Heroin addicts were remarkably reliable in this sort of transaction.
“Mr Chalmers?”
The man smiled, revealing a row of crooked brown teeth. His eyes sparkled. He was wired, desperate for his next fix. He saw Lincoln as the immediate answer to his problem, and Lincoln knew it.
“Yes,” said the man. “You’re here for the package?”
“I am. May I come in?”
“Of course, sir.”
Respectful.
Lincoln followed, closing the door behind him. No carpets, bare floorboards. The carpets probably sold. Bare walls. He passed two closed doors, emerging into a living room, devoid of anything except a couch, two chairs and a table. No curtains on the windows. A plate sat on the floor, full of cigarette butts. Sitting in a chair was a woman, smoking. Skeletal. Neck and arms spotted with needle marks. Wearing a shapeless grey dress, hanging like a sack. No make-up. Long, listless brown hair. Same haggard, drawn skull face. Stretched white skin. Again, impossible to tell her real age. Maybe once, an eternity ago, she might have been attractive. Now, the walking dead.
“The man’s here,” said Chalmers, waving his arms up and down, agitated. “Get the fucking box.”
She stood, almost robotic, and left the room through the door they had entered.
“Do you want a cup of tea?”
“No thank you.”
“A smoke?”
“No.”
The man licked his lips. “You’re a very smart man. Maybe I’ll buy myself some nice clothes like yours, when I get paid.”
Lincoln nodded. “Sure.” But any money he would get would be spent on other things. Though it would never get that far.
“Please, have a seat.”
Lincoln sat on the couch. The man remained standing.
“Where is that fucking bitch?” he muttered. “My wife’s fucking slow as shit. Sorry about this.”
“No problem.”
The woman re-emerged. She carried a package – a box, about the same dimensions as an office briefcase. Wrapped in brown paper, tied together by string. She handed it to him, and stepped back. They both watched him. Lincoln was reminded of two scrawny birds fixated on a crumb of bread.
“I hope you haven’t tried to have a peek inside,” said Lincoln, his tone jovial.
“No way, sir. Wouldn’t dare.” Their eyes glistened under the single bare light bulb hanging above them, which served as the only illumination in the room.
“I believe you.” Lincoln did believe them. It didn’t look as if it had been tampered with. And the thought of getting £3,000 hard cash was too much of an incentive to break the deal. Enough money to keep them on hard drugs for a couple of months. Or less, if they overdosed.
He reached into his jacket pocket, and took out an envelope, which he placed on the armrest of the couch.
“This is the money. It’s in £20 notes. Three thousand as agreed. All for you. But first I’d like to check everything’s what it should be. Okay?”
It wasn’t okay. But Chalmers nodded anyway. The woman didn’t respond. She kept tapping her hand against her thigh, the heel of her right foot twitching. She was chronic. Desperate for that next fix.
“You didn’t introduce me,” said Lincoln.
“Sorry. This is Tilly, my wife. Say hello, Tilly.”
Tilly stared. No response.
“She’s shy.”
“That’s okay. Why don’t you both sit down. You’re making me uneasy, standing over me like that.”
They sat on the two chairs.
“Thank you.”
He untied the string and carefully removed the paper. It was a soft leather case bound by black ribbon.
“It’s a box of chocolates,” said Chalmers, grinning.
“Maybe.”
Lincoln loosened the ribbon, opened the lid.
Inside were various items, each in its own moulded compartment. A pistol, a silencer, two boxes of bullets, two knives.
Lincoln looked at the two opposite. “All seems good.”
“I’ve never seen a gun before,” said Chalmers, darting his eyes from the box on Lincoln’s lap to the fat envelope on the armrest.
“Really? Let me show you.”
Lincoln gently teased the pistol from its compartment, and held it in his hand.
“This is known as a Glock 20. Massive fire power. Good accuracy. Semi-automatic, which means it’s self-loading, so I don’t need to worry about the next bullet. I just need to keep pulling the trigger, and bam! bam! She’s a beauty. And very reliable.”
He removed the silencer. A stubby, black cigar-shaped object. “This screws on to the end of the Glock. You’ll have seen this in the movies. A silencer. Also known as a sound suppresser. It fits like a glove. Watch.”
He carefully attached the silencer on to the end of the barrel.
“You see? Pretty neat, yes?”
“Fucking awesome. Look at that, Tilly. Like one of those spy movies.”
Tilly did not reply. Her focus was centred entirely on the envelope.
“Exactly,” said Lincoln. “And to make the Glock the weapon that it is, it requires a cartridge. People sometimes get mixed up. They call it a bullet. But in fact, the bullet is a component of the cartridge.” He lifted out one of the boxes, opened it, and spilled several into the palm of his hand.
“It’s pretty straight forward to load a Glock. You put the cartridges into the magazine tube, and load her up.”
He unclipped the magazine and began to feed cartridges in. He slid the magazine back in place.
“These are 10mm cartridges. Pretty potent. Get shot in the head, and the head explodes. Let’s try.”
He aimed at the woman called Tilly, and fired. The sound which emanated was like a short, stifled cough. Tilly remained seated, but half her face suddenly disappeared, and in its place, tangles of vein, blood, bone. She slumped onto the floor.
“Fuck!” shouted Chalmers. He leapt to his feet.
“There you are,” said Lincoln.
He fired again. Chalmers took it full in the chest. He was catapulted off the ground, chunks of flesh erupting from his back, spattering across the bare walls. He landed on the floorboards with a dull thud. Lincoln stood and walked over to his body. The torso was shredded, organs spilling out. Well and truly
