice. 

"Information is king, Raucous," Chamberlain said.  "But giving it away in return for future favours is a risk, and one this man takes too often."

              Chamberlain felt safe in his gentleman's club, Raucous knew that.  Parker called on Raucous and offered him a ride to see his master.  Raucous did not refuse.  He knew when, as he sat in the heated leather seat listening to radio two's morning show skip through the sixties that his test was coming.  He had doubts, maybe they had no more need of him, maybe he scared them too much and he was a willing companion in a trip to his death.

Raucous had time to think as Parker didn't speak.  He drove slowly and safely without nerves.  The car ran perfect and smooth through the smaller streets only the locals had used until modern technology made everyone experts like the local born-and-breds. 

              Raucous followed Parker willingly, sat down opposite Chamberlain who was signing documents on his big antique desk.  Raucous waited and read the documents.  Reading upside down was something you needed to do in prison.  They were official documents, economics and thoughts, forecasts and percentages.  Raucous didn't understand or care, but then he thought, neither did Sir Alex. 

Chamberlain screwed the lid to his black onyx pen into place as slowly as was possible, and Raucous, despite himself, was becoming annoyed,

"Sorry for the wait," Chamberlain said as he set his pen down in a groove in the wood.

"No, you aren't.  What do you want me to do?" Raucous asked.

Sir Alex looked up, his political face still set in neutral.

"I don't follow," he said.

"This is your secret secure location.  You aren't going to kill me here, or hurt or torture.  It is the wrong place for that.  But it is a place where you are sure no one will listen.  So you are about to tell me something of importance or ask me to do something evil.  You trust me, so I'm going with evil."

Chamberlain smiled. 

"Yes, it is," he said as he pushed a photo across his desk.

The photo was a close-up of a fat ruddy face.  Raucous recognized the man.  He knew his name, knew what others had said about him many years before, knew that hurting him would be a pleasure.

"This is Jonathan Haskall," Chamberlain said.  "He could have been someone special, someone with influence, but he lacks tact.  He believes himself to be a little too clever for his own good.  He has the potential to embarrass and cause me problems."

"And how can I help in resolving those for you?"

"The world, I believe, would be a better place without him.  Were you to help that happen, I would be indebted to you."

"And you won't ask Parker because were I to accept, you would also have something on me, with which to build a mutually trusting relationship."

Sir Alex tried dead-eyed passive-aggressive.

"Side benefits to everything," he said.

"Any particular way you would like him to disappear?"

"I'd like him to vanish loudly.  In a way that would cause him and those around him much harm and discourage anyone of his friends or associates to take up where he left off on the road to annoying me."

There was no need to pause, other than tradition. Raucous waited.  Customs should be respected.

“I will need information, and tools,” Raucous said.

“Parker will take care of that.”

******************************************************************

Raucous checked the shotgun five times.  The sawn off barrel had no burrs.  The man who had made the barrel a stub and the wooden shoulder a stump, was a man of expertise.  But Raucous checked the same. 

The cartridges looked and smelled good.  They were no blanks, but whether they would fire true was not something he could test.  The information he was following was given by Parker.  Raucous had instructions and directions, but he could not trust.  There would be a barrier to the easy resolution, there had to be.  And now he stared at the problem. 

Raucous watched a Nissan estate in a picnic area where no food had ever been eaten.  The night air was cold, and inside the target’s car, moisture had exploded covering the glass.  Figures moved inside, like two teenage lovers fumbling in their parents car the weekend after one of them had passed their driving test.

Raucous sat in his own car, heating on, windows clean of condensation.

The car-park was attached to the small picnic area in the countryside near Oxford.  Raucous had driven two hours to be here early.  But the target was there before him.  The car-park was popular.  Cars arrived, lights were flashed, people changed cars, some people wandered, bent to speak to others, but the cars that left were always replaced by new.  The target's car stayed in its place and steamed.  The whole place was full of witnesses. 

Raucous knew he had made an error.  He should have scouted, stayed far and walked in from the woods, away from the road.  The car, a seven-year-old BMW b-series, was untraceable he imagined.  Chamberlain was confident but not stupid.  But he was sitting among a group of people looking for their weekend sexual kicks.  They were discreet but aware.  Their activities presumably illegal, for whatever reason, and new arrivals needed to follow the code or cause quick escape.  The signals of lights, the positions people parked were a language Raucous couldn’t read.

Raucous caught movement far to his left, his peripheral vision working as he stared straight ahead.  He reached out with his left hand to touch his jacket on the passenger seat.  The jacket hid the shotgun.   The figure walked casually to Raucous.  He bent down and tapped on the window.  Raucous pressed the button and the glass slid down smooth and silent.  The figure was a young man, not more than twenty-one, effeminate in feature and smelling of perfume.  He had long lashes, dark eyes, Latin in bloodline.

Raucous waited, he didn’t know the etiquette for the situation.  Was this a place for payment or free exchange?  Did he have to deal?  Silence seemed best.

“New here, right?”  The young man asked.

“I think you know that,” Raucous said.

“You’re breaking a few of the rules.”

“And you think I’m the police?”

The young man tapped the bodywork of the car and shook his head.

“The police know the rules,” he said. “They have watched enough, and quite a few are involved.  However, you seem lost.”

“I think I am,” Raucous said.

“Best to leave, you’re putting a brake on things,” the young man said as he swept his arm to indicate the car-park. “And I need to work.”

Raucous thought, looked at the young man’s face.

“Not a pleasure thing for you?” he asked.

“Easiest way to make money, and I’m a popular guy.”

“You look like you would be.”

The effeminate boy gave Raucous a gangster’s stare.  Raucous smiled, “Don’t worry, Son.  I know when I’m not wanted.”

Raucous started the engine which kicked in and purred.  The young man watched, standing tall, making sure the eyes in all the cars saw him moving on the stranger. 

“You enjoy all this?”  Raucous asked.

“Never found anything better to do.”

Raucous nodded and drove away.  He followed the winding country road for a mile before he found a dirt track in which he hid his car. A mile from the picnic area if he followed the road he had driven.  He figured, through the woods, in a straight line, it would be less.  There was a small path between trees, a worn mud surface, a route made through repetitive walking.  It headed in the right direction so Raucous locked his car, the beep and lights cracking like a gun shot in the silence and dark and he walked back in the cold. 

In the woods, Raucous stopped to pull on his wool balaclava to cover his face and his thin leather gloves covered his hands.  The small modified shotgun rested inside his long overcoat.  Raucous smiled at the image of himself.  He looked like some idiotic hit-man strolling through a pine wood to a picnic area full of people looking for cheap thrills with strangers.  He could stroll right through them all and they'd just think he was kinky. 

Raucous waited on the edge of the wood; he had a clear view of the car.  In his absence the target had changed guest.  Some steam had cleared and the car rocked occasionally.  A hand wiped condensation from inside.  A peephole to look out or for voyeurs to look in, Raucous wasn't sure. 

There were six cars now, spaced around the picnic area.  His own BMW had been out of place, all six cars were for middle-class families, long and spacious.  Each was a dark colour, blue, black or grey, and with the lights off they were difficult to pick out.  One, the furthest from where Raucous crouched, switched on the interior light, switched off, switched on and then off again.  The nearest car rocked and the door opened.  A figure, too far away for Raucous to be sure if it were a small man or average woman, walked toward the flashes and the couple sat in front.

Raucous turned his attention to the car whose number plate he had been given.  He could not identify the target, not 100%. The photo he remembered.  But the man’s face was shrouded in a blur of humid glass.  Raucous watched.  He waited twenty six minutes and nothing happened.  Then the interior light flicked on, off, on, off.  Raucous stood and walked.  He pulled the balaclava from his head.  He didn’t need to hide, no one would want to see and if they fingered him, what did it matter?  He was never going to escape.

The night was dark, no one paid attention, and no one was looking to remember details.  He approached the car, knocked on the window.  The window rolled down, the interior light switched on, Raucous leaned in and identified Haskell. 

He was naked, as was the other man in the passenger seat.  Raucous looked across at the man he didn’t know.

“You’ll want to get out,” Raucous said.

The passenger didn’t move.

Raucous stepped back, reached into his coat, and lifted the shotgun.  The passenger stared, looked to Haskell, pushed the unlocked door open, stumbled and sprinted away.  The target fumbled at his door too, he pushed it open toward Raucous, and fell forward.  Haskell was bent over, his balance taking him quickly closer to Raucous.  Raucous thought of speaking, but why would the man need words?  He would never remember.  It would be a waste and a mistake. Raucous pulled the trigger.  The cartridge exploded into the top of the target’s head, the force blew the body back against the car and he dropped, dead and still. Haskell was almost without head, completely without a face and Raucous looked around.  People were running, some clothed some semi-naked, one completely, to their cars.  Engines started, cars forced into gear and accelerated away.   No one looked at Raucous, no one took photos, and no one filmed.  But stood in the centre of the picnic area, staring down at the dead man was the effeminate young man.  He looked up at Raucous.

“You couldn’t have come along a few years ago?”

“I’m here now.”