Die Twice

his front-seat passenger, a smaller, older guy with Brylcreemed hair and a greasy face, were already relaxing. They saw me as no threat. Just a man who pays his taxes and does what he’s told for a living. I heard the one in the back mumble something but I didn’t even look at him.
‘What do you want?’ demanded the driver impatiently.
‘Er, I was wondering…’
I brought the gun up from my pocket, had this momentary paranoia that I might not have released the safety, and shot him twice in the right eye. He made no sound, simply fell back into his seat, head tilted to one side, and shivered out the final ounces of his life.
The front passenger swore loudly and immediately flung up his arms in a futile effort to protect himself. I leaned down slightly to get a better view of him and pumped out a further two rounds. One hit him in the elbow, the other in the jaw. I heard it crack. He shrieked in pain and then coughed violently as his mouth filled with blood. He tried to retreat in his seat, scrabbling about like a madman, unable to accept the fact that it was all over. I steadied myself and fired again, hitting him square in the forehead. The window behind him bloomed with red and his greasy features immediately relaxed. So far the whole thing had taken about three seconds.
But the one in the back was quick. He was already swinging open the door and coming out with what looked like a gun in his hand. I didn’t have time to take a closer look. Instead I retreated three steps and squeezed the trigger as he came into view. I got him somewhere in the upper body but still he kept coming, and fast. I continued firing, holding the gun two-handed, teeth clenched against the noise that was exploding in my ears. The momentum of the bullets forced him backwards, driving him into the door. He did a manic, confused dance to the tune of the gunfire, his arms and legs flailing, and angry red spots appeared like pox on his crisp, white shirt.
And then the magazine was empty and everything stopped as suddenly and dramatically as it had begun.
For a second he remained upright, holding onto the door for support, the energy almost visibly leaking out of him. Then he sort of half fell, half sat down, losing his grip on it in the process. He looked down at the blood on his shirt, and then at me, and I got a good look at his face, which I didn’t want at all, because it was young, maybe late twenties, and his expression was all wrong. What I mean is, it wasn’t the expression of a sinner. There was no defiance there, no rage. Just shock. Shock that his life was being stolen from him. He looked like a man who didn’t think he deserved it, and that was the moment when I should have known I’d made a terrible mistake.
Instead, I turned away from his stare and reloaded. Then I stepped forward and shot him three times in the top of the head. The mobile phone he was carrying clattered noisily to the ground.
I dropped the gun into my jacket pocket and turned towards Danny, who was now bringing the car round.
Which was when I saw her, maybe fifteen yards away, standing in the light of the rear firedoor, a bag of rubbish in each hand. No more than eighteen and looking right at me, still too shocked to realize that what she was witnessing was real. What do you do? A movie pro would have taken her out with a single shot to the head, although there was no guarantee I’d even have hit her from where I was standing. And anyway, I’m not interested in hurting civilians.
Her hand went to her mouth as she saw I’d seen her, and I knew that any moment she was going to let out a scream that would probably wake the dead, which, with the dead only just being dead, I didn’t want at all. So I lowered my gaze and hurried round to the passenger door, hoping that the gloom and wet had obscured my features enough to make any description she gave worthless.
I jumped in and kept my head down. Danny didn’t say a word. He just hit the pedal and we were out of there.
It was 9.04.
*   *   *
The journey to our first change of transport took exactly four minutes and covered a distance of approximately two and a half miles. We’d parked a Mondeo in a quiet piece of Forestry Commission land earlier that day. Danny now pulled up behind it, cut the engine, and got out. I leaned under the passenger seat and removed a full five-litre can of petrol which I liberally sprinkled over the car’s interior. When it was empty, I got out, lit a book of matches, stepped back so I was well out of the way, and flung them in, followed by the murder weapon and the two-way radio I’d been using. There was a satisfying whoosh as the petrol ignited, followed by a wave of heat.
When they came across the mangled wreckage it wouldn’t tell them anything. We hadn’t left any fingerprints and the car itself would be almost impossible to trace. It had been stolen in Birmingham six months ago, given new plates and a respray, and stored in a lock-up in Cardiff ever since. In this line of business, you can never be too careful. Contrary to popular belief, most detectives couldn’t detect a heartbeat on a speed addict, but you never know when you might be up against the next Ellery Queen.
We now followed a pre-arranged route for four miles through a mixture of B and single-track roads and it was 9.16 when we pulled into the car park of Ye Olde Bell, a busy country pub on the edge of an affluent