Adrian Magson - No Sleep for the Dead

Szulu checked his rear mirror and wondered if he was imagining things. He was sure he’d seen the same car behind him now more than once, ever since collecting Lottie Grossman from her hotel. It kept reappearing, as if the driver was unsure of his route and trying to find shortcuts, but inevitably staying on their tail. Unfortunately, with the level of commuter and other traffic, keeping tabs on one specific car was practically impossible. Szulu shook his head, telling himself not to get paranoid.

‘I need to get out of this place for a while,’ Lottie had told him when he’d called her on the way to the hotel earlier that morning. ‘It’s stifling in here, and those tablets aren’t doing me any good.’ Her voice had taken on a whining quality, adding to the slurring of her words after she’d been taken ill. As for the hotel, it was air-conditioned throughout. Maybe she was having hot flushes, like his gran used to get. He shuddered at the idea of this woman suffering the same ailments as any normal woman.

It had cost him a small fortune to get his arm patched up, but it was better than tangling with the cops. Fortunately, the quack had located the bullet nestling just beneath the skin, and hadn’t had to dig around too much. Even so, the pain had been intense enough to have Szulu yelling like a baby.

‘Fair enough,’ he said, relieved he wasn’t expected to go out and buy an Uzi to blow anyone away. He still hadn’t worked out how to break things off with the old woman without her going ballistic, but he’d have to come up with something sooner or later or he’d do something desperate.

‘So what happened?’ Her voice interrupted his thoughts as they cruised past Runnymede, with the river on the left. ‘Did you deliver the message?’

Szulu nodded, keeping his eyes on the road. He hadn’t told her about being shot, or the addition to the scene of yet another psychotic military type, and hoped the bandages the quack had applied weren’t obvious beneath the sleeve of his jacket. ‘Sure. They didn’t like it. You really have history, don’t you?’

He saw Lottie nodding in the back seat, her eyes half closed. ‘Oh, yes. We have history, all right.’ There was a pause, then: ‘You got hurt, didn’t you?’

Szulu looked in the mirror, surprised she’d noticed. ‘A bit, yeah. Not much. A flesh wound.’

‘A flesh wound? Christ, who shot you — Palmer?’ She cackled dryly. ‘He’s a one, isn’t he? I’m surprised to hear he’s tooled up, though.’

Szulu glanced in the mirror, surprised at her use of slang. He sighed and decided to tell her everything, in spite of the big guy’s warning. Anyway, what could he do to him that he hadn’t done already? ‘It wasn’t Palmer. There was another bloke turned up. The Gavin woman called him John. Big, a bit posh like, but tough. Seemed to know all about guns.’ He explained that he’d taken the.22 with him for protection, but that it had misfired when he’d been startled by the cat.

For the second time in as many minutes, the old woman laughed, but it was a dry cackling sound with no element of humour. Szulu felt his ears burning with shame at the memory.

‘You aren’t cut out for this game, are you, Mr Szulu?’ said Lottie perceptively, rubbing at her eyes. ‘Scared by a cat, eh? Dear me. Still, you were lucky he only put a shot in your arm. His name’s Mitcheson. Ex-army. He worked for me, once, for a short while. Tough fella, all right… I could have done with more like him. Would’ve made a fortune with him alongside me.’

She fell silent and stared out of the window as if recalling missed opportunities. They entered the outskirts of Egham, Szulu taking the Lexus on a random tour to avoid traffic, with no particular destination in mind. Aimless seemed the best way to go at the moment. After a mile or so, Lottie stirred again.

‘Stop here, Mr Szulu. Anywhere will do.’

Szulu stopped the car as ordered, and looked around. They were in a quiet street bordered by chestnut trees, the kerb on either side lined with cars. Middle class, middle income, nice lives; if they had any worries, the people who lived here, they kept them well hidden behind their neat gardens and smart house fronts. He switched off the ignition and turned to look at Lottie Grossman, wondering what she was going to do next.

‘Now I’ve told you my secrets,’ he said finally, ‘how about yours?’

‘Pardon me?’ Her voice was slurred again, her lips barely moving.

‘Well, you wanted out of the hotel pretty quick, it seemed to me. Why’s that?’

There was a long silence, punctuated by the sound of an electric drill somewhere nearby. Then she said: ‘Because I want to finish this.’

‘Yeah? What, like go home?’ He felt relieved. The sooner she was out of his hair, the better. Then he could go back to worrying about the simple things in life, like how to avoid being carved into slices by Ragga Pearl.

‘No. I want you to finish it. Remember those special rates we talked about? You want to be out from under Pearl, don’t you? Only you’ll have to be quick.’ She delved into her bag with a shaky hand and passed him a thick envelope. ‘That should cover it.’

Szulu sighed. Deep down, he knew that whatever else he might be capable of, killing Palmer and the Gavin woman was way beyond his reach, especially now the other guy had appeared on the scene. It was as if he’d been shown his limits and realised that he wasn’t up to it. Strangely, he felt no sense of shame in the realisation. He decided to tell her, extra money or no extra money.

‘Sorry. Can’t do that,’ he said softly. ‘I ain’t killing no-one. You were right: I’m not cut out for this. Not murder, anyway. You can go ahead and tell Ragga if you like. I’ll even go there with you. You want me to drive you?’

‘I don’t think that would be a good idea.’ She sounded slightly drunk, vague, as if her mind was wandering, and Szulu wondered if she’d been taking a few crafty nips while he wasn’t looking. Jeez, that’s all he needed after everything else: how the hell do you get a drunk pensioner out of the back of the car? Especially one who wanted you to kill people.

‘Yeah? Why not? Hey, you could ask Ragga to have his men do it. He’d kill his own mother if the price was right. I never said that, though.’ When she didn’t reply, he continued: ‘Wouldn’t that be better, having Ragga’s men do Palmer? That way you know it gets done.’

Lottie gave a snort of contempt. ‘You think I would trust those strutting idiots to do anything? They’re street hooligans, that’s all, flashing their silly gold chains and hiding behind dark glasses. Real men don’t need to hide their eyes, Mr Szulu. People like Palmer and Mitcheson… they look you straight in the eye.’

Szulu nodded, recognising something close to admiration in her voice. Man, she sounded like she respected those two. That was something he hadn’t expected.

‘Anyway, I can’t ask Pearl.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because I went to see him two days ago, while you were busy. To talk over some stuff. While I was in his office, I noticed some papers on his desk. He seems surprisingly businesslike, for one so…uncouth. A bit careless, though, with people he thinks are beyond it.’ She gave a slight chuckle. ‘We’re the invisible army, us old ones, you know that? Nobody sees us until it’s too late.’

‘So?’ Something in the old woman’s tone told Szulu he wasn’t going to like where this was going. From rarely telling him the time of day, here she was suddenly gobbing off about some visit she’d made to Ragga Pearl’s den.

‘I’ve always had the knack of reading upside down, you know. It came in handy over the years. The paper on his desk included a list of names and bank accounts. My late husband always had a list like that, too. Piggy-banks, he called them. Bits squirreled here, bits tucked away there… makes it difficult for anyone to follow the money trail, see? Information like that, though, there’s always somebody interested in buying. Always.’