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Copyright
Killer Reads
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk
First published in Great Britain by Cutting Edge Press 2014
This ebook edition published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2017
Copyright © Eve Seymour 2017
Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers 2017
Cover images © Shutterstock.com
Eve Seymour asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks.
Ebook Edition © November 2017 ISBN: 9780008271718
Version: 2017-09-21
Dedication
For Susie Davis, my friend, writer-in-arms and the only woman on the planet who makes me laugh out loud.
Epigraph
‘Before you embark
on a journey of revenge,
dig two graves.’
Confucius
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
Chapter Forty-Seven
Chapter Forty-Eight
Chapter Forty-Nine
Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty-One
Chapter Fifty-Two
Chapter Fifty-Three
Chapter Fifty-Four
Chapter Fifty-Five
Chapter Fifty-Six
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Chapter Fifty-Eight
Chapter Fifty-Nine
Chapter Sixty
Chapter Sixty-One
Chapter Sixty-Two
Chapter Sixty-Three
Chapter Sixty-Four
Chapter Sixty-Five
Chapter Sixty-Six
Chapter Sixty-Seven
Essay on Final Target
Acknowledgements
Keep Reading A Deadly Trade
About the Author
Also by E. V. Seymour
About the Publisher
CHAPTER ONE
As soon as the lights went out I knew I was in trouble. Power cut, blown fuse, act of God – happens to honest folk. My dirty past ensured a different scenario. I was a cigarette paper away from a hole in the head.
Streetlight ghosting through the window made my body a perfect target. I stepped away from the door and dropped down onto the floor, belly-low. Unarmed, fear stuck like a chisel in my chest. At any second I expected the stutter of gunfire, the shatter of glass, the room stitched with metal. Game over.
Black seconds thudded past.
Killer-calm, I went through the moves. My prospective tenant hadn’t yet shown. Booked through an agent, the elusive Miss Armstrong could only view my rental property after work. The lady was, allegedly, hardworking and couldn’t spare time during the working day. From my new perspective on the floor, it seemed that she was the bait for someone out to get me, and there were dozens of possibilities. Odds-on my attacker was a hired assassin, someone who’d filled the void I’d left behind and, if he didn’t shoot within the next five seconds, he was on his way in. I’d always preferred to get up close and personal. It was a fair bet that he was cast in the same mould.
Eyes adjusting to the darkness, I used my elbows for traction and scooted across the carpet to the kitchen. A knife offered little protection against a gun, but it made me feel more secure. It was also possible that I’d strike lucky. I didn’t intend to die without a fight.
Cracking the door open, I slid inside. Windowless, the room pooled with dark, shifting shadows and that gave me an advantage. In one swift movement, I stood up, reached out, swiped the biggest knife from the block and stepped behind the door. Mute, breath sucked in, I waited.
‘Hex, is that you?’
I froze, peered dead ahead, exploring the darkness. The mention of my soubriquet, known only to a favoured few, sounded at once intimate and incongruous.
‘McCallen?’
‘Apologies for the subterfuge.’
I don’t like surprises. One moment I believe death is about to wave me through its checkpoint, the next the only woman who has ever truly fascinated me rocks up and wants to play games. Displeasure gave a cutting edge to my voice. ‘Is this your idea of a joke?’
‘I pretended to be your new tenant because I didn’t think you’d agree to see me.’
‘What about the light trick?’ I hissed.
‘Nothing to do with me.’ The air around me parted. Citrus and sandalwood and hints of tobacco, then McCallen’s breath on my face, her lips brushing my ear, then my mouth. If she’d come to kill me, I was a dead man, but at least I’d die happy. I kissed her back, long and slow. Sure, she’d rattled me, but then McCallen always did.
‘Must be a power cut,’ she murmured.
‘You think?’
No sooner had the words left my lips than we were flooded with light. McCallen took several paces back and we blinked at each other.
She looked even better in the flesh than I remembered and, if I were honest, I’d thought about her a lot in the intervening twelve months. I took a moment to appreciate her full lips, neat nose and her voluptuous figure. Her copper-coloured hair was longer. It suited her.
‘Are you going to put that down?’ The amusement in her green eyes implied that I’d overreacted. It wasn’t as if the location was some rural backwater where power surges and consequent electricity cuts are commonplace. This was Cheltenham, big population, home of GCHQ and high tech. As far as I was concerned, the jury was still out. I don’t do coincidence. What I could be certain of was that today was not my time to go.
‘Old habits.’ I replaced the knife in the block.
‘You’re looking good. More rested.’
Not one for small talk, I cut to the chase. ‘How the hell did you get in?’ It wasn’t the most obvious question, but it was the one that sprang to my lips first.
‘I’m a spook. How do you think I got in?’
‘Even you can’t travel through walls.’
Her mouth creased into a smile. ‘You know what? I’ve missed you.’
Inside, I was delighted. Outside, I was Mr Cool. The rational side of my brain told me that McCallen had blagged her way back into my life for one reason only, to use me. ‘And how did you track me down?’
‘Joe Nathan, as you now like to be called, is not much of a stretch from Joshua Thane.’
This worried me. If McCallen had seen through it, so could others. She let out an earthy laugh. ‘Honestly, Hex, you must be losing your touch. Remember the false passport you had in Barcelona?’
I sighed. My last gig. Mystery solved.
‘So how’s life now that you’ve gone respectable?’
Boring, mundane and banal. ‘Terrific.’
‘Managing to stay out of trouble?’
Nice try. ‘Fancy a drink?’ I smiled.
She smiled back. ‘Why not?’
On the way out I checked the fuse box in the communal hall. No switches thrown. No evidence of trouble. Didn’t mean a damn thing. If anyone had messed with the box, he’d have worn gloves.
Surrounded by chi-chi shops, the flat was off Montpellier Street and we could take our pick of bars. Finding one that wasn’t rammed, even in January, required more effort. We finally commandeered a table in the window of the Montpellier Wine Bar, a popular, if expensive, hangout for Cheltenham’s upwardly mobile and fashion-conscious.
McCallen took a seat and asked me to get her a vodka, ‘straight with ice and a slice of lime’. In spite of her upbeat manner, I thought I caught a trace of something haunted in her eyes, and wondered how the hell I was going to disappoint her without causing offence. Whatever she’d come to ask, my answer had to be no. I’d spent too long trying to rehabilitate myself to get involved in something that might force me to cross a line again. Nice as the kiss was, I didn’t believe she was after a date.
I pushed my way through to the bar, ordered a pint of lager and a double Russian Standard for McCallen, and mused on why exactly she was here with me and my newly adopted persona. Coming up empty, I paid for the drinks and returned. We chinked glasses like old friends and I settled in for the warm-up before the main act.
‘Why Cheltenham?’ she asked.
I’d come back home, but I didn’t wish to reveal this to her, or anybody for that matter. ‘As good a place as any,’ I shrugged. ‘Classy, friendly, full of wealthy people, not too nosey, and the architecture’s impressive.’
‘Of course, you’re in property now.’
It sounded as though I was a major entrepreneur. I was involved to the extent that I’d bought several houses, done them up and let them out. The rise in demand for affordable rental accommodation chimed with my plans for an honest life. I was making a respectable rather than lucrative living, my blood money already given away to charities and good causes. ‘Not much career opportunity for an out-of-work contract killer,’ I said with a flat smile.
She shot me a stern, reproving look. ‘Don’t do yourself down. You redeemed yourself.’
I wished I had her certainty. Truth was, I was like an alcoholic on the ‘Twelve Steps Programme’. I thanked a higher deity each day for not having to get up in the morning and kill to order. The thought of what I’d done for almost fifteen years made me feel physically sick. It mattered not that my targets were bad men, men who’d tortured and who had also employed people like me to stay on top of their criminal and grubby piles, but I’d be a liar if I said that I didn’t miss the trappings of my old existence: the buzz, the lick of danger at my heels, the variety, the international travel and the feeling of power. For the past three hundred and eighty-nine days I had stayed in one place and let life haul me, one twenty-four hour set at a time. I no longer carried a gun. I’d dispensed with anything that could be reasonably called a weapon. I had walked away from the company I kept. I avoided old haunts. I wanted to tell McCallen that I’d embraced my new life with a wholehearted sense of wonder and gratitude. I couldn’t quite do that yet. Yes, I had good days, but the bad ‘I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing’ days outnumbered them. I guess it was character building and good for what passed for my sorry soul.
‘You must be wondering why I’ve tracked you down.’
‘I take it MI5 haven’t sent you in an official capacity?’
She hooked me with one of her big smiles. That was the thing about McCallen – she didn’t just smile with her lips, she smiled with her eyes. ‘Strictly off-the-books.’
And that spelt trouble. Having lusted for McCallen for so long, I didn’t like the effect she was having on my sense of purpose. One look and she could derail me.
‘I have a proposition,’ she said.
‘Unless it’s connected to a business opportunity, I’m not interested.’
She lowered her voice. ‘It doesn’t involve violence.’
‘What does it involve?’
‘Knowledge.’
Against my best intentions, I must have conveyed curiosity. McCallen went on to explain. ‘I’d like you to take a look at a set of photographs.’
I grinned, took a slug of my pint. ‘Are they dirty?’
McCallen elevated an eyebrow that suggested she thought me base.
‘What sort of photographs?’ I was an expert in asking the obvious.
‘Crime scene shots.’ She reached for her bag. I stayed her arm, looked deeply into her eyes.
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘Slippery slope and all that.’
‘Where’s the harm?’
‘You wouldn’t understand.’
She sat back up, sipped her vodka. In spite of the noise from the bar, we were enveloped in our own silent bubble. I’m an infinitely patient man so I can live without conversation. I can do quiet. McCallen is different.
‘I’m providing you with an opportunity to do good,’ she insisted.
‘Nice pitch.’
‘Won’t you reconsider?’ She turned those big green eyes on me. I wondered if I could get her beyond kissing. A steamy image of us both on a bridge in London flashed through my mind.
‘Why me? You have plenty of other means at your disposal.’
‘Because it’s private.’
‘Private or personal?’
Colour invaded her cheeks. She said nothing. The first ‘tell’.
I took another drink. ‘Are the police involved?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then let them do their job.’
‘It’s not that simple.’
It never was where McCallen was concerned. Ambitious, looking to the main chance, her career was as important to her as my survival was to me.
‘Look, it involves three innocent people.’
‘Really?’ The cynicism rang clear in my voice.
‘All were shot dead in the same place by the same person.’
I blinked slowly and clenched my jaw. ‘Wasn’t me.’
‘I appreciate it wasn’t you.’
Glad we’d cleared that up, I took another drink.
‘You must have read about it in the news.’
‘I make a point of not reading the news.’ Another part of the ‘weaning off’ process.
At this, she broke into a wide smile. ‘Even better. I was afraid you might have a preconceived view.’
‘Can I ask you a question?’ I realised then that I’d caved in.
‘Afterwards.’
She wanted to reel me in first.
‘I don’t need to tell you that the identities and lifestyles of the victims will reveal far more than the crime scene,’ I said.
‘But the crime scene paints an interesting picture to a man of your particular talents.’
My particular talents? If only McCallen knew the whole, unvarnished truth – that I’d learnt from the very best, that my mentor had been a man who worked for Mossad, that I’d loved him as a son loves a father and that the tang of his betrayal was still sharp and bitter in my mouth. I shook my head, but my eyes failed to conceal my interest. Like a rat in for the kill, McCallen could spot weakness at fifty paces. She stood up, whisked a large brown envelope out of her bag and placed it on the table in front of me. ‘I’m going to get some air. I’d appreciate it if you’d take a look and give me your honest opinion.’
‘About what?’
‘Anything that leaps out of the picture.’
What she meant was the sequence of events, location, and the type of individual responsible, amateur or professional.
‘You’re not expecting me to be able to identify the killer, are you?’
‘Be good if you could, but my expectations aren’t that high.’
‘Thanks for the vote of confidence.’
At this, she pursed her lips and blew me a kiss.
I glanced around. I’d chosen a relatively private spot in amongst a horde of serious drinkers. Everyone seemed too intent on having a good time to bother with a guy like me. It didn’t stop me from checking or watching for the sidelong look followed by the suddenly averted gaze.
‘Pretend they’re holiday snaps,’ McCallen said, disappearing out into the night.
CHAPTER TWO
The envelope stared at me like the bad fairy at the wedding feast. I stared back, belligerent. Draining my glass, I thought about having another drink and changed my mind. I didn’t know for how long McCallen intended to take the night air, but I wasn’t taking risks. Scooping up the envelope, I slipped it inside my jacket and left the bar. My intention was to walk around the block and return, the envelope unopened. My subconscious had other ideas.
Letting myself back into the rental apartment only metres away, I switched on the light, poured myself a glass of water and sat down. The paper crinkled as I moved, the envelope a sharp-edged rock digging into my heart. Only photographs, the devil in my brain told me. Where’s the harm? Do you really want to put yourself in temptation’s way, the other part of me said, aren’t you supposed to be walking away from all that? I’m providing you with an opportunity to do good, McCallen said. What she really meant was that I was giving her a chance to solve part of a puzzle. For some unspoken reason, she couldn’t ask anyone else. I was flattered. And for reasons I hadn’t yet nailed, I was more than tempted.
The devil won out.
I opened the envelope, slid out three black and whites, three identical in colour, and three close-up shots, again in colour. I laid them out in front of me like a croupier placing cards on the table, and took out my phone to capture the images. Next, using the MagniLink facility, I studied each in detail.
The first photograph provided an aerial shot of a two-lane road running through a section of dense woodland. Studying the leaves on the trees, which were oak, ash, chestnut and beech, I guessed it was taken around May or June. From the angle of the sun and hint of dew on the ground, it must have been early morning. Clearings revealed signs of human activity, animals and horse tracks, and beyond these, a criss-cross of paths and narrow roads, undoubtedly a tourist trail. As killing places went, it was an ideal location. No CCTV. With quick road access, the killer could get in and out within seconds and had plenty of cover for a speedy getaway.
On the road, a sleek-looking vehicle, a Jaguar, was positioned almost at right-angles as if the driver had changed his mind about the direction in which he was driving and had decided to turn around. Metres down the road from the Jag, most likely travelling from the opposite direction, an overturned mountain bike, top spec and only used by a serious cyclist. One body lay on the road almost underneath the bicycle. Another body hung out of the open door on the passenger side of the Jaguar. Spent cartridges littered the scene. Untidy. I’d come back to these later.
I moved on to a close-up of the Jaguar. Rounds of gunfire had extensively damaged the front and offside of the vehicle. Standard procedure: windscreen smashed, metal perforated by so many rounds that it looked like the car had been sliced open by a king-size can opener. This meant the weapon’s magazine capacity was at least thirty rounds and probably fired at a rate of 700 rounds per minute, maybe more. I looked closely at the measurement of individual holes. The problem with this is that when a bullet leaves a weapon, impact changes both it and the surface with which it comes into contact. Without the actual bullet in my hand, it was difficult to estimate calibre. Clearly fired from an automatic, I reckoned it could be 9 x 19mm Parabellum, but I couldn’t be exact.
The passenger door was open, the driver’s door closed. Rubber marks on the road suggested that the car had moved at speed, tyres biting the asphalt in the driver’s desperate bid to get out of trouble and make a fast getaway. I closed my eyes and pictured the scene: driver responds to the threat by stopping, takes fire but not enough to kill, reverses and then is felled by another round of automatic fire.
A close-up revealed the driver: her face twisted to one side, most of the top of the head removed, body slumped over the wheel, blood and brain matter decorating the expensive leather interior. Left arm extended, her hand stretched out as if trying to make contact with her male passenger one final time. Meant the relationship was close. Death conceals age to a degree, but I guessed she could have been anything between thirty-five and forty-five years of age.
Close-up of the passenger revealed that he had made some effort to flee but, caught in the spray, his upper torso was a mess of gunshot wounds. I estimated his age around the same as mine. Either way, I reckon he’d hit his thirty-third birthday. To my professional eye, the driver was first on the killer’s playlist, the passenger of secondary importance.
Next up, the crime scene with the unfortunate male cyclist. The bike, keeled over on the road, trapped the cyclist’s right leg. This indicated that the cyclist was facing the motorist and stationary when shot. Close examination revealed that, unlike the occupants of the car, he had been shot, at most, three times. He’d taken a bullet to the chest and one at point-blank range to the head. I suspected that this was the third in the sequence. The actual choreography would go something like this: one in the head, one in the chest, and a follow-up shot for good measure. A pathologist might state otherwise but, either way, he had been dispatched in a clinical fashion. He wasn’t riddled with bullets. I imagined the cyclist’s attention being attracted; maybe someone flags him down and asks for help – directions possibly – he stops to think and, before he knows it, death beckons.
I took another look at the overall shot. There were no visible tyre tracks on the verge, but the pattern of fallen cartridges told its own little tale. I frowned. My observations were so blindingly obvious; McCallen didn’t need my help at all.