A Deadly Trade: A gripping espionage thriller. E. Seymour V.

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СКАЧАТЬ strangely detached from the rest of me. Low in pitch and without obvious accent, it certainly contained no trace of my middle-class Gloucestershire roots.

      ‘You, alright, mate?’

      I turned towards the man serving, the one who asked the question. He had a fleshy face ripe with folds and creases. All I wanted was a mug of tea. I did not welcome chat. I did not want be his mate. I nodded slowly once. His tongue flicked out, touched the side of his mouth, nervous. As he poured the beverage from an urn the size of a household boiler, I glanced at my reflection in the mirrored glass behind the counter expecting a drastic change in my appearance, some giveaway expression in the eyes betraying the disarray in my head, but I looked the same: cropped dark hair, blue eyes, wide nose that had once been broken in a game of rugby and reset, high Slavic cheekbones care of some genetic kink down my father’s line.

      Counting out the exact change, I paid and took the mug to a corner table with a good visual on the door. Wes would be wondering why I hadn’t called. That got me thinking. Wes had insisted that Wilding was unmarried and childless. Had Wes been aware of this crucial piece of information but for darker reasons withheld it from me? Did he presume that any inconveniences would be ruthlessly taken care of? Knowing Wes, he would describe it as ‘collateral damage.’ This did not alter the simple fact that he had a fucking duty to tell me.

      Uninvited, my thoughts cascaded, washing me up next to the wretched boy. No doubt about it, he’d supply a description to the police and thereby identify me. My face grew cold at the thought of a squad of armed coppers lifting me off the street, if I were lucky marching me to a station and Wilding’s son picking me out from a line-up. By sparing his life, I’d left myself wide open. I ought to go back, finish what I’d started, except…

      Wired, I gulped the tea, scalding the roof of my mouth. By now the lad would have discovered his mother’s body. The thought genuinely appalled me, which came as a surprise. Not because Wilding was female – women can be twice as cruel and vicious and calculating as men – but because I wasn’t accustomed to this level of introspection concerning the relatives of the targets I’d removed. It was as if some unseen force had taken me over and brainwashed my mind. Truth is, over the years, I’d ripped men from life. Some had been rogues and murderers, some cruel and psychopathic. Some were good men who turned into bad men. Mostly motivated by greed and pride, always vanity, many strayed too far on the wrong side of the tracks and paid the ultimate price. Dr Mary Wilding was one of them. But the boy…

      He was like a fly buzzing around my head. I couldn’t help but picture his anguish and pain and his devastation at losing his mother. No doubt about it, his life would be changed forever. If he became vengeful one day he’d come after me.

      The door swung open and closed. My eyes flicked to the woman who’d entered. Middle-aged, stout, tired around the eyes, something in her manner reminded me of the woman I was sent to kill. Had I not skimped on the job, I’d be able to run through the strap lines of Mary Wilding’s life in my head: what she spent her money on, her medical and family history, her career path, her…

      The mobile phone I used for the job vibrated. I snatched at it. It was Wes. Coldly furious, I pictured the pretty-boy American with his dark hair, and soft brown down-turned eyes inferring sensitivity that he didn’t possess but rendered women helpless. Part of me was looking forward to breaking the news that I’d aborted the job. It would be Wes’s stupid fault for screwing with me. The other part was not so keen.

      ‘You didn’t call,’ he said.

      I said nothing.

      ‘What the fuck is going on?’

      Good question. I didn’t answer. You learn more from staying quiet and letting others do the talking. Frankly, I was too livid to speak.

      ‘You all right?’ he began, clearly mystified.

      No, I was not all right. ‘There’s been a problem.’

      ‘What sort of problem?’

      ‘She was already dead.’

      ‘Shit, you sure?’ I pulled a face at Wes’s loss of volume control. ‘What about the merchandise?’ he ranted.

      Wes had an annoying tendency to imitate lines from the latest action adventure film or crime show. This was not an episode of The Wire. ‘The safe was empty.’

      ‘Fucking holy hell.’

      I dislike excitable reactions, but often they lead to the kind of loose mouth talk that yields vital information. I wasn’t to be disappointed.

      He lowered his voice in a way that I imagined he might if he were phoning Dial-A-Wank. ‘What about the boy?’

      I felt a pulse in my jaw tick, Wes’s lapse in intelligence unforgivable. ‘What boy?’

      ‘The fucking son, you moron.’

      I let the insult pass. I’d been called worse. I kept my voice low and controlled to conceal my rage. ‘You never mentioned a son,’ I growled. ‘The deal was for one target only. If there had been two the price would have been considerably more. Your lack of attention to detail could have compromised me. It could cost me my life.’ I didn’t admit that I, too, had screwed up, that I’d made monumental mistakes.

      Faced with the irrefutable logic of my argument, he backed off. I also think he was afraid of me, which was good. ‘Look, I knew about the kid, right?’

      ‘You fucking lied to me.’

      ‘I’m sorry, man, but I was ordered not to tell you,’ he whined.

      ‘Who by?’

      ‘The guy who’s paying.’

      What sort of half-brained lunatic was this man? I said something to that effect.

      ‘I know,’ Wes said, trying to appease me. ‘So there was no boy?’ he pressed.

      One good lie deserves another. ‘No.’

      ‘Holy Christ, that’s going to be a problem’. Yours, not mine, I thought. ‘The boy is a loose end. He has to be removed.’

      This was the equivalent of pouring a can of petrol over my very personal fire. ‘Fuck you. I’m out.’

      Wes let rip with what could be best described as a full-on curse. I maintained a contrived and dignified silence so that he could calm down, which he did. ‘Can’t, man. You have no idea who you’re dealing with.’

      ‘Who am I dealing with exactly?’

      ‘One nasty son-of-a-bitch.’

      My laugh was cold. They were all nasty sons-of-bitches. Came with the territory.

      ‘And there’s the small matter of the merchandise,’ Wes said.

      ‘Which is missing,’ I reminded him.

      ‘Says who?’

      I neither cared for the tone nor the inference. ‘Says I. Don’t get smart, Wes. I can track you down any time I like.’ And kill you, I inferred. Wes got the drift.

      ‘Hey, I’m not taking a СКАЧАТЬ