by John Gardner
XIX - AIR
A simple melody for voice or instrument (best played on a G String!)
Boysie braced himself to receive the bullet, but when the shot came it was from behind him and Griffin lurched to the left clutching his shoulder, the white overalls stained red.
Boysie glanced back to see William Edith struggling with a jammed Walther, the slide locked to the rear of the butt. Griffin had regained his balance, slewed around, sideways on. Boysie made a leap at him, low down in a rugger tackle which missed, leaving Boysie eating the tarmac while Griffin loped off behind the line of aircraft.
Pandemonium was breaking out from behind him, and as Boysie climbed to his feet, rubbing a knee, he saw Edith throwing his automatic pistol away in disgust. Against his better judgment, Boysie set off at a trot after Griffin, his mind churning and a gout of bitterness welling inside him, flowering into fury.
True he had used Griffin time and again, they had forged a relationship and that had been in his terrifying line of business. He should have known better than to trust the undertaker with his harmless little jokes and murderous intentions. Dogs and killers sometimes bite the hand that feeds them.
Griffin was well away, trotting in his loping lopsided stride towards the little Piper Cub which was already moving onto the taxi track. Boysie would never catch him on foot.
He stood there for a moment, helpless as Griffin swung himself up the wing and the Cub’s engines rose to full power.
There was another face that Boysie recognised through the polished perspex hood: Caesar Chiliman glaring malevolently towards him.
Edith was beside him now. “Bloody thing jammed,” Edith’s voice rising to a falsetto. “Do something, Oakes. Don’t just stand there. Do something and I’ll get you off the hook. It’s Chiliman and Gest as well.”
For a frozen fragment of a second, Boysie held him full face, then he was moving, shouting back at Edith as he ran, the words bellowing from his throat in rage. “I told you to get your number dry, Edith. You need more experience, you need to get your nasty knees brown, more experience in the field. But I’ll fix the sods for you, especially sodding Griffin. Sod them.” He was dashing back along the rear of the parked air circus planes.
The pilot of the RE 8 was still in his cockpit, his observer standing by the aircraft, the engine idling, puffing exhaust from the twin pipes which ran at right angles from the fuselage carrying the fumes away over the upper wing.
Boysie clambered up the lower wing root, shouting in the pilot’s ear, “Can you speak English?” Enunciating carefully and making each word count.
“My native tongue,” the pilot shouted back. “I’m an Aussie, cobber.”
Boysie pointed out through the whirling disc of the four-bladed propeller. “Can you catch that Cub?”
“Who wants to know?”
“I’m a British Intelligence officer,” shouted Boysie, believing every word of it. “I’ve got to stop the bastards.”
“Can but try, mate.”
“Okay. Follow that Cub. The guns loaded?”
He looked back into the rear cockpit at the twin Lewis guns in their ring mounting, each with its drum magazine in place, the big circular sight rising between them.
“They’re loaded okay, Blue, for the demo. Get in and I’ll make this flying shithouse do things that’ll turn Jonathan Livingston Seagull green with envy.”
Boysie prised himself into the rear cockpit, unmercifully small and cramped. He felt he might also turn green, but not with envy. By this time, the Australian’s observer was on the wing root and there was a lot of shouting going on, much swearing decorating the conversation. Then the observer threw a pair of goggles at Boysie, gave him the thumbs up sign and leaped down and under the aircraft.
He must have been pulling the chocks away, because, before Boysie could get the goggles over his head, the pilot had the throttle open and they were bumping and swaying forward. For a moment, Boysie remembered the fairground rides of his youth as the St. Giles’ Fair made its round of the Berkshire towns.
The Cub was almost airborne, Boysie could see it starting to climb away from the main runway parallel with the sea. It was being pursued by a pair of police cars and a fire engine which were not likely to unstick and get into the air behind it.
The Australian did not seem to bother about minor details like runways, he just opened the engine and headed across the airfield, over the tarmac, apron, taxi track and earth, the old machine bouncing and juddering so that everything blurred and Boysie had the distinct impression that his joints would be telescoped one with another.
Then the propeller blades seemed to catch hold of the air as though they were boring through something solid, and they began to claw their way off, smoother now, though engulfed by noise and buffeted by the wind and slipstream howling around the open cockpit.
There was a whining in the wire stays between the wing struts and the ground fell away below them: with it went Boysie’s stomach. From where he stood, in the tiny space set on top of the fuselage, he could see pieces of the fabric fluttering while the wings appeared to bend with the stress of air pressure. It was like riding a lawn mower high above the sea.
The Australian had unstuck her at a line which dissected the Cub’s take-off path, cutting through at right angles. Now he was putting the aircraft into a tight turn, so that it tipped crazily as though they would be thrown down into the sea. It was at that moment Boysie realised that you normally carried parachutes in aeroplanes like this. He was without any visible means of support and did not relish the thought of what might happen if the pilot decided to try any advanced aerobatics. It was a long way down.
Boysie watched, trying not to look below him, as they grabbed at the air, throttle through the gate, urging upwards towards the Cub which had eased off on its climb, heading over the sea towards Italy.
The Cub, he presumed, had the edge on them as far as speed was concerned, but she also had a full load with Chiliman, Gest and the wounded Griffin up front, and her little 65hp engine would be flat out.
He was hypnotised, his eyes never leaving the Cub as it grew larger above their upper wing. At one point the Australian turned round, grinning, with his thumb stabbing upwards.
They appeared to inch up through the sky and it was almost with surprise that Boysie realised they were very close to the Piper Cub - so close that they were bucking and jigging in its slipstream.
The Australian turned again and pointed upwards making a movement with his hand which Boysie interpreted as a signal that they were going to climb above the other aircraft and come down level with them.
He nodded, turning his attention to the guns, aware for the first time that it was very cold and his hands, unprotected by gloves, were stiff and clumsy.
It was years since he had seen a Lewis gun, but the operation was relatively simple. He found the cocking handles on the right-hand sides of the guns, and the safety catches. Pushing between the weapons so that both butts rested easily into his shoulders, he grasped the grips and triggers.
The weapons swung in an easy arc on their ring mounting, the large circular metal sight with its crossed wires level with his eyes. Biggles and Ginger, he thought briefly, then the old RE 8 slewed to one side and the Piper Cub slid into vision. They were riding, lifting and falling like the ginny horses on a big roundabout, formatting with the little aircraft.
He could see clearly into the cabin. Griffin lying back, his face white and head lolling as though half conscious; Chiliman bulked beside him and the shape of Gest cramped at the controls, shooting nervous glances towards the RE 8.
Boysie’s stomach lifted and dropped as the Australian waggled their wings ferociously, a hand out motioning downwards towards Chiliman. Boysie followed suit, panning the twin guns, traversing along the Cub’s fuselage and then firmly moving them up and down.
He saw Chiliman’s mouth open and close in a stream of abuse; a pudgy hand reaching out to slide back part of the canopy window; the ha
nd coming up with a pistol. Then a whip and crack as a bullet ploughed into the fuselage between himself and the pilot.
The RE 8 dropped its nose violently and appeared to remain motionless, the Cub disappearing from view, lifting above them. An increasing whistling through the aircraft framework, then the roar of their motor and pressure, as though he was being forced back by an invisible hand. They were in a skidding turn to the right and then the left. Then a small, tight circle and the Cub was above and in front of them again.
When the Australian turned to look back at him this time he was not grinning, his finger crooked in a trigger-squeezing motion.
Boysie nodded. They climbed again, the Cub to their right. The pilot lifted a hand and slewed, yawing the aircraft, bringing the Cub’s tail obliquely on to Boysie’s cockpit.
He sighted quickly through the metal ring and pressed both of the triggers, but the tail was only there for a few seconds and the burst went wide.
The engine roared once more and they were again climbing over the Cub, losing a little distance. This time the Australian lined them up, above and to the left, throttle wide, before tipping the wings, flying tilted to one side.
Boysie had the rear of the Cub firmly in the sights now. He felt the Lewis guns come alive and pieces started flying from the Cub’s fuselage just forward of the tail plane.
The Cub bucked, turned gently away, its belly exposed for a second, nose down, diving for the sea below. The Australian had their nose down, following, the wind banshee-howling and whipping in one long stream around them.
The Cub was performing a slow spiral, going down as though on an invisible and perfectly constructed set of rails. Twice she came through the gun sights and on both occasions Boysie managed a two-second burst. The second time more pieces fell away, then her nose settled down and the spiral stopped.
The RE 8 pulled up and they had a clear picture of the small aircraft as it hammered, gently it seemed, in a straight inevitable line towards the sea.
Far below, it hit with a flower of spray. Boysie distinctly saw the high wing break in two, one half go fluttering back to land skipping on the sea. Then they turned away and he could only see the mountains ahead, and below, along the coastline, the white sprawl of Nice and the rough dirty promontory that was the airport, the sea flecked with red from the sun setting gently behind the mountains.
XX - CODA
In musical analysis, a section of a movement considered to be added at the end as a rounding off rather than as a structural necessity
“No news of Griffin’s body?”
William Edith shook his head.
It was six weeks and a lot of words later. They sat in the room which Boysie had once known well as the Chief’s office, when he had worked for Special Security. The chair was now firmly occupied by William Edith, Number One of the Department of Tactical Security.
The various committees of investigation had done their work thoroughly enough, establishing that Griffin, along with a number of other well-known professional hired experts, had long been on Chiliman’s list of operatives.
They also had irrefutable evidence that, on the night when Mostyn was killed in Paris, Griffin had walked calmly out of the hotel only seconds after the shooting had taken place. It was presumed that Lyric Lavenham had, of her own initiative, realised that this was the case. Griffin would have been forced, under these circumstances, to get rid of her. The details would never be available.
For Boysie the whole world had changed. Mostyn gone, Griffin revealed as a treacherous mercenary prepared to change sides for the highest bidder. He found that hard to accept, but it was fact and Griffin with whom he had worked for years, now lay at the bottom of the Mediterranean: they had recovered only Chiliman’s body, bloated and thrown up on the coastline a week after the affair ended high over Nice. No trace of either Gest or Griffin.
Though second thoughts were inevitable, Zizi Portobello had taken Boysie at his word, and after so many years in happy and unrestrained bachelordom, the one-time Liquidator of Special Security was trapped, once and for all, at Marylebone Register Office one bright spring morning three weeks after the Piper Cub had sliced into the sea.
They had gone off, happy enough, for a couple of months’ sun and sea in the comparative tranquillity of the Greek Islands, only to find Boysie summoned back to London after three weeks.
The cable had read: YOU ARE STILL A MEMBER OF THIS DEPARTMENT STOP URGENT YOU SHOULD REPORT HERE DAY AFTER TOMORROW STOP EDITH STOP
Boysie replied: CANNOT STOP STOP PHIZ OFF STOP STOP BOTHERING STOP OAKES STOP
Three hours later, two extremely large men arrived at their secluded hotel and suggested that unpleasant things might happen if Boysie did not return to London.
By the time they got back to Heathrow, Zizi had mollified her husband, and Boysie, true to form, arrived at Edith’s office with his resignation neatly typed in his breast pocket.
“How is the fair Mrs. Oakes?” asked Edith, strangely pleasant.
“She’ll be okay once we can get back to the honeymoon,” Boysie grinned placidly.
“The honeymoon is over,” Edith showed his fangs. Boysie shook his head. “Wrong. My resignation.” The paper fluttered onto the desk where Edith let it lie for a moment before picking it up gently and tearing it into pieces.
“There is no way,” he smiled. “Once in you cannot get out, and you know it, Oakes. Besides I have your new appointment here.”
Boysie picked it up with diffidence. His name was at the top of the list:
Brian Ian Oakes appointed deputy to William Frederick Frances St. John Edith, MBE. Special Duties.
His jaw dropped, “What the hell ...?”
“It means you’re my Number Two. Mrs. Oakes should be pleased you’re in work. Second-in-Command of Tactical Security is ample reward for the service you have done. It’s also a demanding job. After all you have the experience. Congratulations.”
“But I ... But I ... But I ...”
“You know where your office is. Downstairs. The one Mostyn used to use in the old days. I believe you have some interviewing to do. There are a couple of applicants for the training course.”
Half an hour later, having haltingly called Zizi, Boysie sat behind the desk which had for so long been used in the old days by Colonel James George Mostyn. The longer he sat there the more he tasted the power that was now his. It was not an unpleasant sensation.
A tap on the door called forth a dazed “Come in,” and a tall willowy blonde with magnificent contours entered clutching a shorthand pad. She had eyes which beckoned Boysie to darkened rooms and soft silk sheets.
“The applicants are here, sir,” she said.
Boysie knew instinctively that she was really telling him that she would be free after hours for whatever he had in mind. The thought of Zizi, alone in the Ken High Street flat, dragged him back to reality.
“Wheel the first one in then, love, and, oh, what did you say your name was?”
“I didn’t, sir, but it’s Iris.”
He felt a flicker low down in his loins.
“My private number is in the file, sir,” she vamped.
“Wheel the first one in,” Boysie picked up the dossier which lay in front of him.
The first one was a tall man, bronzed, obviously fit and muscular. He had light blue eyes and the left side of his mouth had a tendency to twitch upwards.
“Come in, laddie,” said Boysie. “Come in and sit down.” His voice sounded almost smarmy.
Acknowledgments
I am often accused, quite unjustifiably, of not giving credit where credit is due. In order to avoid the wrath of those concerned, I now list the following acknowledgments for this, the eighth, Boysie Oakes Entertainment:
Patience by Hodder & Stoughton
Odd Quips by Alexis and Simon Gardner
Typing by Margaret Gardner
Flight Information by Capt. E. Mercer, D.F.C.
Enthusiasm by Simon Wood
; Constant Harassment by Alexis and Simon Gardner and their friends, also recordings of numerous pop groups
Mr. Oakes’ Dreams at Chalon-sur-Saône by Ann Evans
Typewriters by Adler and Olympia
Miss Lavenham and Mlle. Portobello’s Wardrobes by Mr. Gardner’s roving eye
Chapter Headings mainly by courtesy of A New Dictionary of Music
Wigs by Christopher Worner
Cigarettes by John Player
Nerve by John Gardner
If you enjoyed A Killer for a Song you might be interested in The Secret Generations by John Gardner, also published by Endeavour Press.
Extract from The Secret Generations by John Gardner
Prologue
All the nurse could see was the fine old head against the white pillow. Her intuition and experience told her the man was very close to death. Had she been blessed with some odd form of second sight, enabling her to read the thoughts and see the images in the dimming brain, she would probably not have understood them…
He felt a terrible weight on his chest, and pains down the left leg, but could not at first tell where he was. Then the roaring noise bore down on him – the dust choking his throat. Hoof beats receding, and the sound of cannon. Now he knew.
He had been hit. Badly. Try to get breath. Gently. There. All would be well; they would take him back to the neat rows of white tents and hutments at Balaclava Harbour. For a second he could see the rocky inlet, cliffs rising around the deep water: a natural harbour for the myriad ships which had brought the soldiers to this place.
But something had gone very wrong after they trotted out, as ordered, then turned – at the sound of the ‘Gallop’ – making straight for the Russian guns. Madness. Had he called out? Madness; particularly as, only the day before, he had gone, with a corporal and three troopers, to reconnoitre. The maps he had made, and brought back, showed the exact position of the Russian guns, and the way in which they were digging in the Turkish cannon, so that the main Russian batteries were protected on both flanks.