Love You Dead

34 Saturday 28 February

Six hours late. An hour out of JFK the flight had turned back because of a technical fault. They’d been deplaned and sat in the goddam terminal for over four hours before finally boarding again. They’d originally been scheduled to land at 7 a.m., now it was 1.30 p.m. Most of the day wasted.

Standing in the long, snaking queue for passport control at London’s Heathrow Airport, Tooth yawned. He could stay awake for as long as he needed, and sometimes, concealed in enemy territory back in his days in the military, that meant staying awake for forty-eight hours or longer, waiting for a target to appear. But right now he was looking forward to a few hours’ sleep in the room he had booked at the Waterfront Hotel on Brighton seafront. Maybe he was getting old.

He’d stayed awake in his cramped economy seat at the back of the plane for the entire flight, planning what he needed to do when he arrived.

Once the plane was taxiing at Heathrow and he was able to get an internet connection, he’d pulled up a street map of Brighton and Hove on his phone, reminding himself of the layout of the city. Looking up the street Judith Forshaw had put down on the hotel registration form.

Western Road.

Was it a real or false address? Whatever. The news stories about Walt Klein said his fiancée was from Brighton. A city of just 275,000 people. New York was a city of eight and a half million people and he never had a problem finding anyone there.

It would be a slam-dunk to find her in Brighton.

He slipped his passport out of his pocket and checked the details he’d filled in on his immigration form. His name, for the purposes of this visit, was Mike Hinton. He didn’t like travelling on false documents, they added a layer of risk that wasn’t usually worth it. But with his recent history in Sussex, there would be a marker on his real name for sure. Hinton. Mike Hinton. Accountant.

Ten minutes later the immigration officer studied his passport, then asked him to remove his cap. Tooth lifted up the baseball cap, which he had pulled down low over his face, and gave the woman officer a pleasant smile, whilst trying to mask his concern that she had recognized him.

She looked at his passport again, back at his face, back at his passport, then closed it and handed it back to him. ‘Have a nice stay in the UK, Mr Hinton,’ she said and smiled back.

Tooth stepped forward without replying and took the escalator down into the baggage reclaim hall, where he had his holdall to collect. He didn’t like to let it out of his sight, but some of its contents would have been confiscated if he’d tried to take it as carry-on baggage.

When it arrived he picked it up off the carousel and strolled across to the green exit channel, his laptop bag and holdall both over his shoulder. He always travelled light. It was easier to buy clothes wherever he was, and bin them before leaving. In fifteen years of globetrotting, he’d never owned a suitcase. And for most of his jobs, he was in and out of a place without even needing to unpack what little he had with him. New York had been an exception; he’d been stuck there far too long, because he’d had to deal with assholes.

He was on his own here. Just himself and a woman who thought she was smart. But she clearly wasn’t that smart. She’d been engaged to a crook with frozen assets, and now she’d stolen, clumsily, something she could never sell, and for which she was going to die.

Unpleasantly.

Tooth didn’t do pleasant deaths.