Reaction of the tiger, p.7
REACTION OF THE TIGEr, page 7
part #4 of André Warner, Manhunter Series
To say I was staggered would be to understate my reaction. I had paid a little over a million for it three years ago. I had no interest in the property market and hadn’t kept track of price movements. Moreover, pre-Maura, I had never contemplated selling. Now, at one point eight million euros I couldn’t contemplate not selling.
‘Go ahead,’ I said, making an expansive gesture with my arms. ‘List it.’
And that was that.
I signed on a few dotted lines, she left me the green copie client of the contract, and I waved her off at the front door.
For a couple of beats, after she had bumbled off down the drive in her retro VW Beetle, I experienced a surge of regret. A sense of finality, that by unloading my home I was closing the door on Maura’s return, writing off any prospect that we might get back together and resume the idyllic existence we had enjoyed for a few so-short months last winter.
In my heart I knew that was not going to happen. Maura’s decision to go was a protest at how I earned my livelihood and her inability to condone its continuation. My past she could forget and forgive, provided that the future was going to be different.
‘Either you stop or we’re history,’ was her ultimatum, delivered the night before I left for England, to honour a contract. Not the kind of contract you execute with a pen and a signature, but with extreme prejudice.
* * * * *
Setting up the hit was the most challenging part of the job. It had to be right, and an escape route, preferably two, was an imperative. England, being so crowded, was easy to get lost in and get out of. By boat from a south coast port to the Normandy coast was my preferred itinerary; failing this, by private plane from a farmer’s field in Lincolnshire. The boat owner, the plane pilot, and the farmer, were all on a retainer to be at my beck and call. None of them knew my real identity, and I was always a bespectacled, moustachioed brunette in their presence. The boatie was ready to sail anywhere within reason, the flyboy anywhere within range. The farmer also offered hideout facilities if needed, which they hadn’t been yet.
My passport for the duration – Donald Blaine, Sales Consultant – was already ordered and was delivered to me from France by messenger two days before my departure date.
I was good to go, so I went.
* * * * *
Born of the need to travel without leaving a trail I went by car to the UK, via Toulouse, Bordeaux, Tours, Le Mans – passing within sight of the famous Dunlop arch – Rouen, and finally Calais to board Eurostar for the fifty km dash under the Channel. All transactions strictly in cash. The fewer receipts printed in my name the less evidence to connect me with the crimes I committed. Hence the greater the prospects of avoiding detection.
Passports had to be shown when entering Britain, of course, but my British red in the name of John Henley meant that inspections were generally a formality. Nothing was recorded, nothing stamped.
‘How’s the weather been?’ I said to the passport officer, young with a stubble cut and an air of wishing he were elsewhere.
‘Not bad at all. Rain later though.’
I find that if you treat petty officials as human, more often than not they respond in kind. It all helps oil the wheels.
I drove the Evoque out of Folkestone, still invisible, still making no blips on any radars I hoped.
At some point I would need a gun, which meant a visit to Tagd Corry, my Ulsterman armourer, who lived in Kent. But, although I would pass within a few miles of his farm in the village of Nuper’s Hatch, it was too soon to be arming myself, with all the potential hazards that carrying guns entailed in this most gun-averse of countries.
Overnight in Slough, at an inn called The Crown, all worn patterned carpeting and scuffed wooden panelling. ‘Cash not a problem, sir. Need a receipt?’ The kind of landlord who was dear to my heart. No traces would remain of John – ‘Call me Jack’ – Henley, and less than none of my real identity.
On Saturday morning around eleven I cruised by Stonehenge, that great British icon, its horseshoe arrangement of rough-hewn sarsen pillars and lintels crouching the plain like a prehistoric dinosaur; alas, no longer accessible to the public. By one o’clock Exeter was behind me and it was an easy drive along the A38 highway to the Cornish border.
Travel conditions went downhill fast after I crossed the River Tamar. The Cornish roads were hell and the sun was in the descent as I drove up the hill out of Tintagel and swung into the narrow track that served Jacqui’s cottage. Hoping all the while I didn’t meet an oncoming vehicle before the next passing place, I groped down its mile and a half of hedgerows, high as houses on both sides, sounding my horn at every blind bend.
Jacqui met me at the five-barred gate that kept out the unwelcome, in lean jeans and a loose, fluffy sweater. Add a few dabs of paint to her forehead and she would have looked like an unemployed artist. Sam was with her, gambolling like a spring lamb, almost beside himself in his excitement at the sight of another victim.
She opened the gate and I drove onto her cobblestone driveway. I got out, stiff from too many hours behind the wheel. Sam barged in ahead of Jacqui for the greeting process. I dealt him a few extra head pats and he refrained from slobbering over me in return. Our understanding was working well.
‘Hi,’ I said to Jacqui.
‘It’s wonderful to see you again so soon,’ she blurted, flinging her arms around my neck. We kissed, me and my paramour of convenience. My ardour was mostly fake, but she was a good-looking woman, with a body you couldn’t fault, so the pretence was no strain.
As our lips separated, she said, ‘Did you have a good journey?’
‘Yeah, apart from the driving.’
She laughed gaily, not because she thought I was funny, just happy to see me, I guess. She’d had her hair bobbed to pageboy length. Although my personal taste in female coiffures inclined towards long and tousled, the new style didn’t detract from her prettiness. It diluted the resemblance to Maura though. A good thing, some might say. Healthier, at least.
After unloading my bags, aided and abetted by Sam, we went in. Normally undemonstrative Jacqui dragged me off to the bedroom as soon as I shrugged off my windbreaker. Sam tried to sneak in and was unceremoniously bundled out, leaving us in peace to do some serious consolidation. She had dropped a few of her inhibitions, and oral sex, given and received, had been added to the agenda. Her pubes were sculpted to accommodate a bikini line. I asked her if they were done by the same hairdresser as pruned her hair.
‘Of course! I’m hopeless with a razor.’
‘You’re kidding. Aren’t you?’
She deposited a kiss on the end of my nose.
‘Just a bit. He’s male, for a start.’ She tittered. ‘Well, he is in one sense, if you know what I mean.’
Her eyes, full of mischief, skewered mine. Her legs parted and we started on the age-old routine. She climaxed ahead of me and was still going strong when my turn came. Then it was all over but for the panting. That slowed gradually, the sweat on my body chilling with it.
‘That was the best yet,’ Jacqui murmured, stretching and squirming like an awakening cat.
‘By some distance,’ I agreed.
‘Am I a good fuck then?’
It was unusual for her to talk dirty to me.
‘A great fuck,’ I said, and in the heat of the backwash I really meant it. Then memories of Maura elbowed in as they always did at times like this, and I at once felt like a cheat.
Jacqui sensed the change in my mood.
‘Something on your mind, darling?’
‘Yes, but it needn’t concern you. Just an investment that’s gone sour and keeps coming back to haunt me.’
‘Oh.’
Lies. Tripping off my tongue, slick and smooth and as natural as breathing out. A day would come, I was convinced, when the difference between lies and truth would become so blurred I would no longer be able to tell them apart. Then again, maybe I wouldn’t live that long …
* * * * *
If this were just another hit – target male, qualifying as scum – I would have neither need nor wish to meet him. The opposite in fact. From a psychological standpoint, I preferred to know no more about him than was provided by my employers. I observed only. I monitored movements, daily routine and the not-so-routine. Whom he met, socially and professionally. Building up a picture.
I would camp out in sight of his places of residence, of leisure, and of work – if he worked. Any behavioural trends and quirks were noted. As was his marital or live-in partner (of either sex) status. Also, the existence and extent of any protection. Could he be tailed with impunity, or was he accompanied by a bodyguard, who might himself be tailing his master? Was he ever alone or always in company?
The compilation was thorough and detailed and only when I was satisfied that I had covered all angles, did I proceed. Even then I never rushed. Well, almost never. This time last year I rushed a job to get back to Maura. Not on account of missing her, though I did plenty of that, but because I feared she was about to take off. I was vindicated. My return home was less than an hour ahead of her planned exit.
Though when all was said and done the outcome was the same.
Setting memories of Maura aside, replacing them with the pure professional was no easier than it had been the day after she left. Self-discipline was necessary. On this occasion the motive was keeping Maura and Lindy from harm, and money didn’t enter into it. Anathema though the idea of killing a woman was, I seemed to be stuck with it.
Because my target was a woman, this was not just another hit. In the hope that meeting her would steel my resolve, I would arrange, or cause to be arranged, a meet. It was a precarious move. I might inadvertently show my hand. Small chance, but it was there, an increase in the risk factor. The greater hazard was that it might reinforce my distaste for the task in hand. That the Weldon piece might prove to be unlike her profile, a genuinely appealing personality, with a positive side that offset the evils of the trade she was in. Hard to imagine that any aspect of her personality and modus vivendi would justify turning young girls into sex slaves, but people are funny like that. All too often in my experience they don’t conform to stereotypes. I was seeking and hoping to find justification for the deed in her manner, her behaviour, her words. To reassure myself she really was as black as her CV painted.
* * * * *
Weldon lived in Henley-in-Arden, a village famous only for its ice cream. Her home was a half-timbered mansion with three floors and a square tower, plus an indoor pool, a tennis court, and a paddock with jumps. Outbuildings included a four-vehicle garage and six stables, all occupied. The dossier recorded her as married but separated with a live-in boyfriend, Jamaican by birth, some years younger but no age specified. Children were not mentioned. Could be she had none, or they were grown up and flown the nest in which case they were irrelevant.
Vantage points from which to spy on the house and its owner were non-existent. The land was only gently undulating. The only means of taking a close look at her was by personal visit. For that I needed a reason. I could be interested in buying a horse, but my equine knowledge was sparse. Perhaps a piece of real estate – she had about thirty hectares, some of it just meadowland. A builder looking for development prospects then. Surely I could bluff it out without giving myself away. What I was really after though was a clue to where she ran her illegal business from. Home was the obvious and safest place. But would she want to allow criminal stuff to take place where she lived?
It was four-thirty in the afternoon when I parked a couple of hundred yards down the road, in a recess bearing the sign LAY BY, from which point I could just about keep the gate to her property in sight using binoculars. Traffic was desultory, four vehicles passing in the first hour. At 5.40pm she showed up in her white BMW X5 SUV, opened the five-barred gate using a remote. The car went through, no longer visible behind the hedge that enclosed the property. The gate swung shut.
At least she was home. If she was planning an evening in front of the box, it would be a while before I could safely abandon my stakeout. Another hour of boredom passed, only momentarily relieved when a nondescript beige saloon drove past me and turned into her drive. The gate opened, meaning the driver either had a remote or was persona grata enough to be able to call the house to be allowed entry.
My cell phone beeped to signal receipt of a text message.
Hi buddy
rumour has it you’re in Blighty. call me
if u feel like getting together. samantha
dyeing to meet u.
get stuffed. Tony.
Tony was Tony Dimeloe, my former partner-in-intelligence and nominal superior in the Secret Service. Since I opted out of the spy game, we had kept in touch on and off, and he had done me the odd favour. One of the good guys, as he had proved in Afghanistan a decade or more in the past. The signing-off insult was his trademark.
It was good to hear from him. Only thing was, how the hell did he know I was in the UK?
* * * * *
The Fiddlers’ Arms pub was on Colchester Walk, a narrow back street running off Winchester Drive, in Birmingham’s Chelmsley Wood District. A mean establishment, in a mean area. Weldon and her occasional boyfriend: West Indian, name of Jerome Julius, outlandish dresser, had travelled in the X5 from Henley-in-Arden. It’s never easy tailing a car at night. I was lucky. Traffic was thin on the ground and the streets well-lit. Plus, the X5 with its white bodywork and tall boxy outline stood out well. My equally chunky SUV was black and blended with the night.
The pub parking lot was not spacious, but this being mid-week there were plenty of gaps between vehicles. I was able to park beside a flaking Transit van, which screened me nicely.
I heard Weldon chatting with Julius as they headed for the door, her heels clacking on the asphalt.
‘Don’t let me catch you fucking around with any of this new batch, Jerry.’ She sounded royally pissed, as if they had been having a row, and it wasn’t over yet.
‘Aw, Pauly, not even a little fucking around? They super-cute these Russian chicklings.’ A guffaw, dwindling to a giggle.
‘I’m warning you –’ A door slammed cutting off her warning. I could imagine the temptation to stray when confronted with a bevy of teenage beauties, especially as crying ‘Rape!’ was not an option for them.
The entry door was just an ordinary wooden back door, no lock, no password. As I filtered into a dingy corridor with a faded vinyl floorcovering and greasy red paintwork on the walls, a man emerged from a room on my left. My being there caused him no surprise; he nodded, hiccupped and went past me, his gait unsteady, towards the door I had entered by.
Nothing obviously sinister about the place. If it hadn’t been for the ‘Russian chicklings’ I would have thought I was pursuing a red herring.
The corridor came to a sort of sanctum with multiple doors. Music thudded behind one of them. Between the doors a flight of stairs, carpeted back around 1920AD at a guess. Voices, faint but raised, from the floor above. A thump, like a body falling – something I was familiar with, though less familiar with the squealing that followed it.
Rushing to the rescue wasn’t on my agenda tonight. I paused, ear cocked. All was quiet now, just a low monotone mumbling, male. Then a response, female, Weldon possibly. A door opened abruptly hurling an oblong of yellow light down the stairs. I stepped back fast, flattening against one of the corridor doors.
‘It’s ten thousand, you prick.’ Weldon speaking, still sounding pissed.
‘Fuck you, Weldon!’ Male, Birmingham inflexion. ‘We agreed eight, and she isn’t worth that much. She’s drugged up to her fucking hairline and what’s more …’
‘What what’s more?’ Weldon snapped as the male voice hung in the air
‘What’s more her tits are too small.’
‘Hah! Where’ve you been lately, Sapphire? Plenty of clients prefer small tits.’
The man called Sapphire snorted. ‘Not my clients. I know my market. Tits are what it’s all about. Big, bouncy, and bountiful, and an arse the size of two planets to go with ’em.’
‘All right, all right. Come back inside, wanker. She’s not the only chickling on our books.’
‘Take a look at this one, man.’ Another male, a touch of the Caribbean. Julius then. ‘She play football with them tits she carryin’.’
Footsteps, floorboards creaking. Swearing under his breath, Sapphire retreated into the room. The door slammed, extinguishing the light. Conversation was resumed, muffled again.
If nothing else, I was in the right place. The place where the action was. Trafficked girls were either kept here or processed here. Ten thousand, the price of a teenage girl. I remembered Lizzy, abducted and abused beyond bearing to provide entertainment on the Internet. She too had been destined for sale – to an Arab prince in her case. White slavery was something I had never expected to encounter in Birmingham though. It sounded incongruous. The sums were impressive. After what Lizzy had suffered at the hands of the de Bruins I was unshockable, but I could still be sickened by the male of the species’ inhumanity to the female.
If I’d been carrying, I could have done the job there and then. It would have meant taking out Julius and Sapphire. No loss to the human race, but a tripling of the risk factor to me. Witnesses too; one girl at least, maybe more.
My lack of weaponry made the question academic. Even if I was a match for the three of them, I had never killed with my bare hands. The skills were available, thanks to my Secret Service training, but I was too squeamish to use them on a woman. In any case I wanted to confront her alone. There was a message to deliver from the contractor, and I intended to add one of my own. To make sure she understood why she was going to die, why, for the first time ever, I had accepted a contract to hit a woman, and, by God, I was not going to be squeamish about enforcing it!
* * * * *
Meeting her would be easy. It could be engineered by tailing her and at some point the opportunity for a brief encounter would occur. I could brush against her in a pub, spilling her drink, I could light her cigarette – she was a heavy smoker – a crass come-on but proven to work; I could even shunt her shiny new BMW. See how she reacted in adversity.
