Chapter Six

Mark couldn’t believe he hadn’t seen the Lexus in the street. It came from behind a van with Angelo at the wheel. Mark moved quicker than Tony, which saved his life. Tony took the hit full on, bouncing up over the car’s bonnet to land a few yards behind it on the road, quickly turning a patch of it wet. Their eyes met for a second, but Tony’s did not register anything, and were filling with blood. There was a screech of brakes from other vehicles, and a woman screamed somewhere. Mark heard others shout out and saw the Lexus speed away around the first corner. Angelo’s skull had obviously not been broken.

Mark had been struck a glancing blow, just enough to push him into the gutter and make his shoulder throb. He felt for the gun and it was still in place. Traffic was stopping, people were rushing towards Tony. Someone approached Mark.

‘You okay, pal?’

‘Yes. Help my friend.’

And Mark was gone without another look back, pushing through the gathering crowd into a side street.

If they wanted Tony dead it meant they expected him to sing. They were right, but for Mark Tony hadn’t said enough. Maybe he could have got more out the man. Mark realised how cheap life was for these people. They had killed two of their own very easily. A few minutes ago he thought he’d had one vital element on his side, surprise, but he was behind the game, way behind. His situation had gone from hopeless to impossible, just like Tony said. Even so, he’d keep to his plan, such as it was, and get over to that address in Greenwich. Maybe it would be an endgame waiting for him, maybe not, but at least they couldn’t know where he was going and Angelo hadn’t hung around long enough to know if Mark was out of action or not.

Mark took the Jubilee line and got off at the North Greenwich tube station. This wasn’t a part of town he knew very well. He checked out the usual mix of summer traffic and milling people, all on a mission to get somewhere, a thousand pairs of eyes, and anyone might be looking for him. The police might want to know why the man with Tony had disappeared, but Tony’s end would be put down to a hit and run, not murder. The holdall had given Mark some protection against the car; what was left of his life was inside it.

Greenwich was a large station, concrete columns reared up inside a huge underground space, and glazed blue tiles were everywhere. It had been built to impress, like the Millennium Dome nearby. This had always struck Mark about London, or any big city. They were always on the move, buildings being pulled down, springing up, projects failing with millions lost, but always others to take their place. Ever-growing stone plants. So different from his hillsides, which only changed when wedges of forestry were cut down to leave gaping, exposed spaces, naked gashes in the masses of trees. Glimpses of what the hillside were once like.

Mark looked at Tony’s scribbled address. Anyone might be living there, but it did exist, for Mark found the street in a few minutes. It was in the money end of Greenwich, a million quid’s worth of converted warehouse, the penthouse on the top, Tony said, which would make things even harder. Mark remembered coming here with Lena once, he’d wanted to see the Cutty Sark, Christ knows why. He’d had his bellyful of the sea in the Shetlands but it had been in one of her magazines and it was in their early days, when trips around town had been a novelty for him, especially when it didn’t involve spying on someone. They’d gone on to the Observatory, where his lack of knowledge had shamed him. He couldn’t answer any of Lena’s questions but it didn’t bother her. ‘You can read lots of books when you’re an old man,’ she’d said, laughing at him in that way she had, it was infectious, never mocking and made him feel so good.

Mark fixed Agani’s place, as he leant against a wall a hundred yards down the road. It was overlooking the Thames, one of several warehouse blocks, new money spin offs from 80s Britain, Mark’s growing up time. There’d be financial people from the City here, maybe a few soccer players, small time rock stars, conmen, and silver spoon merchants, but Agani was probably the only murderer.

Getting in was the first problem, staying alive the second. They’d have electronic entrance doors, maybe even someone manning them, but Mark had been here before, many times. There’d always been somewhere to get into, from his earliest days. He saw a pub further down the road and walked down to it. It was surprisingly full for the time of day, city types stretching out liquid lunches. He went into the toilet and tried to freshen himself up, slicking water through his short hair, putting on the jacket, and making sure the gun was secure in the inside pocket. He needed to look as if he belonged in this part of town. Mark thought about having a quick drink but thought again, it was too much like the last wish of a condemned man.

He walked quickly back to the warehouse block, his eyes trying to check everywhere at once. There was not much traffic about and no sign of the Lexus. They probably had it off the road by now, fixing the mess Tony had made.

It was a question of hanging around until someone went into the apartment block. That might be Agani himself, for Mark had no idea what the man looked like. He could not afford to stay outside for long, there was little cover in the modern design of the place, old streets were much better, full of the nooks and crannies of his trade, but his luck was in. A car pulled up outside, he saw a man in a suit kiss the woman driver, get out and go towards the entrance. If it was possible to move fast nonchalantly Mark achieved it, a lifetime of experience served him well and he got close to the man as he punched numbers on the door’s security system.

‘Nice to see summer’s arrived,’ Mark said, in the best voice he could muster.

‘Yes,’ the man answered, ‘better late than never.’

He did not pay Mark much attention, he was still smiling back at his girlfriend. Mark let him go ahead into the lift near the entrance, then took the stairs, which were discreetly positioned behind a service door. He left the holdall at the foot of the stairs, if it was gone when he came down it was gone. If he came back down.

For a big man he’d always trod softly, and he did so now, making barely a sound on the stairs. It was four flights up to the penthouse. He got to the top floor and looked for a way up to the roof. He wasn’t sure what good this would do him but it was worth checking out. Always know your ground, one of his golden rules. The door to the roof was locked but it didn’t matter, for someone was coming up in the lift. There was just enough angle in the corridor to hide himself. Two men got out of the lift, talking in a language he didn’t recognise. One was very large, and the other was Angelo.

It was an instinctive action, he’d always acted like this when the chips were down. Mark came behind the men very quickly and put the gun against the large man’s head. He froze, but did not make a sound. A pro, Mark thought, like me. Angelo turned to recognise him and cursed under his breath.

‘That’s right, mate, still alive,’ Mark whispered. ‘I’ll take his head off. We’re going inside, quiet and easy.’

Angelo found his English.

‘You’re a madman, coming here. What the fuck you think you gonna do?’

‘I could kill you, for a start. I should have last night.’

Angelo rubbed the back of his head in memory. He wanted to get his hands on Mark, to punish with his fists, to kill him with his hands.

These might be the men who had killed Lena. Mark felt the adrenaline kick in again, he was surfing on its rush, not sure himself what he might do, but if he was going down in the next few minutes these two were coming with him, he was certain of this. It was impossible to search them without losing his edge. One yes, but two was too dangerous. He’d assume they were carrying.

‘Open the door,’ Mark said. ‘If either of you make a sound, or speak a word that’s not English I’ll kill you.’

‘He don’ speak English much,’ Angelo said.

‘Tell him what I said.’

Mark kept the gun hard against the big man’s neck. He’d held one or two before but had never used one. It was not complicated. Pull a small piece of metal and someone died. Angelo turned a key in the door and Mark nudged them in. Very quietly.

It was a large room, more than thirty foot long, and one other man was in it. He sat at a desk by the window, smoking, and talking on the phone, in Dutch. Mark recognised it from his one job in Amsterdam. The man had a dressing gown on that looked like a woman’s, a reddish pink colour, almost like another layer of flesh. He was small, very dark, about fifty years old, and wore glasses with heavy frames. This must be Agani, but he was not what Mark was expecting. This guy looked like a cross between an accountant and the doorman of a clip joint. Agani said something to the men without turning around, and continued to talk animatedly into the phone. If there was anyone else in the flat Mark knew the odds would lengthen. Not that they could be much longer.

Mark gestured to Angelo and his friend to sit down. Agani finished his phone call, looked at something on his desk and stood up, stretching and looking down onto the street. Only then did he turn to see Mark and the pointing gun.

Agani’s face was quizzical, not frightened, but he glared at Angelo for a second before the mask came back. It said, you can’t harm me, you are nobody. This was the man who’d ordered Lena’s death and these were the men who’d carried it out. Mark saw her on that bloody bed and wanted to pull the trigger. He wanted it badly. A quick pull on the trigger, just increase the pressure of his curled finger a fraction. Agani first, one round in the head, quickly, before the others could react, then just empty the gun into them as they came for him. He was breathing very hard, trying to stop the shake in his hand. An inner voice talked to him.

It won’t do, you stupid bastard, you’ll find nothing else out. You’ll spend the rest of your life behind fucking bars, never knowing what really happened, never knowing who Lena really was.

‘What’s the trouble, my friend?’ Agani asked.

That almost did it. Mark fought hard to control himself and everyone in the room knew it. Angelo and the big man were weighing up their chances but they did not step between Agani and the gun. They wanted to live, maybe at the expense of their boss. Any real loyalty and they would have been at him before this, chancing that one of them would survive.

‘Don’t do anything stupid,’ Agani said, ‘we can work this out.’

His voice was soft, lacking the flamboyance of Tony, but there was more of an accent in it, and it was used to giving orders, having its own way. Mark found his own voice at last and hoped it didn’t come out as a desperate shout.

‘Do you know who I am?’ Mark said.

Mark cocked the gun. Its click seemed to make the room jump a little.

‘Don’t do it, man,’ Angelo said. ‘You are out of your depth.’

‘And you are close to dying. All of you are.’

Agani looked at Angelo.

‘This is the man, the Mark Richards.’

‘I thought maybe so.’

‘Sit back down,’ Mark said to Agani. ‘I want you all to put your hands on your knees. Dig into them. I want to see your hands go white. If they don’t, or you move, I will kill you all.’

‘Can I tell him?’ Angelo asked, pointing to the big man.

Mark nodded.

I want to kill you. I want it so bad I can smell it. Taste it. If it’s revenge, it tastes like iron, like blood. My throat is dry and bitter with it. I have retribution in my hand and I want to use it. Anything to take the pain away.

Agani was a cool bastard, Mark had to give him that. The man knew his life hung by a thread but faced up to him like he was a business contact, with a proposition. Mark knew it hadn’t always been like this. Agani had learned to do it. Even if the guy looked like a ponce in a men’s clothes shop, Mark recognised a fellow traveller, someone born piss-poor and hating it, not so much from the wrong end of the tracks as beyond them altogether. Agani would have started with small time thieving, then built up, until success was plucked from his mean life. He’d probably done his own killing in the early days, maybe there were others like Lena in his past. This was an Albanian version of a scally from the old estate, but for ripping off motors read drug shipments, for fists and boots in the streets read throat slitting, for getting your girl pregnant read selling them. For a finale read cutting up a woman.

‘Well,’ Agani said, ‘we might as well talk.’

‘Did Angelo tell you I was dead?’ Mark said. ‘That I went the same way as Tony? Or did you think I’d just crawl under a rock? Go away somewhere and blank Lena from my mind?’

Angelo’s hands tightened further on his knees. Maybe he had thought Mark was dead. He would only have had time to see him spin into the gutter.

‘Never mind, mate’ Mark said, ‘at least you got one out of two.’

‘Mr Richards,’ Agani said, ‘you’re upset. Not thinking straight at all. It’s understandable. Such a pity you came back to your flat when you did. All this … unpleasantness could have been avoided. And Flut … Lena, she was such a silly girl. She had a good life here. She was a British citizen. Why is it that some always want more?’

Mark rushed forward and clubbed Agani to the side of the head, knocking him onto the floor. Angelo and the big man thought of doing something but the gun was back on them in seconds. Agani moaned, and spat out a string of foreign words with his blood.

‘Shut up,’ Mark shouted. ‘I only want to hear English. Get back in your chair.’

Agani did so, but was groggy. He almost said something else in his own tongue but stopped himself.

‘Can I get a handkerchief from my gown?’ he managed to ask.

Mark nodded. Agani was bleeding freely. He dabbed at his wound gingerly. Mark had also caught his cheek with the gun butt. It was turning purple.

‘I haven’t been hit for twenty years,’ Agani said quietly. ‘I’d almost forgotten about such things.’

‘You haven’t forgotten shit,’ Mark said. ‘Only now you pay men to do this stuff for you. You’re just a lowlife ponce, a dago woman killer.’

Agani dabbed at his head again, and winced, yet a thin smile crossed his face.’

‘Tony said we’d have trouble with you.’

‘Look,’ Agani said, ‘Mark, can I call you Mark, this is getting us nowhere. We can make a deal.’

Mark tried to keep a lid on this. Angelo was right, he was out of his depth here, and holding a gun on three international killers. He backed against the wall, and wanted to sink down it, but he kept the gun steady, and pointing at Agani’s head. The nerve was letting him have it again, jerking him to its tune. Tap-tap, tap-tap, on the side of his head. His personal Morse code but it had few words. He allowed his eyes to flit to the window for a moment. The sky outside was a serene soft blue. It matched Agani’s furnishings. Everything was toned down here, soft pastels, polished boards, and an oversized white leather suite. Lena would have approved. It looked like a woman lived here, though Agani’s red, patterned dressing gown was effeminate enough.

‘A deal?’ Mark said, trying to tone down his voice and sound like a man in control.

‘We are men of the world, you and I,’ Agani said. ‘What happened to the girl was unfortunate, but we can’t allow our own to steal from us. There was no need for it to go as far as it did, and I have said that, but some of our people have too much of the old ways in them. They are not civilised, like us. They thought she’d swallowed the gems and should have waited. But waiting is hard to do for Stellachi.’

Stellachi was a new name, but Mark did not react. He wanted to ask questions, but he knew Agani would just spin him a line, until he dropped his guard. He was seeing the horror again, the smell of that morning was still in his nostrils.

‘Mark,’ Agani said softly, ‘stay with me now. Keep it together. I can set you up for life. Angelo tells me you are good, there’s always room in the organisation for someone like you. You know this country.’

Mark shouted, at least he thought it was a shout, but he wasn’t sure what came out of his mouth, but it turned into a kind of low-throated scream that shook Agani. His mask dropped for a moment. Mark’s body knew what it was going to do, even if his brain didn’t agree. He fought to control the gun in his hand, but it had a life of its own. It stayed cold in his grasp, fighting against his sweating hands, alive, and wanting action. Agani got up from his chair and waved a calming hand. Their eyes met for a long second as Mark pulled the trigger. The gun reared in his hand and the round took the top of Agani’s head away. His skull detached at his hairline and what was inside sprayed itself on the wall behind him. Red and grey on white. Agani stayed upright for a few seconds, his body shaking out its life, like a decapitated chicken in an Albanian farmyard. He was dead before he hit the floor, and looked small and ridiculous, as he curled up in his gown on the hardwood floor. Ridiculous and very bloody. The big man wanted to get at Mark but Angelo restrained him. Maybe this saved their lives. The discharge of the gun had been thunderous but now the room was very quiet. A crazy calm in the aftermath of a killing. Mark too was still. For a few precious seconds he felt a tremendous peace, so tangible he thought he could wrap it around him, and let it take all this away. Bring Lena back. He wanted to close his eyes, which would be the end of him. Maybe he wanted that too, but not yet.

Angelo was shaking his head, but there was no panic in his voice.

‘Wrong move, my friend,’ Angelo said. ‘What are you going to do now? Shoot all of us? What then?’

These men were not that shaken. The brain of their boss was a new wall decoration but, like Agani, they were not pleading wrecks. They’d dealt with death many times before, and had been close to their own before. Maybe so much so that their own mortality had become blurred, and fear muted. One of them might have cut up Lena, maybe the other holding her as she fought and writhed in agony, holding her until she passed out, until she died. They had chosen to kill because they were in a hurry. Simple as that. A matter of fact. A matter of business. Lena might have just as well been a plant, and they hadn’t given a rat’s toss about him or the police. They weren’t worried at all.

Again Mark fought to keep the gun steady. He’d felt it jump in his hand once, and it wanted to again. How did it go? Guns were just tools, that it was people who killed? What bollocks. Guns killed. They controlled, seduced and conspired with anger, pain, the need for revenge. They tapped into weakness, rage, plain meanness, the inadequacies of challenged people. The inadequacies of strong people. The gun in his hand told him he should finish the job. Three not one. It made more sense. These two were the butchers, whoever Stellachi was. He’d killed the organ grinder, not the monkeys on the ground. Angelo was looking at him calmly, weighing up his own chances of survival.

‘You are wrong,’ Angelo said.

‘What?’

‘You think we killed the girl. We didn’t. Agani told you the truth. It was a man called Stellachi. A Romanian, from Bucharest. Agani used him for stuff like that. Tony drove him over to the flat and waited outside. I give you the name because it will do you no good. Whether you kill us now or not you will be dead yourself soon. Run, hide, keep fighting, it’s no matter. It’s just a matter of time. Agani was only big here, there are others much bigger and they will never let this go.’

‘Who the fuck do you think you are? You talk like you are supreme fucking beings, but you’re just animals.’

Angelo shrugged.

‘We are different,’ he continued, ‘we come from a different world, one where life is cheap. Very cheap. You can understand this. You also come from the outside. I know this, that’s why you pulled the trigger. You had to, but what happened with the woman was business. It was nothing personal.’

‘Bullshit. You talk like some idiot in a film. I could phone the police right now. Get them up here. What have I got to lose?’

Angelo’s third shrug almost got him a bullet.

‘But you won’t. They can’t help you, and you will be the only one in jail. You’ll have a lifetime to think about your mistake. Lena doesn’t exist any more. The only killing they can prove is the one on the floor here. Men like us don’t need police.’

The big man said something to Angelo. They were more confident now that Mark would not fire again.

‘Agani is not worth being locked up for,’ Angelo said, with sudden vehemence. ‘He slept with boys.’

He turned to the other and muttered a few words, and the big man smiled and answered. By Christ, Mark thought, these men have ice in their veins. Agani might as well be a piece of meat. Blood from his head was seeping into the floorboards, and slowly making its way towards the white rug that matched the leather suite. Like a dark red sea on the move.

‘Stellachi is in Amsterdam,’ Angelo said, ‘most of us are there. It is a good base.’

‘Why should I believe any of this?’

‘Because this information will not help you.’

Amsterdam. One of the few places abroad Mark knew. No wonder Lena had gone there so often. Yes, these boys would be active there, burrowing like bugs in the red light shit, controlling drugs, the sprawl of suck-and-fuck clubs and the women who worked in them, encouraging the flow of money from the pockets of the curious, stupid and lonely to their own. Lords of a thousand scams.

‘Better to go down fighting, for men like us,’ Angelo said softly. ‘Kill us now or try to kill us another time, it doesn’t much matter, does it?’

‘What about the deal?’

Angelo laughed.

‘The deal? That was just words. Agani was talking to stay alive. He’d have killed you the first chance he got. Unless, of course …’

‘Unless what?’

‘Unless you had our goods. There were twelve, in a small black leather bag. The one Lena always used. Have you ever held stones like them? No, of course you haven’t. Each one cut by a master. They seem to hold all the light of the world, and it sparkles just for you. People have always thought them worth dying for, but we know you don’t have them, just as Stellachi knew Lena would never have hidden them in the flat. That would be as stupid as saying she’d lost them. No, his guess that they were inside her was a good one, but wrong. We underestimated Lena, like we underestimated you. We searched the flat afterwards, but you wouldn’t know it, eh? We found nothing, but then we didn’t expect to. Lena was foolish, not stupid. The diamonds are somewhere else.’

‘Why did you kill Tony?’

‘That you are here is the answer. I thought I’d got you also. That was my mistake. Who knows, maybe my future is the same as yours now. Our people will not like Agani dead.’

‘Where did you take Lena?’

Angelo sighed. ‘Does it matter, my friend? Does it really matter? You saw her, you know her fate. In my country we say the body is just a shell that the soul leaves. I envy her.’

Mark re-aimed the gun and Angelo closed his eyes momentarily.

‘One thing I will tell you, Stellachi would have put her out before he looked for our goods. Not because he has mercy, Stellachi has none, but it is professional, no? Easier. That man works alone, always, and he would not want her fighting him. Only fools and amateurs do things the hard way. Lena would not have known what was going to happen to her. I doubt if she knew he was in the flat before his hand was over her face. Only Stellachi got it wrong. She hadn’t swallowed them. Believe me if you want, or not. If you have the diamonds, or can find them, maybe we can do a deal. It’s not up to me.’

‘I still want to know what you’ve done with her,’ Mark shouted, ‘and don’t shit me. Your brains will join Agani’s if you do. I swear it.’

‘In the sea,’ Angelo said.

‘What?’

‘She’s in the sea, or at the bottom of it. She swims with the fishes, no? Somewhere off Dungeness. It was how Agani wanted it. Stellachi left, and Agani sent us in. He always used us for stuff like that, cleaning up, fixing someone else’s mess. But you got there first. Look, isn’t this way better for everyone? If the police found a body you wouldn’t be here now. You’d be in the frame, we could have easily done it like that, but it’s not our way. As I said, the body is just a shell.’

Angelo was talking hard for his life as Mark fired again. Men like us, Angelo said. But he wasn’t like them, even in his bleakest moments Mark could never be like these ghouls. Not even now. Let them think he was though, it might give him an edge.

This time he jerked the gun up at the last fraction of a second and the round ploughed into the wall. Once more the sound was monstrous. It made the nerve leap, and increase its grip on his head, but this time he hadn’t obeyed it. He was looking beyond Angelo at Lena, at her lustrous, healthy face, and he felt an echo of the way he’d felt each time she came back from a trip. Protective, glad she was back, glad she was home, that word he’d dared to begin to use. He wanted to kill Stellachi but these men should also die. Something sweeter than the bitter iron taste of fear was salivating on his tongue, a taste that meant retribution, and a sudden end to the pain, if only for minutes. His mouth was no longer dry, and the nerve told him to finish it. Go on, pull the trigger, get this over. But he’d had enough. Every sense Mark possessed had been through the shredder in the last three days and he managed to stay his hand. He was allowing these two to fight another day, to maybe kill him another day. So be it. He had to get out, get away and weigh everything up. Stay alive.

‘Lie on the floor,’ Mark shouted, ‘gut down, hands stretched out. Do it.’

The big man had a lot of gut to stretch out but he still looked dangerous so Mark kicked him heavily in the head as he got down. It did not seem to affect him much but it kept him still. He’d put his mark on both of them now. He searched for weapons with his left hand, but only Angelo was carrying – a 9mm automatic Mark didn’t recognise. It became a new addition to his arsenal.

Mark took a last look at the hell he’d created. Agani was in a foetus-like position, his dark eyes were almost black now, fixed on the sky beyond the window, but seeing nothing. He looked like he wanted to go back to the womb from which life had ripped him. Agani might have been born in the crumbling back streets of a town, or maybe out in the sticks, another unwanted mouth to feed, one of a family too poor to do anything other than survive. Now it had ended on the floor of a million-pound penthouse in another world. Every foul act the man had committed to get here had finally cost.

‘See you soon,’ Angelo murmured, sure of his life.

Mark knelt by his head and Angelo was not so sure. Mark was breathing heavily now, his hay fever kicking in with the nerve, the bastards working in tandem.

‘Stellachi,’ Mark said, ‘what does he look like?’

‘You’ll find out soon enough.’

Mark pressed the gun against his neck like he had with Tony. Angelo nodded his head towards Agani’s desk.

‘He’s there, with Agani, in Rome. They share the same tastes.’

Carefully, Mark got up and went to the gold-framed photo. Agani was standing in St. Peter’s Square with another man, amongst the pigeons and the families.

‘He has blond hair now,’ Angelo muttered, ‘or at least he did have the other day. Stellachi does not stay the same for long.’

Mark fixed the man’s face in his mind. It would be in there for ever. He was maybe six three, finely muscle-toned, no excess weight whatsoever, a lean, hard, face, tanned and high-cheekboned, with cropped hair. Stellachi had dead eyes. His eyes looked like Agani’s did now. This man was another ghoul who was dead but didn’t know it. The smile on the man’s face was a lie and Mark felt he knew Stellachi already. Stellachi’s eyes hated, he hated the world and the people in it, and would pay it back, for as long as he could, pay it back for being born. Mark had a small piece of this in himself, and thanked God it was one small piece.

He could see no way of locking the two men in so he just turned and ran. They were not the type who could get up that easily, let alone move quickly, and he was the man with the guns. He didn’t trust the lift so he took the stairs, two at a time, almost crashing into each turn in the staircase, his nose streaming, eyes watering and head thumping. Not very heroic at all. If they came down in the lift and were waiting for him at the bottom, it would all end quickly.

They weren’t. There was no one around. He was out on the street, with barely time to conceal the weapons before he ran. It’s hard to run and not look conspicuous but he tried it anyway, without glancing back. The air-conditioning of the penthouse was quickly blown away by the heat, and his clothes began to stick to him again. He could go back to the flat, wait for Stellachi to come to him, but it was a place where his future had ended. Kelly’s place was out so he didn’t know where the fuck to go. Three people had died, he was a killer on the run and he wasn’t even sure what day it was any more. Maybe Saturday. The last few days had been a lifetime. He’d killed a man, but it seemed outside of him, a necessary action on his road to retribution. Even so, he was not a natural, and Mark knew he never would be.

A black cab was passing and Mark instinctively struck out a hand. It was empty and it stopped. Mark told the driver to take him to Kelly’s pub, it was all he could think of, and sank into the back seat. The guns felt heavy, one in the jacket, the 9mm in his waistband.

Mark knew Dungeness a little, a job had taken him there once. A strange, flat, windswept place, with lots of sky and light, existing in its own space, as if it belonged to another time. Wooden chalets everywhere, holiday homes for the odd, but a power station as well, the old and the new bumping up against each other. He’d been watching some actor guy, a dick who’d made the job easy, and had thought that Lena would like it there. Maybe they could take a spin down and he’d show her around. Well, she was there for good now. With the fishes, as Angelo said. Feeding them. She’d never surface. Those bastards would have made sure of that.

Mark wasn’t sure if he was talking to himself. He caught the glance of the driver as the man checked him over. For a moment he thought this might not even be a taxi and felt for the automatic. The nerve was stretching him to breaking point, he was jumping at shadows, but no, the guy was thinking nothing at all, except maybe if Mark was a good tipper. They hit traffic. It would take more than a few minutes to get to the pub. Mark stretched out and tried to control his breathing. There were specks of blood on his shoes, like dark freckles. Man-made uppers with man-made blood.