A Cold Killing (Rosie Gilmour)

Anna Smith

First published in Great Britain in 2015 by Quercus

This edition first published in 2015 by
Quercus Editions Ltd
55 Baker Street
7th Floor, South Block
London
W1U 8EW

Copyright © 2015 by Anna Smith

The moral right of Anna Smith to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Ebook ISBN 978 1 78429 118 1
Print ISBN 978 1 84866 429 6

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

You can find this and many other great books at:
www.quercusbooks.co.uk

The Dead Won’t Sleep

To Tell The Truth

Screams in the Dark

Betrayed

For Mary Myles – who fought the good fight.

‘To love and win is the best thing, to love and lose the next best . . .’

William M. Thackeray

London, King’s Cross, October 1999

Ruby Reilly didn’t look up as the waitress slammed the mug of coffee on the table, but she felt like getting up and punching her out. Just because Ruby had suggested she get off her mobile and take her order, the waitress had made sure she waited even longer. She clenched and unclenched her fists, trying to calm herself down. Don’t let your short fuse fuck everything up, she checked herself. She was wound up big time. No wonder. She’d never killed before. She wasn’t prepared for the range of emotions coursing through her. At first it had been total euphoria as she’d stood watching the house burn down – with that twisted bastard inside. Burnt to a crisp, he’d be. She’d even felt her face smile as she’d calmly walked away, got into her car and sped off into the night, adrenaline pumping her on as she hammered up the motorway and out of the Costa del Sol. Then, there was the dread that she might get caught. She’d been totally wired since, jumpy as hell, and even quicker to the red-mist rage than normal. But guilt? No chance.

The coldness of the ‘murder’ – because that’s how the cops would view it – wasn’t what made her nervous. Fuck that. She wasn’t about to start all that muesli-eating analysis shit, because the truth was, she’d waited long enough to do it. Most of her life, in fact. Killing the bastard was the good karma. The bad karma was that they were looking for her, and she’d disappeared off the face of the earth. She knew if they ever tracked her down, she’d attempt to dance her way out of it, say that she knew it was a hit and thought she was next by association, so she did a runner. But she wasn’t going to hang around for the old man’s heavies to turn up and start strong-arming answers from her. So she’d just kept on running – like she’d done all her life.

She drove for eight hours from the Costa del Sol, stopping only for a pee and petrol, till she reached the French border, where she holed up in a dreary motel for the night. Then she headed north for the Eurostar in Paris, abandoned the car at the hire place and smoked two fags one after the other before boarding as a foot passenger. And here she was, in a busy café round the corner from King’s Cross station, in the pissing rain, where every immigrant from Africa to Bombay usually pitched up, dreaming of a better life. Ruby was just hoping she’d come up with a plan for the rest of hers.

But first, she’d go to the care home and tell Judy. She sipped her coffee and smiled at the thought of seeing her sister, at the same time dreading hearing that there had been little progress since she last visited.

‘I’ve done it,’ she’d whisper in her ear. ‘He’s dead, Judy.’

She knew her sister would just sit there, her pale-blue eyes dead, the way they’d been for twenty-five years, her now frail frame motionless, and her skin grey and shadowy like a neglected statue. Catatonic, the specialists had said. Not brain dead in any medical sense – just in another world, and chances are she would never come out of it. She was just thirty-seven. Only Ruby knew their secret. Just the smallest blink of an eye from Judy had been response enough when she murmured to her a few months ago that the time had come. Still trapped inside the childhood trauma that had made her retreat to a silent world, her sister hadn’t spoken or moved her head, but she’d squeezed her hand. The memory brought tears to Ruby’s eyes, and she quickly brushed them away and sniffed. Man up, she told herself. It’s nearly over.

Two tables away, she watched two old guys deep in conversation. They looked quite distinguished, like they were somebody, Ruby thought, or they’d been somebody, long before they were the elegant older men they were now.

She was drawn to their conversation – intrigued at the way the really handsome one kept lowering his voice and leaning across conspiratorially. He was very good looking, his skin scrubbed and fresh, with the weathered tan of someone who spent his weekends on a yacht in a place where the sun was guaranteed. It was him she’d noticed when they first came in, the kind of upper-class confidence about him, he wore a crisp light-blue shirt, and his khaki trousers had a crease you could have shaved with. He was clearly in awe of his friend, like a blushing teenager finally on a date with the sixth-form heart-throb.

The other guy was much cooler, more like a journalist or an explorer than a posh boy. A mop of lush, sandy-coloured, wavy hair, greying at the temples, a cravat and brown corduroy trousers. Ruby could imagine him pontificating at a dinner party, an expert on every subject. But she also noticed how his mouth grew tight as their conversation became more intense. He leaned forward, sat back, sighed and from time to time ran his hands over his face in frustration as he shook his head. Ruby watched, intrigued by his angst.

She’d played games like this all her life, finding a kind of escapism in her vivid imagination, making up scenarios and scripts for complete strangers she encountered on buses and trains. It helped push away the shit that flooded her mind if she didn’t keep her head firing all the time.

Now she watched as the sandy-haired guy put his hand in the inside pocket of his quilted jacket and took out a padded envelope, sliding it across the table. She strained her ears, engrossed and thrilled that she could actually hear them.

‘They’re on to me, Gerard. I know they are,’ he whispered, shaking his head, ‘I’m not safe any more.’ He tapped the envelope. ‘But it’s all in here. Everything. All the bloody lies, the deceit. Queen and bloody country?’ He looked down at the table in disgust and was silent for a moment. ‘I’m doing it for Katya . . . Gerard, I never should have involved her. I should have known better.’

Ruby’s eyes darted from one to the other, captivated, as the posh man reached across the table and rested a comforting hand on his friend’s arm.

‘Oh, Tom. I’m so sorry. I do hate to see you like this.’ He lowered his voice and put the envelope in his inside pocket. ‘It’s safe with me. I won’t let you down. But you must get away.’ He bit the inside of his jaw. ‘Where will you go? Do you have a plan?’

Ruby was so fascinated she was almost pulling her chair nearer. She didn’t even notice that the four Eastern European men who’d been sitting on the adjacent table, wolfing down bowls of stew had got up and were leaving. She’d been watching them earlier, too, wondering which backwater or bleak town they’d come from, what promises they’d been made in order to up sticks and leave their homeland. They looked like the kind of muscle she’d seen surrounding the various Russian gangsters she’d come across on the Costa del Sol. Guys that would snap your neck with one hand. One of them was a looker, all high cheekbones and big soft lips, and she’d seen him checking her out when she’d come in, had been aware he was stealing little glances at her. That would be nothing new to Ruby. She was aware of her beauty and the power she had over men. Most of them were a walkover, full of shit. But she could never resist a new challenge. She looked up, but the hunky one didn’t look in her direction as all four of them walked past her table.

Then, suddenly, it happened. Two rapid gunshots. Not deafening, and obviously through a silencer, but Ruby instinctively dived below the table as the third shot was fired. But not before she caught a fleeting glimpse of the shocked expression on the old, sandy-haired guy’s face that split second when he became aware, too late, that the was gun pointed at him. It blew the back of his head open, an explosion of red against the bright-yellow shiny wall, and all hell broke loose. From under the table she saw him slump from his chair and slip down in a heap beside her, his eyes wide with shock. Then his friend dived across and knelt down, cradling his blood-soaked head in his hands, weeping, confused, hysterical. Two women with kids in pushchairs screamed in horror at the other table, and people ran from the back of the café to the front and then to the back, hiding, trying to make for the door, cowering in corners, some face down on the floor, waiting for the kind of massacre they’d seen played out on American television. The kitchen staff behind the open counter stood rooted as though they were watching it unfold on screen, and the stupid waitress was screeching and wailing as though it was her who’d been shot.

‘Get an ambulance! Hurry!’ the posh man screamed into the mayhem. ‘Oh, Tom! Please! Please stay with me!’ he sobbed, grabbing handfuls of paper napkins, trying to stem the well of blood gushing from his friend’s mouth.

As she crouched, Ruby’s eyes met his and she gave him a genuinely sympathetic look. Poor bastard.

‘Did you see them?’ he asked, his face contorted in abject misery.

Ruby shook her head slowly. She could hear sirens in the distance. She had to get out of here. Fast. She backed away, got to her feet, her eyes flicking around the room, taking in the chaos. And as she did, she was drawn to a piece of paper with something scribbled in pencil on the table where the assassins had sat. She snatched it like a thief and shoved it in her pocket as she bolted for the door.