The Liquidator

by John Gardner

  'Bit of a shock, your partner's death?' said Mostyn, removing a pile of papers - held between finger and thumb - from the spare chair.

  'You know about that? Terrible. I'm still a bit. .. Well, all to pieces, if you know what I mean?'

  Oh dear, thought Mostyn, we shall have to do something about that accent; and the clothes - the Harris Tweed jacket must be all of five years old. Ugh! Aloud, he said:

  'I can imagine. Still, death's no stranger to you, is it, old boy?'

  'Oh, I don't know.' Nonplussed.

  'The two men in Paris. Remember? And there must have been others, old Oakes, there must have been others.'

  'The men in Paris. Oh, yes.' Boysie didn't want to set him off in that direction. It would be embarrassing to explain; now, after all these years.

  'You come far?' he asked, for something to say.

  'London.'

  'London, that's nice.'

  'Very nice,' agreed Mostyn, looking damnably supercilious. Boysie waited. Mostyn was drumming his fingers on the desk.

  'Well, sir, what was it ...'

  'You want to know why I'm here.' The smile was the one usually reserved for small children, chronic invalids and advanced cases of senility. 'Of course you do.' Mostyn took a slim passport-like folder from his inside pocket and tossed it to Boysie:

  'You'd better have a look at those first. Tell you who I am. Identify me. They say we're all searching for our identity these days, don't they? I carry mine with me. Easier in the long run.'

  Boysie opened the folder and looked at the cards, clean behind celluloid.

  'That one's my General Security Identification,' continued Mostyn, leaning back and looking pleased. 'The other's a Special Branch Warrant Card on loan from Scotland Yard - just to make it easier for me to find out about you.' He stressed the 'you'.

  Boysie looked up: natural alarm in his face.

  'Don't worry though, old Boysie,' said Mostyn, 'all your secrets are safe with me ­ the girl in that rating office: even your boss's wife. Tcht, tcht, tcht!'

  'What the hell?'

  'Don't worry.' Melodic. Soothing.

  'What the hell's all this about?' Boysie dimly remembered the salad days in the Council Office. Mostyn looked at him as though trying to decide the best angle of attack. Two cars passed along the road outside, and somewhere, across the fields, a dog barked four times. Eventually, he opted on the frontal approach:

  'I've come to offer you a job, Boysie. Something that we think you will do rather well.'

  'A job? Me? What kind of job?' Boysie was smiling - a sort of bewildered, nervous convulsion of the mouth.

  'With our Department.'

  This must be some kind of joke. It was ridiculous: suddenly to be confronted by a man you haven't seen for twelve years (and then only for a few minutes), who waltzes in, gives you a nasty look, and offers you a job with some secret Government department.

  Mostyn continued: 'I'll give it to you straight, old boy. We want you to kill for us.'

  Boysie was almost struck dumb. He's off his little curly chump, he thought: 'To ... to WHAT?'

  'To kill for us.' Mostyn's tone was casual as a crumpled sweater. 'I thought it might appeal to you.'

  'Struth, thought Boysie, I'd better do something about this fellow. Mothers' Union coach parties I can cope with; but a nut case ...

  'Who ... who do I have to kill?'

  'People.'

  Boysie took a deep breath: 'Look, Colonel Mostyn. Sir! How about a nice cup o' tea? You've been working hard lately, haven't you?'

  Mostyn's face went pink, his mouth set in a hard line. When he spoke the drawl was replaced by a clipped sharpness:

  'Oakes, anything I say to you in this room must be regarded as absolutely confidential. Do you understand? I haven't got time to fool around.' There was a terrible authority about the man. Boysie remembered the official documents.

  'All right,' he said.

  'And you needn't start trying to play funny beggars with me. I'm like the two copulating maggots, Oakes - in Dead Earnest. Dead Earnest!' He sounded it.

  It wasn't a game. This grotesque conversation was for real: for keeps:

  'You want me ...' Boysie tapped his chest with the forefinger of his right hand, '...to kill ...' finger across the throat, '...for you?' finger pointed at Mostyn.

  Mostyn nodded:

  'That's the general idea. Not for me personally, of course. For the Department ­ for the Government.'

  'Why me?' On the fringes of the absurdity, Boysie was aware of ice-cubes being rubbed hard up the back of his neck.

  'You seem to forget, old lad,' the slow affected speech had returned, 'I've seen you in action. I watched you shoot two men: very prettily.'

  'That? Yes, but ...'

  'But me no buts, Boysie. You enjoyed it. Anyone could tell that you enjoyed it. You were ... cold blooded, as they say in the newspapers. That's the kind of chap we want. Someone not inclined towards squeamishness.'

  'Look.' He drew the word out, changing the double-O to a long 'U'. 'Look, Colonel Mostyn, I think I'd better tell you about ...' Boysie stopped in mid-sentence. This man had convinced himself. He was never going to believe that the whole thing was a horrible mistake. Somehow Mostyn had got it into his strange London head that he, Boysie, had upped and shot the two Germans without a jot of emotion or tittle of feeling. Worse, Mostyn imagined that Boysie was perfectly prepared to do it again: and, perhaps, again, and again, and again. Fumbling for an escape, he changed his tactics:

  'That happened once, sir: wartime. People do funny things in wartime.'

  'You don't think we're still at war?'

  Boysie was lost: 'Well, I mean, it's peace, isn't it? I mean, well, I know about the communists and that, but ...'

  'We're still at war, Boysie, only it's gone underground – until some mad bastard presses the button and we all go sailing on the big mushroom. Think of me ...' He was leaning forward, confidentially, choosing his words like a parson acting some well­rehearsed ad lib illustration from the pulpit: 'Think of me as a recruiting officer. I'm asking you to take the Queen's shilling. To enlist. You'd be a soldier again: an officer this time. Not in uniform, of course; and, I might add, you would be paid a considerable amount of money. The country needs you, Boysie .'

  He went on, but Boysie stuck on the word 'money'. I wonder, he thought, what they would offer? He couldn't face the idea of killing anyone, but there was money around: and he needed the filthy lucre PDQ. Mostyn was still talking:

  '...so you would only be killing as a soldier kills - for Queen and country: under orders. We'd train you, of course. It's really a challenge.'

  Boysie wondered about the best way to lead the conversation back to cash:

  'Er ... enemy agents, spies and that? That's who you'd want me to ...'

  'Liquidate is the word that's evading you. Yes. We'll want you to arrange a few accidents. There will be fatalities ... to people on the other side. Got to keep the coroners busy, old Boysie; got to keep their hands in for the big one.'

  'You mentioned money ...'

  'Ah, now you're talking. You know, I believe it's going to be a pleasure doing business with you Boysie. I think we're going to become quite good chums.'

  When the full scale of salary and conditions was laid in front of him, Boysie - staggered at the government's generosity - knew he would be insane not to take the risk. You weren't offered money like this every day of the week. He even became quite confident about coping with the work. At the Espionage School - with its quiet professionalism, stately home atmosphere, hidden firing ranges and lecture rooms which hummed with confidential information - he regained pride in physical fitness, enjoyed perfecting his marksmanship, and marvelled at the general ingenuity of the organisation.

  Occasionally, there were twinges of conscience: sudden moments when heart and stomach sank as he remembered the bitter end for which he was being trained. He was still unable to picture himself performing the actual act of execution, but
time was on his side, and, he thought, maybe, when the moment came, dealing in death might not be so bad. He tried to cultivate the detachment of a surgeon: thinking of those who were to be his victims, as spreading cancers which had to be removed.

  Yet, as the weeks swept by, the anxieties became more pronounced. Instead of the tiny pinpricks of worry, he began to suffer whole days of depression and nights of restless uneasiness. Life in London, under Mostyn's comprehensive instruction, brought about a deceptive change. He could almost see himself becoming an indolent dilettante; a leisurely man-about-town. His personality, his whole outlook, was undergoing a subtle alteration: to the extent that he began to despise his past. Occasionally, he went as far as inventing a fictitious background - complete with country seat - for the benefit of impressionable young women.

  Then the time came, towards the end of his training, when he was forced to think hard about the duties which, all-too-soon, would rest on his shoulders and spread their blood-stained tendrils into his mind. Mostyn arranged several exercises – dummy runs, in which Boysie, now commissioned with the code-letter 'L', was briefed on a target and called upon to work out the kill in detail. He didn't mind concentrating on the overall plan; but the mere thought of having to carry it out turned his bowels to jelly.

  Boysie finally came to the conclusion that - having reached the point of no return – he was doomed. The simple undeniable fact haunted him: he was emotionally incapable of carrying the operation to its murderous conclusion. But it was too late; he was too involved, and there was no way of escape: either from Mostyn or himself.

  The first one came only four days after Mostyn announced that Boysie was now on permanent standby. The telephone rang at about nine in the morning:

  '"L''?' said the voice.

  'Yes?'

  'Number Two. Pressure. This is a live assignment, come round, will you.'

  The briefing room was hidden behind an innocuous tobacconists in the Edgware Road. The target was a woman: Frances Ann Chandler: age thirty-seven: working at the War Office. Boysie spent the morning watching motion pictures of her, taken secretly as she arrived and left her work. In the afternoon he studied a twenty-page dossier which plotted her habitual routine - including the information that she travelled daily from Surbiton to Waterloo on the 8.56 a.m, and from Waterloo to Surbiton on the 6.07 p.m. By six o'clock, he knew the girl about as well as if he had been sleeping with her. He was conversant with her mannerisms, favourite kinds of chocolate and cigarettes; could tell you where she bought her clothes and was familiar with her taste in literature. The whole thing was very disturbing: for Boysie found himself liking the portrait of Frances Ann Chandler which the report painted for him.

  'A railway tragedy strikes me as being your best bet, old boy,' said Mostyn as he was leaving the room. 'See you when it's all over. No hurry; anytime this week. Best of luck, Boysie.'

  The next morning, he was up early, driving to Surbiton to make visual contact with the target. He took the train back to Waterloo, riding in the same compartment as Miss Chandler, and realised that the game was up. For one thing, Frances Chandler was a very attractive woman. She had even given him an undoubtedly sensual smile as he stood aside to let her leave the train at Waterloo. What was worse, she reminded him of one of the girls he had known in the old Bird Sanctuary days. Even if she had been plotting to atomise the whole of the southern counties, he could never bring himself to kill this girl: it was out of the question. People, thought Boysie, didn't just go out and kill other people. He couldn't do it: it wasn't his line.

  That night he had three goes at telephoning Mostyn: his nerve failing on each occasion. He wanted to hang on to the flat, the life, the salary and the new darling little regiment of women he had collected. To do this he would have to dispose of Miss Frances Ann Chandler - and that wouldn't be the end; there would be others.

  The brainwave came after his sixth large whisky: around three in the morning. Ironically, it was Mostyn himself who had provided the answer. During his London training, Boysie had been taken on regular familiarisation jaunts round the night-clubs - from the plushy playboy joints to the seedy dubious dives of the West End. About a month previously they had gone to The Strangulated Tortoise: a club which, as Mostyn had warned him, was openly regarded as one of the favourite underworld clearing houses.

  The Strangulated Tortoise was a dark, and not particularly hygienic, cellar off one of the narrow, suspicious alleys which run, like warrens, between Beak and Brewer Streets, in what the tourist guide-books call: 'London's colourful Soho.' A dance floor, the size of a largish dustbin lid, was circled by tables pushed well back out of the light, and after midnight the atmosphere took on the appearance of some smogbound island. Music blared from a hidden juke box, and, twice nightly, four of the girls from a neighbouring strip club, tottered in lethargically divested themselves of what little clothing they were wearing, and teetered out again - much to the delight of the raucous clientele who paid £2 a head cover charge, for the entertainment.

  'Shouldn't think she's got much stamina in bed,' said Mostyn, looking disenchantedly at an anaemic blonde who had just removed le minimum and now stood naked, but for a pair of leather boots and a riding crop. Mostyn looked round:

  'Do you know, old boy, I could get your job done, for a fraction of what it's costing us, just by mentioning it to the headwaiter of this dump? Makes you think, doesn't it?'

  'Why don't you then?'

  'No go. The Chief has an aversion to using the criminal element. Wants a home-grown professional practised in our ways of procedure. But, honestly, Boysie, you could get your grandmother carved into little pieces for less than a couple of hundred quid. See the chap sitting over there - one with the glasses? Thin type?'

  'Yes.'

  'Dare say he'd fix us up. Cute bird, only been done for petty larceny. But we know different. Very clever is our Mr Griffin.'

  Now, on the brink of his initial mission, Boysie remembered the nondescript, grey, hornrimmed Griffin. Perhaps he was the answer to the macabre problem.

  Three days later, Griffin agreed to a meeting - in the Bridge Street Lyons under the shadow of Big Ben.

  'Sorry to have kept you waiting, guv'nor, but I has to be a bit careful - bloke in my trade.' He had cracked and broken fingernails, Boysie noted, and a handpainted tie which simply screeched at his shirt: a man of fifty-odd, who might have been a private, lurking, detective, or a sly summons server.

  'That's all right, Mr Griffin,' said Boysie, looking over his shoulder - a habit which took some time to conquer.

  'Well, you seem to be "clean" - I had a couple of the boys check you out. I'm always a bit chary of the police, and those bloody newspaper men.'

  'Of course.' Boysie sipped his tea.

  'Now, guv'nor, what can I do for you?'

  Griffin's voice had a rough throatiness: as though it had been hoarsened crying wares in a street market.

  'I believe you ... er ... dispose of people.' Boysie consciously put on Mostyn's drawl.

  'Yes, we can arrange that.' He paused, aware of Boysie's uneasiness: 'I've been in the business a long time, Mr Oakes, so you needn't be embarrassed with me. I've ceased to wonder at the foolishness of my fellow men.'

  'Oh!' The homespun philosophy took him by surprise.

  'Started as an undertaker,' continued Griffin. 'So got used to the inevitability of it all quite early on. Who d'you want done? Mother-in-law?'

  'Well, there'll probably be more than one ...'

  'Don't you fret about that, guv'nor – I never ask any questions so long as the lolly's right: and I can promise you, sir, that everything'll be in the best of taste. I mean, undertaking taught me that. A bit religious, I am, guv'nor, on the quiet like.'

  Frances Ann Chandler departed from this vale of tears, suddenly at Surbiton Station, the following evening. In fact, there wasn't very much left of Miss Chandler by the time the live rail and the mincemeat wheels of the train had done for her. Griffin's elbow, unexpected
and hard in her ribs, had toppled her from the platform before she even had time to cry out or realise what was happening to her.

  Mostyn parodied:

  'Frances Ann has gone to rest

  Safe at last on Abraham's breast,

  Which may be rough on Frances Ann,

  But it's certainly sexy for Abraham.'

  It was so easy. He even became quite friendly with Griffin, and together they worked out a regular format. After a briefing, there would be a telephone call; then a meeting in Lyons. Boysie would travel to wherever the kill was to be made, Griffin never far behind; and once Boysie had put the finger on the target, Griffin would take over - with excellent, though fatal, results. It was even relatively simple for Boysie to blot the more revolting consequences from his mind. This was a game (with his monthly cheque as the stake), in which moral responsibility had to be thrown to the wind.

  *

  Early light was beginning to filter into the room. Boysie, still awake, sat in the chair looking, unseeing, at the window. Remembering those first days had helped to lift the depression. For nearly seven years he had successfully foxed the Department. Officially, he was responsible for the liquidation of twenty-five people - all enemies of Britain. Unofficially, and only because of his one weakness - the inability to promiscuously dispense death - he had sub-contracted, at £300 a corpse, plus expenses: a sum which balanced easily against the regular body bonuses. Damn it, why was he worrying? It was a trick played, commercially, on the government every single day. Sometime, he knew, it would have to end. There was always a certain amount of strain: and of late there had been the neuroses concerning his own mortality. Perhaps this 'Coronet' thing was going to bring on the showdown. Griffin, as always, was his only hope.

  Iris stirred, her hand searching for him on the pillow:

  'Boysie?'

  'All right, sweetie, I'm here.'

  'What you doing?'

  'Having a cigarette.'

  'Come back to bed, Boysie. Then softly, 'I want you.'

  Boysie had got his second wind, and – in spite of the sleepless night - performed with an expertise and polish, the like of which Iris had never experienced. At last, he relaxed, and, within five minutes, was knocking out a long stream of Zs which, for some time, kept Iris from returning to her satisfied dreams.