Lucas parked alongside the shed next to a Range Rover and they got out of the car. A train ran past on one of the lines about fifty yards away with a short, half-hearted roar before dying away. She wondered how many of the people on board had noticed them there. It made her conscious that she’d left the law behind, that she was becoming the person the police had half suspected her of being.
She followed Lucas into the shed. With part of the roof missing it was bright inside and weeds and a single buddleia were growing among the debris and broken glass. It had the oily smell of industry and decay about it.
As soon as she walked in, she noticed the guy standing in the middle of the shed: short dark hair, lean, wearing a black suit with a black shirt underneath. It took her a moment longer to see the other man sitting on the floor, his arms handcuffed behind his back. He looked broken and dejected, his hair disheveled, face bruised, T-shirt dirty and bloodstained. And he looked young. Lucas had talked about him being in London for seven years and she’d imagined someone older, not a guy in his mid-twenties.
‘Ella, this is Dan Borowski. Dan, Ella.’ The guy in the black suit smiled at her. He was in his mid to late twenties too, and good-looking, but she was unnerved because he looked so much like the stereotype of what she supposed he was—a contract killer or a gangster, somebody from the underworld. ‘And this is Vasko Novakovic.’ Lucas turned back to Dan and said, ‘Thanks. I’ll call you later.’
‘No worries.’ Dan looked down at Novakovic and then at Lucas again. ‘He’s heard of me but he hasn’t heard of you. How about that?’ Lucas nodded at Dan, amused. Dan left and she heard his Range Rover pull away across the gravel, then another train passing.
‘Come over. Take a closer look at him.’ She stepped closer. Novakovic looked up at her and away again. ‘We don’t want to hurt you. All we need is information.’ He looked up at Lucas, disbelieving. ‘Mark Hatto, his wife, his son. Where did the hit come from?’
He nodded, a grim acknowledgment, as if he’d known that job would lead him into trouble. He seemed to weigh things before shrugging and saying, ‘Bruno Brodsky.’ Lucas smiled at Ella, a look of self-satisfaction, though she had no idea why.
‘Ask him why he killed my brother.’
Novakovic looked at her in surprise, as if realizing for the first time how she was involved. ‘He doesn’t have to ask me. My English is good.’ He hesitated before saying, ‘I was paid for three people—your father, mother, brother.’
‘He was only seventeen,’ said Ella.
Novakovic looked unimpressed. ‘I do what I’m paid to do. Brodsky tells me kill the boy, I kill the boy. Brodsky tells me kill you, I kill you.’
He seemed almost to be gloating and she could feel her confused and overwhelmed emotions settle into disgust and hatred. When she’d first seen him sitting there, she’d hoped he might be full of remorse, that she might even be able to find a way to forgive him.
But he didn’t care anything for what he’d done to her or her family. If anything, he seemed to be reveling in it. She felt sick, too, because she knew that even when Lucas killed him it wouldn’t erase the memory of that smug arrogance.
‘Okay, Ella, let’s go.’ They both looked at Lucas in surprise and he said, ‘He was the messenger, not the murderer. It’s difficult, but you need to see that distinction—there’s no revenge here.’
It took her a moment or two to soak up the absurdity of this. She thought of her mum and dad, of Ben lying perfect and lost in that casket, and she knew in every cell of her being that she wanted this monster dead, as ultimately unsatisfying as she knew that would be.
‘Kill him.’
‘What are you going to do, Ella—kill everyone who came anywhere near this contract?’
‘Just him. Lucas, I’ll pay you, but how can I let him live knowing what he did? How can I?’ He didn’t respond. ‘You’re saying it was just a job for him. Well, make it just a job for you. I’ll pay you whatever the going rate is but you have to kill him. You have to.’
‘I told you before, no payments.’ She didn’t even see him draw his gun, just heard the sudden ear-cracking of the shot, a sound so violent it startled her. When she recovered, she looked at Novakovic. He was lying on his back, his body contorted and in tight relief against his T-shirt, forced that way by the obstacle of his own arms handcuffed behind him. It reminded her of one of those Michelangelo statues they’d seen in Italy, a dying slave—except for his face, mashed with blood, stripped of form, no longer looking human.
She felt more satisfied than she’d expected, having erased the only extant memory of her family’s final moments and death. And she knew also now that the struggle she’d been having between the desires for justice and revenge had been a false one.