Tom Hinshelwood - The Killer

The room was empty. They checked the bathroom-it was the same. While one covered the other they examined the closet, under the bed, anywhere that might conceal a man, no matter how unlikely. They had been told to be thorough, to leave nothing to chance. They checked behind the curtains, first holding out a hand across the window to give the marksman in the building opposite the signal not to fire. Their faces glistened with perspiration.

Each room was a mess. The target had obviously fled in a hurry, not hanging around long enough to take all his belongings. Clothes were strewn about the floor, the bed was unmade, toiletries left by the sink. It was sloppy, unprofessional.

Both men relaxed slightly, breathed a little easier. He was gone. They hid their guns in case anyone came their way. When the elevator had refused to appear they’d had no other choice but to run back up the stairs and break down the stairwell door. It hadn’t exactly been quiet.

They left the room, pulling the door shut behind them. The more senior of the two lifted his collar and reported into the attached microphone that the target was gone. He was careful with his choice of words not to imply any mistake on his part. They weren’t worried, all of the building’s exits were covered, one of the other team members would spot him and move in-might even be doing so at this very moment. The target was as good as dead. Each of the team members was due a large bonus when the job was complete, and they hadn’t even had to fire a single shot.

Their boss had told them to be careful, that their target was dangerous, but now the nerves they’d felt seemed misplaced. Their dangerous target had fled at the first chance he had and was now someone else’s problem. They shared the same thought. Easy money.

Their faces changed when they learned the target hadn’t left the building, that none of the others had even reported a visual. The two men looked at each other, their expressions silently echoing the same question.

Then where was he?

Victor stepped away from the spy hole of the door opposite and raised his gun. He fired, squeezing the trigger ten times in rapid succession, emptying the magazine of exactly half its ammunition. The hotel door was thick, solid pine, but the bullets in the Five-seveN were shaped like rifle rounds and cut through it with barely any loss in velocity.

Two heavy objects hit the carpet, one thud after the other.

The door creaked in front of him. He’d kept it shut with his foot, having broken the lock to gain entry. He pulled it open with his left hand and stepped into the hallway. In front of him the first man was slumped on the floor, propped up against the door frame of Victor’s room, head hung forward, blood running from the mouth and collecting into a pool on the carpet. Apart from a twitching left foot he made no movement.

The other was still alive, lying face down on the floor, making a quiet gurgling noise. He’d been hit several times-in the gut, chest, and neck where the ruptured carotid artery sprayed the wall with long crimson arcs. He was trying to crawl away, his mouth open as if screaming for help but making no sound.

Victor ignored him and reached inside the dead man’s jacket, searching unsuccessfully for a wallet. He went to take the man’s radio receiver, but it was in pieces, a bullet having passed straight through on the way to his heart. In a shoulder holster Victor found a 9 mm Beretta 92F handgun and two spare magazines in a pocket. The Beretta was a good, reliable weapon with a fifteen-round mag, but a heavy, bulky gun that, even without the attached suppressor, was impossible to conceal completely. With subsonic ammunition the stopping power wasn’t great either. For this kind of work it was a poor choice of pistol. If the guy wasn’t dead Victor might have told him so.

The Beretta wouldn’t normally have been his preference but at times like this there was no such thing as too many guns. Victor took the weapon and tucked it into the back of his suit pants, the grip supported by his belt, the suppressor down by his coccyx. The body jerked suddenly, perhaps from some muscle spasm, and tipped forward. The jaw fell open and a cascade of collected blood poured out, followed by half a bitten-through tongue flopping onto the carpet. Victor stepped away and turned his attention to the one who wasn’t dead. Yet.

He stopped crawling when Victor’s heel pressed down between his shoulder blades. Victor rolled the man onto his back and squatted down next to him, pushing the Five-seveN’s suppressor hard into the man’s cheek. He forced his head to one side to keep the violent arterial spray directed at the wall and away from himself. Where it hit, the pressurized blood tore at the floral paper.

The man was trying to speak but could only manage a wheezing exhale. The bullet in his neck had ripped through his larynx, and he could make only the most basic of sounds. He tugged at Victor’s sleeve, tried to claw at him, not giving up the fight despite the inevitability of the wound. Victor respected his perseverance.

Like his partner he was also armed with a Beretta and equipped with a radio and earpiece. Victor unloaded the gun and checked the rest of his pockets. They were empty except for a few sticks of chewing gum, more ammo, and a crumpled receipt. He took the gum and the receipt, seeing it was for half a dozen coffees and discarded it. Victor unwrapped one of the sticks of gum and folded it into his mouth. Peppermint. He nodded his approval.

“Thanks.”

He shook off the hand and moved to the stairwell to check for others. No sign of any more assassins but voices carried up from below, female, complaining about the elevator. Victor made his way back down the corridor, careful to avoid the dark stains on the carpet and moved the fire extinguisher from between the elevator doors. He stepped inside and pressed the button for the lobby. He’d left some of his belongings in the room, but he wasn’t concerned. The toiletries were brand-new, the clothes hadn’t been worn yet, and everything that had been handled would be free from fingerprints thanks to the silicone solution on his hands.

In the corridor the dying man had at last ceased his thrashing. Blood no longer spurted from his neck but simply oozed out onto the drenched carpet. Victor couldn’t help but admire the pattern of red on the wall above the corpse. The crisscrossed lines had a certain aesthetic quality that reminded him of a Jackson Pollock.

Victor examined his reflection in the mirrored elevator walls and took a moment to straighten his appearance. In his current surroundings if he looked anything but presentable he would be noted. The elevator doors closed as a shrill scream echoed from the direction of the stairwell. Someone had just gotten something of a surprise.

Victor guessed she wasn’t a great fan of Pollock’s work.

08:34 CET

In the lobby Victor waited patiently as panic erupted around him. The hotel manager, a short slim man with a surprisingly loud voice, had to shout just to be heard above the frightened guests. Some were only half-dressed, rudely pulled from their beds by screams of a massacre. The manager was trying to explain that the police were on the way and everyone should remain calm. But it was far too late for that.

Victor sat in one of the luxurious leather armchairs in a corner of the lobby. It was very comfortable. He’d angled the chair so he could watch the main entrance in the middle of the far wall and most of the lobby without moving his head. He kept the entrance to the hotel bar and stairwell in his peripheral vision. He doubted anyone would use the elevators to his right, but if they did he was close enough to see them exiting before they noticed him.

The police would arrive soon, and the remaining members of the kill team were quickly running out of time to fulfill their contract. They would be panicking by now, having worked out that two of their men were dead. Either they would escape, which Victor didn’t expect, or they would try and finish the job. In the mêlée of guests and staff members fleeing the lobby it would be too crowded to kill him on the streets outside and too risky with cops on the way.