Droplets of blood covered the windscreen. He fished a box of tissues out of the back seat and cleared away a portion of it. He slammed the door shut and drove off quickly. Waiting any longer in the middle of the road would only increase the risk of being seen.
He spun the vehicle around and lifted a Navman GPS out of the driver’s footwell. He switched it on. A robotic female voice greeted him in a monotonous tone. He entered the rough co-ordinates of where he expected the metal work factory to lie, knowing that there had to be some kind of vehicular access to the site. It highlighted a track leading down from the main road. A pop-up message warned him that the road was unsurfaced. He dropped the GPS back to the muddy floor of the cabin and drove off.
As he took the truck round the steep mountainous bends, he weighed his options a final time. Going to the police would be the most noble course of action, but there was no way to explain what had happened without getting dragged into a lengthy legal battle. With no witnesses and four brutalised corpses, he didn’t like the odds of defending his innocence.
Two workers were dead. King didn’t know why. Maybe they were in debt. Maybe not. The men who had killed them were also dead. They’d tried to shoot him, so he’d fought back. He’d succeeded. In the grand scheme of things, that was fair. There was nothing else to consider, nothing to mull over. Best to remove the evidence and forget all about it. Everything about the past hour had brought back memories of a darker, violent past. A past he was desperately trying to forget.
The pickup handled the unsurfaced road easily, its thick tires eating up the gravel. King heard the three corpses bouncing around the rear tray. An unsettling sound. He grimaced. The headlights illuminated the track ahead, casting long shadows across the ground. The cold breeze sent a chill down his spine and he shivered involuntarily. He hadn’t bothered to roll the windows up.
The trees melted away as he pulled out into the clearing. The abandoned factory lay ahead. The twin beams of light emanating from the pickup gave King a better idea of the structure’s form. A multi-level building, built with no symmetry or pattern, like several warehouses had been stacked on top of each other. Metal tubes and walkways ran along the exterior walls. Most of its features had long since rusted away. The factory looked forlorn and ready to collapse. No-one had touched it in years.
King swung the wheel around and drove through the large entrance on the ground floor. The headlights revealed the enormous space, proving to be almost exactly how he’d pictured it in the darkness. Largely empty, save for a few dilapidated tanks and broken machines scattered across the floor. Near the centre of the floorspace, lying limp next to a dirty puddle of water, was Buzzcut. Unquestionably dead.
King got out and eyed the nearest machines, rundown from years of lying dormant. Each had a slightly different design. One looked something like an oversized inverted cone, with a rusted dial on one side. It would serve the purpose King needed it for.
He dragged the bodies out of the rear tray one by one, piling them beside Buzzcut until the four dead men were positioned side-by-side. He moved quickly. It was unpleasant work. First, he searched the pockets of the construction workers, and came up with a pair of leather wallets and a couple of cigarettes. The wallets had nothing more than loose change, identification and workers permits in them. King tossed them over the lip of the cone, then did the same with each of the bodies. Due to excess weight, David Lee proved a little more cumbersome to manhandle than Miles Price, but King got the job done.
Next, the hitmen. He knew they wouldn’t be stupid enough to carry identification on them, and he was proved correct after a quick search of the bodies. But deep in one of Buzzcut’s pants pockets, King came up with something.
A keyring. It held a single silver key and a tag labeled ‘Jameson Post’.
He knew he should throw it away, just as he had done to the two construction workers and their wallets. It would be foolish to keep anything that could link him back to what had happened. But an irresistible urge overcame him. He slipped it into his pocket. It couldn’t hurt to poke around.
Buzzcut and his partner followed David Lee and Miles Price into the cone. When his work was done King took a moment to rest against the side of the pickup. He mopped a bead of sweat off his forehead. Despite the cold night, lifting deadweight proved tiresome. But the corpses were out of sight and it would take an inquisitive soul to discover them. He couldn’t have imagined anyone setting foot in this place for years, let alone searching for bodies.
He retrieved a heavy set of pliers from the rear tray of the pickup truck and set to work destroying the vehicle. It only took a light blow to shatter each window in turn. Then he swung hard and fast at the chassis, gouging huge dents in the metal until it matched its surroundings. Nothing but broken junk. Lastly, he used the pliers to lever off the plates. He tossed them in with the bodies. The pliers themselves followed suit.
A twist of the keys in the ignition and the engine died. The headlights flickered out, plunging the factory back into darkness. He threw the keys in the general direction of the cone and was rewarded with a resounding clang as they struck home.
Then he turned and headed out of the factory, determined to forget that the ordeal had ever happened.
CHAPTER 5
It took thirty-eight minutes to reach Jameson. By the time King strode into the town’s outer limits it was close to two in the morning. He came up the road into the main street. Murky halogen streetlights lit the way. There was a big brand supermarket on the left, vast and physically imposing in comparison to the rest of the stores. He eyed a convenience store, a chemist, two restaurants, a cafe, a pair of motels, a tourist information centre, a hardware store, a petrol station and finally, at the very end of the road, a post office. The sign above the door read 'Jameson Post'. He retrieved the key from his pocket and stared at its tag long and hard. After a moment of thought, he put it away. He would decide tomorrow if it was worth chasing up.
The two motels faced each other off on either side of the road, clearly in direct competition. One was devoid of lights, completely enshrouded in darkness. The other had a small front light glowing above the entrance to its office. That was enough for him to make up his mind.
He trudged across to the motel that was lit and rang the bell to the office twice. Then he stood in silence and waited. He was used to waiting. His whole life had revolved around the art of patience. Long stretches of waiting, with occasional bursts of massive instantaneous action.
Finally the door swung open, revealing an elderly European lady in her night-gown. Her hair was dishevelled and thick bags sat under her eyes.
'I’m sorry to disturb you ma’am,' King said. 'I was wondering if you had a room available. Just for one night.’
Despite the hour, her face lit up at the sight of a customer. He wondered if she struggled to stay afloat in such a remote region.
'Of course we do. Come on in.'
He stepped through into a small room with white plasterboard walls and a desk piled high with loose sheets of paper. The woman scurried around behind the counter and fished a document out of the mess. She placed it in front of him along with a pen.
'Name and signature here, please. Usually we charge eighty-nine a night, but since you’re only spending half a night I’ll give it to you for fifty.'
'No problem. Thank you.'
'Why so late, may I ask?'
'I misjudged my timing. The walk took longer than I expected.'
'Where did you walk from, dear?’