The Considerate Killer (14 page)

The parking lot was full, and there was even some unauthorized parking where drivers had pulled their cars halfway onto the sidewalk outside the delineated spaces. The photographer headed for a white Toyota Land Cruiser that was clearly equipped as a camping van, with heightened ceiling, a mini satellite dish, a rolled-up sun shield along one side, curtains in the windows, even a rubber raft on the roof—it looked like something that should be driven around the Australian outback rather than Viborg's smooth asphalt streets. Søren was still too far away to see the license plate and much too far to plant a tracer. If he had had one, that was . . . damn. He was as civilian as you could be. He riffled through his pockets, but knew that a microtransmitter wouldn't miraculously appear no matter how many times he turned them out.

On the other hand . . . one of the Land Cruiser's back windows was open a crack. Another possibility popped into Søren's head and he felt a wide, self-satisfied grin pull at the corners of his mouth. He sped up. The photographer had already gotten in and was starting the engine. Søren had to run a few steps to make the timing work, but just as the Toyota backed out of the row, he slapped his hands hard against the side of the car and shouted at the top of his lungs.

“Hey! Watch out. Look where you're going, asshole!”

He didn't think the man would be able to understand the words, but road rage was an international phenomenon, and the anger ought to shock and frighten him sufficiently that the driver wouldn't notice Søren's real mission. His iPhone slid in through the open window and landed someplace in the camper's interior with a barely audible thump.

The man behind the wheel looked suitably shocked. His mouth was a dark distorted hole, his shades gleamed in startled blindness, and he hit the brakes so hard the ABS came on with an uneven shudder.

But what happened next took Søren entirely by surprise. As the door flew open, a fist shot out, and something else, something hard, hit him in the chest. His entire nervous system sizzled and shut down. He collapsed like an ox in an abattoir, and his head hit the asphalt with an ominous crunch.

A Taser
, he thought before the lights faded completely.
The guy has a fucking Taser
.

THE PHILIPPINES, SIX MONTHS EARLIER

C
ome on. Get
it over with.”

Vincent had to say it out loud to himself before he could do it.

He had to be strong now. Had to nerve himself up like he had done when he was little and what he had been told to do scared him. Do it. Be a good, obedient boy. Darkness had just fallen, and the car, still parked in front of the engineer's office, would not be there much longer.

The man who owned the silver Toyota would appear and drive it home, and then it would be too late for today. And it was important, Vadim had said. It was urgent.

Vincent took one of Victor's chef's knives from his backpack and squatted down next to the car. There were still people in the street, men in suits, and street vendors, and teenage girls in brief shorts who reminded him of Mimi. It stressed him out, but he doubted that anyone would notice or make any move to stop him as long as he was quick and effective. He jabbed the knife into the first tire. It was surprisingly hard and tough to cut through—he had to push with all his weight against the knife handle and wriggle it back and forth to create even a crack in the rubber. He made as long and deep a cut as he was able to. The result was not impressive, and the tire didn't even seem punctured.

“What are you doing?”

A man, dressed in jeans and a shirt and wearing a pair of off-center spectacles, had stopped and was staring angrily down at Vincent's kneeling figure. Three large warts jutted from his chin. He looked like a toad, thought Vincent. It helped to think ugly thoughts about other people, he had discovered. It produced an anger he needed. Still, he had to pull himself together in order not to get up and walk away.

“I work for the guy with the car,” said Vincent in as hard a tone as he could muster. “Mind you own business.”

The guy shrugged his shoulders and walked on, while Vincent prodded the tire. The sweat was already pouring off him, and he hadn't done any significant damage yet. He had to give up on the tires and think of something else. He let the knife's point slide along the silver-grey side of the car. A deep scratch appeared, and in a few places the paintwork cracked and fell off in small flakes. Much better.

He repeated the procedure on the other side of the car. The man needed to be able to tell that the damage was deliberate. A punishment. People like him weren't afraid of the police, said Vadim. They could buy their way out of anything.

A few pedestrians were slowing down to look at him before passing by. He had a knife, he reminded himself. They were more afraid of him than he was of them. He took a step backward and considered his work with narrowed eyes. That would have to do, but the most important element was still missing. He put the knife back in his bag, walked away from the car and went to stand at the entrance to the small run-down park on the other side of the road. The man had to see him.

A little more than half an hour passed before the engineer appeared. Vincent recognized him from the construction site and many heated arguments with Vadim. He was around forty and a good-looking guy. Muscular and well built in a nonshowy way and with a youthful energy. He usually wore jeans and a T-shirt and had an attentive dark gaze.

But that didn't mean he couldn't be an asshole.

He had started blackmailing Vadim some months ago, just after he was fired as chief engineer on the rehousing project. Vincent didn't know the details, but some men from the building crew outside the city had seen him several times out at the construction site, where he stood smoking and staring at the workers. He had also started sending letters to Vadim. Vincent had seen them lying on Vadim's desk.

The guy produced a cigarette and went into one of the narrow shops a bit further down the sidewalk. A little later he came out with a steaming carton, which he poked at with a plastic fork. Rice and some kind of meat and sauce. Dinner already. He rested his back against the wall of the nearest house while he ate and was clearly in no hurry. Music reached the street from a window above him, house remix with a psychotic pounding rhythm. Vincent wanted it all to be over, just as he wanted Vadim not to have given him the task in the first place. There were definitely others whom Vadim could have hired and who would have been better qualified than Vincent.

But it wasn't a question of qualifications. Vincent knew that. It was about something else. This was Vadim's punishment because he had asked him for money and received it. It was the thumb ring and the lead belt all over again—“How far would you go for me? Friends do anything for each other. Come on, Vincent, my man. Show me that I can trust you . . .”

The engineer caught sight of him from the other side of the street and stopped mid-movement. The fork hung suspended in front of his mouth for a long second before he finally shoveled in the last bit of rice, threw the carton away and headed for his car. He let a hand run along the scratch all the way around the car before he shot Vincent another fast look, got in and drove off with shrieking tires. The car sideswiped one of the horse-drawn
kalesaes
and made the skinny horse jump on the pocked asphalt.

Vincent dried his forehead and headed in the same direction. He didn't know how long he would have to keep this up. Hunting the asshole twenty-four hours a day. Until he had had enough, Vadim had said, but only Vadim knew when that was.

He caught a taxi at the corner of San Pablo and J. P. Rizal. He had enough money at the moment; Vadim had been generous when he assigned the task and the means to carry it out.

“You don't have to hurt him, just frighten him,” Vadim had said. “I don't care how you do it, as long as it is effective and he stops sending me those damned letters. He sent my father one last week. To his home address. Jesus Christ. It was only because I happened to be there that weekend that I had time to snatch it before my father read it. The man is crazy.”

Vincent looked at the piece of paper with the address that Vadim had given him. It wasn't a fancy neighborhood. Apartments for the lower middle class, no swimming pools or lush gardens. The engineer's scratched car was parked outside already. Vincent paid the taxi and looked around quickly for his backup, as Vadim had called him. Vadim had insisted he bring an extra man when he went to see the engineer.

“I don't trust him,” Vadim had said. “Some of the things he has written are clearly threatening. You can bring Martinez. He looks the part.”

Martinez was a security guard at the company's construction sites, employed to ensure they weren't completely cleaned out of construction materials. He was half a head shorter than Vincent but broad in all the right places, had several gold teeth and a tattoo of a skull on his calf. Vincent had never spoken with him before. Now he appeared from the opposite side of the parking lot, waving with a complicit grin. He had a loose, relaxed gait and was showing off his round, beefed-up arms in a snow-white tank top.

Amateurs
, thought Vincent.
What the hell are we doing?

“You know what we're here for?”

“Yes, man. I've spoken with the boss.” Martinez flashed all his gold teeth in an idiotic grin. Vincent didn't like him and didn't feel like chatting. Instead he turned around and rang the lobby bell.

The reception cubicle was manned by a uniformed doorman with a pistol, but that shouldn't be a problem, as long as they spoke politely.

“Lorenz Robles?”

The doorman, who wasn't much older than Vincent, sent them a haughty look through the no-doubt bulletproof glass door. Then he walked over to the intercom with his hand on his pistol.

“And who should I say is here?”

“We have a message for him from Vadim.”

“Who?”

Either the guy liked to take his time or he was unusually slow.

“You don't need to worry about that,” said Vincent and smiled as nicely as possible. He held a one-hundred peso bill up against the window. “Just tell him what I said.”

The guy turned around and carried on a short, inaudible conversation with someone else on the other side of the glass door. Then he nodded, opened the door for Vincent, and had his reward pressed into one palm.

“You can take the elevator to the fourth floor. It's apartment 4B.”

Vincent walked past him to the elevator. He was nervous now, and his heart was beating much too fast, as if his body was preparing for something terrible. He had never liked direct confrontation. Martinez was bouncing about next to him like a boxer on speed.

“He's an asshole,” Vincent repeated to himself. “He wants to destroy everything.”

“Yes?”

The man who opened the door looked surprisingly calm.He was wearing glasses now, the modern kind that you saw in American commercials, and he had changed into knee-length shorts. He crossed his arms and regarded them with a neutral gaze. He was a couple of inches taller than Vincent. From behind him came the sounds of a couple of teenage boys arguing mildly in front of the television.

Vincent cleared his throat.

“Vadim asked me to tell you that you're to keep your mouth shut and stay away from his buildings.”

The man shifted his stance. Made himself broader. He had a wide jaw and was chewing on something. Gum, maybe. His eyes narrowed as he considered Vincent through his specially made high-index lenses.

“You're a couple of tough guys, you and your pal. Am I supposed to be scared now?”

Vincent felt like saying no. He didn't like this. His heart was pounding so hard he could feel it in his throat.

“Tell your boss that I'll keep this up as long as it is necessary,” said the engineer. “He asked for it.” He took a step backward and prepared to close the door.

Vincent's shoulders slumped. If he was supposed to scare this man, he clearly wasn't doing a very good job. He had thought it would be different. A quick exchange during which the man would reveal himself as a first-rate asshole, would bluster a bit, and then cower in terror. Vadim, after all, was not just anybody. Most particularly, his
father
was not just anybody in this city.

“Don't count on getting any work again,” he shouted through the closing door. The engineer paused to bare his teeth with a haughty snarl.

“You're a dog. A mangy, cowardly dog,” he said. The voice was cold and steady, and for a brief moment Vincent felt as if the man had X-ray vision and could see right through him. Could see all the dirt and dishonesty. The boys in the living room had turned up the volume on an Elvis song they'd found someplace out there in the crackling electronic universe. “I'll remember you.” Soft voice, slow calypso. Vincent's grandmother loved Elvis.

He closed his eyes and wanted to turn away. Disappear. Then he felt a movement next to him. Martinez, who shot forward and kicked the door open the second before the lock clicked.

“I'll kill you,” he shouted. “I'll fucking kill you, you big asshole.” The engineer tumbled backward into the hallway, cradling one hand. Martinez grabbed him by the neck and hammered his knee into the engineer's face.

There was a faint crunch, of spectacles or cartilage or both, and the engineer sank to his knees with a long sigh.

Elvis crooned on.

“Did you have trouble understanding anything my friend just told you?”

Martinez kicked him in the face again, so the crumpled glasses flew to one side and slid along the tiled floor.

The engineer remained on his knees, curled over to protect his body and face. He didn't look up at them. Blood and saliva dribbled between his fingers.

“What are the names of your boys in there? And your wife? Is she good in bed? A sweet little
pinay
with a shaved pussy? Cameltoe? Make sure it's shaved. That's how I like it, even when it's an older lady. If you have a daughter, that's fine too.”

Martinez was still bouncing on the balls of his feet, raring to go, like a boxer waiting for his opponent to get up after a knockout. When the engineer showed no sign of answering or rising to his feet, Martinez concluded his display by firing off a large spitball into the man's sweaty hair.

The living room had gone quiet. It was as if the entire world was holding its breath along with Vincent, paralyzed by Martinez's insane dance.

Then Martinez turned away, shot a crooked smile at Vincent and pounded him on the shoulder, before striding off toward the elevator, beefy arms swinging.

“Come on. We're out of here.”

Vincent didn't move. He couldn't take his eyes off the engineer on the hallway floor. He was stirring now. Wiped one hand across his face, and looked up. Two teenage boys had appeared behind him and stood staring at Vincent and their father. Their mother shouted something from another room, but no one answered her.

The engineer's bloodshot eyes rested on Vincent.

“I'm actually trying to help your boss,” he said. “It's important for you to understand that. There's still time. Tell Vadim that.”

And then, as if this was the signal he had been waiting for, Vincent could suddenly move again. He turned and ran toward the waiting elevator without looking back.

“That took you long enough,” said Martinez.

He pressed the button for the lobby and pounded some kind of idiotic drum rhythm on his thigh all the way down. He was clearly in a good mood and was feeling generous enough to leave twenty pesos for the guard in the lobby. Outside in the parking lot he threw a shiny, glass-like look at Vincent and put a hand on his shoulder.

“Do you want to grab a beer? The night is young.”

Vincent took an involuntary step back and fervently wished the warm darkness would swallow him. Let him disappear out of the world as easily and unconsciously as he had entered it.

“No, thank you,” he mumbled.

“Need a lift?”

Martinez gestured toward a beat-up red Mazda that had clearly seen some heavy infighting in Manila's traffic. The license plate was crooked, like the mouth of someone partially paralyzed by a stroke.