by Jake Cross
‘I’m not going to survive this thing, am I?’ he said.
‘Don’t think like that. We don’t know what evidence is out there that you’re innocent. That’s why we’re looking.’
‘That headline is bad. That, plus the house fire… no way I survive this.’
‘Is it true, though? The cops investigated you for murder and robbery?’
A sudden image of a nation in uproar, of crowds baying for blood. ‘Yes, but it’s not as bad as it sounds.’ He didn’t know why he felt the need to defend himself to a woman who had just killed two men.
‘Tell me your version.’
He tried to ignore her choice of words. Not ‘Tell me what happened’, but ‘Tell me your version’. Did she have doubts? Understandable, because nobody did the things they’d done to Nate for no reason. Did she think that Nate was a bad man who was now dying by the sword?
Putting aside that worry, he explained. HyperX Customs had been a high-end car restoration and customisation joint that did private work, and also sold cars they’d overhauled. It had two branches, one here and one in Dubai. The Dubai side was larger, catering to rich people who wanted their flash rides to stand out amongst the serious and expensive vehicles in that country. But sometimes blinging out a Ferrari or Lamborghini wasn’t enough, and that was where the London branch came in. Here a Vauxhall Corsa wasn’t exclusive, but roll around in a diamond-studded one over there, you turned heads. In London the guys would customise run-of-the-mill rides and ship them to Dubai, and the beauty of the deal was that tycoons bored of their gold-plated Rolls-Royces would, here and there, do a straight swap – a car worth £10,000 for a car worth fifty times as much. These luxury cars would head overseas and be sold in London for tidy sums.
That fateful night, the London branch of HyperX had three Rolls-Royce Wraiths in the workshop, and Acorn Security had been hired to watch the place. Some guys had broken in, but since the cars couldn’t be started without the keys, and the keys were off-site with the boss, none had been stolen. Instead of arranging a tow, the angry robbers had taken the cars to pieces and stolen various expensive parts.
Nate’s team of three had tried to defend the place, and things had gone badly wrong. Nate and his brother and two of the three guards had been pulled in for questioning, but nothing had come of it. The cops had let them go after a few interviews. No big deal. He didn’t know why it was even being brought up. It had no bearing on what had happened at his house. But it didn’t make him look good.
‘Maybe I could get a reward for handing you in.’
‘They just want to make me look like a fucking maniac who’s running around out there.’
‘On a serious note, Nate, you’re going to have a hard time convincing the cops that you did nothing wrong this time. Not with that little secret in your past. We might have to get more extreme. Hurt some people.’
‘A dream come true for you. Which gives me an idea. I’m going back to sleep. Maybe this is all a bad dream and I’ll wake in bed two days ago.’
At least the remnants of the drug were letting him drift off quickly. She started laughing, and he was gone before she had finished.
Fifty-seven minutes later, the ambulance was in Kent, running northeast through the Hoo Peninsula after leaving the M2 south of where the River Thames became the Thames Estuary.
He had woken after another sleep, exactly nineteen minutes later. She was checking the phone, probably the route. When she saw him awake, she said nothing, but she tossed the phone into his lap. She went back to watching the road ahead.
Now, after over half an hour of ignoring each other, he heard her rooting in the driver’s door pocket. Seconds later, a penny landed in his lap. He understood. He’d spent the first ten minutes of that half hour on Google, and the rest staring out the side window.
‘Monoamine oxidase A mutation,’ he said. And caught her perplexed look. ‘It’s a problem with the prefrontal cortex part of the brain. That’s what you have, maybe. Brunner Syndrome. Might explain your violent brain and lack of empathy.’
Perplexity became mirth. She said, ‘And you have cyberchondria.’
He looked that up on Google, too. Anxiety over one’s health brought on by searching medical websites. Now he understood what she found so funny. He tossed the phone into her lap and put his forehead back against the side window.
The A228 took them past Upper Stoke, then it was a northwards run through Lower Stoke, strangely higher than Upper Stoke on the map. Eventually they were at the end of a typical residential street when ahead they saw a large blue sign.
As Toni pulled up at the kerb, Nate studied the key in his hand. The key Toni had taken from the hitman. The emblem on the fob matched the picture on the sign: a grassy expanse with the sun above and a mobile home, and ‘Sunny Dream Leisure Park’ floating in a blue sky. On the back was the number 47.
The phone landed in his lap. Playing the game, he looked at the screen and saw a website about something called ‘The Warrior gene’.
‘Maybe that’s what I have,’ Toni said with a grin. ‘A guy got it successfully used in a murder case to defend his actions a few years ago. So, I may escape prison because my genes are at fault. Thanks for that.’
‘Sounds like cyberchondria to me.’
She turned to face him, a little angry suddenly. ‘If I must explain my whimsical attitude, it was for you. Because you’re a little girl, so I was trying to lighten the mood so you don’t piss in your pants and wake screaming at night. You’ve still got the walk-away option. Go right now if you like and I’ll finish this myself.’
‘I’m staying,’ Nate snapped back. ‘This isn’t your show. It’s mine. And we’re not killing anyone else unless we have to. Understand?’
‘Maybe I have to. Read some more about my genes, since you know them so well, doctor.’
He glared at her. ‘Jokes aside now. We need to talk about something serious.’
She looked at him, saw on his face that all the humour was gone. She turned off the engine and looked at him.
He said, ‘You were part of the group that killed my brother and tried to kill me. And I was fully prepared to kill you. You think I might want to do that again when this is over and I don’t need your help.’
She glared back and he knew he had hit the spot.
‘I have no plans to try to kill you, Toni. You did not kill my brother. I do not hold you responsible.’
Her silence told him she didn’t believe that.
‘When this is over, I plan to walk away. I will not try to hurt you.’
Now her eyes couldn’t meet his. They fell over his shoulder, out his window and across the planet, seeing nothing.
‘If I had not escaped from you, Damar would still be alive. It’s my fault in a way. You kind of said that earlier. So, I know you will either want to kill me for that, or you will want to kill me because you think I will kill you. You don’t trust anyone, that much I know about you.’
She started the engine. ‘Time is ticking,’ she said. ‘Let’s get this done.’
‘Believe me or don’t, Toni, and I hope you do for both our sakes, but if you don’t, then let’s have an agreement. Nothing out of the blue. No cheap shot. When this is over, we agree that it is so and work it from there. Because if you try to pull a fast one and sink a blade into me, Toni, I will react. I will react. Understand?’
She ignored the question and pointed out the windscreen, at the leisure park. Said, ‘We can’t take an ambulance inside.’
She was right. Too much attention. People would stare, wondering who might have died.
They drove the streets, seeking another vehicle. They didn’t find one, but they did happen across a row of lock-up garages with a battered abandoned car parked in the scrubland between two buildings. Toni got out and removed the wheelchair, then Nate parked the ambulance on the hidden side of the last garage, where it just fit between that building and a wooden fence. There was no-one around. Toni parked the wheelchair by t
he open back doors.
The hitman was stirring. He had come round halfway here and Nate had had to blast him with the gun again. There was one dart left, and he used it now to put the guy back to sleep.
‘Turn his jacket inside out so this doesn’t look suspicious,’ Toni said.
Nate understood. Civilians wheeling a paramedic in a wheelchair – dodgy. He did as asked, and of course, she didn’t help.
She helped him get the guy out of the vehicle and into the wheelchair, though. Not to be helpful, he knew. But because they couldn’t prolong their exposure out here. Toni threw the blanket over him, tucked it in, covering all but his head. Now he just looked like some disabled guy having a kip.
They started walking.
Twenty minutes later they were back at the entrance to the caravan park. The map showed a C-shaped main road with icons plastered all over it, as if a kid had been given a bunch of stickers. An insert showed a larger view of the ‘entertainment complex’, and seeing this reminded Nate of when he’d been to such places as a kid. He instantly started to feel better. These were anonymous places. Places where you forgot about the outside world and its news of fugitive fratricides. He pulled off his cap, determined to try to relax a little while here. He had been wired now for twenty-four hours and would probably burst something vital in his brain if he didn’t calm the hell down.
There was a guardhouse and a barrier, but the barrier was up and nobody was home. Cars came and went without a care. They passed through and walked along the pavement. Other side of the road, two other people in wheelchairs sat near a bench upon which their carers rested. That made Nate and Toni feel better. They knew they wouldn’t stand out here.
The main road was lined on both sides with pavements and shoulder-height hedges that broke for roads leading into the caravan sites. Five minutes of walking and they found the sign for ‘Seagull Wings’. A sea of pale brown static caravans stretched before them on both sides of a road and along a series of side roads. The grass was bright green and mowed, and benches where scattered everywhere. All very quaint and quiet. A few people scattered around, some just chatting, some headed somewhere or back from somewhere. Nobody gave them a second look, never mind a suspicious one. Nate felt the tension dribble away, as if he were leaving it as a stain with each footstep. To bolster his resolve, he even waved at an old couple who were playing chess at a table outside their caravan.
Number 47, enchantingly called Starfish, was at the back near a berm representing the boundary between this site and the next. The caravans beyond the berm were a weak yellow colour, as if they’d sat under the sun for a thousand years.
The caravan next to theirs had a people carrier parked alongside and a kid sitting on the grass playing with toys. No parents in view, but the caravan’s door was wide open and light and TV noise oozed out. The kid ignored them as they turned in. Far more interested in seeing if Peppa Pig could outwrestle a T. rex half her size.
Toni went cautiously to the door and peered in the window, then unlocked it. She glanced at their neighbour’s open door, then waved him on. Nate wheeled the chair up to the steps and turned it around.
Together they tipped the chair over backwards and dragged the guy out and inside. The door delivered them into the kitchenette, with the living room to their left and a door on the right that led to the bedrooms. They dropped him on the linoleum and Toni flicked on the light as Nate stepped out. He started to collapse the wheelchair, but froze as a handsome young man appeared at the door twenty feet away. The guy was topless, carrying a can of lager in one hand and a shirt on a hanger in the other. Nate nodded at him. The guy nodded back and vanished. Nate slid the collapsed wheelchair under the caravan and darted back inside.
The hitman was on his back and was slowly coming round. Toni had a foot placed heavily on a forearm and was staring down at him, patiently waiting for his revival. Nate put his own foot on the free arm, pinning him there.
His eyes finally opened. They watched confusion turn to understanding, then morph into shock. He started to struggle, but the drug wasn’t yet ready to return his strength to him.
‘I’m still not wishing death to my great grandfather’s balls,’ Toni said. ‘Get a move on.’
The guy’s throat got up to full power quickly. He started to yell for help. Nate pulled out the dart gun, but before he could take a shot, Toni bent down and applied a choke from the front. The guy grabbed her hair, but his hands fell limp in just seconds. Back to sleep.
‘The gun’s empty,’ she said. Nate suddenly remembered that. ‘You let him live, so you tie him up. I’ll look around.’
Since they’d cut away the bandages in order to move the guy from the ambulance and hadn’t brought others, Nate had to improvise. Cables from the TV for his wrists and ankles. Nate sat him on a wooden chair in the kitchenette, facing a knife block just so the guy would know, when he woke, that his cosy home was not a safe place for him. Then he joined Toni in searching the Starfish.
Toni found a laptop computer under a pile of magazines on the coffee table and immediately immersed herself in it. Nate thought she was wasting her time: surely a professional hitman wouldn’t be silly enough to leave clues and evidence on a computer. So he searched for physical things in invisible spots. So intent was he upon awkward nooks and crannies that he didn’t notice the item atop the TV until he sat down on the sofa to think.
A metal briefcase.
And it was unlocked. Inside it was lined with foam that had shapes cut out to accommodate a few scary items. A pair of small binoculars rested in their home, as well as a small knife. There were two empty spaces for guns, one of which looked like the home for the tranquilliser pistol. A small metal box contained more darts for that pistol. And there were two spaces for syringes, one still in place. He plucked this out and held it up. A plastic medical syringe, short and fat, the needle capped. It contained a strange, bright green liquid, like molten Kryptonite. Like magic dragon’s blood from a fantasy film.
Toni saw it and stopped playing on the laptop.
‘Damar was given a syringe like that. Same green fluid. It was what we were told to inject you with.’
Her tone said she was thinking the same thing as him: the hitman’s involvement in this was deeper than he’d claimed. And that was a good thing, sure, of course, but Nate couldn’t bring himself to be pleased while imagining this nasty green shit flooding through his veins.
‘Damar said it had Rohypnol in it,’ she said. ‘Date rape drug.’ A ghost of a smile on her face, as if she thought this was funny – a guy being knocked out with a date rape drug.
‘Why the hell is it green?’
‘Like I’d know,’ she said. She looked at the clock above the cooker.
‘It has additions to make it quicker acting,’ said the hitman. His accent was thick Scottish.
Nate whirled round.
The hitman was awake, head turned so he could watch them. ‘Rohypnol is one ingredient. There are others that confuse the mind even long after the sleep effects are gone. I don’t know the full arrangement. The bright green colour is a scare tactic to aid in the collection of information.’
Nate got that part fully. If some guy threatened to jab this shit into his neck, he’d admit he was the guy on the grassy knoll in Dallas’s Dealey Plaza in 1963. He was angry.
‘So you supplied this drug, yet you said you were hired recently to capture us in the hospital. Bullshit. You’ve been in this from the start. You need to start telling us what you know. Start with why my brother was killed, and why they’re trying to kill me.’
The hitman shook his head. ‘I don’t have those answers. I wasn’t involved in that. I was hired four days ago and I told my employer what I needed and who I knew in London could supply it. The tasks I was given did not involve you or the lady. I only learned of your existence earlier today when he called me with a side mission. I was told only that there was a young woman who had to be detained, and used to locate a man. I know nothing ab
out you, my friend. This is the first time I’ve seen you.’
Nate waved the syringe. ‘No, we’ve met, dickhead. Remember, this fucks with your brain.’
‘If you let me go, I will give you my employer’s name. He’s–’
‘Cube,’ Nate said. The hitman looked surprised, then embarrassed. ‘You told us. You told us a lot. Like you told us you killed a young Indian woman–’
‘No,’ the hitman snapped. ‘Cube only tasked me with one hit, and that was a fellow way off in another country. I only kill abroad. That’s what I’m good at. Here at home I deal only in paving the way for others if they require someone dead.’
Nate had tried to trick the hitman into admitting he’d terminated Kaushal. Now he believed the guy was telling the truth. Which meant Kaushal had already been dead by the time the hitman had gotten involved. Which meant someone else had killed her.
‘So who killed her?’
‘I don’t know. I didn’t need to know. I don’t ever need to know. I never want to know.’
Something in the man’s tone, or his eyes? Something, though. Something about him that said he wasn’t a liar. A killer for money, but not a liar. And deeply offended to be called such. Again, Nate believed him. So this guy had gotten involved only after Toni had visited the biker called Alfie in hospital.
As if he knew Nate was in a trusting – maybe even forgiving – mood, the hitman said, ‘I have a wife and son in Scotland and I run a small business in Edinburgh that helps local charities. I am not a snitch. I am a man with a family and employees who rely on me. I will not make them suffer in order to protect a London gangster. I will tell you what you need to know in order to get back to my family. I will not lie to you about anything. Cube, my employer on this job, is a man no doubt used to comebacks, and I’m sure he is prepared to deal with the one you threaten him with. The computer.’
Nate and Toni looked at the laptop.
‘A hidden file,’ the hitman said and explained how to find it. ‘I met Cube in a public place and only for thirty seconds while an employee of his gave me the file on a flash drive. I cannot direct you to this man or give you any other information about him. But I will give you the file he gave me. Maybe there will be information within that you can use. I will do that. It is all I have, which means my giving it to you is testament to helping you to the best of my abilities. Maybe it will be enough for you to be swayed into letting me live.’
