A Few Words for the Dead Read online

  ‘Sorry.’

  Tamar smiled. ‘I’m not. Yet. But by the time we have swum to the side of the river I will be calling you bad names, so enjoy my love while it is still there.’

  TWO

  The Assassin walks steadily through the crowds of disembarking passengers. Groups of tourists, jaded and miserable in the hangover stage of their holiday, return to the cold of their real lives to fold up the brightly coloured shirts and thin dresses of another climate for one more year. Foreign students hoist backpacks and gaze out of the panoramic windows onto a grey landscape of Gatwick concrete. Refuelling trucks and people in high-visibility waistcoats busy themselves around the aeroplanes, long since numb to the sense of magic this place holds for the holidaymaker.

  The Assassin strolls through them, balancing his natural impatience with a professional awareness that a good killer never runs. He should never need to.

  At passport control, he leaves the crowds behind and heads towards the e-passport machines. A slightly impatient customs official moves between the barriers, repeatedly explaining the process to people still confused by this old technology. The Assassin needs no assistance. He slides his passport onto the reader where its electronic chip – provided, at considerable cost, by a Lithuanian contact who worked miracles with illicit tech – is scanned. The Assassin looks straight ahead into the small camera, letting its software analyse his face, compare it to the stored imagery and make its decision. A soft hiss and the door opens.

  He moves quickly through the shopping concourse, buying himself a takeaway coffee, a newspaper and a new sim card for his phone. He dislikes giving clients contact information and makes a point of using a different card for each contract, sometimes even changing it mid-job. Information is his enemy, the modern-day lichen of existence, accreting with every phone call, email or card purchase. Whenever he feels that build-up begin he sheds it like dead skin.

  He catches the Brighton train heading into London, reads his newspaper and drinks his coffee, just like a normal human being. Which, of course, he is not. Normal human beings don’t kill each other for money.

  Arriving at St Pancras, he folds up the paper and dabs the cappuccino froth from his upper lip. It leaves a brown, chocolate kiss on the complimentary napkin, like a lover’s goodbye. He stares at it for a moment, feeling paranoid, then pockets both the cup and napkin. He’ll dispose of them later.

  Leaving the station, he finally feels he has stepped out of the hinterland of travel, that false world of airports and train stations, and been delivered into the real world. This had been his city once, a home when he had enjoyed the luxury of a real life, removed from the constant travel from one country to another, swapping names and languages, invisible, transient, unreal. Here he had had friends – well, as close as he had ever got to such a thing – lovers, hobbies, a job. Here he had been real. It feels disconcerting to be back.

  He sends a text message to the client, breaking the phone’s pure, new state. Now it exists, and him with it, the clock is ticking.

  The reply is less than a couple of minutes coming. A location. Not a meet, thankfully. The Assassin doesn’t approve of face-to-face encounters. He prefers to handle all contracts remotely. Anonymity and murder should always go hand in hand. The location is for a locker linked to an online store. Alongside the address is the pin code he’ll need to access the locker.

  He buys himself a day’s travel card for the Underground and heads to Waterloo. Exiting the station past the seemingly endless row of taxicabs he descends into Lower Marsh street. Finally, he is out of the heaving crowds and walking along streets sparsely populated with real, normal people. These are people who have never choked someone to death or slit a throat. The dislocation he felt earlier is multiplied a hundredfold. He is an impostor. A man at odds with his surroundings. He looks at the office creatures, the market shoppers, the simple, definable human beings with their basic needs, their simple narratives and he feels utterly alone. Here, in the city he once called home, there seems to be nothing left of the man he had been, the fiction he had carried to keep himself safe, the fiction that had acted as if the world was a simple place to be. That fiction, fragile as it was, has rotted away. He is a shell. He is a hollow man.

  Walking into the grocery store listed in the text message, he stares at shiny packaging and advertising faces, perfect and happy, and begins to wonder if perhaps it is the world that is false and him that is real.

  The locker is set up against the back wall. A small control panel invites him to enter his passcode. He does so, copying it from the text message, and there is a click as the door of a locker opens. Inside there is a large manila envelope. He takes it out but doesn’t open it. This is neither the time nor the place.

  ‘Got something nice?’ asks the shop assistant as the Assassin makes to leave.

  The Assassin stops. He glances up at the security camera on the wall above the door, turns and sees a second above the counter. Is the footage they record stored locally or held on a server by the security company? Paranoia. That old friend. He feels exposed. He keeps his face low, unseen.

  ‘I don’t know what it is yet,’ he says.

  ‘Surprise, huh?’ the assistant smiles. ‘Nice.’

  The Assassin takes another quick glance at the camera. It’s cheap. The store is independent, not blessed with the financial support of a multinational company. The camera footage will be stored locally. Hell, it might even be on tape. He’s willing to bet one of the cameras might even be a dummy.

  Easy. It will be easy. Then the paranoia will go away. He can kill this man. Choke the life out of him. Beat out his skull on the hard wood of the shop counter.

  There is no need, the calm, professional part of him insists. Do that and you only add to the information. You make people look. And what of the footage from the cameras in the street? London is lousy with cameras. If this man dies, people will look at the information on those cameras. He will exist as a person of interest.

  ‘Get you anything else?’ asks the assistant, and the Assassin realises he’s been stood, staring at the man. Drawing attention.

  ‘No,’ he says, ‘I was just wondering if I had enough phone credit but I’m fine. Thanks.’

  He walks out of the shop.

  ‘No worries,’ says the assistant, completely unaware how close he came to dying during his low-paid shift.

  The Assassin returns to Waterloo, the envelope zipped up inside his jacket. He catches a train to Bank and then walks the short distance to the hotel he has picked for his stay. He always stays at chain hotels. They are nondescript, cheap and the constant flood of guests means the staff have grown blind to faces.

  The receptionist barely looks at him as he books his room using one of several disposable credit cards he keeps for just such occasions. It will pass a cursory check through the machine but can’t be used to trace him. These places insist on a card imprint for security but when he comes to leave, he’ll pay cash and the card won’t be charged. No trail.

  His room is identical to so many others he has stayed in during his life. Deep red carpet and white sheets. The companies keep the permanent fixtures dark to hide the grime, distracting you with the lightness of the removable sheets and towels. The furniture comes in flat packs. The desk, one of hundreds of thousands scattered through this chain, is littered with glossy literature inviting him to part with his money. He dumps it all in a drawer, sits down and sends a text message to his client confirming that he is in receipt of the envelope.

  The reply is, once again, quick. ‘Handle naturally. Your friend should be surprised and completely unaware of your efforts. Timing and location for the meet will follow. Precision is vital.’

  This means that he is to use traditional means to eliminate the target. This is not his speciality; people usually hire him to create a piece of theatre, a shocking and well-publicised death. It doesn’t concern him – he’s happy just to pull a trigger if that’s what the client wants. The talk of surp
rise is common enough and usually suggests a twinge of guilt on the part of the client. They want him to kill quickly and suddenly. The target should be dead before they even know what’s happening. No threats, no fear just a flipped switch. Easy enough. The Assassin is a renowned marksmen and a high-velocity round through the forehead will do the job adequately.

  He opens the envelope and, for the first time in his career, feels a moment of indecision. Not because he doesn’t wish to kill the target – that is far from the case, the face is all too familiar and the Assassin relishes the idea. No, the regret he feels is that the man will die quickly. It is something he would have far preferred to take time over. Momentarily he wonders whether to ignore the directive but then, as in the shop earlier, common sense prevails. He has no wish to gather more enemies and, whoever wants this man dead is likely to be a dangerous client indeed. He will carry out his job to the letter.

  The Assassin leans back in his chair and looks into the face of the man in the photograph. The shot has been taken from some distance, a telephoto lens aimed through traffic, but the target’s face is all too clear as it gazes into the window of a gentlemen’s outfitters.

  ‘August Shining,’ says the Assassin, ‘looks like your past is about to catch up with you.’

  THREE

  August Shining stared at the photographs on his wall and remembered better days. It wasn’t nostalgia, his feet were too firmly placed in the now for that, just an awareness of happiness lost.

  ‘You being all maudlin again?’ April, his sister, was piled on one of the sofas like a collection of unwanted bric-a-brac someone hadn’t yet dumped outside a charity shop. Sometimes the pile of mismatched clothes and cheap, garish jewellery would shuffle or exude menthol cigarette smoke, sometimes it would speak. Either way, the air was a little worse off.

  ‘I am not,’ Shining replied, aiming a poisonous look at her. ‘I was simply thinking.’

  ‘Amounts to the same thing these days. You’re barely there. Half a man.’

  ‘I haven’t a great deal to be jolly about, April, as I’m sure even someone as self-obsessed as you must have noticed.’

  ‘Self-obsessed? Well, if you’re going to be rude…’

  ‘Please don’t feign offence, darling, we both know you better.’

  He settled down behind his desk and tried to find something constructive to do on the computer. It was like walking into a room having forgotten what one wanted to do when there. A minute’s aimless spinning of the cursor mouse led to him emptying the recycling bin and staring once more at the walls.

  ‘They’ll be fine.’ April said. ‘They’re both horrendously capable, you know. Probably even more so than we were at their age, though I hate to admit it.’

  ‘I don’t doubt their capabilities, just wish I could be more proactive in helping them. Is that so strange?’

  ‘Of course not, but sometimes one simply has to accept one’s powerlessness and find something else to rail at. Haven’t you got any godawful manuscripts you should be publishing?’

  She was referring to Section 37’s cover as Dark Spectre, a small publishing house of horror novels that didn’t sell. In actuality, Shining left all of the work to a young man in Milton Keynes who brushed up submissions and slapped questionable covers on them. Occasionally the young man became irritated by his boss’s lax attitude towards the business but never so much so that the power and minimal freelance wage didn’t compensate.

  The telephone rang, saving August the need to argue. The caller did nothing to improve his mood.

  ‘Shining?’ said a voice that seemed to resent being there, despite the fact that it was making the call.

  Shining recognised the voice and his mood slumped even further. Sir Robin, a particularly vocal opponent of Section 37. The man filled the hours he avoided his Whitehall desk by breaking the springs of an armchair at the Cornwell’s Club. Shining suspected that would be where the pompous old sod was dialling from, that dusty old graveyard of colonials and kings. The call would be a chaser to another large brandy.

  ‘I’m sorry?’ Shining replied. ‘I think you may have the wrong number. This is Dark Spectre publishing, can I help you?’

  ‘Oh piss off, Shining, you know damn well who I am.’

  He did, but knowing the pleasure Sir Robin would take should he ever catch Shining breaking security protocol, he was damned if he was going to turn a blind eye.

  ‘Actually the line is rather bad, could you hang up and try again?’ Shining put the phone down and enjoyed his very first smile of the day. Its brevity made it no less enjoyable.

  The phone rang again.

  ‘Dark Spectre?’ asked Shining, keeping his voice perfectly civil.

  ‘It’s a secure line, you hateful old bastard!’ shouted Sir Robin. ‘There’s a car coming for you in half an hour.’ Sir Robin hung up first this time.

  ‘Problem?’ April asked.

  ‘Yes,’ admitted Shining, ‘I think there must be. Sir Robin is sending a car for me.’

  Shining made a point of being early, not because he wanted to seem eager but rather because he wanted to keep the buggers out of his office. There was no particular reason, nothing specific he wished to hide, he just didn’t like the idea of unknown officers poking around in his private space.

  As always, the main road was busy, shoppers weaving between one another as they made their angry way from one shop to another.

  Oman, the owner of the mobile phone shop beneath the Section 37 office (and occasional technical adviser, cash paid, questions asked but answers never given) was stood in his doorway, attempting to stuff a limp kebab into his mouth.

  ‘Didn’t have time for lunch,’ Oman explained through a swamp of meat and yoghurt.

  Shining might reasonably have pointed out that the man had found time for it now but he wasn’t going to take his irritations out on a friend.

  ‘Off somewhere nice?’ Oman asked.

  ‘I doubt it,’ Shining admitted. ‘A mystery tour. They’re never good news.’

  ‘My old mum went on one of those once, ended up trapped in a bus just outside Eastbourne. Twenty pensioners fogging up the glass and staring at the rain while waiting for the AA.’

  ‘Sounds charming.’

  Shining was distracted by a figure across the road. A man staring at him from behind the window of a sandwich takeaway shop. The reflection on the glass distorted his features but Shining was quite sure that man was watching him. Perhaps aware that he had been spotted, the other man looked away, turning his back on the window and retreating inside the shop. Shining, still feeling combative, had half a mind to walk over there and take a look but then the car arrived and he had more immediate irritations to contend with,

  It was a suitably innocuous hatchback in metallic grey. Four men were inside, all wearing nondescript business suits from high-street stores, people designed to be forgotten. One of the men sat in the back climbed out and stepped to one side so that Shining could climb in. He did do, annoyed to see the man close the door on him and walk off towards the Section 37 office, ignoring a stare from Oman completely. So much for not having his office invaded.

  ‘Should I have warned your chap that the office isn’t empty?’ Shining asked, wondering who was designated to reply.

  ‘I’m sure your sister will be happy to help,’ replied the man sat next to him on the back seat. Shining was only too aware that the man was scoring points. They knew who was in the office. Fine, bully for them. It hardly mattered. He looked at the man, ex-military most likely, eyes constantly scanning the world outside the car as if expecting an attack.

  ‘I don’t suppose anyone is cleared to tell me where it is we’re going?’ Shining asked.

  ‘No,’ the man replied, watching a young mother push her child across a pedestrian crossing. Shining couldn’t tell if his gaze was appreciative or whether he suspected the woman represented a threat. Perhaps the man had been in the security business so long he could no longer tell either.
/>   They drove north towards the A10 and an escape from London, Shining no longer bothering to maintain the pretence of civility as a pregnant silence filled the car with the breathless atmosphere of a gym locker room. Instead, he took a few moments to analyse his companions and decide what had brought the car to his door.

  The men reeked of special forces. UKSF had a bearing, a solidity that never waned, even when not involved in anything more intimidating than the act of filling out suits. Whatever meeting he was on his way to was therefore both secret and outside the normal channels of any specific department. These men were on loan. They probably knew nothing more than that they were to collect him and deliver him to his destination, wherever it may be. Outside London, that much was obvious, and equally worrying. This wasn’t to be a simple debrief by one of the other section heads; if that were the case he’d have been called to the meeting not ferried in ignorance. This was the sort of treatment reserved for the enemy.

  Petty animosity aside, he couldn’t imagine what he’d done to earn himself that status. If anything, Section 37’s last operation should have seen their reputation in the ascendance. Naturally, a good many of the details would be hidden away in obscure files, known by few, believed by fewer. Those facts aside, their involvement in the recent trade talks between the UK and South Korea had saved lives and unearthed an MI6 traitor of long standing. Shining could fully imagine Six were somewhat irritated by the fact – nobody liked it when outsiders discovered these things. If there was a bad apple, better you found them yourself, hopefully in a manner that might suggest you had always had your eye on them – but that wasn’t due cause for victimising Shining. Right now, the last thing Six would want to talk about was Mark Fratfield.

  They had left someone behind to poke around his office. Why had they done that? What were they after? What files would the man be trying to lay his hands on at this very minute? Had April already killed him? Shining couldn’t help a brief smile at the thought.