If Looks Could Kill

by Gary Kittle

  ‘As if I would,’ he thought. ‘And if you believe that, you’ll believe this really is about disease immunity.’

  He dialled a number from his desk phone. The call was answered on the first ring. Jenkins gave the address and a description of the vehicle the gang were using. ‘The girl?’ he said. ‘No, she’s back at a second address I’m about to give you. You’ll need to exercise some caution. My man says one of the gang has stayed behind with her and he’s wearing a suicide vest.’

  There was an animated response from the other end of the line. At last Jenkins was able to get a word in.

  ‘No, no. Listen. My man says it’s a fake. But don’t take any chances. Treat him the way you would any would-be suicide bomber,’ Jenkins said. ‘Stockwell tube station style.’

  Jake, his P.A., had already gone a good way to eradicating any trace of Dan’s time in the office. ‘Sorry, Dan,’ he thought. ‘Turns out you were in the gang right from the start.’

  Jenkins replaced the receiver and went to turn up the heating. He hoped he wasn’t going down with a bug; though it couldn’t be anything as awful as Foedus. His man on the inside had been against the idea of carrying a tracking device, and said the gang leader insisted on keeping hold of the rest of the gang’s mobiles when they didn’t need them. But he’d still managed to get some information out. He had to be discrete, though, he’d said; pick his moments to make contact with Jenkins.

  But the more Jenkins thought about it, the more doubts arose.

  Could he not have bought another phone? Used it in a toilet? Most of his silences, now he thought about it, were based on excuses. The phone reception was bad. He slept in the same room as another kidnapper. Someone followed him the last time he’d been out. He kept catching the gang leader eyeing him suspiciously. ‘Can’t talk . He’s coming. Later.’

  Jenkins frowned. How well did he know this ‘Jamie’, as he was calling himself? He’d been sent to him out of the blue and told not to ask questions.

  ‘What’s your real reason for keeping me in the dark, ‘Jamie’?’ he thought.

  Trevor Jenkins put his hand to the wall heater and realised he was still shivering.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  ‘You’re the first person I’ve spoken to in weeks,’ Devina added, her shrouded head still turned to face him. ‘And when you say nothing people assume you can’t understand either. Yes?’

  Dan nodded.

  ‘So they get careless and say things they shouldn’t.’

  ‘And all the time you’re listening.’

  ‘Yes. So you have to trust me when I say that everything I have just told you is true.’

  ‘How old are you?’

  ‘Nineteen.’

  Dan let that sink in. ‘They took your skin.’

  ‘Before I came here I travelled from one European transit camp to another for four years.’

  ‘But still.’

  ‘He was very careful.’ Devina shuffled her chair around so that it was half facing him. ‘But that’s not important. You’re friends will come here soon, yes?’

  ‘They’ll have to deal with this first.’ He nodded down towards the suicide vest.

  ‘No they won’t. Take it off.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Take it off.’

  ‘What if it’s rigged?’

  ‘It isn’t. These people are criminals, not fanatics. Trust me, I know the difference.’

  Dan tensed at the mental image of cat food splattering a wall. ‘Their boss sounded pretty convincing to me.’

  ‘No. Think about it. Whoever untied you did it so you could escape, yes? Why bother if the device is real?’

  Still he didn’t move. Everyone else was treating him like a pawn, why not her? ‘Unless you’re a suicide bomber yourself,’ he said aloud before he could stop himself.

  ‘I told you, whatever this is about it isn’t religion or politics. Wherever I’ve gone, whoever I’ve been with, always I hear talk of the same thing.’

  ‘Money, obviously.’

  ‘Yes, but money for what?’

  ‘Your immunity, obviously.’

  Devina laughed. ‘There’s nothing obvious about any of this. It’s something else. I’ve been in this country for months. These men are not kidnappers at all. I was given to them.’

  Dan let that sink in a second. ‘By whom?’

  ‘They were English and they went to a lot of trouble to get me past men like you.’

  ‘They brought you over from the continent?’

  ‘I was in one of the French camps by your Channel Tunnel. They took me away in the middle of the night, hid me in some sort of container.’

  They heard a door bang shut somewhere below. They both listened, hard, not daring to breath, but there was nothing more to hear.

  ‘Another gang wouldn’t snatch you only to hand you over to this lot. And if the men who snatched you worked for the Government, why let you go again and have to part with a ransom?’ Dan’s head ached. None of it made sense.

  ‘It isn’t that simple,’ the shrouded head continued. ‘Now please stand up.’

  ‘What if you’re wrong?’

  ‘Then it won’t just be you that suffers.’

  More than anything it was anger that made him stand abruptly. When he realised he was still alive his legs nearly gave way beneath him again.

  Dan gritted his teeth and walked over towards the window, still holding his breath as the suicide vest jiggled about on his chest.

  ‘These things could still be rigged,’ he moaned.

  ‘That’s why we have to act quickly!’

  ‘But it’s too late!’ He tried not to raise his voice to the girl but couldn’t help himself.

  ‘No it isn’t, but it will be soon. They’ll use that vest as an excuse to take you out.’

  Dan cocked his ear, thinking he’d heard movement downstairs again.

  ‘Think about it. They’ll be here soon. Whatever they’re up to, it’s me they’re after, not you.’

  Dan stared at the shrouded head. The word ‘expendable’ echoed through his thoughts. He desperately needed certainty, and there wasn’t any.

  ‘I’m sorry to tell you this, Dan,’ Devina urged. ‘But you really don’t have any other choice.’

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Jamie leaned forward between the two front seats. They were only a couple of minutes from the factory site and Richard was already stroking the lid of his laptop, itching to get started.

  ‘You shouldn’t have told me where we were going, Richard,’ he purred. ‘Should have kept us both in the dark, come to that. It could have been him just as easily.’

  Gareth and Richard exchanged quizzical looks.

  ‘I really wind you both up, don’t I?’ Jamie laughed.

  Both men up front said nothing, but they both looked irritated.

  ‘Will it matter if we use that laptop anywhere else but Knight’s Diesels?’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ asked Richard.

  ‘Want to see what I’m doing back here?’ he asked, wiggling his mobile phone.

  ‘Not really,’ Gareth replied, without looking back.

  ‘Sure you do,’ Jamie continued, ‘if you both want to live.’

  Something in his tone of voice made Gareth glare into his rear view and look the younger man in the eyes. ‘What?’

  ‘You think I’m stupid, don’t you?’ Jamie smirked. ‘Do you know why?’

  Gareth opened his mouth to say something sarcastic.

  ‘Because that’s what I want you to think.’ He passed his phone over to Richard. ‘Read these texts and ask yourself who’s the stupid one around here now.’

  Richard read and scrolled, and read again. He looked over at Gareth, his lips parted but unable to speak.

  Gareth glanced back, noticed the ashen colour of the other man’s face. ‘What is it, Richard?’

  Richard sat bolt upright in his seat, finding his voice at last: ‘Turn around! Now!’

 
‘Turn… What?’

  ‘Turn around, Gareth! Do it now! It’s a trap!’

  Gareth looked perplexed momentarily, but the look on Richard’s face and the panic in his voice were enough to convince him. He took the next right and accelerated hard.

  ‘What the hell is going on?’ Gareth spat.

  ‘Obviously, we’ll need to change vehicles,’ Jamie purred from the back seat. ‘Choose something older, something easy to hot wire.’

  ‘He’s set us up, damn it!’ Richard shouted, turning to glare at Jamie.

  Jamie sneered at Gareth, holding eye contact in the rear view mirror and enjoying the sense of power it gave him.

  Ignoring Richard, he leaned closer to Gareth’s ear and whispered softly: ‘Well? Aren’t you going to say something sarcastic?’

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Ten minutes later they were driving through the centre of town in a rattling red Astra with rust around the wheel arches. The handbrake looked like it had the same tensile strength as a cucumber. No one had spoken since Jamie had finished his handiwork beneath the steering column. The car took a short stretch of dual carriageway towards the coast before heading away from traffic up a side road.

  The countryside closed in around them quickly. There were no cars behind them; no houses to be seen, either. They turned left again into a narrow dirt track.

  ‘Are you sure you can get a signal out here?’ Jamie sat up in his seat, his smirk wavering for the first time. ‘Where is this, anyway?’

  Richard and Gareth exchanged a look.

  ‘Lovers’ lane,’ Richard muttered.

  The car reached the end of the track near a metal gate overlooking a meadow that swept down towards a stream maybe four hundred metres away. Beyond that was an area of marsh, a line of trees and a distant housing estate. The car inched forward into a small clearing.

  ‘Were you backstabbing us the whole damned time?’ Gareth snarled.

  Richard raised his hand to calm the other man down, and slowly shook his head. ‘That’s what I don’t understand; because if you were, you could have sold us out whilst you were giving your performance as a park keeper.’

  ‘Well, here’s the thing,’ declared Jamie. ‘Seems I was on your side when it mattered.’

  ‘I think it’s time my fists asked some serious questions of your anatomy.’ Gareth’s hands gripped the wheel so firmly it was hard to understand how it didn’t come clean away from the steering column. The engine was still idling but no one seemed to notice.

  Jamie sighed, as if he were bored. ‘They were going to do us all, that’s why. We know about the immigrant, and more importantly we’ve seen her. That makes us liabilities - including me. I decided being rich was preferable to being dead.’

  ‘How patriotic,’ said Gareth.

  ‘Donating your cut to charity, then, Gareth?’ Jamie laughed.

  ‘Think you can beat them at their own game?’

  ‘There was me on the inside from day one, and later on that rookie we left holding the suicide vest. They were always going to get her, boys. And besides, you don’t really buy that immunity crap, do you?’

  Richard looked round, intrigued. ‘Why else would they be going to this much effort?’

  Jamie looked momentarily unnerved. ‘I don’t know. But it’s definitely nothing to do with the chance of finding a cure. When people assume you’re a jerk you get to hear things you’re not supposed to.’

  ‘Well, you certainly had me fooled,’ Gareth said, squeezing the steering wheel even harder. ‘So you’re not lying to us any more, you’re lying to them; and you think that makes it all right?’

  ‘What would you have done, tough guy? Play by the rules and hope for the best.’

  ‘Doesn’t change what you are, though, does it? Get out,’ Gareth snarled, turning the engine off.

  Jamie stepped outside, a picture of composure. The muddy ground squelched beneath his shoes. The other two jumped down, too. When Gareth turned in his direction, Jamie wasn’t surprised to see that he was holding a gun.

  ‘Well, what do you know?’ Jamie slowly raised his hands. ‘Better watch this one, Richard; he takes things rather personally.’

  ‘Shut up,’ Richard told him. ‘Gareth?’

  Gareth raised the gun and pointed it at Jamie’s head. ‘My pleasure.’

  Jamie shook his head sadly. ‘Wait a second, big boy! I get why you want to waste me, Gareth. But why is Richard so keen to get rid of me? Ask yourself that, Gareth. Go on.’

  ‘Because you’re a dickhead, Jamie.’

  ‘So why is he sweating?’

  Gareth snatched a glance towards Richard. Despite the chill breeze something glistened on his forehead.

  ‘Perhaps he’s going down with something.’ Jamie stuck his hands nonchalantly in his pockets. ‘Like guilt.’

  Gareth’s arm dropped two inches. ‘Do you know what I think? It’s not that difficult to divide two million between three people instead of four.’

  Jamie burst into laughter, almost doubling over with amusement. ‘Ha! Gareth, you just hit the nail on the head!’

  ‘Meaning what?’ Gareth released the safety catch. ‘You’re just stalling.’

  Jamie stepped boldly forward, suppressing his laughter with difficulty. ‘I’ve worked for the other side, remember? I know what’s at stake here.’ He cast a disgusted glance at Richard. ‘And he knows I know it, too; which is why he’s so desperate for you to pull that trigger.’

  Gareth’s elbow snapped his arm tight, his eye squinting along the gun sight. ‘Last chance, shithead.’

  ‘He didn’t ask for two million.’

  Gareth glanced over at Richard, eyebrows arched, and his arm sunk like a deflating balloon.

  ‘It’s ironic we’re talking about money, Richard,’ said Jamie. ‘Because I think the penny has just dropped.’

  Gareth turned towards a man he had trusted throughout, the gun in his hand turning with him.

  ‘Richard?’

  ‘That’s right, Einstein,’ Jamie chuckled. ‘The ransom is for four million. Which means the Godfather over there takes a cool three million quid.’

  Richard didn’t move. He stared back at Gareth, his face a mask.

  Jamie was still enjoying his moment. ‘You know, I even doubt there’s a Leighton.’

  Gareth narrowed his eyes, his muscles clenching, ready to spring. ‘Richard!’

  A second later the birds were shaken from their branches by the first of two gunshots.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Trevor Jenkins was in his office for the last time. That much was certain. Somewhere along the line he had miscalculated badly. The raised voice and overt threats in the phone call he had just concluded still rang in his ear. The gang had not showed up at the diesel engine factory. ‘Jamie’s’ phone was switched off and the address where the girl was supposed to be located along with Dan had proved to be empty.

  The answer was obvious: ‘Jamie’ was working for someone else.

  He knew who that someone else was, too: the same person that had just chewed his ear off for ten minutes. Jenkins had long harboured suspicions, but the caller had hinted at information he could only have got from ‘Jamie’. He was about to be elbowed from the deal; or worse, if he didn’t act fast.

  He dialled a new number, praying that his luck would hold. It did. The voice on the other end of the phone sounded pumped up with anticipation. ‘Want to speak to the Squad Leader?’ the voice asked him.

  ‘No need,’ Jenkins said, knowing that the squad leader would have been tipped off already about the change in ‘arrangements’. ‘You’ll do.’

  Mr. Jenkins Senior had been a regular infantry soldier who never advanced beyond the rank of lance corporal, and his outlook on life had always been correspondingly pragmatic. Many times during his childhood his father had advised: ‘Don’t wait for trouble to visit you; get out there and find it first.’

  ‘I’m having a job finding the new target location on a map. Can
you just confirm the postcode or something?’ The voice on the other end of the phone laughed and told him what he needed to know. Jenkins cut the call, relieved, as he pieced together in his mind what must have happened.

  ‘Jamie’ had now reported in to his real paymaster with the correct address of the safe house. Giving a false location to Jenkins first was all a ploy on ‘Jamie’s’ part to make sure he did not get caught in any crossfire, whilst also guaranteeing himself enough time for a getaway. In the resulting confusion no one had forewarned any of the ordinary squad members not to talk to Trevor Jenkins about operational details; after all, as far as they were concerned Jenkins was still the man at the helm.

  It was an unexpected loophole, but one that would not stay open for long.

  Jenkins reached for his coat and turned to the filing cabinet; after rummaging around in the bottom drawer he pulled out a revolver and a small white cardboard box. These he stuffed into the deep pockets of his overcoat.

  His P.A. looked up as Jenkins marched across the main office.

  ‘Where shall I say you are should anyone want you?’ Jake called after his boss.

  Trevor Jenkins didn’t break stride, nor look back. He could feel the noose tightening around his throat already.

  ‘Tell them I’ve gone out to find it first,’ he muttered.

  Chapter Thirty

  Despite the close proximity of the housing estate, no one would raise an eyebrow at the sound of a gunshot in the countryside. There was a water-filled ditch to the right of the stationary Astra, just behind a small fallen tree: the weight of the second body would easily submerge the first; after which he could probably roll the old trunk down on top of both. Sure, someone would eventually have a nasty shock walking the dog, but by that time the killer wouldn’t even be in the same country or using the same name.

  Catching his breath in the passenger seat, Richard Simmons checked the dashboard clock and saw he’d left Fiona at home for nearly forty minutes. How much longer after the hour would she wait before she started to panic? Not long, he knew, not in her state of mind. That gave him twenty-five minutes tops to finish up here and go pick up the girl from the safe house. In the backseat he could see his laptop. He smiled to himself. Had those two idiots really believed any of the redirected money would find its way into their pockets?