Shoot to Kill by James Craig

banal ici. Je crève d’ennui et il pleut sans cesse
.’
    Tuco allowed himself a little laugh. He knew what the kid meant. He didn’t like going to London himself. It was a total shithole. But it was a shithole full of customers. He was in business, so you had to respect that. The market was always right: you had to follow the money.
Aucune question
.
    Traditionally, outside of France, Tuco had always lacked what business analysts called ‘critical mass’. London was waiting for him like a big, fat whore, her legs wide open. The problem was, his dick was just too small to give her a proper seeing-to. He needed more sales, growing revenues if he was to become a player and take the business to the next level. That meant finding a serious local business partner, someone with a successful track record and a good reputation. After a couple of expensive false starts, Tuco was optimistic that he had finally found that man.
    He suddenly caught sight of one of the hookers he’d brought down from Paris for the weekend strolling towards the pool. Black as ebony, she wore a fetching canary-yellow bra but was naked from the waist down. ‘Look,’ he said to Alain, his voice thickening. ‘You have to stay where you are for a while. I need some time to sort this out.’
    ‘But—’
    ‘No buts,’ Tuco snapped. ‘Just keep out of sight. I will speak to my – our – business partner in London. He will make sure you are well looked after. I’ll even ask him to get you some more games.’ Beforethe boy could complain any further, Tuco ended the call. Tossing the handset onto a nearby sofa, he headed for the pool.
    The temperature was well on the way to a humid 100 degrees. Sitting in the dust, with his back resting against the outside wall of an empty hut, Adrian Gasparino took a mouthful of water from his bottle and thought about Justine back home in Worthing. Hopefully she would be getting a good night’s sleep around now. He hadn’t spoken to her for a few days. She was due to have a scan of the baby this week but he couldn’t remember which day. Gasparino wanted a boy. Justine hadn’t been convinced that they were ready to start a family, but couldn’t go through with an abortion and he had talked her round. They could have a boy now and then a girl later, once he had sorted himself out with a decent job. Maybe a third one a little later down the line.
    Perfect.
    From behind his Oakley M Frames, he watched as one of the Americans, a sergeant called Anthony Withers, strolled over, placed his M-16 carefully against the wall and dropped heavily onto the ground beside him.
    Gasparino offered up a palm and they exchanged a high-five. Withers was one of the few Americans who had shown any interest in fraternizing with the Brits. He had taught Gasparino and a few of the other guys how to play poker – taking them for a tidy sum in the process – and generally had shown an interest in learning from their experiences in the Arghandab, unlike most of his comrades who, it seemed, just wanted to work out, smoke dope and listen to thrash metal. They seemed more hostile to the Brits than the Talibs.
    With his regulation buzz cut and beefy features, Withers was a squat guy from Hartford, Connecticut. Gasparino had tried to imagine where that was on a map. Somewhere near New York? He had no idea. Withers had told him that Hartford had once been the ‘insurance capital of the world’ but now it was number three on the list of America’s Top Ten ‘dead cities’ – former business hubs which had been left behind by the global economy in recent decades.
    ‘A good place to get out of,’ Gasparino had mused, for want of anything else to say.
    ‘Absolutely,’ Withers grinned. ‘That’s why I’m here.’
    ‘It’s just the same in England.’
    ‘Yeah?’
    ‘Lots of places like that. Lots of dead towns and cities. Probably just about everywhere’s dead, apart from London.’
    ‘Ever been?’
    ‘To London?’ Gasparino shook