The Liquidator

by John Gardner

  'I'm in France. I'm having a naughty weekend with a very attractive man (What would Mummy say?) Tonight I want to dine on - what? Terrine de Canard a l'Orange...?' She was acting outrageously. Excited? A little afraid?

  ('You'll get steak, eggs and chips, mate, and like it,' grunted Boysie.)

  '...And now I want to smoke strong, strong, Blue Gauloises.'

  'Okay, I'll ring down.'

  'Oh, Boysie,' disappointed.

  'What's wrong now?'

  'Look, love, can't you see? I want you out of the way for a while - little feminine repairs and unpacking. Be a dear: nip out and get me some Gauloises. Just for a few minutes.' She wheedled: 'Please, Boysie. Pretty please.'

  He put his arm round her shoulders, squeezed her and lodged a smacking kiss on her cheek:

  'Okay, me old darlin'. Can I just slip into something loose first?'

  'Be my guest.'

  He lugged the Revelation into the bathroom: sea-green tiles, inlaid strip-lighting and shiny chrome- 'Not quite my style,' said Boysie to the large, almost symbolic, bidet. He ran the shower, unlocked the case - transferring the pistol and ammunition to the zip pocket on the inside of the lid.

  A quarter-of-an-hour later, he emerged, tingling from the shower and changed into spongebag check slacks, white linen shirt and rope-closed sandals. Iris stood on the balcony, looking down into the street, lazy with leggy girls and broad bronzed men.

  'How do you like the tout ensemble then?' He turned slowly: a male model in a monthly glossy. Iris walked round him:

  'Well the tout looks OK, but I'm not sure about the ensemble.'

  'We read the same books, darling,' he said, doing his Noel Coward.

  She giggled: 'You look very beautiful, Boysie. Now what about my fags?'

  'Six packets of Gauloises Bleu coming up,' said Boysie. 'Then, I think, dinner at the fabulous Sporting Club, a quick whirl at the tables, followed by ...?' He arched his eyebrows.

  'Oh, get out.' She smiled: then, softly: 'I'll be waiting for you, Boysie.'

  In the street, he put on his sunglasses, lit a cigarette, and walked past the Royal to the corner opposite the Casino. Crossing the road, he turned and stood looking back at the uneven view of peaks behind the Jardins Bioves. The backdrop mountains were beginning to change colour, sharp in the still air - the sky now milky-blue behind them. He glanced at his watch. Four forty-five.

  Boysie sauntered through the crowds and bought the cigarettes at the bar tabac in the Place St Roche, among a press of postcard­hunting English girls, and walked on to the seafront. The rocks and pebble beaches were jigsawed with bodies catching the day's last sun. He thought of Iris and tomorrow. By then, the first flush of pleasure would be over and they could lie satiated among the water-smoothed stones, or play, giddy, in the surf. Perhaps, by then, he would be free from his obsession with her - this illogical, immature thing that had hounded him for half a year, even when he was with other women. Unaccountably, his mind changed direction, becoming focused on Mostyn - now there was an obsessional character if you like. Suddenly depressed, he began the return journey to the hotel.

  It happened as he was turning back into the Avenue Verdun. The girl came round the corner walking at speed. Boysie, not really looking where he was going, tried to twist his lean body out of the way; but it was too late: their shoulders met with a bruising jar. He made a grab for her, but the force of the collision, combined with the girl's forward velocity, sent her careening into the wall. She gave a little cry and ended in a dainty heap at his feet.

  'I'm sorry... Pardon, madame ... er mademoiselle ...'

  'Oh, you're English! Oh!'

  She was blonde: twentyish: short, and poured into oyster silk pants and shirt. A spotted silk bandana was knotted at her throat below a cheeky elfin face, topped by splendid gold hair which curled under the nape of her neck, just touching the ears.

  Boysie could smell the sun on her flesh as he helped her to her feet, noting, with pleasure, the firm contours tight against her second skin of clothes - the grapefruit breasts and the telltale curved-V elastic line of her panties showing clear up the rounded bottom.

  'Ooh!' She grimaced, gently pawing the pavement with her right foot.

  'You all right?' said Boysie.

  'I'm not sure.' She smiled through a wince of pain. 'It's my ankle. I twisted it when I fell. Must have sprained it. Ooh, damn!'

  'Bad?'

  'Not too good. Making me feel sick.' She was pale under the berry-brown tan: leaning against the wall.

  'Think you ought to see a doctor?'

  'If I can get back to the hotel, I'll be all right. Daddy will know what to do.'

  'Where's the hotel? And Daddy?'

  'Up in Garavan; not far; in the Old Town. Ouch: crumbs, this is painful.'

  'Crumbs' was not the kind of expletive Boysie expected from this sort of girl.

  'Well, let me help. After all, I knocked you over.'

  'Oh, it was my fault ... But ... well ... if I could hold your arm ... I think I might manage to get to the car.' She pointed across the Gardens. 'It's over there: in one of those side streets.'

  'OK. You're sure you're going to be all right?' She nodded, biting her lip. Game little bird, thought Boysie.

  'Let's go then.' She took a few tentative, hobbling, steps clutching at his forearm.

  'Look,' said Boysie, as they reached the low hooped fence which separated the Gardens from the pavement, 'wouldn't it be better like this?' He curled his arm round her comfortable yielding waist.

  'Ooh, yes!' said the girl, allowing herself to be pulled closer. 'I say, aren't you strong?'

  The car was parked in a narrow cobbled alley, flanked by high red-washed irregular buildings which looked as though they had been designed by a romantic, sun-struck alcoholic. She slid into the driving seat and tested her damaged foot on the pedals.

  'The wretched thing is swelling. D'you know, I don't think I'm going to be able to drive.'

  'Come on then, move over.'

  'Oh, you angel! Would you? Would you really? You are being kind. Are you sure?'

  Boysie, doing a quick check to familiarise himself with the controls, had just reached out for the starter when he sensed the danger from behind. Half-turning, he glimpsed a raised arm. The girl gave a yelp, and something flashed across his eyes. A circle of stars and four new planets shot into orbit round his skull. Then Boysie Oakes fell on to the steering wheel and into deep, thick darkness.

  Boysie had been gone for about five minutes when the telephone rang. Iris, dressed only in lacy bra and briefs, turned from her unpacking and lifted the receiver:

  'Hullo?'

  'Telephone pour Monsieur ou Madame Oakes.'

  'Oui.' Boysie at one of his pranks again, thought Iris. There was a wave of static and then a voice clear in her ear:

  'Hullo.'

  'Hullo?'

  'Is that Mrs Oakes?'

  'Who is that?'

  'Iris, I'm so glad I've caught you in. It's your old uncle Mostyn. Just ringing to see how you're getting on. You should have let me know you were spending the weekend with your husband.'

  'How the ...?'

  'I have my spies everywhere, lovey, you should know that.'

  Iris used a four-letter word much favoured by licentious soldiery, D.H Lawrence, sick comedians and beat novelists.

  'So I should imagine,' said Mostyn, grinning far away in drab Whitehall.

  4 - Cote D'Azur

  Saturday June 8th 1963

  CORAL

  A dozen little green men, shod in steel-capped boots, were punctiliously kicking their way out of Boysie's skull. He imagined that he could see them through the crimson­wash of cloud which sifted behind his eyes.

  He was the inside of his head. There was nothing else. All feeling and being had somehow reduced itself to a huge blood­filled cranium. And that was him: inside.

  Far away someone was groaning. Then a voice began whispering down a narrow tunnel, and he felt something del
iciously cool on the desert of forehead. With the coolness, sensation began to return. The whisper got louder. A woman's voice:

  'Are you all right? There, there, there now.' It was the sound of a mother soothing a fallen child. For what seemed like an age, Boysie was back in his childhood village under the Berkshire Downs - Ma comforting, because he had grazed a knee playing 'chain-tig' in the lane. The head shrunk. It was equipped with a neck. There were shoulders, and arms, and a torso, and - a long way off - feet.

  He braced himself and heaved open his eyes. Somewhere above him swimming like an image in a mobile distorting mirror, was the face of a blonde. His lids snapped shut, then opened again. This time he held on until normal vision returned. The world swung in two great circles: the blonde's face did a series of gentle revolves, and things began to settle into a recognisable pattern. The girl looked worried, and he discovered that the cool thing on his forehead was her hand, gently brushing and smoothing:

  'Oh, thank heaven, you're all right. I thought you were never going to wake up. Now lie still. Don't try and sit up.' She put a restraining hand on his shoulder.

  'What happened?' said Boysie, foolishly. His mouth seemed to be full of a foul­tasting brand of cotton wool.

  'Someone hit you.'

  'Oh.'

  'On the back of the head.'

  'Why?'

  'I don't know..' The girl seemed a trifle piqued. 'I was hoping you'd tell me.'

  'Well, where am I ... are we?' He sat up, wished he hadn't, and was forced to cling to the side of the bed until the room stopped doing its realistic imitation of a switchback.

  'I don't know. It's a kind of cellar. They brought us down steps, I know: I could feel them.'

  Boysie felt both angry and frightened:

  'Look, what the hell's going on?' He put his hand to his head and felt it cautiously. Just above the right ear a swelling, the size of a small plum, throbbed painfully.

  'I think we've been kidnapped,' said the girl in the breathless confidential tone of a sixth-former announcing - at the school dance - that her suspender has snapped.

  'They pointed a gun at me and stuck a needle in your arm - you know, injection thing ...'

  Instinctively, he felt above his elbows. There was a bruised area just below the left shoulder. That accounted for the nauseating taste in his mouth.

  '...Then they dumped you into the back of the car, put a horrible smelly sack over my face and told me to lie down ...'

  'They raped you? The bastards!'

  'No, not that kind of lie down - in the back of the car ... so that I couldn't see where we were going.'

  Boysie was beginning to remember: Iris, the Miramont, Gauloises, the girl's ankle. He looked at his watch. It was seven-thirty: two and three-quarter hours since he had left Iris.

  'How's your ankle?'

  'My...? Oh, I'd almost forgotten – they carried me in here. It doesn't seem too bad. You were kind about that. Thank you.'

  'Hasn't done either of us much good, has it?'

  'No. I'm sorry.' Then, like a child at a picnic: 'Why have they kidnapped us?'

  'I haven't the foggiest idea. Oh, my achin' head.'

  Boysie was dead worried. Never, in the whole of his career with the Department, had anything like this happened to him. Ye gods, he thought, what if it is me they're after? Up to now, Mostyn had been his only real concern. When his conscience pricked it was because of fear and guilt about facts withheld and his prolonged deception - the wool-pulling over Mostyn's eyes. He had never really considered any danger from the other side. Now it looked as though they had caught up with him. His guts gave a triple forward-roll followed by a couple of nifty bowel-springs. To make it worse, he caught sight of a spider edging its way up the wall. If Boysie had made a long list of all the things he disliked - apart from flying ­ spiders would have come out pretty near the top. He took a deep, nervous breath (which turned into a shudder) and looked around.

  They were in a bare, windowless room – a cell of whitewashed brick. Above, a single light burned from behind a convex grille, sunk into the ceiling. There was no trace of a switch: the walls as naked as the proverbial baby's backside. The door, which seemed to have been carved straight from an over­grown oak, was set flush with the wall - no sign of a lock, or handle, on the inside. The only furniture was the one matressed bed - an iron hospital cot - on which they were sitting. The air felt dry and the temperature was not unpleasantly cool.

  He continued to puzzle at the problem. Their attackers had been hiding in the car. A ray of hope: the fact that they were already waiting in the car would mean that they were after the girl and not him at all. He looked at her - ridiculously pert - pretty. Under different circumstances it would have been a pleasure to be locked in a room with her - especially a room which only contained a bed. He was about to ask who the devil she was (some blasted millionaire's daughter, no doubt), when the sound of bolts and chains rattled in from the other side of the door.

  Automatically, they both stood up, the blonde slipping her hand into his. The floor weaved slightly.

  'Don't worry,' he whispered, trying to control his knees which were striking up a zapateado. She looked at him with helpless, and devastating eyes:

  'I won't.' She forced a brave smile.

  'By the way,' said Boysie out of the corner of his mouth, 'what's your name?'

  'Coral. Isn't it: stupid? It's Coral White.'

  The door opened and they looked into the nasty end of a Browning .32.

  The man with the gun sported the face of a decaying camel: brown, thin, long-jawed and sinister. His companion was obviously a hybrid of the Frankenstein strain: about six feet seven; shoulders like a Henry Moore statue, and a face which Boysie seemed to remember having once seen on a large, unpleasant piece of T'ang Dynasty sculpture - squat, dome-headed, moronic and transcendentally evil. Both wore heavy dark glasses.

  Camel-Face looked at the girl:

  'You stay.' The accent had vague German connotations.

  'You come.' The pistol muzzle moved in a slow, accurate arc from the left side of Boysie's chest to the centre of the door, and back again.

  'Good luck,' whispered Coral. He squeezed her hand, swallowed hard, and obeyed: treading, like the biblical Agag, delicately. Frankenstein's cousin stretched out his iron arm and rested a banana-bunch hand on Boysie's shoulder. It was almost a gentle gesture, but the fingers were curled expertly, their tips touching the pressure points on his neck. A tightening of grip would inflict excruciating agony.

  Across the threshold, Boysie found himself on a narrow landing - a tiny ante-room draped on three sides with black velvet. The door closed behind them. Darkness. He could feel the hand on his shoulder, hear the heavy breathing and the scrape of bolts being pushed home. Then the gun was in his back:

  'Hiep!' It was a parade-ground order, shouted into his ear and accompanied by a two-handed push, smart in the small of the back. Boysie took off and shot, head first, through the curtains into a blinding glare of light. His shin caught something hard, and he came to a stumbling halt, half bent over a chair back.

  'Good evening, Mr Oakes. I am so happy you were able to join us.'

  The voice came, silky, and disembodied, from behind the battery of lamps. Boysie was standing in the converging beams of five tactically placed theatrical mirror spots. He shaded his eyes, trying to peer through the light, and could just make out a pair of hands at the far end of a polished mahogany table. He had to screw up his eyelids, leaving only tiny slits, to keep out the dazzling brilliance. The cone of light generated a formidable amount of heat, and already he could feel himself sweating.

  'Do sit down, Mr Oakes. Make yourself comfortable,' crooned Sheriek, complacent from behind his radiant curtain. Boysie felt his way on to the chair and tried to look around him; but the massed beams cut off his view on both sides. It was, he thought, like a rather high-class third degree room. The Man-Mountain stood to the right of the chair, and he could sense the gun-toter at the bac
k of his neck.

  Boysie leaned across the table, straining his eyes:

  'Look here,' he said, an irate Englishman done out of his rights. 'What's all this about?' His voice was unsteady, and he could feel control slipping from his lip muscles - a sure sign of fear.

  'You do not know what it is all about, Mr Oakes? I should have imagined that, in your profession, one would be constantly prepared for the day of reckoning.'

  'I don't know what you're talking about - whatever your name is - but I demand that you release Miss White and myself immediately. My wife is waiting for me at our hotel - she's probably been in touch with the consul already; and as for Miss White ...' He dried. It was the best he could think of for the moment.

  'Your wife, Mr Oakes? We did not know you had a wife; and I must remind you that you are in no position to demand anything.'

  'Well ...'

  'As you say... Well!'

  At this point, Boysie admitted to himself that he, and not the girl, was the centre of this bizarre plot. Twelve red admirals and a lone cabbage white were doing an enthusiastic ballet in his lower intestine, and sweat - drawn out not by the lights, but through mortal funk - spouted from his pores like a series of chilly fountains.

  'Let us put our cards on the table,' resumed Sheriek. 'I apologise for not being able to introduce myself - but I think you would agree that it would reduce the air of mystery. I am a great follower of detective fiction, Mr Oakes; and the more entangled tales of your great espionage writers. I return to the adventures of Mr Richard Hannay with almost the same avidity as I resort to the Bible and the Koran when I am in need of spiritual consolation ...'

  'That's a bit square, isn't it?' Boysie was surprised at his own cheek. 'Buchan is considered to be in the decline these days.'

  'Maybe it is a sign of my age. But as you may yet have an opportunity of finding out, I dip into other books. The works of the Marquis de Sade figure largely among my bedtime favourites.'

  'I can imagine.' Boysie was finding it difficult to retain a proper perspective of the affair - it seemed so fantastically melodramatic. But the very fact of his own job, and the way in which Mostyn had steam­rollered him into it, always seemed to hover on the borderline of fantasy.