Sweat dripped from his forehead as he walked the long walk from the market place toward the slipway leading down to the beach. "Damn this heat", he thought as he increased his pace, fighting his way through throngs of people. People shopping for the day's provisions; people mingling with friends; people just pointlessly, aimlessly, needlessly walking in the blazing heat of the late morning sun. What was wrong with these stupid people? Who would choose to burn up, to sweat, to begin to smell from the armpits. Some people loved their jobs. Not Jeremy Barnes. Jeremy Barnes hated his job, hated what it had made him become, hated the people who paid him the big bucks which kept him out of this awful heat most of the year. Most of all, Jeremy Barnes hated himself.
Wiping the sweat away from his eyes, he took another look at the photograph he held in his hand. He looked again at the man he had followed from the market, and who he was now beginning to draw alongside in the crowd. Yes. That was him. No doubt about it.
Tariq Mustapha Sabri had a happy and carefree look about him as he walked among the crowd toward the beach. Jeremy Barnes did not notice this. Specifically, Jeremy Barnes chose not to notice this. In this line of work you could not afford to let emotion stand in the way of the job to be done. That he had Tariq Mustapha Sabri in his sights was, for now, enough. And now Sabri's pace seemed to pick up, in spite of the heat, and Barnes swore almost audibly as he struggled to keep pace, for keep pace he must.
Tariq Mustapha Sabri was a recently married man of 32 years of age. He had learned only that morning that he was to be a father. He had gone to the market to buy his wife a special present, a jewelled clip for her hair. Tonight he would give her the gift and tell her again how much he loved her, how much she meant to him and how very happy he was that she was carrying their first child. It would be a night of love and romance. A night to remember.
He smiled to himself as the stranger tapped him on the shoulder and he turned round to face his inquisitor.
And as the smile drained from Tariq Mustapha Sabri's face and the blood pumped from the wound so skilfully and swiftly delivered straight to the heart by the weapon concealed in Jeremy Barnes's clothing, Barnes had disappeared into the crowd and was slowly and inconspicuously making his way back to his air-conditioned hotel room with its well-stocked mini bar.
Maybe this job did have it's perks, after all.