I didn’t want to go back to the town house so I moved into the small apartment block we kept off Westgate Road. There were eight flats above an underground car park but no one lived there. We used them for clandestine meetings or to house visitors. Occasionally I stayed there when I was tired of hotels. The most important thing going for the site was security. There were toughened glass doors out front and a gated underground car park with an entry code that prevented anyone else getting in. I figured I was as safe here as anywhere.
I asked Palmer to show up early, but I made sure Kinane was there at the same time. I didn’t want to be left on my own with either of them. Not until we had discovered the source of our leak. When Kinane went to the door to let Sharp in, I turned to Palmer, ‘what did you find out from those tracking devices of yours?’
He looked sheepish, ‘Nothing he said. I got Robbie to pore over everyone’s movements and there’s nothing that looks out of character.’
‘Fat lot of use they turned out to be then.’
‘Give them time,’ he told me.
‘That’s the one thing we haven’t got.’
Sharp walked in carrying a case and we watched silently as he set up a laptop and took a memory stick from his pocket. It seemed to take an eternity to fire up and we waited impatiently. Eventually he tapped the keyboard and an image popped up.
‘Don’t ask me how I got this,’ Sharp said, but I didn’t care how he got it. I just wanted to see the footage. ‘I have to return it in an hour. There wasn’t time to even copy it,’ he looked stressed, ‘an hour, tops.’
‘Better get on with it then,’ I said and he hit ‘play’.
‘What you can see is from the overhead camera in the bar,’ he began, as the black and white, grainy image gave us a view of the whole pub. We could see the bar down the left-hand side of the screen, a girl and a guy in their twenties were serving behind it. The tables in front of it were largely unoccupied. It looked like there were four other people in the bar; a couple in their early twenties, holding hands over the table, and the teenaged girl, the only one who had actually seen the hit man’s face, even though he apparently wore dark sunglasses and a baseball cap. She was dressed in an old, green Parka coat, and was reading one of her English set texts at the table, probably making her coffee last as long as it could so she didn’t have to pay for another one.
Tucked away in a corner by the window, was Danny, looking a whole lot healthier than he had done the last time I saw him. Even from a distance he looked pretty chilled, and why wouldn’t he be? He was expecting to see the bar owner to collect a little protection money just like he had done every month for more than a year. It was a routine job. I held my breath because, unlike Danny, I knew what was coming next.
It happened fast. One minute the hit man wasn’t even in the room, next thing he walked briskly through the door, the baseball cap, dark glasses and long coat making it impossible to get a clear look at him. He marched straight towards Danny. Our young’un seemed to have an instinct that the guy was all wrong because he immediately climbed out of his chair and headed straight for the open French windows at the back of the bar. Unlike me, he didn’t have enough time, because the guy sent to kill him quickly drew his gun and fired. The first shot missed Danny as he went into a stooping run. Instead it hit the large window behind him and shattered it. Somehow it stayed in place, but the impact of the bullet sent a spider’s web of cracks spiralling across its surface. Danny kept moving, desperately trying to reach the French windows but he didn’t make it. The second bullet hit him in the arm, spinning him round; the next two hit him in the back. He collided with a table and fell over it, then went head first into the nearest window, which gave way under his weight and broke completely, sending shards of glass tumbling down on him as he lay face down on the floor. The upended table knocked over a second table and a couple of chairs which may have made the difference between Danny being critically injured and dead. The hit man seemed to hesitate for a second, as he surveyed the scene in front of him. You could tell he was wondering whether he wanted to risk wasting valuable seconds clambering over the upturned tables and chairs to direct more shots into Danny’s motionless body, or should he instead trust his instincts, the ones that said nobody could take three bullets and survive.
There was no volume on the CCTV but I didn’t need it. The two young lovers leapt to their feet as the firing started, the girl’s mouth was open in a scream, her boyfriend hopping about next to her like he didn’t know where best to run to save their lives. The student girl was frozen, still clutching her book.
The hit man made up his mind. He turned and lowered his gun. He kept it held down by his side in his right hand, so he could quickly use it again if anybody tried to stop him from leaving. He moved towards the door at walking pace. The student had nowhere to go and he was bearing down on her. They both knew she was a witness, the only one close enough to get a good look at him. Maybe they each realised that the sensible thing for him to do was shoot her on his way out. It looked like he had the exact same idea for, as he drew close to her, he raised his gun, pointed it straight into her face, held it there for a moment that must have been a living agony for her, then he lowered it and walked away, disappearing off camera.
‘Fuck! Is that all we’ve got? I couldn’t have ID’d that guy if he worked for us.’
I couldn’t believe we’d managed to view the footage, yet seen absolutely nothing.
‘There’s a second camera,’ Sharp told us, producing another memory stick, ‘this one’s by the door. Because of the positioning it doesn’t give such a good view of the shooting, but we see more of the guy when he leaves.’
‘Show me,’ I ordered.
Sharp changed the image and cut to the second camera; the one that must have been positioned high up on the wall that was just behind the girl with the green coat.
Sharp was right; the angle of the camera didn’t give us such a good view of the attack. Some of it was obscured by the gun man himself, his tall frame blocking the sight of his hand pointing the gun at Danny, and my brother completely disappeared from view once he left his seat and ran towards the window. It was only when the shooting had stopped and the hit man made his decision not to finish Danny off that the recording got interesting. When he turned to head towards the door we got a far better look at the guy. Underneath the black raincoat there was a dark suit and a white shirt with no tie, black shoes and a black leather belt around his waist. He’d spent some money on those clothes. I could tell, even from this distance.
I watched once more as the gun man advanced on the young girl, then he raised the gun and held it there, pointing it at her face. It was then we noticed something we couldn’t have seen on the other camera. The gun man’s mouth opened, it formed a word and it closed again. We all saw it and didn’t need any volume to know exactly what he said to her.
It was Palmer who spoke, and he sounded like he didn’t quite believe it. ‘Did he just say “bang”?’
No one bothered to answer. We saw it as clear as day, just as we saw the man’s mouth transform into a deep, broad grin. He was smiling at the terrified girl, enjoying the moment. Then he laughed. He actually laughed.
‘Pause it,’ I said quickly, barely able to say the words. Sharp hit ‘pause’ and the image froze. The killer was still laughing, and the freeze frame caught him with his mouth open, teeth bared in a broad smile. Here was a man who was enjoying his day. I wanted to pick up my chair and hurl it at the screen.
‘Sharp, I want you to get the best image you can of this guy and I want it circulated.’ I wasn’t looking at Sharp. I was too busy staring at the face of the guy who had shot my brother. Apart from his smile and the sunglasses, the only clue we had to his identity was the slight greying of his dark brown hair down both sides. The rest was obscured by his cap and glasses. ‘I want every copper, bent or straight, and every grass in this city, and every other city in the country, to see this guy’s face. I want you to trawl all
the bars and nightclubs, whore houses and crack houses until you get me a name. I don’t want you to do anything else, just this, you hear?’
Sharp was looking at me like I was deranged. Perhaps I was, but I wanted to find the man who had shot my brother in the back and walked out of a bar laughing about it. Even Tommy Gladwell’s agonising end would have been a cake walk compared to what I was going to put this man through. All I had to do was find him. He was out there somewhere, hiding, in a country of sixty three million people, but that wasn’t my problem, it was Sharp’s.
‘Just find him, Sharp, and quick.’
Palmer was staring intently at the grainy image on the screen, not saying a word.
‘What?’ I asked.
‘I know him,’ said Palmer, and he looked up at me, ‘I know who he is.’
32
.......................
‘Who is this man?’ I asked Palmer, ‘and how do you know him? Don’t hold out on me.’
‘His name is Thomas Mason,’ said Palmer. ‘When I was with the regiment we got sent on all kinds of missions. In this country and abroad, stuff we are not allowed to talk about,’ he told me firmly, ‘even now. When you work in hostile countries you are on your own. Deniable.’
‘And you met this guy on one of those deniable missions?’
‘Not met, exactly, but I did see him,’ he admitted, ‘and I heard what he did.’
‘Go on.’ I urged him.
‘This was back in the nineties in Bosnia. He was supposed to assassinate a rogue Serb colonel who was planning another Srebenica. NATO didn’t want the embarrassment of another massacre and the Americans gave us the green light to take him out. Our brass gave the job to Thomas Mason. The hit was meant to prevent the loss of innocent lives, but it didn’t work out that way.’
‘Because?’
‘Mason flipped out.’
‘What happened?’
‘He killed everyone. I don’t know what happened – maybe he was discovered during the job – but Mason killed everybody. He left eleven dead bodies in the Colonel’s residence, including the chef, his driver, housekeeper, even his wife.’
‘Why?’
‘They never found out. Believe me, nobody really wanted to know. The whole thing was hushed up, buried and blamed on the Croats.’
‘And Mason?’
Palmer shrugged, ‘there’s only three ways to deal with a man when he does something like that; promote him out of harm’s way, quietly kill him or chuck him out.’
‘And they chucked him out?’
Palmer nodded, ‘I heard he went freelance.’
‘So he’s a fucking madman. Is that what you’re telling me?’
‘I don’t know. A lot of guys in that business are wired tight and sometimes they snap. It happens, that’s all I’m saying.’
I turned to Sharp. ‘Find this guy,’ I told him, and watched as my bent detective’s face fell.
Despite everything, the club opening was a huge success. We made sure Golden Boots brought his team mates along with him for Cachet’s first night party and they created just the kind of buzz we wanted, attracting the usual coterie of wannabe WAGs and hangers on. I did a deal with the biggest model agency in the area and hired two dozen stunning girls to pretend to be punters, making the place look like it was the first choice for the beautiful people. We paid half of them a bit extra to stand in a queue outside for an hour before we opened, so that anyone who walked by would think we were attracting the best-looking women in the north east to our doors on word of mouth alone. By the time we’d been open an hour the place was heaving.
Inside, our DJ had the place jumping. The dance floor was packed, the bars trading briskly and the pyrotechnics I’d invested in did the rest. The whole atmosphere was buzzing, helped by the four go-go dancers on the platforms raised high above the crowd. When the party was at its height, the huge glass-fronted lift rolled upwards, to the accompaniment of slow, atmospheric music and the animated chatter of the DJ. Once it reached the top, floodlights hit it and the doors slid open. An R&B star everybody in the room recognised stepped into it, accompanied by our best dancer dressed in a big red cape and a tiny gold bikini, over a sheer body stocking that was covered in what looked like diamonds. They sparkled brilliantly every time she moved. The R&B star offered her his arm. She took it and the lift slowly descended. The cheers from the crowd grew to a crescendo as the lift reached the ground, the doors slid open and they walked up a ramp until they were positioned right in the centre of the podium. She kissed him chastely and he, being an R&B star, took a fucking liberty and proceeded to rape-kiss her hard on the lips. The crowd went wild and our girl ignored the temptation to knee him right in the balls. I made a mental note to pay her extra for that. Motormouth grabbed the mic and shouted out a few inane phrases about burning up the dancefloor. As soon as he’d finished, he waved at the crowd and walked off. His few moments on the podium had set us back twenty grand.
The DJ started playing the opening bars to Snoop Dog’s ‘Sweat’ and the dancers went into their act, in perfect step, arms and legs pumping, transmitting their energy to the dancefloor where the crowd joined in. They shouted, they screamed and cheered and I knew we’d done it. This place would be the best club in Newcastle for years. People would travel for miles just to get in, and we could launder all the money in the world through its doors, but all I could think of at that moment was Our young’un and how much he would have enjoyed this.
I turned my back on the scene below me and got one of the waiters to bring me a drink. I took it back to my new office and closed the door behind me to blot out the din.
I visited Danny in hospital the next morning but he didn’t open his eyes. He’d been drifting in and out of consciousness but hadn’t spoken yet. I was just glad he was still alive.
I was driving back through the city when my phone vibrated into life, ‘Yes.’
‘It’s me,’ said Sharp.
‘What is it?’
‘I found him.’
I felt a surge of adrenalin, the first positive emotion in days, ‘you sure? That was quick.’
‘It’s what I do,’ he reminded me, ‘Palmer gave me a name, my contacts did the rest. The guy lives openly, under his real name, barely a hundred miles from here, which is surprising, but there you go.’
I asked him for an address and he gave it to me. Then I phoned Palmer and issued instructions. He, in turn, called Kinane, who collected his boys. I didn’t want any delay; I couldn’t risk the slim chance that our man might leave the country. It wasn’t likely, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to rest until I had reckoned with him and the men who had hired him. We left our city to hunt for the man who shot my brother.
The restaurant Palmer tailed him to from his apartment was upmarket, as was Thomas Mason’s guest, a high-maintenance blonde in her late twenties with sunglasses resting on the top of her head. She was wearing one of those garish, yellow and blue, patterned Hermes scarves with a dark blue, blazer-style jacket with gold buttons and cream trousers, a Chanel bag at her feet. I couldn’t see the manicured fingernails from here but I was betting they’d be immaculate. She’d be an expensive companion, one way or another, but it didn’t matter because the man with her had money. I knew that because he would have been paid a great deal of it to gun down my brother.
Of course Danny was still alive, which meant that, technically, the assassin had failed but, if I was right, the man behind the shooting wouldn’t care too much about that. Danny always said a wounded man was far harder to take care of than a dead one. He explained that, in battle, wounded guys have to be rescued, patched up and ‘coptered out of there. The man’s presence, his visible injuries and his screams would upset and unsettle the men and he would probably need months, sometimes years, of care from a large contingent of expensive personnel behind-the-scenes; including doctors, surgeons, and nurses and even the civil servants, who would eventually rubber-stamp his invalidity benefits before he was finally cashiered
from the army. ‘Wounded men are what the enemy really wants,’ he explained to me once, ‘they cause chaos and they fuck you up, mentally. It has a big effect on you when you see your mates carried off on stretchers with bullet holes in them and limbs missing. Why do you think anti-personnel mines are designed to blow legs off but not kill you? Wounded men are a burden. All you have to do for a dead man is dig a ditch and drop him in it.’
Now Danny was the wounded soldier and I figured the man behind it would be relishing the effect it was having on me. I wasn’t sleeping, I couldn’t eat and my mind was no longer on the business. I only cared about two things; Danny getting the best medical treatment it was possible to buy and me making the man who had done this to him pay in the worst way imaginable.
And now I was looking at that same man from the darkened window of my car, which was parked opposite the Michelin-starred restaurant where he had selected to take his female companion, watching him rise from the table and smile broadly as she rejoined him. His manners were good. You could tell he was ex-British army, officer class, even before Palmer confirmed this. He looked like the kind of man who wouldn’t dream of staying in his seat when a lady entered the room, but he had no qualms about shooting my unarmed brother in the back
They were laughing at something now and I took a strange pleasure in that. I relished knowing what he didn’t; that soon he wouldn’t be laughing any more and she would be the final bit of female company he would enjoy. That this meal was going to be his last supper.
I turned to Palmer and said, ‘Do it.’
When he left the restaurant, our target kissed his companion on the lips, walked back along the high street, paused to buy a newspaper, then took money from a cash point that he would never spend. He seemed relaxed enough, no visible demons, no haunted look caused by what he’d done, no noticeable fear that now he was the hunted one.
The Damage (David Blake 2) Page 21
