Killer Diamonds

by Rebecca Chance

  He readjusted his mask, fastening it across his face once more; the wind whipping across the plateau was especially painful with the sweat drying on his cheeks.

  Time to retrieve my goodies, now Mr Clean’s out of the picture for good, he thought. Behind the mask his smile was radiant now, positively angelic: his lips slightly parted, his eyes dazzling. As he turned and began to carefully clamber down the narrow, rocky trail they had followed from their base camp up to the mountain in search of privacy for their sensitive conversation, he found himself humming a cheerful tune:

  ‘He’ll be coming down the mountain when he comes, he’ll be coming down the mountain when he comes. . .’

  It took him a few moments to realize not only why that particular song had popped into his head, but that he had unconsciously modified the words; when he did, the smile of pleasure behind his face mask was positively devilish. He was on top of the world, literally and figuratively.

  Angel’s plan, when he’d embarked on this expedition, had never been to kill Tor. That had been mere collateral damage – entirely Tor’s own fault for poking his nose in where he didn’t belong. However, once Angel had concluded that he would be obliged to push Tor off a cliff, there was absolutely no task in life that he could have enjoyed more. He would freely admit that watching Tor’s unconscious body tip over the icy edge and slide away down the steep, rock-strewn slope had been one of the most pleasurable experiences of his life so far.

  Who’s best at outdoor games now, Tor? he thought happily It’s all very well to train by pulling tyres around all day long on ropes like some stupid macho man, but those big muscles didn’t help you in the end, did they?

  To be fair, though, Angel had to acknowledge that he had had a significant advantage. Tor had not realized until the very last moments that he was truly fighting for his life.

  What a fool, Angel reflected. Really, what a total idiot. Didn’t he realize how vitally important this was to me?

  But then, Angel too had been a fool, he had to acknowledge. He had been both complacent and smug. He had underestimated his opponent, failed to realize that Tor had become suspicious of Angel’s motives for joining the charity expedition. It had been such a stroke of luck that this was the area to which the trek was headed that perhaps Angel had been too careless, too buoyed up by his good fortune.

  Six weeks earlier, the news had reached Angel in London that the prop plane carrying a shipment of pure cocaine in which Angel had invested a great deal of money had gone missing shortly after taking off from a discreetly located Bolivian airstrip. No one knew what had caused the plane to crash onto an Andean peak, where it had eventually been located via GPS tracking. Its pilot and co-pilot had probably died on impact; there had been no radio contact from them. Satellite images showed, however, that the body of the aircraft was intact, and since the peak was very high and no one was looking for the plane but the members of the syndicate who had organized the flight, the neatly wrapped bricks of pure cocaine would, hopefully, be safe for a little while, until plans could be made for their retrieval.

  The original intention had been for the plane to land and unload its precious cargo on the small island of Curasao, just off the Venezuelan coast. There the bricks of cocaine would be packed into a shipping container, boxed up with a large quantity of loose ground coffee to confuse any sniffer dogs, and loaded onto a cargo ship bound for Liverpool. It was a familiar route. Certain authorities at both the airstrip and port of Curasao were used to turning a blind eye to this particular traffic, and although Liverpool could be more problematic, the sheer volume of shipping containers travelling through its docks meant that the risk of detection was fairly minimal.

  Unfortunately, the plane crash had derailed these well-laid plans. It was impossible to carry the coke bricks overland back to the airstrip to start again with another plane; the route was far too dangerous, as most of it lay in a rival syndicate’s territory. Angel, who had invested in these shipments successfully in the past, had a great deal at stake with this one. The plan was for him to turn over the entire stack of coke to the casino with which he had huge gambling debts: they would pay off the other investors, cover the full balance of Angel’s debts, and give him a credit balance for many future hands of blackjack and poker.

  So Angel had decided that he was going to bring back the cocaine himself. He had come up with the ideal solution: he would tag on to Tor’s upcoming expedition to the area, providing him with the perfect cover to retrieve the precious goods. There was so much equipment in the camp that, with judicious bribes to a couple of expedition staff, Angel could easily conceal all the coke in extra duffle bags labelled with his name. Camouflaged as climbing gear, the bags would be shipped back to the UK along with everything else at the end of the trek. Customs at either end were bound to wave it all through; what could be more respectable than an expedition for a cancer charity in which Prince Toby of Great Britain and the internationally famous action star Missy Jackson were participating?

  Unfortunately, Tor had turned out not to be quite as oblivious to Angel’s manoeuvres as Angel had assumed he would be. Angel had calculated that Tor would be completely absorbed by organizing the various races and climbs – but Tor must have had some brains to go with all that brawn. Angel’s frequent sorties from their various camps, to liaise with the Bolivian locals in the pay of the drug barons who had located the crashed plane, had not gone unnoticed.

  It had been such a simple and effective strategy! The Bolivians had unloaded the coke from the plane onto a mule train, and, knowing the mountains extremely well, tracked the progress of Tor’s expedition from a safe distance, contacting Angel every day to give the GPS of the latest rendezvous point. Angel had found a daily opportunity to sneak away, carrying the bricks of coke surreptitiously back to camp and concealing them among his climbing gear.

  Clearly, however, Angel had been so flushed with success that he had grown sloppy. In the first few days he had been extremely careful to ensure no one saw him leaving camp, but after that he must have let down his guard enough for Tor’s suspicions to be aroused. Tor had followed Angel yesterday and seen him with the Bolivian mule handlers, sliding four bricks into his backpack. And Tor was clearly a better actor than Angel would have thought possible, because he had said not a word yesterday. Instead, biding his time, he had waited until Angel sneaked out of camp today, followed him once again and intercepted him on his way to meet the mule train.

  Practically the first words out of Tor’s mouth had been concern for the reputation of his expedition. He couldn’t let it be tarnished by a drug-smuggling scandal – not just for the sake of the charities he supported, but for his long-term sponsors, who would withdraw funding the second a story like this broke in the press. He had, therefore, chosen to lead Angel to a secluded place in order to confront him, a high plateau where they could be sure they would not be overheard by any expedition member.

  And that was Tor’s big mistake, Angel thought now, a smile playing around his full, rosy lips. He gave me a peak to push him off. Not only that – nobody saw the two of us together! I can sneak back into camp and eventually act as worried as everyone else when we all begin to realize that Tor’s gone missing.

  I mustn’t be the first person to notice. That would be much too suspicious. No, I’ll wait till several other people are realizing that he isn’t around, and get in on the act then.

  Now he was humming ‘Come Fly with Me’, the Sinatra song. The lyrics about floating down to Peru were perfect.

  ‘Who knows?’ he speculated aloud. ‘Maybe that’s where Tor ended up! It’s a long way down that mountain, he might have bounced off a couple of peaks and landed in Peru . . . “Once I get you up there, Where the air is rarefied, We’ll just glide, Starry-eyed . . .” Until I push you off, of course! Oh well, all good things must come to an end . . . That’s a song too, of course.’

  The steep descent needed to be negotiated carefully. Angel’s mountaineering boots gripped well, his
natural athleticism standing him in good stead as he worked his way down, the face mask pulled back so he could see the crevices his gloved fingers needed to locate and dig into. By the time his feet were back on solid, if icy, ground, he was humming ‘Skyfall’.

  Music to throw people off mountains to! he thought happily. I’ll make a playlist when I get home in memory of dear departed Tor . . . Hmm, what else could I put on it?

  He mulled the question over on his hike to the location where the mule team was holed up. By the time he reached the clearing, he had assembled a list of songs: ‘Free Falling’ by Tom Petty, ‘Wind Beneath My Wings’ by Bette Midler, ‘Slip Slidin’ Away’ by Paul Simon, and ‘Push It’ by Salt-n- Pepa. Angel had never killed anyone before, and he definitely felt that the event deserved some form of commemoration.

  And not just the playlist. I really should have some sort of private Goodbye Tor ceremony every year on this date – throw something off a hilltop in commemoration, while drinking champagne. . .

  He was to meet the mule team at the same site where they’d been the day before: a cave twenty minutes’ hike from base camp, tucked away in a fold of the mountain, extremely discreet. In the interests of security, they hadn’t even lit a camp fire, lest the smoke be spotted by a curious member of the trek. So Angel had no advance notice that once he rounded the clearing, the entrance to the cave gaping dark and dank before him, he would find it empty.

  His heart stopped for a moment. This had never happened before. The muleteers had always been one hundred per cent reliable. What could possibly have gone wrong?

  Tor! he thought immediately. Tor’s behind this somehow! That bastard got to them first and scared them off! Although it was just possible that a rival drugs syndicate had discovered the location of the mule train and relieved them of their cargo at gunpoint, it was simply too much of a coincidence that Tor had just confronted Angel about the existence of the cocaine bricks, and now the rest of them had disappeared.

  Words Tor had yelled at him on the mountain plateau came back to Angel with heightened significance.

  ‘This stops now!’ Tor had shouted. ‘Trust me, I’m putting an end to it today! It is over!’

  Clearly, Tor had meant this more literally than Angel had realized. He had already banished the muleteers, doubtless with dire threats. Angel slipped off his glove, pulled out his phone and sent off a text telling them to come back, but he doubted he’d get a response.

  God damn him! he thought furiously, his good mood completely dissipated. That fucking bastard! He had already retrieved most of the coke, but there had been about fifteen more bricks to take back to camp, and he needed every single one of them.

  He’d have to get in touch with the Bolivian contact who had organized the muleteers, and tell him to send them back; and he could scarcely do that by texting him that he’d just shoved his expedition leader off a cliff. So he’d have to concoct some ridiculous story that would be plausible enough to convince the guy. This would be difficult in itself, because he would be furious that Angel had been busted by another expedition member. Yes, his contacts would want to complete the deal, get their product to market; but they were understandably risk-averse. Angel would really have to rack his brains to come up with something that would regain their trust.

  Livid, he kicked the wall of the cave so hard that if he hadn’t been wearing extremely solid and well-made climbing boots, he would certainly have broken a toe. All thoughts of music to throw people off mountains to were forgotten; Angel’s only idea, as he stamped back to camp, cursing with every breath, was that he bitterly regretted not waiting until Tor regained consciousness before kicking and rolling him off the mountain top. He wished Tor had felt every bump, every bone-breaking bounce off the rocks, the terror of the final, fatal impact waiting for him that would pound his body into, hopefully, an unrecognizable, pulpy mess.

  Bastard! Damn fucking interfering bastard! I suppose it’s too much to hope that he woke up halfway down that gorge, damn him, and realized exactly what was happening. . .

  Angel was still simmering with resentment by the time he clambered down the final descent and saw the tents of the base camp, pitched in the lee of a sheltered valley. One goal of this trek was to take the participants on various climbs, reaching personal bests for which each member was individually sponsored; that day Prince Toby and Missy, together with four of the army veterans, were making an ascent, guided by Tor’s highly trained team. Tor himself, naturally had been supposed to lead it, which was why Angel had felt so safe in absenting himself from the camp and slipping away in the opposite direction from the climb. With very little fixed-rope climbing experience, he wasn’t expected to complete summits with the rest of them.

  No one had returned yet from the day’s activities, and the camp was quiet. Angel crossed swiftly to his tent, but even as he reached it, Joao, one of the guides Angel had been bribing to overlook the growing stash of coke in his tent, came over to intercept him, his face tense and set.

  ‘Angel,’ he started, indicating with his head that they should walk back, away from the pitched tents. You never knew who was inside one, able to hear what you were saying. They navigated back over the pegs and guy ropes to a safe distance before Joao, biting his lip, blurted out: ‘Tor went through your stuff when you were having breakfast. I think he took – you know. He carried out a couple of big bags. I didn’t get a chance to tell you until now – he was watching you, and I just didn’t think it was safe to talk – I didn’t want him to know I knew what was going on—’

  What? Fuck!

  Angel dashed towards his tent, heart pounding. He had to hop, skip and jump over the guy ropes, and as he got there he tripped over a tent peg, bashing into it with the same foot that he’d kicked against the cave wall. This time he did break his toe, but he would only notice that hours later. Then and there, the shock of João’s information was overwhelming, all he could think about. He skidded into the tent, fell to his knees in front of his pile of gear and knew immediately that João had been right. Tor had, in one stroke, removed every single brick of coke Angel had painstakingly accumulated during the last few days.

  João came in after him, shaking his head as he took in the sight.

  ‘I couldn’t do anything,’ he said, sotto voce.

  ‘Did you see where he went with it?’ Angel hissed, turning on João, his face white and his eyes glittering with utter menace.

  João gulped. ‘Away,’ he said unhappily. ‘Like, away from camp. And then he came back twenty minutes later and there was nothing in the bags.’

  ‘And you didn’t come and tell me?’ Angel’s voice was like a knife now.

  ‘I tried! You were with Prince Toby and Missy and you practically told me to fuck off! And then you sneaked away and I was right over on the other side of camp, so I couldn’t get to you in time!’ João said. ‘I thought Tor was with the climbing group, but I just heard he told them to go ahead without him . . .’ He trailed off, backing away defensively from Angel, who looked more like a cornered animal than a human being at that moment, crouching down, teeth bared, eyes wild.

  Angel had to acknowledge that what João said was true: João had indeed attempted to lean over and talk to him, and been abruptly told to come back later. Angel had not wanted bothersome interruptions as he sat forking up breakfast stew in a cosy threesome with the prince and Missy, a delightful continuation of the cosy threesome they had enjoyed the night before. Toby had proved disappointingly resistant to any direct physical contact with Angel’s genitalia, but there had been more than enough variety to keep the three of them entertained, even with the constrictions of not being able to strip fully because of the icy temperature. The diesel space heater was effective, but outside of the high-tech Rab sleeping bags, which had cost six hundred pounds apiece, it was decidedly chilly, and the participants had only bared the parts of their body that were strictly necessary. Angel and Missy were already planning a rerun, hopefully with royal participation, in the
much more congenial surroundings of the hotel in La Paz when they returned there at the end of the expedition.

  But even without getting naked, it had been tremendous fun. Missy didn’t suck cock with the Dyson-like ability of Nicole, but her rimming technique had been absolutely superb. The expression on Toby’s face had been priceless as she made him shoot his load, to his own surprise, much sooner than he had expected, with an unexpected couple of nicely placed fingers up his arse. And if Angel hadn’t actually managed to touch Toby’s cock or have Toby touch his, he had at least managed to position himself so that he got royal sperm all over his face. Which was certainly, as he had joked to Missy afterwards, one to tell the grandchildren.

  Just a few hours ago, he reflected bitterly everything had been so perfect! Angel and Missy had been plotting for days to seduce Toby into Missy’s tent for some unorthodox fun, and had finally managed it, to their great satisfaction. Rumours about Toby’s propensity for group sex had definitely been proved correct. He had barely needed any encouragement at all to double-team a very satisfied Missy. Angel hadn’t actually had ‘threesome with a royal’ on his bucket list, but it was nice to know that he could add it on and then smugly cross it off.

  It had all been going so well! Even if Nicole were screwing him on the Silantra and Lil’ Biscuit deal, which she surely was – he’d have scored a little extra in her place, too – the amount she had told him was his fifty-fifty cut was a nicely hefty sum. He had been about to rake it in. He had managed to convince his sharp-eyed grandmother that he had thoroughly turned over a new leaf, and that the radiation therapy had treated his cancer effectively; he’d assured Vivienne not only that he had kept it a secret from Christine, but that his fertility had not been compromised.

  I’ll have to get married the day after I get back to London, just to get my hands on that money from Viv! How else am I going to settle my damn gambling debts?