Bang: Memoirs of a Relationship Assassin Read online

  But you have to know this. I don’t mess with people in love. I know, I look like the hypocrisy poster boy now, but it’s true. If it’s for real – if I think I’m dealing with a couple who are still in love, or just one of them loves the other – I walk away. I won’t interfere with that. Not for any amount.

  Which leads me onto…

  Rule Two: Never work for a third party.

  In the Old Days, back before I came up with these Rules, I was a gun for hire. Anybody could use my services. Choose your target. Aim me. Fire.

  That was when I started realising what complete bastards people could be. Take my old client Mrs Samuels. She despised the man that her daughter had married, so she hired me to make a move on her. To seduce her own daughter! She knew damn well that when the jealous, aggressive husband spotted me flirting with his wife, it would send him over the edge. Got a free holiday out of that one, since I had to fly out to Greece to do the job. They were still on honeymoon, you see. Mrs Samuels didn’t want that marriage lasting any longer than it had to. So I killed it. All it took was a drunken snog with the blushing bride at the hotel bar. Bang. Job done. Her daughter flew home early with a black eye, courtesy of enraged husband. Back home to cry on mummy’s shoulder. I did warn you about him darling. There there.

  Never again. After that, I decided only the people in a relationship have the right to end it. Nobody else’s business. So the interfering mothers, protective fathers, jealous mates and all the rest of you can jog on. There’s the client, and there’s my target, and there’s me.

  Rule Three: Don’t disrupt the target’s life unnecessarily.

  This is just something that comes with experience. Old Days, bull in a china shop. I used to get far too deeply involved. The target’s friends and family would get to know me, even like me. Worse – I got to like them. Which meant I felt it when they got hit by the shrapnel, on the day I made the kill.

  Messy. And unfair. As I said in Rule Two, it’s got nothing to do with anyone except the target and the client. So nowadays I’m more discreet. Surgical. In and out, nice and neat.

  Well, all right, the Bentley-Foster case wasn’t exactly surgical…

  Rule Four: Walk away the instant the job’s done.

  This isn’t the same as Rule Three. This one means don’t linger. Don’t come back later and make sure you’ve done your job properly. Don’t give the target any opportunity to get in touch with you again.

  Don’t – no matter how much you’re tempted – try to make the target feel better afterwards. Like anonymously sending a bouquet of roses. Or leaving a huge stuffed toy of that cartoon figure that was your private symbol when you were together.

  Just don’t.

  Damn good rules. They’ve served me well, got me out of all kinds of trouble. Stopped me hurting people. Stopped me looking like a complete tit. And I stuck to the Rules for years.

  Until the Hargreaves case, when I broke every single one of them.

  Do I have the room of fellow confessors rapt? Or am I wandering round in a circle talking to myself? Is the confession booth empty or packed?

  This is weird for me. You have to understand that writing this down is so damn weird. I can’t tell people what I do for a living. With one exception, I never breathe a word about my missions to anyone. Secret agent. Nobody ever finds out. So writing about it, writing about me and my life, just feels wrong and strange. Half of me wants to really show off, tell my life story in juicy detail. The other half wants to delete every single word I’ve written, quick, before anybody sees it.

  I wonder if my Dad felt like this. He was a writer too, a novelist. Thrillers, spy stories, hitmen, kidnappings, underworld. That sort of thing really floated Dad’s boat – the house was full of dog-eared Ian Flemings and Tom Clancys and John le Carrés – which is probably why I’ve ended up loving the same sort of genre. He had a book of his own published in the Eighties. Nobody bought it. You can’t find it now, not even on Amazon or eBay… I’ve checked.

  After Dad was gone, Mum cleared out all the free copies he’d received from his publisher, as well as everything else he ever owned. It was almost an exorcism. To be honest, for a couple of years he’d almost been like a lodger anyway, squirreled away in the back room, barely speaking to anyone, getting more and more obsessed with his own writing. It was Mum who looked after me, brought me up pretty much single-handed. She never relied on my Dad to help, never stopped working, never complained. So once he was gone, it almost wasn’t that big a deal. A week later there was no trace of him or his book.

  Except for the one in my bedside cabinet.

  Oh, and then fun began! My Mum, who was only forty, suddenly discovered a second adolescence. It was like someone had flicked a switch and activated her, like she was a sleeper agent or something (I really did read far too much of that stuff). Out went the practical clothes and shopping lists, in came the make-up and short skirts. I suppose it’s quite comical, looking back on it, but you don’t see your own mother as a woman when you’re a kid. She’s just Mum. Suddenly she was very much a woman, and a woman off the leash. All she cared about was enjoying herself, going out and having a laugh.

  And by ‘having a laugh’, I mean ‘keeping half the estate awake by loudly having sex with the windows open at three in the morning’. I once made a joke about getting a revolving door put in her bedroom, and got a clip round the ear. Every week there was some new bloke sitting in the kitchen eating toast as I got ready for school. And at the weekends, I could always count on being woken up by the loud crash-bang-shh-giggle of pissed grown-ups, trying not to wake the kid as they stumbled back from the pub for a bit of how’s-your-father.

  Still, after a while, I got used to it. She reminded me that I was supposed to be trying to get laid, like every other fifteen year old boy.

  And so I did.

  Suddenly it was all so simple. Mum had made it simple. Sex wasn’t this hysterically funny thing you giggled about in the playground, or this messy, scary biology lesson that you couldn’t ever imagine happening to you. Sex was just sex. It was easy. It was a bit of crash-bang-shh-giggle late at night. Nothing special.

  Mum had done something else. She’d changed herself, overnight. Fed up with playing the role of dull housewife, she’d reinvented herself as a good-time girl, as the life and soul of the party. She turned herself into someone new. Why couldn’t I do the same thing? Why couldn’t I change into what the girls wanted?

  This, looking back on it, was when I first started going undercover. At fifteen, I was a bit of a scally. Tracksuit, hoodie, cigarettes, bike. Hanging out on the estate with my mates, bored as hell, talking about girls, not getting within ten yards of any. But then I realised I could change, like Mum, and play the part of someone else – a cooler, sexier, more confident me. Clothes. Hairstyle. The way I walked, the way I talked. All new.

  Nowadays, changing into somebody else is part of the job. The only way to get close to a target is to turn myself into someone they’re attracted to. And since everyone’s attracted to different types, I have to find out what that is and adjust my looks and behaviour to match. Simon Templar was nothing like me, but he was just the kind of smoothie that pushed Amanda’s buttons.

  He was a mask. I’ve worn dozens of them. All the men I’ve pretended to be, to get close to a target: funny men, cool men, aggressive men, impulsive men, intelligent men… professionals, students, businessmen, plumbers, police officers… salt of the earth workers, well-to-do middle class types, distant cousins of royalty… I’ve been them all. It’s second nature now, but back then it was a revelation, that I could just change myself so easily.

  So I turned into this new kid and started asking girls outright if they’d like to try having sex. They started saying, well… all right then.

  You might think that at fifteen I was playing hide-the-sausage every other day. A lot of my mates were. I’d never had the confidence to go for it the way some lads at school did, or the older boys from the sixth form coll
ege up the road (those guys were the real catch for any teenage girl). But now I realised it wasn’t about confidence as such. You just had to not give a shit. Like you could get it anywhere, so who cares if she says no? Take a drag on your cigarette and shrug. No big deal either way.

  Works a treat.

  I guess I have my mother to thank for this way of thinking. She calmed down a lot after a year or so, maybe having got it out of her system, and accepted that the woman in the mirror was her after all. My looks seemed to kick in about then too. At the time, I genuinely believed I was becoming better-looking purely because I was getting some! In 1996, I was just another scrawny, spotty kid. When I left school in 1997, you wouldn’t have recognised me. But you’d have noticed me.

  One difference. Mum had sex for fun. After the first few times, I usually did it for a reason. For me, it was even more fun if I got something out of it. There was always some small favour a girl could do. Letting me copy her coursework answers. Lending me that new album. Little things like that. Just knowing I was getting something out of it always gave me a real boost. It meant I could pretty much get it on with anyone, no matter what they looked like. That helped with a lot of girls – the fact that you didn’t need to be the prettiest popstar-wannabe in school to get a fit lad like me. Who had the time to go hang around the sixth form anyway? Not if you could find it closer to home.

  And you know what? You’d be surprised how popular you become in a comprehensive school, once the whispers go out across playground and classroom and assembly hall. That nobody would ever be turned away.

  Nobody at all.

  I always imagine the therapist seizing on this little story. Smiles around the room as the counselling session veers onto familiar territory. A silent nod on the other side of the confessional box, feeling I could now be blessed with forgiveness. With a childhood like that, no wonder he does what he does. Blame the parents!

  I really am their child, in many ways. Did you think I was a bastard?

  My name is Scott Rowley, and I am not in counselling. I’m not going for confession, either. I’m on my way to see my agent about a new mission. And I’m late.

  So keep up.

  Chapter 3

  Infidelity Ltd

  I stepped out of the stretch limo. Strolled through the glass mezzanine and took the express elevator to the penthouse office suite. At the top of Assassin Towers, with the whole of London sprawled out beneath me, I sat down behind my mahogany desk and voice-activated my phone.

  Get me the Munich office, I told my secretary. Then send the Asia-Pacific regional director our quarterly targets. Tell him if he doesn’t clinch that Tokyo deal by Friday, I’ll have his balls skewered in satay sauce. And get me a double espresso!

  Oh, I wish.

  There was something about that particular dogshit-littered back-alley in Hackney that always made me feel like I was in a movie about the end of the world, and that Monday morning was no different. I kicked litter aside, my footsteps bouncing back at me off the crumbling brick walls. After the bomb. Last man on Earth. There wasn’t a double espresso for miles, and if there was, it was probably the religious artefact of a tribe of deformed bike-riding punk mutants or something…

  But a few places still showed signs of life. The large red-brick building I arrived at was owned by a printing firm. ‘Somebody-Or-Other and Sons, est. since 1892’, that kind of place. The ground floor was taken up with massive, black-iron printing presses that usually just sat there, silent, waiting for work. The days of paper were coming to an end, thanks to all the eBooks and iPods and aHoles these days. So the owners rented out the upper floors to small businesses. When I say small, I mean small. One-bloke-and-a-computer small.

  And up there, sad to say, is where you’ll find Assassin Towers.

  Second floor, third on the left. Stained carpet, peeling wallpaper, rusty door hinges, that weird mouldy smell. Classy. What this place needs, I thought, is a Miss Moneypenny, flirting outrageously with me the second I walk in.

  Instead what I got, rolling out like a peal of thunder, was a loud trumpeting fart.

  That’s my agent. You’re going to love him.

  Barry launched into a coughing fit as I walked in. Probably brought on by inhaling his own arse-burp. He got louder and louder, so bad he could only wave at me as he started turning purple. Don’t bother with the Heimlich Manoeuvre just yet, though… this happens all the time. He didn’t bother covering his mouth or anything, just hacked and spluttered right into the middle of the room with enough force to rupture a lesser man.

  But not a tough nut like Barry O’Nion.

  Yes, that’s his real name! It didn’t hit me at first, because of the way he said it. When he answers his mobile he growls “Oh-NY-on!” It was when he gave me his business card, back in the Old Days, that I realised I had a vegetable for an agent. I’ve no idea if it’s a common surname in Northern Ireland or not, but first time I saw it written down, I just wet myself laughing. Barry O’Nion – brings tears to your eyes.

  Barry was a stocky, tough-looking bloke in his late forties. Bullet head. Tiny sunken eyes. Forearms that really needed tattoos on them. The sort of guy who could easily have been a bouncer in his younger days. Except if he’d ever tried to throw somebody out, he’d probably end up tripping over them. He’s not exactly accident-prone, just all fingers and thumbs. Let’s just say that when he plays darts in the pub, the regulars know not to lean against the wall.

  The telephone on his desk rang. Barry hawked up a mouthful of phlegm and gobbed it in his wastepaper bin. A gurgling hack to clear his throat, then he snatched up the phone, dropped it with clunk, fumbled with it like it was made of jelly, then it was finally at his ear.

  “Infidelity Ltd,” he said smoothly. “Ah, Mr er, ‘Smith’ isn’t it? Yes we got your details, thanks very much. Yes, the photos of your wife came out well… just a shame she wasn’t actually having an affair with her colleague after all, but don’t worry, we can fix that for you…”

  As Barry talked, I took out my mobile phone and went over to a small cabinet on the wall. Inside were a dozen brand new SIM cards still in their packaging, dangling from hooks. I plucked the next one in line, texted the phone number on it to a few people, unwrapped it, inserted it into my phone. New number for me. New number for each mission. The old SIM card, with all the texts and voice messages from Amanda Bentley-Foster, clunked inside Barry’s bin, making him jump.

  Pinned up on the wall next to the SIM cabinet was a huge map of the UK, with large dots marked in red felt tip. Over twenty around London. Half a dozen in Manchester. Others in Newcastle, Cambridge, Southampton, a few in the Home Counties. It almost looked like the country had been shot by a submachine gun. Riddled with the bullet-holes of my past cases. I picked up the felt pen and circled a red dot in Wiltshire, a new little gunshot wound where I guessed Amanda’s village might be. Smirked a bit when I realised I was shooting up Arse-End. Honestly, grow up Scott!

  Barry was still talking. Bit tough on the old sod, pretending to be an entire company by himself. Maybe I could lend a hand.

  “Well, Mr Smith, I’m sure – ”

  “Call on line four!” I shouted from the middle of the room. Barry glared at me, but recovered.

  “I’m sure that in this particular case, we can – ”

  “Somebody get that bloody phone! Can’t you see I’m busy!”

  “– We can approve a request for a ten per cent – ”

  “Have your people fax our people!”

  “– Ten per cent discount, yes that’s fine, so we’ll – ”

  “For God’s sake, I told you DOUBLE espresso! You’re fired!”

  “– We’ll be in touch, Mr Smith, thank you, goodbye!”

  Barry slammed the phone down, just as I started demanding some executive relief from my secretary. “Scott! For frig’s sake, what are you doing!”

  “It’s a busy day!” I waved my arms. “What can I do! It’s a madhouse in here!”

  �
�You silly bugger, you’ve probably scared him off! That’s a new client you’ve just lost there!”

  “Nah, chill out. He’ll be back.” I heaved myself up onto the end of Barry’s desk. “Anyone who calls themselves ‘Mr Smith’ obviously has something to hide. Don’t worry about it.”

  Barry grumbled as he updated Mr Smith’s file on his PC. I watched his stubby fingers slam down on the keyboard like sausages fired out of a gun. To cheer him up, I told him how the Bentley-Foster case was a complete success.

  “Hmmph, yes, I worked that out for myself,” he huff-puffed. “Got confirmation from the bank this morning. Transfer of funds from your man’s company.”

  “So Bob’s paid up!”

  “Yeah, I’ve already transferred it to our accounts. Should be in yours by tomorrow.”

  “Good old Bob. He did look pleased.”

  “Not so pleased that he gave us a bonus.” Barry started unwrapping a Scotch egg on his desk. “Just the flat rate, not a penny more. That’s how these corporate types get so rich, you know, by stiffing the little people. Bet he squeaks when he walks.”

  I shrugged, thinking that our bonus was probably going towards repairing his Mercedes. Not that Barry needed to know that particular detail. The knowledge wouldn’t make him happy. Besides, it was worth the money for the memory.

  “I brought the suit back.” I gestured to the beige Saville Row suit, hanging up on the doorframe covered in plastic. “And I was thinking, why don’t we just buy it, rather than hire it out every time?”

  Barry chomped on his Scotch egg. “Thuf suths uhrn’t cheep, yuh knuhw.”

  “Yeah but this is, what, the fourth time I’ve worn the same suit? False economy there, surely.”