Walter came running down the corridor waving his big revolver, his eyes blazing with fury.
As Scrimple watched, the big German too was cut down by rapid automatic fire that seemed to be coming from the patio. The windows had shattered from the first volley of rounds and piles of glass seemed like small sand dunes.
Walter was flung back against the dining table and as he collapsed a bunch of the expensive and ornate chairs toppled over. He groaned for a moment and tried to rise back up by tugging at the edge of the table. His fingers scrabbled for a handhold. Then William appeared from the patio, followed by Chisin and stepped up to Walter and put an end to his struggles with a single bullet to the face.
There was a sudden silence and the strong smell of cordite filled the air. Three or four more people came into the house and Scrimple lay still waiting for his own inevitable bullet.
“Come out now,” William said. “We can see your legs.”
Scrimple slowly stood up with his arms held high in the air. It was the only gesture of protection he could make.
William grinned at him while Chisin scowled. They were both holding small sub-machine guns that Scrimple knew to be Israeli Uzis with the stock folded back. The other men had similar weapons and talked quietly in Chinese as they examined the two dead people.
“This wasn’t a smart place to come and hide,” William said as he ejected the long magazine from his weapon and snapped a new one in place. The magazine made a loud click as it fitted in home.
“Did you have to kill them?” Scrimple said petulantly now that he knew he wasn’t going to be shot immediately.
“Why not?” William replied as he bent down to examine what was left of Nari’s face. He exchanged a few rapid sentences in Cantonese with Chisin which Scrimple could not catch.
“You left the money with this woman, so where is it?” William asked as Scrimple gradually lowered his arms.
“It’s in my bedroom.”
Together they walked over to the room where Scrimple had been sleeping. He hauled the Adidas bag out under the watchful eye of the two Chinese men. William grabbed it and threw a quick glance inside, not bothering to count the stacks of notes. For a second Scrimple thought he should tell him that half was missing but then he kept quiet. William would realize sooner or later.
“This is what Bottle gave you?” William wanted to know.
“Yes.”
“I thought it was a briefcase?”
Scrimple shrugged, not wanting to say anything more.
William tossed the bag at Chisin and told him to keep it safe.
“How did you find us?” Scrimple asked.
“We put a GPS tracker into your mobile phones before we kicked you out on the street. You took us directly to Jomtien and then back here.” William said, giving him a wink to show how smart he was and how stupid Scrimple had been to think they’d just let him go. “We checked the safe in the travel agency but there was nothing much in it. That’s what took us a while.”
“What happens now?” Scrimple asked, feeling resigned to the circumstances.
“This is what happens now,” William said nodding at something over Scrimple’s shoulder and the next thing there was a stunning blow and he lost consciousness.
* * * *
It was late and the man with the gun was sitting on his veranda looking out across the ocean. He sipped his drink with careful economy and thought about the next target.
The brief had come in through the usual channels and there was no way for him to know who was commissioning him or for that person to have any idea about his identity. He had no qualms about turning down jobs. He didn’t need the money that badly. There was plenty hidden in all the bank accounts. Properties were held under fake names on his behalf, yielding rentals every month that fed into conservative brokerage accounts. He wasn’t a greedy man and he didn’t have any expensive vices. He liked women and he liked comfort and he liked danger but most of all he liked being successful and not being caught.
He had some sports and some hobbies and he travelled around enjoying them when time and work permitted. Now he considered if the next project was right for him. He had no particular fetishes or fears but he preferred killing people who deserved to be punished. If sometimes an innocent victim got in the way he felt bad about it but didn’t dwell on the matter because that was a deathwatch beetle in the soul.
He was drinking an expensive burgundy, a Grand Cru from one of the best years for that chateau, shortly after his own birth year. He’d not bought it himself—he was not particular—but it had been a gift from an old friend and he appreciated the gesture and the quality of the wine.
The next target was a middle aged Thai man who ran a brothel of underage girls. It was an elite place, clean, well-kept and he was well-connected. As were many of his customers. When he wasn’t running the brothel and counting his money he was a detective in one of the Bangkok police divisions.
The assassin drank his wine and in the dim light from the living room considered the photos of the brothel owner. The target had a fatty face with a receding hairline and the snake-like eyes of a man who knew and practiced refinements in debauchery. There were a number of pictures shot at a distance and from these he could tell that the man was overweight and carried a large handgun on the right, under his baggy shirt.
The assassin sensed that there was a political element to his recent jobs. They had all come from the same source and there was something more complex than the usual gangland feuds or jealous and greedy spouses that he was accustomed to. There was a pattern of sorts here and he was puzzling over it.
What was it that tied them together? Or more likely, who was it who tied them together? This would be the third hit and it was a graciously dirty and deserving target. The assassin could even be forgiven for taking pleasure in the killing. He wasn’t a crusader and he had no particular morality: he did what he was good at and moved on to the next day with not much thought or pause about what had gone before. But it was better to kill bad people than to kill innocents and that was a fact.
The line between what was good and who was bad was a very fine one and often not worth the debate but in this case the stone fell far on one side.
The assassin liked girls who were young and pretty with firm bodies and pleasure in their loins to be given to the right man. But he thought that a twelve-year-old was too young to be abused by any man and that even a fourteen-year-old did not deserve to be bedded by a man simply because he had money and her family had sold her body to buy a new pickup truck. Choice was important and if a girl wanted a mobile phone or a Versace dress and wanted to lie on her back for twenty minutes so she could afford these luxuries then that was her choice. But the girls in this target’s brothel were not there by choice, nor could they leave and live the carefree life of a teenager.
The assassin felt it would be a righteous kill. Not that he cared much but he cared a little, just a bit more than the bullets that flew from his guns and ripped the targets’ internal organs to shreds.
He turned the file he had made over in his hands and memorized the names and addresses. Yes, he should do this one and see where it led him. There would be more, he could feel it, and he would have to be careful. More so than usual.
After a while he went inside and opened his big secret safe and began cleaning his guns with the diligence of a hunter and the gentleness of a lover.
* * * *
When Scrimple woke up he was lying on the sofa holding an Uzi and three Thai police officers in uniform had their guns drawn on him.
“Drop gun, drop gun,” one of the policemen was shouting at him and the empty Uzi clattered to the floor as he released his hold on it.
“You stand up slowly,” he was instructed. He did so and looked around at the carnage. Slowly it came back to him, why he was there, what had happened. The bodies of Nari and Walter had not moved but there was no sign of anyone else except the police.
“You kill everybody?” the one who’d been talking asked.
“No,” Scrimple said. “No.”
“You jealous her, or somebody steal your money?”
“No,” Scrimple said, shaking his head.
“Three dead body outside,” the policeman said, almost conversationally as if he were impressed by the falang’s murderous capacity. A fourth copper in the trademark tight grey-brown tunic approached carefully and snapped a set of handcuffs on Scrimple’s wrists.
They marched him out the front door and shoved him into a waiting black van with barred windows. Someone snapped another pair of cuffs on his legs which attached him to a heavy steel rod running the length of the compartment.
It was when they got him back to the station that they established he was the same foreigner wanted for the wild murders in Wong Amat. Everyone looked at him in awe and smiled at each other that they had captured him. They threw him in a cell by himself as a sign of respect. This was a man who had killed seven people. And in an hour, once they had communicated with Bangkok, they found out he was suspected of being involved in an eighth murder.
It had been a while since they had a serial killer in these cells and all afternoon people came to look at him and mutter muted comments to each other about how ordinary he looked.
A few times Scrimple demanded to have a phone call and to get in touch with a lawyer but they just laughed at him and told him to wait.
He’d heard horror stories of Thai prisons and the thought of what awaited him filled him with dread. In a way he was grateful that he hadn’t been arrested for common place drug trafficking. This way he was a celebrity of sorts. The prisons were full of misguided tourists who’d thought smuggling a few kilos of blow would pay for their holiday in the Kingdom of Smiles. There wasn’t much to smile about after twenty years in a Thai prison, it would be better to kill yourself than live through that kind of medieval nightmare: leg shackles, dysentery, foul food and barbarous behavior by the guards. Scrimple shook off the morbid thoughts. He was innocent and he had enough friends who could help him out if he could just get in touch with someone.
They brought him a midday meal which consisted of a watery soup with a fish head sticking up and some grains of rice. Strange patches of grease floated on the surface. He considered it for a while then pushed it away. There might be a time to come yet when he would be grateful for any food but he would hold out as long as he could.
Eventually a man came in to his cell wearing civilian clothes. An empty holster sat on his belt so Scrimple assumed he was a detective of sorts.
“You Theodore Scrimple?” the man said.
“Yes.”
“This your passport number?”
The man turned a clipboard over to Scrimple. All the writing was in Thai apart from his personal details.
“Yes.”
“You sign confession here. We go to judge tomorrow,” the man instructed.
“No,” said Scrimple, putting a firmness into his tone. “I won’t sign anything. Especially something I can’t read. Get me a translator.”
The man eyed him up for a moment, as if he had insulted a member of the Royal Family.
“You not sign?”
Scrimple shook his head.
“This much bigger trouble for you,” the detective said and rapped on the cell door to have someone let him out. Scrimple sat back down on the bed and stared at the three dead cockroaches that were piled in a corner where someone had swept them up.
It was starting to get dark when Colonel Somchai appeared with two men at his shoulder.
“You go to Bangkok with me,” he simply said and then turned away.
* * * *
The assassin, gun in hand, walked carefully along the darkened side street. He wore black running shoes and the rest of his clothes were dark. A baseball cap shaded the upper part while a dense beard disguised the lower part of his face.
It was two in the morning and he knew that they would not yet be sleeping. He’d spent two weeks on this case and had done careful research as he always did.
The key was taped underneath a window ledge and he used it to open the back door, creeping carefully along the corridor. The living room was in shadows, only the red pilot lights visible from the television and other appliances.
He took the stairs lightly, moving his gun from left to right, listening, watching and using all his senses to try and detect the possibility of any unexpected threat. There were no bodyguards. They had been sent home. This was the home of the mistress but discretion was still important.
A faint smell of perfume hung in the air, mixed with burnt tobacco and a vague odor of imported whiskey.
The sound of a television came from behind one of the doors at the top of the stairs. He knew this to be the master bedroom. It wasn’t a large house. She was a new mistress, not old enough to push hard for something more expensive. Her gifts were still portable: gold bracelets and necklaces, diamond rings and last month the new Honda Jazz.
The gunman paused in the doorway leading to the guest bedroom. He breathed deeply and steadily for an entire minute, listening, sensing his surroundings and visualizing the next moves.
Then quietly as a leopard, he opened the bedroom door and stepped through. He didn’t expect anyone there but he crouched and moved the muzzle of the gun to cover any threat. It was quiet as a morgue so he moved on and into the bathroom which was shared with the master bedroom. The door from the guest bedroom to the bathroom wasn’t bolted from the inside. He had assured himself of that earlier in the day.
There was giggling from the master bedroom and a smell of cigarettes seeped through to where he was standing. The gunman opened the bedroom door two inches, verified the layout then raised the gun to the gap and squeezed off two careful shots.
The girl in the negligée had been between the man’s legs, kneeling on the floor with her mouth on his partly erect cock. The target was lying back against a pillow, watching the girl idly at her work while one hand pointed the remote control at the TV and the other held up a cigarette he was smoking.
The 9 mm bullets hit him twice in the face, splashing most of his brains against the white headboard. The girl screamed and screamed while the gunman gently closed the bathroom door, shucked open the window and stepped out onto the roof of the garage where the Honda was parked. He slid down the drain pipe with practiced ease and within a minute was gone in the night.
When he reached home, after a fast two hours’ drive, he immediately set about cleaning his Glock automatic. He took a lot of care over it, ensuring that all the working parts were in pristine condition. He rubbed the cloth over parts that he had brushed and oiled, then inspected his handiwork and when he was finally satisfied fitted all the parts back together until the whole constituted the dangerous tool it was intended to be.
When one thought of Austria one thought of waltzes and the Alps but this man and many people like him thought only of the fine handguns that came from a large factory nestled in the outskirts of a small town.
He replaced the weapon in its usual place in the hidden safe amongst its brothers and sisters then went upstairs to sit in his living room and have a glass of vodka and soda.
The windows looked out over the sea and the sun was just coming up from behind the horizon. The beach directly in front of his house still appeared dark although soon it would turn into a golden, then yellow, expanse inviting visitors to come lie down and worship the weather.
He felt contented because he’d done a good job and he prided himself on clean work. Just last week there had been the gunning of a politician where two assailants had sprayed the man’s car with bullets only injuring him and his driver. Shoddy, amateur jobs done by petty street punks who had no idea how to kill a person with style and swift efficiency. But if employers wanted to pay peanuts, they would get monkeys. And monkey work. Headlines but no resolution.
There were few experts who could handle a killing as well as the gunman. He knew that and his reputation had spread all over Asia. Potential employers sought out his services and many were turned off because of the prices he charged. Then they went and found some mean-talking crack heads and gave them guns and the end result was nearly always embarrassing.
Thailand was in a mess at the moment and there would be much work coming his way if he wanted it. He was still debating if it was worth the aggravation or if he should leave and spend some time in one of his other houses.
He finished his drink, walked into the master bedroom and slipped into bed with the little brown girl who was fast asleep hugging one of the lavender colored pillows.