THE FIX: SAS hero turns Manchester hitman (A Rick Fuller Thriller Book 1) (32 page)

Rick Fuller's Story:

I took Lauren to Piccadilly railway station by cab and she managed to sort a decent set of passport pictures in one of those booths just off the platforms. I had tried to compliment her on her hair, but, as usual couldn’t find the words. She looked beautiful though. Her hair was russet-coloured and her new fringe stopped just above her eyes, bringing out their colour. Her pale skin was luminescent and she bristled with a new confidence which made her even more desirable.

The night had cleared and the moon outshone the streetlights as we walked slowly back towards the gardens in silence. As we approached my hotel I suggested we have a drink in the bar underneath.

It was pleasant enough, especially with a beautiful woman for company and we sat in a cosy corner and settled in.

The car in the aerial photograph was a 1967 Aston Martin DB5 finished in cream with red leather interior. It was a one-off, the only one of its kind in that finish. It had been stored in the secure parking area of my building and only ever came out on special occasions. It had been my pride and joy and had been taken from me along with everything else by Stephan and his crew. Obviously someone in his organisation had taken a shine to it, and believing I was dead, didn’t see a problem in driving it around the Med. Lauren toyed with her bottle of Bud.

“So how can you be so sure that the car is yours?”

“Was,” I said. “Not anymore.”

I knew I could never drive it again. The mere thought of that scumbag Stephan or any of the other vile murdering lot sitting in my car made me retch.

I watched Lauren take a long drink from her bottle before casually placing it back on the circular beer mat in front of her. It wasn’t quite central and I adjusted it for her to make me more comfortable.

She eyed me for a few seconds.

“Compulsive.”

“What?”

“Obsessive compulsive disorder. You suffer from it, don’t you?”

“Do I?”

“Yes, I think so. I’ve watched you, lining things up, putting things in order, checking and re-checking minor things. I wouldn’t say you were a severe case but you certainly show some symptoms.”

“I can cope.”

“I’m sure you can, Rick, we all have our own idiosyncrasies. I pile all my rubbish into cupboards and pretend my house is tidy.”

“That would drive me mad.”

“I’ll bet.”

“Do you lose things that way?”

She nodded furiously and laughed. “All the time!”

It was a lovely tinkling sound, and it floated around our warm cosy corner of the bar and made me feel at home. I realised that for the first time in years I was sitting in the company of a female and felt completely at ease.

“You asked about my car, well, it’s an old Aston Martin and that alone makes it quite rare, the colour is very unusual and when put together with the red interior, it makes it a one-off car. I used to love driving it. It was very special to me.”

“I can imagine. My ex-husband used to have an old Triumph Stag. It was bright yellow and had a soft top; he spent more time cleaning that car than he did with me.”

Lauren looked a little wistful as she mentioned her doctor ex-husband, but it passed quickly. We talked casually about my fascination with cars, clothes and gadgets, anything but our dilemma.

I ordered two more bottles of beer and placed them carefully on the table. Lauren touched my hand as I did so, and watched my reaction.

I tried not to flinch, I really did. In fact at that moment I wanted nothing more than her touch and her company. I felt happy to just be there in that place with Lauren. But I did flinch and I spilled a little beer on the table. She looked a little shocked at my reaction. I felt she was analysing me.

“I just wanted to see your manicure, Rick.” She looked a little hurt but it was brief. “You don’t like to be touched, do you?”

I looked hard at my nails. I’d had them cut and polished, and bought some decent clothes that evening. The visit to Makris loomed and I didn’t want to look like my standards were slipping in front of the Greek. If he smelled weakness he charged double.

I forced myself to hold out my hand so Lauren could inspect them, fingers slightly splayed.

“I’m sorry, go ahead.”

She gently took my hand and rubbed her thumb across each fingernail, pausing between each one.

Finally she looked up but didn’t let go.

“When you first came onto the ward, before you were conscious, I used to sit with you and wonder where you came from and what you did. I saw then that you had nice hands and that you looked after your nails. I figured you were a businessman of some sort. Soldiers don’t have manicures, do they?”

“This one does.”

She let go of my hand and took a drink.

“How long have you been like this, Rick? How long is it since someone touched you and it felt good?”

I didn’t know how to deal with the way the conversation was going. I hadn’t confided in anyone before. Seconds ticked by and they felt like minutes. I could see Lauren wasn’t going to offer me an escape route by speaking, so I just told the truth.

“I suppose it started after Cathy was murdered, and sort of crept up on me without me noticing it really. I mean, being touched by someone was the furthest thing from my mind at that time. I was a mess. I suppose it went unnoticed until later, until I came out of the other side of my grief. Des was the only person who knew where I was at that time. He was my only contact with the outside for months on end. He would tell you what I was like. I didn’t wash or eat properly. I was drinking heavily too. Once I got my shit together enough to work in the outside world again, I began to notice my aversion to being touched. Then, later, came the cleaning up and straightening things, even the smallest spillage would mean cleaning the whole living space. I mean, I’ve always been organised and tidy, the army saw to that and I’ve never been ‘touchy feely’, but it got to the point where any physical contact was abhorrent to me. I managed a strange kind of physical relationship with Tanya, but I knew deep down that I could never love her. I don’t think I could ever love anyone again. I find it hard to shake hands except with Des.”

She put down her bottle, this time completely off the beer mat. I decided she was being playful rather than forgetful. She wore an impish grin.

“And how did it feel then when I held your hand?”

I felt myself smile back. “It felt good, Lauren, thank you.”

Then she stood, pulled her jacket from the back of her chair and slid her arms into it with one swift movement. She pushed her hands behind her neck and released her trapped red hair from under the collar. She shook it and it fell around her shoulders.

“I think I’d better go.”

“Yes,” I said, and she turned and walked away without looking back.

Des Cogan's Story:

I’d been feeling pretty pissed off with myself after Rick’s briefing. Even though I’d stuck by him the last ten years, I never really wanted to believe Rick’s theories that Williamson was involved in the drug trade, or worse still, the murder of a fellow soldier’s wife.

A small part of me couldn’t let go of the Regiment values. The army had been good to me and I’d always been able to rely on it. Now I wasn’t so convinced and it hurt. Sure, there were plenty of bad eggs in any organisation, but I’d always looked up to Williamson. Well, now he would get the chance to explain himself, wouldn’t he, and if I got the chance, it would be a very painful experience for him.

I’d taken my hair down to the wood using some cheap electric clippers from Boots. They were half the price the boy in the hairdressers across the way wanted for a cut and would do the job a few more times if needed. I had enough of a goatee to show up in my pictures and I figured that I would look sufficiently different to any grainy CCTV footage the opposition had obtained from Leeds Hospital, which as far as I was concerned were the only possible shots they had.

After digesting the file Rick had put together and then flicking through the five available channels in my shoebox of a hotel room for two hours, I decided a pint and some grub was in order.

I was about to pull on my coat when I heard Rick’s voice at the door.

I let him in and noticed he smelled of drink. Not pissed but he’d had one or two.

“You got your pictures done, then?” he said sitting heavily on the edge of my bed.

“I certainly have, matey.”

I handed him the eight head and shoulder pictures and he glanced at them before adding,

“Ugly little Scottish fucker.”

I picked up my jacket and rubbed my newly cropped head. “I’m fuckin’ better looking than you, you English bastard. I can smell y’ve had a pint or two already. D’ya fancy another with yer old mate?”

Rick nodded slowly.

“I suppose one or two more won’t hurt. I’ve been over to get Lauren’s shots and we had a couple of bottles before I came here.”

I felt a pang of envy, or was it jealousy? Whatever, I knew deep down that Lauren wasn’t interested in me romantically. I also knew that it would be crazy for the three of us to be anything more than comrades in arms. When this was all over, we’d see who was left standing and take it from there, simple as.

I shook all thoughts of romance out of my bored bones and opened the door. Rick was about to step out into the hallway when I noticed it was too dimly lit. Something was wrong and the shortest of hairs stood to attention on my neck. I heard the spit of a silenced handgun first and then actually saw the two rounds slam into the door casing inches from Rick’s head.

I grabbed the collar of his coat and tugged him into cover. He dropped into a crouch and drew his gun as two guys dropped in to chat. They were both straight out of a gun crime video, young black and very serious. They wore street clothes. Hoodies with sports inscriptions, pulled up over cropped heads, scarves over their faces, each with one outstretched gloved hand holding a big shiny Israeli Desert Eagle self-loading pistol. I wasn’t sure if they were going to kill us or rap about us.

Now yes, the Desert Eagle is one of the most powerful handguns in the world and it makes you feel like Clint fuckin’ Eastwood, but even silenced as these were, the muzzle flash is atrocious. So much so, that matey boy who had just let off two .50mm mothers into my cardboard hotel room doorway was just about blind. Tip from the wise now, never shoot one of those fuckers in the dark if you want to see for the next twenty seconds or so.

The shooter who was first through the door was squinting so much he looked like he was in a Benny Hill sketch. He shifted his weight and waved his Eagle in my general direction. I punched him square in the throat before he could get a shot away and I heard the cartilage that protected his windpipe pop and the boy make a wee whistling sound that was far from healthy. He dropped like a stone, grasping his neck. It would do him no good of course, the only thing that would save his life would be a tracheotomy and I was in no mood to perform it for him.

Player number two held his gun out at a strange angle. I’d seen it in some of the American gang movies. How the fuck you thought you could hit anything with your weapon lying on its side was beyond me. He bobbed from foot to foot aiming first at me, and then at Rick, who had his own gun trained at the boy’s head.

His mate was making horrible choking sounds on the carpet near my feet and the increasingly nervous youth kept glancing down at him, unsure what to do. Now when most people are faced with an issue like I’m describing to you now, their heart rate increases and adrenaline flows through them like a river. For me, it had always been different. I felt an almost surreal calm. I suppose my nature was to sit and wait, my talents were best served on a roof in the rain with a sniper rifle, or a hole in the snow with binoculars. So when, in a grubby little hotel room, faced with this kid, who was as young as some of the African soldiers we all get so upset about by the way, you would have to forgive me for feeling a mixture of disappointment and confidence. 

“Your mate’s dead, son,” I said, clicking the safety off my own weapon but leaving it hanging loosely by my side for the kid to see.

“I don’t mean that in a medical way, see. I mean it like; he’ll be dead in a few minutes maybe. If he’s a strong lad, he may even last half an hour. But he’s dead to you, and any family he may have had. There’s nothing you can do to save him so stop pissing about and do what you came here to do. Understand, sonny?”

The guy’s eyes were wild and seemed uncannily white against his sweating black face. His woollen scarf was falling down and he tugged it upward nervously.

I raised my gun.

“Do you want to die here, son? Is that what you want? Because if you don’t put that big stupid fuckin’ gun down right now I promise you will die just as slowly as your friend here.”

The guy bolted, we were off and the race was on.

He burst through the first fire doors, using his head he was so wired.

I was a couple of yards behind him. We pounded down the narrow carpeted hallway past the lift doors and toward the fire escape. He looked over his shoulder directly at me, I knew what was coming. He twisted his body violently in an attempt to get a shot off. The big cumbersome Eagle and silencer slowed his movements and the round pinged off harmlessly to my right. I could have killed him there and then but I needed the kid alive. I wanted to know how he’d found us and more importantly who sent him and where they were.

The green and white illuminated sign was only feet away and I was almost upon him. I stretched out my left hand. Just a few more steps and I would have him.

As he pushed at the fire escape door I was inches away and I grabbed at his clothing with my free hand and dug my pistol into his neck. We almost fell into the stairwell and the door banged shut behind us.

“Drop the fuckin’ gun now!” I hissed.

I have to admit I wasn’t prepared for what came next.

The split second he felt my touch he raised the Eagle to his temple and without a word, pulled the bastard trigger.

A fountain of blood erupted from the left side of his head as parts of his skull burst through his hoodie, tearing the sweatshirt material like wet paper. The massive power of the .50 soft nosed shell created a vacuum in its wake and fashioned an exit wound the size of a fist in the kid’s head. Bits of bone, brain and copious amounts of claret formed a gory mural on the white wall to the left of the landing. The kid bent at the knees and slipped from my grasp. He fell forward onto the concrete steps which were to have been his escape route with a nasty crack, and even more blood poured from his head. I could smell the warm metallic liquid as it created a crimson river downward.

I took one last look at the kid. Now, with his hood and scarf pulled away from his face I got the full picture. I reckoned he was fifteen at best.

I walked swiftly back to the room and noticed that no other hotel doors had opened to see what the commotion was all about. Either the occupants were out, deaf or just too scared to look. Either way it was a good thing. As I entered my room Rick had just finished hiding the body of the other shooter in the shower room. I didn’t want to look at him. I already knew he was of a similar age to the lad on the stairwell. I had seen kids fight and die his age, and younger in Africa. Now in cities all over Britain kids the same age were fighting and dying too. Life is really shit sometimes.

“He fuckin’ topped himself,” I heard myself say, my mouth dry. I felt a little sick; I was suffering from guilt, plain as.

Rick either didn’t feel as disturbed as me or just hid it perfectly.

“We need to get the fuck out of here now.”

He pissed me off with his attitude, as usual.

“I know that,” I snapped. “Most of the kit is under the bed.”

We cleared the room of every particle or presence of us in twenty-five minutes.