Price to Pay, A by Simms Chris

Author:Simms, Chris [Chris Simms]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Severn House Publishers
Published: 2013-08-31T16:00:00+00:00

TWENTY-ONE

Liam eased the kitchen door open. The sound of the television playing became clearer. He’d been watching the man through a rear window of the house for the last twenty minutes as he’d shuffled around the ground-floor room, turning a laptop on and then plonking it half-open on the sofa before flicking the telly on, too. He scrolled through that evening’s listings, highlighting a film for recording later that evening.

Did that mean he was planning to go out? Liam decided he couldn’t afford to wait and see: Nina wanted the laptop back straightaway.

The news came on and the man sank lower on the sofa, just the top of his head now visible. There were no mirrors near the television, nothing to give the man a view of the doorway behind him.

Liam stepped carefully across the tiled floor of the kitchen, stopping in the corridor to remove the hammer from his jacket. He peeped round the TV room’s door. The room was in semi-darkness; most of the light came from the TV’s screen. It kept brightening and dimming as the camera angles switched.

The man was still on the sofa, head now tilted forward. Had he nodded off? Liam moved silently across the carpet, thinking of all the houses he’d robbed while their owners watched television in the front room, totally oblivious to his presence.

He peered down at the top of the man’s head. He’d nodded off, judging by the deep breathing. He wondered whether to just lift the laptop from the sofa and slip back out of the kitchen door. But Nina had said: no one left alive.

It had occurred to him, once or twice, where the girls they shipped out of the country ended up. Probably the same type of place they did in Britain; terraced houses on quiet city streets, flats above shops, back rooms of certain clubs.

The only buyer Nina had ever talked about was one who owned a giant yacht. A man who’d got into gas or oil when the Russian government decided to sell the industries off. But rather than spend his money on things like Premiership football clubs, this man liked to blow his cash on young girls. He had them flown out by helicopter to his floating palace. The man, Nina had once said, was willing to pay any price if the girl matched what he was looking for at that particular time. All that money and – according to Nina – the girls were never on board when he eventually returned to port.

He lifted the hammer up high. Nighty night, mate.

The man made a little snorting sound before the head of the hammer sank into the crown of his skull. He went stiff and, as Liam yanked it back up, he started to topple sideways. Liam just had time to reach over the back of the sofa and whip the laptop away.

As the man settled across the cushions, Liam looked at the words on the laptop’s case. Sony. Nina’s wasn’t a Sony, it was a Dell.

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