They never told him why. They just gave him the person's name, his or her address and a photo, not some private snapshot ripped out of an album, of course not. These were professional shots, made with high-class equipment, made by specialists. They had specialists for everything.
And Orlando never asked why. When he looked at the picture of a man in a trenchcoat crossing the street in blurry shades of grey or at the clean-cut black-and- white profile of woman at a cocktail party, laughing, with a glass in her hand, these images were nothing to him but shadows, beginning to morph into the background already. As if they had never even existed. As if he had no part in their sudden disappearance.
He never asked why.
He didn't want to know what happened to the pictures after one of the persons had been so neatly and precisely cut out. Because people don't disappear like that, they don't dissolve into thin air as it happens in video clips. There are always others who will most likely miss them, lovers, children, friends. But then, who knows? Maybe there aren't.
Orlando never thought about things like that.
These people were not individuals. They were jobs. Work he liked to finish as quickly and smoothly as it could be done. Professionalism was his credo, not cruelty. He despised violence, had learned to hate it long ago, way back in school when he and Sam had been kicked around because they didn't wear the right clothes, didn't know the right people and because they had never been smart enough to simply blend in.
He looked at the unopened envelope lying before him on the table. Things would be different now, if they had been smarter then. If they hadn't had the bad luck to be in the wrong moment at the wrong place.
Sam had tried to erase the memories of that night with alcohol and short-lived affairs ever since. As if too many men hadn't touched her already.
Orlando didn't need alcohol or drugs. He could look back on everything and feel nothing, like he had felt nothing when they pulled down his pants and brutally spread his legs. At that moment, he had closed his eyes. There would be no pain, no pain at all. He could take it, he told himself. After all, others had fucked him before. Though not like this, not with the clear intention to hurt, to break him. But they would not. They would not.
If only there had been a way to seal up his ears. That he didn't have to hear those stiffled little whimpers his sister was making or the sounds of skin flapping against naked skin.
Those noises, sounds of limbs struggling, of fabrics being torn, the echoes of grunts and choked syllables, would never stop haunting him.
Everything else was easy in comparison. Pulling the trigger and firing was easy. His victims never suffered. They simply did not wake up from their sleep any more.
And if it wasn't for the red spot quickly seeping into the pillows or onto the sheets, red fading into grey on white, one could easily imagine they were only sleeping.
It was like a film unfolding before him, a silent film in dull, monochrome colours in which he had no part. He was nothing but a spectator, standing by and watching.
As he loved to watch Kate when she was down on her knees before him and her pearly pink lips slowly, slowly closed around his cock. And when she released him after a while the swollen head was glistening wetly, just like her lips.
One of the best things about Kate was that she hardly ever made a sound during sex. She always bit back her moans when he was fucking her, fucking her with wide-opened eyes, watching her all the time, watching her shiver and climax under mute sighs before collapsing on top of him.
And all the while there was music playing in the background, some distant ambient sounds, enveloping them in a never-ending loop of tunes.
It was what Orlando always did first upon entering his apartment. Switch on the music so that he couldn't hear himself breathing in the clean white silence of his rooms.
And Kate didn't ask questions either. She never wondered about his posh apartment or the fast cars or about all those other treats that seem to come as the natural attributes of the rich and beautiful. When he presented her with tickets for a weekend in Paris or a pair of diamond earrings, she would just smile her million-dollar-smile, shining and opaque, and simply say: "Thank you".
Orlando watched the mocha coffee settle at the bottom of his glass, Turkish mocha, sweet and strong, just as he liked it.
It had become a ritual, coming to this place, settling on the cushions in one of the remote corners and drowning the small cup in one go before he began to study the details of his next assignment.
The bittersweet taste still on his lips, he ripped open the envelope and read what was written in meticulous handwriting at the back of the photo:
Viggo Mortensen, 45, owner of the gallery "Alatriste", Old Compton Street, Soho.
