People Die (22 page)
Authors: Kevin Wignall
Conrad decided to head him off at the pass—he dipped his hand into his coat and pulled out his gun. Frank looked up, his eyes drawn by the movement, and was genuinely surprised to see the gun with its silencer already attached.
“I altered and strengthened the inside pocket. It’s not perfect, but good for situations where you can’t wear it or carry a bag.”
I’m not surprised by your tailoring, Conrad, I’m surprised that you’re aiming a gun at me.”
“It’s nothing personal, Frank.”
Frank looked derisively and said, “Oh spare me the clichés! Jesus, forget the madness a second, what about the disloyalty, what about stabbing people in the back, people who’ve helped you? You do remember that, don’t you, Conrad? I took you in. You were a wreck, and I took you in and gave you a life.”
Conrad nodded, acknowledging the point and inadvertently offering hope in response to Frank’s indignation. He thought back to his arrival here nine years before, the spell its preternatural calm had cast on him. He’d booked into Die Alpenrose and hadn’t wanted to leave, like a convalescent soldier from an earlier war.
In truth, Frank hadn’t helped him at all; he’d merely smoothed the path of his descent. But Conrad couldn’t help but feel grateful to him, and now that he was here, he understood in some detached way that this wasn’t fair. Frank didn’t deserve to die, and certainly not by Conrad’s hand.
“I’m sorry, Frank, but you know who I am. There’s nothing more to it than that.” It sounded like a feeble excuse for killing someone, but he imagined he’d killed some of his targets for less over the years.
Frank tried a look of smug superiority, but it was undermined by his adrenaline jitters and he sounded slightly arch as he said, “Oh,
I
know who you are, but tell me, Conrad, are you absolutely sure
you
know who you are?”
I
know who you are, but tell me, Conrad, are you absolutely sure
you
know who you are?”
“Nice try, Frank. I’ve been sick, I know that, but I remember everything I’ve done these ten years. That’s the worst of it—I know all too well who I am.”
“You’re forgetting something ...”
“I’m not forgetting anything.”
The conversation was going nowhere. Conrad shot Frank in the chest, the bullet meeting his final words halfway. “I lied,” said Frank, before the bullet punched him into the sofa and the glass fell to the floor.
He didn’t die instantly, and, apart from the bloody hole in his chest, he looked like he could keep conversing all night.
Conrad couldn’t resist asking, “What do you mean? What did you lie about?”
Frank’s eyes looked left and right, as if he was struggling to see where the question had come from or what it meant. Then he seemed to spot Conrad sitting opposite and a sense of understanding crossed his face. He coughed a little, producing blood, his lungs rattling with fluid. “Everything,” whispered Frank, almost to himself.
“I forgive you, Frank,” said Conrad, and immediately felt it was a cheap shot to make fun of a dying man’s words. He thought about adding something else, something more fitting, but Frank was done listening.
Conrad put the gun aside and sipped at his port, savoring the silence. He told himself it didn’t matter if Frank had lied to him. He’d always kept his distance from the business anyway, and like he’d said, as long as there were only four people—three now—who could connect him with it, the lies he’d been told and the truths they concealed were of no importance.
Conrad finished his drink, then worked Frank’s house the same way he’d been instructed to do the Klemperer job, killing the hard disk on his computer, collecting the loose disks. He took the SIM card from Frank’s phone, too, then built a couple of bonfires, one in the study and one around Frank.
And as he walked back to the car, his footprints already being erased by the gently relentless fall of more snow, the sitting room window was beginning to glow orange. A new house would be built here, and the neighbors would be shocked but happy that Frank was gone.
They’d never taken to Frank. Conrad had wondered if it was because he was American, or because his wife, who’d left Frank a couple of years before Conrad first met him, had been black. But he’d underestimated the good people of Mittenwald. They’d disliked Frank because they knew, as only people in a small town could know, that Frank was a lowlife.
As Conrad drove through the worsening weather toward Miesbach he sensed they were probably right. Maybe that was why he felt nothing for the man he’d killed. After Klemperer, he thought he’d feel something for every killing, particularly someone he’d known so long. But right now he felt as little for Frank as he did for all those victims whose names he could no longer even remember.
The only thing keeping Frank in his thoughts at all was a curiosity about those final words—that he’d lied, about everything. Conrad had already dismissed them once, and they’d probably been no more than a desperate play by a man who knew he was up against it.
But the words kept coming back to trouble him. He was driving to Miesbach, then south to Birkenstein. He’d check in late to his guesthouse, do his recon in the morning, and so on, and so on. He’d rehearsed it all in his head a hundred times in the last few days, but even the possibility of an unknown quantity was disturbing the rhythm of his thoughts.
What if he had been lied to? What if nothing was as it seemed? None of it would have concerned him two weeks ago, but the Klemperer job had changed everything—he understood that now. Perhaps for the first time ever, as much as Conrad tried to suppress it, he feared what he didn’t know about the world, and most of all, he feared what he didn’t know about himself.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
K
EVIN WIGNALL
, thirty-four, was born in Heren-tals, Belglum, where his father was stationed as a soldier. After living in Northern Ireland and Germany, the family settled in a small town in the west of England where he still lives. He graduated with a degree in politics and international relations from Lancaster University. Certain only that he didn’t want a regular job after leaving university, he traveled, campaigned, wrote on the environment, and taught English as a foreign language. Having always written, it was during his brief stint as an English teacher that he began work on his first novel,
People Die.
EVIN WIGNALL
, thirty-four, was born in Heren-tals, Belglum, where his father was stationed as a soldier. After living in Northern Ireland and Germany, the family settled in a small town in the west of England where he still lives. He graduated with a degree in politics and international relations from Lancaster University. Certain only that he didn’t want a regular job after leaving university, he traveled, campaigned, wrote on the environment, and taught English as a foreign language. Having always written, it was during his brief stint as an English teacher that he began work on his first novel,
People Die.
PINNACLE BOOKS are published by
Kensington Publishing Corp.
119 West 40th Street
New York, NY 10018
119 West 40th Street
New York, NY 10018
Copyright © 2001, 2004, 2007 Kevin Wignall
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, is entirely coincidental.
PINNACLE BOOKS and the Pinnacle logo are Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.
ISBN: 978-0-7860-3099-6
ISBN-10: 0-7860-2086-5
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