A Last Act of Charity (Killing Sisters Book 1) (32 page)

‘Who? The boss or the guy you beat up?’

‘Either.’

‘The guy downstairs is OK. He’s just some operator or something. He does security stuff, runs errands. He’s OK. If he beat me up . . .’ she looked up at Stoner and smiled gently around eyes like bruises. ‘If he beat me up he’d be in deep shit. So he wouldn’t do that. He’s more likely to stop me getting into trouble than to cause it.’

‘But he was looking for you. He was looking for someone he called Handy Mandy. That’s you, yes?’

Amanda sighed in a weary way, like someone who’d heard it all before and didn’t enjoy it much the first time.

‘Yeah yeah yeah. Common view is that I’m the boss’s own private playmate. You know how it goes. Handy Mandy. Yep. That’s me. Add your own hilarious bloke jokes. I shall of course convulse with laughter at your searing wit. Not forgetting the originality of course. Where did you meet him before? Here? At the club? What are you going to do with him?’

‘Is he really harmless?’

‘To you? Yes. To me? Don’t know. Last time he felt he had an edge with me a hand job kept him quiet.’

‘Men are simple, basic creatures, then?’ Stoner grinned at her.

‘Yep.’ She only smiled. Grimly, at that. No grin.

‘I’ll let him go, then. Tell him you left hours ago. I’ll get Chimp to let him out when the club closes. Two-ish.’

‘Me?’

‘What?’

‘What am I supposed to do?’

‘Whatever you want. Stay, go, go now, go later, stay all night. Up to you.’

‘You don’t care. You just don’t care.’

‘I don’t
mind
, Amanda. I don’t mind. Caring is something else. There is a world of difference. If you need to be elsewhere, then that’s where you need to be. Go there. If not . . . stay. It’s quiet here. You’re safe here. Until your leather-jacketed pal tells your big bad boss where you are . . . or at least where he saw you last. Whatever.’

‘What are you going to do?’ She stared hard at him.

‘Another set. Then I need to get hold of some folk.’

Amanda’s stare was set in place. She brought its focus closer to Stoner.

‘You beat up one of the boss’s musclemen, didn’t you? I heard them talking about it. It was you.’ She grinned, quite suddenly and entirely unexpectedly.

‘The fat guy. Yes. I already told you. Keep up.’

‘I’m sorry. Lots to think about. I could almost feel safe with you around.’

Stoner ignored the compliment. Signalled the Chimp for refreshment. Bili brought over a bottle. Water.

‘You look like you need fluids, big man,’ she spoke with a lightness of voice unmatched by the seriousness of her expression.
‘Another set? Or do you want to sit it out and draft Miss Twinkle-lips here into a spot of singing for her supper? Playing for it, at any rate. Know any jazz standards, sax goddess?’

‘All of them.’ Amanda ignored the barbs. Wisely.

Stoner took three cell phones from his pockets. ‘Go make noise,’ he said. ‘Keep the customer satisfied.’

There were messages. Several of them. Shard. The Hard Man. The dirty blonde. Stoner read them all. Including two offers of life insurance and an announcement that he’d won a lottery without even entering it. Nothing could be better than that.

29

DARK HOURS

‘I cannot believe that you’re still talking about music.’ Bili leaned dishevelled along the door frame, a bottle – almost full – of clear Russian spirit in her hand. Amanda rocked slowly back and forth, up and down, in and out, in Stoner’s lap. She looked up. Looked towards Bili, smiled.

‘Oh. Hi. Hi Bili.’

Stoner’s eyes were closed. He and Amanda maintained their slow steady rhythm. Bili slid down the door frame, sat, folded her legs. ‘Don’t let me interrupt such a fine philosophical discourse, my friends. Carry on. Just ignore me. A soliloquy for two. Is that even possible? Just don’t get JJ talking about triangles. He’s mean about triangles. Serious, even. Musical triangles, Amanda, not what you’re thinking.’

‘Shame.’ Amanda smiled again, wider this time. The pace of her and Stoner’s shared movement was slow, steady. Relaxed. ‘You play, Bili. What’s your take on this?’

Bili raised her gaze, poured, and raised her glass in a tired salute.

‘Take on what? Whether you and JJ make great music together? I imagine that’s your only shared subject, or have you really got
more than physical music on your collective mind?’ She drank a little, poured some more.

Stoner, eyes resolutely closed, stretched out an arm, opened the hand at the end of it. Bili placed a glass in his grasp, poured. ‘Half full, JJ, or half empty?’

He smiled in reply, vacantly, lifted the glass with impressive accuracy to Amanda’s lips, tipped it as she sipped. Smiled more, sighed a little, said nothing, shifted his hips.

Amanda looked over at Bili. ‘We were wondering whether the sax is the pure instrument, because it plays only pure notes. A guitar, a piano, hey Bili, even the bass, can play chords, more than one note at once. The sax is pure, unless you’re Rahsan Roland Kirk and play two at once. It just plays the one note at a time.’

‘The bass is the centre. It holds things together. Doesn’t take great lungs to play it, either. You got good lungs under there, sister.’

Stoner smiled at Bili’s humour, but said nothing. She continued. ‘The guitar’s an accompaniment, that’s all. Sax, though. You can’t accompany anything useful with that. It’s a voice. It’s like a woman. A woman is the entire chorus, the full orchestra, men just add an accompaniment when they’re needed.’

She laughed gently.

‘What you say, JJ?’

‘Me? I say carry on ladies, just carry right on.’ His eyes were half-open, they appeared to be tracking the gentle movement of Amanda’s heavy breasts as they swayed above him, although it wasn’t easy to tell. He waved the empty glass in Bili’s direction, She took it, refilled it, passed it back. He sipped, his eyes closed.

‘Every solo note I play is a true note.’ Stoner’s voice was quiet. ‘Chords are often lies. They cover errors. The more complex the chord, the more room for mistakes.’

Amanda reached down between them and squeezed him.

‘Shh . . .’ she sighed, ‘keep this going.’

‘Don’t worry about JJ,’ Bili sipped from the bottle, but gently, now watching the couple on the floor before her. ‘He’ll go on like this for ages. Hours if you’ll let him, Hey, JJ?’

No reply.

‘It’s just . . .’ Amanda squeezed him again, less gently. Her face and neck and shoulders were flushing a deep red. ‘It’s just . . .’

Bili stood, crossed behind Amanda and leaned down, taking one of the other woman’s breasts in each hand. Stoner’s eyes opened, stared into Bili’s. He smiled. Amanda was almost silent, her breath puffing. Both of her hands were moving, squeezing and rubbing between her legs. Bili smoothed her nipples, Amanda’s bright flush travelled down to include her breasts, her head fell back against Bili’s and she breathed harder harder, faster and faster. Then she shook, silent, sweat standing out on her forehead, around her eyes. She took her hands from herself and squeezed Bili’s fingers into her flesh until the bass player’s hands were all-but invisible. Then she shook again. And again. And again. And then relaxed. Opened her eyes. Sat still.

‘No need to stop now,’ Stoner’s smile was easy and relaxed. ‘You cool? Bili?’

The bassist returned to her door frame, resumed her seat, raised her bottle in a mock toast.

‘Carry on. It’s OK to be an audience. You were saying about the purity of the sax, Amanda?’

‘I so like this.’ Amanda had recovered a more relaxed shade of skin tone, was rocking slowly in Stoner’s lap once more. She smiled again, wider this time, at Bili, who mock-toasted her with another sip of the clear spirit. And rose again to her feet, crossed to a table where four cell phones were ranged in a row. She picked the right-hand of the set up, and flipped its screen to life.

‘You have incoming, JJ.’

She returned the phone to its place, picked up the next, then the next, then the last.

‘You have a lot of incoming, JJ. You OK to ignore it all? Sorry, Amanda. Didn’t mean to spoil the party.’

She walked over and placed the cell phones by Stoner’s side. He took the first, lit it up and read its views, closed it down and read the second’s call log and messages. Sighed. Swore a little.

‘Time for me to go and do a little work. Sorry.’ He squeezed Amanda’s buttocks, then her hands, pulled her over him and kissed her slowly and gently.

‘Needs must. I hate phones. All of them.’ He lifted her from him. She stood and reached for him, but he moved away.

‘Quick shower, and I’m away for a while. You don’t need to leave. Bili has the keys and knows where everything is.’

‘You’re just . . .’ Amanda seemed more puzzled than angry, ‘leaving? Just leaving? Right now?’

But Stoner was already halfway to the shower. Bili waved her over.

‘He’ll be back. Some business. Grab a bath, grab some sleep. Or not. I’m not tired. We can finish the bottle. There’s a wall of fresh bottles downstairs. More than enough to poison us both.’

Amanda’s confusion was obvious.

A cell phone’s strident call sliced through the conversation, such as it was. Bili stared around her in unusual confusion. Amanda stared at Bili, who had risen to her feet and was standing rock-steady, seeking the source of the sound. The door to the bathroom flung against the wall and a naked, shower-drenched Stoner was suddenly reaching behind a television screen, a pistol black in his left hand as he retrieved a serenading phone with his right. He stared at the small screen, made no move to answer the call. Pressed the call denial button, ending the alarm, opened a closet and dressed carefully, choosing each garment.

Bili spoke first.

‘All black, JJ? Going to a midnight funeral?’

Stoner ignored her. His focus was complete, his calm total and
all-denying. He pulled on and tied with care a pair of stout black Caterpillar boots, took a black bag from another closet, replaced the silenced phone behind the television, collected the others from the carpet and dropped them into the bag. The gun was somehow gone. He stood still in the centre of the room for a small count, turned to Bili.

Tilted her face up to his, ‘Love you, see you.’

Was quite suddenly by the door and then disappearing through it.

Amanda stared open-mouthed at Bili. Who shrugged.

‘You need a shower,’ she said. ‘A bath. Come on. I’ll scrub your back for you.’

30

ANOTHER MAN’S FLOOR

‘Broadcasting again. Murdermayhem. Another head.’ Whichever of the techno prisoners had answered Stoner’s calls was wasting no time on unnecessary pleasantries. ‘Another man. Caucasian again. Live feed, blood still leaking. No indication of whereabouts. More as we get it. This number or the panic number?’

‘This one.’ Stoner closed the phone, dropped it into the black bag. Opened the second phone which sat with its peers, mute on the dash of the Transporter as they drove, quiet through the night. He punched the call-return button.

‘On my way. Location the same?’

‘Yes.’ Shard was as brief, as focused as all the night’s players. ‘ETA?’

‘You’ll see me in five or less. Meet at the van.’

It took less than the suggested five minutes, and as Stoner switched off the engine and the lights a sharp rap on the side door announced Shard’s arrival. The door opened and closed in almost silence and the two men sat for a while, listening, watching and waiting.

‘The follow was simple. I don’t think she was even trying to evade or to lose a tail. She was easy to see – bright blonde as
she is – and the traffic kept her completely honest at all times. No stunts, no back-doubles, no switches.’

‘None you spotted, anyway.’ Stoner was not asking a question.

‘There were none. She collected her car; it’s in the multi-storey, which has only one exit and we can both see that. She drove here on the most direct route, no sudden side streets, no breaking the one-way rules. Nothing. She either didn’t know I was there on the bicycle or she didn’t care about it.

‘As soon as she went in through the front door, she went to the desk and collected a key. There are three other ground floor exits; I put tell-tales on them all. None have been opened.’

Stoner reached for one of his phones. ‘Much traffic with the hotel?’

Shard’s tone of voice shrugged for him. ‘Just the usual for a midweek night in a place like this. If she left, she left with a different walk, a wig, extra weight and a different height. If she left, she left in disguise. Or in a balloon. You sound spooked, Stoner.’

‘There’s another head. Another body.’

‘OK. And?’

Stoner passed him the open phone. Shard read the text message on the screen.

‘Ah. And this is who? Do I care about him? Your brief was to watch the blonde lady, which is what I’ve done. Who’s this? Why is he here and why is he telling you that he’s here? Is there a meet? Do you want me to sort some backup or have you done that already?’

‘The guy was in the club earlier. Long dull story. He’s a plod of some sort. I identified the threat to him, connected dots in the shape of the blonde lady, delayed her and told him how to lose himself and to lose himself very rapidly. Told him to locate an anonymous junkyard hotel or a safe house and to go to ground there. He’s had some basic tradecraft training from the plods; I
told him to use it and to lose himself. I also told him to strip out his phone and to use a new one, pay as you go.’

‘Was he a target?’ Shard was plainly joining his own dots. ‘Is the blondie doing the icing?’

‘He fits the profile and has some entanglement with a previous dead head. At least, he has some geographic overlap.’ Stoner fell silent.

‘And I don’t need to know more?’

‘At this point no. At this point it’s better for us both that you share none of my preconceptions. And it’s better for me that I know what you know rather than you knowing what I know.’ He smiled, bleakly.

‘So much for the trust we discussed, hey?’ No smiles from Shard.

‘I trust you completely at this point and you can do likewise. There’s no advantage in sharing my opinions, frankly. You’d just develop theories and cloud my thinking. That’s all.’

‘And you’re thinking that the head’s his?’

‘I am. That thought is large in my world at the moment. It is too rapidly forcing me into a confrontation, and into a conclusion which is too easy to be correct. If the blonde lady, for whom I do have a name, is in fact our mad axeman, then she would be always aware of a tail, and she would always be able to shake it, and she would therefore have brought you here deliberately. If you and she truly don’t know each other – and yes, I do trust and believe you – then she would have spotted you simply as a tail and harmless. Or, and this is more of a worry, she spotted you and assumed you were a tail I’d set, and she left you in play while remaining in plain sight herself. Which means that she’s led you here, and most likely assumed that you in turn have brought me here.’

‘Some long reaches there, Stoner. Some big assumptions. Like,
we’re the only players in this? Your masters and mine could both easily have teams set up.’

‘Do you see any? Have you seen any? The place looks decently deserted to me.’ Stoner looked around through the wide windscreen of the Transporter. It was dark, it was late. Few lights burned in fewer windows. He felt entirely unthreatened.

‘Where’s her car?’

Shard nodded towards an hotel garage entry. ‘Through there. She drove in. Left on foot a little later and went into the hotel itself.’

‘Did you check the car?’

‘For what? Bald tyres? An empty screenwash bottle?’ Shard impersonated a patient man, but with less than total conviction.

Stoner pulled the keys from the ignition.

‘Watch the place, OK? What’s the car?’

Shard passed on make, model, colour and registration details. Then settled back into the Transporter’s interior shade. Stoner swung himself into the rear of the van, left it through the silent sliding side door. Walked steadily across the dim street and into the utter dark of the parking garage. As he entered, movement sensors picked him up and lit the harsh bright lights on the first level. The target vehicle was close by the entrance, standing alone but unlit. Stoner walked around it, the first time as far away from it as he could manage without losing sight of it. Nothing stirred. He circled it again, this time much closer than before. The car sat silent, betraying no secrets. He approached it from the driver’s side, keeping the entire vehicle in full and steady view.

The driver’s window wound down. Charity looked at him. She might have been smiling, and then again she might not.

Stoner stopped. They shared an entire lifetime of silence collapsed into less than a minute.

‘Mr Stoner, I believe.’ Still no welcoming smile, but no obvious unwelcome, either.

‘Ms . . . Charity. I believe I’ve forgotten your other names.’

‘If I’d given you another name you’d not have forgotten it, Mr Stoner. Would you care to join me out of the night’s chill?’

‘I’d prefer to stay where I am. I may need to run away very fast, and that’s not easy to do inside a car.’

‘Quite right. There are no eavesdroppers nearby.’

‘My man observed you going into the hotel. He failed to observe you leaving it. He is a very observant man, very careful, cautious and, as I say, observant.’

‘I’m sure he is. And you?’ There was the shared shadow of a smile.

‘I have trouble trusting what other folk observe. I prefer to check things out for myself.’

‘Wise.’

‘Are you in fact inside the hotel? Is this a great illusion?’

Charity’s returned, reflected smile was a sad smile.

‘I’ve not left this exciting car park since I got here some time ago. Keep your hands where I can see them, please, Mr Stoner. I confess to a slight nervousness.’

‘I’m not carrying. My man makes few mistakes, and I’m currently more curious than dangerous. Who is in the hotel?’

‘Nice thought about curiosity versus dangerousness, Mr Stoner, if disingenuous. Many kind people are inside the hotel. I am not, and you are not. We are the only important persons in the current situation. Please stay still. Although you may not be armed, I am, and I am under no illusions that although I’m not much of a killer, you most certainly are.’

In case confirmation were required, the sound of a cough came from the car, and a flake of concrete flew simultaneously from the garage flooring a metre from Stoner’s position.

‘I need to ask this; are you alone?’ Stoner’s hands rested at his side. He was too far from the car to rush it; they both recognised that.

‘Wrong question. Ask one I can answer truthfully and I’ll do so.’

‘You’re not alone, then?’

‘That’s an assumption, not a question, and it deserves no reply. You’ve no reputation for being sloppy, Mr Stoner. Ask the questions to which you need answers. From your questions I’ll learn what you know already and can then decide whether it helps us both for you to understand more.’

‘You sound like a schoolteacher, Charity. Is that actually your name?’

‘It is. Next? You may be up for staying here chatting for the rest of the night, what’s left of it, but I’m not, and your friend will be wondering where you’ve gone. He’s armed, I’m sure, and unpleasantness would be inevitable.’

‘Dave Reve, the guy you met at the club, the guy who was convinced that he already knew you. He’s here, isn’t he?’

Charity’s eyes fell from Stoner’s face.

‘What can I say? He
was
here, I believe. I doubt that he is any longer. You should go check. That would be the correct thing to do.’

‘We can check together.’

‘No. No we can’t. Dave Reve checked in . . . I think he may also have checked out.’ She looked at something on the car’s instrument display, and started the engine. ‘Third floor. Room 310. Sorry about the mess. Don’t try to stop me and don’t bother trying to trace the car. Or stop it.’

The window powered its way closed, and the car rolled lightlessly and unhurriedly forward. Stoner ran in front of it. The car accelerated steadily towards him. He stepped back, trailed tough fingernails along its passing roof. He followed the car as it left the garage, and ran to the hotel entrance. Charity’s lights lit and the hazard warning lights flashed once as she passed the heavy Transporter, accelerating at a rate which would defeat the most powerful of bicyclists.

Stoner pounded on the door of the hotel’s reception. Leaned his weight against the night bell. After a short while, Shard joined him.

‘There should be a law against this.’

Shard and Stoner stood in the doorway of the hotel room, a room anonymous and exactly like so many others apart from the carnage it contained.

‘You knew him, then?’ Shard may have been talking to calm his nerves. Then again, he may have wanted answers. In that he would not have been alone. Stoner stood back into the silent early morning hallway.

‘Yes. Not well and not for long. Long enough to know that he was called Dave and that he was an accountant. A police accountant. Not the greatest vocation in the world, but hardly deserving of this.’

They spoke quietly. The rest of the hotel, with the unconscious surrealism of similar situations, slept on unawares. Real policemen and their attendant disturbance would follow soon enough. The half-closed eyes of a severed head regarded them accusingly, perhaps, as they stood framed by the door.

‘You think the blonde tart did it?’ Shard was direct. Stoner shook his head slowly.

‘Can’t see it. She’d have been blooded from head to foot. Just look at this mess.’

The room was as filthy, as gory, as it was possible to imagine it.

‘Can’t understand the quiet of it, though. You can’t do this to a decently fit guy without him making one fuck of a fuss about it.’ Shard’s level gaze swept the room for understanding. ‘Chopping his head off didn’t kill him, then? And if he’d not known the killer, then he knew enough to refuse entry. So . . . no sign of a break-in. He knew the killer? Even if it wasn’t the blonde tart, like you say.’

Stoner shrugged. ‘Electronic keys. Easy to copy if you know how and if you come equipped. Easy to lift one from behind the reception desk. Easy to make a new one if you know how to drive the machine behind the desk. I don’t know these things personally, but I do know those who do.’

‘You’d just shoot the door off its hinges, like in the movies.’

‘I would.’

‘It would make a big bang.’

‘Big bangs have their place. Big bangs scare the shit out of the innocent.’

‘You say the vic’s a cop, though, so not too innocent?’

‘He was an accountant. Didn’t strike me as the sort to be scared witless by a big bang, but you never can tell. Let’s go. There’s no more here. No more answers.’

‘You don’t want to search the place? Do the heroic and always illuminating CSI deal? Always works on the TV.’

‘My sides, they are splitting with the wit of it all. No. If you care to keep your manly feet away from the blood, and reckon you can search the place without leaving a Here I Am postcard for the plods, then be quick and see whether you can find his phone. I want to see who he called. There’s nothing else for me here.’

‘You don’t want to look for the phone yourself?’ Shard looked at Stoner with curiosity. ‘You want to leave no trace at all?’

‘In one. I would rather not have been here at all, so far as anyone other than us is aware.’

‘And the blonde tart in the car. The one with the great big gun?’

‘The blonde tart you watched get out of the car, go into the hotel, and who you think offed our hero here? I don’t care if you paddle through this shit, but I want to be unconnectable with the scene. Not sure why. Let’s call it a hunch. Let’s pretend that I know what I’m doing. I don’t think it matters much if you leave
trace. It’s not you who’s being chatted up by beautiful if unhappily deadly blondes. Who should not know that I have any connection to this mess. Which in fact I don’t. This is very confusing.’

‘You like being confused.’

‘I don’t mind it.’

‘Confusion’s a great excuse when you need to hurt someone a lot.’

‘You think I want to hurt someone?’

‘I think you always want to hurt someone. Do you really want the phone?’

‘It would help. Might help. And why do you say that? I never want to hurt anyone.’

‘That just isn’t true.’ Shard trod a fine line to the headless corpse. Looked at it for a time.

‘None of the bodies has been booby-trapped,’ Stoner suggested, helpfully. ‘I’m just being helpful. Supportive. Encouraging. Hurry up. We broke in, remember? Some day the plods will come.’