Richard Wiseman - To Kill Or Be Killed

Cobb, white plastic bag with prawn fried rice, duck, pancakes, vegetables, Ho-Sin sauce and a six pack of Budweiser in one hand and his backpack in the other noted the lights on in the marina office past the hours of business listed on the door. He tried the door handle and found the office open. Charlie smelt trouble. He double checked his handiwork on the CCTV camera control, still in place. The young man probably never checked it. He left the office his senses alert and made his way to the punch key locked gate. He looked along the jetties and seeing where his boat was, with the lights on he narrowed his eyes and flared his nostrils making a face that would have made a snake flinch.

He squatted down in the shadows by the gate, putting aside the take away and beer. In the last light of day the dull metal of his Russian PSS pistol swallowed the low lances of the setting sun. He punched in the access number, eased through and closed the gate with deadly silence. Treading the boards towards the edges with soft silent steps he honed in on the yellow beacon of his boat lights. There were no lights visible on other boats, he noted. He saw the shadows behind the boat’s thin curtains.

He could have climbed onto the boat, but knew better. They’d be coming out and he’d save himself some cleaning up. He lay down on the drizzle wet boards, hidden by the prow of the boat. They’d exit via the stern of the boat and move to his right back towards the gate.

Wally and the watch man did emerge, clambered off the boat, Wally doing most of the talking. Cobb heard the words ‘police’ and ‘alert’ and ‘CCTV’ footage’. He let them get four metres down the jetty and gave each a silenced shot in the back of the head within a second. Each victim pitched forward, damaged beyond repair and spiralling downwards brain dead they fell to earth near lifeless. Cobb was on his feet in a moment he stood over them and put a round in each heart. It had taken mere seconds to stop the life in them simply because of their inconvenience. The young watch man and Wally lay on the jetty like landed fish in the last gasps of drowning, small, pathetic after death twitches moving muscles as the last nervous signals pulsed and faded in their finished bodies.

The last light of the day saw Charley busy. Glad for the harbour water, simply for hiding the bodies and washing the blood he got to work. He checked the bodies for identification and car keys. He didn’t pause to muse over the pictures of himself and the others he took from Wally’s corpse and the even more curious diplomatic badge with Wally’s picture on it; he put them in his pocket with a definite view to looking at them later. He took what little money they had, frowning at Wally’s wallet pictures of Tara and Ginny. Who sent a family man to deal with a killer like him?

He found the cars, cut the tyres from the spares, took the jacks and rims for weight. The Sheets and duvet cover from his boat wrapped the bodies, tied by spare mooring rope from his boat. Weighted he lowered them into the marina waters, below the jetty, he knew the weight wasn’t quite enough and hoped they’d be hidden an extra day bobbing against the underside of the wood. He washed the jetty down quickly with three buckets, sloshing the blood away.

Looking around he saw the lights of the city, tens of thousands of people, but not one near enough to witness his actions. Cobb went back to the gate, picked up the now cold take away and his rucksack.

One remote key blipped a Peugeot 207 hatch back. The other key opened the old red Fiesta. He drove this out the gate and parked it on Hill Street. He walked back to the Marina, always looking around. He locked the office. Happily settled in the Peugeot 207 he drove away, Manchester bound.

‘So much for the quiet night’ in he thought pointing the car towards the M62. As he drove he wondered how the authorities had so quickly got pictures of all of them. He knew his picture was a sketch, seemingly lit by a glow? Could they have seen them that morning? It was impossible surely? Charlie was suddenly very worried. The whole situation looked and smelled like a set up.

Leicester

5 – 30 p.m.

April 17th

It was the same thoughts which led Mason to get off the London train at Leicester. He was happily settled on the train, feeling warm and comfortable and then he started thinking about the submarine. It had told him from the start that it was a government job. Someone in power had given the green light to an assassination in the UK. He had thought it sensible to send five of them to make sure the job got done, but now that he thought of it, he was struck by the thought that there was something odd about it. He knew they’d gone in Scotland to avoid detection, but who were they avoiding. If the target was someone important they’d be guarded. If it was someone in secret service it made more sense that they came in from a remote place. Then it struck him. Stanton had chosen to hitch because he was avoiding CCTV and centres that meant that Stanton, who’d been far from chatty those two weeks on the sub, knew something they didn’t or at least had worked out what he was working out now.

The idea got into Mason’s head that whoever they were going to kill would have security that were watching for assassins. He’d made up his mind to get off the train and find transport that involved him being away from the public when Leicester station was announced. He grabbed his bag and stepped onto the platform into lashing rain.

He asked the ticket barrier guard for directions to a supermarket and was told the nearest one was the Tesco along the Uppingham Road and that a 747 bus would take him there. He had to make his way up to the Humberstone Gate and found the stops there. He stood waiting for the bus, the rain hammering onto the bus shelter roof.

Leicester public transport is known for its efficiency and the 747 bus arrived within minutes and Mason was at the Tesco quicker than he’d expected.

He was wandering the car park waiting for the right person and vehicle to show up and it was becoming a problem. He needed a car that was overloaded at the back, the boot lid held down by rope because wood was sticking out or something. It was either that or a van that was overloaded at the back or had a broken back door handle.

Mason had spent half an hour in the car park looking suitably fuddled in case someone asked him what he was doing. He created a part for himself in case security came over. He decided to be a man with mental health problems who couldn’t find his daughter and the car. This was his lie and he worked it over in his head, mentally doing the voice and visualising the facial expressions.

He needn’t have worried as the rain was making people more concerned with themselves than anyone else.

He was going to give up, feeling exposed, when he saw a plumber’s van with faded writing, blue on white, ‘David Barrett Plumbing amp; Heating Engineer’ on the sides. It pulled into a space half way up the row he was walking along. Mason had seen it so easily because the small van had a bath sticking out the back and bungee straps holding the door.

Mason watched David, presumably, get out lock the van doors and do that half run half walk people do so embarrassingly into the Tesco entrance.

As soon as the man was out of sight he walked to the van, unclipped the bungee straps and pulled the bath out, which was thankfully coated PVC and not cast iron, laying it behind the car to his left. He climbed through into the driver’s seat, grabbing a screw driver on the way. Half a minute’s quick work and the van had started. He was pulling out when, as an afterthought, he pulled the bath into the space and popped the plug in.

As he drove away the bath began filling with rain water. Mr Barrett would think one of his mates was having a laugh and might not call the police for a while before he’d checked. Mason was spot on. Dave Barrett didn’t call the police. On seeing the bath where his van had been he simply stopped being amazed at the lack of his van and rang his mate.