The Dealer and the Dead by Gerald Seymour

aborted. He only had to say it was ‘turn-round time’ and Vern would spin, cut across traffic lanes and be well gone. Vern was not one to debate – he did as he was told.
    The indecision moment passed quickly. Some rubbish, plastic bags and a sheet of tabloid newspaper were blowing down the pavement, and a glance into the direction the wind was coming from showed that the rain was temporary.
    They’d done all the talk.
    No reason for him to do more explaining about where he would wait and where he would hit. He had done all of that the previous evening. Then he had put the detail of a killing out of his mind, and most of that evening he had been on the sofa with Barbie, watching TV, not thinking about being up close to a target and doing the hit between the eyes with a converted Baikal.
    If he had wanted to abort he would have said so. Vern didn’t prompt.
    The first time Robbie Cairns had taken a life was a week after his twenty-first birthday. He was doing debt collecting, going the rounds for a local man who dealt in tablets and skunk, and the joker at the door had told the fresh-faced lad who had come for the envelope to ‘Go piss yourself’. Then he had laughed and spat at Robbie’s feet. A little of the mess had gone on Robbie’s shoes. Robbie had not told the local man that his debt was as yet uncollected. He had gone into the family network, had hired the handgun and a half-dozen shells for the magazine. Three nights later he had been back at the door and was ringing the bell. Two issues to be resolved: unpaid debt and respect.
    First he had shot the man, one bullet, through the kneecap. The pain had been sufficient to persuade him that paying up was sensible. There had been a trail of blood across the carpet as the man had clung for support to furniture before getting tothe safe and extracting the necessary cash. But that had dealt only with the debt. Robbie had then settled the matter of respect. If he hadn’t laughed and spat, the man would still have been walking, awkwardly, down a Bermondsey street. But he had, so there was a handgun in his face. Nobody in the block had heard, seen or knew anything. The police had called it a ‘wall of silence’. A few knew who had collected a debt and killed, and word spread among those who regarded it necessary to have a guy of cool nerve on the edge of the payroll.
    Robbie’s second target was an Albanian trying to muscle into the cocaine trade at Canada Water where the City people had their apartments: a nightclub owner had hired him to take out a rival who interfered in profit margins. Since then, four years in the trade, the numbers had ticked up and a reputation had been established.
    He was dropped off outside a mini-mart. He was being cautious. He went through and out at the side entrance. The rain was easing. He had a mile to walk and he blended well.
    He went past the house and saw the car parked in the driveway. He checked his watch and was satisfied.
    Between them, his father and grandfather – Jerry Cairns and Granddad Cairns – took the contracts, evaluated them, put a price on them and slipped the necessary information to Robbie. He didn’t need to know the customer, just as he didn’t need detail on the personal life of the target. If his father or grandfather thought the money was right, Robbie Cairns sent his sister to the quartermaster they used, took out the weapon, passed it and …
    Johnny ‘Cross Lamps’ Wilson ambled along the pavement and the last drips of the shower made the pavement glisten in the lights.
    Robbie didn’t need to know anything about him.
    Robbie swivelled and looked behind himself, left and into the café, right and across the street, then far ahead of him and over the shoulder of Johnny ‘Cross Lamps’ Wilson. He didn’t see a policeman on foot, on a bicycle, or in a patrol car. He stepped into the target’s path.
    Maybe three or four seconds before his life was curtailed, Johnny ‘Cross Lamps’ Wilson