It Wasn't The Bullet (29) Clay’s breaths provided the stark ambience for the room. Charlie desperately wanted a Marlboro, but this was not the time to break this critical pivotal stillness. It was all Simon now, Charlie knew he was not capable of making unemotional decision at this moment. It would be easy for Justin to bait him and draw him into a foolish action. When Simon spoke, his words meshed perfectly with the ethereal rhythm of that precise point in time. “What do you want in return for your tale?” “Shoot me, not Clay. Do that and I’ll give you all the informants, information about whatever I know. I’ll tell you why Terry had to die, and why Charlie should have died.” Charlie shook his head; this was something out of a fucking book. “If I agree to your request, you’d have to take me at my word. Why would you do that?” intoned Simon. “If you shoot me first, I wouldn’t fuckin’ care now, would I? I want you to give him another chance. His wife is expecting another kid, he might change his life around if he walks out of here.” It was plain to all in the room that Clay had shut down, a complete emotional collapse. It was doubtful if he was even aware of the conversation concerning his life. It was also doubtful, whatever Simon’s response, that Clay would survive to see another sun rise. “You have my word.” “Good enough.” Justin acted like he had been reprieved not sentenced. He looked as if all his problems had evaporated. He sat back into the upholstery and lit another smoke; he began to speak in tone usually heard in after dinner banter between friends. “As I was saying, someone wanted a look a the student personnel files. I was never posted to a station; that was the experiment. Take a young copper and turn him into a drug dealer. Deep cover. Ever wondered why I wouldn’t go down to the east End, Charlie? That’s why. I would have eventually bumped into one of me mates, and they all knew where I fuckin’ went to college. There’s no point in me leaving here. When they unravel what I’ve really been up to, it’s off to the nick with me. I won’t last ten minutes; either a screw or a blagger will get me.” Justin actually smiled, like a one would when remembering something pleasant, he briefly glanced at Mikey and then Green, before continuing, “Terry had been acting a bit leery of me, ducking out of meetings or a beer down the pub. Clay started wondering whether he was onto me. It was possible, Terry was no ones fool, that’s for fuckin’ sure. Anyway, Clay got wind that those Columbians were trying to put together a massive coke deal and asked me to keep an eye out. Now, you two were being all secret squirrel, I was getting paranoid. Terry’s asking me weird fuckin’ questions about where I grew up and such, and you were hiding everything. I was pretty sure you were doing the deal; you’ve got a great future in this game, if you live long enough. Those fuckin’ Latin cunts are mean, Charlie boy.” He finished this sentence with a wink in Charlie’s direction, Charlie’s mind winced. “ So, Terry had to go, and if Terry went, so did you. But first I needed to find out where the Columbians were. Easy, follow you. Well, it wasn’t easy. Didn’t even get to see what fucking train you took, let alone where you were going. That fucked things up. So, Plan B. If you knew you were being followed you would have changed everything. I bet you went half way round Britain before you got where you were going. So, it would be natural for Terry, once he found out you weren’t at the hotel you were meant to be at, he’d try to get hold of you. Like I said, Terry had to go. I was seriously un-fucking-balanced. That thing with the files got into my head, no rational reason to think Terry had anything to do with it. But that’s where I ended up, it had to have been Terry. I set numb nuts up,” he motioned to Mikey’s body, “Laid him out a couple of lines of angel dust, ha-ha, told him it was Israeli cocaine. What a fuckin’ tool.” He laughed like he was at a dinner party with a group of friends, “Then we went off to T’s place and as Mikey was getting seriously fucked up, I told him Terry was a rat. I told him it was Terry passing on all the info to the cops. Well, ‘course, he went fuckin’ mental. As soon as Terry opened the door, he flattened him. But fuck, what a fight. The only reason Mikey won was that he was so jacked up, he had that superman strength.” Justin paused and took another pinch of smack. Charlie couldn’t help himself, “Terry and I thought you were becoming a liability because of the smack. Neither of us thought you were a cop. We decided to go out on our own, we were putting money into the business and you weren’t anymore. We knew you were going to get popped real soon, that’s why we kept away.” “Oh well,” Justin said breezily, “can’ be right all the time.” Charlie snapped, Simon sensed it and turned. “Not now, Charles.” Charlie held his gaze for an instant, and backed down. It was obvious right then why Simon was a leader. “So, anyway. While Mikey was trying to get Terry to admit to something he hadn’t done, I was paging you. I remembered your short codes, page to a number etc. I thought I’d got it wrong when you didn’t call back. Mikey started to completely freak out, he finally beat poor old Terry to death and started taking his clothes off and that kind of fuckin’ shit. I had to get him out of there, and you hadn’t called so it was a wasted trip. Apart from getting rid of T.” All the training that Charlie had had, could not stop the myriad of abstract thoughts that appeared in his head. He was taken back to a small chapter in his life when he decided on a whim to attend some night classes in psychology. He thought it might help his intuition of some the people he met in his business dealings. There was one class when Professor Schmidt used the blackboard to write out the ten character traits of a sociopath. ‘Any more than six similarities’ he said, ‘and you are almost certainly looking at a bona fide sociopath.’ Charlie remembered this so well because he was quite freaked out that he was up to five. However, Justin was displaying the full set, perhaps eleven. It was becoming eerie observing a man shed his whole persona and reveal a completely new one. Simon was interrogating him and Justin was alternatively flippant or callous with his replies. Charlie was listening to the exchanges but not really hearing what was being said. Once more his mind drifted back to a different time and place. Mikey was sick, or as Terry put, ‘more stunned than usual’. Charlie said he would take Mikey’s place as Justin’s bodyguard at an exchange and Terry was the outside man, protecting them both from any unforeseen events with a high powered rifle. It was approaching dusk and Justin and Charlie were sitting in a car waiting for the buyers arrival. They sat in relative silence, the front seats reclined slightly backward and the radio playing a long forgotten song barely above the volume of a whisper at a church service. Charlie had a sawn off pump action shotgun resting on his knees, a visual affirmation, for all to see, of his purpose at Justin’s side. Without preamble Justin suddenly spoke, “You ever thought of just pulling the trigger and blowing me away? I mean, during a deal. You’d have the money, the dope. Who the fuck’s going to argue with you, Charlie? You’d have the whole business to yourself.” Charlie was so taken aback, he could not reply immediately, so Justin carried on, “You’re one scary fucking guy. And what’s even more scary, is you don’t know it. I think about it sometimes, perhaps someone cunt said something about me. You get all bent out of shape, and BOOM! I got a bunch of dead going on!” Charlie was about to tell Justin to shut the fuck up when a pair of headlights swung into view and they had to go to work. Charlie had made a mental note to resurrect the conversation but the right time never came, and the subject lay dormant and then finally forgotten until now. He looked over at Justin; he had made himself comfortable on the sofa. Going so far as to push Green’s slumping body to the floor. Clay had not moved as far as Charlie could make out. He tuned back into the thrust and parry of Simon’s words. “So who was feeding the information to Clay about the Latins?” “I don’t know, old bean. Jolly nasty chaps whoever they were.” Justin had affected an exaggerated upper class accent for this particular answer, openly mocking Simon’s heritage. The smug expression on his face made Charlie sick. Without warning Charlie’s mood changed. He felt tired, despondent. He was enveloped in a caustic sadness; he couldn’t help but look across the room at the dead. He was overtaken, not with remorse, but something akin to resignation. Those men were gone. He had killed, no, murdered two people today. He had witnessed the murder of three others. No, he felt no remorse in the killings. In his own mind they were justified. What was gnawing away at him was the question; ‘Justified to what?’ Charlie had lost that connection. It wasn’t like he had had an epiphany, he wasn’t going to try and expunge his sins. At this moment, he had lost his way. All the energy he had concentrated getting to this very place in time had evaporated. There was nothing left to drive him forward, he had imagined the look on Justin’s face when he pulled the trigger. His revenge for Terry’s death carrying him forward like driftwood on a crest of storm water from a breached dam. He had rolled over everything in his path, and now he did not even want to kill Justin. He didn’t want to hear his condescending, self-righteous fucking voice anymore. This wasn’t the Justin he had hated these past months, this was an alien entity. A stranger. He looked again at the prone Clay, still muttering to himself, unable to comes to terms with the consequences of his actions. He wondered if that was what prayer or a God was for, a simple means of deflecting the truth of one’s life to someone or something insubstantial. Clay sickened him too. He had put into motion a hundred self centred scenarios, with not a moment of regret for the effect the end result had on others, and yet now he was full of self pity. Carefully avoiding the fact that the entire reason for his life was hanging on the logical conclusions of an ex special forces soldier was his doing completely. Every force has an equal and opposite reaction. The voice of his physics teacher echoed at him from the memories of the science lab of his old school. He looked down at his weapon. The weight of the gun seemed to be relative to his thoughts. With more focus than the task required, he unscrewed the silencer from the barrel and slipped it back into its place in his shoulder holster. He then carefully did the same with the Browning. Simon must of sensed the intensity of his thoughts as they swept out of him. He turned and faced Charlie. “Do what you wish with them Simon. I’ll wait for you in the car.” Simon, perhaps, had seen this reaction before in some of his soldiers. His outward expression did not change. “I won’t be long now. Go ahead.” He turned back to Justin. “See ya Charlie! You look out for those fucking Columbian cunts. They’re going to be the next big thing. You see if I’m not fuckin’ right about that.” Charlie did not look back at Justin as he took the couple of steps toward the door. He had to pull hard on the handle to free the door from the miss-shapen frame. He walked through and down the concrete pathway, he paused while he leant down slightly to open the thigh high metal gate, and then walked across the pavement and over the road until he got to the car. He lit a cigarette once he was behind the wheel. The smoke drifted into the roof and toward the rear-view mirror, he watched the trails as the danced with the air currents of his breathing. Tears began to roll down his cheeks; he was surprised at how much the smoke must have irritated his eyes. Chapter Sixteen Innocence and trust The sun was hot despite the buffeting of the wind that tore across the open deck of the cross channel ferry. He could taste the salt on his lips that the gusts had left there. They were nearing Dover now and he once again cast a casual glance over to the four students who were being entertained by the young woman dressed in seventies hippy garb. They did not appear nervous, although he was very sure they were. As the white cliffs came more into focus he saw her grab her unsuspecting target and twirl him around like the she was ending a waltz, she giggled and that made the boys laugh. He looked away from the silent movie and checked on Charles. He looked resplendent now with his close cropped hair, artfully dyed blond and coupled with the, in Simons opinion, rather tacky goatee, he really was quite well disguised. A great deal had transpired since the long night they had spent together after the business with the maggots Justin and Clay. Much had been discussed and decided. It took until dawn and the better part of two bottles of vodka for the three of them to agree on the direction of the next phase of their lives. It had made perfect sense for him to join forces with Charles and learn the smuggling trade first hand. The money was rolling in now, and it had the right amount of excitement and tension to keep him from boredom. He also very much enjoyed the company of his fellow travellers. They had decided not pursue the Columbian connections Charlie and Terry had nurtured, with all the rumours surrounding the South Americans business practices it was not where they wanted to be. Too much unwarranted violence and tension. So Charlie went back to his Marseilles contacts, where Charlie, shadowed by Simon and Samantha, managed to explain and convince the big importers that they were on the level and back in the game. Charles had mentioned that it got a bit exciting at some points during the negotiations. Simon took this as Charles telling them that he was close to being shot as a spy. He felt a presence approaching and looked up into the eyes of the hippy girl as she passed close to him. Samantha gave him a very flirtatious wink and disappeared down the blue paint peeled ladder that led to her cabin. He had to smile to himself, she had become a real master or would that be mistress of disguise. She would return to the deck shortly, completely unrecognised as the free-living hippy, perhaps a librarian look or maybe film star. Neither Charles nor he were ever privy to her manifestations. It had become quite a game for the pair of them; in fact, they had begun to bet with each other on the disguises. So far their guesses had been wildly off the mark, and the pot had swelled to quite a substantial amount of money. It had been Samantha’s turmoil that had been the hardest. She took awhile to come to terms with shooting a man. It had come to light that it may not have been his shot that killed Hamilton’s henchman, but more likely Samantha’s. She described everything slowing down around her and she honestly could not remember pulling out the weapon or even firing it, just staring down at the blood pooling around the dead mans head. She recalled Simon’s associate literally picking her up and tossing her onto the backseat of the waiting car. Then Mr Black, as he had introduced himself, sitting with her in the suburban living room until she had stopped shaking. It had been her undeniable conviction that had persuaded them that this was the life she wanted to live. She had evolved into a formidable operative. The boy she so deftly danced with was now headed to prison, the trace amount of cocaine rubbed onto his bag. Samantha had come to terms with that particular philosophy. Her insight was so juxtaposed to theirs, she had also become a real asset in the decision making arena. She was even juggling a boyfriend in between her more subversive moments. Simon gathered from her limited conversations about him that he believed her to be some kind of social worker. He looked back in Charles’s direction. He was smoking another of his seemingly endless supply of cigarettes. He was leaning on the railing, his features betraying nothing. Simon was constantly amazed at how no one could really tell his mood except when one caught his gaze occasionally and you were sucked deep into somewhere one really didn’t want to be. He had never inquired as to what had happened to his old friends, and Simon had never offered the answer or even brought the subject up. The newspapers had reported the murders as a drug bust gone wrong, the police were looking for persons, as of now, unknown. He pushed himself off the railing he had been leaning against and had to steady himself for a moment as the ship stuttered over a wave. The sky was so blue and clear. He felt good, almost happy. He once again idly stole a subtle peek in Charles’s direction.
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