by John Gardner
“Onward and bloody upward.” Boysie leaped towards his office.
The teletype message gave the bare essentials so he called Excelsior. The flight was all right and on its way, having lost an hour. Minor engine fault and worry over fuel. It was all standard practice and they did not sound concerned.
He got down the atlas and looked up the minute square of land that was Etszika. It was difficult to equate the dot that said Otuka with men, women, children and an aircraft. The one bright thought was that the incident gave him something to report: an excuse to see the enchanted Miss Brightwater again and soon.
He called her and she was more than willing to see him that evening. “I shall cook us a meal of vast gastronomic interest and I expect you to wait on me at half past the hour of seven, for eight o’clock. We will drink a little sherry wine first.”
She greeted. Boysie at the door wearing a claret velvet hostess skirt and white blouse with many ruffles, puffed sleeves and a high neck fastened with a cameo brooch. Her hair was piled on top of her head and looked ravishing.
“Oh, Miss Snowflake Brightwater, I am so glad I found you.” Boysie took her in his arms and hugged her. It was a new, safe feeling.
The sherry was light and exquisitely dry (Miss Brightwater seemed to be blessed with the gift of divining Boysie’s taste.) The banter was as light as the sherry.
Promptly at eight they moved into the small dining room. The table gleamed with silver and had about it the look of intimacy.
“I have taken much trouble; Boysie, dear.” She indicated his chair. “Much more trouble than I would normally take. But you are different.”
She left the room, returning a few minutes later bearing a tray on which stood their soup plates and a small tureen.
“Messrs Crosse and Blackwell’s famous pea soup,” she announced, sweeping the lid from the tureen.
The soup was followed by delicious Plumrose chopped ham with pork and a mixed salad dressed to perfection.
“The dressing is Mr Kraft’s Thousand Islands. Piquant, wouldn’t you say?”
“It has an edge: an excellent edge for the taste buds.” They completed the banquet with a Findus choc nut mousse. “Such an exciting new flavour,” she commented. “I’ll wager the coffee is from Monsieur Nescafé.”
“Who else? Gold Blend though.”
They both collapsed in giggles over the table. As they sipped coffee, Boysie told her of the emergency landing.
“I shall commit all relevant details to memory; after which I think we should retire early.”
She was just opening the bedroom door when the bell rang.
“Two gentlemen for you, Boysie.”
“Not again. We went through that routine this morning.”
“I know them not.” Her hand to her lips.
Boysie put his jacket on again and went into the living room.
They were a pair of well set up young men: neat, carefully dressed and with bright faces.
“Mr Oakes?” asked one.
“Yes.”
“Miss Brightwater?”
“Yes.”
“I am Paul. This is Charles.”
They all nodded and acknowledged the introductions.
“What can I do to help?” Boysie was at ease.
“Just put on your coats and come with us.”
“What for?”
“We’ve come to kill you, but it would make too much noise here,” said Charles.
“Must think of other people,” said Paul.
6
The noise behind him was Snowflake Brightwater’s breathing. The quick intake of air and the small sighs through the nostrils. It was the sound of a terrified animal and served to increase comprehension. The mind said it was impossible, but Boysie’s instinct and heart told him that it was all too real. The sounds from Snowflake Brightwater underlined the truth. This was the end game.
Boysie glanced behind him. Snowflake Brightwater’s face was the colour of a dirty grey sky; she held on to a chair back, leaning forward, in shock.
His mind and vision cleared. Now he could fully distinguish and identify the two young men. Paul was the blond, hair trimmed to the nape of the neck; blue eyes; dark overcoat. Charles wore a navy raincoat; he had brown hair fashioned like Peter’s; slightly more thickset than his companion.
The genuine articles, thought Boysie. Not crew-cut skin-heads or bully-boy yobos. They were the kind Mostyn would pick. He tried to detect the essential emotions behind their eyes.
“If you wouldn’t mind,” prompted Paul. “We’d rather like to get going.” He had a hunk of metal in his hand to reinforce the argument. The hunk of metal looked like a Walther PPK, but, it did not matter about the make. It was bloody lethal whatever factory it came from.
Boysie raised his arms. “Why?”
“Ours not to reason …” began Charles. “Just get your coats on. I promise it will be easier this way.”
A Mostynian remark. These two had to come from Mostyn. The three stooges with their stutters, impediments and physical imperfections had been real also and Mostyn knew about it. Now it was Mostyn’s revenge.
Cut. Stop. Wash the mind. That was easy logic. No proof. Concentrate on dealing with the situation.
“I’ll get the coats.” Snowflake Brightwater barely audible behind him.
Paul followed her from the room. Charles kept his eyes on Boysie. No flicker. Nerveless. Intelligent robots who had been ordered to kill and would do so to a plan, a programme.
Paul was helping him into his coat.
“There now. All ready?” The soft voice. Queen?
Boysie turned to face Snowflake Brightwater.
“Boysie?” she whispered, her face already cast in the bewildered expression of sudden death.
Boysie stopped and turned his attention to Paul. “How?” he asked simply.
“There is a motor car downstairs. We will get into it and drive to a secluded spot. After that we will shoot you. I promise it’ll be quick and merciful.”
Mostyn? The three stooges? The past? The past? The past?
It was a dark coloured Mark Ten Jaguar. The man at the wheel was also young and presentable. He nodded in a friendly way as they climbed in. Charles in front. Snowflake and Boysie in the back with Paul sitting sideways on.
Boysie was sweating; he could smell his own sweat; Snowflake Brightwater clung to his hand, encased in her own misery and fear.
He tried to speak but there was difficulty. When the words did come out he experienced a flicker of shame at the nervous quake in his voice.
“I can understand someone wanting to get me, but I don’t see why the girl …?”
“Schtum,” said Paul. “It’s easier without the chat. Better for all: that way nobody gets emotionally involved.”
Boysie knew the technique. In books and movies there was always the car ride which gave the hero a chance to think, act and escape. In real death it was preferable to do the job on the spot. When you had to cart a mark to some place of execution you did not talk to him. You either did it by conning him into thinking he was being taken to friends, or you told him the truth and hoped that shock would keep him silent until you pulled the trigger. There was a lot about that in the ghastly manual they kept in Whitehall.
He desperately tried to pull his conscious thoughts onto the possibilities of getting clear, but the subconscious kept interrupting. Darkness; non-existence; unknowing. Fear.
They were going east. Stepney? The Docks? It would make sense. A piece of deserted ground. The traffic had begun to thin out and pavements were less occupied. The lighting system was not as good either.
Boysie squeezed Snowflake Brightwater’s hand.
She nodded in the darkness, then her profile was suddenly illuminated by a street light: a wash of brightness; her face; then a dimming to darkness.
“Next on the right,” Paul quietly told the driver.
“Okay, I know. We’ve collected something behind. He’s running on sidelights,
can you see him?”
A pinpoint of hope.
Then, from Paul. “It’s only a cab. Probably the driver going home early.”
They slowed and took the right turn. A narrow road bordered by brick walls.
“He’s coming as well.” The driver; a click of urgency in his voice.
“Okay,” drawled Paul. “Pull over. Let him pass. Nice and easy.”
The driver slowed. Boysie could see his indicator on the dashboard flashing left. He looked to the right and saw the cab pulling level. There was a coloured man at the wheel. He did not even look in their direction. Nor did the four passengers, also coloured.
The driver of the Jaguar began to move forward again as the taxi cleared his bonnet.
The seconds dripped away. A pause which seemed paradoxically fast and endless.
Then it happened: fast and without warning. Boysie saw the taxi veer sideways on in front of them.
“Christ.” The Jaguar driver high pitched. Something heavy came out of the darkness ahead and hit the windshield which frosted over as if sprayed with paint. The jolt as the driver hit the brakes.
Charles, in front, was very good. Calm, cool thinking. His hand punched forward breaking a hole in the frosted glass, battering out the fragments. There was a gun in his hand and he thrust it through the opening.
A metallic thump and a crunch. Charles screamed. You could hear the pain as he tried to pull his hand back into the car.
At the moment of the scream all the doors were wrenched open. Paul swivelled, gun up, but a strong black hand had his wrist, crushing like an iron shackle. The hand’s twin wrapped around Paul’s arm, above the elbow. Boysie heard the jolt of breath and the clatter as the gun fell into the road, just before Paul was dragged through the door. As he went there was a deep cracking noise from his shoulder.
Boysie looked back to where the driver had been. He was not there any more, and someone was releasing Charles’ arm. As it came back through the windscreen, Boysie caught a glimpse of what appeared to be a mangled beetroot where the gunman’s hand had been.
There were screams coming from the left outside and behind. Also to their right front. Snowflake Brightwater was hunched up in the embryo position, hands over her face.
Boysie looked beyond her through the door and saw a pair of immaculate striped trousers. The screaming stopped and Mister Colefax peered into the car. He was smiling.
“C-compliments o-of th-the B-board of T-t-trade,” he said.
Boysie got out.
Charles lay unconscious on the pavement. He would not use his gun hand again for a long time.
Two large coloured gentlemen dragged the sagging Paul from behind the car and laid him out next to Charles. There was blood on his face and he would not use his arms and hands for at least a year.
Another brace of coloured gentlemen humped the driver from in front of the car and placed him alongside his companions. He was equally incapacitated.
Boysie heard Colefax say. “M-miss Bri-Bright-wa-water, co-could y-you g-get out of th-the c-car and g-go straight to the maxi.”
Boysie, leaning over the Jaguar’s bonnet, felt the great drops of sweat rise on his brow. Suddenly he could not breathe. He retched and parted with the bulk of his choc nut mousse, the delicious Plumrose chopped ham with pork and a fair proportion of Messrs Crosse and Blackwell’s Pea Soup.
He gulped air, found his handkerchief and wiped his face. Colefax was standing beside him.
“Christ,” said Boysie. “Sex, snobbery and sadism. You hit ’em hard.”
“Th-they w-were g-g-going to-to k-k-k-kill y-you, m-m-man.”
Boysie nodded. “How did you know?”
“W-we di-didn’t. B-but y-you’ll know w-w-we me-mean bus-s-s-iness. W-we ca-can pl-play ro-rough; and w-we’re alw-ways n-near.”
“Yes.”
Colefax said he would have to stay and help clear up. One of the boys would run Snowflake and Boysie back. “W-we’re wa-watchin’ y-y-you,” said Colefax.
“I know.”
They did not talk in the taxi. Boysie did not like what had happened. The world had erupted and for a while his nervous system had been expanded to maximum stretch. He was also aware of not being aware: he did not know the reason. That was a perpetual problem.
He managed a pirate airline company and the orders were given by Mostyn. While on company business he had met the sun goddess Miss Snowflake Brightwater. She had conned him. The cripple, Colefax, and the vocally unsuitable Frobisher, from the Ministry of Transport and Civil Aviation and the Board of Trade, had pressured him into reporting on the dealings of his company. He did not know why. A brace of professional knock-off boys and their driver had come to execute himself and la Brightwater: he knew not why. Mister Colefax, from the Board of Trade, had come to their aid with a squad of extremely tough assistants. Why? Why? Double bloody why?
“Why?” he asked Snowflake Brightwater when they returned to the almost grotesque normality of her flat.
“I thought you could tell me. I knew Frobisher, Pesterlicker and Colefax got mixed up in crazy situations. But all that bit was serious.” It was the understatement of the night.
“I don’t think they’ll try again. Not after that. Will you be okay?”
“I’d rather you stayed until morning.”
“I won’t leave your side. After that, well, let’s see what we can lay on.” He crossed to the telephone and began to dial, hoping the number had not been changed.
It was a number in Harrow and Charlie Griffin answered almost at once.
“Mr Griffin?”
“I know that voice. Mr Oakes. How nice to hear from you again.”
Charlie Griffin had acted for, and with, Boysie on many occasions, back in the old days. Griffin was a man who had stared death in the face from early in life and had come to terms with it. First as an undertaker; later as a perpetrator. But Boysie was not going to stop and think about that now. “You got any minders at hand?” he asked quickly:
“You in trouble again, Mr Oakes?”
“Minders, Charlie. Can do?”
“Cost you twenty-five a day and expenses. What do you want?”
Boysie gave him the address and a description of Snowflake Brightwater. He wanted the place watched back and front, nobody in or out except for himself and the lady. The lady was to be kept close when she went out. He also passed on the telephone numbers of the flat, his flat and the office.
“Shooters?” asked Griffin.
“With discretion. There’s probably one okay-watch on both of us already. In spades I should think. They can be disregarded unless there’s any funny business with the lady.”
“Don’t you worry your head about it, Mr Oakes, it’s as good as done. I have access to only the best.”
“I believe you.”
“My minders are, if you like it, the Nureyevs of the profession.”
“You’re over-selling.”
“Trade isn’t what it was. I’m back in the old business if you’re interested.”
“What old business? Undertaking?”
“Not exactly. The bit that comes just before that.”
“I’ll bear it in mind. Call you in a couple of days.”
“Any time.”
“You know people, don’t you?” Snowflake Brightwater said when he put down the telephone.
“Yes, I know people.”
“I mean you know unpleasant people. People of violence.”
“Like your mate Colefax, yes. I know him.”
Snowflake Brightwater changed the subject. “It’s going to be all right?”
“It’s going to be sensational and we can sleep safely in our bed.”
“And tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow is another year. Tomorrow is for decisions.”
Much later, close to him and warm with afterglow she asked, “What do you really do?”
“I’m a jaded male model.”
“Apart from that and satisfying available ladies l
ike me.”
“I help run this rotten stinking illegal airline. But not for long.”
“I mean before that.”
“Before that I was a salesman.”
“Sell it to me anytime,” she whispered, slipping away into dreams of great gentility far removed from the horrific realities.
Boysie could not sleep. His conscience held up his lids and the nervous trail, which had followed the events of the previous evening, flew through his consciousness like small evil demons.
By morning he had made up his mind for the hundred and thirty-first time. He could not prove Mostyn was actually responsible, but Mostyn was certainly the first cause of all that happened. Mostyn could go and fornicate among snakes. That was where he belonged. He, Brian Ian, Boysie, Oakes would summon enough guts to tell Mostyn to do just that.
“Can I see you, Ada.” He arrived briskly at the office.
Ada gave the other girls a knowing look and followed him into his private quarters. He turned and faced her, leaning against the desk.
“I want you to do a big favour for me.”
“Anything: and I mean anything.”
“That’s good to know.” He decided it sounded a shade self-satisfied. “Are Daddy and Mummy home?”
“No, actually they’re in Spain.” Puzzled.
“Good. What about your brother?”
“Toby’s in Scotland.”
“Great. Daddy’s pistol range.”
“Yes. Would you like to come and have another go? I mean by yourself, not with those two around.” She jerked her head back towards the closed door.
“I’d love to do that, but not at the moment. Ada, the Diamondback revolver: the one I used when we came over. I want to borrow it, and some ammunition.”
“What for?”
“Personal protection. I can’t explain. It won’t be used to break the law, I promise, and it’ll be returned if Daddy or Toby show signs of coming home. I just need it for a while.”
“All right. Nothing easier. When?”
“Now. I want you to go back and get it.”
