Bang: Memoirs of a Relationship Assassin (39 page)

But I walked on anyway. She could wait. There was plenty of time for tonight’s target.

Maybe that was why I was taking my time. I felt at home… a world of disguises and costumes, everyone pretending to be something else. Felt like I’d been picked up by the mothership and taken back to my home planet! The black mask on my face was snug and comfortable, like I’d been wearing it for years. And soon, when the newsreader took it off… just before she allowed me to kiss her, in front of the hidden cameras down in the hotel’s laundry room, where I was going to whisk her away once she’d had a few more drinks… then she’d see my real mask underneath. The face of Richard the unemployed actor. Just the kind of arrogant, talented young guy that my client, her husband (who was having his own affair with the newsreader’s sister), thought his wife might dally with.

I loved this world. This dirty masquerade. This was me.

Leaving the newsreader behind, I moved on, glancing up at the ballroom’s clock. Plenty of time tonight to make the kill.

But first… some unfinished business. I bypassed a group of waltzing revellers and headed towards the rear of the ballroom, where huge heavy drapes hung from the balconies above. Suddenly I jumped – “Shit!” – as my mobile went off. Its electronic chime sounded horrible, breaking the atmosphere. The highwayman looked around guiltily. Oops!

How strange I must have looked, in my cloak and boots and waistcoat, checking my Nokia. I wonder what my masked face looked like when I saw the name.

Darren

Suddenly it was like someone had snipped a tiny cord and everything, my costume and props and masks, my whole face, everything, just collapsed into a pile at my feet, crash, gone. I stood there feeling exposed. The ballroom went away, somewhere distant. Just me, shivering suddenly as if naked.

A text from Darren, sent backwards in time to the Eighteenth Century.

My best mate.

Six months, it had been. Not a single word between us for six months, not since the Anchorage… since I’d busted his nose and he’d punched me in the eye and I’d kicked him in the ribs and… abruptly I could feel Andy Holloway, like he’d crept up behind me. Ready with a vicious sneer. Ready with an angry fist. What the
fuck
did this arsehole want now, then, eh?

My knuckles white as I opened the text message on my mobile.

Hi m8 hows u? Fancy

a xmas booze up at sum

point? B gud 2 meet up,

bin 2 long. Miss u fucker.

Stupid, but… when I read it, hearing his voice… and when I thought about how hard it must have been for him to send that… how long he must have been putting it off, worrying over it…

I lifted my mask briefly to wipe my eyes.

A weird, tingly feeling waterfalled through my insides, right down from head to toe. Like when you’re nostalgic about something from a long time ago, and realise how badly you miss it. My best mate. And I wanted him back. God, I missed him too.

And just like that, Andy was gone, dropping away from me. No more rage to sustain him in my head.

I texted a reply:

Sounds good to me m8!

Could do with a serious

drink. Just need to clear

it with the other half and

I’ll be in touch.

I smiled as I hit send, knowing that last bit would send Darren into a complete spin. Imagine his face! You what?! Other half, what other half?!

Boy, did I have some stories for him… and I couldn’t wait to hear what he’d been up to as well, the dirty bastard. Just hadn’t been the same without him.

Right. Mobile off. Unfinished business.

Like a thief in the night, I slid along the back of the ballroom. There were fake gas lamps on the wall for atmosphere, making the shadows flicker. Between the massive drapes were dark alcoves, some of which were fire exits. And in one of these alcoves – not exactly hidden, but set apart from the rest of the party – a man and a woman.

The guy was young, slim, with floppy blonde hair. He had a simple embroidered mask across his eyes, the kind that doesn’t conceal much and lets people recognise you from halfway across the ballroom. His frilly white shirt was more New Romantic than Elizabethan but it did fit the style, loosely laced together at the top with huge billowing cuffs.

The woman was stunning. A vision in scarlet, with a proper wireframe dress and a tight bodice that pushed her breasts up proudly. Her blonde hair was woven into long braids, leaving her slender neck bare. She was cooling herself with an ornately decorated fold-out fan. Her other hand held a mask on a slim stick: a red and gold firebird design, sculpted into flames above the eyeholes with red plumage exploding out from the sides.

They made a gorgeous couple, smiling and talking in the shadows. The man was trying to get her to pull her mask away, and she playfully refused, keeping her face hidden, whacking him gently with her fan, oh stop!

You should have seen his face when my flintlock pressed against his head.

“Stand and deliver, sir!”

I tell you, I
live
for moments like that.

He jerked, looked round. I stood with the pistol resting across my left forearm, now aimed right between his eyes.

I could see how irritated he was at the interruption, and for a second it looked like he was going to shout at me, but then he covered it with a laugh. “Ahh… nice one mate, I like it! Stand and deliver, gotta love the Eighties, yeah? Don’t remember ‘em meself though, I’m just a baby!” he winked at the firebird woman. Cheeky Irishman, just like always, remembering his own mask. The one he wore for his adoring public.

“Your money or your life, Mister Shea.”

Now he did look annoyed, perhaps at being identified in front of the girl he was hitting on. “Look mate, bit busy right now but tell your people I’ll swing by and donate in a bit, okay? Come find me in a – ”

I pushed the muzzle of the pistol against his forehead and said “Even though you fool your soul, your conscience will be mine.”

Declan looked confused. He glanced at the firebird, who smiled and fanned herself lazily, then back at me. Recognising something. Maybe my voice. Maybe something else. “Do I know you?”

“Allow me to introduce myself,” I said, bowing my head. “Mister Ex, at your service.”

His face fell, nervous. Then anger. “Not very funny, fella, and not very original either. We’ve had a dozen Mister Exes popping out of the woodwork, so listen, whoever you are, just…”

I slid my highwayman mask up so he could see my face. No goatee. But that didn’t stop Declan recognising me instantly.

“Oh fuck.”

“I see you’ve already met my other half,” I said.

The firebird mask was elegantly flicked aside, allowing Emma to give him her most devastating smile. “Lovely to see you again, Mister Shea,” she purred, folding her fan shut with a
snap!

Declan recoiled, bumping against the drapes. We both took a step closer, hemming him in, the flintlock still resting across my arm. Through the eyeholes in his mask, bright blue terror. Honestly, from the look on that pretty baby face, you’d think the gun was real.

“What… what do you want?” he stammered. “Look I… what’s going on? What’s this all about, has somebody put you up to this? Who do you work for?”

“We worked for you, Mister Shea,” I said.

The pop star swallowed. “I don’t know what – ”

“We didn’t know it at the time, of course,” said Emma. “We’d always assumed that the tabloids were our client. Even our agent thought that. It took us a while to work out it had nothing to do with the newspapers. They did very well out of it, but they weren’t the ones who hired us. You did.”

“I…”

“Did you go and see Larry Jones yourself?” I asked. “Bet you didn’t. You probably just got that flunky-woman of yours to sort out the whole thing. Get rid of Megan for me. I don’t need her any more. Make it look like she’s been cheating on me, like she’s a slag. Just as long as I come out of it looking good. Looking
innocent.”

Emma traced her fan underneath Declan’s jaw like it was a switchblade. “These things matter, don’t they, when your whole image is based on being a nice guy. Last thing you want is all your fans thinking you’re a bastard because you called it off with your fiancé. Looks a lot better when it’s all her fault. Then you come out of it smelling of roses.”

“Saving face,” I added.

Declan was trembling. Just out of interest, I thumbed back the metal hammer on top of the flintlock so it clicked loudly. Sure enough, he jumped, staring at me like my face might be the last thing he’d ever see. Like he might be about to hear a very loud and final
bang!

“What do you want!”

“Tell us why,” said Emma. “Why did you stitch Megan up like that?”

I watched Declan frown, as if it was a maths question he might be able to work out in his head. “Well… if I hadn’t, then I’d never have been able to meet Isabella…”

“I knew it,” I said. “You had that planned all the way back then, didn’t you?”

Declan had been back in the headlines over the last couple of months, thanks to his high-profile relationship with a Hollywood actress. Isabella Rodriguez, a gorgeous starlet and the leading lady in Matt Damon’s last movie, had posed for a hundred pictures with Declan on her arm. International celebrity mega-gossip: the American beauty and the Irish heart-throb!

“It had been talked about, yeah,” Declan admitted. “And we had to find some way of cracking the States, so…”

Emma nodded. “Yes, I hear Flag are planning a US tour next year, now that they all know all about Isabella’s cute British boyfriend and the band he’s in. Worked out rather well for you all, hasn’t it? You’d almost think it was planned.”

“Who needs Megan, right?” I said angrily. “Why date some bird off EastEnders when you can be seen with a Hollywood movie star?”

Emma’s fan scraped across his Adam’s apple. “Poor sweet Irish boy, cheated on by the Scot slapper, now finding true love across the pond… and it all becomes so much easier when the public are on your side.”

Declan pulled away angrily. “Christ’s sake, it wasn’t my fault! She was starting to take the whole thing seriously! She was always bloody following me, waiting for me to get back to our place, calling me up and stuff…”

“And it was never serious, was it?” I nodded. “Your whole relationship with Megan was organised to give you both some publicity. Just like with Isabella, fake from the start, right?”

Declan shrugged, but that was enough. I shared a look with Emma, and something like the mate-telepathy I used to have with Darren kicked in.
Told you
, I transmitted.
We didn’t kill anything that was alive to begin with. Rule One.

Rule One
, she smiled.
You were right. Well done
.

Ah, it was nothing
, I sent with a twitch of an eyebrow.

Smug bastard
, she told me clearly.

“Um…” began Declan, like he didn’t want to interrupt. “Look, if you’re after money or something, maybe – ”

“Your money or your life?” I leaned in, making him wince as I pressed the flintlock’s steel muzzle against his forehead. Hard enough to mark that smooth tanned face… little shit probably never had a spot or wrinkle in his life.

Then I flipped the pistol away, sliding back into the holster. “But you’ve already paid, Mister Shea. Payment received in full.”

“And we gave you back your life too,” smiled Emma. “All part of the service.”

“You have nothing to fear from us. Client confidentiality is very important in our line of work.”

“As long as we can also rely on your discretion,” Emma added.

Declan looked back and forth between us, rubbing the red circle on his forehead. He still didn’t know who we were. The man who had hired us didn’t really understand what we did. He didn’t have a clue what he’d set in motion.

Maybe I’d send him my memoirs, when they were done. This would make a very juicy last chapter… but I knew I could rely on Mrs Buchanan to edit out the true identity of our employer, when it came to the published version. Client confidentiality is very important in our line of work. Revealing him to the world as the one who’d engineered Megan’s fall from grace wasn’t what this was all about. We just needed to know for ourselves. Always need to know who we’re working for.

“Enjoy the masquerade, Mister Shea,” I said, sliding my mask back down. Emma flipped her firebird mask across her face and did a tiny curtsey, as if to a lord in the Elizabethan court. Hating being outdone, I doffed my tricorn hat and performed an extravagant bow, black cloak sweeping around me.

Funny – I always felt I had to go the extra mile when Emma was around. Guess I still wasn’t quite used to working with someone, although it was growing on me… and our success rate in recent months spoke for itself. A purely professional relationship, I should point out – it would never have worked otherwise – but together we had made Infidelity Ltd strong.

My other half. She needed me as much as I needed her. Everyone should have a partner in crime.

And she was mine.

Declan shook his head, still confused. “Who
are
you guys?”

Emma and I shared a smile through our masks. Then we both reached into our costumes and handed over our new business cards. The ones our agent had printed up for us. Identical cards – we did the same thing, after all.

You get a better shot when you’re double-barrelled.