Seven Daze
Caffeine Nights Publishing
Seven Daze
Charlie Wade
Fiction aimed at the heart
and the head...
Published by Caffeine Nights Publishing 2013
Copyright © Charlie Wade 2013
Charlie Wade has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1998 to be identified as the author of this work.
CONDITIONS OF SALE
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, scanning, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the Publisher.
This book has been sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.
Published in Great Britain by Caffeine Nights Publishing www.caffeine-nights.com
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: 978-1-907565-40-3
Cover design by
Mark (Wills) Williams Everything else by
Default, Luck and Accident
Acknowledgements
It would be impossible to name everyone who has helped or encouraged over the years, so I’ll give a general thank you to everyone. However, special thanks go to Karen, Nick Quantrill, ‘H’ and Darren at Caffeine Nights.
Seven Daze
Jim looked again. They didn’t look like killer’s eyes. Brown surrounded by bloodshot white. Pale eyelids that flickered. Shifty, nervous as hell. Yeah, they were hiding something; something dark. But they weren’t killer’s eyes.
He turned from the mirror. The bedside clock still read six fifty-five a.m. It hadn’t changed since his last look. He briefly wondered if it was broke, but digital clocks didn’t freeze or go slow. When they break, the display just blanks.
Moving, he sat on the hotel bed. Bouncy. Springs long gone from illicit overuse and age. He knew he shouldn’t be feeling like this. It was the first day of his new job for fucks sake. He should be happy. It definitely shouldn’t have made him throw up. After all, it was the chance to meet new people. The start of a new adventure.
He wondered if that was the problem with contract killing. The only new people you met, you killed. The display changed. Six fifty-six. Waiting was the problem. No one had mentioned that. It was all glamour, high risk and money. He’d spent last night checking and double checking everything. In hindsight that had been a mistake. There was nothing left to do but wait. Just clock-watching, daydreaming and waiting.
His stomach gurgled. That wasn’t helping either. God knows what muscle it was, but it had perfected twisting and spinning. He looked back at the clock. No change. Should he leave now? Despite all the planning, maybe something had been missed.
There was the other reason too. It kept filling his head. The room was too small. Walls everywhere; you couldn’t walk without being next to one. It reminded him of the cell. Occasionally the walls would creep in and pin him to the bed. First his hands, then his face would feel hot. He’d need to stand. Opening a window didn’t help. He had to get out.
Standing, he shook his head. He had to get a grip. Walking the four steps to the bathroom, he took the top off the toilet cistern. Fishing out the floating polythene zip-bag, he dried it with a towel. His gloved hands fumbled with the seal before it opened. He breathed out while looking at its contents. A pistol wrapped in another waterproof layer. This was it; no turning back.
His hands hacked at the sellotaped seam. The gloves were useless; fingers and thumbs worked against each other trying to rip it. The seam wasn’t giving. All that planning and he couldn’t unwrap the gun. The walls moved in again. The heat came back with a vengeance to his neck. His armpits felt wet. So much for the earlier shower. The hotel room was just like the cell. Even the windows had bars. It was too much. That was where this had started. That cell.
He’d been inside many times. The last stretch was never the last. It was never his fault though. He’d just been unlucky. His home life hadn’t been easy, but that wasn’t an excuse. Maybe he’d been too greedy. When the older kids on the estate asked him to sell cigarettes at school, he just hadn’t thought it through.
Of course it spiralled. Cigarettes became other things: electrical goods, phones, whatever needed getting rid of. Not just to schoolkids either. After being caught, he didn’t take the hint and stop. When school ended, his criminal record saw no other options existed. The only option was to keep selling stolen goods. Caught again and again, he did a stretch in a Young Offenders that turned him from borderline scally to hardened criminal. Release was followed by all he knew: selling stolen goods and more prison.
A lucky break was needed to end the circle.
Picking at the tape he found a seam and peeled. The clock now two minutes to seven, he panicked. This had set him back. It was going to go wrong.
Cursing, he peeled some more. The worst of the tape gone, it rolled off like a banana. The gun exposed, he checked the barrel and silencer; just as he’d wrapped them last week. Though the ammo clip was wrapped, he made short work of it. Snapping the clip home gave a satisfying click. Holding it, he looked in the mirror. For a moment he barely recognised the suited gun-wielder staring back.
The suit looked good. Off the shelf, but still the best he’d ever worn. This was London after all, and he needed to fit in. He looked up the mirror towards his face. His eyes shifty and uncomfortable. Out of their depth. He’d seen enough killers inside to know what their eyes looked like. He looked at them again. Still a touch of innocence. He tried to remember the look; he might not see it again.
As breaks go, Jim wasn’t sure if his was lucky or not. His cell mate for the past two years, “Fingers Harry”, had changed his life. He didn’t know if it was for better or worse.
Despite his size and short-fused temper, Fingers Harry had become a close friend. Jim assumed Harry was missing his son who was destined to grow up fatherless during his twenty-five stretch. Harry had a way of glamourising his life that Jim could listen to for hours. His tales of scrapes kept their spirits up during those lonely nights.
It was that cell and Fingers Harry that changed his life. Gave him his break.
One minute to seven. Jim slipped the gun’s safety on and placed it on the bed. Picking up his new shoes he squeezed in his feet. Either his feet had swollen or the shoes had shrunk. Pulling on his coat, the stickiness returned. A thick coat in summer, he’d stand out a mile but he needed the bulk. The gun needed to be hidden inside the bulk. Placing the gun in his pocket, he fastened the coat and walked to the mirror. Did it show through the coat? Was there an outline, a bulge just above his stomach? He closed his eyes and told himself he’d been through this before. The gun couldn’t be seen. There wasn’t a bulge. His brain was playing tricks.
He told himself again, no one will notice the gun.
Throughout the stretch, Fingers Harry hadn’t been happy. One of Harry’s relatives had gone down because of a witness. This plucky member of the public had refused to be scared, intimidated or bought off. This, according to Harry, was a very poor show. “After all, what would happen if everyone witnessed crimes and all the criminals were locked up?” Harry would say. “Anarchy, that’s what it’d be.”
During the lonely nights, Harry wanted one thing: the witness’s head. A contract went out and when some lag took the job Jim was amazed by the amount of money. Ten grand. Ten big ones for a few minutes work. Sure, it involved killing, but from what Jim had heard, it was no great loss; the witness would have drunk himself to death anyway. Rumours abounded he hadn’t witnessed anything; a bent copper had paid him to lie.
Contract killing seemed so easy.
The clock flicked to seven. He checked his pocket for the keys and money he’d placed there last night. Still there. One last look in the mirror at the suit bulge and he felt ready.
“Gun, keys, money, phone.”
Shit. Phone.
He looked at the cabinet crammed between the bed and wall. Sat atop it, next to brochures for museums he’d never visit, was the Pay As You Go mobile. He grabbed and pocketed it.
“Gun, keys, money, phone.”
Two deep breaths later, he opened the door.
Over the months, Harry had taught him about contract killing. He’d made it sound so glamorous. On Jim’s release he was given a contact, “Pistol Pete”, who lived in the Scottish Highlands. Arriving in the northern wastes of nowhere, Jim quickly learnt there was no youth training scheme or apprenticeship for contract killers. All you have is what comes from inside and what you learn on the job. Previous experience wasn’t essential, but useful. Jim hadn’t killed anyone, but he quickly talked himself into it. After all, how hard could it be? It only took a second.