The Dealer and the Dead by Gerald Seymour Page A

realised the mortal danger confronting him. The expressions on his face did a slide-show of emotions: astonishment, disbelief, then the aggression that might have had a chance – small – of saving him. The Baikal was out, safety lever off, and aiming for the head. The man tried to duck and to lunge. Robbie fired once. A hell of a shot, a class shot. The target had been moving and weaving, and the one shot had taken him clean through the front of the skull, just above deep lines over the forehead. The man crumpled. The life of Johnny ‘Cross Lamps’ Wilson was extinguished about halfway between the café and the newsagent’s.
    The blood had not spread far on the pavement – hadn’t reached the kerb and the gutter – before Robbie Cairns was away. Didn’t run: to run was to attract attention. He just walked briskly. Went past the café, down the side alley, into the car park, saw the car as it edged forward to meet him, and he was gone. It was like another notch for him. He had done it well but, then, he always did.
    Back over the river, the Baikal would go to Leanne. His sister would move the weapon back to the armourer, clear his clothing, and dispose of it beyond the reach of the forensics people.
    If he was in high demand, his price would rise. Maybe he was the best. He felt good, confident, and the car wasn’t yet at any of the bridges that would take them south over the river and on to their own ground. Outside the newsagent’s the blood had not had time to congeal.
    It was not territory they normally worked on: vacation leave had eroded the teams based nearer to this murder site in Tottenham.
    Bill said, ‘That’s one shot, professional – a man who knows his business. That is top grade.’
    There was white tenting behind the police tapes. A photographer worked inside it and a scenes-of-crime technician had bent to make a chalk mark on the wet paving that circled the single discharged cartridge case. The flap was lifted by a local detectiveand the young woman had pride of place at the front. Mark Roscoe was at her shoulder, and the Yorkshireman craned behind him.
    Suzie said, ‘The target isn’t some innocent. Wilson’s record goes back twenty-eight of his forty-five years. He was a hustler, ducked and wove. There’ll be a deal in the immediate background where he’s come up short or welshed. He’ll have known where he shouldn’t be, where he was threatened. On his own patch he must have felt secure.’
    The body lay awkward and angled, a leg bent under the weight of the stomach, an impossible contortion for a living man. The colour had already drained from the hands and ankles and from the face, except where the hole was. Very neat, precise. Could have dropped a pencil into it.
    Roscoe scratched his chin. The sight of death seldom fazed him. ‘There’s a shooter right in front of his face.’
    ‘Not a man who freezes.’ Suzie had confidence and gave her opinion, as if it was expected of her.
    They had come up to north London because there was little to detain them in their office, and the failed air-conditioning was an incentive to be clear of their workspace. The word, immediate, on the team screens was that the killing had been simple and ruthless, that the hitman should be of interest.
    Bill said, ‘Would have taken evasive action. It’s right in his face, his life on the line.’
    Suzie said, ‘But only one shot discharged. It’s a quality hit, boss.’
    Bill said, ‘About as good as it gets.’
    Roscoe grimaced, then turned on his heel. His own girl, Chrissie, did scenes-of-crime: funny thing, but he’d never met up with her inside a tent she shared with a cadaver. Back at their flat, he wouldn’t tell her about the killing of Wilson – a tosser who must have overstepped whatever line was drawn in front of him – and she wouldn’t tell him where she’d been and what bodies she’d sidled towards with her box of tricks and kit. They both did need-to-know, took the principle to the