‘I’ll leave you two in peace,’ I said.
‘I’ll show you to your room,’ said Steve. ‘We’ve got an early start tomorrow.’
As I walked past Karen she looked up at me, the tears still running down her face. ‘Good luck,’ she said at last, but she didn’t get up.
I thanked her, thinking that, whatever happened, I was going to go after Alastair Sheridan. I didn’t know how I’d do it. Or where or when. But it would happen. And when it was over, one of us would be dead.
32
When Jane Kelman got back to her hotel room in the Hilton at Heathrow Airport, she was angry and frustrated. Somehow Mason had thwarted her once again. In the last twenty-four hours she’d almost had him not once, not twice, but three damn times. And still he’d got away.
Jane was a businesswoman first and foremost and one of her selling points was that she never got emotionally connected with her jobs. She’d killed for money many times now (she didn’t know the exact number because she thought it vulgar and disrespectful to keep count), and until she’d come across Ray Mason she’d had an enviable hundred per cent success record. He now stood out as a symbol of her failure. What was more, she was taking unnecessary risks to get to him, and that was going to have to stop right now.
She poured herself a glass of Chenin blanc from the mini bar and sat down in the tub chair next to the bed to review the events of the night. She didn’t think anyone had seen her either arriving at or leaving the old lady’s house, but she couldn’t be sure of that. She hadn’t passed any police cars leaving the scene and had been wearing a balaclava when she’d fired on Mason in the woods, so the driver of the car he’d escaped in wouldn’t have seen her face.
En route back to the airport, she’d pulled off the M25, driven down a rural back lane and buried the gun and the silencer about twenty yards apart in woodland, where they were unlikely to be found. The gloves she’d dropped in an industrial waste bin close to the short stay car park where she’d left the rental car, which had been hired using a fake name and credit card that couldn’t be traced back to her.
She took a large gulp of the wine, which tasted cheap and dull, and, concluding that she’d done everything she needed to, put in a phone call to the number Sheridan had given her, and gave him the bad news. Not only that she’d failed to kill Mason, and Boyd, but that she was quitting while she was ahead and leaving the country the next morning.
Sheridan wasn’t pleased. ‘I thought you were meant to be the best,’ he told her. ‘You can’t just leave a job half finished.’
‘I have no idea where Mason is. He escaped in a car. And there’s no point trying to go after Tina Boyd now either. Or him for that matter. He won’t risk coming after you now.’
‘That’s easy for you to say. It’s not you he’s after.’
‘Look,’ she told him coldly. ‘You deceived me. I thought I was cleaning up a minor problem for you. I had no idea that Ray Mason was involved, or that you’d organized for him to kill the head of the Kalaman crime organization. If I’d known that, I’d never have taken the job. You made the mess. You clear it up. And if you’re scared Mason might come after you, then get some security.’
‘I’ll pay you half a million to deal with it,’ he said, a note of pleading in his voice.
And that, she knew, was Alastair Sheridan’s problem. He was like a spoiled child, too used to getting what he wanted, and when things went wrong, he got desperate. It made him an unreliable client, and she didn’t need that.
‘I’m sorry, I can’t help you,’ she said. ‘Make sure you have the hundred thousand dollars’ compensation for the loss of my colleague in my account by Monday at opening of business.’
She ended the call, switching off the phone. She’d get rid of it in the terminal tomorrow before she boarded her plane to Miami, and home. Sheridan had already paid her for the first part of the job and she’d subcontracted Voorhess, who clearly now no longer needed paying since what was left of him was sitting in a pig’s belly, so she was up on the deal, and the fact that she was still alive was also a bonus.
Jane’s degree had been in finance and consequently she looked after her money very carefully. She had $1.7 million in liquid investments, a rental property in Panama on the Pacific coast, and no mortgage on her condominium in Fort Lauderdale. She’d already paid for her sons to get through university, so there were no outstanding debts. But her cash target was $2.5 million. When she had that amount, she could leave the life for ever. She’d fallen into killing by accident and, although she was good at it, it was no career for a lady. At forty-six, it was definitely time for a change. Maybe even meet a nice man and settle down somewhere.
That was her dream, and it was why, when she’d finished the wine and poured herself a second glass, she checked the private hotmail account she used for business to see if there were any other jobs in the pipeline. She wanted something nice and easy. An unsuspecting wife or husband she could take out with minimal fuss for a nice flat payment. Instead there was a message from an address she recognized immediately: [email protected].
The message was to the point: ‘Are you free for an urgent job. Need to be in London next 24 hours. Payment 750 pounds.’
‘750 pounds’ meant three quarters
