The Isis Covenant

II

Myron Deloite broke open the double-barrel shotgun with a satisfying snap, blew the dust from the mechanism and carefully slipped the two buckshot-filled cartridges snugly into their chambers. The action made him grin because it reminded him of Wednesday night behind the garages with Soraya. Damn, she was good, was that Soraya. But Soraya didn’t come cheap. She liked to be romanced with a little love weed and maybe a couple lines of blow to get her in the mood. It was girls like Soraya that had got Myron into trouble, but he just couldn’t stay away from their hot little bodies and busy little hands. Satisfied, he snapped the barrels back into place and polished them with a filthy piece of cloth he’d found in a cupboard of the rented flat. It had once been a fine gun, but someone had crudely shortened the stock by cutting away six inches of polished oak and the dark-sheened metal barrels had been sawn off two inches in front of the fore-grip, making it around two feet long. Ideally, Myron would have preferred a pistol, or maybe even one of them dinky little Mach-10 babies that sprayed out thirty rounds in the time it took to spit, but the shotgun was cheap and Myron Deloite PLC was currently having cash flow problems. The main thing about the shotgun was that it was simple and it made a fucking big hole in whatever you pointed it at. He’d seen what it could do, cos he’d insisted on a demonstration. Ol’ Myron might be a little slow, but he wasn’t dumb. Din’t want no shotgun blowin’ up in his face.

He tied a piece of string round the butt and formed a loop big enough so it would go over his shoulder. It took two or three attempts before he got the length right, but eventually the gun hung snugly against his right thigh, with enough slack so he could easily bring it up and fire it from the hip. The long black coat he’d stolen from the bar a few nights earlier hung on a hook behind the door. Now he put it on and studied himself in the mirror. No telltale bulges or awkward angles. He’d have to sit with his leg straight on the Tube, but he could suffer that. He unbuttoned the coat again to make sure the gun was easy to access and tried it a couple of times to get the feel of it. Damn, that was good; felt like he was Clint Eastwood. Do you feel lucky, punk?

Myron had watched the mark for three days before he’d eventually found what he’d been looking for. Three whole fucking days standing about in the rain or sitting in expensive coffee shops nursing a cup of mocha with the waitress staring at him like he was a piece of dog shit somebody’d walked in on their shoe. The house to the Tube to his office. Office to the Tube to his house. Never went out at night. Never strayed. Didn’t the man do anything on his own? It was only when he’d arrived early at the house after an all-nighter that he discovered Mr Man was a jogger. Mr Man liked to run round the park at first light, all on his lonesome. And Mr Man was dumb. Because Myron had sneaked along to watch on four consecutive mornings and Mr Man never changed his route, not even to run in the opposite direction. And that meant Mr Man was a dead man.

Myron looked at his wrist. The Rolex watch with the Timex action said 4.35 a.m. and Mr Man’s runs started at 6.15 sharp. Plenty of time to get the first train out of Brixton and reach Lancaster Gate in time to make the walk through the park to the spot he had identified as the killing zone.

The image of the hit in his head exhilarated him, but he felt a little sluggish. These early mornings are killing me, man. He grinned broadly at his own joke. What he needed was a pick-me-up to clear his mind. He fumbled in the drawer until he found one of the sachets of white powder. Even the sight of it made his heart beat a little faster. Pure Colombian coke. Still owed for, but that was what this was all about. When the business acquaintance who supplied Myron with his recreational substances suggested he could wipe out his debts and set himself up with a nest-egg, Myron was in no position to turn it down. He’d done these little jobs before. True, some had worked out better than others, but he was still here, wasn’t he? Mr Man was a spoiled white rich boy. He wouldn’t know what hit him. Myron poured a line of white powder onto the desk top and snorted it straight from the scarred plastic. It was like a jolt of electricity to the brain. Everything looked better already.

He walked up to the mirror and whipped the shotgun out from under the coat. Do you feel lucky, punk?

Jamie Saintclair groaned as the alarm on his bedside clock beeped mercilessly. Christ, why did he keep doing this to himself? He rolled over and fumbled for the button. Don’t snooze. If you snooze, you’ll never get up. He forced himself out of bed. Sarah would have been up by now, bouncing about like a demented rubber ball and getting dressed in her running gear. He liked to move at a more sedate pace. No Sarah. Not for three months. Off back to the Land of the Free to find herself. At least that’s what she’d said. He struggled into his Lycra shorts — not cold enough for the long johns yet — grabbed his T-shirt. It was the one with Picasso’s Guernica on it that he’d picked up at the museum in Madrid for nine euros — five minutes later he’d seen it in a back-street shop for three. Running shoes, Nike, but in need of replacement. Not quite awake, but ready.

He ambled blearily through the flat to the front door and took the stairs down to the street. Kensington High Street. Not deserted at this time of the morning, but not far off it, thank Christ. He didn’t start running immediately, just a brisk walk interspersed with vaguely effective stretches that made him look like an idiot. At last, the park. He took his usual route on the long diagonal up past Round Pond. Slowly at first, letting the blood loosen the muscles, easing his way into the run. Breathing a little laboured, but that would soon ease off. The rhythm came to him without conscious effort and his mind switched. That was the thing about running at this time of the morning: you could do it in your sleep. The thought made him smile, and smiling made him think of Sarah, which made him stop smiling. He hadn’t done a lot of smiling since she’d gone. Don’t. Think. About. Sarah. It must have worked because the next thing he knew he was up at Lancaster Gate, and making his turn down past the ornamental ponds to the path beside the Serpentine. Did he really need to do this every day? He was young — thirtyish was still young, wasn’t it? — and fitter than he’d ever been, thanks to Sarah’s early-morning runs and the fencing classes. Anyway, an art dealer didn’t need to be a marathon runner. He needed to be a networker. Maybe if he did some early-morning networking instead of jogging he’d make more money?

‘Crawk!’ He swerved sharply as the raucous cry from the lake and the flutter of large wings announced a decidedly pissed-off heron.

‘Sorry for disturbing your breakfast, old chum,’ he muttered as he ran on into the trees.

From his concealed position in the killing ground, Myron heard the distant crunch of gravel. He shifted so that he had a better view up the path between the trees. It wouldn’t be doing to shoot the wrong jogger, would it? He glanced up to see a dull leaden cast to the sky. Almost dawn. The path was still artificially lit, but the way the cocaine made Myron feel he could probably have seen in the dark. Not that he was nervous. No, just excited. He hated rich people and this spoiled white boy was rich. He’d watched him go every day from his fancy Kensington flat to his fancy Bond Street office. The white boy had everything. Well, Myron was going to take everything away from the white boy.

The rhythmic sound of running feet came closer and he noted the neon flash as tiny panels on the running shoes were reflected in the pathlights. Closer. Closer. Exactly as he expected. A runner in a dark T-shirt. Head down, deep in thought, but the right height and the right build. Mr Man. His breathing quickened. Closer, still. So close that there was no way he could turn and run. Mr Man. Dead man.

Myron stepped out into the pathway, raised the shotgun so it was pointing at the target’s heart and squeezed both triggers.

Jamie almost stopped when the man lurched from behind the bronze statue of Peter Pan into his path. His first instinct was to swerve, but when he saw the twin barrels of the shotgun sweep up to aim directly at him he knew he had nowhere to run except straight at his ambusher. He was going to die, that was fairly obvious, but he wasn’t going to die without trying. He screamed, the way the Army had taught him to scream, and launched himself at the man in the trench coat.

Myron couldn’t believe that the fucking gun hadn’t fired. As the wailing banshee with the face from hell bore down on him, he scrabbled at the trigger in desperation. Nothing happened. It was fortunate for Jamie that the seller hadn’t told Myron about the safety button behind the trigger and that Myron had been so excited about the potential of his new toy that he hadn’t bothered to ask. More fortunate still, because, as he found a second later when he smashed into Myron’s chest and forced the barrels skywards, the safety button doesn’t always stop the gun firing. The simultaneous twin blasts deafened them both and in his fright Myron dropped the shotgun, leaving him at the mercy of his annoyed, dangerously scared and belligerent target. Myron was only nineteen and five foot six. Jamie was a well-built six foot odd who’d boxed for Cambridge and been trained in unarmed combat by people who killed other people with their bare hands. It was over in thirty seconds.

‘Right, you little bastard,’ Jamie growled when he’d manoeuvred his ambusher onto his stomach with both arms behind his back. ‘What the fuck is this all about?’

For answer he received a string of inventive curses, a few of which he’d never heard before. He switched position so his whole weight was on a knee in the centre of Myron’s spine and Myron responded with a satisfactory yelp of agony.

‘Look, my trigger-happy friend,’ Jamie whispered in the other man’s ear, ‘whatever happens you’re going to the police, the question is whether you go in one piece or not.’ He pinned Myron’s right arm with his knee and took the left wrist between his hands. ‘Now we have a choice here. I can break every one of your fingers one by one, which feels a bit like this.’ There was a sharp crack and Myron shrieked in genuine agony. ‘That, by the way, is only dislocated. Or I can go the whole hog and force your arm out of your socket and you’ll never be able to use it again.’ He put a little more weight on the arm and was rewarded by another shriek, followed by a whimper as he released the pressure. ‘So let me ask again. What is this about? Why did you try to kill me?’

‘Didn’t,’ Myron gasped. ‘Was just going to mug you. Was desperate. Wanted cash for smack.’

‘Dear, oh dear, you’re going to have to come up with something better than that. You must think I’m as dim as you are.’ He sighed and took a tighter grip on the arm. ‘One more time.’

‘Don’t!’ The would-be assassin cried. ‘Look, I’ll tell. I’ll tell. Some punter put a ten-grand contract on you. Kill and collect, no questions asked.’

Jamie almost let him go in his astonishment.

‘A contract?’

‘A contract, I swear it. Please don’t hurt me again.’

A hundred questions raced through Jamie’s mind, but only one of them really mattered. ‘First I need you to tell me who.’

‘I can’t.’ The voice was shrill with desperation and pain. ‘He’ll kill me.’

‘That’s a pity.’

‘He denies it, naturally.’

Jamie sat with his back against the gnarled bronze roots of the tree stump supporting Peter Pan as he listened to the plain-clothes detective.

‘Says he was minding his own business and you jumped out and assaulted him.’

‘The gun will have his fingerprints on it,’ Jamie pointed out.

‘Of course it will. But it would help if he didn’t have the injuries he has. That arm of his is a right mess.’

Jamie shrugged. ‘Man with a shotgun. Man in his shorts. A fairly obvious case of self-defence, I’d have thought, Inspector.’

‘I’d have thought so, too, Mr Saintclair, or you’d be up there in the paddy wagon with him. But you never know these days. Bastard lawyers and a liberal judge, anything can happen. Course, I didn’t say that.’

‘No, you didn’t.’

The detective pulled out his notebook. ‘One thing I need to ask? This contract, if it exists, can you think of anyone who might want to kill you?’

It happened that Jamie had been asking himself just that question. Neo-Nazi nutcases. The Chinese government. Mossad. The list was fairly extensive. Not to mention his enemies in the art world, who might have a more lethal dislike for him than he thought. But one suspect stood pony-tailed head and shoulders above the rest. ‘There’s a man in the United States I came across last year. We had a coming-together that cost him a lot of money. Howard Vanderbilt.’

The policeman raised an eyebrow and noted the name. ‘The Howard Vanderbilt?’

‘Is there anything I can do about it, in the meantime?’

‘The contract? We’ll send someone round to offer you some advice. Ten grand’s not really a lot of money.’

Jamie felt vaguely slighted. ‘Advice, that’s it?’

‘ ’Fraid so, sir.’

‘Maybe they’ll give up on it after this?’

‘You don’t really believe that, do you, sir?’

‘No,’ Jamie admitted. ‘I don’t.’