A Last Act of Charity (Killing Sisters Book 1) (15 page)

Stoner gazed at his uninvited guest, his expression as blank as years of studious development could make it. Shard waited for a response, saw none approaching, carried on.

‘I think I’m being set up for this. I can’t tell you the reason at this point, but when you start digging – and you are an excellent digger, credit where it’s due – you will find a road leading to my door. That’s a false trail, a red heading or a dead herring, something like that. Make your own joke. There is an intention to bring us into conflict. I can think of several reasons for this and I can think of several folk in whose interests it would be.’

‘Care to share this?’ Stoner’s interest was steady.

‘Not if I can avoid it. Can we do the trust thing, you and me?’

A pause. Stoner stretched the silence and then snapped it.

‘That is so tempting. It would be so easy to believe we share a motive. Sharing resources can only be good for us both. But it’s not a trade, my friend. I have nothing to offer you. You are no kindly benefactor; you give nothing away. Nor would I. I’d like to believe that your offer is sincere, but if I made it I doubt that it would be. We’re not that different, you and I. What would you hear if I made the offer to you?’

Stoner, stood, stretched to tiptoe, walked to the coffee and poured more for them both. Set about making a fresh pot. Familiar, relaxed movement of the hands disguising the tension of his thinking.

‘Listen some more, JJ. Your big chief is presenting this to you as just another enquiry. Find him a hitter and he’ll give you a fat fee and be nice to the wife and family. That sort of thing. You
will find the hitter is me. Well . . . you’re likely to uncover enough clues to convince you to suggest to himself that I am doing the deeds. Which – and this is true – I’m not.

‘My suspicion is that you’ll get your fat cheque at that point and that very bad man will arrange a hit of his own; me as the target. That would be more than inconvenient. I don’t know how many events you’re looking at so far, but you will eventually – OK, quite quickly – find out that I can be placed near the scene of several hits. All uncredited and increasingly messy. “No no!” you’ll cry, “Shard doesn’t do messy”, which is true, but your boss will take it to his masters anyway and they will reach out to me. Not convenient at all. It would be unwelcome, unusually unwelcome. It would interfere with a long job, and I don’t want that. You following this?’

Stoner was. Following conspiracies is usually easy enough for paranoids.

‘You’re telling me that I will find your trail, start following your scent. You will observe that this is happening, take exception to it, and arrange an incident for me. A debilitating incident?’

‘Yep. Despite your decent approximation of a good cup of coffee, I would have to act, because the disproving would interfere with a more important venture. Fatally interfere with it, I think. You don’t have to believe me, JJ, but I would not be enthusiastic about debilitating you. I have no reason to lie. Unless I killed you, you would in any case come back after me, and life is far too sweet for that.’

‘A heads-up, then? Should I believe you? Trust you?’ A moment of tension. Stoner had placed the empty mug by the coffee maker, leaned against the counter, his back to his companion. Small silence. The silence pressured slowly, as did the tension. The coffee maker hissed, joining in. Stoner straightened, reached for the pot and poured. ‘More? Another cup?’

The sound of an empty mug sliding along a table top, reaching exactly to the edge but no further.

‘It is good coffee. Believe who you like and trust who you like. Trust your instinct and believe your interest. It makes no odds. I’m only telling you what’s in my interests for you to know. My instinct tells me that you will catch a scent soon enough, and you will mistake that scent for my very own spicy odour. And inconsistencies, subtle side-aromas, you will consider to be my own efforts to put you off my own scent . . . and so on. Down that long road lies madness and conflict. A conflict between the two of us is no use. Tell it straight, Stoner; I don’t know who would walk away from that. Neither do you. Correct me if I’m wrong in this. It’s a long time since we did the dick-waving angry thing, but memory – not perfect I know, but generally reliable – reminds me that it was not fun and it was not profitable.’

Stoner poured. Returned the cup. Stripped off his tee and leapt for the rafter, the same rafter from which Shard had hung himself to dry an hour earlier. Shard watched with a half smile. Stoner strung together a half-dozen brisk pull-ups, repeated them using his right arm alone, then his left arm. Swung himself down, stripped off shorts and showered. Shard applauded, slowly.

‘A one-hand clap for a one-arm bandit. That was very good. Good strong legs.’

Stoner towelled down, pulled on fresh clothes, loose black cargo pants, loose black Transportation Station T-shirt, tight knee-high socks. Looked across at Shard and threw him another tee, same logo. ‘Have a dry shirt on me. Wear it to confuse our enemies. Who are who, as you’re in a sharing mood?’

‘Did I tell you how much I like your fortress of solitude, hey, Mister Stoner, sir?’ Shard was pacing around the unit. Touching nothing, observing everything on display. Padding barefoot, carrying coffee. ‘Always thought it was a good idea. Everyone should have one. More than one, really. And your bike in the
living room, too. Very stylish. This the batbike, huh? Press button B and the booster blasters boot you into orbit; that sort of thing?’ He was standing by the black Harley-Davidson, slipping his feet into running shoes, shrugging on the free T-shirt.

‘It would need a battery. But yes of course. We’re all comic book heroes today, no? Comic book villains tomorrow. Great things to fiddle with. Fiddling aids the thinking, as my old mum might have said.’

‘Like running. Like sitting all night out in the rain on your big black bike, watching the water slide down the paint, spitting and boiling on the engine. Christ, JJ; how much thinking time do you need?’

‘Forgot to ask my old mum that. Sorry. Where are your elders and betters when you need them?’

Shard smiled, grimly. ‘Someone is stitching me up. But it’s dafter than that. Someone – probably the same someone – stitched
you
up. Set you up for me to find as the operator in a hit about a month back. Nasty job. The mark died slowly and badly. Guts on the floor and him watching them twitch and dry. That sort of thing. Not a pleasant way to end things. Couldn’t see you doing that.

‘So it’s a double game. You fit the geography and the time frames, but not the MO, not the character of the killing. You know how it works. We sit and we sift our way through who’s where and who’s when and whether they’re contracting to any of the usual buyers and – guess what? – you’re in more or less that place at more or less that time, and the hit is someone your usual buyers would want their usual hitter to delete for them. But the MO is not you. Be a bad day for us all when you turn sadist. Cause a lot of head-scratching and soul-searching in our tiny little introverted world.

‘Meanwhile, your boss hauls you in to investigate a series. Increasingly messy, decreasingly sane hits. Have a look at these,
he tells you, and you do. Then you go and consult the mighty timetables of our lives and discover, lordy-lord-lord, I’m in town every time. If I’m a lucky man, you then step back and ask the big Why question. Not why have I done the jobs, because the answer to that is always the same for all of us because we’re all the same; for the money. But why the mess? And if I’m especially lucky, you’ll come seek me out and you’ll sit me down and allow me to poison you slowly with some excitingly dreadful alleged instant coffee and we’ll talk it though.

‘But if I’m not lucky. Or if you’ve had another near-fatal fight with your girlfriend, the sweetly professional sex goddess, and if you’re feeling very sore at the world you might just notify your boss and take me out. Or seek me out and arrange a forced confrontation, which is much the same, hardly survivable for us both, being who we are and what we do.

‘And I didn’t want that. Because there’s something going on. If you took me on or if I took you on . . . there are only so many of us doing this, Stoner. Only a few. We know everyone between us, pretty much at least, so we know who’s playing the piper in this song and dance.’

‘It’s paying the piper, not playing him. Don’t you know your Shakespeare? But I do hear you. I hear what you’re saying, and it might make some sense. But not a lot of sense. Seems unreal to ask you this, matey, but why are you spooked? I wouldn’t force anything. If I thought you were doing the hitting I’d tell the boss and he’d do whatever he does. I don’t take on hits any more, anyway. I do music, me; sweet blues music. And I find things when I’m asked.’

Stoner pumped the pedal of the hydraulic lift his motorcycle was sitting on and raised it so the engine was at eye level. Slid open a drawer of the tool chest and removed a socket. Hooked it onto the engine’s drain plug, removed it and watched the oil flow into a pan.

‘Shouldn’t the oil be hot before you drain it?’ Shard sounded interested and vaguely knowledgeable. ‘You mechanics are all the same; never do unto yourselves what you preach unto others.’

Stoner looked distracted. ‘The engine’s never run on this oil.’

‘So you’re draining it? Why?’

Amusement sped across both faces at the same time: ‘To give you thinking time!’

‘Exactly.’ Stoner stood back, replaced the tool in the drawer and closed the chest.

‘The oil in the Transporter needs changing, but you would have considered it impolite if I’d suddenly dived underneath that. Added to which, the Harley is better looking than the VW. How many more hits do you think there’ve been from this . . . competitor?’

Stoner looked around for an answer, but Shard was striding towards the back door, cell phone against his ear, listening intently. He turned at the door. ‘OK for me to leave this way, JJ?’

He didn’t wait for a reply, simply silently unlocked the door and was gone. The door closed again, also silently. The odour of engine oil provided an all-male accent to the pervasive cloud of coffee.

Stoner’s cell phone called him again. He picked it up, flicked it open, observed how popular he was. Voicemail, the screen advised him, he had a-waiting. A-plenty, too. Press 121, it suggested, and he would become privy to its secrets. He did that. The Hard Man was brief at first. ‘Call me now,’ he had instructed some hours ago. The next two messages were the same. Then there was a string of no-message messages. Finally: ‘Harding is looking for you. You need to know that Harding is looking for you. He is looking for you with a view to terminating the relationship between you. Arm up.’ Which was strong stuff indeed for the Hard Man.

There was no message from the dirty blonde. Not a one.

Stoner poured the last of the coffee down a sink and set about preparing some weak, fragrant and mostly unappetising floral tea. The ritual gave him yet more time to think. Futures are long and varied. There are many more of them than anyone can ever understand. Shard had no reason to lie; few reasons even to admit an interest other than those he’d supplied.

Hauling the same wrench he’d used to drain the oil from the motorcycle, Stoner re-fitted and re-tightened its drain plug. He poured the clean, unused oil back into the tank. Motorcycles are like guns; the more you strip them, the more you service them, the more you clean them, the more you learn about them, the more they reward your care with reliability, dependability of their own. Lives are like guns; reliability is never underrated, never overvalued. And everyone has but one life, even mystics and musicians. You can share your soul with the devil, but that bad man will always let you down.

14

THE WHITE ROOM

‘You do look interesting.’

Dave Reve looked up at the suddenly twin reflections in the mirror behind the bar. The female reflection spoke again.

‘I’m Chas. Who’re you?’

Chas beamed at Dave in reflection. He gazed back, natural caution disguising itself as shyness; a well-worn technique. Flicked a hand at the browsing barman, two spaced fingers, more stylised horns than obscene instruction, and fixed the gaze into a smile. Too early for beaming. Too early in several senses.

‘Dave. Marry me and we become Chas and Dave. We could perform appalling English pub songs on a detuned piano. It would be the making of us. Generations of the drunk would sober instantly and leave their bars as we entered the room. Closet millionaires would share their millions for a promise that we would never again sing in their company. Questions of state would be asked whenever we performed, the UN would sit in emergency jam sessions and nations would go to war to avoid listening to us. The space race would be re-started as there would quite suddenly be a reason to put interstellar distance between
humanity and ourselves. It would be an amazing thing, and I would ask you to consider it very seriously.

‘There are of course a couple of insects in the smooth liquid of this potential future. Firstly I’m a policeman, not one of the generically laughing kind, and secondly I am a married policeman. Whether that blissful domestic situation has any connection to the lack of professional laughter in my life I could not say. Should not say. Will not say until we’re better acquainted. Which I fear to be inevitable.’

Chas slid down from the bar-chair and walked in a wide circle around the bar and its drinking inhabitants. She returned to her seat and sat again. She picked up the bottle of Bud which had landed before her and sliced the soaked label in an exact half with her thumbnail.

‘You do look interesting,’ she said. ‘I’m Chas. How do you do, Dave?’

She extended her left hand; her right held the dewy bottle. Dave Reve gripped that left hand with his own. Slapped it and shared a mocking high five.

‘Beer,’ he said, ‘is one great leveller.’

‘They were worse.’ Chas sank half the bottle, placed it on its mat, and looked seriously at the mirror. ‘The Levellers. Far worse than Chas and Dave. For a start they were serious. They took themselves seriously. It must have been hard for them to face such apathy and derision from the music-loving public.’

‘Never heard of them. Life’s too short to listen to music you know you won’t enjoy, so why do it? Chas and Dave, now, that . . . that was like purgatory for lapsed Roman Catholics; an opportunity to bear the weight of penance without actually dying first. Suffering is always popular with that Church. They encourage their millions to do the suffering while they’re alive; dead sufferers rarely contribute much to the earthly coffers, when all’s
said and done. You can see their point. A clever bunch. Well sorted. Their toast always falls butter-up.’

‘So you’re that lapsed Catholic, married and joyless policeman, Dave!’ Chas was grinning at the unsmiling reflection of the slim man seated next to her, in life as well as in reflection. ‘Are you here for the cure?’

‘I’m drinking the cure, miss. Ms. Muzz? Missus? I was numbing my sorrows with overpriced and very dilute if entirely palatable alcoholic solution until a delightful apparition appeared both beside me and opposite me. I could write an entire
Star Trek
script about the temporal and spatial anomalies of characters reflected in bars, a sort of metaphor for the duplicities of life, if you like.’

‘You could. Brannon Braga would direct or produce it, or whatever people like him actually do to television, and the next generations of trekkies would pointlessly debate your creative genius well into the next century. You do have the strangest bar-side manner I’ve ever come across. As well as a good line in drollery and wit. Is it the marriage or the policing which produces this? Maybe I should get out to meet married policemen more? Maybe there’s a whole world of entertainment awaiting, and I was unaware of it.’

Both beers were empty. Chas flagged for more. Dave raised a single eyebrow at her reflection. ‘It’s on me. These things always are, it’s a tradition.’

‘Traditions are just rules, and rules are made to break. My shout. Make me smile and I’ll stand for another. Make me laugh . . . and I’ll stand you a peanut.’

‘Oho!’ Dave smiled, meeting gazes through the glass.

‘Here it comes.’ Chas leaned towards her reflection. ‘I’m an unmarried woman. No one misunderstands me. I crave misunderstanding. I am bored to death with men who understand me. Legions of boring, middle-aged and married men understand
me completely and know how to make me happy while at the same time caring not at all for themselves or just wanting to get laid. I crave meeting a man who misunderstands me and just wants to get laid ’cos his wife is off with their family jewels being witty and smart and beautiful and intelligent, and who loves his mother and his cat and shares a fascination with his rare collection of genuine 1950s Coca-Cola bottle tops and who awaits his every evening arrival with his favourite tea and who dotes on his every word.’

‘What exactly does dote mean, anyway? I’ve often wondered. That’s what my life is like, Chas; I waste it pondering subtle things, like the true meaning of . . . dote. It cannot be easy, but it isn’t really hard. Drink up. You must need to find better company by now!’

Dave turned ninety degrees to his left, facing his companion head-on for the first time.

She beamed at him. ‘What sort of policeman? You must be a top one. A detective? All rugged and . . . ah . . . misunderstood? I can try to do misunderstanding if you like. It’s plainly big in your life. Does your wife misunderstand you? Where is she, by the way? At home with the two-point-four kids and the Ford Focus? Mondeo? Volkswagen? Hold on, hold on . . . she takes the children to school in a Shogun? One of the really really huge ones which can hurdle mountains in a single leap. Am I right or am I right?’

Dave signalled for a further round.

‘I’ll skip the next beer; get me some expensive water, there’s more profit for the bar in that. I think only of others. You? What do you drive? You’re a cop so you’re forced to drive super-safe Volvos all day, projecting an image of calm power and protection to keep Mr and Mrs Joseph Citizen reassured and sleeping through their lives in a peaceable way. You probably don’t drive a car at all. You probably go everywhere on foot and ride a huge
motorcycle with no silencing at all at the weekends. You spend all your days chasing felonious drunks and your evenings pretending to be the fond family man. At the weekend you don mirror shades and a lot of dirty leather, then head out on the highway like some fearsome dude. Brother. How’m I doing?

‘No! I suddenly had that walking-over-my-own-grave thing. You don’t do that at all, do you? At weekends you dress up in a frilly flowery frock and take ballet lessons. So sorry for the stereotyping. You can tell your Aunty Chas. You’re safe with your Aunty Chas.’

Dave Reve rolled his eyes, help up his hands in surrender. ‘If that’s what drinking water does, then I’ll stick to beer. Speaking of which . . .’ There was no need to call the barman; two bottles of beer and a bottle of water appeared together.

‘I’m a detective. A sort-of accountant detective. I detect fraudsters. I do big sums and catch clever chaps who prefer not to pay their social dues. Or who move money which does not belong either to them or to the guys who claim to own it. It’s called laundering. I chase laundry. A tough life, but amusing enough. It’s more legal than nicking knickers off clothes lines and possibly even more entertaining.’

‘Arnold Layne.’ Chas tipped bubbly water from bottle to throat. Sank the bottle in one and belched like a stevedore. Covered her mouth. ‘Sorry. Arnold Layne. The knicker nicker. Sorry. I should stick to beer; water is too strong for me.’

‘Pink Floyd? You’re older than you look, then. Hang on, hang on. That was not at all gallant. Your grandkids play Pink Floyd and force you to listen to it under threat of death?’

‘No kids, Mister Policeman. No kids. Never had time. Never had inclination. Too selfish.’

‘Yeah.’ Dave Reve paused. ‘My wife drives a Jaguar. An estate. It’s very nice. It has a diesel engine and a wooden steering wheel and its seats are made of leather. It’s got a CD player. She chose
it because she wanted something to carry around the dogs she’d decided to have instead of children.’

‘And then? Nature ran its throbbing course?’

‘Yep. Kids. No dog. Car’s old now, has no value. No one wants cheap thirsty cars with leather seats and permanent puke stains. She’s not great on cleaning it. Why are you interested in the wife? Is this a new ploy? Chat to distressed-looking bloke in bar and offer him only stratospherically expensive marriage guidance services?’

‘And you?’

‘What?’

‘You. What do you drive? You can tell a lot about a man from the car he drives. With women it’s the clothes they wear. Possibly perfume. I could kill a Scotch. Or possibly a Scotsman.’

‘I . . . um . . . I don’t have a car of my own. I just borrow one if I need one. I’m a policeman. Policemen can always borrow cars. I don’t really care about cars. Or about football. Does that tell you a lot about me?’

‘More than you could ever imagine.’ Chas pulled a large watch from a pocket. ‘It’s getting late.’

‘Am I supposed to offer you an escort to your room? That would be normal at this point, I think. I could invite you to mine, although that might be a mite challenging on the domestic front.’

‘Do you swim?’ Chas peeled money onto the bar, waved away the change. ‘This place has an excellent pool. And, do you know what? No one swims in it. It also has an excellent gym. No one uses it. The place claims to be a health spa. Because it’s a spa it can charge a small fortune to stay here because it offers guests and their guests free use of the excellent fitness facilities. Guests of course prefer to ignore the free facilities which they’ve already paid for and sit drinking in the bar, where the prices are unusually elevated because they need to pay for the gym equipment which
would be free to anyone using it if they did which they don’t. Fancy a swim? Fancy taking the plunge, Mister Policeman?’

As she said, the pool was huge and glowed a pale blue in the night. And it was empty. She kicked off her shoes and dipped a toe into the water, pronounced it perfect. Started to unbutton her shirt.

‘Isn’t it dangerous to swim when drunk?’ Dave was standing by the pool steps, fully dressed, attempting to look much more calm than he was feeling. ‘Doesn’t it give you cramp or something?’

‘Not yet.’

Chas had piled her clothes neatly, revealing a subtle taste in the underwear she still wore. She stood looking steadily down the length of the pool, touched the tips of her fingers to the tips of her toes and dived smoothly into the water. Surfaced a surprising distance away and settled into a lazy crawl to the far end. Reve peeled to his shorts and followed. By the time he’d reached the turn, Chas was back-stroking her way to the shallow end. They were both good, strong swimmers. They swam in silence. Never together. When Reve reached a turn, she was halfway down the pool. He swam faster. Failed to catch her. Swam slower. She failed to catch him. Pleasure for both. Companionable.

She was sitting on the edge in a corner at the shallow end. Dripping in her underwear, smiling at him. He pulled himself out. Sat facing her across the corner, separated by tiles. Both of them breathing harder than their exertions demanded.

‘You do look good, Ms Chas. You do swim good, too. You swim a lot, then.’

Not a question.

‘You too, Mister Policeman. Mister married Policeman. I’m going to swim a little more before turning in. Think carefully before answering this. You have a lady wife who drives a Jaguar. I love to swim naked. If you’re going to share in that with me then you
will need to be naked as well. In nudity lies honesty, even in the water. Are you undressing me or are you leaving now?’ She rose from the pool and stood before him. ‘It really is your call.’

No hesitation. No hesitation at all. Reve pulled himself up and out, walked to her, hooked his thumbs into her unfrilly sports briefs and pulled them down, kneeling so he could take them all the way to her feet. She stepped from them and stood before him, legs slightly apart. At ease. She was hairless. Entirely hairless below the neck. Not even the shadow of stubble. Armpits nor belly. He leaned a little forward and kissed her on the bud of her sex. First contact.

He rose. She hooked her fingers into the elastic of his shorts and dropped with them to her knees. His reaction to her was more obvious, less deniable, than hers to him. She kissed him on the tip of his sex. Second contact. He stared at her, transfixed. She looked up, rose to her feet, turned her back to him. Reve unhooked her bra, held her shoulders and turned her to face him. The straps hung at her side, her breasts holding the clothing in position; an interesting reversal of roles. Interesting at another time, perhaps. Reve pulled the garment away, kissed the nipples of both breasts, already standing as proud in their own way as he was in his.

She stepped away from him and smiled at his urgency. Reve was past smiling, fresh out of smart conversation, clever comment.

‘Race!’ And she dived cleanly and was gone.

He stood and watched as she crawled a length, turned and backcrawled towards him again. He dived. They passed in the middle, their eyes met, their strokes steady.

Another turn, another length. This time, as if by a signal, they both stopped in the centre of the pool, paddled together. She reached for his head and pulled his lips to hers; he drank in her chlorine, beer, whisky, and she his. His hands found her breasts, floating between them, his right hand traced a steady line past
her navel towards her sex. Before his hand met its target, Chas sank, took him in her mouth and trod water, arms out from her sides, feet controlling her depth. He could breathe; she could hold her breath for a longer time than he would have imagined. Her mouth worked on his cock for an impossible time and then was gone.