"Baz has a choice. I need to see this guy called Baz, if you guys truly are part of Alfo's gang, then you need to get Baz in front of me by 5 o'clock, or a rain of fiery shit is going to come down on all of you. I mean it. Peter Mall and his men are tooled up, ready for action. Last man standing. St. Valentine's Day Massacre."
Despite fighting for his life, Jimmy felt awkward spouting such cheesy shit. But it worked. The man he now knew was Baz was visibly scared. He whispered something to one of his men, who scuttled off. Jimmy figured the guy was going to check the windows, make sure armed gangsters weren't about to storm the place.
"You tell me what you need to say to Baz," Baz said. "What does Mall want?"
Jimmy gulped. He knew the five deadline was right upon him. He asked what time it was. Baz told him. Two minutes to five. Jesus.
"Peter Mall offered Alfo The Destroyer a chance to join together, expand, run London jointly. Alfo declined. So he got killed. Mall is now offering his number two that same choice. If Baz says no, Baz goes the same way and the offer goes to the next in line."
If this guy wasn't Baz, but the third in line, then Jimmy was doomed. The guy would decide to ride out the next few days, wait for Baz to bite the dust, then jump at the opportunity offered to him. In the meantime, the alternate killer would be en route.
"I'm Baz," the guy said. "And bring it on. They want a war? We've got the home advantage, and we'll fuck these guys up. Eighteen of them? We've got more."
Jimmy's heart lurched. He almost heard the ticking of a giant clock, counting down the seconds.
"Then let me go pass on the message," he said, trying to be calm. He saw one of the other men check his watch and raise his eyebrows. "I'll go back to my life. I don't want to be around when all the killings start."
Baz was tapped on the shoulder. His man whispered something to him. Jimmy saw fear in the speed the man's lips moved. Baz yanked his arm out of the man's grasp and looked at Jimmy again.
"If this is a trick, I'll fucking cut your head off."
Jimmy shook his head. "I don't want any part of this. Just the messenger. I know you got guns, and I know the Mall gang has bombs and poisons and stuff, and I don't want to get involved. I'm just a supermarket guy who got caught up in this shit."
Bombs and poisons was a good line. It put shock in Baz's eyes. It was there for just a second, before he blinked it away and tried to act fearless again.
"Okay, maybe I'll consider a fifty-fifty split. What do I do?"
Jimmy reeled off a phone number he'd memorised earlier. "You need to call that number before five o'clock, or it's too late. Don't say anything other than you accept the job. You accept the job, that's all you say, and then hang up." Now he knew fear was in his own eyes. Five o'clock had to be a minute away, if that. Seconds, even.
Baz pulled out his mobile. He asked for the number again, and got it. He typed and put the phone to his ear. His eyebrows raised when it was answered with just a stiff Yes. Jimmy watched, waiting for it to all go wrong.
***
Einar checked his watch. 4.59. One minute to go. Looked at his phone, but it was dark and dead. No message to abort.
With the Austrian Steyr Scout sniper rifle's cheekpiece firmly against the side of his face, he sighted down the scope, out through the cricket pavilion window, across the field, over the fence and back garden of the house opposite the Marsh home, through the small gap between that house and the next, over the road, and into the grass lawn where Maria was tending to the hedge again. The hide was perfect. The pavilion, which he had seen from the road, was on a rise in the field, which allowed such a beautiful angle. No cricket today, so the pavilion was empty. There were kids playing football close by, but he had bust the door without a care, knowing they wouldn't call the cops, and knowing he only needed a few minutes and would be long gone by the time the police arrived anyway.
Maria still had the headband on, just above the hairline, so the stamp on her forehead was visible. He centred the crosshairs right on the dot nose of the Smiley face. Right there he would put the bullet. He wondered how many people would die this year while kneeling in their gardens, their minds a million miles away from the subject of their own mortality. Maybe quite a few across the planet, but for sure those would be old people, struck down in retirement by a heart attack or stroke. He wondered how long the garden fence chatter of the neighbours would take to move away from the woman who got her head blown off today and back onto the mundane matters of soap operas. Then he halted his mind, because he knew how quickly time could pass when he let his brain run with such strange thoughts.
So he checked his watch, and found his timing perfect. 5.00. He was supposed to wait for a green light or a red light, but Einar played it another way. He was green to go unless told otherwise. And no order to stand down had been given, and the deadline was here. Thus, green to go. Kill time.
But he took his finger away from the trigger.
Nineteen times Einar had killed a target, sixteen of those for money as part of a contract. And without fail the last words heard by each target had been the same line delivered by Einar. Something a little cheesy, but designed to shock right before the moment of death, and play on the mind in the afterlife. A little habit, a little game of his. An unbreakable routine, in fact. Of course, sometimes others had died alongside the intended victim - like the passengers in the car he had bombed last year - but those people had not been designated targets and did not count, so he didn't care what might be the last words they heard on this Earth. However, because of his fear of a comeback, the wife and daughter, despite not being part of the kill contract, had each become a designated target.
But neither the wife nor the daughter had been given the line. And that bothered him.
He reached for his phone, dialled the number stamped on his hand, and put the phone to his ear. As listened to the pings and clicks of a connection being made, he watched Maria through the scope, but he thought about her daughter. How could he speak to her? Einar knew he might have to go across to the house. He hoped not.
Then he got the lucky break of a lifetime and he laughed.
And the daughter heard it. "Why you laughing?" she said down the phone.
He couldn't believe it. When the phone had started ringing, Maria, hearing it, had stopped her gardening, turning her head, and the smiley face target, away from him and towards the front window. She had gotten to her feet, moved towards the house. But before she even got to the door, the phone had been answered, a screechy child's voice saying Hello into his ear.
Einar cut his laugh, but continued to smile. The Gods had thrown him some luck, maybe because they needed him to succeed. If ever he failed and was caught, he might die in police custody or one of those British holiday camps they called prisons, and then his soul would fly into the world those Gods inhabited. And they wouldn't want someone like him around. He might just take over. Better to see to it that he remained on this world, so let him have his way there instead.
"Who's there?" the daughter screeched again. Einar hated children's voices, and this one grated on him now, her earlier cuteness all gone. But he continued to smile. He watched Maria enter the house, then swung his crosshairs left, onto the window. There the daughter was, right behind the glass, the handset to her ear. A lock of fringe had fallen loose and curled like an upside-down question mark around the stamp on her forehead. Framing it for him. He centred the crosshairs on the stamp.
"Your life countdown has reached zero," he breathed into the phone. He put four pounds of pressure on the trigger, leaving just one before the precipice.
Then he released the trigger.
He couldn't kill the daughter first, because how then could he ever hope to get the mother on the phone? What mother would watch her baby's head blow apart and then take a phone from the corpse's hand?
And here she came into the picture, hand reaching for the phone. But her mouth didn't move: nothing spoken. The girl turned her head to speak to her a
nd Einar was able to read the girl's lips.
Some man's on the phone. Something about a countdown, mum.
The mother's lips still didn't move: nothing spoken. Then she had the phone. She put it to her ear. The crosshairs found her smiley face stamp again. The daughter was by her side, just her head poking above the window ledge. A slight shift after the first shot and he would fire again within half a second and the daughter would exit the world even before her brain registered that her mother was dead.
"Don't say anything and listen carefully," Einar said into the phone. And in a beautiful moment of Fate, she remained silent: his line was still the last thing the daughter had heard.
Four pounds went back on the trigger. He pressed the phone hard against his cheek to make sure she heard his next few words clearly.
"Your life countdown has reached -"
And his mouth froze open as the phone beeped twice loudly in his ear. He jerked it away from his face as if it had suddenly turned white hot. The gun sank in his grip. In the darkness of the pavilion, the green glow of the phone's screen clearly showed the text message he had just received, a minute beyond the deadline:
JOB CANCELLED.
***
Baz had said, "I accept the job," and then ended the call. He had stared at his phone, waiting for something. Jimmy had watched him, also waiting. After thirty seconds of nothing, all three kidnappers went the windows and peeked out, talking animatedly. Thirty seconds of nothing became five minutes of nothing. Now, Jimmy heard one of the henchmen say something about a trick to get a fix on the phone's location. Baz dropped it on the floor. He raised his foot and was about to stamp it into oblivion - when it beeped. A text message.
Baz lifted the phone slowly, as if he didn't trust it. He read the message. Then he flicked a hand, as if to beckon his men to follow him. They approached and surrounded Jimmy, who kept his head hung, staring into the pool.
The phone was thrust under his nose. He saw the text message. It gave the name of a gym, a postcode, and the number of a locker. Then: VITAL - COLLECT FILE BEFORE 5.30.
"What the fuck is this?" Baz hissed at him.
Jimmy looked up so he didn't anger the man and get another knee in the face. He thought quickly. Inside, he was heaving. If Baz got hold of the file, he would know the truth. But Jimmy needed time to think of a way out of this hole, and if Baz or one of his cronies went off across London to find a locker, then Jimmy would get that time, and one less enemy to deal with.
So he said, "I don't know, but obviously that locker contains something you need to read. Or sign. Must be important. That postcode is the centre of London and it's rush hour, so it won't be a trap."
Baz thought for a moment. Obviously he'd been wondering about a setup. But could he afford to ignore the instructions on the text message? Eventually he decided he couldn't.
"Cub, get down there, get that file. Type this postcode in the SatNav. And rush. You gotta be there by half five, man."
Cub looked at the phone, spoke the name of the gym and the postcode aloud, and turned and ran. Jimmy could hear him repeating the postcode aloud all the way to the boarded up front door.
Then Jimmy's head stung from a vicious slap.
"You ain't off the hook, cocksucker. Unless Mall wants you alive for some reason, which I doubt, because you've seen too much, then you're still getting the blade. And the never-ending swim."
***
Just seconds later, Einar got another text message. He read it and nodded in appreciation. For his troubles, it said, he was being paid £5000, to be collected from locker 106 back at the gym. There was another key hidden in the locker room. Then a clause, which he found strange: CANNOT COLLECT UNTIL AFTER 6 P.M.
£5000 was a drop in the ocean to Einar, but it wasn't about the amount. The money was a mark of respect. These people were saying that they understood they couldn't just dangle a master like Einar on a string, wasting his time. That gesture made him feel a little better.
He sighted through the scope again, filling it with Maria's head. But his finger was nowhere near the trigger this time. Such a sweet lady. He thought about casting aside everything that had happened today, the fact that he had been seconds from putting her brains across the living room wall, and heading over there again. Pretty thing like that, surely she would be bored by now of her shallow, middle-aged husband. She'd probably jump at the chance for a dinner date with an Adonis like Einar.
Then he cast that thought aside. Too risky. So Einar slotted his rifle back into the guitar gig bag and left the pavilion. He crossed the field and collected his Audi from the car park, and headed back to the gym.
He managed to park on the street, right outside. Checked his watch. It was twenty-five past five. Just over half an hour to wait. If someone was coming to drop the money off, Einar was going to accost him, ask why the job had been cancelled. Just out of pure curiosity.
He saw a man park on the same side of the road, sixty metres away. The car was a black Golf and the man was black, average height, wearing a padded jacket of bright colours. Einar watched him without watching, his eyes just following movement on the street as his brain found things to think about to pass the time. Then he grew slowly suspicious. The guy stopped outside the gym and stared at it as if he'd never been here before. Was this the guy who was here to drop off Einar's payment?
No, Einar realised. Someone had already been here to deposit the file, and that guy wasn't this guy, because this guy was new here. And it made no sense to use more than one man for delivering things. And this guy seemed nervous.
The man pressed the bell and entered, and Einar followed him inside.
When Einar entered the locker room, he hugged the wall and made his way towards the window. From the corner, he watched the black man. The guy retrieved a key taped to the underside of a small pedal bin and went to locker 106. Einar's locker. So, this was the delivery man after all.
But as Einar watched, the black man stuck the key inside locker 105 instead, opened it and pulled out a file. He stuffed it quickly into his jacket and looked around at the few men getting changed into or out of their gym gear.
Einar felt his anger boil. This was no delivery. It was a collection. These people had played some kind of game with the lockers. Everything was already in place. They had sent Einar to 104, while all along the full file on the target sat just inches away in 105, and inches away again, in 106, was a £5000 payoff for whichever hitman didn't get the job.
And that was what pissed him off. The job had been shopped around after all, just as he suspected, and this idiot in the bright jacket had gotten it. And Einar had gotten the boot. It explained why he was instructed to wait until later to collect his money - so this hitman could first collect the full file and be gone.
The hitman pulled out his phone as he rushed for the door. Deciding to ignore the £5000 awaiting him, Einar followed the other hitman. He waited at the top of the stairs, hidden, and listened as the man clumped down the stairs and spoke into his phone.
"I got it," the man said. "Some file. No, I ain't opened it. Hey, he still alive? Don't you go killing him until I get back, man? Okay, back in fifteen. Ciao."
Einar grinned. Had he heard that correctly? Did he understand that correctly? This hitman was part of a team, and it appeared that team already had hold of James Marsh. That was good work - they had found James when Einar couldn't. But early success counted for nothing against the end result. A boxer who dominates for twelve rounds has still lost the fight if he gets knocked out seconds from the final bell. Einar was going to steal the prize right from under the nose of the hitman and his team, and there was going to be no judges' decision in this battle.
***
Jimmy continued to stare into the pool, right to the bottom. In his mind he saw himself in there, through his eyes, going through a routine based on an old memory, and repeating it. Each time, he corrected something that went wrong, perfecting it. When Baz's phone rang, he cocked an ear but didn't
shift his gaze from the water.
Baz and the other two were on an old sofa under the balcony, against the wall right across from Jimmy. In his upper peripheral vision, he saw Baz get to his feet and answer the phone, pacing as he talked.
"What you mean, you opened it? You fucker, that's...no, you listen. I run this...you fucking what?"
Here Baz listened for a good thirty seconds. Jimmy felt the moment of truth racing at him like a runaway train. Baz's man, Cub, had collected the file and called to say so, and now he had called back to say he'd opened it. And now Baz knew everything.
Baz laughed, told his man to hurry back, and hung up the phone with a ciao. He stared at Jimmy from across the pool.
"Look at me, cocksucker."
Jimmy tore away his gaze from the pool floor and stared right back at Baz. The man was grinning like the cat that got the cream.
"You been lifted up and dropped in a world of shit, pal. You got enemies on all sides. Know what was in the package my man just collected? Nowt that needs a fucking signature, I tell you. You wanna know how you just led yourself like a lamb to the slaughter, cocksucker?"
Jimmy felt he had to keep up his act. He protested his innocence. Just a messenger, he said again.
Baz laughed hard, forcing it for effect.
"There's a price on your dainty head, cocksucker. A big one. Someone wants you dead big-time. Who the fuck did you piss off so badly?"
No denying it now. Baz knew the whole truth. Jimmy could imagine the contents of that file. Photos of his house, his car, his place of work. Taken over days, maybe weeks. Someone following him, snapping away with a camera. He wondered how long might someone have sought his death. How far must he cast back his mind to highlight someone he had wronged so badly?
But now was not the time for reflection. "This is bullshit, Baz," he shouted across the pool. "I've done nothing. I'm innocent. I've got a family."
"Then you should watch who you slag off, or who you fuck, or fuck over, or whatever." Baz started to make his way around the pool. "But here's the funny part of it all. Someone didn't just put a bounty on your head, man. Maybe it was Peter Mall, or maybe someone fed you that line of bull so you could feed it to me. They actually got you to set up your own death. You telling me about that phone call to make. These guys tricked you into tricking me into accepting the death hit on you. In a way, you committed suicide. Man, that's hilarious."