Adrian Magson: No Peace For The Wicked

The first old man died on the beach.

Unaware of his impending fate, he watched, huddled in a blanket, as gulls screamed over a plastic bottle bobbing in the choppy water, while under a heavy sky a tanker plodded up the Channel. Apart from him, the beach was deserted. It was too early in the season for day-trippers and too cold for beachcombers with their wretched metal detectors.

He wasn’t interested in seagulls or tankers. The birds were noisy and demanding, like people, and the tankers too remote. He had long ago given up interest in anything much, surrendering willingly to an ill-tempered isolation. Now all he had left was the creeping disease of old age, made bearable by the few bits of comfort a well-stocked bank account could buy. As long as the account received regular additions, that was all that concerned him.

A car approached along the promenade and he sank instinctively deeper into his deckchair, pulling the blanket tighter around him. If he’d wanted strangers stopping by for a chat he’d have hung out a sign.

Maybe it was Willis. His minder was due about now with a flask of coffee laced with something that would truly piss off his doctor, if only he knew.

The hairs on his neck stirred as the footsteps approached, bringing faint memories of other times when danger had moved against him.

Well, he’d faced that and usually walked away laughing.

The newcomer stopped behind him, so close he must have been staring down at the top of his head. He fought a strong desire to turn and look. Damn him! He’d sit and defy the intruder to come round and look him in the eye.

Whoever it was didn’t bother. Instead the old man heard a rustle of cloth and a familiar metallic click. It turned his blood to water. Then the seagulls and the wind, the impending rain and the tanker, all ceased to matter.

Half a mile away, in a block of exclusive flats overlooking the sea front, another old man stared out to sea, puffing on his first cigar of the day. He knew it would likely kill him, but he didn’t give a bugger. Too old to let it worry him now, anyway. He wriggled his toes into the pile of his new carpet. Nothing like the feel of a fresh nap, he thought. About as far from Linoleum as it was possible to get.

He brushed a speck of ash from his sweater and debated going for a walk. Over to the east he could see two figures down on the pebbles. One appeared to be huddled in a deckchair, the other standing behind him. Bloody mad, some people, he thought idly. Probably asylum seekers, looking for something to steal.

The standing figure appeared to be holding a hand out to the other. Offering something maybe, or pointing. There was something familiar in the stance that made the cigar smoker shiver. He decided he was better off staying in. Far too cold to venture out, anyway. Easy way to catch a chill. In any case, the boys would be here later for a game of cards.

He glanced at the coffee table, with its single sheet of paper covered in neatly typed figures. He smiled momentarily. Money was still rolling in, and as long as the managers didn’t get greedy and the other two let him run things the way he always had since… well, since the changeover, it should be fine.

The front door clicked. Startled, he swung round. Two figures were standing in the hallway as if they had materialised out of the walls. Their heavy coats and dark slacks gave them the appearance of men attending a funeral.

“What the fuck do you want?” he demanded. For the first time in years he felt a skewer of fear deep in his gut. “How d’you get in?”

The leading figure stepped forward and pointed at the smoker. There was a sharp, flat sound and the cigar snapped into the air. It landed on the new carpet where it sizzled pungently.

The old man fell alongside it.

The second newcomer stepped past the gunman and carefully retrieved the cigar. He placed it in an ashtray where it could burn safely without threatening the other residents in the tower block.

Then both men stepped across to the window and looked out. Over to the east a solitary figure was walking up the beach towards a car parked on the promenade. Behind him was a figure slumped in a deckchair as though sleeping.

The two men turned and left the flat, barely glancing at the man lying on the floor.

Job done.

The young man in the smart suit seemed oblivious to the chill in the air as he stood on the patio watching his employer. She was kneeling on a cushion, digging the blade of a knife between the flagstones and levering out stems of couch grass, the crepe-flesh in her upper arms quivering with the effort. The knife strokes were short and vicious, as if the battle with the weeds was personal, old age against new growth.

He looked around, eyes flicking over the tree line a hundred yards away, then turned to take in the house behind him. Set in an acre of prime Buckinghamshire countryside, the house wore sweeping eyelash gables overlooking a magnificent stepped garden, and every brick and tile, each bush and shrub, echoed solid, undeniable wealth. He’d heard it was once the home of a merchant banker. He wasn’t surprised.

Inside the house a telephone warbled pleasantly, as if promising good news. The young man went into the kitchen and through to the hallway, breathing a sigh of relief once he was out of earshot of the woman. Guard duties with no danger of action had a definite downside.

He picked up the phone and listened to a brief message, then replaced the handset without comment and returned to the patio. Over the old woman’s bowed back he checked the garden for signs of movement but saw only borders and flower-beds in perfect splendour; neat, ordered and unblemished. Not that he cared for any of it, save for the fact that intruders had no place to hide. Gardening wasn’t really his forte.

The woman glanced up as his footsteps sounded on the stones, the knife hand stilled, thumb resting on the top of the blade. The way she held it reminded the young man of a combat instructor he’d once trained with. Vicious bastard liked to nick trainees with the point of his dagger, to give them a sensation they never wanted to experience again. It had worked, though. The memory still made his gut twitch.

“What is it, Gary?” she asked.

“It’s done,” he replied, hands clasped respectfully behind his back.

The woman very nearly smiled. She didn’t, much, as if she had never learned how. “Good. Thank you.” She gazed down at her handiwork. “Much better without all those horrid weeds, and I must get that back border sorted out — it’s looking quite a mess, don’t you think?”

Gary made no comment. He had learned not to. When the woman levered herself upright with a grunt, Gary made no move to help, either. Something else he’d learned not to do.

The woman was in her mid-seventies and dressed smartly as always — even for gardening. There was still a hint of the showgirl she used to be, mostly revealed by a taste for gaudy jewellery and too much makeup. Behind Dior glasses and heavily layered mascara were eyes that looked out on the world in a seemingly benevolent manner. Eyes like someone’s grandmother, which she was, although not recently. Those eyes made Gary shiver. And he didn’t shiver at much.

“Have you called Spain?” she asked, dropping the knife onto the cushion at her feet.

“No, Mrs G. I thought you might want to do that.”

Her full name was Letitia Grossman. Lottie for short. But she liked being called Mrs G; she thought it showed respect. There had been too many times when respect had been denied her, and she had a lot of ground to make up.

She reached up and patted Gary’s cheek with a wrinkled hand, one of her long fingernails trailing momentarily across his cheek. Then she walked towards the house, leaving behind a sickly trace of sweet perfume overlaid by the tang of damp soil. Like she’d been recently dug up and bought back to life, Gary thought.