Филип Керр - A Five Year Plan

Kate nodded enthusiastically. She said, ‘A gun would be nice.’

‘How about you, Captain Willard?’

‘No thanks.’

‘Please yourself,’ said Stanford getting up carefully from the co-pilot’s seat. The speed of the boat made the deck difficult to stand on. But clearly Stanford was used to it.

Jellicoe said nothing as the actor went below to fetch the handguns. He was still sweeping the bright blue horizon for some sign of the Britannia. From time to time he would glance down at the open-scan radar screen. It was a similar system to the ARPA on board the Duke, except that the screen had two displays: the radar image of the general vicinity, and the adjacent chart display — instant confirmation of their position and any hazards that might be in the area. Something on the small screen caught his experienced eye and he touched the instrument’s zoom button to take a closer look.

‘There,’ he said excitedly. ‘On the screen. Something to the north-west of us. Less than five miles away.’

Al came out of the head feeling like shit. He had a headache and a bad case of diarrhea and he felt as tired as if he’d missed a whole night’s sleep. So tired that it took him a couple of minutes to remember that he really had lost a whole night’s sleep. They’d been up all night taking down the score. Then there was the medication. And the alcohol. Tearing the two Scopoderm plasters off his arm he threw them irritably onto the stateroom floor and then sat down on the edge of the bed, paying no more attention to the two dead bodies next to him than he had to the guy in the bath while he’d been taking a crap. They didn’t bother him. Dead was dead. He never connected bodies with people who had lived and breathed. But he did wish that he had paid more attention to what Dave had told him about mixing alcohol with the seasickness medication. Not that he had drunk all that much. No more than a few mouthfuls of vodka. A couple of beers. That was just refreshment. But it did seem to have taken its toll on his state of being.

Trying to get his shit together, Al took a deep breath through his nose. He’d killed lots of people before. People he knew well, too. Fact was, it was nearly always people he knew well. The nature of the business he was in demanded it. You came on to a guy you’d done business with, like he was your best friend, and then blew his fucking brains out. Only usually Al had a little more enthusiasm for the job, on account of how he normally felt more like he had some adrenalin coursing through his system. Adrenalin was good for wet work. It kept you sharp and on your toes. Right now, he felt as blunt as a door handle in a padded cell. Gray and sweaty, like it was him who was heading for a Viking funeral, instead of the younger guy up on deck.

Al looked around for inspiration and saw a jade block and a razor blade on the dead girl’s bedside table. It had been quite a few years since he’d had a blow of snow. Enjoyable, but expensive, and Madonna was too money oriented to let him turn lots of cash into a handful of dust for snorting up his nose. Besides, Naked Tony wouldn’t have liked it. He distrusted people who used dope regularly. But as a now and then thing it was OK. And right now it looked just what he needed to be on top of the hit parade. To give it his best shot. One hit to make another. That was politics.

He leaned across the girl’s body, casually inspecting her nakedness, and stroking her titties as he reached for her bedside drawer. Leaving aside the hole in her head and the blood all over her face, she was a nice-looking girl. Still warm too. But for his lethal agenda he might have been tempted to fuck her before she cooled off for good.

The drawer was a regular dessert service tray: shotgun spoons, gold-capped safety razors, gold straws — all the paraphernalia of the regular user, like it was premier cru Bordeaux. Even the glass storage bottle containing her supply of coke was wearing a little gold jacket.

‘Damn right, babe,’ Al told her as he tapped a generous measure onto her jade chopping block. ‘It’s a luxury, not a lifestyle.’

When Al had finished chopping the coke, he separated the powder into two neat mounds, took the gold straw and snorted one of the piles into his flaring nostrils. His head jerked up from the rush and a big grin spread on his face.

‘Now that’s what I call vitamin C,’ he chuckled and swept the second mound of coke off the jade block with the razor, and into the dead girl’s navel. Taking the gold straw, he pressed his face close to her belly and snorted out her navel, licking it clean for good measure. Already he felt invigorated. He said, ‘This is good leaf.’

Ever since Dave had found the stash, Al had been wondering if there was a way of getting it out of there and loading the stuff onto the Ercolano at the same time as they transferred all the money. Tony might like a windfall like that. It seemed a hell of a waste just to sink the boat with all that dope on board. If it was anything like the stuff tingling through his nose, deep-sixing the motherlode would be nothing short of a fucking tragedy. Al licked the dead girl’s belly again, and feeling the boat begin to slow, he stepped out of the main stateroom and shouted up the stairwell.

‘We there?’

‘I reckon this is about the spot,’ shouted Dave.

Snorting happily, Al scratched his nose and went up to the galley where he had left his weapons on the counter. He took the .45 automatic and unscrewed the laser aiming module. He wouldn’t need it. Not at the range he was contemplating. The silencer he had already dumped when firing at what he had assumed was the nosey parker. Noise was good when you were trying to persuade someone to stay the fuck out of your way. Ejecting the magazine, he thumbed a few more rounds inside until it was full again and then smacked it back up the handgrip. One round would be all he would need, but Al was too much of a pro to leave anything to chance. Any opportunity you got to reload, you took it. You could never tell what might happen when you had to grease someone. The unexpected. It was always a factor. Especially when it was a guy you knew well. A guy you quite liked, even. Drugs had helped Al to change his mind about blowing Dave away without a word. That no longer seemed such a good idea. He was going to have to talk to Dave. Apologize. Tell him that it was nothing personal. That it was just Naked Tony’s fucking paranoia, and what could he, Al, do about it? Except do what the fuck he was told, or end up in a similarly terminated condition. After all he and Dave had been through together, apologizing seemed to be the least he could do for the guy. That and a quick and painless headshot. Back of the cranium probably — SS style. Whatever you thought about their lack of personal morality, those Nazis had known how to off people with a pistol. German efficiency. The ultimate killing machine. BMW with bullets.

The Britannia’s original owner had been a keen diver, and the boat was fitted with an Apelco fishfinder. As well as giving the screen viewer the best possible picture of where fish were to be found, the Apelco was also equipped with a dual-frequency transducer, which, scanning forward and downward, could give advance warning of shoals, holes in the seabed or even wrecks to be explored. From the pilot’s chair on the bridge, Dave kept one eye on the Apelco and one eye on Al through the skylight window of the galley. There could be only one reason for Al reloading his gun. He meant to use it. On him. This was the moment Dave had been half expecting. Now that Dave had served his useful purpose, it was time for Al’s double-cross.

Dave throttled right back so that the engines were just ticking over, picked up the Mossberg shotgun from the control console, and positioned himself immediately over the stairwell that led up from the galley to the bridge.