A Last Act of Charity (Killing Sisters Book 1) (27 page)

27

EVERYTHING’S WAITING FOR YOU

‘You were recommended by a lady.’ One seriously smartly presented individual had seated himself at the café table, uninvited, opposite Stoner. Who was unimpressed, unamused and uninterested.

‘Recommended for what?’ He was in no mood for conversations with strangers, no matter how well dressed, how well mannered.

The intruder sat back, looked around, flashed gleaming teeth in a fine attempt to attract service. None came. Unlike a shared silence. Both men appeared comfortable with that. Stoner removed a phone from his pocket, opened it, confirmed that there were no outstanding instructions warning him to beware tall, handsome strangers, and replaced it in its pocket. He gazed at the man opposite, neutrally. This could perhaps be a welcome encounter. It was unlikely, in the light of his past experience of these things, but it could be. His guest smiled. Again.

‘Is service likely? Possible?’

Stoner nodded, encouragingly. The stranger mistook the nod for a thawing, and showed further wider whiter teeth in a truly winning and welcoming smile.

‘She told me you always stop at this place when you’re passing. So I waited.’

‘For very long?’ The notion of parking up outside an anonymous roadside café and then waiting for an unknown, if recommended, apparently, stranger to drop by was a good one. Amusing, perhaps. ‘Many weeks, for example?’

‘About a half hour. You sure about that service?’

Stoner shifted his gaze over his guest’s shoulder and tracked the approaching coffee as it progressed glacially towards the table. The stranger smiled on, aware of the shift but undisturbed, undistracted by it. Professional, then. The plate and cup landed, the waitress turned away in silence. Stoner raised a hand.

‘More, please.’

She stopped, turned, looked only at Stoner. Silence.

‘Same again, please. And thanks.’

He nodded towards his guest. The waitress left in her maintained silence, with as much vigour and bounce to her step as when she arrived. Immune to displays of dazzling dentistry. A true waitress, an example to her profession.

‘You want something.’ A statement. ‘Other than breakfast?’ Stoner sipped his coffee, winced. It was as bracing as ever.

‘That good, huh?’ The smile was still convincingly in place, no sign of tension or intent. ‘Yes. I’m a policeman, Mr Stoner. I know who you are, who you’re working for and that you’re good at what you do. I have been told to find you and to talk with you. Your employer, public-spirited and helpful though he always is, claimed to be unaware of your immediate surroundings. The very tall black lady in his office suggested that I might find you here at around this time. And here you are. She knows your movements well.’

Stoner sipped steadily. Carefully.

‘You do have a name? You know mine, so it seems only reasonable to share these things. Your coffee might be on its way. Be
cautious. You do not want to drink it. You should eat the bacon in bread – hard to describe it as a sandwich – and leave the coffee for me. I’m immune to it. Almost enjoy it on a bad headache morning. Try water, maybe a drink from a can. A new and unopened can. They’re the least dangerous.’

He took a bite from his breakfast, revealed no visible distress and sipped more of the coffee.

‘What you after, anyway? Guitar lessons? Tips on traffic control? A guide to good coffee?’

‘According to the information you hold, I should be dead.’ The smiling policeman appeared unworried by this.

‘OK. I had wondered.’ Stoner chewed, with inexplicable relish. ‘You’re not the wrong policeman. You’re the right policeman. And you should be a dead one. You’re a man called Dave, right? Tell me all about it?’

And so he did.

Stoner listened while chewing. He signalled for more coffee. More coffee appeared. But only for him. He looked up sharply at the waitress’s retreating back. Waitresses do not have eyes in their backs. Or in the backs of their heads. And the strange grunting snorting noise she made when walking away, a noise with a distinctly porcine flavour, was perhaps a clue to her behaviour.

‘For. Fuck’s. Sake.’

A series of statements. Staccato. Clear. Almost loud. With violence behind them. Stoner smiled no more. His gaze lacerated the calm and the quiet of the café. It lit a path to the waitress, who turned, returned and delivered two big mugs of coffee.

‘Food in a moment. Sorry Mr Stoner. Didn’t know it was a friend.’

Stoner raised his eyes to hers, bloodless. ‘He’s not. He’s a plod. But he tells a terrific tale. Bring him ketchup for his bacon, and bring me another coffee.’

She glanced at the table.

‘Yeah yeah, so I’ve got two already. I need strength. OK with you?’

She left. No little piggy grunts trailed her.

‘I’ll get this straight. You met some tart in a bar, in a posh hotel filled to brimming with fellow constables.’

Dave Reve nodded. Sipped. Grimaced only very slightly.

‘The wife’s upstairs counting sheep, so you decide to quench the hots with the blonde tart in the pool. How do I do so far?’

‘You’re good.’

‘You fuck about in the pool some, and then she half-drowns you by jamming your face into her snatch and taking the deep-end dive? Is this correct, Dave? It sounds truly unlikely to me, but if you’re telling me it happened then I should believe you. You have no reason to lie, or at least I can’t think of one. How . . .’ he drank deeply, shuddered only a little. ‘How did you escape? Dear gods. What a way to go. Killed while muff-diving in a hotel pool. Glorious. Would your widow have got your pension? It would surely have given your forensics a bit of a day, taking oral swabs, as they do. “The deceased had eaten a hearty beefburger with relish and a lively cunt for dessert.” That would have made their day. Sorry, it’s a pleasing thought. Go on, how did you escape? Bite very very hard? I doubt that harsh thoughts would have done it. Interesting geometrically, though . . .’

‘I didn’t escape. She let me go. Try it. It’s not easy to break the grip. My mouth was tight up against her, so I couldn’t bite, and she had a grip of the pool’s rim, I think. I just flailed about. Got water up the nose, started coughing, swallowed, breathed more water, panicked like a fool . . .’

‘Thought about the grieving widow, how she’d explain it to the kids, stuff like that . . .’

‘Nope. Punched her in the body as hard as I could, which wasn’t very, started to cough, choke, horrible way to go, drowning,
despite what some folk write about it. Couldn’t see, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t break her grip. Hell of a grip, she had. Great . . . really great legs. Fit as you like. Then she just let go. And she went. Was gone when I got out of the pool. No sign. No trace. Took her clothes and took my clothes too.’

‘Oh! I love that. She took your clothes? Left you strolling about the midnight lobbies in the starks? Excellent. Sense of humour, then. How d’you explain that when you got back to your room? “I say my dear, a funny thing happened on my way back from the bar?” That would be a challenge.’

‘Didn’t even think about it. Was still coughing up water and crap from my lungs. The chlorine is really bad for the lungs. They’re still sore.’

‘Sympathy of course. Fuck of a way to go, though. Epic. You report it? What were you doing in the hotel anyway? Some jolly for the plods? Happy taxpayers buying you all a good time?’

‘No. A conference. All about money. I’m an accountant. A police accountant. A banker. I’m on the force because they wanted it that way.’

‘OK. You investigate financial crimes, is that it?’

‘No. I move police money around. Do you have clearance for this? Who are you anyway? I don’t know you well enough to care about you, but I’ve skimmed your short file which tells me that you’re some kind of freelance. What kind of freelance, and why?’

‘I bet you know what kind, and I bet you know what I do, too. I bet you pay me, or men like me. Are there limits to what you can discuss with me? What have you been told to tell me? More usefully, what have you been told you must not discuss with me? In denial lies the truth. Usually, I reckon.’

‘The brief was to tell you what happened. I’ve done that. Interpretation is more your game than mine.’

‘That is true. Most certainly true. I can’t . . . interpret without facts and background. The more facts, the better background,
the better my . . . interpretation is likely to be. I’m looking for a killer. The fine lady didn’t kill you. She killed someone else. Another porker. That very night. Which is all very excellent, she will have done it for a reason. If it was indeed that lady who killed that cop. There are few lady killers. But your masters and mine seem to think that she killed another cop. What do you think?’

‘I think lots of things, but I’m not sharing until you tell me what you think. You show me yours, you know how it goes.’

‘OK. I think she was a distraction. I think she distracted you while her oppo, the real killer, went and did his dirty deeds. That’s how I would have done it. If I did such things, which of course I do not and never did.’

‘Nice theory. Distracting who? I was hoping to get laid, not to wander around for an hour in the nude coughing up chlorine water. And distracting me from what?’

‘Not you. You were the distraction, not the distracted. Although . . .’ Stoner almost smiled. Thought better of it, and hefted one of his coffee mugs as though weighing it to throw. ‘OK, then. You’ve rubbished my idea. Let’s hear yours.’

‘I think I was the target. I think she liked me. I think she deliberately killed someone else and let me go. I think you know that already and that you’re playing a fool or a sophisticate or something out there. I think you’re trawling for information which will help whichever investigation you think you’re investigating at the moment. I think you’re trying to mislead me, too.’

Stoner smiled down at his coffee. Raised his eyes. ‘Why would she let you go? Professionals do not do this, otherwise they would either be dead themselves or out of work. Either way, they would no longer still be professionals. And if she could overpower a cop in his prime armed with nothing but her twat and a pair of good legs . . . she was certainly a pro. Most certainly. Did you fuck her? You carefully left that bit out.’

‘Is that important?’

‘I have no idea. No idea about most of this, to be honest, but it all adds a little spice to the tale and its telling. Maybe if you didn’t, hey, maybe she’ll come after you for a happy ending. Maybe if you did, you were so ace that she was not only stunned into letting you go but she will come back and insist that you do it again. I am sure stranger things have happened. I still reckon that she wasn’t the killer. I reckon that if she’d been the killer then you would be one dead cop. So did you? Fuck?’

‘No.’

‘Interesting.’

‘How so?’

‘Christ’s sake. Keep up. Her behaviour was bizarre. Utterly bizarre. What was your meeting, your conference, what was it about? Money, you said. You said that you move money about. What sort of money? Why do you move it? From where? To whom? You’re a decently senior plod, so it must be important. You’re at a posh hotel, so your constabulary pals must be decently senior. Just a moment. Was it all constables? Or was the guest list rammed with crims as well? A giant slush party? Handing over wads of taxpayer largesse to keep the villains under control?’

‘You do have a great imagination, Mr Stoner.’ Dave Reve appeared to be genuinely amused by this sudden flight of fantasy. ‘Mostly cops. Cops of one sort or another. There are several sorts of cops, as you must know, being who you are. In case you’ve not worked it out, I am the man who pays you. Sometimes. Although in the same way that you wouldn’t recognise me – I hope – I don’t usually have any contact at all with operators.’

Stoner spat into his empty mug, sourly.

‘Operators? Is that what I am? An operator.’

He appeared decreasingly happy.

‘You’re a transport consultant, if memory works. You supply
advice to surprisingly senior officers in the intelligence community. Advice which, excuse me if my near-death experience has muddied my thinking, generally involves senior officers or their appointees hiring your services and indeed your vehicles to carry out tasks which are somehow logistically vital to the realm but which need not be specified to a mere money-mover like me. And as my figures are checked only by secure accountants I could be viewed by persons of a depressingly suspicious nature to be acting not only as a money-mover but also as a cutout between official . . . ah . . . officers and . . . ah . . . unofficial consultants. Of which you are one. A well-paid one, although my memory could be confused, as I’ve already suggested.

‘It could also be of course that I am not unique in the function I provide to, say, legitimate officials, and that from time to time my colleagues and I get together to . . . well, I doubt that the reasons we might get together could be very important at the moment. You specialise in Volkswagen Transporters, I believe? You have a fleet of them. They are wonderfully versatile and can be used in a vast variety of circumstances for all manner of unspecified but nationally essential jobs. Were I a curious man, I might even have observed that the noble and selfless taxpayer would appear to have paid you rather more than the cost of a large selection of Transporters over the last several years? Presumably they wear out fast. Maybe the service they provide proves fatal for them. Maybe they find themselves cut off in their prime?’

‘Rather like your own position in that respect?’

‘Exactly so. The same thought had occurred to me. It’s an unusual notion, to find myself comparing myself to a VW van, but life can be strange.’

‘Transporters rarely go swimming in the middle of the night with shapely assassins, though.’

‘True. Being human appears to have at least one advantage
over being a VW van. Even though your own VW vans appear to cost a lot more than the life of, say, your average human.’ He smiled. ‘Any chance of a glass of water?’

‘Almost certainly. But I’d only drink it myself if it was boiled first and then probably diluted with alcohol to maim the more resistant bugs. It is a little early for that, though, and I do have some miles to drive.’