Chapter 53
Right now Mark Drury is feeling pretty pleased with himself. He has made it across both moats, and nobody is any the wiser. That’s one more moat than he has ever had to navigate before. He scratches his neck, just above the eagle tattoo.
He is as surprised as anyone to find himself back in the hitman game.
Mark had been going straight. Had given up his vices – the main vice being murdering people for a living, but he had also cut down on his vaping – and was settling into life in the City.
He was good at it. Not as good as he was at being a hitman, he’s very good at that, but good enough.
The key was to show no fear, and, as befits a man who has recently knifed a bodyguard to death in an Italian villa, then shot someone in broad daylight in Palm Springs, Mark has always had a very healthy relationship with fear.
It’s a new client, and a new opportunity to impress. Eriksson is the guy’s name. Jakob Eriksson. Swedish? Doesn’t really matter, he pays well.
He sees a car leaving the house. It’s the ex-cop, Steve. The ex-cop does not see him. And that’s what you get when you hire a professional.
Mark remembers those first few weeks at the brokerage, everything around him moving at speed, everyone running circles around him.
But he’d picked it up, just like he’d picked this game up years ago.
Knew his business after a couple of months, and a couple of years later was making good money.
He really thought he was set for life. He’d even taken Laura to Greece for a week, and thought his days of killing for a living were behind him.
How long had he gone without killing anyone? Must have been three years?
Then came AI.
At first it was fun, making pictures and little videos.
For a month or so it was making his job easier too.
Taking care of some of the boring stuff, some of the grunt work.
Numbers, invoices, the sort of thing Mark wasn’t all that good at.
Mark was good at the instinct stuff. At spotting something before his competitor.
But fast-forward another two months or so and it became clear that AI was better than Mark at the instinct stuff too. The AI could spot something before its competitor, and, he realized later than he should, its competitor was Mark himself.
So AI took his job, and now he’s in a ditch working out the best way to kill Vern Blackwood. Them’s the breaks. All Mark Drury knows for sure is that this is a job artificial intelligence can never take.
Shooting people for money and plumbing, they’re both future-proof.
Another vehicle makes its way down the long drive. Only a delivery though, a local off-licence. Third delivery this morning.
He’d heard about the first job, just over a week ago now, at his old gym in the City. This Eriksson was looking for someone to travel to a little town called Brockenhurst, track down a woman and give her a warning. Easy.
Did Mark know anyone? Yes, said Mark, feeling an old familiar feeling. I can do it. Have you ever done this sort of work before? Mark simply tapped the side of his nose. Leave it with me.
In the end he had improvised and given the woman’s husband a beating instead. Warning delivered. Worked a treat.
Yep, he’s got the skills to fall back on, and the money’s great.
More than he was on in the City, to be honest, and the hours are a lot better.
You never had to dig yourself into a grassy hollow and cover yourself with leaves when you worked in the City, but to all other intents and purposes this was the better job.
That’s if you are happy with killing somebody, and Mark is. Some people aren’t comfortable with killing strangers, and this wouldn’t be the gig for them. Honestly, people have asked him before, and that’s the advice Mark has given them.
He starts to clean his gun. It’s a Beretta 92FS, and he has always sworn by them.
It’s easy to get swayed by the branding when you’re buying a new gun, some guys he knows will use Heckler & Koch, but Mark Drury thinks you’re paying extra just for the name.
Some of the younger guys, the hipsters, will use a Glock or a Walther P22.
That’s up to them, of course. You have to go with whichever one speaks to you.
Is Mark himself future-proof, he wonders? He will find out soon enough. He knows above all that his value to this Mr Eriksson is that he’s completely expendable. Completely replaceable.
But Mark Drury has been replaced once, by a computer brain that could play the markets, and he’s not about to be replaced again, so he’s not going to disappoint Mr Eriksson. A steady job is more important than ever in this economy.
There have been cars coming in and out all morning.
He has names for most of the people currently inside.
There’re two bodyguards, Amy and Lee, there’s the woman from TV, Rosie thingy, there’s the ex-cop, Steve, who just left, and, of course, at the heart of it all, Vern Blackwood. Mr Eriksson wants him dead asap.
You can tell Eriksson is a pro, this new job came from a new phone, the money from a new account. Mark had asked a couple of gentle questions about the first three jobs, just to make sure he was talking to the same man. All checked out, Eriksson just making himself hard to trace, so here he is.
As if on cue, Rosie now drives away from the house. Open-top E-type Jag, very nice. If Vern was in the passenger seat, Mark could take an easy shot from here. But they’re keeping him all wrapped up, just as they should.
Mark now starts cleaning the suppressor, what the kids call a silencer, and this is where Mark has to admit he has succumbed a little to the marketing.
In the old days if he needed a suppressor, and you do have to keep things quiet sometimes, he had always gone with the Gemtech Lunar 9.
I mean, why wouldn’t you? It just works.
But tooling up for this job – where he definitely will need a silencer, there’s a house full of people here – he’s gone for a newer model, the Dead Air Ghost 9mm. I mean, how could he resist?
The house full of people is concerning Mark a little. If it wasn’t concerning him, he wouldn’t be doing his job properly.
It would have been a lot easier to kill Vern Blackwood in Italy the other day. No moats there. But who is Mark Drury to question Jakob Eriksson’s planning? He’ll have his reasons. Better to do what you’re told and take the money. Leave logical thinking to AI.
They say the New Forest is beautiful, but he’d seen so little of it when he was beating up that guy.
That was just a day trip. This time though, there’s a hotel.
He spent the night there last night and drove over here this morning.
The Hunter’s Rest, it’s called. Laura would have liked it if she was still around, but at roughly the same time his brokerage replaced him with an algorithm, Laura had replaced him with a padel coach called Franco.
He’s made himself fairly comfy for now. He’ll be here all day and all evening, unless an opportunity presents itself to nip in, take a shot, then nip out again.
The warm weather is helping. He’ll stay dug in till about midnight then head back to The Hunter’s Rest. He wonders if the bar will still be open.
To his left, Mark Drury hears a sound. He saw two foxes earlier. You’d think they’d be tucked up asleep by now, but they must have come back.