The picture seemed to scream at him from the phone’s screen. He stood open-mouthed, shock and revulsion squeezing his vocal cords shut and denying the scream that ached in his chest.
He blinked, his eyelids feeling alien and foreign, which did nothing to blot out the vision of Matt Evans’s ruined body. Forced himself to look again: Evans’s body was propped against a car, the gloom of the night doing nothing to hide the blood that covered, like a shroud, the wounds that had been inflicted, the legs bent at sickening angles, knees obviously shattered. He focused on that, seized on the lesser horror as he swallowed burning bile, not wanting to see what was perched on the car’s roof.
The phone buzzed in his hand, a text popping up below the picture: Thought you would appreciate this. Will give you something special to talk about today. Enjoy Stirling.
He stared at the message dumbly, its casual tone almost as shocking as the picture above it. Did he answer? Should he? And if he did, what would he say? ‘Thanks for beheading the loudmouthed little prick and slaughtering two other people, just what I wanted’?
No. No. He put the phone down on the coffee-table in front of him, pushed it across the table, out of his reach. Then he sat back, looked up at the ceiling. It was done. With Griffin and Russell dead, he was safe, his legacy assured. He could retreat into the life he had created for himself, go back to his – no, their work – make the difference he had always dreamt of.
There were always casualties in war, always collateral damage as innocents got caught in the crossfire. And Evans was hardly innocent. After all, it had been his greed and avarice that had started all this.
No. Better he was out of the picture. And the caller was right: it would divert the focus of today’s meeting from other matters. He sighed, dropped his eyes back to the table and the phone that lay there, like an unexploded grenade. He reached for it, unlocked it, then forced himself to look at the picture one last time. Stared at it until the horror abated, replaced by the cool indifference he had honed over the decades.
He thumbed in a text, then considered. Glanced at the clock on the wall, seeing it was almost two-thirty a.m. He needed to sleep. Rest. Be ready for the meeting with the chief constable at Randolphfield in a few short hours.
He stood, and the phone buzzed again. He read the message – A pleasure doing business with you.
He felt a chill finger trace a path across his calm. He had done what was necessary to protect everything he had worked for, ensure his secrets stayed buried in the past. To do so, he had contacted a professional whose discretion was assured, whose credentials he knew were impeccable. It was a business arrangement, nothing more, and he had paid handsomely for the service.
He had met the caller in person only twice, the first time years ago, the second less than a fortnight back to agree terms and be given the phone they now used for contact, a phone he was assured was untraceable. He had seen in that meeting someone who reflected himself, a man living behind a façade.
But he had known. It was in his eyes. While he was hiding from his past, the caller was hiding something uglier, darker.
The contract was complete, but would the caller be satisfied? Or would he come looking for more blood, having decided there was one more loose end to be dealt with in Stirling?
And if that happened, would he be ready?