by Linda Coles
Amanda ignored him. “So, back to my previous question: what are you up to?”
Jack sat back in his chair and slipped the glasses up on top of his head, Kardashian style. “Remember those ice cream vans that were selling cocaine to students outside the library on campus? I got to wondering if that food van was selling something a bit more lucrative than tea and sandwiches. Easy enough to hide a baggy inside a baggy, eh?”
“Well, it’s not a new thing, is it? The drug wars back in the eighties in Glasgow were about ice cream vans and drug turf disputes, so I guess it’s plausible. Could be anything, though, not just cocaine.”
“My point exactly. Anything small enough to slip inside a sandwich bag along with a sandwich as disguise. And something not too obvious to insert, from the vendor’s point of view, though they’d have to be extremely careful. Take us, for instance: two coppers. They wouldn’t have known us from Jack.”
Amanda smiled and rolled her eyes at his unintended pun.
“Yeah, yeah, very funny,” he mock-growled at her. “You’ll be reminding me of the Schitt family next.” He started to recite what he could remember, using his fingers to get all of the names right. “Jack Schitt was married to Noe Schitt. They had several kids: Holie Schitt, Giva Schitt, Fulla Schitt, Bull Schitt, and the twins Deep Schitt and Dip Schitt…”
Amanda waved her arms in the air in defeat.
“Okay, stop!” she called before he went on any further. “And Noe went on to re-marry Ted Sherlock after a divorce and kept her double-barrelled surname, making her Noe Schitt-Sherlock. Yes, I and everyone else in here have heard that story, Jack.”
“I know, but it cracks me up every time I hear it, so humour me sometimes, eh?”
“Funny, that’s the second time I’ve heard Sherlock in the last forty-eight hours. Must be something in the water.”
“Let’s hope it’s not Schitt.” He grinned at her.
“Riiiiiiight.” Amanda cleared her throat, refocusing. “So, again, what are you searching for?”
“I’m looking at recent and old cases, because if they had turf wars in Glasgow back then, they may well have turf wars down here too. These vans are mobile, remember? So, they might not be locals.”
“Good thinking. So, what’s the plan, then?”
“I don’t really have one yet. We don’t know if there’s even been a crime committed.”
Amanda looked at her watch. It was still early but what the hell. “Then do you fancy a drive out? I suggest we grab an early coffee from that layby van again and see what we can see for an hour. If nothing happens, we’ll keep an eye out from a distance, get a couple of the others to pop in for sandwiches on occasion, that type of thing. It’s only a hunch there’s even anything going on at this point.”
Jack stood and closed down his computer. They grabbed their coats, scarves, and bags, and headed out to the car park.
“I’ll drive,” Jack said, getting his keys out. He really hated being the passenger and much preferred to be in control. Driving also gave him the right to choose the music if they played any. And since he’d discovered music streaming without the need for CDs, the music world was his oyster. In reality, that meant he listened to even more of the old stuff, not the modern noise whose words he couldn’t hear.
The car blipped open. He climbed into the driver’s seat and Amanda got in beside him. They set out into a bright but cold winter’s day. The sun’s glare hit him straight in the eyes and he pulled his visor down.
“Shit, that’s bright,” he moaned, and pulled what he thought were his sunglasses down off his head. Amanda threw her head back and laughed as her pink reading glasses settled back on his nose.
“Very bloody funny. Very funny indeed. You were waiting for that, weren’t you?” Jack growled and yanked the glasses off his face.
“Of course I was! I just wondered when you’d finally notice,” she said, and carried on giggling until Jack finally saw the funny side of it too.
“I’ll get you back for this, Amanda. You mark my words.”
“No shit, Sherlock,” Amanda roared, and the two of them howled together as they set off towards the layby.
Chapter Twenty
By the time they had pulled up at the food van, there was quite a queue, made more bearable by the tepid winter sunshine. The pale yellow ball in the sky gave off a feeble heat, like half a bar on an old electric heater at a grandmother’s shins. No need for sunscreen today; there’d be more danger in a hot cup of tea. Jack approached the van and joined the back of the queue. Amanda stayed in the passenger seat surveying those parked up in the layby. Cars of all types were parked up – a few small vans, a motorcycle; nothing out of the ordinary. Trucks were not an option; the parking was too limited.
Amanda watched Jack watching the queue. A tall blonde woman, her head covered in 80s-style frizz to her shoulders, stood directly in front of him, making it difficult for him to see round. Amanda doubted she was the motorcycle rider; she’d never get her comb through her hair ever again. And she wasn’t wearing leathers either, although the person in front of her was. This one was shorter in stature, with short dark hair and the typical V-shaped body of someone who spent time developing their upper chest; probably a male, Amanda thought. Then it was suit in front of suit in front of suit, all varying heights and widths, all playing with their phones. A total of seven people patiently waited their turn, and considering it wasn’t really breakfast time or morning coffee time but somewhere in between, that struck Amanda as quite a lot. Maybe the food van was that good and these people were regulars. Yes, her bacon sandwich had been nice, but queue-worthy?
A suit up front took his bag and Styrofoam cup back to his car and got in. Amanda adjusted herself to see what he was doing, but he was too far away. But he didn’t just drive off; he sat long enough to perhaps eat what was in the bag. Another suit made his way back to his Mercedes, slipped inside, and then immediately hit the road and sped off, at unnecessary speed Amanda thought. That left two more suits, the biker and Blondie as well as Jack. Another suit joined in behind Jack, a woman this time, in a dark trouser suit. She began texting while she waited. The two remaining suits were served quickly. Both clutched white bags and soon left the layby.
Finally, Jack was served and trotted back to the car with their order. He climbed into the car, and he and Amanda watched the layby activity as they slowly chewed on fresh bacon sandwiches and sipped their tea, in no particular rush.
“There was nothing to see waiting in the queue, and I didn’t hear anything untoward either. The most I got was ‘red sauce or brown.’ And I couldn’t see big notes being handed over either, so if they are selling something illegally, they’re not taking payment at transaction time, and dealers don’t do that. It’s not good business sense – drugs on the never-never.” He took another bite and red sauce dropped down his tie.
“Oh, sod it!” he exclaimed, and Amanda passed her napkin across, not wanting to wipe the sauce herself and smear it. Naturally, he managed to smear it himself and Amanda chuckled to herself, careful not to let him hear.
“Well, maybe payment is cashless now,” she said. “Everything else we buy is going that way. Maybe the crims are going the same way – technology. You’ve heard of monthly subscription services for things like Netflix and what have you? Maybe these vans are doing the same thing, or maybe they have an app?”
“Eh?”
“Well, think about it. Why not? Open an account, pay some money in, then transfer it as or before you purchase.” Jack looked sceptical and Amanda carried on, “I’m not saying that’s what they’re doing. I don’t even know if that’s possible – and again, we don’t actually know if anything is going on. The queue could be because they sell great sandwiches and tea, which is no crime.
“I can think of plenty of places that I’ve bought bacon sandwiches from that should have been a crime they were so bad. I mean, who in their right mind cooks bacon so it’s still pink? It’s got to be well cooked, cris
py even. Just don’t give me pale pink, not ever.”
Amanda nodded in agreement as she scrunched her bag up and wiped her mouth on a tissue from her bag. She gathered their rubbish and opened her door to get out. As she threw the waste paper into the bin, she noticed a couple of what looked like miniature empty sachets of salt sticking out from under a cup.
She pondered for a moment. “Now that’s odd,” she mumbled quietly to herself. “Who puts salt on bacon sandwiches?” She checked her surroundings, then, using her discarded tissue, she carefully pulled them out by their corners. She folded the tissue over them and slipped them into her pocket. Then, she gently pushed other debris so one side and saw a couple more. In fact, as she focused, she could see the edges of yet more little packets, identical to the ones in her pocket. She took another tissue from her bag, had another quick look round to see that no one was watching, plucked the rest of the packets out, then headed back to where Jack was waiting.
“You got something?” he enquired when she was safely in. He’d seen her lean into the bin and figured she wasn’t still hungry.
“Let’s see, shall we?”
Chapter Twenty-One
Luke and Clinton had glumly gone their separate ways for the weekend. It had been a depleting day for them both. Nobody said getting a business off the ground was going to be easy, and Luke hadn’t expected it to be a walk in the park either – more a walk through the Yorkshire Dales, he’d figured – but he had expected it to be less emotionally challenging. The constant rejection was tough to handle, and he felt the need to flake out a while and stop pretending that everything was going to be all right.
His granddad would have warned him that each finance rejection was fate telling him to leave well enough alone, that the banks had his best interests at heart when they said no, even if it didn’t seem that way at the time.
‘They have rules in place for your own protection,” he’d have said. “Don’t force it.” Luke smiled as he imagined his grandfather giving him a stern talking-to, an arthritic forefinger pointing directly at Luke’s chest, his cloudy eyes crinkled with distress. He’d loved his wise old granddad. The old man had been gone a few years now and there was no one left in Luke’s life to fill his place.
Luke closed his eyes as he lay stretched out on his bed in the back room at his parents’ place. He’d hoped to have moved out by now; a twenty-five-year-old shouldn’t still be living at home, never mind paying room and board. He should be making his own way in the world, living in a nice little flat somewhere, with a girlfriend maybe, a steady job to go to every Monday morning. He had none of that. And now it looked like he’d be sleeping in the tiny room for a while longer.
“Get a job,” his father had said. “Stop with the romantic notion of running a big company. Knuckle down and do some proper work.”
His father’s ideas of a proper job were something physical – and join the union while you’re at it. Like he had. It certainly hadn’t done him any harm, had it? Yeah, until miners weren’t needed anymore, foundries were closed down and dock workers were taken over by steel containers and hoists. No thanks. In Luke’s mind, running his own business wasn’t a romantic notion: it was a very real opportunity and he wanted in. Owning a mobile food van and selling well-cooked, wholesome organic food was what he wanted to do, knew he could do, if only they could find the funds to get up and running. Then they’d franchise the idea and take it nationwide and beyond. They had everything lined up – suppliers, menu ideas, locations even – but without funds, there was no way of getting it started.
Hit.
The word nagged at him again. He sat up and swung his feet to the floor. There was no harm in doing the research, was there? He grabbed his laptop from the bedside cabinet and opened Google. His hand hesitated over the keyboard. Would the search term send a flag up somewhere? Would cookies then track him on his computer? There was only one way to find out. He typed in the search box.
Hit man for hire.
And pressed enter.
“No going back now. I hope I don’t need to have an explanation ready for the cybercrime division when they come knocking.”
To Luke’s astonishment, Google returned more than three million results. So, like everyone else, he started at the top of the first page and looked at what was on offer. There were the usual Quora and Wikipedia pages, but about halfway down, a web address caught his attention. He read the small piece of text, his finger hovering over the keyboard as he wondered whether to click the actual link or not. Curiosity got the better of him and he hit it. Half of him expected an actual alarm to go off like a police siren; half of him thought, “It’s just a website. Don’t be so silly.”
The website came to life, and a page with “Hit Man for Hire” emblazoned across it filled his screen. But a quick glance told him it wasn’t a shop front; rather, it was an old news story about a company that had been hired to build a website for such services and had quickly been shut down. Luke took a couple of deep breaths in and relaxed a little, taking comfort in the fact that something so illegal wasn’t as easily available as he’d first assumed. He hit the back button, went back to the search results and scrolled further down. The other results were stories about hits taking place on the dark web, websites that had sprung up there, guns for hire of all kinds and in all parts of the world. It seemed no matter what you wanted done – bones broken, beatings or a straightforward hit – it all could be found in a much darker place than Google.
Luke closed his laptop lid, leaving the Google search page open, and rested his head back against the wall in thought. The dark web – that’s where he needed to do his research, find out more, maybe join a group or two and see what people were looking for and how they were getting their requirements filled. He had to admit, though, that the thought of doing a hit repulsed him: beatings to order sounded too personal, too brutal, and not something he’d be able to do even if he wanted to. He wasn’t built that way, in mind or in body. Stabbing someone was in the same “too personal” box, as he knew from watching far too many movies. It was a close-up act of violence, and it took a certain kind of person to take a life that way. And again, he didn’t have the physical build to overcome someone, never mind the mess factor.
But shooting someone? That could be a different matter. He’d often thought, when road rage had overtaken his senses, that he could pull a trigger as easy as changing gear, wipe slow-moving traffic out of the way in an instant, clear the way for himself to get through. Blow away someone who had stolen the last parking space or cut him off on the motorway. He’d feel nothing but the smooth trigger with his finger, squeezing it gently. Powerful, almost hypnotic even. Yes, he could easily do that under any of those circumstances.
It wouldn’t be personal at all.
Chapter Twenty-Two
After dinner, which consisted of a simple bowl of tomato soup and several slices of buttered toast, Luke took a quick walk in the drizzly evening air to blow some metaphorical cobwebs off. His hair had since dried, and his now tight curls looked a lot like a brown poodle’s coat though without the damp dog smell. Now he settled down to work in his room, laptop balancing on his thighs as he typed.
Expanding on his earlier realization that he could easily fire a gun at someone, it seemed the sensible (if that was the correct word) thing to do some more research. From the little he’d found out already on the regular surface web and trusty Google, prices ranged from around £5000 to £30,000, depending on the quality of the kill and what was required.
Quality? Sounds like big game hunting rather than a hit. Aren’t all shootings equal?
If an experienced ex-Forces officer or similar was required, that was where the heftier price tag came in, whereas a dodgy backstreet pub dweller would do his best for a measly £5000 – balls over brains, he supposed. Luke figured that as an inexperienced but intelligent beginner, he’d sit someplace in the middle. He had the brains, he was clever, and he had common sense, something many people didn’t h
ave – common sense wasn’t that common. But did he have the balls? Time would tell if he got that far.
Luke began thinking out loud, a lifelong habit that had always helped him organize his thoughts.
“I’m going to need a gun, and some training on how to use it,” he mumbled, “but which gun? I’m thinking with a silencer, so that means a pistol probably. Still too noisy, though. Maybe I’ll still need to use a pillow. Either way, first job, see if I can get the right gun.” He mentally filed the thought and went on to the next problem to solve – getting a customer.
“I’d be out of place in a seedy pub, so how will I get a client? And how much should I charge? Hmm, I’m thinking a nice round ten thousand, so I only have to do a couple maybe, and I don’t want to price myself out of the market.” He added those thoughts to the other already in his mental filing cabinet. There was so much to organize, so much to think about. On the surface so far, though, it all seemed rather simple: get a weapon, get a client, decide on the situation and squeeze. Ten grand, thank you very much. Please call again. The thought amused him: “Please call again, and tell your friends!” He laughed.
If he planned it out rigorously, nothing would go wrong. One thing he wasn’t planning on, not yet anyway, was telling Clinton, not until he was sure of how it would all work. Luke hit the Tor browser icon on the Mac’s dock and launched the dark web search page.
“Here goes. Let’s see if I can pull this off.”
Luke was no stranger to the dark web. He’d spent time there on and off over the years, mostly in chat rooms where he’d purchased a few odd small packets of hash. They’d arrive wrapped in plastic film, all folded up nicely and stuck to a fake gym invoice for cover. Not that he had any money to buy any at the moment, of course, but he knew his way around the place. He’d also seen more than his share of stuff he rather wished he hadn’t clicked on during his travels. Still, seedy stuff existed everywhere, he knew, whether it was on an actual physical street corner or a virtual one.
