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but on a man like him it was plenty. Susan was his trophy wife, and I found myself hoping for her sake that it never strayed much further than the ornamental state. When I am casing a job, I do my utmost to remain detached from such useless emotions as like or dislike, but there was no denying that this guy was a hunting accident waiting to happen.
    â€˜I’ll leave that up to you,’ Susan had said, when I mentioned some possible methods. ‘I have it on good authority that you are considered the very best in your field, so I guess I’d be a fool not to let you take care of the details. Besides, it’s not as if I hate him or anything like that. ’ I weighed her words for the least hint of flirtation, and nodded.
    So there it was; just business. A lady who knew what she wanted out of life and was not afraid to go after it. I wondered if she could ever fall for someone like me. I’m in good shape and not bad-looking for mid-forties, and I’ve managed to put aside a nice little nest-egg to ensure a very comfortable retirement. Some women even found ambrosial qualities in my aura of menace. I decided that, when all of this was done, I’d come knocking.
    I took my time with the job, gave the situation a chance to settle. A cooling period is important, in case of new developments or stirrings of conscience. And when, finally, I did set to work, Jake Malone was still brash and overweight, still rolling to his routine days, making the office by ten, lunching with a constantly rotating clientele, and always checking out by five. I kept up surveillance for a fortnight, until I could read him like a penny dreadful.
    Like a lot of his kind, he liked the façade of independence, and found great appeal in the idea of showing the world that he had never lost touch with the common man. No personal valets for him, no chauffeurs either. When he left work at five, he climbed behind the wheel of a jet-black Lincoln Navigator SUV, a great boat-like slab that practically haemorrhaged cash, but which held a lot of sway as a style statement among the tasteless glitterati. Such indulgence made him an easy mark though, allowing me to trail him at a variety of distances and to watch how he bullied his way through rush-hour traffic, cutting lanes, running red lights and blasting his horn at anyone who dared hold their place instead of ceding right of way to him. The man was a maniac behind the wheel and that presented me with an open-door invitation. All I had to do was find a quiet spot on the road and go to work. The police would open and shut the books on this highway wreck, no question about it.
    Malone always took the hill route home. The hill, seven or eight miles out of town, was the status real estate, and his spread was the prime spot: well elevated, west-facing for bloody sunsets and the sparks of the town lighting up as stars in the darkness. The road up was narrow and winding, and edged in several places on sheer drops. It wouldn’t take much to ease him out into the waiting abyss.
    The whole thing looked straightforward, but as always, my mind was soaked in doubt. What if I had underestimated his abilities as a driver? What if he saw me coming in my freshly stolen sedan and merely sneered as he held his place, and his cool? Or maybe I’d have the bad luck of meeting oncoming traffic just as I made the final push. And all would be lost. But some risks were unavoidable, and I have always been good at working out mathematical equations, measuring the angles, settling on the correct formula. Besides, doubt is, I think, an essential part of my work.
    In the end, the job proved as easy as picking flowers.
    He had the needle pinned in the high seventies and it was all the sedan could do, given the steepness of the incline, to close the gap. Still, the speed was the key; the faster he was going the easier it would be for me to make him to lose control. When I made my move, edging up beside him, I