1.
After hitting him a few times for fun, they chained him to a car, cuffed him, and put a dirty black hood over his head. It was sticky and stank of engine oil. Then they splashed some gasoline around him and laughed. “Maybe we’re going to light it, you fuck. Maybe we ain’t.”
They laughed some more.
“You’ll find out.”
Weston waited in the dark. He could hear their footsteps walking away, and he tried to place them by slowly moving his head from side to side, smelling the gasoline. He felt the cuffs as best he could. They were new combination-and-key, he thought. Houdini might have escaped, but he was not Houdini. He felt the chain round his waist, but he couldn’t find a lock. His legs were free, but standing up was not on the menu. As for the gasoline, he’d worry about that later. If there was a later.
He thought about his path to this uncomfortable place. Weston had been in the direct employ of Mr K because Mr K smelled something strange about the death of three people, and he couldn’t trust the police for this. The first dead man was the only son of Norman Trebble, a shadowy politician the public ignored. Trebble fell from power soon after and was replaced by someone so nothing that Weston could hardly remember his face, much less his name. The guy wasn’t even a yes-man, just a leaf in the wind. When Weston thought of Trebble, with his long vinegar face, he thought of a man you never let get behind you. He was some kind of political manager of the police.
Somehow someone had got hold of some incriminating evidence against Trebble, and the suspicion was that the son had something to do with it. But it didn’t make obvious sense. The son, by all reports, was not up to much, with no clear desire to do anything except drink and horse around at parties with the kind of women who only like rich men. But his father gave him work as his private secretary and so he controlled Trebble’s agenda. He got to know all the people who visited him, and was trusted with many of Trebble’s security keys. The secretary knows the secrets. Probably had access to the money, too.
The son’s smashed body was found in a brown sticky puddle of dry blood early one morning at the foot of a high building. It was an old office building, empty for years, stripped of its pipes and cables and most of its doors. Even the rat shit had dried to dust.
Weston stopped thinking about Trebble now, and waited some more. He never did like the smell of gasoline, he decided. Verses from the Bible came into his head as he remembered the preacher – his father’s best friend outside the family – saying that anyone who fears and loves the Lord will have no other fear. Memories of those times flooded back and he breathed deep with appreciation. He sent a prayer for the preacher, blessing him and thanking him for all the good he had done. The preacher had been a generous and kind man, always ready to help others. He never asked for anything in return.
What was that? Voices. They must have gone into the old manager’s office. Weston remembered that from the office you could see the whole workshop. Closed the door. So now I can hear them, but I can’t hear the words, not even the language. Probably waiting for orders.
Hey, Don, he told himself. You really messed it up, eh? It only takes one mistake to spoil your day, and today is not doing too well. That third guy must have been bent double in the tool box for four or five hours. So much metal around I couldn’t detect him.
He reviewed his mistake. Man Number One, whose name was probably not Delaney, said he knew about Devil’s Heaven and would I like to give him half a million? I wanted proof, of course.
What do I know about not-Delany? Apart from looking like a chronic street criminal, I mean. Apart from his missing little finger with the tattooed fake blood round the stump of course? I wonder what big-brain thought of that to join his gang?
So he had Man Number Two come an hour early to the garage and hide himself in the back. I knew about him, so I kept Delaney between us at all times. If Man Two wanted to take a shot at me, he had to kill Delaney first. Fine little dance, that was. But the monkey in the tool box was behind me.
Another verse came to him. Be strong and of good courage, fear not, nor be afraid of them: for the Lord thy God, he it is that doth go with thee: he will not fail thee, nor forsake thee. And he thought of Mrs Ingram, Mrs Janis Ingram. Her son had died, in a mess of his own shit, lying on the floor of a cheap hotel by the sea. Because she was influential, there was an autopsy but no one found anything. How he died was a mystery. Why he was in the hotel was not known either. He had checked in with a false card, and it was not the sort of place to bother with biometrics.
Weston had gone to the hotel and spent a night there in the next room. He didn’t find anything. The fat owner was not happy to talk, but she finally showed Weston the room itself. He could smell the disinfectant behind the fake flowers of the air-freshener.
More voices from behind the door. The three sounded fed up now. Not getting their orders quick enough?
Mr K was interested because of Mrs Ingram, a world-class queen bitch, he said. Janis Ingram was, among other influential things, the head of a budget committee that decided how different shadow police departments got funded. The money was enough for everyone in a small village to retire early. So somehow, the committee members always managed to live well.
Cars with human drivers all day and night, guaranteed electricity all day, ditto water, and even in one outstanding case, a secret swimming pool.
Weston didn’t find Mrs Ingram a bitch. He found a woman with newly rounded shoulders and new lines on her face who had lost her only son. She wasn’t taking medication, she said. Drugs wouldn’t bring her son back. She couldn’t be bothered to look at Weston in the interview and her voice was flat. She had nothing to say.
He rattled his chains now. Just to feel alive. Clink to the left, clink to the right, here a clink, there a clink, everywhere a clink-clink.
Top-secret Mr K had chosen him for the mission because Mr K trusted soldiers more than police. He trusted ex-special forces more than anyone because, he said, “In action, your friends hold your life in their hands. You trust your friends.” This mission was delicate because it dealt with people of influence, immune to normal police.
But Mr K liked special forces men for another reason as well. They had spent their lives far away from police work so they hadn’t built up the mesh of favours that made police work possible. In a perfect world, said Mr K, he would change all police every three years.
Once a soldier in combat, he said, always a soldier in combat. So Weston had accepted the case, with no reinforcements, and armed with nothing more than Dox of Authority. A Doc of Authority can open any door in secret and back up that secret with an automatic ten years hard time. No bail ever.
Weston smiled again in the dark, and rattled his chains one more time. He heard a laugh and he recognised it as the monkey in the tool box. Some people were just a pleasure to shoot, he thought, and the monkey in the box would look much better dead. He apologised to God for the thought. But You’ll understand.
The third body was the right-hand man of Jasper Beech. Beech, yet another obscure politician, was not easy to like. He was a well-fed man with a face like a polished apple who talked about the little people, because it was their own fault they were poor. He knew you were an admirer. He knew that because everyone is an admirer. He thought he was the best thing in your day, and didn’t trouble to hide it.
The dead man was his private secretary, Carlos Fernandez, who often stayed overnight in Beech’s bachelor apartment. He worked for Beech nearly nine years.
His body was washed up on the coast a few weeks ago. The cause of death was drowning, and unlike the other case by the sea, Mrs Ingram’s son, he was staying in a good hotel under his own name. He had just gone for a swim and got into trouble.
Not even a case to close.
They were laughing now from behind the door. The three men sounded as if they had forgotten him and were just having a few beers at the end of the day. Weston decided against clanking his chains again. If they were so relaxed, this could be a long day or two or three. Conserving his energy was a better bet.
Another verse came singing into his mind now. He was back in church at eleven years old singing the harvest festival, when the sight of an unknown girl of about fifteen made him fall in love for the first time. She was dark and slim with huge brown eyes and a smile that made you smile. He never saw her again except in his dreams.
Back to the case. He came here following a lead to Oscar Beazley. Beazley was a high-level political security man. A heavy drinker, he surrounded himself with far better security than the men and woman that Weston had met. When he went out on the town, tables next to him stayed empty. Mr K suggested caution with this man.
So is it Beazley who’s paying Delaney? Or are there others who are not happy with me? Not enough information. Can I do anything else right now? Unchain my chains? No? May as well go to sleep and dream of God and gasoline.
They woke him up with a friendly kick in the ribs and tore off the hood. Monkey Man was about to kick him again when Delaney stopped him. “He needs to breathe for the next bit.”
They unchained him, with two shotguns pointing at his face for maximum effect.
“You know something,” said Weston as he stood up slowly, easing into the stiffness. He was speaking to Monkey Man and he spoke very slowly. He wanted every word to count. “You look like the monkey in the zoo, the one that picks up his turds and throws them at the visitors.” That got a laugh from the other two, and Weston joined in, making monkey noises. “Notice to Visitors. Poo-flinging monkey. Don’t wear good clothes round here.”
Monkey’s face went white with rage and he jumped forward.
“Stop!” Weston shouted.
He dropped his voice, and spoke hard and slow to Monkey Man. “They’re not going to leave witnesses here. Think about that, you fool. Just think.”
Monkey Man’s eyes flickered between the other two men. He didn’t like what he saw. He took a step back.
It was the last step in his life. Delaney’s shotgun blasted him in the chest. And blood and bits of meat blew everywhere.
As the remains lay in a spreading pool of blood, Weston, with his ears ringing and still feeling Monkey Man’s last kick, almost felt sorry for him, now he was entertaining the devil. And said a little prayer.
“You’re right,” said Delaney. “Kleenex man. Use once and throw away.”
He shrugged and reloaded.
“Now it’s time to get chatty. We want to know a few things. For instance, who sent you? What do you know? Shit like that. See that plank behind you? Yep, you’re going to lie on it. Time for your swimming lessons.”
The two of them tied Weston to the plank and raised his feet a little so they were higher than his head. Weston knew what was coming next. But the only thing he didn’t know was if he was going to survive it. He had trained for this, after all. He knew he could hold out till he was unconscious, and then it was out of his hands. They let him live or not.
Delaney had the smile of a man who enjoyed his work as he plastered Weston’s face with cellophane. He then slowly poured water over it, his smile broader and broader. Weston writhed a little and his legs started kicking, but after a couple of minutes was still.
Delaney took off the cellophane and waited. As Weston came to, breathing like the bellows of a furnace, Delaney broke open a little blue glass capsule under Weston’s nose.
Weston had no choice. He had to breathe. And he went straight to heaven.
