The Death List

AND CHECK THE MAIL!!!!

I pushed my chair back on its rollers. What the hell? I could do with stretching my legs, anyway. The pounding my body had taken playing amateur rugby league from my time at university until a couple of years ago meant that my muscles and joints stiffened up all the time. Besides, WD had piqued my curiosity.

I saw the brown paper package lying on the floor when I was halfway down the stairs. It was one of those bubble-filled envelopes, A4 size. There was something bulky in it. I wondered how it had landed on Mrs. Lamb’s doormat without my hearing it. I felt a spasm of apprehension as I got nearer. Surely it couldn’t be a bomb. I’d written about terrorism in the Balkans in the Zog books and I’d expected at least a verbal backlash from one or other of the armed groups. None of them even knew of my existence, of course. Until now?

I forced myself to walk forward. This was idiotic. WD was just playing games. Then I realized what it had to be. A manuscript. The fool was a budding writer who wanted me to vet his book. How many times had I been asked to do this? The same number of times that I’d told people, not particularly politely, that I was a writer, not a script reader.

I bent down, feeling the usual twinge in my right knee-that had been what had finally made me stop playing for the South London Bison. The package was weighty enough, but it wasn’t solid in the way several hundred pages of copy paper would be. There were only two words on the envelope. Matt Wells. Now my correspondent really was taking the piss. Each word had been cut from a newspaper, my first name in a small black font and my surname in larger red letters. Who’d been reading too many crime novels?

I opened the front door and looked down the street, both right and left. There was no sign of anyone. Most people were at work, college or school and the others-retired people or au pairs-were indoors. There weren’t even any builders in evidence, which made a change for Herne Hill. I knew the Lambs weren’t around. They’d gone off to their holiday villa in Cyprus for a month. Whoever made the delivery had pulled off a clean getaway. As there was no address, it obviously hadn’t come from the hands of a postman.

I felt the package in both hands as I went back upstairs. It was paper, all right-there was nothing hard or metallic inside. Reassured, I tore open the flap and emptied the contents onto my lap.

The money was new, the colors shining brightly in the light on my desk. There were five bundles of twenty-pound notes. Each bundle contained fifty notes, making a total of?5000.

My mouth suddenly felt very dry.