Jonathan Frame

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Out Now – The Contractor. See the Books section for details.

As a taster, here is the first chapter. Please go to the Books section for further details.

Of course, when I look back on the whole incident now, I’m utterly pissed off with myself.

Gnnaarggh!

How did I allow it to happen? I’ve been over it a thousand times. How did I not see it coming? I need help and I’ve run out of money. It’s one of the oldest gambits in the book.

What on Earth was I thinking?

The truth is, at the time of my initial encounter with the Delaneys, I wasn’t thinking at all. Or rather I had other things on my mind, so when Marcus Delaney first appeared in the corner of my vision, my interest in him was minimal. I hadn’t even realised he had specifically targeted me. He was just a random individual in a car park at a motorway service station.

It didn’t take too long for me to be aware he was closing in on me. I was returning to my BMW, having relaxed in the lounge area set up for as long as it took to gulp down the basic latte and vegan Farmhouse BLT roll I had ordered. Fully refreshed, I was ready to complete my journey, another sixty minutes or so.

Afterwards, I wondered how long he had been watching me. Had he seen me arrive and enter the building? Had he already been inside, hanging around the shop or the burger joint that was also there, spotting me as I headed straight for the café? Or when I was selecting what I was going to eat and drink, observing that I wasn’t even bothering to weigh up the prices? Did his mind flash, here is a bloke with a bit of money he could spare? Let’s see how gullible he is.

“Hey wait,” he called out. “Excuse me.”

A quick glance at the man told me he posed no obvious threat. He was in his forties, forty-six I later found out when I also discovered his name. Scuffed shoes clung to his feet, the edge of the top of one of them had peeled away to reveal light-grey material underneath. His legs were encased in jeans that were unfashionably faded and ripped across one of the knees. A short-sleeved, slightly grubby checked shirt hung from his shoulders, obscuring the shape of his body, as if he had bought it years ago in better times then lost the weight that had bulked the shirt out when it had been new. The brown hair dangling from his skull was lank and greasy, uncombed, unwashed and in need of a trim while his face was lined, pallid, with a couple of days of stubble stippling his chin and the lower part of his cheeks. His skin seemed to be on the verge of being drained of its natural colour, to leave behind a monochromatic hew.

“Can you help me?” he asked in a slightly hoarse voice conveying anguish.

Like I said, I had other things on my mind. My immediate reaction was this man was no threat to me. In my line of business, I have to be wary of strangers. There are a few people who would be happy to see me dead, although it’s unlikely any would seriously order a hit on me. I have enough information on them, combined with comprehensive instructions stashed with a solicitor, if I die the police will be provided with a rich new seam of information to mine.

I made sure every one of them knew that. The theory is they all act as checks and balances against one another. If one started considering bring my time on Earth to an abrupt end, the chances are one of the others will learn about it and warn them off.

Still, there is always the chance one or more of them could decide to take the risk and have me liquidated.

But the man who had just called out to me was no assassin. Nothing like it. The image he was presenting was that of someone down on his luck and in desperate need of help. If anything, he came across as being someone who, through misfortune and bad life choices, had ended up living on the streets. I was even beginning to feel sorry for him.

“What is it?”

“I need to get back home in Guildford,” he gabbled, “But my car is almost out of fuel. I only just made it here but I’m stranded. I haven’t any money to get petrol. I just need some cash so I can fill up and get me and my family home.”

“Your family?”

I looked around. Despite the people milling about, there was no-one else close by taking any interest in us.

The man threw a forlorn look one way then the other. “They are here,” he assured me. “Somewhere around, I promise you. We’ve been stuck here for nearly an hour.”

This isn’t right, a voice in my head was saying. Guildford? What the hell is he doing here? The motorway I was on ploughed a winding, asphalt course to Bristol and the south-west. Guildford was south-east from here, on the way to London, almost in the opposite direction. There was a route a little further down the motorway he could take to reach there yet I was struggling to make sense of how he found himself stuck here in the first place.

The problem is, I have reasoned with myself over and over again since then, I don’t want to be a cynic of humanity. It’s one thing to give to charity but that never feels personal. If someone comes up to me saying they need help, I want to believe them. I want to lift them out of whatever hole they’re in. And I wasn’t in the mood to interrogate him although I damn well should have done.

Normally, I deal with honest criminals, that is to say bad people who make no pretence about what they are, how they make their living and what they’re capable of. Some pretty extreme stuff, truth be told. Because they are up front about who they are, they generally operate under a code of honour, as warped as it would probably seem to most people.

And I am no different from them.

“What about credit cards? A phone?”

The man deflected my question by announcing, “I came out of hospital a few hours ago. I’m recovering from stomach cancer. Look.”

He lifted the left-hand side of his shirt up, exposing a large, square bandage taped to the flesh, covering a sizeable area of his midriff roughly where his stomach was. At the edges of the bandage, the skin looked red and inflamed, giving the impression there was a serious wound under the plain, white gauze. Shouldn’t he still be in hospital was the first thought that flitted into my mind – then flitted out again before I could grab hold of it.

At once, a multitude of questions were vying for attention in my mind to be the first ones to be spouted out but the man managed to interrupt all of them.

“My wife must be over here,” he cried out, taking hold of my forearm to guide me away from my car, towards another part of the car park.

Even then, I found myself unable to object. We weaved through a small selection of parked vehicles, the man increasingly becoming more agitated, muttering to himself that his family had to be here somewhere. I could feel my scepticism was trying to smash into the scene but I still found I preferred to ignore it. We went around a small, flat-bed truck and the man’s face lit up.

“There they are,” he declared in triumph, his voice immediately becoming brighter, an instant turnabout.

A small, red Peugeot hatchback that looked like it had seen close to two hundred thousand miles of road during its automotive life appeared from somewhere at the far end of the carpark to make for us. It rolled to a halt into a free parking space as the man led me up to it. A middle-aged woman was in the driver’s seat, looking as wretched as the man. Her hair was a little lighter than her husband’s, hanging loosely down to her shoulder blades. It was nowhere near as unkempt as the man’s although it appeared not to have been styled for a while. Her clothes weren’t quite as dishevelled as the man’s, a blouse with a floral design and a pair of faded jeans. Like her husband, it felt the woman’s skin was having the life being drained from it, although she had applied make-up to try and hide it, by the looks of things.

When we reached the car, her window came down and she switched the engine off. Behind her, I could make out a human shape covered in a cheap, dark faun blanket extending to somewhere below the shape’s knees.

“This gentleman is going to help us,” the man said.

“Well, I didn’t say …”

“Sshh, she’s asleep,” the woman interrupted me in a low voice, pointing towards the back of the car. “Our daughter.” Then she was staring up at me with green, pleading eyes. “Thank-you so much. I don’t know what we would do otherwise.”

“You’re out of fuel?”

“Yes,” the woman replied. “We haven’t enough to get home. Look.”

She cranked the ignition key to the On position and a series of symbols were lit up on the dashboard, icons in bright reds and yellows. One mini display set in the instrument panel had the picture of a petrol pump at one end, a zero at the other. A thin, red needle that had been covering the zero gave a tiny jerk and moved fractionally away then stopped, as if it were too afraid to leave the zero alone. They were as good as running on just fumes.

“You see?” the woman added unnecessarily. “We hardly have any cash ourselves and our cards aren’t working for some reason.”

“We do have money,” the man butted in. “We just can’t access it at the moment.”

“Please help us,” the woman implored. “We can’t get home, otherwise.”

“And we can get the money back to you in a couple of days,” the man butted in before I could come up with a response. “Just give us your address.”

The woman took out a mobile phone. I recognised it as being a cheapish model, similar to the kinds of burner I like to use myself.

“Give me your number,” she said. “I’ll call you then you’ll have my number. Text me your details so we can repay you when we get back.”

There were so many questions I wanted to ask as I recited my number to the woman. None of this was making much sense. If they were so low on fuel, why had the woman been driving around the car park? How come none of their cards worked, especially if they did have money in accounts as they claimed?

But I was in a hurry. Fundamentally, I did want to believe them. To do something nice. My good deed for the day, if you like. A kind of social offset against most of the work that I did. That wound did look genuine while I felt I could see the level of frantic worry rising in the faces of both of them.

With a sigh, I dug into my inside jacket pocket to pull out my wallet. Two hundred pounds, in a mixture of ten and twenty pound notes, bulked out the wallet’s slim body. If that warning voice of suspicion in my head was still speaking, it was too far away for me to hear it. I grabbed three notes, two blue, one brown, fifty pounds altogether and thrust them at the man.

The look of pure delight that sprang onto the pair’s faces couldn’t have been any broader if they suddenly discovered they had become multimillionaires through playing the lottery. And their reaction gave me a pleasant rush of proud satisfaction.

“Thank-you, thank-you,” the man extolled in absolute relief, looking like he was on the verge of bursting into tears as he grabbed the money and stuffed it in his jeans pocket.

“You’re a saint,” the woman declared, her eyes wet with joyful emotion.

In the back of the car, the human-shaped blanket was motionless, completely disinterested in what was going on. For one instant, I wondered if whoever was there was actually alive. Or maybe a giant, ventriloquist’s dummy?

My initial sense of wellbeing, though, was already beginning to fade. A peculiar awkwardness was taking over, that I was somehow prying into the family’s private moment.

“I have to go.”

The man was already rushing round to the passenger door to sit beside the woman. I flashed a reassuring smile at them as they moved off before walking back to my BMW. The further I travelled away from them, the more it felt I was coming out of a trance or some kind of hallucinogenic state. And if there had been a sense of euphoria I had been trying to reach with my gift, it was clearly an illusion.

And my suspicious instincts were also kicking into gear. Once I was next to my car, I turned in time to see the red hatchback scooting out of the car park at high speed, heading towards the petrol station. And the exit.

The number plate was clearly visible and I made an immediate mental note of it. Within a matter of seconds, I was behind the wheel of my own car, slipping the gear into first and darting from my parking space. The hatchback was out of sight but I was only a handful of seconds behind it.

I came out of the car park onto the single lane carriageway that led under part of the service station before forking several metres further down, left to head into the gleaming petrol station, right to go around it, onto the slip road and then the motorway.

The instant the petrol station was in view, I spotted three vehicles standing at various pumps, two cars and a van. None of them was a red Peugeot.

“Shit.”

The word came out louder than I had intended, surprising me. Slamming my palm into the steering wheel, I put my foot onto the accelerator and swung my car to the right, towards the motorway, continually reciting the number plate to myself.

On the motorway itself, I brought my car quickly up to just over the speed limit. But there was no sign of the hatchback. That woman must really be pressing her foot down.

A mile or so further along, a sign presented the statement the next junction was coming up. I had a choice. Fifty-fifty. Did they stay on the motorway or had they come off? There were no clues in front of me.

My gut feeling told me to stay on the motorway. If they were genuinely heading for Guildford they would need to continue along here for a while yet but there was a turn-off they could take. I pressed the accelerator a little harder, watching my speed ease up a touch. Still not fast enough to trigger a speed camera, I reckoned. That was the last thing I wanted, a bloody ticket to pay with the prospect of having to attend a speed awareness course.

I was in the middle lane as I was approaching the next junction, overtaking an ambling Alfa Romeo, drawing the conclusion I had been wrong to drive passed the previous junction when I saw the Peugeot. It was moving into the nearside lane, ahead of an articulated lorry, its indicator dutifully flashing to show it was intending to leave the motorway at the exit it was only a couple of hundred metres away from.

I allowed my BMW to fall behind the lorry so I could slide into position a short distance from its rear. The Peugeot zipped onto the slip road while I kept back to stay some distance behind them, not too close to alert them I was there. They must have still been congratulating themselves too much to notice I had caught up with them.

Fortunately, the roundabout at the end of the slip road was quiet so they were able to enter it immediately. I followed. After a few minutes, we were driving into a small town, the Peugeot leading me deeper and deeper into the suburban wilderness of a newish housing development.

Easing off the accelerator, I increased my distance from them a little more. There was no need to be too close. I sensed the journey was near to ending. A minute or so later, they were turning into a cul-de-sac. I drove passed the entrance to the road and parked. After a short time which I spent listening to the news headlines on the radio, I left my car to wander into the road they had driven into.

There it was, the red Peugeot hatchback, sitting innocently on a driveway about halfway down the street, without a care in the world, its occupants presumably now inside the house. It was now late afternoon, people would be making their dinners or at least start thinking about what to eat.

A plan was fermenting in my mind. If I had caught up with them a minute or two after they had left me, I probably would have forced their car off the road, given them both a smacking, retrieved my money and driven off. And that would have been that. But over the time it had taken for me to reach here, another idea had emerged. One I didn’t want to abandon.

I returned to my car. It was going to be a busy evening. There were particular areas of the Dark Web I prefer to use for urgent deliveries. The courier services can be expensive compared to more legitimate enterprises, but they are fast and reliable. I wasn’t too far from home and I had some business to handle but now I knew where they lived, I could return when I was ready.

Which I was, several hours later, when the town was now fully under the umbrella of night. It was late evening, some people would already be in bed, others finishing their final daily routine before retreating to the bedroom. Making sure there was no-one around on the cul-de-sac, I rang the doorbell, pleased the responding tinkling tune inside was barely able to make it through the door. My right hand was already gripping an aerosol can. I gulped in as much air as I could, trapping it in my lungs.

The door opened and there was the man, a puzzled expression on his face. He frowned at me, recognition dawning on him as I brought the can up, his mouth beginning to open as I pressed the button on top to envelope his nose and voice in a fine mist of anaesthetizing gas. Before he could utter a sound, his knees were crumpling. I stepped inside to catch him under his armpits and ease him to the floor.

“Who is it, Marcus?” the woman called from the front room.

“You had better come out here,” I replied, using as little air as possible.

“Marcus?” the woman said. “Who is that? What’s going on?”

I didn’t reply. A lack of any kind of response to her question would fire her curiosity and force her out to investigate. Which it did less than half a minute later, bringing her into contact with another burst from my can. I gently laid her sleeping form down next to her husband.

Poking my head into the front room, I pushed out what remaining stale air was in my lungs, to replace it with a fresh batch. A few deep breaths bordering on hyperventilation later and I was ready to deal with the daughter.

Now where was she? If she was out, I would have to wait for her to return. At least Marcus and his wife would be unconscious for several hours. But I couldn’t wait here all night. I decided I would give it until one in the morning. Then I would have to go, returning for her if necessary …

“Mum?” a voice called from a room above. “Dad?”

She was upstairs. Good. Hopefully on her own. I just had to be patient again. It took a little longer this time and another set of unanswered calls to her parents but the girl finally came to the top of the stairs to find out what was going on. I was out of her line of sight in the front room. The instant she saw her parents sitting unconscious against the wall, I heard her race down the stairs to them. I stepped into her line of sight, taking in another huge breath of air, and her eyes widened in shock. A moment and another spray later and she was asleep as well.

The only sound now was the burbling television in the front room. I switched it off before returning to the family. Fast asleep, I could see they were now in much better condition than when I had first met them. Clean, neat, casual clothes, washed, hair freshly shampooed. The girl was blonde, slim, attractive, late teens I estimated, dressed in light-grey sports bottoms and a darker hoodie-style top. No wonder she had been hiding under the blanket. If I had seen her in the car, the chances are the sight of her would’ve blown her parents’ hard luck story out of the water.

Lifting the man’s shirt to study his midriff, I was totally unsurprised to discover the flesh was entirely untroubled by a nasty wound or anything else apart from being flabbier than he would probably prefer.

I drew a mouthful of air through my teeth, on the verge of swearing at them but also at myself. Now, I was more determined than ever to put my plan into operation. A cup of tea first. Then I would get to work, when all their neighbours were asleep.

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