Pay Off Read Free Page B

and labelled as either truthful or not to be trusted.
    He leant back in his chair and steepled his fingers under his broad chin. His hands were smooth with long, delicate fingers and perfect, well-manicured nails. A stainless steel watch peeped out of his left sleeve as he gently tapped his two index fingers against his upper lip and looked into my soul.
    'I've been wronged, badly wronged, and I'm out for revenge. Two men have done me a grave injustice, just how bad I can't tell you and maybe I never will but they deserve what's coming to them. You'll have to trust me on that score.
    'One is a drugs dealer and property developer with very nasty criminal connections and a stack of dangerous friends. The other is one of his associates, a business man of sorts, a whizz kid who's acting as a front for the other guy's money.
    'If these guys had crossed me in the City, if it had been business, then I could have coped on my own, I could have fought back. If they'd broken the law I could have gone to the police, or sued, but they were far too clever for that.'
    'What did they do?' he asked.
    'I can't tell you that. I just need your help, and I'm prepared to pay for it. And to pay well.'
    'You want them killed,' he said, and it was a statement, not a question.
    'I went them dead, or put away for alongtime. And I don't want to tee directly involved. I have aconscience, Jim, a set of values that was drilled into me from a very early age so no, I couldn't point a gun at either of them and pull the trigger.'
    'You want someone else to do your dirty work.' Another statement.
    'Yes, but not in the way you think. Sure, I could go into any of a dozen pubs in the East End, spend a little money and have their legs broken, maybe even killed. What would it cost me, a few hundred pounds? I could do that, but I couldn't live with myself afterwards. All my time working in the City I've been honest, I've never double crossed anybody or deliberately hurt them. My word is my bond might sound corny in this day and age but that's what my father taught me and those are the values that I've stuck to. I can't betray him or myself, and I won't even try.'
    'It's not corny, but it puts you in a very difficult position. Maybe an impossible position. You want two men dead yet you're going around saying “thou shalt not kill” like some pious prophet. Either put up or shut up, you can't have it both ways. And if it's an assassin you want then you've got the wrong man. I've killed, but in battle and that's a whole different ball game. It's one thing to run down a Falklands hill firing at men trying to kill you, it's another to sneak up and shoot someone in the back of the neck. Soldiers have standards, too, and backshooting isn't one of them.' He started to get up, but I held out my hand and motioned him to sit down.
    'You don't understand, just hear me out.' He settled back in the chair but there was a tenseness about him, an unease that was making both of us uncomfortable.
    'One of the things I do best is to lay down strategies, to calculate how people will react in certain situations. To gauge the reactions of directors and shareholders, to anticipate the actions and reactions of others and to plan accordingly.
    'I have a plan, a set of actions which, if I put them into 23 effect, will give me the result I'm looking for. I think I can get my revenge without pulling the trigger or paying someone to do it for me.'
    'A set up,' he said. 'You're going to set them up.' He was smiling now.
    'Yes, and for that I'm going to need help, people with skills I don't have. It's the same in business. You need advice, you bring in a consultant, you pay him to provide the services and knowledge you don't have yourself. It works with computers, marketing, public relations, so why shouldn't it work for me? I need expertise which you have and I'm willing to pay for it.'
    I leant forward and looked into the ice blue eyes. 'I'm not going to lie to you and say that I'm putting all