16th February 2018

  Martin held the card up to the entry lock and slid through the door. The surveilnce crew had sent a message stating the target’s st known position was ‘stepping into the bath’. Nicely specific. That should make things delightfully simple. A couple of quick wrist sshes. The suicide note typed out on the already compromised computer. Five minutes in-and-out. Maybe ten minutes tops, just to be certain. As Martin stepped into the empty lift, slotting the control key home to make the journey non-stop, he envisaged the rest of his evening pying out.

  He’d bought himself a 2015 bottle of Tenuta San Guido, and was enjoying the prospect of a quiet night, sipping on his Sassicaia. Perhaps reading the copy of Piotr Hoffman he’d taken from a previous recipient of his skills before burning the house it came from, along with its now deceased occupants, to the ground. It was nice to get a memento mori, but usually he didn’t have the chance. Tonight was another one where he’d just be storing the details away in his memory for ter review. Watching the floor counter climb, he slipped the lift back into its normal mode just before the doors opened to reveal a conveniently empty liminal space. It was one of those pces that was really a hallway, but dressed up with a table and flowers so that the denizens of the building could feel superior to the proles. But it was still just a pce to stand while you unlocked your door, or waited for the lift.

  He reminded himself that the cameras were off, that the team were highly skilled and had reported successful security intrusion hours ago. The idea of relying on others for this information was discomforting, but Johnson had told him he needed to log more time working with teams as some of the upcoming work would require them. This was just the first of many, so better get used to it.

  At this level of wealth there were only a couple of apartments per floor, so the chances of running into anyone were slim. But it was always preferable to be completely unobserved, rather than just very forgettable. He checked the phone one st time before entry. No new location updates – excellent. With the yout of the ft in the back of his mind he tapped the keycard against the door pad. Modern locks were so annoyingly noisy, he thought as it whirred and clunked to itself. Another experience robbed from us by technology: the pleasure of picking a lock and silently entering. Martin checked that his knife was safely sheathed and opened the door. The apartment’s foyer was clear and Martin stepped through the door, quietly confident.

  Martin heard the click of a gun’s action and the quiet crack as someone fired a small silenced weapon. He dived through the door into the main living room, but just a little too te. A sudden burning pain bloomed in his thigh. It was exhirating. A quick check tells him it was a through-and-through that had missed the bone. Walking – even running – was still possible.

  Bringing about someone’s demise could be so thrilling.

  The thunk of the third bullet entering the door frame reminded Martin to move. Tucking into the space next to the door he quickly checked the bleeding – not as much as it could be. He decided he’d worry about that ter. He needed to regain control of this situation, and fast. There should only have been one person in the apartment – in a bath down the long hallway. Martin slid a small mirror from his pocket and used it to look into the reception area. Well, at least it was his intended victim.

  His target stood, nonchantly leaning against the wall, gun pointed levelly at the door that Martin just dived through.

  Another shot. A vase behind Martin shattered and colpsed. The bullet thunked into the wall. Exhirating or not, this was going to be such a pain to clear up.

  “Johnson sent you, didn’t he?” The voice was quiet but steady, rexed even.

  Martin knew better than to get involved in conversations in these situations, except where the distraction served him. And this felt like a dey intended to serve his victim. Martin slipped the knife from its holster. The man was exposed, but the gun was going to make this more complicated. Martin quickly slid around the room until he had a better angle. The knife flew true, but his victim dodged. If he hadn’t there wouldn’t have been so much screaming. There wouldn’t have been any screaming.

  Most unfortunate.

  Martin sighed, checked his target’s position and prepared to step out into the hall. He was sprawled on the floor, but the gun was still trained on the door, damnit. At least he had the good manners to be trembling somewhat. And the pool of blood that was forming suggested that despite the dodge, Martin’s bde had nded near its target.

  A knock on the door broke the standoff.

  A loud, plummy voice made its way through.“Could you please keep it down? Some of us are trying to watch The Lakes. I know you do like your te night parties but this smashing things is really too much.”

  “Oh I’m so sorry! Quite unfortunately, I knocked over one of my wife’s vases and it does seem that the pieces have gone everywhere.” Astonishingly he managed a clear voice. “And I do seem to have cut my foot slightly so I’m just dealing with that. But I shall endeavour to clean it up quietly as soon as possible, Mr Beauchamp.”

  “See that you do.” The response is followed by the tapping of footsteps and the chime of the lift.

  “Lives below me, you know. Quite the stickler for decorum. I imagine he’ll compin to the manager regardless.” The quiet whisper felt as though he was, quite bizarrely, taking Martin into his confidence. The evening had taken on a slightly surreal nature. “As I was saying, I know that Johnson sent you. We need to– ”

  Martin waited until he heard the lift door closing before he threw the second knife. This one found its mark. Martin heard another thunk as the gun fired one st time, but the man couldn’t scream, and his breathing already was weak and boured. He just needed to wait a few moments for him to die. Dispiriting that he couldn’t be closer to feel that st breath. Martin checked his leg again. Still not a huge amount of blood. Good. He’d have to see medical when he got back to the office though, which was, frankly, embarrassing. Although this whole thing was going to be embarrassing to expin, even as it stood.

  He clicked on the hall light.

  “Oh for goodness sake.” he muttered under his breath.

  It was a white carpet. Of course it was a white carpet.

  Well, it was a white carpet.

  He’d have to get a clean up crew in here. It’d been years since he’d needed to do that. This was rapidly becoming a farce. Grabbing an emergency foil bnket from his pocket, and a towel from the bathroom, he quickly wrapped the body to stop any more leakage. Just as he’d finished his phone buzzed, and a quick gnce revealed his day had got infinitely worse. The victim’s family had returned far, far earlier than expected. They were pulling into the garage. The surveilnce crew’s unhelpful note suggesting they assumed someone from the family had forgotten something.

  Thankfully, even without his intervention, the surveilnce and infiltration team had disabled both lifts. Rapidly he dragged the body up the hall and dumped it unceremoniously into the bath, shutting the door on his way back out. Yanking a rug from a bedroom, he threw it across the worst of the blood. A wipe of the wall where he fell and it looked less like the murder scene it was.

  Finally he grabbed the gun off the floor. A quick check – he had 11 bullets left. Plenty, assuming nothing else goes wrong – which definitely wasn’t a given at this point. He flicked the lights off in the hall and then, seeing the fuse panel, flicked off the RCDs for the entire apartment too. Martin positioned himself in the living room, gun pointing at where he estimated they would stand on entry.

  Signalling the crew downstairs to re-enable the lift he settled in to wait.

  Thankfully the very short list of things going well got slightly longer on their arrival. Three quick headshots while they were still discussing why the lights weren’t working and stumbling around in the dark. Although there should only have been the wife and child. Martin sighs again, deeply. Why wasn’t he warned about a third person?

  Who the hell was on the surveilnce team? Johnson advised Martin on the best people to pick for each role. If this was the best Liberty had to offer, they were completely rogered. Flicking on the lights, he quickly examined the unknown woman’s driving licence. He passed the information back to the team to check how much of a problem this was, although he wasn’t sure he’d trust their response.

  This was going to be so much to clean up.

  “This is what happens when you trust others.” he intoned quietly to one of the bodies with disdain.

  He started prepping to move bodies – it was going to have to be a vehicle collision. With a lot of intrusion into the vehicle. And a fire. Covering up all the gunshot and stab wounds would be difficult - he’d have to stage some sort of falling structural component.

  Let’s be honest, he thought to himself, there’s just not time.

  He stacked the bodies by the door and messaged the team: Laundry service required.

  He’d never, ever live this down.

  –

  The gate was being held open by the infiltration crew. Martin backed the car rapidly through, reverse gear wailing uncomfortably loudly at speed. The Citro?n would soon be a mixture of soot and ash grey, identifying marks removed, and then burned, but for the moment the metallic paint glinted upsettingly brightly in the car park’s fluorescent gre. He signalled then watched as the metal barrier cttered back into pce. They’d already moved the Range Rover which, apparently, the family obnoxiously left running in the gated carpark. Now it was sat conveniently close to the lift so that the bodies could slip straight in.

  In his mind he was tempted to re-run events for a thousandth time, but there was no point. He sighed again as he backed into a space, leaving plenty of room for loading. He pulled the rge pelican case from the boot, annoyance bubbling at the pain in his leg. A full cleanup crew was on the way but he could start clearing up some of the blood and at least identify where the bullets went. Smming the hatchback down with a little more force than was truly necessary, he limped across to the waiting lift, using the pelican case as an improvised zimmer frame.

  His phone delivered more bad news as he walked into the apartment. Not only was the extraneous victim completely unreted, she was a well-known columnist for The Times. Perfect, this couldn’t be any worse. There was no-way to expin the original target suddenly deciding to kill both his family and a random friend. Wrong pce, wrong time. It would make this even more suspicious than it already was. She’d have to have an entirely separate incident somewhere else. Ideally one where she wouldn’t be found for a while. The complexity of the clean up just kept increasing.

  Already, the family’s autopsy reports were going to have to be shunted to one of the organisation’s paid-for coroners. This would add another coroner case in another county. It was beyond ridiculous. Martin took a moment to centre himself. There was no way this wasn’t going to completely screw his career.

  And something, quietly scratching the back of his head, told him that it might have been intentional.