The Contractor

 The Contractor

Molly took her drink, half a sweet cider, and found a table away from the bar. She chose this spot especially. It gave her full view of the rest on the pub and was right by the door, good for a hasty exit. She was 10 minutes early and, excruciatingly nervous. Fortunately, not used to drinking, after just a couple of sips, the cider soon hit the mark. It calmed her, just enough to prevent her from running.

About the Wagon and Plough Pub were six other people, consisting of two couples and two other women who were on their own. None of them looked like they could possibly be her contact. None of them looked anything like the contract killer she was expecting to speak to. Concerned, Molly wished she'd asked for a description; age, height, colour of skin, anything was better than nothing.

7 o'clock happened, and the person still hadn't arrived. Nervous impatience caused her to squirm in her seat. She found herself staring at the door, waiting for it to open. Growing trepidation made her bite her lip, it was close to bleeding. So entranced was she, she didn't notice the person who sat down at her table.

'Molly?' Whispered a female voice. Molly was immediately dragged out of her trance. Her head turned towards the voice and recognised it to belong to one of the women who had been elsewhere in the pub already. She had blond hair under an orange beret. There was a small gap in her front teeth, reminding Molly of Madonna. 

'Y-Yes..... Um..... Red Ferret?' Replied Molly. That was the codeword she was supposed to use, it said it in the Email.

'Yes.... and I believe you have something for me?

Molly nodded. From inside her jacket she took out the white envelope. Looking around first, she was about to pass it over.

'NO!' The woman hissed, her eyes glared. Molly received a kick to the shin. 'Give it to me under the table, fool.'

Doing as she was told, Red Ferret took it and promptly folded it tightly in the palm of her hand. 

'Stay here,' she said in a demanding tone. Red Ferret then came up out of her seat and proceeded to walk away. Molly, thinking she was heading towards the exit, suddenly panicked. She thought the woman she knew only as Red Ferret, was stealing her money. Fortunately, she was wrong. The woman was instead heading for the toilets, to check the contents of the sealed white envelope.

Not taking her eyes away from the toilet door, Molly took a large draw of her cider. The glass now empty, she wished she'd bought a pint after all.

Red Ferret was soon back, wearing a wry smile. 'All seems to be in order. Thank you,' she was now speaking in a softer voice. 'We can move on. Firstly, are you sure you really want me to do this?

Molly took a half breath before answering. She'd been thinking this through for months. Even after mediation, talking to her husband and friends, the problem just could not be resolved any other way, Gloria had to go. 'Yes,' she replied, sounding more confident than she actually felt.

'Okay, I hear you. Good,' said the blond woman. 'Now, I already have the address. I've been passed it a couple of times. It's quite a large property, and a nice house too. Are you sure there's no security? Anything that's going to catch me out?'

'Well we had infra red spotlights installed last year but they were so sensitive, triggered by foxes and such like, we had to turn them off almost straight away. They haven't been turned on since.'

'Good, good, good. And how about neighbours, are any of them nosey? How active is the Neighbourhood Watch scheme there?'

'You really don't need to worry about anything like that,' replied Molly matching Red Ferret's hushed tone. 'Most of the properties are empty in the Summer. Like us, their owners go away elsewhere. And we're such an insular bunch, Neighbourhood Watch never stood a chance down our road.'

Red Ferret nodded. Already this looked like it was going to be the easiest pay day this side of Christmas. Molly watched with a hint of admiration as the slim 30 something woman ticked things off from an imaginary list. She looked confident, the sort of person who could do anything she put her mind to, not just kill to order. She came across as the true professional Molly had hoped she'd be.

Red Ferret was nearly done. 'Now I know exactly where Gloria lives. I guarantee she will be dead by the time you arrive back home from your holiday. I just need to know when and at what time exactly will you vacate the property?'

Molly told her when exactly the taxi was picking her and her husband up to head to the airport. Red Ferret could set to work after that. Although everything was now crystal clear, Molly still had one tiny doubt. It had been bugging her from the off.

'Um..... err... Gloria's death.. Um...' she began stuttering under her breath. 'Err... How...?' Before she could finish the question, Red Ferret already had the answer.'

'There's nothing to worry about, my friend. Gloria's death WILL look just like an accident.' She put an arm on Molly's shoulder to reassure her. She stared into her eyes. 'No one, except you and me. will EVER be any of the wiser. You can trust me on that.'

The prompt reply made Molly feel immediately much better. She even managed a smile as she watched Red Ferret finish her wine and come up onto her feet for the 2nd time. 

'I'm off now,' she said. 'This will be the last time you will ever see me. Pleasure doing business with you. Enjoy your holiday.'

Slickly, almost cat-like, Red Ferret reached the door. She was out though it, without bothering to even nod her goodbye. Molly was immediately alone again, sitting at the table with just an empty glass in front of her. Everything was normal, like nothing untoward had happened, or ever will happen.

Molly and her husband, Patrick, had two weeks in the South of France. It was nice. It's always nice there. The food was good, the wine even better. The weather too was blissfully warm and sunny. Everything, including her husband, who only a few times mentioned Gloria, was just about perfect. Although Molly enjoyed her time there, it was impossible not to think however, of the fate Gloria was suffering back home in England. She only wished there was some other way of solving the problem.

Their flight back was civilised. They arrived home at about lunchtime. When the taxi pulled up outside the house, it was immediately clear something awful had happened. Looking into the garden, where once stood Gloria, there was now a large gap in the hedgeline.

'No, no, no, what's happened?' cried Patrick. The taxi had barely stopped before he threw open the door and lept out. 'Gloria! what's happened to Gloria?'

Already in tears, he bounded up the garden path towards the love of his life. Molly feigned concern as she paid the taxi and followed after him. Reaching her husband, he was already on his knees, hugging the broken trunk of a mature eucalyptus, a gum tree to any Australian. The entire tree was laying flat across the garden. Its trunk was broken, splintered through, just a few feet from the base. Gloria the gum tree, Patrick's most treasured possession was dead.  

'How could his happen to her?' He asked, looking all around in disbelief.

Standing beside him now, Molly took her husband head, she held it into her thigh. 'I really don't know, my love. It's most odd. I'm so, so, sorry. Maybe Gloria had some kind of disease? Maybe it caused her to rot?'

Releasing himself from her grip, on his hands and knees he crawled through the web fallen branches until he reached the broken stump. The wound was fresh, there was no sign of disease or decay. It had snapped clean through somehow, like a match.

'No that doesn't make sense,' exclaimed Patrick. 'Gloria has always been healthy. I cared for her too much, too often, to let that happen. You know yourself how many hours a day I spoke to her. I knew her intimately. She would have told me if she was ill.

Without any further explanation, it was assumed that Gloria had been felled by a freak gust of wind.

It was hard for Patrick, but over the following weeks, he slowly got over her death. The time he used to spend with Gloria, he now spent with his wife of thirty years instead, all just as Molly had planned. They began doing things together again. They grew closer again. It was just like it was when they'd first met at uni. Molly idolised Patrick, and Patrick was again besotted in his wife. Put simply, life couldn't get any better for Molly.

A year passed, things were still very good, though slowly, Molly couldn't help noticing Patrick spending more and more time in the garden again. Something was going on behind the potting shed. Molly ignored it at first, after all, everyone needs a hobby, there's nothing wrong with that. Then, one day however, her enquiring mind got the better of her. She waited until Patrick was out getting the newspapers before donning her Crocs and tip-toeing down to the bottom of the garden. Following a narrow path through a jungle of shrubs and bushes, she soon came upon a patch of freshly manicured soil. About a metre square, she saw in the middle growing, a baby sapling with bright green and yellow leaves. Surprised as she was, she was even more surprised to see a tiny label attached to it's stem, enough to send a chill down her spine. On the label was written just a few words, 'Tina, the love of my life, Patrick x'.

Red Ferret immediately sprang to Molly's mind. What would she do in this situation? With barely a hesitation, Molly brought her foot down soundly on top of the defenseless plant. Twice more she stamped, before pummelling and grinding the sapling until it was no more. Satisfied of a job well done, under her breath she muttered, 'Patrick will always be mine and mine alone.'