by Jason Vanez
It came out in stutters and pauses. In sixty seconds Jimmy knew that this guy, who he now figured was Colin, the leader, was supposed to capture and kill Jimmy and bury the body. The wife and kid, he promised, were not to be harmed, but let go after assurances that they would be punished if they went to the cops. Cowboy and his cronies had been told Jimmy was at the service station, but had no idea how the man hunting Jimmy had traced him here. Jimmy figured it must have been his wife. She must have used her debit card. His own fault - he hadn't warned her not to. The guy who wanted him had power and connections if he could trace debit card usage. Cowboy insisted he didn't know who the man was, because he had gotten the job through a middleman, and old friend. Jimmy believed him.
He moved around the table and took Cowboy's radio from a pocket in the jacket, but there was no mobile phone. That, the guy said, was in the car. Didn't want to risk having it go off while he was busy.
Jimmy put the radio to the guy's ear. "You've got a guy with my family right now. Tell him you got me and we're outside. Tell him I blubbered for my life like a little girl, if you want. Laugh and joke about it. Then tell him to come down and bring the wife and child. He's to let them run out the building first, then follow shortly afterwards. Understand?"
Cowboy nodded.
Jimmy pressed the transmit button. Cowboy spoke.
"Pan-pan, it's Carl. I got the guy. He's crying like a girl. Come on down. We got him. Let the wife and kid go and wait in the foyer for thirty seconds, then come out."
He did a good job of trying to sound like a man having a good time, no pain in his world, no one threatening him. But there was no response from the radio. He tried again and got the same result.
"What's that mean?" Jimmy said, his fear rising.
"Maybe can't hear it," Cowboy said, his voice breaking again.
Jimmy didn't like this. He got up. Looked around. Figured he would have a few minutes' head start. Cowboy was going nowhere without help, and help wasn't about to come running the moment Jimmy left. That would involve Cowboy calling for assistance, and Jimmy didn't think that was going to happen. One look at the spoons, and helpful people were probably going to call the cops, and cops were something Cowboy didn't want around. So Cowboy would probably try to free himself. Jimmy figured it might take Cowboy ten minutes. And ten minutes was easily long enough for Jimmy get his family and get out, if he rushed to the hotel. Right now.
"If I see you again, you're dead," he said to Cowboy, then got up and ran.
***
Einar sat on the floor with his back to the door and faced the three females. He didn't speak at first, just stared at them as if they were characters performing on a movie screen. Neither of the adult women looked at him or spoke, but the little girl, Louise, stared right at him and fired questions. About what he was wearing, what he had in his hands, where her dad was, a dozen more, none of them tinged with concern. Einar found her innocence amusing and answered every question with a smile. Maria kept a firm grip on Louise's elbow throughout, as if she feared her daughter might suddenly jump off the bed and into the man's lap.
Then they heard a crackly voice from the other side of the door.
"Pete? Pete, where the fuck are you?"
Einar rose and yanked the door. The guy beyond was on his side, not moving. Einar ruffled his clothing and came back, shut the door and sat. As well as the gun he now held a small radio.
Louise asked for the radio. Einar laughed. Maria pulled the girl closer to her. Beside Maria, the receptionist had her head bowed, as if asleep.
"What are-" Maria began, but stopped when Einar held up a hand. He was concentrating on the radio. Which spoke again after a few moments.
"Pan-pan, it's Carl. I got the guy. He's crying like a girl. Come on down. We got him. Let the wife and kid go and wait in the foyer for thirty seconds, then come out."
Einar grinned at Maria, who looked shocked, ready to cry herself. "Your husband is a fine warrior, Maria. Stop worrying."
The radio went again. The guy virtually repeated his earlier sentences word for word. Einar turned the radio off and tossed it aside.
"Your husband is not captured at all. He's in control. Pan-pan, that's no man's name. It's a mayday call. Something these bozos must have pre-arranged. So your husband just took out two men sent after him, and now he's trying to rescue you two. Doesn't that just fill you with pride? Don't you just burst with love?"
"Why do you want to kill my husband?"
Einar stood. "It's a long and complicated story. Probably. Someone wants him to leave this world, and I don't know why. Ours is not to reason why. Anyway, clearly there's a trap waiting downstairs for me. I don't fancy it. So we'll just wait here until he realises we're not answering and not coming. Then he'll come up. And I'll kill him."
"You're a monster," she snapped.
"Now, now. If I was a monster, I'd have my way with you and the receptionist there and I'd make you watch me cut your husband's throat. But I'm considerate. I won't make you watch that. Unless you try something, understand? So I'm going to close this door behind me, and you do not make a move, okay? You might hear some noises, but just ignore them. Might be a scream or thud or two, but you just sit there and comfort your daughter and wait for morning. Understand?"
He waved the gun when she didn't respond. All he got was a nod. Einar then left the room and shut the bedroom door behind him. He went down the short hall, past the dead guy, and opened the front door, and rushed across to the room opposite. Before heading up here, he had checked the register to determine which room the Marsh family was in. Only two rooms were occupied. The computer listed a cash payment for a family called Carslake, who checked in earlier that evening. The other listing was for a couple called Silverback, but they had rented their room that morning. So Einar had snatched the card key for the empty room opposite the one the "Carslake" family occupied. He now swiped the card and let himself into the empty room. He shut the door and put his eye against the peephole. It gave him a clear view of the target door. He clutched his Bersa and waited, ready to yank the door when Marsh appeared. This time there would be no fancy performance when he took out his nemesis, and whoever he dragged upstairs with him. This time he would just start blasting.
***
Jimmy entered the hotel and immediately noticed the empty receptionist's chair, which made him think of the cigarettes in his pocket. Crushed and wet. He plucked them out and tossed them as he rushed behind the desk. His plan had originally been to hide here until the man apparently called Pan Pan exited the lift or the stairs and moved past the desk with Jimmy's family, then launch himself at the man. But as he waited, he noticed the receptionist's mobile phone on the desk, so snatched it up and hit the Internet to allay a growing fear. Sure enough, a few seconds later his mild, itching fear was turned into full-blown acknowledgement. Pan Pan. Something in the back of his mind had suspected a trick, and he had been right. Pan Pan was some term derived from the French word for "broken." It usually meant mechanical failure, but Carl had used it to inform his comrade that he was under duress. It made him think that the man upstairs was going nowhere.
So Billy's next plan was to hide in the room opposite his, but he found that key missing from the rack and grew a new fear. Someone had taken that key, and not a paying guest. The other hitman. He was here. He must have tracked them here in the same way that the Three Stooges had. Carl had tried to inform his man upstairs that he was compromised, little knowing that "Pan Pan" was also mired in shit.
Billy ran from the hotel. He stood outside and looked up at the windows on the first floor, saw his own lit room and a small chink in the curtains. Each room had French doors giving onto a tiny balcony. There was a gap of just a few feet between each balcony.
He rushed back into the hotel, grabbed a keycard from behind the desk, and hit the stairs. He cautiously opened the door into the corridor containing all the rooms, peeking down its length. Nobody around. The door to room 1 was just feet away.
He darted there, swiped the card, and was inside with the door closed a second later.
He moved through the dark room, to the full-length curtains over the balcony doors. They slid open silently and he stepped out into the cold air. He climbed onto the balcony and jumped, neatly landing on the balcony of the next room. The next balcony belonged to the only other occupied room and Jimmy had to traverse past cautiously. As he slipped by, a chink in the curtains displayed an old couple laying sitting up in bed, wearing matching blue pyjamas and each holding an electronic tablet. He could hear some film or TV blaring from each, creating a messy noise. Then he was past, on his way to room 10, right at the end of the building.
***
Einar had patience, but also paranoia. To while away the time, he recited his times tables, like some kid practicing. He took the numbers from 2 to 17 up past three hundred, then gave it up and slowly opened the door, peeking to his right, making sure the corridor was empty. Then he opened the door to the Marsh room and strode down the corridor. His plan: retrieve the radio and call back with a new idea. Just tell them to come up because he, under the guise of the dead guy, was in the shower with the receptionist. They'd believe that and stroll up.
He opened the bedroom door and felt wind resistance on it. His gun was out and aimed ahead a second later, even before he's opened the door wide enough to see that his captives had gone. Well, two out of three.
The French doors were wide open, the curtains billowing in the wind. Einar rushed over and peered out, instantly noticing against the black night the stark white of a bedsheet tied around the railing. The ground was only twenty feet below, but the bedsheet had been for the kid, maybe the girly mother.
Einar scanned the cark park off to his left and saw nothing. But a moment later he heard the faint screech of tyres on concrete and knew exactly what had happened. He turned away from the window, stared down. The new pay-as-you-go phones had escaped, too, but the chargers remained, curled there like headless snakes. Einar looked up at the receptionist.
"Why didn't you escape as well?"
She looked at him with blotchy eyes and tear-wet cheeks, and he sensed her lack of resolve. Worn out, defeated. Fearful, maybe, that being caught escaping would have meant a worse punishment. Or hoping that nobody would return to the room.
He sighed. Outpointed again. He needed a serious knockout in the next round. He closed the doors against the cold wind and pulled his mobile phone.
The men Einar called arrived ninety minutes later. Until then, he sat on the bed, reading on his phone about movements and rumours in the world of boxing, the only sport he liked to follow. The receptionist sat next to him, not by her own choice, of course. She didn't speak except to ask him once, early, if he was going to kill her - "Only if you try to run" - and again later when she requested the toilet. In response to the latter, he accompanied her to the bathroom and sat outside the door. Then they went back to the bed.
As well as checking out boxing news, he hit the Internet to research a few things for when his guys arrived. They phoned ahead when five minutes out, so he could expect their knock. When he let them in, he immediately said,
"I need men to watch these addresses." He showed the addresses on his phone and the lead guy of the two, both of whom were dressed in suits, wrote them down. Then he showed a photo he had taken on his phone of the photo of James Marsh he'd gotten in the file. "Homes of the mother of this guy, his grandfather, and his wife's mum and dad." He showed another photo. "Workplace. You never know, he might just be that stupid."
He didn't have to explain further. These guys knew their job. He had used them before to stake out multiple addresses. And to get rid of bodies.
"One dead bad man," Einar said next, moving swiftly on. "Might be two more dead men somewhere around here. Nobody's screamed for the police yet, so I doubt they were dumped in the middle of the car park. Some kind of damage control if you can't find them. That the term you like? Damage control?" He led them into the bedroom and they saw the receptionist. She broke down at the sight of them, obviously fearing bad things. He stared at her and thought.
Then said to her, "Your life countdown...continues." He had never planned to kill her, but it felt good to say his catchphrase and then give the impression of offering a reprieve right at the last second. Even if she had no idea what he was talking about. He turned to his man. "I'll need a few days."
The lead guy nodded and went to grab her arm. She scuttled away from him.
"Don't fight it," Einar told her. "You won't be hurt. But you're going with them, so make it easier for all involved, eh? A nice little holiday until it's time for me to leave the country. Don't worry about your job. Surely you can't be given a disciplinary for missing work through kidnapping?"
The lead man led her out, crying.
"I might have dropped a pubic hair somewhere. Room needs cleaning," Einar said to the remaining bloke.
"We don't clean," this guy said.
Einar patted the guy's cheek. "Conglomerate diversification," he said, and walked out the door.
***
The M25 Motorway passes through six counties, and Jimmy was sure he saw them all three times each during the useless drive through the night. Maria, still pissed at him despite the fact that he'd saved her life twice, sat in the back with Louise and slept most of the journey away. Jimmy emptied his mind of everything except the drive. He forgot about time. On his third trip across the Dartford Crossing, which passed over the River Thames, he realised that the toll for the bridge would be in effect by the time he circled around again, and he had no coins, so he left at Junction 1B and found a place to park. When he turned off the engine, Maria woke.
"Where are we?" she groaned.
"Middle of nowhere," Jimmy replied. Now that he wasn't concentrating on driving, he was starting to feel tired. Very tired. But the sky was beginning to get light, announcing the start of another day. A day in which there would be no time for sleep.
"Where are we, though?" She glanced at the dashboard clock. When he told her he'd spent the last few hours circling the M25 Orbital at speed, she pulled a horrified face.
"You're joking. We could have been in Newcastle ages ago. Instead we're still in London?"
"Newcastle? I hope you don't mean your mother's house. I told you, we can't risk going to see people connected to us."
"This is a joke. So you just drove around uselessly, wasting time? And petrol."
He wanted to snap at her. Hey, we kept moving, which meant we stayed alive. Instead, he said, "I didn't know where to go. We're short of cash and we can't use the cards. I used the last of my cash to fill the tank in this thing."
She snorted. "They didn't trace my card. That's just silly."
Now he snorted. "Yeah, science-fiction, that. Much easier to believe they used remote viewing or something. Took a wild guess. Sent ten thousand people out to search every building."
"Maybe they knew which car you stole, Jimmy. Traced that."
"And knew where it was parked? In that short time?"
"So where are we going to go? Or do you want to buy a fridge and some blankets and we'll live in this car?"
He stayed silent. Good question.
"We need to call the police," Maria said with finality.
His mind raced. He thought about some extravagant lie, like claiming the police were in on it. The Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police was the hitman. Jimmy had seen the police murder a group of foreign exchange students and now they wanted him silenced. In truth he was worried about what the police would discover if they delved into his life, which they certainly would if they wanted to learn why he was targeted for death. And then they'd discover that he was a part-time contract killer, and then he'd a one of Her Majesty's guests for a long, long time. He couldn't risk that. So he simply said that they couldn't enlist the police's help, trust me, or we would. Maria didn't buy it, but didn't push it.
"So what the hell do we do? We can't just drive around the rest of
our lives. Where do we go?"
Their raised voices woke Louise, who struggled awake and said, "Are we at the cottage yet?"
And Maria and Jimmy just looked at each other.
Jimmy started the engine. Maria ruffled Louise's hair, said, "We'll be there soon, baby."
***
Einar had driven back to London and booked into a hotel for the remainder of the night. But he had found sleep hard. James Marsh had outwitted him twice now. He might have once been a Marine Commando, but he was now just a supermarket assistant manager. Besides, there were many, many Marine Commandos in the Royal Navy, and if Einar allowed one to get the better of him, he would have to admit that others could. Many others. And that just would not do for a man usually confident that no matter where he strode on the planet, how rich or intelligent or advanced the nation, regardless of how vast a crowd surrounded him, he was the greatest among them. In certain areas he fell short beside certain experts, but overall as a human he stood ahead. In a game of Top Trumps, for instance, his combined scores would be higher than those of any other single person on the planet.
Marsh, though, might be only a few rungs below him. Einar had searched the Nissan Qashqai belonging to the employer's dead men and found their phones in the glove box. Each man had received two picture messages just a couple of hours ago, probably when they were given the mission to terminate James Marsh. The first, just a photo of the face of James Marsh, with some text giving the postcode of the service station. The second picture was a photo of a sheet of paper laid on some black wooden table. Using the zoom function, Einar had scrolled over the entire picture in close-up, reading what was printed on the sheet.
It seemed to be an official document of the British Army and it was all about James Marsh. A CV detailing his history before joining the Marines, and a breakdown of his life within the service. He had won something called the Parker Trophy, an award given to a soldier showing outstanding skill on the All Arms Commando Course, which tested amphibious drills, helicopter drills, and small unit tactics, amongst other things. Soldiers did not earn their Green berets until completion of this course, and James Marsh, in winning the trophy, had apparently performed better than everyone else. So he was a top-class Green Beret, even though he had left the Army within six months of reaching the pinnacle. The document had listed an injury obtained in Norway during something called the Cold Weather Winter Warfare Course. He was out for three months and chose never to go back.
