There was no time to bring in a top-class assassin like The Ghost. He needed to go down and dirty – sometimes that worked just as well. Providers on the Dark Web offered an array of illegal services, including drugs, guns, counterfeit money and even fraudulent lifetime subscriptions to Netflix. Financial transactions were carried out using Bitcoin, the cryptocurrency that enabled two parties to transact without knowing each other’s identities. He was pleased to discover the website he had previously used appeared to still be live. It had a memorable domain: removeanyproblemwithaclick.onion.

He moved off the browser for a brief moment to open a file on his desktop, containing Hembury’s home address. He’d used his high-level contacts in the LA Police Department to obtain it after his first meeting with the lieutenant, as he’d thought it might prove useful down the line. He highlighted it, flicked back to the website and began his post.

I used your service two years ago for a job in Russian Hill and it was highly successful.

The flashing cursor burst into life almost instantly. I remember it.

Franklin continued typing. I have an emergency job that requires your special skills. It has to happen tonight in Los Angeles. The subject is a male police lieutenant named Troy Hembury. His address is 1554 North Vine Street in West Hollywood. Apartment 16. It’s essential the body is removed so it appears to be a disappearance rather than a killing.

Franklin wondered if the status of the subject would prevent the transaction from happening. The reply gave him the answer.

500.

Franklin understood that to mean the fee was the equivalent of five hundred thousand dollars in Bitcoin, five times the rate he’d paid two years ago, but it was an eighth of the fee he’d paid to The Ghost just two weeks earlier. Under the circumstances, it was a bargain.

Agreed. Let me know when it’s done.

Franklin closed his laptop and reached for the intercom on his desk. “Mary, let the pilot know I’ll be on time for the flight.”

Aaron Wicks was an unusual hitman – a former pharmacist who’d decided, some years before, he could make a lot more money using drugs to kill people than he ever could selling them over the counter. He lived in a small rented townhouse close to Santa Monica Airport, just twenty-five minutes from Hembury’s apartment. This latest job would be his biggest payday yet, but with higher rewards came higher risks.

However, this was a returning client, so he knew he would get paid.