Cold Kill

by Rennie Airth

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Recent Titles by Rennie Airth

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Recent titles by Rennie Airth

  John Madden

  RIVER OF DARKNESS

  THE BLOOD-DIMMED TIDE

  THE DEAD OF WINTER

  THE RECKONING

  THE DEATH OF KINGS

  THE DECENT INN OF DEATH

  Novels

  COLD KILL *

  * available from Severn House

  COLD KILL

  Rennie Airth

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  This first world edition published 2020

  in Great Britain and the USA by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

  Eardley House, 4 Uxbridge Street, London W8 7SY.

  Trade paperback edition first published

  in Great Britain and the USA 2020 by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD.

  eBook edition first published in 2019 by Severn House Digital

  an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited

  Copyright © 2020 by Rennie Airth.

  The right of Rennie Airth to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted

  in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-9029-0 (cased)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-78029-677-7 (trade paper)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-4483-0381-6 (e-book)

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents

  are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Except where actual historical events and characters are being described

  for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are

  fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead,

  business establishments, events or locales is purely coincidental.

  This ebook produced by

  Palimpsest Book Production Limited, Falkirk,

  Stirlingshire, Scotland.

  Night, once again

  While I wait for you

  Cold wind turns into rain

  Masaoka Shiki (1867–1902)

  ONE

  He had been watching the three workmen for an hour, though he wasn’t sure why.

  Habit, probably, plus a natural aversion to haste, plus something else – something to do with labels and packages and the connections, if any, between them.

  Whatever it was, it all came under the heading of patience – patience with a capital P – which Charon just happened to believe was the secret to a long and stress-free life.

  Oh, it was fine to be brave and strong and clever – add a pinch of good looks and nine out of ten would think they had hit the number – but when it came to the long haul, if you really wanted to outlast the other guy, then patience was what was called for. Patience, and still more patience …

  Even when it was wasted?

  Especially when it was wasted, dummy, that was the point. The time to take care was when everything looked normal. The fact that it probably was normal didn’t change a thing.

  These three workmen, for instance. They had been there on the job when he arrived, fenced in by bollards that formed an island in the middle of the road, and because they were strangers, new to the street, not part of its daily comings and goings, he had sat in his car watching while they went about their work.

  What they were doing was repairing the surface of the road, lifting the old cobbles and levelling out the ground underneath before replacing them again. Tedious work, even at the best of times, and given the prevailing conditions – a raw December afternoon in Paris with a light rain falling – they certainly showed uncommon devotion to their craft.

  Which was just as well, since anything else would have started all sorts of bells ringing.

  Anything out of the ordinary – the way they stood, or the way they moved, the direction of their glances, any small thing – and that meant waiting … waiting until you were sure, because sooner or later people gave themselves away, even the best.

  Step forward patience.

  Take a bow.

  Charon yawned. He had seen enough. He was ready to move. Just a few more minutes, a few more cobbles … Imagine it, a lifetime of cobble-lifting. It really made you think. What did they have to look forward to, this trio of hunchbacked worthies? Aching limbs, dulled senses and at the end of the day a houseful of squalling brats and a wife with more wear on her than a route nationale. How they must dream! Of lottery wins and fast cars and girls – girls in all shapes and sizes: blondes, brunettes, redheads, and each one as young and fresh and dazzlingly lovely as the one who had suddenly appeared on the sidewalk up ahead – yes, that one there!

  Charon blinked. Now where had she come from?

  He watched as the young woman paused, glancing left and right to check the traffic before hurrying across the street to a tabac on the other side. Blonde and loose-limbed, she was wearing a pair of form-fitting jeans topped by a yellow silk blouse and, just for a moment, the grey afternoon seemed brighter. In a few moments she reappeared clutching what looked like a pack of cigarettes, and having recrossed the road quickly vanished through the doorway of an apartment house.

  Charon sat and stared. Minutes passed.

  Finally he shook his head. He couldn’t help it: he just had to laugh.

  It was all so predictable. Take a pretty girl, any pretty girl, walk her past a bunch of workmen on a city street and what did you have? Urban comedy, that’s what. The girl walked by and the men whistled at her. It was inevitable; inescapable; dammit, it was probably a commandment handed down by you-know-who round about the time the first pyramids went up. Instruction to all pyramid workers: Thou shalt whistle at pretty girls.

  And it was true, you had to laugh, because no matter how many times you had seen it, like a man slipping on a banana skin it was always funny-funny-funny. And what was even funnier this time was the reaction of Charon’s three workmen.

  They hadn’t even looked up.

  Explanation?

  Well, a couple came to mind, and the
first was that all three were gay: a possibility, to be sure, but in the realms of likelihood about as remote as the rings of Saturn.

  Which left the other, and really it was the only one that made any sense.

  They hadn’t looked up in case they caught her eye – it was as simple as that – which meant they knew her and she knew them and they were all there by appointment.

  Not for the first time, Charon marvelled at his instinct. No disrespect to patience, but in the end it came down to something deeper than that, something that went back to the very dawn of Homo sapiens, dwelling for all he knew in what remained of his reptile brain that had warned him all was not as it seemed.

  He had sensed it from the first, and now he knew.

  The workmen weren’t workmen.

  And they hadn’t come to mend the road.

  Well, now!

  Breathing a little faster from the sudden exertion, Charon stepped over the body and paused at the head of the stairway.

  Just as he’d thought: three in the street, one up here and the girl downstairs in the apartment below. Why had they brought her? Probably to field calls, pass on instructions, send for the ambulance later. Stuff like that.

  He’d been lucky with the girl, first spotting her in the street and now, not five minutes ago, hearing her open the door of the apartment one floor below and call out softly, ‘Misha … Misha?’

  And Misha-whoever-he-was, who’d been up here all day waiting for him – and what fun that must have been – had gone downstairs for a minute, no more, but a minute was all the time Charon had needed to slip out of the box room and pick his spot deep in the shadows of the darkened landing.

  Lucky, too, that he knew this apartment house from top to bottom, had long ago scouted the empty box room and the skylight that opened on to the roof. From there it was little more than a stroll across neighbouring roofs to another skylight in a small hotel not a hundred paces away at the end of the street. Except it wasn’t luck, it was foresight.

  Too bad about Misha, though. Charon had been hoping for few minutes’ conversation, but one glance at the heavy pair of shoulders ascending the stairs had banished any thought of a tête-à-tête. As Misha came out of the light into the shadows Charon had hit him twice in the throat – savage chopping blows shattering the thyroid cartilage (along with the hyoid bone for good measure) – after which it was doubtful if Misha would ever speak again. Or breathe, come to think of it.

  Which left the girl, and Charon truly regretted that. He loved beauty in all its forms – beautiful clothes, beautiful objects, beautiful women – everything in fact that money could buy.

  He walked down the stairs to the next landing and knocked on the door.

  Footsteps, the rattle of a chain, a soft voice.

  ‘Who is it?’

  Charon understood the question, if not the words, which were in Russian.

  ‘Misha.’

  She opened the door.

  There were times, no question, when Charon felt he was just a little weird.

  By rights he ought to be tearing his hair, climbing the wall, breaking crockery. Wasn’t that what people did when they saw their world fall to pieces? As in shattered, shredded, pulverized, powdered and scattered to the four winds? (And that was the good news.)

  Yet here he was laughing at it all, and the reason was simple. Right at the heart of everything, buried under the rubble of hopes and dreams, the ingenious schemes so lovingly pieced together was – would you believe it? – a joke! Irony, pure irony.

  My God, it was true what they said – you couldn’t trust anyone.

  What now?

  He went to the window and looked down at the empty street. There was no sign of the workmen – yellow flashing lights marked the enclosure in the middle of the road where they had laboured all day – but it wasn’t hard to guess where they’d gone. Try that café a couple of doors down from the tabac. No matter to him, he would leave the way he had come.

  And go where?

  Zurich? London?

  London was a must. If he had to guess, it was where he would find her. It was also probably the last place he should go. They had been waiting for him here – why not there?

  He had always been a gambler – within limits. Risk was in the very air he breathed. But he was used to having control, a measure of it anyway, enough to tip the odds in his favour. And now?

  Charon shrugged. No point in trying to read the future, not without a crystal ball, and there was a distinct lack of those in the vicinity. At least he was alive when by rights he ought to be dead – an unpleasant surprise for quite a number of people, and for one in particular, something a good deal worse than that.

  Time to go.

  He turned from the window and went to the sofa where the body of the girl lay stretched out in front of the fire. He had placed a red silk cushion beneath her head. It was an object of some significance to him – and particularly now – bringing back memories as it did. Earlier he had held it on his lap, tracing the design with one finger while they talked. Picked out in paler colours, it showed an Ottoman lady, from the sultan’s harem no doubt, seated with folded legs, gazing down into a limpid pool. ‘She’s thinking of her lover.’ He remembered the words just as he remembered the souk through which they had wandered together. ‘And I’ll bet it isn’t the sultan.’ He had bought the cushion then, aware that the gesture must have seemed a sentimental one, and amused by the thought that he had never come close to experiencing that particular emotion and wondered at others who did. He had kept the pillow resting on his lap while they talked, the girl and him, and when the moment came it had served its purpose.

  Looking down at her now, he saw that her features were composed in death and drew some satisfaction from the knowledge. He was glad he hadn’t had to hurt her. He took no pleasure in causing pain. Death was another matter – the all-encompassing answer to the last great question – and those with a mind to see things that way (a mind such as his, for example, if such a thing existed) might acknowledge him as Death’s faithful servant: Charon the Ferryman. One day they would meet, he and his master, swap stories, but not today – oh, no.

  She had told him what she knew, which was little enough, but what did details matter set alongside the one overwhelming truth. Listening to her, Charon had felt a cold hand tighten about his heart. He gave nothing away. They had sat together by the fire chatting like lovebirds while a nerve twitched in her pale cheek and her blue eyes pleaded with him. And he had wanted to let her live, truly he had, but by then it was too late. He knew what she knew, and once they knew that, well, it would give them an edge, and an edge, even the smallest, was all they would need.

  On an impulse he bent down and kissed her smooth forehead. Homage to beauty. Let the men who had sent her find her here. Let them contemplate their handiwork – and his.

  And lest there be any mistake, he took a coin from his pocket – a silvery one-euro piece – and slid it gently between her lips.

  TWO

  The hunk was headed her way.

  From her window seat near the back of the plane Addy watched him walking down the aisle, checking the seat numbers against his boarding pass. She had spotted him first in the terminal. Tall, fortyish, with a touch of grey at the temples, he reminded her of one of the stars of those old movies Rose loved – Cary Grant in To Catch a Thief, say. He’d been right behind her in the check-in line, and for a wild moment Addy had thought of stepping on his toes – by accident, of course – or dropping her purse, or just plain fainting; anything to strike up a conversation.

  It was the kind of crazy thing she often thought of doing but seldom did. Seizing the moment, grabbing it by the collar and saying, Stop! Hold it right there! Because suddenly then there’d be a new situation, possibilities, and who could say where they might lead?

  It had nothing to do with men per se, though when it came to men, Addy sometimes wondered if a little grabbing and seizing might not be the answer. Neglect – a girl cou
ld die of it, just wither away, and while Addy knew lots of men (really they were boys) her own age – twenty or thereabouts – actors for the most part, nice kids, even loyal friends, somehow when it came it … no, let’s be honest … there were one or two who might do very well as lovers if things ever headed in that direction, which plainly they didn’t.

  Yet all around her, kids were hooking up. Why not her? Could it be that she scared men?

  The question was one Addy had examined more than once (try a hundred times), usually when looking at the mirror. Small, dark-browed, fierce: the adjectives had been applied to her by the drama critic of the Fairfield News when she had played in a summer stock production of Much Ado About Nothing a few months back.

  ‘Small, dark-browed and fierce, Adelaide Banks made a compelling Beatrice’. She had memorized the words.

  What had the citizens of Fairfield made of Much Ado? They had made for the woods. The same critic had deeply deplored the lack of audience support for this jewel of a comedy blah-blah-blah and wondered aloud what could be done to draw people back to the theatre? (Addy was for house-to-house arrests and summary executions.)

  Still, maybe he had a point. Fierce. ‘Ease off, Addy,’ her drama coach kept telling her. ‘Too much intensity.’ And sometimes, ‘Pas trop de zele’, because he was that kind of asshole.

  Certainly, if it came to keeping score, which was something she would never entertain – my dear, how vulgar – but if you twisted her arm, if you dragged her up to the blackboard and made her do it, chalk ’em up, the results were not encouraging. A grand total of two.

  Two!

  And one of them hardly counted, Jamie whatever at summer camp when she was sixteen, who’d come on like Secretariat, snorting, practically pawing the ground, and then barely made it past the finishing post.