Types of Darkness
Chapter One: Things We Do For Money
"Struggle again, and I'll snap your fucking neck in two," she said uncrossing her legs as she sat opposite the man.
It must have been quite galling for him to be so totally powerless and to a teenage girl as well. He was well on his way to being forty years old and she was no more than seventeen. Pretty, with freezing cold eyes that told him in no uncertain terms if he moved again and it threatened her, she would really kill him. His expensive suit was cut in various clever places, where the flesh was softest and where it would hurt the most. The soft unused skin of his underarms was cut to ribbons.
"Once again my dear, please tell me explicitly where it is," she said looking intently through her oddly dark hair at his bloody, bruised face. "The gun, where is it?"
"Gun?" he repeated. "I don't have any gun!"
"Sometimes I wish I was born ignorant too," she sighed. "Then I'd believe you and I'd have no more use for you or your annoyingly loud family. But I'm not ignorant. I know it's here, I just didn't want to waste time ripping through your son and daughter until you break. I thought you'd want to spare them."
"You won't kill them, you're just a girl."
She stood up, slowly as if she was in no hurry. She wore all black, boots that were obviously made for a man and the black gloves made him nervous. She sauntered over to where he was tied to the chair, his hands numb from the tight knots.
"You wish you believed that don't you? How we all pray for ignorance in the end. You wish to be ignorant of your family's demise. I won't allow it until you give me the gun. Your wife is already gone. See?" She opened a white pained closet and a body fell out with a soft thump to the floor. The man yelled out in a broken way. "Now tell me where it is."
He did not doubt anymore that his children would die unless he told her.
"There's a vault behind the Van Gogh in the office, the combination is written in the back of a book on the adjacent book shelf in Black Beauty," he said, head lowered.
"Well done, you did the right thing." She snapped his neck with a loud crack and walked calmly out of the room, stepping over the bodies of his already dead children that were propped up in the hallway.
The gun was there just as he said, the combination was correct from where it was hastily written on the last page of Black Beauty. In a box it sat, unloaded and utterly unexceptional. A simple, black KAHR K9 semi-automatic handgun.
But she was used to completely boring, unremarkable objects. To the individual person they were priceless. This gun belonged to a man who now lay upstairs dead as a doornail. He used it for private networks. When things got either personal or desperate. He had killed eight people with this gun two months ago. Three of them were relatives of Tony Giovanni, and no one messed with Giovanni. The guy upstairs was small time compared to him. It had been a lousy, messed up attempt to kill a rival of his, Giovanni's cousin - Robert. Now Robert and his family were dead and the gun that killed him was recovered as a memento. Giovanni liked mementos.
But in all honesty she wasn't the littlest bit interested in mob rivals, gang shootouts or anything except getting this gun back to where the ten grand was waiting for her. Then she could go to her room, have a bath, put a bandage on the stab wound in her arm that the gate security guard had given her before he died, and then she could finally get some sleep.
She was halfway out of the door when she heard a small, choked cry from upstairs. Frozen, the gun heavy in her inner jacket pocket, she strained her ears to hear it again. Nothing, but then….there it was again. Someone was alive. It sounded like one of the children.
Sighing with annoyance, she pulled out her knife from her boot and walked silently back up the polished wood steps. One child was where he should have been, but the other one was gone - a bloody puddle where she had sat.
"Damn," she said softly. "Little girl!"
Nothing, a silence to strain to be genuine. "It's the police! Are you alone? Is the killer with you?"
A small, muffled cry. The bathroom. She turned, uncaring if she was noisy now. Police women were not trained killers. They made noise. She put away the knife and entered the bathroom, where the trail of blood became more prominent. She wondered idly how the girl was still alive.
"It's okay!" she said when she saw the girl huddled up in the bathtub which was pooled with blood from her ribs. "It's all going to be fine. Are you hurt?"
The girl sniffled, not moving and being as silent as possible. Kids were hard to figure, thought the seventeen year old. There was a slim possibility that this was the child she got second after she crept into the room, the one who didn't see her face. Her twin brother looked so like her in the dark.
"Honey," she tried in her most soothing voice. "It's alright. Backup is on the way. Did you see the man who did this?" She reached down and put her hand on the girls' face, pondering if she knew how important her next answer was.
"No, he got away," she cried.
"Okay, it's okay. You'll live. This is only a puncture wound. I'm going to get you some bandages and see where my backup is okay? You stay here!" she said. The little girl nodded.
She left the room fast, hurried downstairs so it sounded like it was urgent and then she slowly and quietly opened the door and exited. When she was well shot of the house, she made a call from a payphone to 999 in a worried, Scottish accent that there was noise coming from the Ferrata's house. She let the phone drop without hanging up and walked away into the thick silent darkness.
"But Dad! It's stupid! None of the other kids have to have a bodyguard to go to school! I fell like a total prick!" shouted the young boy from the top of the elaborate and ornately carved staircase. "I hate it! I hate you!"
"Good, good," said his father neutrally wandering past without really hearing what his son had just said. "Did you do your homework?"
"No, I paid a hooker to do it and then we sex upside down!" he shouted down the stairs.
"Good, good."
Wishing he had something very heavy to throw at his father, Damon kicked the mahogany staircase with his Nike Air trainer. It hurt and he bit down on his lip so he wouldn't yell with pain at his broken toe. "Wanker," he muttered and stormed (albeit while limping) back to his room. He had football tomorrow, and now he had hurt his foot. "Perfect," he deadpanned. "Just..."
"Perfect," said Giovanni with a please smile. The gun in his hands might have well been his first born son for the way he was looking at it. "Perfect."
"They're all dead?" asked Giovanni's panicky associate, Graham. He liked people being very dead.
Usually she would take great pride in saying yes, but what if she lied and they saw it on the news - the little girl survived.
"Far as I could see," she said with what she hoped was enough attitude to prevent him from questioning anything else.
"Good, pay her Graham," she Giovanni fondling the run of the mill gun. Graham got out a box that looked like a nail file kit and opened it. Ten bundles of £1000. "Thank you for your services."
"Always a pleasure Mr. Giovanni," she replied automatically. She took the money and left.
He was out again, walking where no one would know who he was and if they did - they would rob and kill him. He hoped they would try, he hoped someone would recognize him and word would get back to his father. Damon could look after himself, but his father didn't know that. He didn't know how old he was, let alone his training.
But fate was unkind and the streets were empty. No one saw him with grim recognition, no one wanted to start some serious shit with him tonight. No one wanted to fuck him up tonight.
His proxy father was out and about, doing 'Business' as he called it. The brothels, the dealers and the sweatshops. No one in the Daily Mail wrote about that, they wrote about the Charity Donations and the clever stock marketing. Lucky that the people at the Daily Mail liked money. Everyone in this town was for sale. Everyone.
"New job," said John the moment she got in the door. "Some kid."
"I told you, I don't do kids," she said feeling immediately even more tired. "I need a bath."
"You can have a bath when you agree to the job," he said glancing over her body. "Who got your arm?"
"Bastard security guard. You didn't tell me there was a gate guard," she said flashing him a very annoyed look.
"I didn't know. My bad, anyway - new job. Not a killing thing," he said as though this was a rare treat. She rolled her eyes.
"What then?"
"A collection."
"You said it was a kid," she said, confused.
"It is. The order is for you to get the kid out into the open after you've got the Intel," he said picking up a heavy file and passing it to her.
"Intel?"
"They said security's too tight for a pro. They need someone they won't suspect. I told him it was our specialty," he said a pleased grin.
"Great, now fuck off. I don't do Intel."
Smack!
"You'll do as I say you little bitch!" he snarled. She didn't even put her hand to her face when the red mark was stinging.
She snatched the file and opened it. "This is him? You said it was a kid!"
"He's seventeen," he explained.
She gave him a nasty look; he obviously didn't see what he had implied.
"Fine. Set it up and I'll get in. How much?"
"Two hundred," he said. She blinked.
"Two hundred what?"
"Thousand," he said. He looked like he was about to burst out of his stubbly face with excitement.
"Why so much?" she asked. Thrilled as she was to be on the receiving end of such a lump sum, it made her unduly suspicious.
"I've heard the kid is a bastard," said Jack. She watched his face, it flickered with something unfamiliar. Worry?
"What's the way in?" she asked briskly.
"Deep cover. He's young, stupid and reckless. You two should get along fine."
"Fuck you," she said almost politely. "Work out an opening. I'll get him. Brief me in an hour, I need a bath," she said and passed the file back with her broken arm.