Spoil the Kill Read online

  And we’re only getting warmed up.

  We’ve been sifting through the profile pages for about half an hour when I come across a short video that makes me stop and peer closer. Kim, a chubby blonde with heavy mascara around small eyes, is being filmed by one of her mates. She’s walking along a street at night with a gang of her friends. They’re all dressed to the nines; it looks like they’re out for the evening. Kim has her phone up, and she’s filming the one who is filming her. Funny how often people do that now.

  “Where are we going?!” she’s shouting, laughing. “Does anybody know where the hell we’re going next? Jesus, are we lost? Hey, honey … you know you’re walking backward right? Watch out for the–”

  The person filming her obviously steps off the curb, and topples backward. The phone flies up in the air, the video spins and becomes a whirl of dark colors. There’s a sudden shriek and several others laugh before a jarring impact cuts to silence as the phone hits the ground.

  “Hey, take a look at this,” I say to the others.

  I rewind the video. Behind Kim, as she’s talking, two guys are horsing around. The clarity’s not great, but we can see that the taller one has grabbed the shorter one’s cap and is holding it up while the shorter guy is jumping up trying to reach it. The tall guy has his back to the camera, but as he holds the hat out of the other lad’s reach, his jacket and t-shirt lift up, revealing the back and hind legs of the dragon tattoo. We only get a glimpse of him before the girl filming falls over and the picture’s lost.

  “Okay, so he’s tall and he’s got brown hair,” FX shrugs. “That’s something else at least, but still no face. It doesn’t give us much more than the first photo.”

  “No, look again,” I say. “We couldn’t see his hands in the photo. Here, take a look.”

  They both lean in, staring at the frozen image showing the guy from behind, holding up the blue cap.

  “I’m sorry, I’m not getting it,” FX mutters. “What are we looking at?”

  “His nails,” Manikin says, lifting her head. “He bites his nails. Like, really short. Ouch.”

  “Yeah,” I say. “He’s bitten them down to the quick—the index and middle finger especially.”

  “So we go back through the images …” FX starts to say.

  “And see if there’s a face to go with those badly bitten nails,” Manikin finishes for him.

  “Keep an eye out for any guy with plasters on the tips of more than one finger too,” I add.

  It doesn’t take long to find him. In a group shot of what is obviously this circle of friends, he stands in the middle with his arms on the shoulders of the girls on either side. He’s tall with brown hair and his short nails are clearly visible. When I hold the cursor over his face, the name “Joey Rodin” appears above it.

  “Jonny Grodin becomes Joey Rodin,” Manikin snorts. “Right … nice alias there Joey.”

  You can see the resemblance to the younger kid in the photos Easy gave us. But his pale, freckled face is longer and his nose has been broken and healed crooked at some point. And in every new picture we find of him, he’s got a big stupid grin on his face. All of these things combined were probably enough to stop FX’s facial recognition from finding him.

  “Okay, so we have his mugshot,” FX says. “But he’s not on MyFace—at least he’s not linked to any of these pages.”

  “Maybe he’s not a complete idiot, then,” Manikin comments. “He’s got to know Move-Easy’s still looking for him. What next?”

  “We need to get his phone number,” I say and FX nods.

  “If I have his mobile number, I can track him down, wherever he is,” he says.

  “Kim or one of the others might have it on their phones,” Manikin murmurs, looking off into the distance. “We should be able to find them easily enough now.”

  FX and I both nod. That awkward discomfort is back, as our minds turn from the job to actually finding Jonathan Grodin. Manikin hisses through her teeth and she looks at me as if measuring me up. I can guess what she wants to ask.

  “I’m not wired up,” I tell her. “Easy only puts cameras or mikes on his seniors. He says rat-runners attract less attention from the law that way.”

  But I’m still careful. I don’t want to make the first move here. Easy would go harder on them than on me. Manikin nods at me, gazing at me for a few seconds.

  “All right, I’m going to say it,” she sighs, sitting back in her chair, the anxiety written on her face. “Are we really going to do this? I mean, give this guy to Move-Easy? We all know what’s going to happen to him if we do. How about it, Scope? Could you live with that?”

  Even as I’m about to answer, I wonder if somebody’s listening in. Easy could very well have had us followed to keep an eye on us. I haven’t spotted anyone, and presumably neither have the other two, assuming they’ve been looking. I take a deep breath and let it out.

  “No, I don’t want to do this,” I tell them. “I just haven’t figured out how to get out of it. I don’t think any of us want to double-cross Easy, do we?”

  “We could just say we couldn’t find this guy,” FX offers.

  “He wouldn’t buy it.” Manikin shakes her head. “Besides, he’d take the failure out on us, and then put somebody else on the job. It’s taken us less than an hour to find a face and a name. That means somebody else could do it too.”

  “The only way I can see out of this,” I say quietly, “is to find Grodin like we’re supposed to, and then tip him off somehow before Easy’s trolls can get hold of him, so they take the blame, not us. We need to spoil the kill. Drive him out of the country again … but we’ve got to find him first.”

  “Okay,” FX adds. “So how do we tip him off without it looking like we’ve totally cocked up the job? ’Cos I’ve gotta tell ya, I’m sweatin’ my kacks just talking about this.”

  “The less I know about your kacks, the better,” I tell him. “Anyway, we get some outside help. I think I have someone I can call, but we need to suss this whole thing out first.”

  “Right then,” Manikin says, running her hands through her red hair. “Let’s find this Kim Jordan, and then figure out how we’re going to steal her phone.”

  Chapter 3: Malicious Gossip

  Kim Jordan works on Saturdays, in one of those big sports stores in a retail park, where most of the staff are still in secondary school and work for minimum wage. The type of shop that deals more in fashion than sport, where they know everything about this season’s trainers—except which ones are the best for running. FX has set up a conference line on our phones, so we can all talk to each other at the same time using our earpieces. It’s encrypted too, so no one can listen in.

  I’m sitting on a bench outside the front of the warehouse-sized store when Kim walks out at the end of her shift. She takes her phone from her bag, and taps four numbers into the keypad before checking her text messages. I swear under my breath.

  “She’s just come out,” I tell the others. “Bad news. She has a PIN on her phone.”

  “Bugger,” Manikin’s voice says into my ear. “Hardly anybody does that, unless they’ve actually got something to lose.”

  The PIN is a simple but very effective way of keeping the information on your phone secure if it gets robbed. Cracking this kind of encryption is an almighty pain in the rectum, even for a hacker like FX. Manikin was just going to pluck the phone from Kim’s bag without her noticing, as they both came up to the bus stop. But all of a sudden, stealing it isn’t such a good idea.

  “You want to grab it while she’s using it?” I ask.

  “We don’t do snatch jobs if we can avoid them,” Manikin replies. “Especially in a place like this. Attracts too much attention, no streets to escape into and you’re too likely to be caught on camera. What we really want is for her to call Jonny—or Joey—that’ll give FX what he needs.”

  Kim is making her way across the huge car park toward the bus stop.
FX is sitting on another bench not far away, but out of my sight. I know he’s got Kim’s mobile number—she gave it to somebody on her MyFace page. It’s also how we found out where she works, what days and what time she finishes. With her phone number, FX can use his console to patch into the signal and listen in to everything.

  Manikin is standing at the bus stop as Kim approaches. She glances over at Kim, then looks again, harder, her face twisting into an expression of pure hostility. Mani’s still got her phone on, so we can hear everything.

  “Hey, you,” she says. “You! You’re that Jordan cow, ain’t ya?”

  “I’m sorry, what?” Kim replies.

  “Kim Jordan, right?”

  I’m making my way toward the bus stop now, but I’m still over fifty meters away. Kim is taking a step back, holding her bag defensively against her chest.

  “Who … who are you?” she stutters.

  “Who am I?” Manikin snarls, causing everyone else at the bus stop to turn and look. “Acting the innocent now, are we? Who am I? You cheeky fat tart! For somebody who doesn’t know me, you had plenty to say to Joey Bloody Rodin last week! Who am I? You’ve a bloody cheek! After what you said about me … you … you pig-faced hag! You know Joey’s telling everyone what you said—all that … about the poodle, and the pirate costume and the … the … that goddamned jacket potato.”

  There are tears in Mani’s eyes now and real anguish on her face. Damn she’s good. I’m struggling not to wet myself laughing as I come up to the glass wall of the bus stop. The jacket potato?

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about!” Kim protested. “I haven’t a clue who you are!”

  “Yeah? Tell that to Joey Rodin!” Manikin gasps at her, tears streaming down her face. “You tell him that, before he blabs any more of your stories about me and that badminton racket!”

  With that, she whips past Kim and strides off back toward the stores. I suppress the urge to either giggle or break into applause. Kim watches her go, a look of consternation on her face. Turning her back on the curious onlookers who are trying to appear as if this is none of their business, Kim steps away from the shelter, unlocks her phone, chooses a number from her contacts and hits the call button.

  “Hi, Joey?” I hear her snap, before she walks out of earshot. “What in the name of God have you been saying …”

  “Heeelllo, wabbit,” FX says into my ear, in his best Elmer Fudd impression, and I know he’s looking at the phone number on his screen, and listening to Joey defend himself against Kim’s furious accusations. There’s a smile in FX’s voice as he adds: “Right now, she’s threatening to cook his tongue with a hair straightener. Wow. With friends like that, no wonder he bites his nails.”

  Chapter 4: Outside Help

  I meet Nimmo that evening, in the overgrown back garden of a vacant house. It’s just one of a whole street of rundown terraced houses. I find him sitting on a broken piece of wall that divides what was once the patio from what was once the lawn. He’s got that ever-present look of laid-back wary about him, his lean face bearing its typical neutral expression, framed by tight-cut red hair and the grey woollen hat he’s always got on. And he’s dressed, as usual, in a worn black leather jacket and loose-fitting jeans. He has the body of a dancer.

  Nimmo’s not much older than me, but where criminal qualifications are concerned, he couldn’t be more different. He’s a thief—a good one—and a hustler too. From what little I know of him, I think he was raised by thieves, though there might have been a copper somewhere in the family, too. The cagey sod is almost impossible to read and you could be forgiven for thinking he’s a cold fish. He’s tough enough to take care of himself amongst the most serious villains and doesn’t seem to give a damn about anyone but himself.

  It’s more complicated than that, though. He’s got bigger trust issues than most, but once he’s let you past the armor you’re in for good. Even so, I never feel that I can take his friendship for granted. Now I need his help again. And I’m really, really hoping he’ll say yes.

  He’s killing time by rolling a cricket ball from his wrist to his shoulder and back again. Sometimes he flicks it into the air before catching it on his arm again, never using his hands.

  “Hey, Nimmo,” I greet him.

  “Hey, Scope.”

  “Never figured you for a cricket fan,” I say.

  “I’m not—I hate the game,” he replies, “but I admire their balls.”

  He slips the ball into the pocket of his leather jacket and leans back, waiting for me to tell him why we’re here. I figure there’s no point beating around the bush.

  “Move-Easy wants me to find someone so he can kill them. Manikin and FX are on the job too. We need to spoil the kill ’cos … y’know, we don’t want to help murder anyone. We need to screw it up so the guy can escape.”

  “Right. You hopin’ to do this without losing any fingers or toes?”

  “That’s the plan.”

  “You got any more to this plan of yours?” he asks.

  “No. That’s about it so far.”

  Nimmo regards me for what seems like a very long time. I’m beginning to wonder if I’ve made a mistake in coming to him.

  “So you want to double-cross your mass-murderer boss,” he says carefully. “And you want me to help?”

  I shrug. I wish I had a good reason for him to do it, but I don’t. We’ve got each other out of a few holes, but he doesn’t owe me any favors—if anything, I owe him. He’s still looking at me. I have to remind myself that he generally doesn’t give a toss about other people’s problems. He is a professional thief, after all. But I trust him. If he won’t pitch in, at least I can count on him to keep his mouth shut.

  “Manikin and FX can’t know it’s me who’s helping you,” he says. “I don’t know them too well, so I don’t trust them.”

  “Okay.” I hesitate. “They won’t be happy, but I think I can make that work.”

  “Right then—tell me about it,” he says.

  I explain that we’ve been given this job to track down Jonathan Grodin so that Easy can use him to draw Jonny’s father, the Duke, out of hiding. Nimmo actually winces when he hears that the Duke’s testimony put Easy’s brother in prison. It’s not often you see him making any kind of expression.

  “Bloody hell, Easy’s vicious enough on a normal day. If you grassed up his brother …”

  “He said he was going to cut off the Duke’s arms and legs.”

  “Yeah, I’d say that was the all-sweetness-and-light version. Anyway, what else’ve you got?”

  “Okay, so we’ve found Jonny,” I go on. “FX is able to track his phone, so we pretty much know where he is all the time, and we can look back through the records for months too. That said, Jonny’s either really smart, or a complete flake; we can’t figure out which. Judging by the movements of his phone over the last month, he doesn’t keep any kind of routine. It doesn’t look like he has a job—we don’t know where he gets his money—and he spends a lot of nights away from where we think he’s living.”

  “Does he have a car?” Nimmo asks. “Motorbike?”

  “No,” I reply. “He seems to avoid owning anything that requires him to have ID. The phone is pre-pay too. So here’s the thing: we can stall for a bit, but sooner or later, we’ve got to bring it to Easy. We do that, and Jonny’s on the barbecue.”

  Nimmo is quiet for a while. Quieter than normal, I mean.

  “When you have to tell Easy you’ve found Jonny,” he says at last, “drop a hint that you think he’s still in contact with his dad. Easy might hold off doing anything immediately if he thinks there’s a chance you could find the Duke by trailing Jonny. But that’ll only work for so long. You need to give Jonny a proper scare—one that really puts the boot up his arse and sends him running. If he so much as stops to pack his toothbrush, Easy’ll have him.”

  “Yeah, I kind of figured that,” I say. “But how do we do it without
Easy getting suspicious?”

  “I reckon Jonny Grodin needs another enemy,” Nimmo adds. “Or his dad does. Someone to try and get to Jonny first. Easy’s trolls have to see it happen, to make him believe it. But it’ll need some serious timing.”

  I nod, but don’t say anything. The nerves are really starting to set in now.

  Nimmo regards me for a moment, and then adds: “You’ll need a gun.”

  “I’m not going to shoot anybody, Nimmo.”

  “That’s the whole idea,” he assures me. “Do you know someone who can get you a piece?”

  “The only people I know like that are Easy’s guys,” I tell him.

  “Really?” Nimmo looks surprised. “Nobody else?”

  “What can I say? I lead a sheltered life.”

  “I’ll have to get one for you,” he says, looking off into the distance. Then he glances back at me, and adds: “But you’re paying for it.”

  “That’s fair,” I reply.

  Chapter 5: The Written Word

  As Easy already told us, it’s Jonny’s birthday on Tuesday. His friends are throwing him a party on Saturday. From the chatter on MyFace, it’s going to be big … and a masked costume party at that. For the first time since finding him, we have advance notice of when and where he’s going to turn up. If we’re springing a fake surprise attack on him—with some of Easy’s trolls as witnesses—this might be our only chance. But it means setting him up to be snatched for real, with very little time to lay out our thing.

  Jonny spends his birthday mooching around town with one of his mates. Manikin and I are following him, while FX checks out the house where the party will take place. This is a little more awkward, because we should all be in school. None of us go—we just kind of educate ourselves along the way. Mani’s taller than me, and can look a lot older when she wants to, but I’m always nervous when I’m out on a weekday. The Safe-Guards can’t stop and question me, of course, but a copper might—if you ever saw them out on the streets anymore.