There was a time when he’d thought about retiring. It was just about the money then but later there had been more than enough money and somehow there was always more work to be done.
He’d tried to stop working and found that some people wouldn’t let him and so he’d just carried on. Carefully, professionally, building his reputation with each efficient kill but it wasn’t that important anymore. He’d continue doing it until someone better or cheaper came along and then the customers would begin going elsewhere. It was a nice thought but so far there’d been nobody better.
He’d have to think about it again sometime. How to get out of this cycle of continual death. At least now, with all the latest jobs, he’d felt a sense of satisfaction. He was cleaning up the denizens of the gutter.
That wasn’t something he wanted to think about too much either. He didn’t want to be some kind of crusader or hero. He knew himself far too well for that. It would be hypocritical to feel good about the killings. He knew he could kill for no reason and just because this time there seemed to be good reasons, that didn’t mean it would continue like this for ever. He would have to stop sooner or later. He would have to see how things went with this string of hits. There was a pattern and eventually it would come to the end of its run.
Bill Jedburgh, the assassin, sat on his beach and drank his beer under a large sunshade and waited for McAlistair to arrive. The girl was away, visiting her parents in the rustic village in the north of the country where she’d been born. Jedburgh had been there once and found it pleasant although he didn’t like the lack of air conditioning. He could stand heat and cold and pain and the constant bites of mosquitoes but he preferred to be comfortable if you had the opportunity and could afford it.
He shifted his feet in the warm sand and curled his toes and thought about the good dives he’d had in Puerto Galera. It was a great sport. Solitary and challenging if the water and the current wanted it to be. What would he do for his next break?
Perhaps go to Simian. It had been a while since he’d dived there and it wasn’t far away. Just two flights from Bangkok, in Malaysia. Or a week on the Maldives? The water was crystal clear there and the fish life still great as long as global warming didn’t destroy it all.
McAlistair appeared on the veranda, came down the steps and walked over. He punched Jedburgh on the shoulder and took a Singha from the cooler.
“How was the Pines?”
“The usual, everybody cheerfully incompetent but somehow muddling through. Diving was good.”
“Are you still doing that deep dive shit?”
“Technical diving? Yes.”
“Scares the fuck out of me just thinking about it.”
“That’s what makes it exciting.”
“I think a young nubile Isaan girl with a shaved pussy is exciting.”
“That’s because you are a married man.”
“No, it’s because I’m normal.”
“You are not normal. You’re very far from normal. I’ve seen you doing un-normal stuff.”
“Like what?”
“That time in the night club in London.”
“That wasn’t un-normal. That was just a Friday night bar-room brawl.”
“Maybe. But normal people don’t behave like that.”
“How about super-human? Would that be a good way to describe me?”
“How about ‘pathetic loser,’ would that be a better way to describe you? How is your scribbling coming along?”
“Fine. The words appear on the page and they seem to make sense and I arrange them in pleasing patterns and with grammatical exactitude.”
“Sounds like you’re making progress then.”
“There have been a lot of dead people turning up lately in Thailand. Sounds like somebody else is making progress.”
“Yeah,” Jedburgh said, flicking off the top of another beer bottle. “The grim reaper has been scything away.”
“And did they all deserve to die?” McAlistair said with a mischievous smile.
“Don’t know, don’t care,” Jedburgh replied, passing the new bottle over to his friend who’d drained the first one. “You know what they say in the popular press. Kill them all and let God sort them out.”
“But they’re Buddhists, they don’t believe in God.”
“Not my problem. Tell me about my problem. What’s going on with Scrimple? The man’s a magnet for shit, ever since he stepped off a plane in Hong Kong over twenty years ago.”
“He’s not the most lucky guy, got to admit that. He’s all right though. We had dinner last night and we had a good laugh. He’s just a bit of a…what’s the phrase I’m looking for—sad fuck? No, that’s a bit hash. He’s just a bloke who seems to bounce from nightmare to nightmare and every time he gets knocked over and tries to get back on his feet he gets hit by a double-decker bus again.” McAlistair looked at Jedburgh and shrugged.
Jedburgh said, “He knows a bit too much about what I’ve done in the past. If he puts two and two together he might realize what’s really going on here.”
“Maybe but I don’t think he cares and frankly he’s probably too busy taping up his broken glasses and tripping over his untied shoelaces. Metaphorically speaking.”
“Yes, he’s not the world’s luckiest man. He could still get me into a lot of trouble.”
“Forget it. He’s a mate and we need to help him out.”
“I didn’t say I wouldn’t.”
“You just had that slightly dreamy expression on your face for a moment about wanting to kill him.” McAlistair grinned. “I know you.” He wagged a finger at his friend.
“I didn’t. I wasn’t thinking that at all. I was just wondering why he can’t sort out his own problems and why I have to step in and do his dirty laundry for him.”
“Not everybody is as viciously capable as you are, mate.”
“Don’t I know it. What’s happening to the younger generation? Anybody out there who fancies making a living by the gun? Seemed to be popular in the old days.”
“There are others and they will come but you’re just hitting your stride. Be happy, you’re popular.”
“Bugger that. It’s hard when you’re nearly perfect.”
Jedburgh took a few long draughts from his beer and rested the bottle on his thigh.
“Beware hubris. Don’t think you’re that good and that you can’t get caught or screw up.”
“I’d rather not think about it. Thank you. We’ll avoid all that hubris shit. I know the risks and that’s why I want to start slowing down a bit. I don’t want to burden you with the details. Tell me more about Scrimple’s problems.”
McAlistair began explaining and they chatted for half an hour as the sun beat down on the large purple umbrella under which they were sitting.
When McAlistair had gone, Jedburgh went back into the house. The living room was cool from the air-conditioning and he walked quickly to the bedroom to take a shower.
Still toweling himself dry he walked into his study and opened the safe and took out the latest files. He had received new instructions and they intrigued him.
He’d been concerned before when he was told to kill former Assistant Commissioner Bottle but now the instructions had changed. Bottle was no longer a target, only the woman, who was named as Mrs. Tang, and a Thai man, Kornsak who was described as a local politician. What had Bottle done to deserve the respite? Or what had he not done? Jedburgh was surprised with himself that he felt happier about this development. He’d not really wanted to kill Bottle but a job was a job and he would have done it if the man had been shoved in front of his sights.
According to McAlistair, Bottle was the cause of all of Scrimple’s problems. Somehow the old fellow had dragged Scrimple into his own complicated affairs, whatever they might be. It looked like bribing politicians and dodgy property dealings.
Jedburgh put the file away. He would keep it for another day and then run it through the shredder after having scanned the important information. The shredded pieces he would take out and dump somewhere far away. The soft data he would keep on an encrypted drive. Nothing was completely safe but you couldn’t live entirely without some documentation for reference. The safe had a tamper proof device. If anyone tried to open it forcibly or used a wrong combination then the contents would be incinerated. There was also a button on the base that activated the same process. It wasn’t perfect but it was good enough.
He went back into the living room and turned on his Ipod. It was connected to a large set of speakers and the chords of “Freebird” filled the room. Later he would go down to the Bolthole and have a talk with Scrimple. It sounded as if the best way to start cleaning up was to grab the real culprits and get some confessions from them and then get to the bottom of what was really going on. Jedburgh spent time thinking this through and made notes in his cryptic shorthand in a black Moleskin notebook.
* * * *
“Don’t you think she should be allowed to take a shower? It’s been two days,” William said to Madam Tang.
The old woman had stopped being angry with him after delivering an abusive tirade for over half an hour. William knew she would tire eventually and he accepted her anger. He was the only one she could properly trust. And he had disappeared for a while. That had made her furious. Chisin and the others were good soldiers but they could not make fast decisions. They could not anticipate problems.
William had told her he was frustrated and he needed to spend some time thinking. He’d come to a conclusion and left a message for Bottle on the girl’s phone. He thought Bottle would call now. He knew the old man had a soft spot for the girl and she’d been helping him all along with whatever plans he’d secretly been hatching.
But so far he hadn’t called and William was starting to get concerned, doubting his own assessment. Tension was rising in him.
Madam Tang, standing by the door to the room where they were keeping the girl said, “I don’t care if she smells bad and wets her pants. We’ll have to get rid of her eventually.”
“You mean you want me to kill her?”
“What else, you fool?” Tang snarled at him and began walking back to the living room.
“If we agree to switch her for the papers then we need to let her go.”
“I don’t like her. She has betrayed us. That’s the end of it.”
William shrugged.
“I should punish her for giving me the wrong information about the hotel in Bangkok,” he said.
Tang turned to him and nodded. “You can do what you want. I am sick of that girl. She must know where he is hiding. Go and try to persuade her some more. Chisin has been useless.”
William agreed and went back to the room. He nodded to the guard who was sitting outside the door reading a Hong Kong gossip magazine, a large automatic pistol in a shoulder holster strapped across his body.
“Open it up and let me have a talk with her.”
The guard grinned. “She’s ready for something more than talking.”
“You think so?”
“She’s got a good body.”
“Has anybody done anything to her yet?”
“No,” the guard shook his head and fanned himself with the magazine because the air-con didn’t work so well in the corridors. “Chisin has been in a few times but all he does is look and slap her around. We don’t know what Madam Tang’s plan is.”
“Her plan is to kill the girl.”
“That would be a shame. I would enjoy having her.”
“Don’t think about it too much. Concentrate on your job.”
The guard unlocked the door and William stepped inside. The girl was still chained to the bed, wrists and legs attached through handcuffs to the metal legs of the bed.
She looked at him with fearful recognition and moved her body around as if she wanted to escape but of course she couldn’t. She was wearing a pair of jeans and they were stained down the front where she had wet herself. Someone had taken the gag off her mouth because she knew screaming was useless in the house and had been quiet for a while.
“Hello, Pim. I’m back and you sent me to the wrong place.”
“I didn’t. He was staying there, at the Sheraton.”
“He wasn’t in the room you sent me to.”
“He must have changed rooms,” she said nervously as William sat down on the side of the bed and took out a packet of cigarettes. He lit one slowly and let the smoke trickle from his mouth and nose.
“You must know that I’m very angry you sent me to the wrong place, wasting my time and we still haven’t got the documents.”
“I don’t know where they are. The English guy has them. He doesn’t know he has them.”
William shook his head as if not believing her words.
“Do you think he’s run away already? What can he do with the papers outside of Thailand?”
“Stop you from going ahead with the development,” she said in a low voice.
“I know that but what’s the benefit to him? How does he make money from that? Who will he sell them to?”
“He doesn’t want any money. He just wants to stop you and her from being successful.”
“I don’t agree. He wants something. Everybody wants something for themselves.” William took a few more hits on the cigarette then said, “I think he wants you back now. I’ve left a message for him and told him to come and get you from here but he has to bring the documents.”
“He won’t come. He is too smart for that.”
“He will come. He might be smart but he also cares about you and won’t leave you here.”
But William wasn’t so sure. The old man still hadn’t called and time was marching on. It was nearly three in the afternoon.
“You’re a little bitch, you know?” he said casually as if it were a compliment one gives to a school girl.
She said nothing, only looked at him.
“Was he really staying in that hotel or was that all lies?” William asked again.
“He was there. Maybe he moved,” she repeated herself.
“No, you intentionally sent me to waste my time. You wanted to piss me off.” He leant forward and stabbed the cigarette out on her cheek and she screamed in sudden pain. “You wanted to make me angry didn’t you?”
She calmed down after a while because it didn’t hurt that much after the first searing pain from the heat.
“No, no, I didn’t,” she pleaded.
“You wanted me to be angry. And now I am angry,” William said studying the red spot with interest where the cigarette had burnt the skin. It was ugly and would leave a mark for a long time.
“What is it between you and the old man? Are you his girlfriend? Why do you care so much?”
“He is a good man.”
William laughed out loud. “If you knew about the things he did when he was younger you would not say that.”
“He isn’t a bad man,” she persisted.
“No, he’s not a bad man. I am a bad man. I am your worst horror movie. Bottle is nothing compared to me.” He stood up and walked to the window, looked out at the view into the neighbor’s garden as he lit another cigarette. “Do you know how many people I have killed?”
Pim shook her head. He smiled at her. “Twenty, maybe thirty, maybe forty. I never count. Not after the first few.” He smiled at her again. “Does that scare you?”
“You’ve always scared me,” she said in a low voice.
“Yes, I know I scare people. So why do you want me to be so angry with you?”
“I don’t know where Bottle is,” she said and began weeping quietly.
William stood by the side of the bed and held her chin in his hands. The cigarette hung from his lips and the smoke curled up making him squint. He turned her face so the other cheek was facing him, the one without a burn mark. She tried to resist but he was too strong.
“You’re a pretty girl,” he said. “You won’t be one for long.” Then he stabbed his cigarette out on her face again. She screamed for fifteen seconds and then subsided into sobs.
“Make up will cover those marks but if I start cutting up your face there won’t be much you can do with brown paint.” He dropped the half-smoked cigarette on the floor and trod on it then pulled a Leatherman knife from his back pocket. It was a sturdy folding knife designed for yachtsman to cut ropes or hunters to gut their prey.
He pulled out the blade and let it snick into place, held firm by the lock. “You see this piece of metal. It’s as sharp as it can be and will cut a sheet of paper, just like that.”
The girl was still crying and he used one hand to wipe away her tears and the other to brush the tip of the blade against her right temple. He traced a line from her temple down under her eyes, where the skin was soft, and along the folds of her mouth until he paused, just above her Adam's apple.
Gently, and with care that he didn’t cut her yet he ran the blade back up, stopping to show her how he could cut into the side of her mouth and give her the permanent grin of a circus clown.
“Nobody will talk to an ugly girl, you know. An ugly, scary girl.”
William leant forward and looked her in the eyes. He said, “So?” and waited for her reply.
“I don’t know where he is now,” she said again and he could tell from the abject terror that was in her eyes that she must be telling the truth.
He shrugged and snapped the blade back into its handle, where it sat snugly, ready for the next time it was needed.
“This will be quick if you don’t struggle too much. Just lie back and let me finish. If you fight me, I will hurt you,” he explained, then opened her jeans, unzipping them quickly and pulling them down until they were right down to her ankles. He grabbed her white panties and with one quick jerk ripped them free so her black, bushy pubic hair was displayed.
The handcuffs that were tied to her ankles held her legs spread wide enough for his purposes. He climbed on top of the bed and, opening his own zipper, freed himself. It took a minute for him to get hard and then he thrust himself violently into her and raped her.
* * * *
They were in the bar, sitting in a dark leather and solid wood booth. The leather gave off the solidly rustic smell of a bridle shop.
Scrimple and McAlistair had beers in front of them. Jedburgh was drinking a vodka tonic in a tall glass. A bowl of peanuts sat in the middle of the table.
“Did he confirm that he would come up here?” Jedburgh wanted to know.
“Yeah, but I’m not sure if he really knows where the place is,” said Scrimple nervously. He was comfortable with McAlistair but Jedburgh had always intimidated him. “He didn’t say exactly what time he was going to come.”
“If he needs our help he’ll turn up,” McAlistair commented.
“He sounded bothered. He wasn’t like that when I met him last time in the hotel,” Scrimple said.
“Obviously he’s worried about this girl,” Jedburgh said.
“So what do you think we should do?” Scrimple asked.
Jedburgh smiled, then shrugged and took a sip from his drink. “What do you want us to do?”
“I need to get things cleared with the police. To do that I need the real killers to confess or something so the evidence can be confirmed.”
“The problem here is that the Royal Thai Police will be very reluctant to admit they made a mistake and have been chasing the wrong man all this time. They’d rather lock you up and forget about you than try and figure out what’s really going on.”
Scrimple felt his heart sink. That was the last thing he wanted to hear. These guys were supposed charge in and save the day. They had promised him.
“We’ll find a solution, don’t worry,” McAlistair said soothingly. “We’ve got connections. Bill is just winding you up.”
“Let’s see what the old man has to say for himself,” Jedburgh said. “If he turns up. He’s been a right piece of work in all of this. If he’d got me into this amount of trouble, I’d give him a right kicking.”
“It’s not polite to kick the shit out of seventy-year-old men.”
“He’s an Aikido black belt,” Scrimple said.
“All the better. It would be an even fight,” Jedburgh replied grinning. “I’ve been doing some traditional Japanese Ju-Jitsu last year and most of the Aikido techniques are based on earlier forms of Ju-Jitsu.” He tapped the top of his vodka glass to make his point.
For a moment Scrimple had an image of Jedburgh and Bottle fighting it out in white uniforms in a dojo. It was a foolish image but it released his tension.
“Want another round?” McAlistair suggested and waved to the bar man in his red waist-coat and bow tie, who came over to take their order.
“Are we going to have dinner here or what?” Jedburgh asked. “I’m starving and there’s no food at home.”
As McAlistair was about to reply the door to the bar opened and Assistant Commissioner Bottle came in. He was followed by Poom, his bodyguard, who scanned the room with care.
Bottle came up to the table and they all stood up out of politeness and deference to his age and former rank in a hierarchy they had all been part of. They shook hands. It was a large booth and Scrimple moved up so that Bottle could sit next to him on the bench while Poom went to sit on a chair by the door.
“Thanks for being here and letting me come,” Bottle said. He gazed around the table and held everyone's eye as if he was briefing the men prior to a major public security operation.
“I’m aware that you probably have a lot of questions. I’m uncomfortable and unhappy because my private life has caused problems for so many people.” He fixed Scrimple with a look to acknowledge this. “I thought I had things under control and was being very clever but obviously I’m getting too old for this game. That’s why I’m here. To ask you for your help. And to do what I can to help Scrimple get out of the mess I got him into.”
“What’s the situation with this woman Tang?” Jedburgh said, going straight to the heart of the matter.
“She’s my wife but we’ve not seen eye to eye for many years. I foolishly thought I had some responsibility to her and got involved in her business dealings out here. As I’ve told Scrimple, I had little choice with this because I’d gotten myself involved with her brother a long time ago and it was hard to back out.”
Everyone at the table nodded seriously to show their understanding.
“If you’ll forgive me saying so, sir,” McAlistair said, “but the lady sounds like a real bitch to me.”
“She is.”
Scrimple jumped in. “It’s William and his sidekick Chisin that are the real problem. They’re complete psychopaths.”
Bottle nodded. “They’re the worst kind of Triad low life. The sad thing is that William is bright and has an excellent education. But he is vermin. If I had the chance to skewer him with a knife I would take it immediately.”
“He killed two of my best mates,” Scrimple reminded everyone. “And a girl who was helping me out and her boyfriend. Just like that, because they were in the way. In between them and me and that fucking bag with the documents and the money.”
“They killed a little girl who’d been working for me as a means of sending me a message,” Bottle added.
“All right, we know the background on most of that,” Jedburgh said, “but what about this girl Pim? She’s also been working with you and now they got hold of her and she’s become a hostage. Right?”
“I’m afraid so,” Bottle said and his face looked old, tired and full of anguish.
“You sure they have her?” Jedburgh asked.
“I can’t get hold of her. She hasn’t called me and William left a message on her phone addressed to me saying they had her.”
Jedburgh nodded. “Okay, sounds possible then. Any idea where they might be holding her?”
“Most likely at the house which is their center of operations. It’s a walled villa with security measures and armed guards. There would be no point in holding her somewhere else. They would consider themselves very safe there.”
“I’ve been to that place,” Scrimple said. “They took me there and then set me free after a few hours.”
“If I was holding a hostage, I wouldn’t keep her in the most obvious place,” Jedburgh said.
“They’re arrogant. I know how their minds work,” Bottle said. “In any case William wants me to call him and set up a meeting to exchange the girl for the documents I’m holding. They need those documents to complete the full ownership transfer of all the land for the developments.”
“Okay,” Jedburgh said, “so we should be able to confirm where the girl is eventually. It gives me an idea that reminds me of my days in SDU.” He smiled coldly.
“Are you suggesting a frontal assault?” Bottle asked.
“Not a frontal one. For all intents and purposes it’s a barricaded hostage situation. We must find a clever way to get in and free the hostage and neutralize the criminals.”
“You can neutralize William and Chisin any time as far as I’m concerned,” Scrimple said.
Jedburgh smiled and clapped him on the shoulder lightly. The barman brought some mineral water for Bottle.
“By the time we’ve finished with them, there won’t be anything left of that gang,” McAlistair said to Scrimple.
Bottle frowned. “There’s something you should know.” Everyone looked at him as he took a sip from the glass of mineral water. “Pim is my daughter from a Thai woman. Nobody knows this. I don’t think my wife has ever suspected it and I don’t think William knows it either. But if they find out then things look even worse for her.”
Jedburgh gave a little laugh. “I thought there was something,” he said.
“What do you mean?” Bottle asked.
“You’ve been pretty cool about all this lately but suddenly you’ve changed your tune. She’s not your girlfriend. She’s your daughter.”
“Yes, it was a long time ago. Her mother died when Pim was a teenager.”
Scrimple said, “We have to free her. William is a fucking animal. You don’t know what he might do to her.”
“You’ve got the papers they want with you?” Jedburgh said. “Is that how it will work?”
Bottle shrugged. “I’ll have to call William and set up the deal.”
“Anyone for dinner?” McAlistair suddenly suggested. “We can continue to work out the plan then.”
Ten minutes later Bottle went to the business center and made the phone call to William informing him that he agreed to swap the documents for the girl. William told him to come to the house that he knew by ten o’clock that night. Everything was agreed.