Horatio

An old one. I must have been 19 or 20 and someone asked me to write something in the style of a Hong-Kong Blood-Opera. It's rough around the edges, but I still kind of like it

Okay, I will admit that I have made a few mistakes in my time. Joining that gang as a kid, possibly the worst because it was ultimately why I was here.

You just have to remember something, it was never that easy in a South London council flat. I am not saying that we did what we had to, just that being flat broke tends to cut down on your options. I was 12, I was bored and it kept me out of the house. Of course, the money was probably another incentive but mostly I just wanted to hang out with Tracy...

Normally, no-one would have wanted me around but my dad was a locksmith. Nothing special about that, except that he was the reason I could open almost any lock in seconds. That was what it was all about, speed. I could get all of us into a shop and shut the door before anyone saw us.

Right now, I was getting myself into another type of building altogether. That was because I had never stopped at petty theft. Now I was working on contract for Dave 'Hammer'.

Dave had actually been one of the victims of our raids. We had not thought that he would be there when we broke in, and not in our wildest dreams would we have thought we would find him with a dozen armed men. Eight of us died that night just as a message but he thought he had a use for me, if I would just shoot one of my gang-mates he would make sure I had a good future. Tracy's boyfriend was the one they chose, a stroke of luck really. I was jealous, he was a dick, I blew his balls clean off. Dave liked my style, so I got the job.

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I had just walked into the Hotel, briefcase and suit, without anyone batting an eyelid. To them I was just another London 'geezer' working in Hong Kong, no doubt the product of some internet company that got lucky. I went to the lift and hit the button for the floor I was after; 13, unlucky for someone.

The briefcase was open almost as soon as the doors were shut. Inside was my normal kit - 2 silenced PPKs for the bodyguards or anyone who just noticed me too soon and my two Glock 17s. Sometimes the Walthers were a bad idea when the only aim was to get out. Besides, it felt more professional to use a different gun for the target than for his muscle.

One other thing from the briefcase, my tools. This place still used normal keys, so I was betting on about 10 seconds to open the door. Glocks in the small of my back, Walther in the right-hand pocket of my trenchcoat, Walther under my right armpit. An intelligent bodyguard would probably be able to spot an assassin just by his coat but the concept of an bright bodyguard was so rare that I had never met one.

The thought lasted as long as it took for the lift to stop. This was the time then.

One man in a suit stood in front of the door. Looking at him I thought it was a little too obvious, just placing him there as a message to all the hitmen. His hands were empty, the suit made me think he probably had a gun in a shoulder-rig, but would that be the one he went for?

I walked over. Briefcase in one hand, other hand in a pocket gripping the Walther. I smiled, so did he. I eased the gun out a little in case I needed to draw it in a hurry.

He was still smiling as he moved his hand across his chest, I was still smiling as I put a bullet through his heart. His hand slid out, holding a radio. Not a problem, a conscience is not one of my flaws.

At 2 in the morning, interruptions are rare but it does not pay to take risks. I left him in the room opposite, along with the couple unfortunate enough to be in it. There comes a point when an extra couple of deaths is not really significant. According to statistics anyway.

The grunt had a key, quite a bonus really. Picking a lock takes two hands but a key would leave me a free hand for my gun. While I had time, I reloaded. Three bullets can be a big difference in a firefight.

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I would not say that being employed by a man who supplied guns was a big step up from a gang but at least people were careful about pissing me off. Trouble is, it didn't make me feel any more comfortable.

My sixteenth birthday was a bit of an experience. Dave invited me to lunch at an expensive restaurant, just him, me and Tracy. Halfway through the meal, he handed me a box in wrapping paper. The tag was addressed to Tracy as well, and the box was very heavy.

After all the years I had known him, I still did not recognise that weight. The shallow box could almost have held a hardback book but it was too heavy. Even as I lifted the lid, I thought I would find some solid silver pictureframe or a brick as some kind of joke.

As my eyes fell on them I was reminded of that French film, Nikita. He had given us matching guns, Walther PPKs with silencers sitting beside them. Neither of us had even touched a gun since the night we met him but I knew then that he had plans for us.

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The key slid smoothly into the lock, I could feel the pins rising and falling until the barrel was free. It seemed like I had been standing here an eternity but I could not rush this or I would be heard. I felt the tension as the bolt slowly slid back and finally the door was free to move.

Throwing the door open would be risky. It would be noisey and if someone were to stand behind it, they could close the door on me. A gentle push would give someone a chance to shoot me through the door though. Either way, this was the most dangerous part.

I pushed the door as hard as I could, putting my weight behind it. It was a good move, the man behind the door was sent flying into a shelf. He went down with almost no noise. The room was dark, so I was a big black target against the light outside. The lightswitch was just where I had expected it, one of the benefits of doing my homework.

Time to take stock. One man in the double-bed, one lying at the foot of the bed on the floor. There was one at the window, turning now that the light was on. The last was getting out of a chair and his gun was aimed at my chest. I only just got out of the way, lucky that he was blinded by the light.

My shoulder felt like it was burning. Maybe I hadn't got out of the way in time.

The second Walther came out even as I fired the first. The window was suddenly a glittering cascade of lethal blades, centred on the man closest to it. He followed them down onto the street below, a casualty of his business. My second pistol was already aimed at the man who has shot me and as the trigger came toward my palm, the bullet put him down.

It is worth remembering that blood spreads a long way, so judging quantities is hard. I noticed this as the man in the bed, who I had ignored in favour of his armed friend on the floor chose that moment to take his shot. A hole appeared in the sheets and another appeared in the wall behind me. Firing from such a position didn't help his aim, already thrown off when his eyes had been forced to adjust to the light.

The man in the bed was probably dead before he realised he had missed but the last had his gun free before I managed to bring mine down to him, so my foot connected with his chin to give me the extra time I needed. It was good enough, his bullet shattered a ceiling tile rather than my skull. I did not return the favour.

Not really a clean kill, but it was going well until the door of the bathroom swung back to reveal yet another guard. 6'2 and built like a tank, I only saw a flash of metal in his hand before instinct cut in. I planted my forehead on the bridge of his nose and almost felt the cracking bone.

He fell back into the bathroom, a torrent of blood issuing from his nostrils. It wasn't enough to stop him but it dropped his aim, I felt the knife slice my shin but the bone deflected the worst of the damage.

Two more knives sat in the sink so I decided to use them, a twisted professional courtesy to the man. Something inside me wanted to feel him die, wanted to watch the knife go into him. I reminded myself to get a set, they seemed like fun.

Any other day and I would have noticed that the connecting door to another room was open and would not have been surprised to see a middle-aged chinese man standing in the door way with a shotgun. I had only just put my PPKs back in their shoulder-holsters and drawn the Glocks to escape, wishing I had got to use them.

Fate has a sense of humour, I had my chance to use them after all. As it happens, the man in the bed was a decoy so I even got to use my glocks for the real kill. If he had just waited for me to leave, just stayed back, I would have mistakenly left him alive. Waiting in the doorway, he had taken a chunk out of the wall. He had fired too soon, probably misjudging the penetration of the thing. It was not even cocked when I blew the back of his skull out.

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Preparing the scene is an art in itself, you never leave too much evidence but it is important to leave a calling card. Odds were that the police were already on their way up from the gunfire so I would have to be quick.

The last items in the briefcase were an incendiary bomb and a can of lighter fluid. A splash here, a 20 second fuse there...

Fire alarms, instant crowd. In the ensuing panic, who notices that one of the businessmen has torn his suit? The crowd outside gathers to look up at the fire streaming from a broken window. Not one of them looks down at the broken figure 13 floors below it. Nor do they look at the Englishman climbing into his car and smiling to his girlfriend as she drives him away.

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Unknown to the media, a knife matching the two used in one of the deaths was found on the back of a fire-escape door. It held a small scrap of fabric that seemed to contain a message.

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And let me speak to the yet unknowing world

How these things came about. So shall You hear

Of carnal, bloody and unnatural acts;

Of accidental judgments, casual slaughters;

Of deaths put on by cunning and forc'd cause;

And, in this upshot, purposes mistook

Fall'n on th' inventors' heads. All this can I

Truly deliver.

- Horatio

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