heard, seen or knew anything. The police had called it a ‘wall of silence’. A few knew who had collected a debt and killed, and word spread among those who regarded it necessary to have a guy of cool nerve on the edge of the payroll.
Robbie’s second target was an Albanian trying to muscle into the cocaine trade at Canada Water where the City people had their apartments: a nightclub owner had hired him to take out a rival who interfered in profit margins. Since then, four years in the trade, the numbers had ticked up and a reputation had been established.
He was dropped off outside a mini-mart. He was being cautious. He went through and out at the side entrance. The rain was easing. He had a mile to walk and he blended well.
He went past the house and saw the car parked in the driveway. He checked his watch and was satisfied.
Between them, his father and grandfather – Jerry Cairns and Granddad Cairns – took the contracts, evaluated them, put a price on them and slipped the necessary information to Robbie. He didn’t need to know the customer, just as he didn’t need detail on the personal life of the target. If his father or grandfather thought the money was right, Robbie Cairns sent his sister to the quartermaster they used, took out the weapon, passed it and…
Johnny ‘Cross Lamps’ Wilson ambled along the pavement and the last drips of the shower made the pavement glisten in the lights.
Robbie didn’t need to know anything about him.
Robbie swivelled and looked behind himself, left and into the cafe, right and across the street, then far ahead of him and over the shoulder of Johnny ‘Cross Lamps’ Wilson. He didn’t see a policeman on foot, on a bicycle, or in a patrol car. He stepped into the target’s path.
Maybe three or four seconds before his life was curtailed, Johnny ‘Cross Lamps’ Wilson realised the mortal danger confronting him. The expressions on his face did a slide-show of emotions: astonishment, disbelief, then the aggression that might have had a chance – small – of saving him. The Baikal was out, safety lever off, and aiming for the head. The man tried to duck and to lunge. Robbie fired once. A hell of a shot, a class shot. The target had been moving and weaving, and the one shot had taken him clean through the front of the skull, just above deep lines over the forehead. The man crumpled. The life of Johnny ‘Cross Lamps’ Wilson was extinguished about halfway between the cafe and the newsagent’s.
The blood had not spread far on the pavement – hadn’t reached the kerb and the gutter – before Robbie Cairns was away. Didn’t run: to run was to attract attention. He just walked briskly. Went past the cafe, down the side alley, into the car park, saw the car as it edged forward to meet him, and he was gone. It was like another notch for him. He had done it well but, then, he always did.
Back over the river, the Baikal would go to Leanne. His sister would move the weapon back to the armourer, clear his clothing, and dispose of it beyond the reach of the forensics people.
If he was in high demand, his price would rise. Maybe he was the best. He felt good, confident, and the car wasn’t yet at any of the bridges that would take them south over the river and on to their own ground. Outside the newsagent’s the blood had not had time to congeal.
It was not territory they normally worked on: vacation leave had eroded the teams based nearer to this murder site in Tottenham.
Bill said, ‘That’s one shot, professional – a man who knows his business. That is top grade.’
There was white tenting behind the police tapes. A photographer worked inside it and a scenes-of-crime technician had bent to make a chalk mark on the wet paving that circled the single discharged cartridge case. The flap was lifted by a local detective and the young woman had pride of place at the front. Mark Roscoe was at her shoulder, and the Yorkshireman craned behind him.
Suzie said, ‘The target isn’t some innocent. Wilson’s record goes back twenty-eight of his forty-five years. He was a hustler, ducked and wove. There’ll be a deal in the immediate background where he’s come up short or welshed. He’ll have known where he shouldn’t be, where he was threatened. On his own patch he must have felt secure.’
The body lay awkward and angled, a leg bent under the weight of the stomach, an impossible contortion for a living man. The colour had already drained from the hands and ankles and from the face, except where the hole was. Very neat, precise. Could have dropped a pencil into it.
Roscoe scratched his chin. The sight of death seldom fazed him. ‘There’s a shooter right in front of his face.’
‘Not a man who freezes.’ Suzie had confidence and gave her opinion, as if it was expected of her.
They had come up to north London because there was little to detain them in their office, and the failed air- conditioning was an incentive to be clear of their workspace. The word, immediate, on the team screens was that the killing had been simple and ruthless, that the hitman should be of interest.
Bill said, ‘Would have taken evasive action. It’s right in his face, his life on the line.’
Suzie said, ‘But only one shot discharged. It’s a quality hit, boss.’
Bill said, ‘About as good as it gets.’
Roscoe grimaced, then turned on his heel. His own girl, Chrissie, did scenes-of-crime: funny thing, but he’d never met up with her inside a tent she shared with a cadaver. Back at their flat, he wouldn’t tell her about the killing of Wilson – a tosser who must have overstepped whatever line was drawn in front of him – and she wouldn’t tell him where she’d been and what bodies she’d sidled towards with her box of tricks and kit. They both did need- to-know, took the principle to the limits and had little to talk about. They relied on sex, hiking on Welsh, Cumbrian and Scottish mountains – anything and anywhere that challenged – and movies, when one or both would be asleep within half an hour. He liked her a lot, was comfortable with her, but they didn’t seem – either of them – to fancy commitment.
He walked away. Bill followed and Suzie skipped to keep up. He hadn’t spoken to Chrissie that morning – she’d been gone when he’d woken, her half of the bed empty; he hadn’t spoken to her the night before because there had been a briefing on developments from the cache, and by the time he came back she’d already been in bed, light out, regular breathing that said ‘sleep’. He hadn’t wanted to disturb her. They might get some time at the weekend, and might not.
Bill was another seldom disturbed by corpses and violent death. He said cheerfully. ‘What I’d think, boss, is-’
‘What would you think?’ Not usual for Roscoe to be scratchy, sour.
‘Forget it, boss.’
‘Sorry… was playing the pig. What would you say?’
‘I’d think that would be a good player to put in the cage, boss. All right, off our usual ground, but he’s a man who’ll move and won’t just be local. We’re late on the scene, it’s already happened and the remit is to be proactive, but what I think, boss, is the joker’s a good guy to put away.’
Suzie said, breathy, ‘He’d come at a price and he’d be in demand.’
They were at the car. Roscoe wondered how it would be to look into the face of a man who held a handgun, had no shake in his hands, had certainty in his eyes – wondered how it would be to see the finger tighten on the trigger bar… didn’t know.
The hospital in Vukovar was a fifteen-minute drive from the village. It was a pleasant site, with space left among the buildings for lawns, trees and flowers. On one of the larger and more expansive areas of grass a white canvas marquee had been erected and next to it was parked a refrigerated trailer. A diesel-powered generator throbbed between them.
The hospital had history – and William Anders had helped to put it on the lists of genocidal war crimes.
His work now, courtesy of business-class travel and a reasonable degree of comfort, took him to the places where atrocities had blackened a name. He was back and felt good. Vukovar and the hospital had been early among his achievements; a large part of his reputation as a forensic scientist had been built on the excavation of the murdered corpses of men who had been brought from the hospital by the victors of the battle, driven from the town to the farm, then slaughtered, dumped in a pit and buried. Anders had been in the second wave of experts to descend on Vukovar and – he would say it himself – his work had been of the highest quality. That day, he had four bodies in the marquee and the trailer, skeletons with clothing still clinging to them.
He had only the names. Dental and medical records had been lost in the firestorms when the town had suffered artillery bombardment and bombing. There were no rings on the fingers, no silver or gold crucifixes hanging from chains, but he had height approximations and descriptions of clothing from two parents and a widow. He had
