NAUGHTY BUT NICE?: an éclair to die for - Chapter 1

Chapter 1.

A chocolate éclair, that’s what he was thinking about.
It was strange that he always thought about food while he was on a job. Perhaps that was a funny way of thinking of it, a job. What would the papers call it tomorrow, a Hit? While the police would call it a contract killing.
But that’s what it was to him,a job. He was a professional doing his job. Something he took pride in doing properly. People never seemed to take pride in their work these days, it was all too slap-dash.
After all he never got emotionally involved these days. Not like in the beginning, all those years ago. Settling scores. Revenge even. Then it had been very personal. But not now, he was too old ,too jaded. Now it was just business.

He was sitting on a step in a doorway halfway up a small alley that connected the Station to the High street. Or to be totally accurate, he was sitting on a small pile of copies of the Big Issue, as the step was cold and wet and he had no intention of getting piles. Perhaps that was an old wives tale. But he wasn’t taking any chances. He never took any chances. That was the difference he thought between a professional and some young thug with a gun; His clients knew he would carry out the contract professionally. A clean kill, no witnesses, no innocent by-standers gunned down and most importantly no connection to them.
If you had a cancer you would go to a surgeon with a scalpel to remove it. You wouldn’t get some illiterate school leaver with a meat clever to do it, would you? That’s how he thought of himself, as another professional, only he used a gun with a silencer. Rather than a drive by shooting by some punk kid with a machine gun.Too flashy, too many witnesses or casualties or both. The police would have to have a proper investigation and the client would end up a suspect.

He was a balding, middle-aged and overweight man in an M&S suit, over which he had a large brown padded anorak several sizes too large for him. It’s hood was pulled far forward over his head, so that his face was in shadow and also to protect him from a persistent drip from the leaky gutter above. He had tried moving to the other side of the step to avoid the drip, but then he didn’t have a clear view down the alley. So he sat and was dripped on. The rain appeared to be easing off as the time between each drip had increased. He had begun timing them about an hour ago, but now the novelty had definitely warn off. He was tired, cold and bored. But as they said, one must suffer for ones art. He wasn’t sure who exactly they were, but they had obviously never spent a wet afternoon under a drip sitting on a step that smelled of urine.

Why had he been thinking of chocolate éclairs? He hadn’t had one for years. Then he smiled to himself as he thought what he must look like in this huge brown anorak. Perhaps that was the reason. Then he remembered the bakers by the station that he had passed earlier when he’d been buying his copies of the Big Issue. One copy from each seller in town so as not to draw attention. They’d been big fat ones bursting with fresh cream. He wondered if he would have time afterward to get one before they closed. He checked his watch, he was late. Some people were so inconsiderate. He couldn’t even be sure he would come this way. Usually he would watch his targets for a few days at least, but this was a special case.

Even so, he had taken time to set the scene. It was important that passers-by didn’t notice anything strange. People didn’t look the home-less straight in the eye, they were too embarrassed. So they couldn’t identify him. The step and by default he smelled of urine, so they didn’t get too close. He was surrounded by empty beer cans, so he would obviously be drunk and aggressive. So rather unsurprisingly no one had approached him to buy a magazine. Which was just as well as he didn’t want to sell the ones he had and risk getting piles. He fidgeted, he wasn’t convinced the magazines were working. He pushed his hands deeper in his pockets. His right hand held the gun with it’s silencer, his thumb fiddled with the safety catch clicking it on and off. He wasn’t familiar with this gun, but needs must. It was important to use this gun.

In the past he had collected guns. They all had a story to tell, a history, a patina, a character of their own. They were like people. No, better than people, more reliable. But that individuality made them dangerous traceably. Police data bases, and latent image technology meant that they could read serial numbers even when filed off. This made them a liability. So, he’d taken a ferry to Ireland thrown them over the side then returned to the bar and had a one man wake in their memory.

Now he usually used sole-less disposable weapons. Purchased over the internet. It made him smile. He couldn’t buy a gun at home without difficult questions, forms and raising lots of suspicion. Why would an antique dealer need a hand gun? But he could buy replicas from China with or without serial numbers. All you needed was a lathe and some basis training as an armourer to turn it into a weapon, both of which he had. He could also make his own ammunition which was useful for more unusual firearms. So, he now bought them by the dozen. Rather like a Chinese take away, a dozen of the number 38 no serial number and a side order of silencers. Totally anonymous, charmless and thankfully devoid of any character.
Which is probably how a stranger would also describe him.

Lathom, Robert Lathom. That was his name. His past witnesses had described him as white average height, middle aged, balding with an indeterminate accent. Which in any other career would be a negative assessment. But for an unidentifiable contract killer it was perfect. Even his closest friends, of which he had few ,if any, would describe Bob as an acquired taste. Being both opinionated and cantankerous with a dry sense of humour.

Lathom had retired or been retired, depending on your point of view. It was a young man’s game he was told. So he took his pension and concentrated on his other interests by opening an antique shop in a small market town. He had been tempted back to help a friend from the old days settle a score with someone who thought himself above the law. The result of which had been so successful that he’d soon found himself in some demand. So that now he seemed to have cornered the market in removing scum. He thought of himself as a type of human waste disposal.

Lathom had a few stipulations, he wouldn’t kill women or children only men he considered scum. If he accepted the contract, he had a fixed fee. Half before after which he undertook to complete the contract within one month with the balance on completion. If he was unable to complete the contract, he would refund the money in full. He reserved the right to terminate the contract at any time, for any reason, but in reality this usually meant he decided he didn’t believe the victim deserved to die, didn’t like the client or felt it was too risky.

These simple rules had worked well for a few years. Lathom had culled those he considered scum and amassed a considerable sum of money which he had used to collect beautiful things. He had always collected things, first stamps then silver, as his childhood had involved moving every few years. No time to put down roots or make friends, always the outsider. So he always set more store by things rather than people and the rarer the better. Lathom had amassed a considerable collection of obscure yet expensive items. The sort of things which to most people would appear to be the contents of a junk shop or car boot sale. Those relics beloved of viewers of TV antique shows where someone produces a bowl or watercolour that most would give to a charity shop which is actually worth tens of thousands of pounds. Lathom had a house full of those bought from various sources, impoverished gentry, entrepreneurs short of liquidity or even stolen goods. If he was ever short of cash he could always use his antique business to launder the money. Recently he had ‘discovered’a first edition of Darwin’s ‘The origin of species’ in a box of books bought at a charity shop. He had made the local papers and a small piece on the regional TV news. In reality he had paid the market value for it from a casualty of the Lloyds-list fiasco who didn’t want the inland revenue to know about it. But that had been a mistake, too high profile. The other local antique dealers had teased him calling him ‘Lucky Lathom’. In future he would have to be more discrete.

Was this him? Lathom looked down the alley. The man had stopped at the bottom of the alley where it joined the High street. He was about the right height, but he couldn’t see his face clearly from here. He had only seen the man once before but he never forgot a face, they had trained him well. The man paused and turned under the street light his back to Lathom and checked his watch. What was he doing? Lathom reached into the right hand pocket of the anorak gripping the handle of the unfamiliar gun unbalanced by the heavy silencer, and with his thumb clicked off the safety-catch.
It was a simple plan, not one of his best, but ‘needs must’. He hadn’t had long to plan it .
He would wait until the man, target, victim, whatever you wished to call him drew level, he would offer him a Big Issue and as he turned to buy it he would shoot him from inside the coat. Then, he would leave the coat and gun with the body and walk up the alley to the station and disappear within the commuters in his chain store suit.

The man under the street light turned as though to come up the alley, then a girl ran up to him threw her arms around him and they kissed. They both turned and walked away from the alley. Lathom sighed and clicked on the safety-catch. Just then the drip started again.drip,..drip,..drip…faster than before but no less irritating.

It was his own fault he was sitting here, he wasn’t even getting paid , which made it even worse. All because of a contract he should have refused. But that was greed for you. He had needed the money quickly to add something irreplaceable to his collection, and he couldn’t risk the attention of another discovery for ‘luck Lathom’.

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