Polokov shakes and shakes when he sees it, he’s not even holding the gun pointing at me now, he’s too disturbed.  I move towards him cautiously, and then rapidly as his eyes turn up in his head.  The gun drops and I catch it, placing it on the ground immediately so that it doesn’t go off, and I can catch him.  He’s a limp mass and I can’t hold him, but I lower him to the ground as gently as I can.  He is shaking and foaming, I’m not sure what is wrong with him, but I can see that he’s in a bad way.

It’s a vigil, and too near the, doll, but I stay paying attention to him, avoiding looking in the table’s reflective surface.  He calms after a while and his eyes look fairly normal.  I’m not sure what has caused this fit, and I can do nothing about it.  His breathing eases, and he slips into what seems to me to be a normal sleep.  I don’t know how much time has passed, but I’m thirsty, that’s a bad sign.

Polokov wakes and I discover than I have been dozing on the floor by him.  He is sitting up by the time I come to, and he looks at the gun, discarded only inches away from his hand.  He picks it up by the barrel and hands it to me.

“Here,” he looks ashamed, I think, of his behaviour, “For you, you are more rational than I am it seems.”  He starts to get to his feet.  ”You took care of me.   I appreciate it.”  I nod, and he reaches down to me.  I swap the gun from hand to hand, and take his, it’s the first thing resembling a handshake I’ve had in years.  I don’t generally touch people if I can help it.

It strikes me that his hand is warm, yielding but strong, I had forgotten how strong people can be.  I write about emotions and relationships, but I have not known the touch of others.  I have avoided it.  It is a guilt.

I kill people for a living.

The grotesque doll is still lying there, how we have come in a circle is a matter for some debate, but I assume we have, other possibilities are too complex to contemplate.  The fact remains however, that we are lost in this place.

“You should walk some distance away, and we can asses how big this place is.  You think you can manage that?”

“I can do that.”  he says, accent thickening.  Without another word he walks off.  Perspective is warped, I should be able to see him for a long time, but within thirty places or so he becomes a speck and disappears.

“Polokov!” I shout.  He answers from behind me, I jump.

“There is no need to shout friend.  I seem to have gotten turned around again.”  I look at him.  I would have seen him turn, I’m sure of it.

“No, Polokov.  This is an impossible place.”

“How can that be, we are in it?”  I think for a moment.

“I will walk backwards and look at you, you will see.”

“What will I see?  A man falling over when he misses a step?”

“No, watch.”  I turn and start walking backwards.  Polokov just looks at me, I point with two fingers to my eyes and to him, and he nods.  The perspective trick happens again, and just as I lose sight of him, I bump into something.  A second of terror forms in me, and Polokov catches me as I fall.  I curse and curse and curse, and Polokov waits for me to finish venting my frustration and not a little fear.

“This is an impossible place.”  I say it, eventually, without emotion.

“Yes.” He says, “Impossible.”  And somehow he has the gun, and I cannot move quickly enough as he raises it to his head, and shoots himself.

…

There is no body, no blood this time, I am alone.  And no gun either, I cannot escape like that.  Polokov is gone, with nothing to say that he has been here.  I look around the whiteness.  I’m thirsty.

The table is still there, and I go to look in it, the shiny surface reflecting me for a brief second, and the as I blink, not me.  She’s there again.  There is nothing else there in he image, and when I look around, the hideous flesh doll is gone, and this little perspective is lost to me, apart from the table and her, there is nothing here and all is white with the world.

I miss Polokov already, but I think that I am dreaming, and this knowledge, or belief, finally is a revelation for me.  It is like a wave of consciousness, and as I look into the reflection in the table I see she has had the same revelation, and I nod and smile as does she.  It is a moment of clarity.

The light diminishes and I see  a darkness coming from all sides as the ceiling lights go out.  I’m at peace, for now, and the girl and I wave at each other with exactly the same gestures, the same smile, the same shrug of our shoulders, and the lights finally come to be just the one, which goes out.

__________________________

I wake up in the hospital.  Polokov is there, sitting in a chair, dozing, but he becomes instantly alert as I move.

“So, you’re real.” I say weakly, “you escaped.”  He nods, and opens his jacket a little to reveal a small handgun with a silencer.  He speaks, his accent much more pronounced in what I assume is the real world.

“I have been sent to kill you.”  He says quietly, “but you have been in my dream, or I have been in yours.  I waited for you there for a long time you know.  Years.  Fortunately I am not a complicated man.  Still, I was mad when you found me.  Mad.  I am not sure I am not mad now.  I have been sent to kill you, but I cannot.  It would kill her I’m sure, and we have a higher purpose now.  I must run, my friend, so that I live for that purpose.”  He holds his hand out.  ”You saved me.  You are my brother.”  I look at him, not entirely understanding, but one thing I do understand.

I say with a dry throat…

“Run, my brother.  Run.”

[more]

“Well well.”  I say, “This is the most normal thing that has happened in the last, I don’t know, long enough for me to be out of hospital.”

There is a gesture, with the gun, away from the, the doll thing.  I get a chance to look at him.  He’s wearing a suit, he looks like he’s preparing for a job interview at an undertakers.  The suit is black, like midnight; the shirt is tailored in one of the rapid tailoring places in HK, the stitch count is off, but the suit is pure Saville row.  His tie is silk, expensive silk, a thick knot; a double Windsor if I’m not mistaken.  He probably thinks that he’s not giving much away, but the shirt tells me that something has happened to him lately.  Something bad.

“It took a long time to find.”  His voice is accented, Russian, somewhere near Tambov.  I know these things.  ”You are a slippery customer.”  Who is this guy?  He must think he’s a Bond villain, slippery customer?  His face creases up into a smile, or a semblance of one, it really doesn’t fit his body, which is slim, his face is heavyset and older than his actions, there is a certain sag to it, lugubriousness that speaks of a life hard lived, his dark beard shows even though he has closely shaved.  There is a mole on his right cheek clearly damaged over time.

“Who are you?”  It’s not really question, just a kind of opening gambit.

“Ah,” His face pulls up into that smile, it’s not really a smile, “that is a complicated question, but you can call me Polokov.”  Another gesture with the gun, suits me, it’s further away from the, doll.

“Are you going to kill me?”  I can see his fingers twitching for a cigarette, and the yellow stain becomes apparent.  It’s deep within his fingers, a lifetime habit.

“No, no, probably not, if you do as I say.”  I move as indicated, and we are walking slowly along this warehouse, square lights in the ceiling dissipating even a hint of shadow.  In this light his clothes are like a black hole, they seems to get darker, and I cannot make out their features any more.  He walks slightly behind be anyway, well out of range of any possible move I might make.

“Tell me, ” he says, “tell me why you kill for money.”  I can hear him puffing as we walk, it’s quite at odds with his lean, slim frame, as if he is a much bigger, fatter man fighting for breath.  Smoking will do that to you.

“It’s a moral matter, you wouldn’t understand.”  He stops for a second, and then the slow pace resumes, we don’t seem to be getting anywhere, except, except further away from that thing.  There is something in the distance though, a faint blob, it’s the first feature I have seen here.  Polokov squints at it.

“You would be surprised what I can understand.”

“Then it’s for the money, but I could manage without that; it’s for the peace.”

“What peace?”

“Companies would go to war if not for me.”

“Is that true?”

“Yes, some of the street gangs, they are driven by the companies.”

“Mhph.”  We walk in silence and the faint blob becomes close, it looks like another table, there does seems to be any walls here, as it the whole place stretches off to infinity, but it’s a trick of the intense light.  ”I would have killed you where you stand if you had not said it was for the money.  We all do things for money, we are no better than whores on the street.”

I’ve met these ladies, some of them barely more than children, some of them not even than, trafficked, abused, desperate, drug dependent.  Oh sure a few are TV’s favourite, the “tart with a heart”, or “working my way through law school”, but these are just comforting tropes.  Whores are generally desperate people.  This offends me.

“We are better.  We’re better off. ”  I stop and turn, his grip on the gun tightens, “We can choose.  I choose what I do, not because it is moral, but because I’m good at it.  Until now.”  He gestures urgently, and I move on.

“So you think you are judge yes?”  His accent thickens, “You say we better because we can choose?  Well what is your choice now, eh?”

“You’ve got the gun.”

“Then tell me way out.”  He almost shouts, but it comes as a whisper.  ”I need to get out.”

We’ve reached the table, it looks exactly like the table I was on, and beyond it, the doll.

[more]

I’m whole.  I know it, I can stand, I can walk.  The pain is gone.

I slip off the metal bench, shiny, utilitarian.  The doll occupies my mind, I thought it was a dream.

It was a dream, I must be dreaming now, it’s never been like this.

It’s there, lying on the ground, bleeding, no, not bleeding; that’s finished.  I prod it out of a morbid curiosity, it’s like flesh, heavy, creepy.  I’m frightened, frightened.  I’m a killer, a professional and now, I’m frightened.   I’m reluctant to touch it again, my feel have some sort of leather slippers, I use my toe to turn it over.

It’s not pretty, brains mashed out the back, a proper exit wound from a too large gun.  This was an alive thing, alive; it walked and presumably talked, but it looks like a doll, it’s a doll.  It was living.  I can’t look, I turn it back over.  Did I do this?

I feel something, something new.  It’s a rock in my heart, I think I might be having a heart attack for a moment, for longer than a moment; minutes pass, I can’t catch my breath, my chest clenches, the room, warehouse, swirls around me and I stagger few steps away and sit on the ground.  There’s a sob, and another, and I look around for the source.  It is only when the first black tears fall upon my hand that I realise that it is me.  I’m crying.  How can I be crying?

I don’t know why I’m crying, I feel stupid.  I don’t where I am and I’m crying over a doll; but it’s a living doll, it was alive, alive!  I’m stupid and I’m going to die, can’t breathe, air, I need air…

…I wake up a few minutes later, more rational.  There is something wrong here.  I have two things to do and one of them will bring me near the doll again, and I’m not ready for that.  I must preserve myself.

I go to the table and look in the shiny surface.  It’s me, and I glance away disappointed.  When I look back, she’s there, holding her finger to my lips, it’s a shock, and we slide down the side of the table together her and I, and the doll appears in the reflection.  I see her get up as do I, but she has infinitely more grace than I, and we walk over to the doll.  I can barely see her but she is doing something as I turn over the doll again, and see the wound.  I look over to her and she is examining something too,, she’s looking at me, and then we turn away and look more closely.

I see with a more clinical eye this time, that the fragments of skull and bone are not right, the arrangement of the wound is wrong.  The exit must have been directly at the back of the head, that is normal, but the trail of blood and brains spattered over the floor implies that the doll was held, not free-standing.  Held, not held, supported, like in a cradle, for something unconscious, or not alive.

I pull the clothes off and see the stitch marks, it’s a grotesque made of animal parts and sewn to together with en exquisite care.  I have never seen the like of it, it’s so awful that I have have to be sick, and I move some distance away, realising for the first time that I’m thinking of it as evidence.  I spit until I’m clear.

When I look up, I’m nearer the table, and she is on her hands and knees too, her hair shrouding her face.  I see a shadow behind her, someone pointing, pointing a gun, and when I turn, he’s there, pointing it at me.

Now maybe, there will be some answers.

[more]

There is pain, sound, light; a confused jumble of images.  I think for a moment that I must have fallen asleep during a film, but the pain comes and a soothing hand touches my forehead.

“Sleep now…”  and I am so very tired the voice commands as much as soothes and I retire from the world again, a pleasant blankness overcoming me.

In my dreams I’m a five year old girl and we’re having a tea party, my friends are coming around to play.  The dollies and bears are sat at the table and the little plastic plates are laid out neatly with the fine china my mother has laid out for the “big people”.  My friends come with their mothers, and the adults talk away in my mother’s large kitchen while we retire to the garden for our tea.  There is cake and lemonde, and because I’m a very strange little girl a pot of tea and milk and sugar.  Only I am allowed to pour it, because I am responsible.  Natashia and Katie and Gemma all seem very subdued, they are very quiet, but I try and be jolly and nice, just as mother said.  I am the perfect hostess.  Mother has bought me some new shoes for this party to go with my little party dress, there is a stain on them, I wonder where that came from?

Well, mother says to pass over things like that unless they an emergency.

My friends really are very quiet, I pour lemonade and pass around little sandwiches with the crusts cut off, cucumber and ham, not together silly, separately, with real butter and the whitest of bread.

Mr Bear and Dolly are quiet too, I try and jolly them up, but there really is nothing you can do for some people.

One of my friends is crying, it’s Katie, she seems frightened, the others hold her, but she shies away from me, I only want to help, I only ever want to help.  She is saying something, I notice that stain on my shoes again, there is something in the grass.  Katie’s not crying now, she’s just afraid, and I’m not sure why, at least I’m not sure why until Natashia speaks, in a petulant voice, which I have never liked,

“Eww, why did you do that to your dollies?  And there did you get that stuff? I’ve had enough, I want to go home!”

And it is then, only then that I look around at my dollies, and realised that every single one has been shot through the  head with a small calibre bullet, and that stain isn’t a stain.

It’s Blood.

I wake with a start and a sharply indrawn breath, that wasn’t me whatever it was.  I’m stil surrounded by a bright light and a beep.  The nurse comes in and takes my pulse, she is short, stocky, businesslike.

“You’ve been asleep a long time.  How are you feeling?”  I have tube, I just nod.  ”Good, we’ll get someone to take that out.”  I nod again, trying not to move too much.  There is a tent over my legs, but my arms are free.  My arms are free, there is no guard, I’m not under arrest in the hospital.

Why?

I remember the police men, policemen, police-men; they came in, I ran there was pain, so much…

The detective is dressed in a mac and an ill-fitting hat, it would be, he’s a giant teddy bear, he’s got  a thick pencil and has to wrap his paw around it to write.  He’s amazingly dexterous with it, and has a flowing script that looks musical.  He’s sat next to me, I’m that little girl again and we’re in the garden.   He has a sidekick, a ragdoll in a stitched on uniform, I can see my mother with her hand to her mouth being comforted by the others.  The ragdoll kneels down, her hand in a glove and touches the blood…

I’m awake, no tube, I swallow urgently.  There is no beeping.  It’s dark.

I sit up and the movement triggers some lights, they blink on above me and spread out.  White everywhere, I’m on a metal table, hard, steel, cold.  Memory floods back.  I pull up my trouser leg, I’m dressed all in black, loose linen, work clothes.  My leg is a network of scars.

And then I look past my leg, to the only other thing that is here in this arena of whiteness.

A small dolly.

There is a bullet hole, and blood…

[more]

I walk around town.

The next day is bright and sunny.  The little paved streets are warm underfoot, the red and silver taxis lazily buzzing through the narrow alleys, tyres thudding over the paving slabs.  People walk around sometimes peering at me curiously, I use a little broken Cantonese to get some food, a noodle soup.  There are signs in English, “Hair Avenue” and blue poles outside a barber’s shop, shuttered at this time of day.

The day saves me for  a while, I don’t see her reflection, my reflection, in the glass of shop fronts, but then I catch sight of her wearing that same black dress, putting her shoe back on, in exactly the same attitude and position as I have taking a piece of gum off my shoe.  I catch this out of the corner of my eye, , as does she and our eyes meet at the point where I should be looking at myself.  I’m not, I see her, and she is tall, as tall as me in her heels; she’s putting her hand up to the side of her face, I feel my lack of beard, the unaccustomed smoothness.

An old lady asks me if I’m ok and I turn to her seeing my reflection turn as well.  I’m ok, I think I’m ok, I tell this old dear, and she carries on walking, drawing me with her and when I look up the window is gone and light has changed, so when I disengage it’s just me standing there, looking.  The old lady looks back at me again and I start moving, saying “Xia xia” in passing, she bows uncertainly at the westerner trying to be polite.

Unless you have been to Hong Kong, it’s difficult to relate how narrow and busy the streets can be, how odd it is that they go up and down and up again in a pale imitation of San Francisco, except that it’s no imitation, it’s just a circumstance.  I don’t place too much emphasis on coincidence, the world is large, things happen.

I’m alone in the crowd.  I’m looking for that high vantage point, the unlikely place, far from my target.  I’m lucky, it’s one of the things that makes me so good at what I do, there is always somewhere from me to work from, some apartment I can hole up in for a few days.  Someone is always away.

I settle myself in, jimmying the door was the work of a few seconds, and the sheet of glass too care of the alarm.

There’s nothing to do but wait.  I’m used to waiting.  I make some arrangements.  A tape over the door, just sticky tape, careful not to leave a print or anything as crass as that.  That little tearing sound will warn me if it open unexpectedly.  A firestarter, easily removed but effective, for a quick exit.  A rope and a brake.  Never used.  Just in case.  I settle down to write, why waste the time?  Another romance, a sauciness I don’t usually put in.  A description of her creeps in, I erase it.

Hong Kong is never really dark and I let the light flood in, but live in the dark for tonight.  The brightness of the screen lights my face and the keyboard, but there only that.  I write and write, the words pouring from me like a river, I’ve been able to touch type for years and I let my mind drift as the well worn passage and wrestled into new shapes, new titillations, some of it erotic, but it leaves me cold; I can be touched, I’ve been with women I enjoy it, but writing, making it up it’s a profession, not a turn on.

I don’t need much sleep and it’s three in the morning before I feel the first touch of fatigue hit me, my fingers stumble on the keyboard and I know it is time to stop.  The old routines take me, I pack everything into the rucksack, make up the bed with clean sheets and sleep in it.  The police never check even if they find these places.  There is nothing left of me, the gun is packed up and I go to brush my teeth before hitting the sack.  There is a mirror.  There is always a mirror, not so much because humanity is vain any more, but because of health.  We like to see our teeth clean.  When I look up she is there, hair tied back, black pyjama protecting her modesty, she moves her face like me, grimaces like me.  I still have a mouth full of toothpaste and saliva and go, she bobs her head down to spit, and so do I.  It’s not a volitional act, I do it because I’m doing it, and her too it seems.  I have wrinkle near my eye, I check it and pull it, not as young as I used to be any more, she is doing all these things, she hasn’t a wrinkle I’m sure, it’s all imaginary.

It’s all imaginary, I can’t be seeing her, she’s not there.  She. Is. Not. There.

I resist the movements in the mirror, try not to do what she is doing, but that damned eyebrow hair has been annoying me, it will put me off my shot tomorrow, I scrabble around in the bathroom cabinet for tweezers, as I close it she brings them up to our eyebrow and plucks, just the once.  A relief, I won’t worry about this.  I smile involuntarily as she does, for me it is like seeing the sun come up, she is dazzling, perfect; but I’m done and we turn away from the mirror.  I don’t see her leave.  She’s not there, it’s all imaginary.

I sleep fitfully.

Dawn comes and I’m up, exercising, it’s important when cooped up, exercise, stretch, don’t be inactive.  I drink coffee, one cup; then tea.

I go to brush my teeth again, she’s not there, just me.  I’m disappointed.  A bitter little feeling comes.  I push it away, today I take a life.  I have done everything, those left are well provided for, I have nothing to fear.  I wash up for the last time, I think I catch a reflection of her in a glass, but it’s momentary and I have better things to do than chase ghosts.

Not better things, more important things.  Let’s not kid ourselves, I’m no angel.  I do something important.  But I’m not angel.

There isn’t any more time.  With perfect assurance I take out the components of the gun and begin to assemble it.  It’s big, I take some time, everything must be perfect.  There’s a knock at the door, I ignore it, but I’m still.  This is the worst time, the most risk, when I’m assembling equipment, it’s when I’m most vulnerable.  The apartment is one big room, a bedroom and a bathroom, I silently pick up my stuff and move into the bedroom.  The knock doesn’t repeat, but a few minutes later I hear a faint scrap, and as I pull me head back in, a tiny mirror slides under the door.  I already know that this job won’t be completed.  That’s a more sophisticated approach than the local police would take.  There is no sound from the door.  I have no idea what they are doing, because I’ve never been here before, they have never been this close, or even had a clue.

I realise that the gun is lost.  I take the pieces that are most identifiable and pocket them.  I risk a glance from the window.  I’m lucky, they’re trying to be discreet, so they haven’t covered everything in line of sight.  I’ll get a few seconds from the bedroom window.  I open it, shoving hard against the safety stop, and and alarm goes off.  It’s a fire alarm, the windows are rigged, that’s new, I hadn’t counted on that.  The is a furious banging on the door as I clip the brake on to the rope.  I can hear the heavy wood starting to splinter, for some reason I feel compelled to count the bangs.  There is rapid speech on radios and on bang number four I jump out the window the rope running through the brake feely.  I’ve chose a seventeenth story apartment, it now looks very far up but I fall and fall, squeezing on the brake about halfway down.  The is a little sound and something tugs sharply at my clothes.

I’m going too fast and I turn my face up to see, to see…

She’s there, falling with me, in that window.  Time slows as I see her hair floating upwards as she falls I catch every detail, every strand of hair, the glint in her eye, her broken dress strap, I see it all and note, she has no rope.

A powerful rush of adrenaline inside me and time slows again I see another bullet roll lazily past me and I start to reach out to her my hand moving with glacial slowness, but I have to try, I have to try.

Anther pane of glass and she is reaching out, out out towards me and our fingertips brush the glass for a moment, a shock, it’s warm, yielding, like touching a person not a reflection, and then the moment is gone and she falls and I hit the ground with a bone shattering crash, and for a while, I leave the world.

[more]

More fiction.

_______________________________________

The first time I see her, in a mirror, I think I’m dreaming.  It’s a shock, that hair, those eyes, that pale skin.  She’s not me, it’s a shock.

I’m expecting a sun ripened face, lopsided, a beard, jeans and t-shirt; nothing exciting at the end of a day bumming around the house, writing.  That’s what I do when I’m not killing people, for money.  A lot of money.  Important people, people who can afford protection. Important.  People.

And then, when I’m not preparing for it, or doing it, or recovering from it, I write.  Romantic novels. Trashy romantic novels.  Because it makes money, enough to live on if work is light.  It means I don’t have to be seen much, don’t have to mix.  I’m an author, my neighbours know me, I hold little parties every now and again.  We have a foursome for bridge.

I’m a prolific writer, I can usually find and excuse to be in whatever country I need to be in.  I charge a lot of money for my real work.  Governments use me.  It’s a dirty world out there.  I have a cat.

I see her standing there as though she’s me, moving like me, not like me, she’s graceful, I’m not.  She’s cute, but young, in this warped day and age she could fourteen to thirty, but I convince myself she’s about twenty-two, teenagers move less carefully, with less assurance.  Her hair is black and long, really long, cascading over her short, tight fitting black dress. Hah, look at me, I see a strange girl in the mirror and I’m interested in how she dresses.  This isn’t the inspiration for a romance, it’s a mental aberration, I’m hallucinating.  I can’t afford it, I have be focused, either to write, or the other thing.

I go into the bath room and splash some cold water on my face.  My beard seems wrong, she’s not in this mirror, but my beard seems wrong.  I fish around in the bathroom cabinet behind the mirror, I have some shaving gear there.  It’s a bowl and a brush, there were safety razors, but they don’t look all that safe now.  There is a straight razor and a strop.

I hang the strop on the peg, pulling it to be sure it won’t come off.  It’s not dusty, it’s been rolled up, so it curls annoyingly.  I roll it the other way carefully.  The straight razor still looks sharp, it’s always sharp.  I strop it well, it takes some time to get that edge, that glint and shine. A hair splits, but it’s not good enough, I run the water freely into the sink without a plug, so that it gets hot, and strop the razor some more.  I don’t put the plug in until the water steams.  Then it’s too hot, add a little cold, because I don’t want to burn, but I need it hot hot as I can.

I look again, to check she isn’t there.  It’s still me, and that beard still looks wrong.  It’s a year or more of growth.  More.  Since.

Nevermind.

I take the razor to under my nose, a trace of shake before I begin, I recognise it for what it is and damp it down.  I cut each hair cleanly away, the slight pain and the scraping noise telling me as a I close my eyes where I’m shaving and how close.  It feels good.  I have always done it thus, blind, I know where my face is, where all the hair is, as I know where everything is,once I have seen it.  It’s why I’m such good marksman.

It’s gone, my beard lying in the sink, in the water.  I look up to the mirror to see what I look like and she’s there, turning her head this way and that as if inspecting my shave, my face as if she is me.  I drop the blade, ad with a start I hear the noise, a glance down, and she is gone again.

I have work.  And a book published in Hong Kong, for which I have to visit.  I get a woman, Jessica, to sign books for me, they; the public, think it’s her.  But the publisher says I must be there.  For questions.  It’s arranged.

The target, a wealthy businessman.  Dirty, in the business sense.  Wife and kid.  Pity, soon to be a widow.  It’s cruel, but that’s not my business.  Someone else would do it.  I have rules, others don’t.  I have to make sure this idiot provided for them before he goes.  My clients, they don’t like that sometimes, the notice needed, the research.  I’m a burglar and forger too, paper and electronics; and because of that, I have to know about law.  To get it right.  It’s an ethical matter, you wouldn’t understand.

These people, the ones I kill; they’re above the law, sometimes, beyond the reach of normal assassins.  These ethics, they cost, they cost me a lot; but you can’t let go of them, or we’re nothing.

I can’t get the image of the girl out of my head.  I see her where-ever I go, in darkened windows, mirrors.  I’m not focused, it’s bad.  I consider putting the job off, difficult, but not impossible.  I could reduce my fee, the client would understand.  I’ve had sick leave, you can’t have a sneezy assassin.  It would be unprofessional.

What could I say though?  I’m seeing a girl in my waking dreams, I’ll have to put it off a few days?  For a cold or ‘flu they would get it.  Not for this.  I have to carry on.

_______________________

I never bother trying to smuggle guns, if I was going to do that I might as well just a put a flag up.  Sometimes I transport  a weapon in the hold, declared, as a weapon for a club.  I’m a member of several internationally.  It’s a hobby.

Here, to Hong Kong, I don’t.  I just buy something on the black market in cases like this.  Oh I could arrange an accident, but who would know that the inhumee has annoyed someone.  It would just be an accident.  There would be no point.

The place is busy, it’s always busy, but there are spaces in every city where it is quiet, I soon find mine.  My contact meets me, Pierre; supposed to be French, an oily little stain of a man, but a good gun runner.  All the French people I meet back home have a little class, they think they’re better, and maybe they are.  They can cook for a start.

He talks almost constantly, about his health, his wife, his daughter in a broad French accent that seems to have no region.  He gives away too much always, or too little, but I guess he’s at least telling the truth; his stories and complaints have a history and an inconsistency that tell me he mis-remembers somethings and edits others.

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