Colour Series Box Set (3 page)

Six months ago, a husband hired me to arrange his wife’s accidental death. He claimed she had hidden her fortune from him and he stood to get the money if she died. Easy enough it was a typical job for me and shouldn’t require too much time or effort on my part.

Or so I thought.

He sent me the money and the information I required. I never meet with a customer. Ever. I don’t need to see them to do my job. I actually choked on my scotch when I opened his file. He was HER husband. I had been hired to kill my mentor’s daughter by her perfect husband. Oh fuck. What went wrong? Mick, I have screwed up.

Needless to say I had a sinking feeling about this. There was no way I could kill Ellia, that’s who Lauri became when Mick died, but if I said no to the job he would hire someone else. There are a few of us out there. Murder is easy to buy in this shitty country. Two bottles of scotch later, I hatched a little plan. I’d watched her so long, I stopped and now something horrible was happening. What had I missed? I decided I had to take the job, Ellia would die but that asshole would not get her money and he would die too. By my own hand no accident this time, he would die. I wonder what I missed, how is this even possible? I continue to drown the trepidation that is growing by the minute as I go over the pages and pages of information he compiled about her. I swallow my fears with the whiskey and reply to his mail accepting his job, setting a time line over the next month or so. I will need some time and careful planning to pull this off. I feel sick, not sure if it’s the whiskey I consumed too much of or the fact that I was hired to kill Lauri Spillane that has me wanting to wretch. I sit there, tapping my foot thinking about this for a long time before I drag my tired, drunk ass to bed.

I told you I’m a bad man. I’m a worse watcher. I should never have stopped watching her, she was Mick’s angel and I failed him.

Fuck.

Past, Sandton, Johannesburg, South Africa 2004

I GOT MARRIED TODAY,
I was so happy but so very sad at the same time. My new husband Renzo has a huge Italian family, enough to fill the whole church. I have no one. My dad is gone and he was the only family I had. I had my best friend stand up for me and I walked down the aisle all alone. The happiest day of my life and I was all alone. But I was so happy. I love Renzo and we were going to have a future and babies together.

My long dark hair is styled up so that my neck and shoulders are bare above the strapless lace gown that feels as if it was painted onto my body and pools at the floor around my feet. Renzo kisses my neck as we dance our first dance. My heart is racing from the whisper of his lips against my bare skin mixed with my own nerves. I am a terrible dancer and I don’t want to embarrass him on our wedding day. I need to concentrate but his touch is so distracting.

I saved myself for this day. Something I did for my dad. He’d told me how that was one of his biggest regrets and that a husband would treasure and love me more if I saved myself for him alone. Renzo’s tried, trust me, he’s tried, but I insisted we wait. I think that was one of the reasons he didn’t want to wait long to get married. We have been engaged for only five months but I know he is my forever.

We celebrate with my new family most of whom I have met for the first time today, but as the night wears on Renzo’s touches become a little more insistent and he decides it’s time for us to go. We are spending the first night of our honeymoon at a local hotel and leave for our honeymoon tomorrow, I don’t know where are going but I need a passport.

Renzo carries me into the suite like a real gentleman and my breath is truly taken away by the candles and rose petals. I couldn’t not notice the vases and vases of roses all around the room. He’s such a romantic. My stomach has been in knots all day in anticipation of this. Renzo’s waited for me but tonight I know I can no longer deny him what is now his. He told me when I first said I wanted to wait that he would wait until today but then he would take what is his. The raw lust in his eyes now tells me he is going to do exactly that.

He leads me to the huge king size bed covered in white linen and he stands me in front him. I feel so small next to his six foot plus body, he is a full foot taller than me and I have to look up into his dark brown eyes that are almost black with desire now. He steps forwards and turns me around and unzips my dress letting it fall to the ground. I remember thinking it was such a tender act from him. It was the last tender moment I ever got from Renzo. He lifted me onto the bed that night and brutally beat my body careful not to mark my face or legs and then raped me repeatedly with no regard for my virginity at all. When he was done he simply stated that I should not have made him wait for what was his and that he intended to take what was his - whenever and however he wanted. Tears stained my face as I sobbed and cried myself to sleep. I had married the devil, an evil man that he had no heart at all. I stopped feeling that night.

Present, Franschoek, South Africa

YESTERDAY WAS MY
birthday and I had an accident. I think I might just be dead because when I woke up the view from the window next to me is one I remember vividly from my childhood. Is this heaven? I wished to die so many times the last eight years, could my wishes have come true? I can almost feel my dad in this place and that makes me happy. Happy for the first time in eight years. Have I really escaped the devil?

I have no recollection of how on earth I may have ended up here; I think I may really be dead. I woke up in the clothes I put on for my birthday party, I remember leaving home and then it is a black hole of absolutely nothing. I may know where I am but I don’t know how I got here. I close my eyes and try to remember a little more detail, nothing but blackness. It feels like a have just woken up from another panic attack.

There’s food and a newspaper on the table in front of me, the paper is open on a page where the details of my accident and subsequent death are described in great detail. I was blown up in an ATM bombing, a daily occurrence here these days except they don’t usually blow people up with them they just want the money. Whoever arranged my accident had a great imagination, I’ll give them that. Maybe a tad over dramatic but very effective as there is very little body to identify if it is blown to bits. They used my bank card and handbag to identify me. The newspaper labelled it a botched job as I was killed and all the money was blown to shit as well. I know better, I know there are no accidents. I’m meant to be dead or I am dead and God thinks he’s funny telling me in the newspaper. But I feel very much alive, in fact more alive than I have in years! I am laughing now from my belly at irony of it all I am dead.

I know it’s not really funny but all I can do is laugh. There is nothing else to do and I don’t feel like crying because I’m not sad at all – I’m relieved.

SO FAR MY SOMEWHAT
stupid half assed plan has worked out and the job is done. I’d paid more to do it than I’d got from her husband but I needed educated morons to pull this one off not the usual criminal for hire that are a dime a dozen here. It’s so easy to get away with murder here. Literally. Accidental deaths are not investigated. They don’t have time with all the actual murders and rapes going on in this shit hole.

I can see her on the security system monitor and I know she knows exactly where she is. She grew up here. When her father died she left and I took over the ‘business’ and the estate he had willed it to me but she never knew this. She had a plan to disappear and she had followed it to the letter. She was a good girl. I needed to stop seeing her as that fifteen year old; she was a grown woman now. I’m watching her again and it feels right, so right. This is all sorts of wrong.

She’s tried the door at least ten times and the windows too. I had made some security upgrades in anticipation of her return. She’s eyed the food on the table very skeptically and not taken a bite at all. Her father taught her to trust nothing - ever. He taught her well. She’d never questioned his plan for her, no whys or buts she just did it, she trusted Mick and never questioned him. Now she was here and I had no clue as to what to do next. I need to move her but I don’t want to. I want to keep her.

She’s sitting on the bed with newspaper that details her ‘accident’ on the front page. I can see her face clearly as she reads the article and the cogs are turning. A smile tugs at my mouth as I watch her processing what she is reading. She knows what an ‘accident’ really means and I can tell she is wondering why she isn’t dead as a door nail. Then she surprises me and begins hysterically laughing at the paper. She laughs so hard that I can see the emotion in her eyes. Her whole face lights up and her body shakes as she laughs from her belly, the tears roll down her cheeks. The smile is wiped off my face pretty fast. Well, that’s not the reaction I was expecting. Not at all. I drink from my glass The ice has melted and the scotch is watered down and quite frankly tastes like piss now but I swallow it anyway while I watch her laugh. I love watching her. I always did. Watching is the one part of my job I always enjoy, I like to watch and learn about the lives I am going to snuff out. I don’t always watch them myself; I keep some of South Africa’s many criminals gainfully employed watching people for me. They earn a legitimate wage from a wine farm and simply do whatever I need them to do. She really is a breath of fresh air in here, I can’t remember the last time someone, anyone laughed in this house. It was probably her as young girl.

I watch her set the paper down, stalk over to the bed, climb up and stand on it and look right into the camera. All I can see are those eyes, Mick’s eyes looking right at me on the screen. It’s like they are looking into me. I wait for her to rip the camera down or smash it. But she doesn’t. She has self-control that could rival my own this woman. I like being in control of things, I like that nothing can change or undo murder what I do is final.

“Thank you,” she yells into camera smiling wide. She’s way too happy about being dead for this to be real. I’m confused, in fact dumbfounded, or gobsmacked would describe me better. I was tempted to go in there and shake her to see if this is real. But then I would have to face her and I am not ready to stop watching just yet.