How a Gunman Says Goodbye (4 page)

Frank had a good night’s sleep. There was a day, rather a long time ago, when he would be nervous in the hours before a job. Not any more. Having a routine settles you. It becomes familiar and enjoyable. Takes the edge off the preparations. Once the job’s actually started, it’s easy. Your focus becomes the dominant emotion. No room for worry. He’s up and showering, having his breakfast, checking the newspaper. He needs to find out about the occupants of the flats, but that’s easy enough. One early phone call to a contact. He’ll get the info through a third party. Probably more than a third party – fourth or fifth. Anyway, somewhere down the line you get to some old woman working in an office for the local postal service. She’ll never hear Frank’s name, never know that the information is for criminal use. She’ll get a small payment and share the information about who occupies which flats. It’s the best Frank can do at such short notice. Hardly the most reliable info. Chances are there’ll be people crashing in an empty flat or two in that building. That’s the risk you take. You can only work with the best information to hand.

Reading the paper, then heading out to the shop. Walk a little every day. Exercise the hip, build up your strength. Also, be seen in the community. Frank’s spent years playing a part locally. Looking like the slightly sad ageing gent, living all by himself. He’s never been close to his neighbours, but he makes sure they see just enough of him to prevent them getting nosy. He’s heading to the corner shop at the bottom of the road. A short walk, but it means he’ll be seen acting normal on the day of a job. That’s what this is about. He doesn’t need the pint of milk and packet of biscuits he’ll buy. He just wants to be seen being his normal, ordinary self. If anyone round here knows what he does for a living, then they’ve never mentioned it. Never even suggested that they know. Maybe they’re just smart enough to keep their mouths shut.

The shopkeeper’s seen him. A couple of other people were in the shop, too. Now he’s back at the house, wasting the afternoon away. It’s the one downside of the job. When you’re working, you have to stay away from all your colleagues. It’s a strange thing. The older he gets, the more he enjoys going to the club and seeing people there. Shoot a frame of snooker, waste a couple of hours. He goes along two or three times a week when there’s no work on. Ostensibly to play the role of security consultant, make the job seem convincing. In truth, he enjoys the company. You stay away from the person who hires you for a job. You keep your distance for at least a few days afterwards, sometimes as much as a week. Depends on the heat. There probably won’t be much for someone like Scott. It’ll be a gang-related death. Not likely to get a lot of traction with the media, not unless it’s a particularly slow news day. The police won’t make a big play of it, either. Better not to scare the locals with talk of gangland killings.

The afternoon has gone. He’s cooking his dinner. Nothing too heavy, and nothing exotic. You don’t want your innards to trip you up. There will be some nerves at the time. Not a lot, experience deals with that, but there might be something. The nerves can come in a rush. If everything goes well, no surprises, then he’ll be fine. When everything happens quickly, and exactly as expected, he can go through a job without feeling the slightest flutter. That’s not healthy, he knows it. You should have some nerves. Keeps you on your toes. If a surprise comes along, then the nerves come with it. They can come in a wave, race up on you and consume you. It’s how you handle those that matters most. Experience helps, but it’s not everything. You can have no experience, but a calm mind. You can have a mountain of experience, as Frank does, and the nerves can still cripple you. It’s happened. People get surprised by something and freeze. Never happened to Frank.

It’s dark outside now. He’s starting to prepare. Getting the plain clothing on. A little bit of a cliché to dress in black. The colour doesn’t matter much, but when you’re working in the night it’s a reasonable precaution to go dark. The most important factor is making sure the clothing has no distinguishing marks. You wear nothing that can be accurately described. You make sure that the police can’t find replicas and show it to the world. Utterly plain, worn only once and then destroyed. He’ll cover his face. He doesn’t on every job. If you have a job where there’s no prospect of witnesses or cameras, then why bother? Sometimes you have to be ultra-careful to get close to someone. That can mean no covering your face because that makes you stand out. These days it’s balaclavas more and more. The good old days – no such thing as CCTV. Back then, he wouldn’t have worn one for this job.

He’s leaving the house at ten minutes past ten. He’ll be at the flats before eleven, but he’ll spend a while sitting and watching. Give it as much time as possible. Make sure everyone’s fast asleep. Makes a job so much easier. It’s not raining tonight, which is something. He’s parked a little further away from the building tonight. He knows roughly which windows to watch now. No lights on in the flat that he’s sure belongs to Scott. There are two lights on in a flat three floors down, but he’s not worried about them. The key to his calm is the information that was put through his letter box in the afternoon. There’s nobody in the flat opposite. Nobody in the flat next door, either. Only one other occupied flat on that entire floor, and it’s at the opposite end of the corridor. The flat directly beneath is occupied, and that’s the one concern. The man who lives there might hear the gunshot. Might be too deeply asleep to hear it. Might hear it and not realize what it is. With a floor between them, it shouldn’t matter. Frank will be out by the time anyone hearing the shot has clambered from their bed.

He’s sitting watching the door. The hip’s starting to grumble a little. It’s these moments when he wishes he still smoked. Used to. Used to smoke thirty a day. Right up until Peter Jamieson told him the rough tobacco he smoked smelled terrible. That didn’t matter. He then told Frank that he could always recognize the smell on his clothes. That mattered. You can’t have a distinctive smell as a gunman. No more than you can have a distinctive look, mannerism or sound. You see many kids in the business today covered in tattoos. Morons, every single one. Marking their bodies with immediately distinctive designs. Stupid. So he was worried about the smell, especially with fewer people than ever smoking. Back in the day, the smell blended in. Not any more. So he quit smoking, and began munching through a packet of extra-strong mints every day instead. That might have been a great leap forward for his lungs, but not for the smell. The minty-fresh gunman. Still too distinctive, so he quit the mints, too.

Nothing, and more nothing. The last lights in the building going out. It’s twenty past midnight when the door opens and a figure emerges. A young man. Hard to get a good look from here. Definitely too short to be Scott. Could well be his mate, though. Looks like the kind of little oaf that Clueless McClure undoubtedly is. He’s walking along the side of the building and round the corner. Out of view. Going home for the night. Frank’s smiling to himself. One less thing to worry about. It’ll be Scott alone, and that’s a job he can deal with. Okay, he’s honest enough to accept that there isn’t a whole lot of glory in this job. When he was away, Calum did the Winter job cleanly. Then he handled the Davidson attack. Glory in that. They might think he’s milking his hand injuries, but they admire the job he did. Brave and smart, they all say. Kept his head clear throughout. This is nothing like that. A simple job to send a message. There was always that thought in the back of Frank’s mind when he was away. People forget about you. Forget that you’re capable of doing a good job as well. The flavour of the month gets all the attention. You need to do something to grab it back. Even something simple, like this.

He’s waited another half-hour in the darkness. Waiting for any sort of movement. Any sign of a light. Giving it a little more time. The clock’s reached one. Enough waiting. He’s out of the car. A little thing he’s never driven before. Nippy and uninspiring. He’ll switch back to his own car as soon as he’s done here. This’ll be the only time he’ll ever be near this car. No one could possibly link it to him. Pulling on his balaclava and walking across the car park. Nobody in sight. Cold, but dry. Walking briskly up to the door. Suppressing that last hint of a limp. It’s a recognizable feature. In through the door, confident the camera doesn’t work. Pressing the button for the lift and stepping in as the doors open. A slight twinge of nerves in the pit of his stomach. Someone else could be calling the lift. Maybe he should have left it an hour later. Too late for these thoughts now. Kill the nerves and focus. You’re past the point of no return.

The lift’s opening on Scott’s floor. Frank’s stepping slowly out, looking left and right. The lights are on all night in the corridor, but there’s no sign of life. All doors closed. Silence reigns. Walking softly to the left, along the corridor. Reaching into his inside coat pocket for the gun. A small thing he picked up from his supplier. He has three suppliers that he rotates, so none realizes how much work he does. Been working with them all for a long time. There’s trust there now. Still better not to let any of them know your work schedule. The gun isn’t powerful, he can see that. Good enough to guarantee a kill at short range. That’s all it needs to be. Checking around him as he reaches the door. Knocking twice. Loud enough to wake Scott, but not a dramatic thump that might make him wary. Frank’s standing slightly to the side. Just out of view of the peephole. A man in a balaclava with a gun at his side is not a man you open the door to. Waiting. Ready to knock again. Then something strange. It sounds like a crack in the distance. Things are going white. He can feel his legs give way. Is it his hip? No, he’s realized as he’s falling forward against the door of Scott’s flat, it’s worse than that.