A Last Act of Charity (Killing Sisters Book 1) (37 page)

‘The fuel is fuel. Motor fuel. It may smell of many volatiles other than the essential petroleum, because its constituent components have been the target for endless government interference over the years, but it still burns reasonably well in a plentiful supply of oxygen, and were this Zippo lighter to ignite it, you would be in a hot place very quickly. I have no wish to do this, Shard, particularly not to you and certainly not here, but I will roast you without hesitation unless you sit down, catch the towel I’m going to throw to you, mop yourself a little and listen a whole lot. OK? Do we have understanding?’

Shard nodded, breathing carefully and slowly through his mouth, aiming to keep the amount of fuel in his lungs to the lowest possible level. Stone stepped away and threw him a towel.

‘Shit, JJ. You planned all this.’ A statement, not a question.

‘Not a plan, my friend. A precaution. No wise man would even joke about taking me anywhere, particularly against my will, and particularly when I may be inconsolable due to the ravages of grief following the death of my close colleague and valued associate.’

‘Hartmann?’

‘How many others have I lost recently? Are there more I should be worrying about? Nervous tension is a terrible thing. It can be bad for the heart. And heart trouble would be unwelcome at the moment. Particularly at the moment.’

Stoner rolled the lighter between his fingers.

‘That’s enough of the amateur dramatics. I wanted to make a point. It’s a simple point, so simple that it would be easy to mistake it for an unimportant point. But it is important. At delicate times like these it is crucial that we all know where we stand.’

Shard nodded, mostly dry, stinking of fuel, sitting and steady. Watching, waiting and listening. Red eyes slitting, pain-filled.

‘So. The lesson is one lesson, but it will need some detailed emphases. That’s the plural of emphasis.’

‘I haven’t gone stupid, Stoner, and neither have I lost my grasp of the English language.’

‘But your noted sense of humour appears a little precarious. No need for that. There is humour in everything. You just need to know where to look and how to identify it.’

‘Glad you think so. I can’t see any at the moment.’

‘Hartmann’s death removes me from any investigations he may have been involved with. Any of them, all of them, express it as you will. I am removed. Detached. I have no interest in anything that man was doing. None. I hope that’s clear?’

‘I don’t understand what you’re saying, but I hear you loud and clear.’

Stoner shrugged.

‘I don’t care what you understand, although it’s very important that you accept that any attempt . . . by you or by anyone else . . . to involve me further in any of that man’s business will be unwelcome and unsuccessful. We would fight. You . . . or whoever gets sent against me . . . would lose that fight. I would
feel a need to incapacitate anyone crossing me. It is important that I’m clear about this, and it is important to me that you tell me here and now that you accept this. If you arrive again uninvited I will treat you as an intruder.’

Shard bristled slightly, but his reply was measured enough.

‘OK. If I’m asked to contact you I’ll make an appointment.’

‘That would be both welcome and wise.’

‘But I thought we were both looking into finding out which maniac did that head-chopper’s video show? I hear you, JJ, and I’ll do what you say, but I don’t understand how you can drop the thing like that. We both know it was that strange blonde woman . . . at least, she’s connected to it somehow. Don’t you want to see it through?’

‘Through? I think it is through. I think it’s over. I think that the man behind it is a dead man. I think that it’s done. That’s my best analysis. Mallis will do better, but he might not share his thoughts, findings, conclusions with you or your masters. He can be a challenge at times. But so can we all.

‘I think there was a game in play. I think it’s over. I think its result is not the result the players intended. But I do think it’s done. If I’m wrong, if there are more of the headless in the future, then we can talk about it some more, but in any other circumstance than that one, it’s done. No more dead heads, no more spookwork. And I want to get back to being off the books. Really off the books. Retired.

‘Shard. Friend. I almost like you. I certainly don’t dislike you. We go back a long way. I have no wish to do you harm. If any remaining players want to send someone against me for whatever reason then fine; don’t let it be you. You want to learn more about motorcycles or increase your understanding of guitar music . . . then fine. Drop me a line, give me a call and we can get together. You want to talk about the spook world? Forget it. I’m through with it.

‘And listen carefully. If someone, anyone decides that I need to be retired, actively retired, then I will defend myself one hundred per cent. And after that, assuming I survive it, I will work out who was responsible and I will move against them. One hundred per cent. Got it?’

Shard nodded.

‘I want to say something, JJ, and I want you to listen. Any chance?’

‘Go ahead.’

‘Truth. I can’t see a circ in which I’d take on a gig to take you down. But if I had to – if there was one of those unrefuseable offers – I would always use the long gun. You may be well past it and slow as a pensioner, but you might get lucky. Long gun. Clean head shot. Promise.’

Stoner smiled at him. Gently. ‘What you’re saying is the fact that you’re here with me is confirmation that you never had any intent? OK. I can believe that. You always were a lazy fucker; long guns? Yeah. When I accept that last gig, the gig to take you down, y’know, the big ten dollar gig, I’ll hire a helo or a drone or something. Sit in a bar somewhere and order an air strike.’

Both men smiled. A moment had passed, and they both recognised that.

Stoner broke the silence.

‘I have an archive, a secure archive, and I know where many bodies are buried. I put a few of them away myself, way back. And I am not going to run away. I am not going to hide. But neither am I going to ponce about, thumbing my nose at anyone. Leave me alone; I leave everyone else alone.’

He walked over to the wall, retrieved the Billet brake caliper, inspected it for damage, shook his head sadly and returned to the bike.

‘Take it easy, matey. When you feel the edge is losing you, then
walk away. Don’t try to be old and bold. You know what they say about that. OK?’

A long silence. Tension drained from it. Shard stood; Stoner turned to face him, both faces set in no expression at all. Shard broke the silence, finally.

‘OK. More coffee? You up for another?’

Stoner turned to face his Harley-Davidson, his back to his companion.

‘You know how to make it, and you know where everything is.’

35

BROKEN WING

After hours. The Blue Cube was quiet, dark, cooling. Echoes of the evening fading. Stoner walked alone, checking door locks, flushing, rinsing, stacking away all the dead soldiers into their crates. It’s rare to find silence near a collection of instruments, and the piano’s bass strings whispered as he passed by; cymbals on the drum kit hissed in conspiratorial reply, the valves on the last lit amplifier hummed their own monotonous melody. But it was quiet. The darkest hours; the longest hours. Always a time for reflections.

Chimp the barkeep would usually perform a basic clean around before setting out into his own later night, but Stoner had sent him away smiling, along with the last of the evening’s customers. He’d not felt like playing himself, had left that with the house band, a guest musician moonlighting from the TV studio where she’d been recording a show and a couple of occasional players. But not Amanda the saxophonist. Not tonight. He wondered briefly where she was, where her own demons were driving her that night. But it was a brief moment; none of his concern. Not really.

Chairs stood around their tables, the houselights were shut
down, leaving the backlit bar and a single spotlight stage left, illuminating the tall stool he preferred to play from. His elderly Fender, the battered Stratocaster which had been more than a companion for a couple of decades, lay in its case, although the Marshall amplifier he mostly used was lit up and live, standing on stand-by alone in its own electronic world. The PA was down, as was everything else.

Stoner lifted the guitar from its case, slung its strap, an old webbing affair heavy with ancient buttons and badges from a faraway past, over his shoulder and collected the lead from its customary resting place under one of the amplifier’s lifting handles. The jack plug crunched as he slid it into its socket. Even with the sound set low it crunched. A poor earth, he reckoned. Again. Old guitars are like old motorcycles; you think they’re working well, that you are on top of maintaining everything which needs maintaining, and something wanders along to prick the perfection. Like having an old friend interrupt a quiet evening’s reading. Not unwelcome, not exactly, but an interruption all the same.

Although he rarely played Hendrix when there was an audience to witness his attempts, apart from ‘Red House’, which he almost always played at great volume and at great length, Stoner relaxed his mind and limbered his fingers by attempting, once again, to play with the same effortless fluidity of style, the same massive understanding of the instrument always displayed by the late musical magician. The need to dig into depths of involvement as he struggled to play just-so always involved his conscious mind so completely that although it was always an effort – a genius like Hendrix he was not – the concentration allowed some unique opportunity for another part of his brain, maybe a more primitive part, to work its way through whatever was its current preoccupation. And anyway, he loved the sound; a Fender guitar played flat out through a Marshall. It does not get much better.
Not at the end of the day. Not at the end – the official end – of a long and dwindling relationship, a long and rewarding – if too often too painful – way of life.

The opening kick to the song ‘Little Wing’ is a delight to get right. Right, as in what feels right for the night. Hendrix played the song in several different ways, sometimes slowly, sometimes more rapidly, always with variations, embellishments and additions. The song was always instantly recognisable and always fresh as a new tune. Tonight, Stoner entertained the tables, chairs, the beer engines and optics, all the empty space of the place with a slow, meditative introduction, then paused, missing the point at which the first words would walk in through the clouds, and the audiences would typically applaud. Presumably they applauded themselves for recognising the tune, possibly not, but for this solo show to no one Stoner stopped, raised his eyes to inspect the ceiling and played the intro again.

He played it accurately enough, close enough not to the Hendrix original but close enough to the version – his own version – that he wanted to hear. But he decided to play it again, this time picking the notes with just the fingers of his right hand, dispensing with the abrasive accuracy of the flat pick in favour of thumb and fingernails. His right hand stalked the strings and he played it again, more slowly, using just the neck pick-up, the more bassy of the Fender’s three pick-ups to provide a rich, full tone while allowing the opposed fingers and thumb of his wandering right hand to apply different weights, different emphases to the strings they picked.

He stopped again after the repeated intro. Picked up the discarded flat pick and held it loosely between the thumb and forefinger of that same right hand. Switched to the guitar’s middle pick-up, introducing a little more treble and leaving out some of the bass. The flat pick could hit the bass strings harder than the nails of his middle and ring fingers, so the pick-up shift balanced
that. And he moved the point at which his right hand played the strings further away from the bridge, removing some of the click-percussion from the contact between plucking finger and plucked string.

Stoner played the introduction again, declared himself pleased with it. The music suited the mood. He leaned into the stool’s backrest, pushed back and sang the first verse to himself, inaudible over the Stratocaster’s own amplified voice, then broke away from the song’s original structure to allow himself a brief solo break. There was no audience to find fault and he was finding his own spaces between the clever chording and all the improvisational opportunities offered to the cunning player by the Hendrix original.

And after a full verse of part-chords and careful picking out of the melody while maintaining the basic beat in the background, Stoner drifted back the original and sang the second verse at the top of his tuneless voice, inaudible even to the audience of none above the Stratocaster’s power shout.

Then, the final section, played all-too briefly on the original studio recording, but expanded and extended when played live by the maestro, and Stoner let rip. The guitar played itself, in that conjoined relationship – almost a coupling – between expert player and their familiar top-quality instrument. It felt that the Fender offered rarely trodden paths between the walls of notes, and Stoner walked those paths, lost in the self-indulgence which is probably unique to a confident instrumentalist.

Finally, after maybe twenty minutes of screaming, soaring, scheming and satisfying late-night guitar music, he pulled his song to its close, leaving the dying last chord to fade into the electronic stutter of the delay, reverb and chorus effect pedals he’d been using. He sat, drained but at peace.

A single pair of clapping hands. Applause where there should have been silence. Unexpected appreciation from the dark. A
female voice, almost lost in the hard silence which follows such loud music.

‘That was so good, Mr Stoner. I can see why you look after your hands. “Broken Wings”, was it?’

‘“Little Wing”, in fact. I wondered where we’d meet, Chastity, but you’ve done well getting in here.’

‘Wrong girl, Mr Stoner; the wrong working girl. I’ve been here for some time. Your house band were good, although I do so enjoy listening to your girlie sax player, great set of lungs and lips on that one, so I missed her, but the others always seem a little . . . empty without your being there, kicking them up a gear. They were a little listless. Maybe they miss you. First time I’ve heard the piano guy sing, though. Nice voice. Bass player was drinking a lot. Always good to watch a band. You can pick up lots of stuff. Tonight? Like they were all waiting for someone, something? You? The second coming?

‘And I borrowed your apartment upstairs for a little while, just to let everyone go their own ways. In their own time. No need to hurry them once you finally showed up.’

‘You knew I’d be here? How?’

‘I know you better than you think, Mr Stoner. Much better than you know me, for example. You were always going to come here, and I was always going to wait for you. The only mystery in this is how come you weren’t expecting me?’

‘Your sister, the crazy one, she killed Hartmann, right?’

‘Wrong again, Mr Stoner. You’re great on the guitar, less great at the deductive reasoning stuff, I think. But you will be tired. I can see that. Respect that.

‘You killed him, Jean-Jacques. You.’

Charity’s voice sounded completely calm. In complete control. Maybe it was. Stoner released the Stratocaster’s strap from the rearmost of its two studs, held the instrument by its neck, close to the joint to the body, and swung it to his right, resting the
silent device in its stand. He looked towards the sound of the voice. He could see a figure; dark coat or cloak or dress, bright hair shining in the dim of the bar lights.

‘No need to get up, Mr Stoner. I’d prefer it if you stayed seated. More comfortable for the both of us. I mean you no harm . . . I wouldn’t be here were that not the case, but you are sometimes a little prone to an occasional rash act, so I’m told, and we could both of us do without that.’

Stoner sighed. He felt peculiarly exposed, alone on the stage, sitting in the centre of the beam of the only bright light in the building. A strange sensation, even for a musician of long standing.

‘This feels dead strange, Charity. I can’t see you well, and it’s making me nervous. I do not enjoy the feeling. Can’t we talk over a drink? There’s plenty here to choose from. I did not kill Hartmann. From the vid I’d assumed it was Chastity, your flaky sis. Although what happened and how it happened is a bit of a mystery. Mysteries are good, though, so long as the truths they conceal deserve that concealment. Like the names thing; the thing with all your silly sisters using the same silly name. Chas. What’s that about?’

Charity looked away, briefly. ‘It’s a game we played as kids. It was never my fault; it was always Chas. Chas did the bad thing. It’s habit. And it confuses the innocent, so we sort of carry on with it. Pick up the phone and ask for Chas; you’ll always get her.’

Stoner shrugged. ‘OK. Drink?’ He sounded calm enough, despite his suggestion of nervousness.

‘A drink? OK. In a minute. Sit completely still. I’m going to land something with you. Between your feet. It’s a difficult throw and I want to make a point without freaking you into some heroic male action hero kind of thing. OK?’

Stoner’s face cracked into a smile.

‘Oh, wow. I do enjoy a surprise. And you’re full of them, lady. What do you want? I should maybe stand on one leg or something?’

‘Think of the little boy with the apple on his head.’ Charity’s voice was calm. ‘Think of the circus, where the big butch guy throws nasty sharp knives at the simpering girly, but always manages to just about miss her. But in reverse. And this isn’t an easy target, and this isn’t a good thing to throw. Frankly.’

Stoner spread his arms wide and shrugged. And a sudden crunch found his own knife, the three-inch black blade he’d left in the throat of the Hard Man, the three-edged killer’s cutting blade with the blood gutters and the Teflon darkness and the composite moulded handle . . . that knife was standing almost exactly midway between his feet. He started to bend towards it, started to reach down.

‘You can leave it there. I would prefer it if you did.’ No threat in the female voice. None needed. It was not a throwing knife, and it was not an easy throw. She would of course also carry a blade of her own, or some other short-range weapon. That would be the only sensible option. In her place he would be well prepared and well armed. Maybe supported, too. Families were apparently close affairs, and he had met her sister . . . knew her better by reputation and result.

Charity rang a pair of bottles together. An invitation.

‘Come down, if you like. Join me at my table. I brought drinks. You paid for them, you might as well enjoy drinking them. You can leave the blade where it is. You left it where it was, after all.’ No tremor in the voice, just an open tone, an invitation.

Stoner jumped down from the stage. Carefully. This would be a poor moment to twist an ankle, strain a ligament, bruise a foot. Also embarrassing. She gestured to a seat facing her, stood for a second, fluid as a fitness freak, sat down again.

‘You left the blade. Good move. I have another. A bigger one,
though no more of an edge; that’s one neat blade, and a clever use.’

‘You’re going to tell me how I killed him? Hartmann?’ Stoner reached for a bottle, started to peel its paper label in single long strips, starting at the top.

Charity held his gaze, held her own hands out of his view. Viewed without the wall of the footlights between them, she was neatly turned out, white-blonde hair immaculate. A long, loose coat, dark material. An odd choice for an indoor encounter; better suited to the outdoor life.

‘You called me, Jean-Jacques.’

‘I did, did I?’ Stoner held his tone as levelly non-committal as her own.

She lifted a hand into view; her left hand, he observed, presumably she was right-handed. The hand held a cell phone. Nothing flashy, not too smart. She slid it across the slick table, adding a spin so that it faced him when its motion ceased. Neat trick. Maybe she was left-handed, he wondered, and picked up the phone, flicked it open.

To view a text message, a simple message: ‘Help me’.

The caller ID was his own name; ‘Stoner’.

‘Interesting. Thank you for that.’

‘I did consider it a little strange that you would leave your cell there with him, but then I did consider it strange that you would ask Chas . . . Chastity for help. A strange choice for you to make, given that so far as I knew you were likely to be her next target. I did wonder when I got the call whether it was a trap. I expected that it would be, in fact.’

‘OK. Excuse my slowness here. I asked Chastity for her help? For what? I needed no help. And in any case, you sisters swap phones?’

‘No. Chas didn’t pick up, so the call transferred to me. We
usually do that. Charm would’ve picked it up if I’d not answered. Answering machines are so . . . robotic, somehow. We like to offer a more personal service than that.’