Soft Target ss-2

by Stephen Leather

‘We want a chat,’ said the man with the knife.

  ‘What about?’ said Hendrickson. He took another step back. ‘This isn’t m-m-my house,’ he stammered. He pointed at Angie, who was still sobbing, her forehead resting on her arms. ‘I’m just visiting. I’m not her husband.’

  ‘No,’ said a voice to his left. A third man walked out of the sitting room. He was tall with receding hair and, like the other big man, he was holding a knife. Its blade glinted under the hall light. The man smiled – a cruel smile, the smile of a man who enjoyed inflicting pain. ‘I am,’ he said.

  It took less than five minutes for Larry Hendrickson to tell Kerr everything he knew about Tony Nelson. There had been no need to torture him, or even to hurt him, but Kerr had done it anyway and taken pleasure in it. Wates and Anderson had taken him down to the wine cellar and tied him to a chair while Kerr had taken Angie up to the bedroom. Angie had cried and kept repeating that she was sorry, but it didn’t mean much when she’d hired a hitman to murder him.

  Kerr had taken her to the bedroom, made her undress and raped her on their king-sized bed. She didn’t protest and she didn’t struggle. He swore at her when he came and slapped her face. Then he used two Kenzo ties to bind her wrists and ankles and pulled the phone out of its socket. She lay on her side, sobbing into a pillow.

  He showered, changed into a fresh polo shirt and khaki chinos, then went downstairs. He walked through the kitchen to the garage and took a pair of bolt-cutters before he headed down to the basement. Kerr could smell the acrid tang of urine as he walked down the wooden steps. Hendrickson had wet himself.

  ‘This is a mistake,’ quavered Hendrickson.

  ‘Couldn’t agree with you more, Larry,’ said Kerr, swinging the bolt-cutters.

  ‘I don’t know what she told you, but it was all her idea,’ said Hendrickson.

  ‘My wife, you mean?’ asked Kerr.

  ‘Please—’ said Hendrickson.

  ‘Please what? Please don’t hurt me? Please don’t kill me?’

  ‘Look, I’ve got money—’

  ‘Not as much as I have, Larry.’ Kerr slapped the bolt-cutters in the palm of his hand. ‘This Nelson, how did you get in touch with him?’

  ‘I phoned him.’

  ‘I meant the first time. I’m assuming you didn’t get his name from the Yellow Pages.’

  ‘A friend of a friend. He knows people, he said he’d put the word out, and Nelson got in touch.’

  ‘What’s he look like?’

  ‘Dark brown hair, just under six foot. He looks . . .’ Hendrickson struggled to find the right word. ‘ . . . normal,’ he said eventually. ‘He looks like everyone else.’

  ‘What does he drive?’

  ‘A Volvo. A grey Volvo.’

  ‘I don’t suppose you know the number?’

  Hendrickson shook his head.

  ‘Because it’ll save you a toe if you do.’

  Hendrickson started to plead but Kerr knelt down next to the chair. He rolled up Hendrickson’s left trouser leg. ‘Nice material,’ said Kerr. ‘Armani?’

  ‘I don’t know, please, God, I don’t know!’ screamed Hendrickson.

  ‘Looks like Armani,’ said Kerr.

  ‘The number of his car. I don’t know the number of his car. Why would I know the number of his car, for God’s sake?’

  Kerr slipped the bolt-cutting blades on either side of the little toe on Hendrickson’s left foot. Hendrickson struggled but his ankle and knee were tied to the chair. He rocked the chair backwards and forwards but Wates grabbed his shoulders to hold him still.

  Kerr pressed hard on the handles of the bolt-cutters and Hendrickson screamed as the blades bit into his flesh. Kerr felt resistance as the blades hit the bone but he forced the handles together and the toe fell to the floor. Hendrickson’s screams went up an octave. Kerr straightened up, grinning. Anderson had turned away but Wates was grinning as widely as Kerr, relishing Hendrickson’s shrieks. The wine cellar was soundproofed and the nearest neighbour was a hundred yards away so there was no possibility that anyone would hear what was going on.

  Gradually Hendrickson’s screams subsided. He was breathing heavily, and his eyes glazed over. Kerr realised he was going into shock. ‘Get him some water,’ he said to Anderson, who hurried up the stairs.

  ‘How did you meet my wife?’ he asked.

  Hendrickson coughed. ‘The gym,’ he said.

  ‘What – you just walked up and asked if she wanted her husband dead?’

  Hendrickson shook his head. Kerr grabbed his hair. ‘Don’t you pass out on me, you shit,’ he said.

  When Anderson returned with the water he put the glass to Hendrickson’s lips and he gulped the water. ‘Thank you,’ he gasped.

  ‘When was the last time you saw Nelson?’

  ‘Last Friday.’

  ‘And he killed your business partner?’

  Hendrickson nodded.

  ‘How much did you pay him?’

  ‘Thirty grand.’

  ‘How did he do it?’

  ‘Shot him and buried him in the New Forest.’

  ‘Nice,’ said Kerr. ‘And you thought he could do the same to me, did you?’

  ‘That’s not what—’

  ‘You calling me a liar, Larry?’

  ‘It’s not that – I just gave her his phone number.’

  ‘What did I ever do to you? Did I ever cause you any grief? Did I run over your cat? Because if I did, I’d rather you told me now.’

  ‘I just gave her his number, that’s all.’

  Kerr opened his eyes wide. ‘Oh, that’s all right, then. All you did was give my wife the phone number of a contract killer. It’s all been a misunderstanding, then.’

  ‘Look, please, there’s something you need to know—’

  ‘I think I have the gist,’ said Kerr, slapping the bolt-cutters against his palm.

  ‘There’s something else,’ said Hendrickson. ‘If I tell you, will you let me go?’

  ‘I don’t think there’s anything else I need to know. My darling wife has told me everything.’

  ‘No, this Nelson, he’s up to something. That’s why I called Angie. He’s trying to stitch me up.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘If I tell you, will you let me go?’

  ‘If you don’t, I’ll start work on your hands,’ said Kerr.

  ‘I don’t want to die,’ said Hendrickson.

  ‘No one wants to die,’ said Kerr. ‘So talk.’

  Hendrickson looked at Anderson.

  ‘Don’t look at him, Larry, look at me. What about this Nelson guy?’

  ‘He’s been using Roger’s email address to get information about the company.’

  ‘Who’s Roger?’

  ‘My partner. The guy I wanted out of the way.’

  Kerr frowned. ‘You’re not making any sense. This Roger guy is dead?’

  Hendrickson nodded. ‘Nelson showed me photographs. Polaroids.’

  ‘Of what?’

  ‘Of Roger. Dead.’

  ‘But you didn’t see the body?’ asked Kerr, thoughtfully.

  ‘I didn’t want to be there. I just wanted him out of the way.’

  ‘So Nelson did the dirty and showed you Polaroids and you gave him the cash?’

  ‘Yes. But a couple of days later someone logged on to our company website using Roger’s password. And sent an email about the company accounts.’

  ‘And you think it was Nelson?’

  ‘It couldn’t be anyone else. That’s why I was trying to get hold of Angie. To warn her about Nelson.’

  Kerr considered what Hendrickson had said.

  ‘So, can I go?’ said Hendrickson. ‘Please. I’m sorry about what happened, but all I did was give your wife a number.’

  Kerr ignored him. Nelson must be an amateur to start using a victim’s email. A professional would do the job he’d been paid for, then vanish. Messing around with emails was a risk, and a true professional wouldn’t take risks. Kerr was get
ting a bad feeling about the mysterious Tony Nelson.

  ‘I just want to go home,’ pleaded Hendrickson.

  ‘You’re starting to annoy me now, Larry,’ said Kerr.

  Hendrickson began to cry and the damp patch around his groin darkened.

  ‘Christ, I hate it when they piss themselves,’ said Kerr.

  He took off four of Hendrickson’s toes and both his thumbs before he got bored with the torture. Hendrickson had stopped screaming and was passing in and out of consciousness. Kerr dropped the bolt-cutters on the floor and stood back. He nodded at Wates, who pulled a large plastic bag over Hendrickson’s head and used electrical tape to seal it round his neck. Hendrickson struggled for a couple of minutes, then went still.

  Kerr went upstairs to the bedroom. Angie was still lying on the bed, crying. Kerr untied her ankles and stroked her hair. ‘Stop crying,’ he said.

  Angie took a ragged breath.

  Kerr helped her sit up. ‘Come on, there’s something I want you to see,’ he said. ‘In the wine cellar.’

  Shepherd phoned Hargrove just before midnight and explained that he’d had no luck in contacting Angie Kerr. Every time he called it went straight through to voicemail, which meant that her phone was switched off so his number wouldn’t show up as a missed call. He’d left one message, short and to the point, asking her to call him, but she hadn’t got back to him.

  He went to bed and lay awake for most of the night. He kept thinking about Sue, replaying her accident. He missed her smell, her touch. He missed arguing with her and making up. He missed being inside her and holding her as she gasped. As dawn broke he went downstairs and poured himself a large measure of Jameson’s, then tipped it down the sink. Alcohol wasn’t going to solve anything.

  He changed into a pair of faded army shorts and a tattered T-shirt, pulled on two pairs of wool socks and the black army boots, then hefted the brick-filled canvas rucksack on to his shoulders. He ran for the best part of an hour around the streets of Ealing, his boots thudding on the pavements, the rucksack straps chafing his shoulders, taking a perverse pleasure in the pain. By the time he was back home he was close to exhaustion. He took off the boots and socks and examined his feet. No blisters.

  He showered, then changed into jeans and a black pullover and walked down to the local shops. He bought copies of the Daily Mail, the Daily Telegraph and the Sun and, on a whim, a ticket for that night’s lottery draw, letting the machine choose his numbers. He picked up a carton of milk and two freshly baked croissants from the delicatessen, then headed home.

  He made himself a cup of coffee and took it with the croissants into the garden. There was a wooden table with two bench seats and he sat down. He and Sue had built the table and seats from a kit they’d bought at their local garden centre. The instructions had been in some Oriental language and half the bolts were missing. Shepherd broke one of the croissants into small pieces. Sue had been seven months pregnant and she’d never looked sexier as she’d brushed her hair out of her eyes and laughed at his D-I-Y attempts. He looked up at the rear of the house. He’d stripped and repainted all the bedroom windows while Sue had done the ones on the ground floor. She’d changed the layout of the garden, putting in two rockeries, a couple of flowerbeds and a dozen fruit trees. The kitchen was her design too, and so were the two bathrooms. She had put her heart and soul into the house and there was no way he could bring himself to sell it. In time, maybe, but not yet.

  He finished the croissants and coffee and carried his empty mug back into the house. He looked at his watch. Almost midday. Miss Malcolm had assured him that a girl from the agency would drop in before noon. He had planned to interview the girl, then drive to Hereford to spend the weekend with Liam. While he was up in his bedroom packing an overnight case the doorbell rang.

  The girl standing on the doorstep barely came up to his chest, had black hair and wore no makeup. She smiled up at him. ‘Mr Shepherd?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I am Katra. The agency said I was to come and see you.’ She was holding a similar manila envelope to the one Halina had shown him. ‘I hope now is not an inconvenient time for me to call.’ She said each word slowly and precisely, as if she had memorised the sentence, and nodded when she’d finished.

  ‘Come on in,’ he said, and held the door open for her. She was wearing a green parka with a fur-lined hood, sand-coloured cargo pants and scuffed Timberland boots. He showed her into the kitchen. ‘Tea or coffee?’

  ‘Just water,’ she said. ‘Please.’

  Shepherd gave her a glass of tap water and opened the envelope. There was a copy of her agency application, which he scanned. She was twenty-two, although she looked less. She had left school at sixteen and had only worked in a shoe factory. There was a letter on headed notepaper from a police inspector in Slovenia saying that Katra did not have a criminal record. Shepherd frowned. Miss Malcolm hadn’t mentioned she was sending a Slovenian – in fact, she had left him with the impression that she didn’t trust them.

  ‘You’ve not worked as an au pair before?’ he asked.

  ‘I have five younger brothers,’ she said.

  ‘Five?’

  ‘Five. The youngest is Rufin and he is twelve and can take care of himself now so my father says I can come to England. I want to study English. And work.’

  ‘You helped raise your brothers, is that it?’

  ‘My mother died when Rufin was born. My father worked in a steel mill so I had to take care of them all.’

  Shepherd did the maths in his head. ‘You were ten when she died?’

  ‘She was bleeding and the hospital didn’t have enough of her type of blood.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘I was very sad but it was a long time ago.’

  ‘And your father never remarried?’

  ‘He said he never wanted another wife, that no one could take her place. I cooked and cleaned and took care of them when they were sick. It wasn’t too difficult. I had aunts to help me sometimes and the teachers at school did what they could.’

  ‘Your father was lucky to have a daughter like you.’

  Katra grinned. ‘He knows that. He tells me all the time that I’m just like my mother.’

  ‘Your English is good but it says here you left school at sixteen.’

  ‘I studied at home. One of the teachers gave me some books and sometimes she would come to the house to help me practise.’

  ‘And then you worked at a shoe factory?’ There was a reference letter from the manager, who said that Katra had been a diligent worker and that after six months he had promoted her from the production line to the quality-control department.

  ‘My father had an accident at the steel mill so I went to work.’

  ‘You were working and taking care of your family?’

  ‘The boys were older so they helped. It wasn’t so hard.’ She sipped her water.

  ‘Miss Malcolm explained my situation?’

  ‘She said you are a widower and you have a young son.’

  Widower. It was the first time Shepherd had heard himself described like that. It sounded Victorian, as if he should have been wearing a frock coat and top hat. But it was what he was. A man whose wife had died.

  ‘Where is your boy?’ asked Katra.

  ‘Liam is with his grandparents. I’m on my way to see him now. I need someone who can take him to and from school. You can drive, right?’

  ‘My father taught me. I have a licence.’

  ‘An international licence?’

  Katra nodded.

  ‘And I need someone to do laundry, clean the house and cook.’

  ‘You need a wife,’ she said.

  At first Shepherd thought she was being funny or sarcastic, then realised she was not, just factual. It was exactly what he needed. He needed Sue. ‘You’re right,’ he said.

  ‘I can take care of you both,’ she said. ‘I cook good.’

  ‘I bet you do,’ he said. He glanced at his watch. ‘Look
, what are you doing today?’

  ‘I come to see you. Then Miss Malcolm said I should call her. That is all I do today.’

  ‘Where are you staying?’

  ‘I share a room in a house in Battersea,’ she said. ‘Some Slovenian girls who have been here for a year are letting me stay with them until I have a job. One hundred pounds a week. That’s good, no?’

  It seemed expensive to Shepherd, but he smiled and said that it sounded like a good deal. ‘Why don’t you come with me? We’ll go and see Liam.’

  She beamed up at him. ‘I have the job?’

  Shepherd looked at her. His life often depended on his ability to read people, and he trusted his instincts. Katra seemed open, honest and without guile. ‘Let’s see how you get on with my son first.’

  Katra grabbed him around the waist and hugged him, then released him and apologised. ‘I’m sorry, it’s just that I’m so happy.’

  Shepherd couldn’t stop a grin.‘Let’s see what Liam thinks,’ he said. ‘He’ll be spending more time with you than I will.’ He picked up his car keys and tossed them to her. ‘You can drive. It’ll give me a chance to see how you handle the car.’

  ‘Where are we going?’ she asked.

  ‘Hereford. It’s near Wales. Over to the west.’

  She frowned. ‘Do I need a visa? I have my passport but my visa is for the United Kingdom only.’

  Shepherd laughed. ‘No, love, you don’t need a visa for Wales.’

  He told her to get the car started while he fetched his bag. As he went into the bedroom he caught sight of himself in the mirror. He was smiling, and felt guilty suddenly, as if he had been disloyal in some way to Sue. He sighed. ‘She’ll be good for Liam, love,’ he whispered. ‘She’ll make him laugh. She might even bring some happiness back into the house. God knows, we could do with some.’ He picked up his overnight bag, then went downstairs and locked up.

  The engine was running as he climbed into the CRV. Katra was already wearing her seatbelt. He fastened his. ‘Let’s go then,’ he said. ‘You can tell me the story of your life as you drive.’

  Wates rolled Hendrickson’s body over on the plastic sheeting. Kerr pointed to a severed toe. ‘You’ve missed a bit, lads,’ he said.

  Anderson picked it up, tossed it next to the body and grimaced. ‘What’s the story, boss?’ he asked.