Genetic inheritance

They were not your typical hands, the pinky ring alone sat tight as a gold tourniquet on a corn-beef complexion sausage finger and would probably have run hula-hoop round the the ankle of your typically atrophied catwalk model. They were definitely working hands, or had been, evidenced from the whitened scar pits where flesh gouges appeared to have been extracted by the bite of determined predators.

You've noticed my hands. Never bite the feeder they say, but when the feeder is as old as I am, the whipper-snappers tend to look past the distributor to eye the stash more directly. They don't bother me no more like they once did; no, they just go sidle round the back-door with their promises of protection, knowing full well that the only folks I need protecting from are them themselves.

So you have enemies?

Hell, everyone's an enemy as far as I'm concerned. You yourself are an enemy, you may not perceive that fact yourself as yet, but I do and, in time, you will too – after I have sanitised you that is.

Am I to take that as a threat?

No, no, my dear boy, just as a precaution – I have no reason as yet to wish you in the way of harm.

That's not exactly reassuring.

As I understand, that's par for the course in your line of work.

It is, but I like to get a play of the field before I commit.

Oh you will commit; I can see you already have.

You're very sure of yourself.

Do you think I got here by doubt? Look around you: this house; these grounds; the pools; the stables and so on and so on. Could a doubter have accumulated so much worldly evidence of his insecurity?

True to an extent; however, you've got the place rigged like a fortress; isn't the reason I'm sat here talking to you a matter of security?

That it is, that it is, laddie.

So what can I do for you?

I need you to eliminate my daughter, call it a precaution against patricide.

I think you misunderstand the nature of my profession.

Ha! Ha! Ha! You must forgive my penchant for the dramatic turn of phrase; I merely want you to neutralise her as a threat; not kill her.

And why would I help you do that?

The money, for one thing, but also so that you can help an old man retain his dignity before twilight sets shadows over his final resting place. I've earned my wealth, perhaps not always with a level of desert that I would have hoped for, nonetheless, it was my toil that claimed it. When you merely inherit such wealth, well, it can strike some, such as my daughter, as a slap of familial humiliation. And boy, is she sore. She wants to stake her own claim now and not wait for the succession of the inevitable. In short, she wants to take back all that she has and, in time will be given, for her own self-worth.