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  ONE TWISTED VOICE

  TRAVERSING GENRES

  By

  Matt Hilton

  Copyright © 2013 by Matt Hilton

  Cover Image Copyright © 2013 by Matt Hilton and Third Act Montage

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  Published 2013 by Sempre Vigile Press

  All characters in this publication are fictitious, or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Kindle Edition, Licence Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, please return to Amazon and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  CONTENTS

  Introduction

  MISCONCEPTIONS

  CONFETTI FOR GABRIELLE

  WANDERING FINGERS

  PAYBACK: WITH INTEREST

  THE SKIN WE’RE IN

  TRENCH WARFARE

  LOST CAUSE

  SATISFACTION GUARANTEED

  CRIME OF THE CENTURY

  HOW THE WEST WAS WON

  APOCALYPSE NOO

  SPLITTING HEIRS

  THE DAY

  GIVE UP THE GHOST

  SUFFERING SUCCUBI

  BOOZE AND OOZE

  Other books by the author

  About the author

  INTRODUCTION

  As an author, I’m best known for writing the Joe Hunter series of high-octane thrillers, of which book eight – Rules of Honour – has just been released by Hodder and Stoughton. I love writing Hunter’s adventures, but like many authors I also occasionally enjoy spreading my wings and writing something a little different from my normal output. I’ve done so in the self-published supernatural thriller novels “Dominion” and “Darkest Hour”, but I also enjoy writing short fiction too. When writing short stories I don’t stick with straight thrillers, but lean wherever my fancy takes me. So, it’s not unknown for me to pen a gritty Brit crime story, a humourous tale, an over-the-top actioner, a western, or a story that falls in the horror or dark fiction bracket.

  Over the last few years some of these stories have been published in various media, from traditional publishing avenues, through eBooks to websites. Some of my regular readers, and especially some of those new to the Joe Hunter books, might have possibly missed out on reading them. I therefore felt that it would be remiss for me not to pull together this small collection of tales and offer them in one volume.

  If you came here looking for action, then never fear. Most of the stories herein are delivered with a similar verve as the Hunter books are, it’s just that the setting might not be as familiar to you as you expected. From across the different genres I traverse, I’ve selected for your reading pleasure sixteen tales that I hope you will enjoy.

  Note: Joe Hunter does not appear in these stories, but who knows, you might find a new hero to root for.

  Matt Hilton

  MISCONCEPTIONS

  I sat in the room, doing the old Sam Spade bit waiting for the femme fatale to knock, and thinking to myself, “There has to be a better way than this?” I couldn’t think of anything. A man past forty, whose waist size exceeds his age, needs something kind of sedate to get by on.

  The room wasn’t a PI’s office. In fact it wasn’t even much of a room. It was a box at the end of a damp corridor above a pole-dancing club with rusty poles. It was more like a storage closet, plasterboard tacked onto a wooden frame, no paper, no photos or diplomas in frames, just boxes of stacked junk lining the walls and an old Formica-topped table and two plastic chairs. I’d sat in chairs just like them at school back in the ’80s. They were uncomfortable then; now that my ass had grown much bigger they were torture. I was itching like crazy and all I wanted to do was get up and pull the material of my shorts out of my butt-crack. But I held the nonchalant pose of a noir antihero; people kind of expected it when they arrived.

  The femme fatale arrived. She didn’t knock because there was no door. She just leaned in and scowled at me like I was something filthy. She wasn’t far wrong, I suppose. I looked back, and maybe the sour look on my face told her everything. Femme fatale she wasn’t; she’d a face like a hog and the body to match. She was dressed in a floral dress a family could set up camp beneath, a brown overcoat and dingy training shoes. Bare legs, patchy with dermatitis. Her hair was greasy, tight curls going gray where the black dye had faded. I could see where she’d shaved hair from her chin, the blunt razor leaving a barely healed scar.

  “You can’t be Ward?” she said by way of introduction.

  Well I sure as hell wasn’t Sam Spade, but I didn’t get what she was meaning.

  “Why not?”

  She came into the room uninvited and sat on the other chair across the table from me. It squealed in protest and little wonder. She pressed her hands into the thick rolls of flesh on her upper-thighs, giving me a head-to-heels inspection. By the look of things she wasn’t impressed. The feeling was mutual.

  “I heard you were meant to be something,” she said.

  I looked down at my gut hanging over my belt. I was more of a man than I used to be that was for certain. But meant to be something? Fair enough I was no oil painting, but who was she to complain?

  “Depends what you want,” I said and she snorted.

  “Well it’s a good job I ain’t looking for a wild time.”

  That pissed me off, but I didn’t say. She wasn’t exactly my type either, but she was carrying the money I wanted, and like I already said, I was there to make an easy living. Every job has pros and cons. Seeing as I could think of nothing that suited me better, I just took the day-to-day bullshit as a necessary evil.

  “When we spoke on the phone, you said that you’d do whatever I asked.” She was obviously happy now that I was what she’d expected. She wasn’t the least nervous. Maybe it was my lack of response to her sarcasm that reassured her: an undercover cop would have argued his case more, to get her to incriminate herself before pulling out his cuffs.

  “Only one thing I don’t touch,” I reminded her.

  “Yes, you said. You never touch kids.”

  I nodded. “Kids.”

  “So you do have some standards.” She was eyeing my rumpled suit, her mouth twisted into a sneer, and I guessed she wasn’t confusing standards with morals. That was okay. A body like mine didn’t carry a nice suit well, so I just made do with an old one. I didn’t dress nice, and I didn’t kill children—some legend I’m graced with.

  Not that I was squeamish about doing a child, but they carried too much fuss with them. You could kill a man, a woman, and it barely hit the papers these days. But do a kid and there was a national outrage. Doesn’t do much for your career chances if the entire country is looking for you, and I had a living to make.

  “I don’t want you to harm a kid. Not unless you have a limit on mental age?”

  I held up the flat of my hand, surprising even myself. “I don’t do handicapped people either.” I pinched my lips around the politically incorrect term, but I wasn’t sure what the acceptable moniker for someone soft in the head was these days. Should have said I’d never killed anyone with mental health issues before, not any in the clinical sense. Plenty of whack jobs and nutcases mind you, but that’s not the same.

  The femme grunted and it suited her.

  “I was making a joke. My husban
d still thinks he’s a teenager the way he’s running around.”

  I got her this time, but didn’t say. So she’d cottoned on that her husband was having a good time, looking elsewhere? Can’t say as I blamed him too much. Still, she was the cash cow so I tried to look sympathetic without putting the emphasis on ‘cow’.

  “You still sure you want me to kill him?”

  “That’s what I’m paying you for. I don’t want a frigging half-baked job. When you do him, put an extra bullet in his brains to make sure.”

  “I was just checking. See, maybe after you think about it, you’ll have a change of mind.”

  She shook her head and I caught a whiff of cheap fragrance and sweat. “That bastard is screwing everything in a skirt that he can find. And I’ve got the proof. The scumbag gave me a sexually transmitted disease and then tried to say he caught it off me!”

  I could understand her outrage, I mean, what were the chances of that?

  She gave me the beady eye, still didn’t care for what she found. “When you’ve done it, how’d I know you can keep your mouth shut afterwards?”

  “I was just going to ask the same thing.” We stared at each other, my hard eyes on her limpid ones. When she didn’t offer anything, I said, “I’m not in the habit of confessing my sins. I’m taking it that once he’s out of the way you want to start a new life. You aren’t gonna speak if it means your new life is in a cell not much bigger than this shit-hole.”

  She looked around the cramped room. Then she shrugged, a roll of fat bulging out of her collar. “I could live with that.” She laughed nastily. “If it means getting him out of the way. Really, though, I can’t live with him any longer.” She placed a pudgy hand over her heart. Her eyes rolled back and I was looking at the vein-marbled whites. “I solemnly promise I won’t say a word to anyone,” she said in a singsong voice. “So? We have a deal?”

  “When I see the cash.” I smiled in encouragement.

  She dug an envelope out of her overcoat pocket and slapped it down on the Formica. I tried to weigh the contents with my eyes. Couldn’t, so reached over and lifted the flap. Plenty of purples, not enough gold notes. “Looks a little light to me.”

  “Half now, half on completion.”

  “That isn’t the way I work.”

  “How can I be sure that you’ll even do the job? For all I know you could just pick up the cash, walk away, and that’s the last I’d ever hear of you.”

  “Sometimes you have to take things on faith,” I told her.

  “I’m struggling with that ... you don’t look like a professional assassin to me.”

  “That’s because I’m not an assassin. Assassins tend to take out politicians, religious figures, royals ... me I just do normal, run-of-the-mill people. I’m just a regular ol’ hitman.”

  “You don’t look like much of a hitman either. Nothing like the ones you see in the movies.”

  “Who were you expecting? Matt Damon?”

  “I should be so lucky,” she snorted. She started picking at the half-healed scab on her chin and I thought, No one with a face like that has that kind of luck!

  “You’ve heard my credentials,” I said. “You know I’m up to the job.”

  “I only know what you told me on the telephone. You could’ve been spinning me a line, just to get your hands on my cash.”

  “I don’t do kids, I don’t do handicapped folk, and I don’t do lies.” My legend was growing.

  “By the look of things you don’t do much exercise either,” she said with a wicked smile, the old kettle and pot argument raging on. “You sure you’re fit for your line of work?”

  “These days I hardly run for a bus,” I acquiesced. “But I don’t have to. A bullet’s quicker than any man.”

  “How pat,” she smirked. “You still have to catch up with them first, don’t you?”

  “Nope, I wait until their guard’s down. Take them when they’re least expecting it. My strategy has served me well, believe me.”

  “How many people have you killed?”

  “You’re sure you want to hear?”

  “I want to know I’m going to get value for money.”

  “Thirty-three,” I said.

  She adjusted her weight on the chair, covering a sniff of disdain with the creaking of the plastic.

  “You still doubt me?”

  “Can’t blame a girl for being nervous with her hard-earned cash, can you?”

  “OK. You want proof?”

  She patted her opposite coat pocket. I didn’t look; I was still watching the disgusting flake of scab hanging off her chin. “I have the rest of the money right here. Show me something that will convince me that you’re really up to the task and you’ve got a deal.”

  “That’s fair,” I decided.

  I lifted my silenced Sig-Sauer from under the table and pointed it at her tremulous gut. I pulled the trigger.

  The thud of the bullet pounding her flesh was louder than the gun’s retort.

  The femme took a moment to realize she was dying. She looked down at the hole I’d just put in her coat, then up at me.

  “Will that do it?” I asked.

  Her mouth hung open, a string of saliva tethering her tongue to her dentures. She blinked slowly and there was disbelief in her eyes. Maybe it was because I’d shot her, or maybe she still doubted me. That damn flake of scab still waved at me and I used it as a target. Scab and chin disintegrated together.

  “So I guess we’ve got a deal?” I asked. Her head was nodding, her floppy neck riding the ripples still shuddering through her body. The nod was enough to seal it for me.

  I jostled myself out of the chair, thankfully unhitched material from the crack of my cheeks and went over to her. Her arms had fallen to her sides, but her girth pushed them away from her. She reminded me of that spoiled bitch that blew up with juice in Willy Wonka’s factory. I dipped a hand in her pocket and pulled out another envelope.

  I flicked through the notes. They were all there.

  I pushed both envelopes into my pockets and walked along the cramped corridor to the far end, ignoring the pain in my knees. The corridor was long and I was puffing by the time I reached the far end. Maybe the femme was right and I should be in better shape for this game. I dabbed perspiration from my forehead before pushing open a door. I had to look the part. There was another room, not much bigger than the first.

  The femme’s husband was a little squirt with glasses and a comb-over. His jumper was a market stall special, all diamond patterned down the chest, the two for the price of one type you buy on special offer. Black nylon trousers, white socks for frig sake! Couldn’t see how someone like him could be living the double life his wife claimed, but she was right in a way. Just shows you that looks can be deceiving. People look at me and don’t credit me with much either.

  “It’s done?” he asked.

  I looked down at the little man. His eyes looked huge behind the glasses. He was sitting in the chair where I’d left him earlier, while I prepped for his wife’s arrival.

  “Just like you asked,” I reassured him.

  “Did she suffer?”

  The malignant gleam in his eye told me the answer he was waiting for.

  “Yeah, she suffered.”

  “Good,” he said. “She deserved it. Did she tell you I gave her a sexually transmitted disease?”

  “Yeah, you called it right.”

  “Bitch. It was her who gave me the clap. It was her who was sleeping around.”

  I didn’t comment. It was beginning to sound like I was stuck in the middle of the Jerry Springer show.

  “What else did she say?” he asked. “Did she have any idea that—”

  “She was certain you were being unfaithful to her, chasing all these young skirts all the time.” I laughed at the absurdity of it.

  He laughed with me. “You think I’d stand any chance with a young girl?”

  Decorum isn’t my main strength. “Not a chance.”

&n
bsp; To his credit, he didn’t take any offense. “Crazy bitch has accused me of running after girls for years,” he said. “She’s made my life hell and I think it was all guilt over her own infidelity. Did she admit to having someone else?”

  “I didn’t ask.”

  “She must have said something.”

  “She did. She asked me to kill you.”

  “What?”

  I just smiled at him and he shook his head.

  “Isn’t that just like the bitch? What a nerve, eh?”

  I shrugged. “A job’s a job to me, a deal a deal.”

  “Good job we dealt first, then,” he said, blinking mole-like. “I know she despised me, but can’t believe she’d actually want me killed. But it does make sense, I suppose. She’d want me out the way so she could sleep around any time she liked. What a bitch!”

  I shrugged, held out my hand. “Forget about her; you don’t have to take her crap ever again.” I snapped my fingers. “Money on completion; just as we agreed.”

  The man pulled out a thick envelope and I took it from him. Didn’t bother counting the notes, because I knew he was good for the fee.

  “A deal’s a deal,” he said, smiling as he mimicked my earlier words.

  “Yes,” I said. “It is.”

  I shot him in the head, just like I’d agreed to do for his wife.

  But that wasn’t the main reason.

  The little squirt should have mentioned it when first we met. I wiggled my trousers out of my butt again, exhaling at the chafing pain. I lined up my SIG on his groin. One pull on the trigger and I got payback. “That’s for giving me the fucking pox.”

  Author’s note:

  This story first appeared at the webzine “Thrillers, Killers ‘N’ Chillers” and appeared in print in “Uncommon Assassins” (Smart Rhino Publications)

  CONFETTI FOR GABRIELLE

  Will Porter wasn’t looking for trouble when he slewed off-road and crashed into Mrs. Hinkle’s cabin. It was an injudicious tug on the steering wheel when his tyre blew out, an over adjustment brought on by the hours of anxiety hanging like a grey cloud over his mind. All he wanted now was to be on his way. That was evident the moment I spoke to him, but I couldn’t just let him change his tyre and carry on with his journey. I’d a report to file, a sobriety test to carry out. Maybe I’d have to take him in on a charge. What did we have here: hazardous driving, reckless endangerment? When I arrived in my radio car, I was sure he was about to abandon the scene, but now that he was sitting in my cruiser, that wasn’t something I could write him up for.