The Trusted Professions - Chapter 12

?Uh?? I tried to make a noise. I wasn?t really sure what I was actually trying to say, just that I wanted to make some kind of noise. I really wasn?t thinking straight. Jez, who was sitting to my right, reached under the desk and grabbed my hand and squeezed it, really hard. He was trying to tell me to shut up. I wasn?t really thinking sharply enough to offer up some kind of contrary argument, so I snapped my mouth shut. Then I had a thought, and my mouth dropped open again, but still I said nothing.

Keri had taken on a hard expression under her running mascara and smeared foundation. But it wasn?t the same as before. It wasn?t someone putting on a mask of hardness to cover internal strife. It was someone who had simply overloaded on emotion, and now had nothing left. It was empty, a void of feeling.

Jez continued: ?And we?d be very happy to accommodate you, we?re just not sure that?s an option that?s available to us in our capacity as Private Investigators.?

Keri regarded him coldly. ?I don?t care if you do it, you fool. Just get it done. I don?t care how. Just take care of it. If you don?t feel up to it, I?m sure I can find someone who is.?

Jez stared at her for a few moments. He wasn?t a man who took being called a fool lightly, but he was also dealing with an unprecedented offer. You could almost see his pride fighting with his greed. The latter seemed to force the former down with a hard swallow as he regained his composure.

?Okay?even if we source the capacity, a million is a very large amount to just transfer to an agency in the line of business. There?d be taxes, questions asked- following hard on the ah, substance of the job, it would look extremely suspicious.?

?Details. I can arrange for a slow transfer of property assets, shares that mature over time, hell, I could buy your business and then just give it back to you. I want to know if you can do the job, you?re giving me minutiae. Can you do it, or can you not??

Jez sat silent another moment, but Keri did not let up: ?Well??

Jez stood and reached out his hand: ?We?re on the case, Mrs. Colmes.? She regarded him for a moment and then returned the shake with a limp wrist.

?Ah,? I started to object, but Jez ground his heel into my toe and gave me a harsh stare I?d known since I was a teenager. I trailed off.

Jez took Keri by the arm and walked her to the door.

?We obviously have to investigate the possibility of completing the ah, task, before we can fully commit, but I can guarantee you we will devote our full resources to it. We?ll certainly be in touch.?

She walked like a zombie, one leg shuffling after the other, arms moving stiffly. I think she might have genuinely gone into shock, but Jez kind of shoved her out the doorway anyway, and she waddled off across the smooth concrete of Canary Wharf.

I was still sitting at the desk, open-mouthed, trying to process the offer, when he returned.

?Did she just say, ah, hang on a second?? I stared at the floor for a few moments, working my jaw around in its socket, like I?d been punched. ??did she just offer us a million pounds to kill Saul Colmes??

?Yup.? Jez grinned and shook me on the shoulders. ?She sure did, buddy. I wish I?d been taping it. I told you we should have installed permanent audio monitoring in this place when we were setting it up.? He looked up and around him at the walls and ceilings and started wandering about the office, as if contemplating their installment.

I swallowed past my dry throat. ?Erm?shouldn?t we ah, I dunno, tell the authorities, or something??

Jez looked at me strangely.

?Fuck. No. Don?t tell me you?re not going along with this.? As if he?d slapped me, I suddenly awoke from my slow-witted reverie.

?Well of course I?m not fucking going along with this. How is this even an option? Have you gone nuts??

Jez made a rushing ?Aaaaah!? noise and took sharp, long-legged strides across the room at me, shaking his arms in frusutration.

?Come on Dal, one million pounds! A million. This?ll clear us out of our debts in one swift stroke. We?ll own our own business. Wasn?t that the plan? Not to live in anyone else?s pocket??

?Not at the expense of killing someone, Jesus!?

?Not killing someone, killing Colmes! He?s a prick! He fucking deserves to die.?

?For being a prick??

?No, for being a philandering right-wing billionaire who can?t come up with any original lines.?

?Oh, that?s what qualifies you for the death sentence these days??

?No, being married to a psychotically revengeful wife does, apparently. But that?s neither here nor there. The motives of a client are hardly our concern, but no, I can?t say I?ll feel particularly sorry to see that guy Diana?d in the headlines.?

?There?s a minor fucking difference between not caring if a guy lives or dies and agreeing to arrange for his assassination! Christ!?

?We?re carrying out the wishes of a client! When have we ever let morals come in the way of doing our God-damned job!?

?Oh don?t start acting like this shit is fucking standard operating procedure, you dick. I?ll admit our moral line is a bit further stretched than most, but that hardly means I?m gonna start capping people for money.?

?We don?t have to do it! You heard what she said! She doesn?t care how it gets done, just that it somehow gets done. We can hire someone else to do it. Pay them a hundred grand, pocket the change. We need hardly be involved at all.?

?Oh, yes, let?s just call up Celebrity-Killers R? Us, shall we? ?Aw, it?ll cost you a few bob my son, but he?ll be dead as nails by morning.? What planet are you even living on??

?You?re seriously asking me if we can?t find someone in London who?s willing to kill for a hundred large? Give me ten minutes to walk down to the bail bondsman?s office. Or any fucking nightclub?s doors, come to think of it.?

?And what?s to stop them from bribing us to pay even more- the whole amount, for example? And Jesus, have you thought of the aftermath? This?ll be front-page news for six months, you don?t think the Police won?t maybe, oh I don?t know, look into who his lovers were, see where he?d visited recently? That?s a path that leads right back to us.?

?How? Through Karen Ellis? She?s a dead-end. There?s no way back to us. And besides, nobody will be looking for a killer if we arrange for him to buy it in such a way that looks, I dunno, like an accident.?

?You?ve really thought this out, haven?t you??

?Well bloody hell, we only got given the job ten minutes ago, give me a chance to work it out.?

?Work it out? What are we even talking about this for? We?re not fucking doing it and that?s the end of the fucking story. You call her and tell her it?s off. Jesus, I don?t even want you discussing this on the phone, that?s how bad it is. Just?send her the bill and cut her ass off. I?ll draft her a letter saying we can no longer continue to represent her interests.?

?So that?s it, you?re just going to make the decision for both of us.?

?Well I think it?s safe to say we don?t seem to be voting unanimously on this issue.?

?Jesus, Dal. This is our chance. You don?t get two chances like this in life. A million pounds, Dal. We could fucking live off the interest. We could actually buy this place with a million in capital. Property in Canary Wharf- that?s an investment that never dies, man.?

?We?ll get all that stuff, bro. This is a risk we do not need. It?s not worth it.?

?There won?t be a risk if we do it right. It?ll be just like any other job. Hell, it?ll be easier.?

?But why even risk it, when we?ll get all that stuff anyway? In time.?

?In time? In twenty bloody years, more like it. That?s even if we get this place off the ground at all, which you have to admit has not been looking particularly bloody likely in the last few months. This would give us security. We?d be our own masters. At thirty! Do you really think we can keep this game up our whole lives? I?ve got a fucking mortgage. We?re not even going to be out of this debt when we?re fifty. We may never even make it out of the starting gates. Now you?re looking at a shortcut to the end of the race and you?re asking if we should take it or not?!?

?Yes! When the shortcut involves killing a man, then yes I don?t bloody want to take it. How are you the one running the guilt trip on me?!?

?Not killing a man, having a man killed. That?s not the same thing.?

?Well it is to me!?

Jez paused and took a breath. He was holding his hands out in front of him, like he was assembling pieces of his argument in the air between the two of us.

?Okay?so let me get this straight. Do you really want to look back when you?re fifty and say to yourself: ?I could be retired by now.? but know that the only reason you?re not, is because you failed to take this opportunity right here, right now. Are you really prepared for that? To sacrifice your future, and mine, and Sam?s, just so that bastard can go on living.?

?Yes. This is what I?m saying, obviously. Christ.?

?Okay. I just wanted to make sure that was what you were saying.?

?Well, it is.?

?Great. Thanks, Dal, thanks a fucking lot.?

?Aw, Jesus Jez, don?t give me this shit.?

?No, really, I gotta go. I gotta, I gotta get home, see Sam. Lock up.? He walked out the door and slammed it behind him, the glass shaking in its frame.

I packed away the presentation material we had out for Mrs. Colmes, picking up the leather-bound book of poetry and glancing at the inscription Saul had written for Max. Stupid old git. I packed the book away in the cabinet reserved for this particular case, along with a zip drive which had most of the audio and video files on it.

I locked the office and started walking towards the Thames Path, heading home. The night was cold. Bloody London. It?ll give you two weeks of lovely warm weather, and just when you?re not in the mood for it, it?ll dump a miserable day right on you. Although on the other hand, right in the middle of winter there?ll be this absolutely beautiful day just sitting there, like it got lost on the way to summer. There?s probably a guy out there, I mean, six million people, odds are, there?s bound to be a guy out there whose every mood has been perfectly matched to the weather, for like, his whole life. Like when he?s happy, it?s sunny; and when he?s pissed off, it rains. The humour and the weather, they?re always exactly the same. And maybe he thinks the weather transforms itself just for him, just to suit his mood. Or maybe that?s exactly what does happen, and he?s never even noticed the synchronicity, just figures that?s the way the world is for everyone. Bastard.

I walked along the bankside, hands thrust deep into my pockets, my mood grim. It was lifted slightly by the river, I mean, seriously, any time I want my mood improved, I walk along the Thames. You can?t see those bridges stretched out down through the city and not feel a little bit happy about the world, they?re so damnably grand.

I texted Max?s number: ?Rough afternoon. You want to come over for dinner??

The response pinged back quarter of an hour later: ?Sure. Have to be back at work at midnight. Meeting not go well??

?Not exactly. Talk to you tonight.? I appended my address and hit send, turning into my local grocery store to pick up some dinner ingredients.

Max lay exhausted next to me on the floor of my small apartment?s lounge. She?d pretty much leapt on me the moment I opened the door. I had a lot of pent up new frustrations and was more than delighted to take them out on her. She didn?t seem to mind too much, either. My fingers traced tiny circles on the base of her spine as we caught our collective breath.

?You hungry??

?Yeah, always.? She gave my chest a playful bite.

?No, for food. I got some stuff.?

?Oh yeah? What you got??

?I got some pasta and things.?

?Great. You got chocolate??

?Yeah, I think I got some chocolate.?

?Mmm. Sex and chocolate. Can I keep you??

?Sure.?

?So ah,? she yawned and stretched like a cat before curling up again ?you were saying something about, a bad day??

?Yeah.?

?Presentation not go well? I hope you showed her my good side.?

?Er, you could say that. Mrs. Colmes wants us to carry out a slightly different job, now.?

?Oh yeah? Breaking those two cats up isn?t enough??

?Apparently not. She kind of lost it after we showed her the footage, offered us a mil on the spot if we could have him killed!? Max lifted her head up from my chest.

?Seriously??

?Yeah, like, I really think she was totally serious.?

?Wow. A million squids. That?s a big chuck o? greenery.?

?Well, yeah. It certainly had Jez?s tongue unravelling. He actually wanted to take the job. We had a huge barney about it. He was pulling out every argument in the book to try and convince me.?

?You didn?t want to do it??

?No, of course not. I?m not a killer.?

?Well presumably you wouldn?t have to do it yourself. You could just hire someone.?

?Yeah, Jez said that. We?d still be guilty by association.?

?Yeah, I guess. So, did you tell her you wouldn?t do the job??

?Not yet. I?ll send her a final bill and letter of disassociation tomorrow.?

?And then presumably she?ll go and hire someone else to have him killed.?

?Yeah. She did say that if we didn?t do it, she?d find someone who could.?

She drummed her fingers on my belly and absently-mindedly kissed my neck.

?So?in the end, he?s just as dead, and you?re out a million??

?Well, yeah, in effect, but at least I could live with myself.?

?Right?because you?d hate to be responsible for having Saul killed.?

?Right.?

?The guy who cheated on his mistress in order to fuck me.?

And there it was. The rage, back in an instant. Somehow I?d managed to convince myself, when it was just footage on a screen, that it wasn?t Max?s body on the video recording. Just pixels. Not her voice crying out over the audio. Just data. I?d somehow been able to separate the two entities in my mind, like a mental subdivision to stop myself from going crazy. And with one word, she bought down the barrier, and the hard reality crashed into me once again: I was in love with a prostitute. A whore. Someone who sold herself for money. Who?d sold herself to Saul, and we?d picked up the bill. And I know Doc, I know you?re saying: Well fuck, is that really his fault? He was a sucker. We set him up and knocked him down. I?d have done the same thing. Maybe I was doing the same thing and didn?t even know it. But I had this rage inside me and it just simmered into hate and spilled out over in my mind on to him.

?Yeah.? I said, quietly. ?That guy.?

?I kind of thought you?d hate his guts.?

?I guess I do.? I said slowly, and truthfully.

?Ah well, whatever. I?m sure you did what you felt was right, cowboy.? She kissed me on the cheek and jumped up. ?I?m going to freshen up. You start dinner.?

?Okay.? She bounded naked down the short stairwell to my bathroom. I put on a robe and wandered into the kitchen, kind of in a contemplative trance, fuelled by anger at Colmes. I don?t know where it came from. Some kind of territorial thing? I knew I had to let go of that, but didn?t seem to be able to. Images of them together kept flashing through my mind, like fast-forwarding through one of the many AVs we?d collected of them.

My phone beeped, its vibration causing it to make a short, pointless trip across a few inches of the kitchen bench. I picked it up to see a short text message from Jez. He still wrote in annoying text-speak, even though he knew it drove me crazy.

?Sorry about B4. Lot of £££ worries on my mind. U were right, as usual. CU2morrow??

Still seeing red, I texted him right back:

?Screw that. Changed my mind. Let?s do it.?

I paused for a moment?then had a vision of Saul?s scrawled message in the Whitman collection. Body & Soul.

I hit send.