No Going Back - 07 Page 21

  He didn’t feel pain but that meant nothing if his body failed him without warning. He had a mission to fulfil, and it couldn’t be put off for fear that his wounds had become infected. He’d just have to speed up the process and find Jay Walker as quickly as possible. This wasn’t about gaining revenge for his slain kin, because he felt as little for them as he had for his younger sister. The only reason he tolerated them was because both Carson and Brent had shared his sadistic tendencies. They’d been a good team but he wasn’t going to grow sentimental over them – even if he could. No, the reason he wanted his time with Jay Walker was solely for his own gratification. The bitch had given him the slip, thwarted him when he was about to beat her saviour to death and had spoiled the good times he had planned for her. It was only just that he balanced everything in his favour again.

  He would have liked to finish what he’d started with the Englishman. From what he’d heard on the street, Stodghill had told him that the man was a private dick called Joe Hunter, and that he’d returned to Florida. Maybe another occasion would present itself; right now he desired quality time with Jay Walker. He’d wondered about Carson and Brent, and their fixation on women who resembled Carla. Women were simply women to him. Now though he understood his kin in a way he hadn’t before, because there was only one woman who was going to satisfy him.

  Now it was time to go get her.

  But to achieve that, there were things he had to do first.

  Primarily he had to complete what he’d started when bleaching his hair. There was no way he’d get within grabbing distance of Jay Walker dressed the way he was now.

  He’d stolen money from Stodghill, but it was down to less than thirty dollars, nowhere near enough to buy the clothing he required.

  Early that morning, he left the flophouse – a dingy hotel advertising ‘clean linen’ – and walked towards the more opulent centre of town, if Gallup contained such a thing. The kind of people in this poor neighbourhood weren’t what he was seeking. His walk took him along West Hill Avenue, and he followed it downtown until the McKinley County Courthouse dominated the skyline. There, he thought, he’d find people more fitting. Before reaching the court buildings he looked for someone to his liking. Buildings here were decorated with murals depicting the Native American cultures prevalent in the city: Navajo, Hopi and Zuni. He had no interest in them. He found a park that looked alien when compared to the dusty streets, like it had been ripped from somewhere semi-tropical and dropped at random in the heart of the desert city. The gardens weren’t huge, yet to someone who’d grown up in the middle of an arid waste it was about the most greenery he’d seen in his life. There were people out strolling, others sitting in the shade beneath the trees, but Samuel was looking for someone of a specific type.

  He spotted the person he’d been searching for. Samuel was short and squat, wide around the shoulders and arms. He needed someone of a similar build if the man’s clothing were going to fit him. The man he spotted was nowhere near as muscular, but was rotund with fat. He was wearing a grey suit, shirt and tie, more suited to a fancy hotel than the workshirt and jeans Samuel was currently dressed in. Samuel leaned against the bole of a tree and watched the man. He was reading a newspaper and drinking coffee from a waxed cup: probably on his way to the office. Samuel wondered if he could take him here, but there were too many people around. So he waited.

  Finally the man stood up, heaving his bulky body away from the bench as he aimed his empty cup at a trash can. He folded his newspaper and tucked it under his arm. Samuel thought he’d head for the nearby courthouse, but the man surprised him by turning north and wending his way through the garden towards the next road over. Samuel fell into step behind him.

  The traffic was already building up as the rush hour began, but over the grumble of engines Samuel could hear something else that reminded him of the thunderstorms that occasionally cut a swathe across his homelands. He couldn’t quite define the sound until the fat man led him out of the park and on to a road on the other side of which was a building site that dominated an entire block. The rumble he’d heard was the movement of large construction vehicles, cranes and a workforce of dozens of men. The fat man crossed the road and walked on the sidewalk adjacent to the site.

  Samuel glanced around and saw that most pedestrians were on the park side, keeping away from the noise and the dust. It suited him. He jogged across the road, feeling his ribs grinding. He continued jogging, and, as he approached he tugged from his jeans pocket his battered wallet and held it in his left hand.

  ‘Sir! Excuse me sir!’

  At first the fat man couldn’t hear him, or chose to ignore him. Samuel picked up his pace, caught up with the man and finally swerved in front of him. The man reared back, bringing up both palms as if to push Samuel away.

  Samuel knew he looked sinister, with his bruised eyes and nose, and his grin didn’t do much to allay the man’s fears. Samuel held out the wallet.

  ‘Sir, you were sitting in the garden over there and as you walked away I noticed you’d dropped this.’

  The man did what anyone would do, his eyes went to the proffered wallet, and Samuel knew that he was contemplating whether or not to take it. Those of an avaricious nature would wonder if the wallet contained cash and if they were on to a good thing by lying and agreeing that it was theirs. An honest person would deny it belonged to them. The man, it seemed, was honest.

  ‘Thanks, but it isn’t mine.’

  While the man was still studying the wallet, Samuel took a discreet look around. Nobody was paying them any attention.

  ‘Are you sure, sir?’ Samuel asked.

  ‘I’m positive.’ The man dropped his guard, and his right hand sneaked round to touch the wallet in his back pocket. ‘Mine is right here.’

  Samuel shrugged. ‘Oh. Then I wonder whose it is?’

  ‘Sorry, but I can’t help you.’

  ‘OK, sir. I guess I should take it to the police.’

  ‘Maybe you should.’ The fat man stepped past and Samuel twisted his torso as if to allow him passage. Samuel’s left hand blocked the man’s pudgy left wrist. It was an innocent enough collision and the man didn’t immediately respond. Then Samuel snaked his strong hand back through the gap between the man’s arm and rotund body. Because he was still blocking the man’s wrist he helped rotate it so that he could place his right palm over the back of the man’s hand and clamp on to the flesh nearest his pinky finger. Samuel immediately reversed the movement, twisting the man’s trapped hand with him. The action locked both the wrist and elbow and brought the man up on his toes. He began to yelp in pain, but already Samuel had nudged his shoulder into the man’s elbow and he both turned him and propelled him over a small wire fence towards an embankment sloping into the construction site. At the last second he released his grip, but there was nowhere for the fat man to go but down.

  The embankment extended a good few yards into the site, and was pitched at a forty-five-degree angle. Even an agile person would find it hard to check their fall. The fat man didn’t stop until he’d rolled all the way to the bottom. Samuel took the time to check no one had noticed, then stepped over the small fence and followed him into the pit. By the time he’d reached the bottom, the man had just lifted his face from the dirt. He was plastered in damp clay. Samuel had intended stealing his suit, but that wasn’t a consideration now. Samuel forced the man back down into the muck, pressing him down with a heel on the back of his neck. The man struggled and he was stronger than his unhealthy weight would suggest, so Samuel decided for a quick dispatch. He raised his foot then stamped down at the base of the man’s skull. The struggling stopped. Samuel stamped twice again for good measure.

  He rifled through the pockets of the suit and found what he required: a wallet and keys. A quick check inside the wallet identified the man as Roger Hawkins, and his address was nearby. Samuel thought there was no way this man had walked a great distance to work each day.

  Samuel checked all arou
nd him but the racket from the site, the billowing dust, had all concealed the mugging from the workers. He grabbed Hawkins by his ankles, and, though it was a struggle dragging him and likely played havoc with his injured ribs, he placed him at the edge of the embankment. There were sheets of board stacked nearby, as well as other random pieces of junk that Samuel piled over the corpse. Hawkins wouldn’t remain undiscovered for long, but Samuel trusted it would be enough time to visit the man’s apartment. He bounced Hawkins’s house keys in his good hand, then went back up the embankment.

  All being well he could be back in Holbrook and ready to take Jay Walker by the end of the day.

  33

  ‘You think your idea will work?’ Rink asked.

  I was sitting on the balcony outside my room at the Tipi Hotel, strategically placed so that it was adjacent to the one Jay and Nicole now shared. Earlier I’d called at the Fed-Ex depot and collected the items that McTeer had shipped there. Sealed in boxes was a SIG Sauer P228, as well as a Ka-bar combat knife. I’d taken them out on the balcony while cleaning and prepping them, and now had a recently purchased ‘pay as you go’ cellphone to my ear. I kept my voice lowered so I didn’t wake the women. Exhaustion had finally caught up with them and while their parents were taking dinner in the hotel’s restaurant they’d both retired early. I’d followed them back up, because the police guards had been recalled to other duties now that Samuel Logan had fallen off the face of the earth.

  ‘He isn’t like the others we’ve fought in the past,’ I said. ‘Tubal Cain, Dantalion, Rickard, they were all pros in their own right. You ask me, Samuel Logan’s a few sandwiches short of a picnic. I don’t think he’d have the capacity to find us if we didn’t hang around and wait for him.’

  ‘He’s maybe dumb, but it doesn’t make him any less dangerous.’

  I thought of the pain in my body, a dull ache by now, and had to agree. ‘I’m not going to underestimate him, Rink. In fact, if anything, I have to be extra careful. Cain, Luke Rickard, they had similar backgrounds and training to us and because of that we could sometimes predict their movements. It’s different here. Samuel Logan, I don’t know what motivates him, and it’s difficult to second-guess him.’

  ‘What if he doesn’t go there?’

  ‘Then I find some other way to bring him to us.’

  ‘You lookin’ for another stand-up drag-’em-out brawl?’

  ‘It’s a case of heart versus mind. I’d love to go at him man to man, but no. Soon as I get the opportunity I’ll put a couple of rounds in his head.’

  ‘Make sure you don’t miss this time.’

  ‘That’s the thing, Rink. I’m sure I didn’t miss last time.’

  ‘So you’re fighting Superman?’

  ‘No, not Superman. But there’s something unnatural about him.’ I told Rink how I’d repeatedly smashed Samuel’s face with my fists and forehead and he’d barely reacted.

  ‘You know the deal,’ Rink said. ‘When the blood’s up, you sometimes don’t feel the pain until after. I can guarantee he was swallowing Tylenol like they were M&Ms later on.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘There’s no maybe. When I was fighting in those knockdown karate tournaments, I saw guys breaking their shins against each other, but they carried on to the end of the fight. Broke my wrist once, but I still won. Tell you what, though . . . later on I was moaning like a bitch in heat. It’ll have been the same with that nut-job. Guarantee it, brother.’ Rink paused and I knew he was considering taking the next flight out here. ‘An’ if I’m wrong, let’s see how he gets on with a load of shot up his ass.’

  ‘You’d have thought a couple of three-five-sevens would have put him down for good.’

  ‘So maybe you missed.’

  The conversation was going round in circles.

  ‘Won’t next time,’ I said, trying my best to put a lid on it.

  ‘Don’t,’ he said. ‘There’s too much at stake there.’

  He was right, this wasn’t just about me. Because I was leading their tormentor directly towards them, my crazy plan was a sure way of causing Jay and Nicole further nightmares. Not that I intended placing either of them within his grasp, but what if Rink was wrong and there was more to this man than met the eye? OK, he was no Tubal Cain or Luke Rickard, but he was a determined and violent antagonist. In fact, his unconventional style might prove to be more dangerous than any of the professional killers I’d faced in the past.

  I experienced a slight fluttering in my guts, the first trickle of adrenalin as I responded to the challenge. Rink has often accused me of getting off on the thrill of battle; maybe he had something. I was looking forward to meeting Samuel Logan and the sooner the better.

  The silence at the other end of the phone had grown palpable.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Take it easy, bro.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Don’t let this frog-giggin’ sumbitch draw you into his world.’

  ‘I don’t get you.’

  ‘I don’t need to be looking at you to know you’re wearing your war face. Shit, man, you ask me you’re fixating as hard on Samuel as the Logans did on the girls.’

  ‘I think that my kind of fixation’s a lot different from theirs.’

  He breathed heavily into the mouthpiece. ‘Whatever. But it’s still unhealthy . . . whichever way you look at it.’

  ‘You turning into a shrink these days, spouting all this psychobabble?’

  ‘Ain’t spouting nothin’. Just offering the voice of reason, you understand?’

  ‘As long as you don’t start feeling my bumps, Rink.’

  ‘I might give you a couple bumps when I see you. It’s the only way to knock some sense into your fat head.’

  We both laughed, and it was a good point to ring off. I was looking forward to personally finishing things with Samuel, but, truth be told, it would make sense if Rink was there to watch my back. If I had my way that wasn’t going to happen though, not this time.

  34

  Samuel Logan was barely recognisable now and he felt the disguise would get him all the way to Jay’s room without alerting anyone to his true identity.

  Earlier, he’d used Roger Hawkins’s keys to gain access to the man’s apartment. Though palatial in comparison to the shack he’d shared with his family, it was a soulless place at basement level, steps leading down from the street to the front entrance. On opening the door he’d found an open-plan area with hardwood floors, heavy leather furniture, a large plasma screen TV and entertainment centre, and, thankfully, no sign of a family. He wondered if Hawkins had a wife and kids who lived elsewhere and if the businessman kept this place for when he was in the city. Off the main living room was an en suite bathroom and a kitchen with appliances that he was unfamiliar with, as well as a large bedroom with a walk-in dressing closet. That was what he was most interested in and he’d found a two-piece suit not unlike the one Hawkins was wearing earlier. Shirts on hangers hung in colour-coordinated ranks and below them shoes and boots for every occasion. Samuel stripped down to his boxers, studying himself in a full-length mirror. He looked like a beer keg on legs, but unlike Hawkins his sturdy frame wasn’t formed of pulpy fat. Like his face, his body was a network of fine white scars from past injuries, whereas a couple of others – burns primarily – were lumpy with pink scar tissue. His bandages were soiled. The pink had become red, and was fast changing hue again to an ugly brown. He stank. He didn’t have time to waste on showering, so looked instead for toiletries and sprayed his body liberally with cologne from a glass bottle. Then, at random, he chose a shirt and pulled it on. It almost fit. It was tight across his shoulders and upper arms, whereas there was plenty of loose material at his waist. He then dressed in the suit. He had to add a belt to keep the trousers up, but again the jacket was snug up top. He studied himself in the mirror again, and saw that his greasy hair and roughly shaved face belied the expensive clothing, but didn’t care too much about it. There were razors and sciss
ors in the bathroom. Hawkins’s shoes were too small for him, so he’d no option but to pull on his own boots again. He didn’t think that anyone would be astute enough to notice such detail as his work boots any way.

  He sheared away the longest hair and combed it into a side parting, used Hawkins’s razor to scrape his beard off. The man who stared back at him from the mirror was a stranger. With his hair bleached and cut short he barely recognised himself, and he leaned towards the glass to check that it was indeed his own eyes staring back at him. He even went so far as to reach out and jab a fingertip against the glass, just to make sure. He left an oily smear on the surface. Samuel couldn’t give a damn for forensic evidence. The cops were already after him, and it wouldn’t matter if they tied him to the death of Roger Hawkins or anyone else: they’d have to catch him first, and when they did he didn’t expect to walk away from the confrontation alive.

  He bundled some spare shirts into a leather attaché case he discovered in the living room, as well as the bottle of cologne. He expected that he would stink more as the hours progressed and the cologne would help disguise the odour.