Thomas Lundon had been asleep for around two hours when he was woken suddenly by the vibrating noise of his personal mobile phone, which lay on the ornate wooden carved bedside table beneath an antique chandelier bedside lamp, the jewels glistening in the moonlight of the otherwise darkened room. A wrinkled hand slowly emerged from the silk covers and reached fruitlessly at first, for the phone, but eventually his hand contacted with the vibrating phone and he pulled it towards the white hair which poked out, just above the edge of the silk sheet.
Without opening his eyes, Lundon spoke in a half asleep, irritated and husky voice.
‘Yes, what is it?’ he croaked.
He didn’t know who would call him at this time of night; only a select few people had the privilege of being given his personal number. The voice on the other end of the phone also sounded tired, but serious, as Lundon froze in bed before rubbing one eye and deciding this phone call required significantly more attention than he had first realised.
‘It’s me,’ came the familiar voice of Lundon’s contact in the UK. ‘I have some more information for you concerning our “mutual friend”,’ it whispered surreptitiously.
Lundon was very skilled at making contacts anywhere in the world, and it would have been no surprise to him that a call should come in for him this late at night. However, THIS contact had sought HIM out and Lundon didn’t altogether trust that. Not that he wasn’t appreciative of such endeavours, far from it; it made him suspicious that people would volunteer to be of service to him, without fully appreciating what he did to people who let him down. However, this contact didn’t care and was only concerned with the ruin of one man. It happened Lundon also sought the ruin of the same man and was prepared to give the benefit of the doubt until the individual had been eliminated, then he would deal with anything secondary.
‘Go on,’ Lundon croaked, sitting up in bed, his face illuminated by the light of a full moon shining through the thin cotton curtains which rustled in the breeze and allowed the relaxing sound of crashing waves to serenade Lundon soothingly to sleep at night.
‘I have sent you the images by secure, encrypted email,’ the voice instructed, as if almost rehearsed. ‘It seems we may have more of a problem with our Mr King than first thought of.’
‘Really,’ Lundon said discontentedly as he reached for his glasses and the laptop he had secured in a hidden drawer beneath his bed.
‘Mr Lundon,’ the voice replied, irritated at his lack of care, ‘I had hoped we would become, how should I put it, mutually beneficial partners in this affair, and that you held Mr King and his demise as your highest priority? Please do not show me the same lack of concern you may have shown others in the past. It would be a pity for our “professional relationship” to suffer an irrevocable difference of opinion.’
Lundon seethed as best he could in his half asleep state of mind that anyone would DARE to speak to him in such a tone. If this bastard had been in front of him, he would have shot him himself for his insolence. However, Lundon had relied on this source of information for some time now and so far, he had provided exceptional intelligence on Mark King’s movements. The voice continued.
‘I would hate to think that this secure information should fall into hands other than yours,’ it said sarcastically.
Thomas Lundon, though seething, put on his best sympathetic and grateful voice to appease this nameless individual. He would find him after Mark King was dead and put a bullet in him PERSONALLY.
‘Forgive my rather rash response, I, er, have been unwell and have not been sleeping,’ he begged.
‘Better,’ the voice at the other end of the phone replied after a pause, ‘I was beginning to think you no longer required my services.’
Thomas Lundon feigned a chuckle and rubbed his forehead angrily as he felt his blood pressure rise and the colour in his face turned redder by the minute.
‘On the contrary, my mysterious friend, it is you who I hold in the highest regard as a source of accurate and valuable information!’
‘Shut up and listen, we’ll forget the false pleasantries for the moment,’ the voice replied and Lundon felt stupid at his waste of effort, which made him even more angry as he reached for his glass of water. ‘Mark King has been sighted collecting a large amount of equipment from Russo’s site. It appears our Mr King isn’t taking this situation lying down. Make peace with whatever demons are still unaccounted for and do your best to take him out before he gets to you.’
Lundon was about to respond when he heard the dialling tone at the other end of the phone confirm that the source had hung up. In a temper, he threw the phone down towards the other end of the massive dark wooden four poster sleigh bed, irritated it didn’t hit the wooden foot board and smash. Lundon knew it was too quick a call to confirm a trace and that it was made from a burn phone anyway, which means the caller had either memorised his number or was working off the grid. Either way, it made tracing the individual impossible.
Lundon spun around as his bedroom door flew open and a young man in a dark blue polo shirt with a wireless telephone headset on his head stood in the door, realising he forgot his manners.
‘Sir, I, er, I’m sorry for the intrusion Sir,’ he trembled, noting Lundon’s furious expression and red face, ‘er, unfortunately sir we could not get a trace on the latest call to come in to your private cell, we’re still working on the recording now, sir.’
‘GET OUT!’ Lundon spat as he threw whatever was nearest to hand at the poor young IT assistant who quickly exited the room, closing the door and thanking God it was only a pillow Lundon had thrown this time.
In the corridor, the villa was bustling with people in the semi-darkness, some with clip boards, some with headsets on, moving quickly from one room to another once the silent alarm was triggered, which indicated that someone was calling Lundon on his private cell phone. Protocol stated that a trace was to be made on every single call, email, text message and communication going in or out of the villa, especially during the night, and it involved a trusted few whom Lundon personally had recruited for security reasons to manage this when he was asleep.
Inside his room, Lundon dropped back down onto the remaining billows and puffed out excess air, frustrated and annoyed at the lack of respect shown to him after waking him up at this hour; also at Mark King for causing so many problems when the man just wouldn’t die.
In the darkened office building in central London, a pre-paid mobile phone stood on an abandoned desk, strapped to a speaker and facing another pre-paid mobile phone, taped with electrical tape, to a coffee mug. On the rooftop across the street sat a small, black news reporter’s antenna pointing east and making a barely audible beeping noise as it rotated around and around.
Down on the street below, a hooded figure hung up the receiver in the phone box on the corner of a council estate. As he moved away from the phone box, his attention turned to the man he was holding by the throat who had been inside the phone box before he made his call, dropping him unconscious to the floor. Turning to go with an evil grimace on his face, and a few new scares on his forehead and cheek, he reached into the pocket of the hoodie, and pulled out a packet of Marlborough Red cigarettes. He lit one up, paused and looked around before making his way to an old dark blue Ford Focus parked half on the verge, and half on the road.
As he walked at a determined and victorious pace, only his eyes and lower face were visible underneath the hoodie as he breathed out one lung full of cigarette smoke after another. The place was quiet, and he knew it well from his childhood. It was the perfect spot to make an untraceable phone call with no witnesses, save one who wouldn’t be worrying about anything he may have witnessed or overheard.
The night air was cool, compared to the office blocks of the inner city business districts, and few people ventured this far for fear of being mugged by the swathes of gangland members who wandered these streets. The sound of yobbish chants and the bassline from someone’s loud music echoed through the deserted streets, along with the sound of breaking glass, screaming dogs barking and the sound of a siren, encouraged Ian Hawking to quickly flick his cigarette and jump into the focus. He pulled out a third pre-pay burn phone from the pocket of his dark blue jeans and opened the screen, pressing the only number programmed into the speed dial, and waited for the other end to pick up.
‘It’s me, we’re on,’ he said and hung up the phone, before wheel-spinning around, sending stones, dirt and wet grass up into the air, and speeding off down the road.
His brakes screeched as he stopped right next to a large bin at the side of the road. He took out the phone he had just used and dismantled it, removing the sim card, battery, and snapping the memory board in half, before dropping it into the bin, lighting another cigarette, and speeding off into the night, the faint flashing red and blue lights of a police car summoned to investigate the sound of breaking glass and screaming he had heard moments beforehand.