Quantum of Tweed

by Conn Iggulden

  CONN IGGULDEN

  Quantum of Tweed

  The Man with the Nissan Micra

  To Kiera Godfrey

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  About the Author

  Also by Conn Iggulden

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Chapter One

  Albert Rossi would be the first to tell you that breaking into the world of professional assassination is no easy task. In almost any job, you are allowed to make the odd mistake, with red faces all round and perhaps a new office nickname. Not so with hit men. If assassins had a theme tune, it would be something solemn and deeply dignified. Adagio in G minor, perhaps. Soft rock would not be appropriate for such a serious business. Bonnie Tyler would not do at all.

  It might have helped if Albert had spent his earlier years in the army, becoming a grim and, yes, somewhat suave dealer in death. He did not do this, however, because Albert Rossi was a late starter. Up to the age of forty-nine, his life had proceeded in an aimless fashion, much like the windows of his beloved menswear shop in Eastcote, Middlesex. Things changed, but things also stayed very much the same. Sadly, his debt to the bank rose every year.

  Albert’s life took a lurch onto a new path when he was driving home one Monday afternoon. The bank had taken to writing rather unpleasant letters to him and adding £30 to his overdraft for each one. He had tried replying. He had even tried charging them for his own letters. To his horror, this seemed only to encourage them. Lately, he had begun to receive statements with a red border and the word ‘bailiff’ around line three. Perhaps he was distracted that Monday. The threat of bailiffs will do that to a man.

  His car, a Nissan Micra, was also not appropriate for an assassin, but in fairness it was fantastically appropriate for the owner of a men’s clothing shop. He may have been listening to Bonnie Tyler, but moments of immense stress often blur details. To this day he cannot remember why he shudders whenever he hears ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart’.

  The first he knew of his career change was when a small man wearing a poorly cut suit and smart black shoes ran out in front of him. The brakes of the car were excellent, but as Albert panicked, he locked the wheels and skidded. At the moment of impact, the little man popped into the air, so quickly and completely that at first Albert dared to hope it hadn’t happened at all. To his horror, he saw a smartly shoed foot sliding into view at the top of his windscreen. The little man had ended up on the roof.

  In the stunned moment that followed, Albert swallowed nervously. With trembling hands, he turned off the radio – rather than have Bonnie Tyler belt her way through a chorus that could only be slightly sinister in the circumstances. The silence was eerie. The sort of silence that is interrupted by a dead man sliding into view can never be the ‘nuns in a reading room’ kind. ‘Eerie’ is very much it for the slight squeak of a size-nine brogue on your windshield. It did not help that Albert recognised the brand of socks as one he had marked down to 40 per cent of its full price.

  The road was empty, though suburban houses seemed to press in on all sides. There had been the squeal of brakes and the thump. Surely the windows would be positively filling with Girl Guides and Miss Marples, noting his number plate and groping for the phone. As Albert stepped out, he was tempted to just push the little fellow off and make a dash for freedom. A man who can sell a jumper with suede strips on the front is made of sterner stuff than that, however.

  Albert took hold of a wrist and tried not to look at the rest of the man as he felt for his pulse. There wasn’t one. He checked his own wrist for the right spot and couldn’t find one there either. It’s a lot harder to do than your average medical drama makes it look.

  Focusing on the task, Albert did not hear the stranger approach. He felt something poke at his kidneys. Was he being mugged? Honestly, whoever it was could not have chosen a worse time.

  ‘Don’t turn round,’ came a deep voice in his ear. ‘Just tell me the name of the man you ran over.’

  Albert wondered if he had struck his own head in the accident. Had the air bags gone off? Was it possible not to notice an air bag going off? He made a strangled sound as he tried to peer into the Nissan Micra without moving his head.

  ‘His name,’ the voice went on. ‘Just that.’

  There was a delicate scent of male aftershave in the air, Albert noted dimly. Unlike the voice and his entire day up to that point, it was actually quite nice.

  ‘I … I hit him with my car!’ Albert said. ‘I didn’t have time to ask him!’

  ‘You expect me to believe it was an accident? You don’t know who this is?’

  ‘Look, I’m truly sorry. I was driving along Hawthorn Avenue and …’

  To his amazement, the man at his ear chuckled.

  ‘Relax, Mr Dangerous Driver. I didn’t really think you were a professional. It was so neat, that’s all. I was lining up my shot … Don’t turn round!’

  Albert froze all over again. The fact that he was being poked by an actual gun was too much to take in. Could he hear sirens in the distance? No chance. That was another part of real life that the medical dramas had not represented accurately.

  On the television, the police were always in the next road, ready to fire up the sirens and arrive in seconds with screeching cars. That did not seem to be the case in Hawthorn Avenue, Eastcote. Albert thought he would be dead on the side of the road by the time the police eventually turned up. He suspected his own expression would be one of total bafflement.

  ‘Look, the police are on their way,’ he said, in the complete absence of proof. ‘I’m sorry if I made you angry …’

  ‘Angry?’ The man chortled. He was very jolly for someone in what Albert was beginning to realise was probably not a jolly profession. ‘You saved me a job. I wouldn’t have bothered with an alibi if I’d known you were going to come along and flatten my target for me.’

  Albert suspected he was going into shock. He wasn’t certain what this entailed, but he was feeling light-headed and faintly nauseous, which probably fitted the bill. He wondered how an assassin would react to having someone throw up on their shoes.

  ‘Will you kill me now?’ Albert asked.

  ‘Not for free, old son. You haven’t seen my face and you did do me a favour.’

  ‘I could … just drive away, in fact?’ Albert said, almost pleading. There was silence for a moment.

  ‘If you sneak a single look at me, I’ll take it badly, understand? Your number plate is on the road, so I can always find you.’

  Albert felt the pressure on his kidneys vanish and he opened the car door with shaking hands. He couldn’t look at the body again. Presumably, it would fall off when he built up a respectable speed.

  The second important event of that day occurred as Albert tried to start his car and put it into reverse gear whilst looking determinedly out of the back window. Perhaps it was fate that led him to accidentally select first gear and run his second man down that morning. The Micra leapt forward eagerly, bumping once, then twice.

  Albert gave a cry of appalled despair. He would have driven off if he hadn’t remembered his number plate on the road. A black mobile phone was spinning by his front tyre. Next to it was a pistol, complete with silencer. Albert snatched them all up, crunched the car into reverse and then he was off, back down Hawthorn Avenue, leaving the dead behind.

  Chapter Two

  The police did arrive, in th
e end. They had received reports of a hit-and-run from a retired teacher named Miss Morrison and one Girl Guide who was home sick from school. The missing number plate had foxed them all, however. Though Albert spent the night waiting for a knock on the door, it did not come. What did come was a call on the new mobile from Stephen Hawking, or someone who sounded very much like him.

  ‘Not as neat as we were expecting,’ said a metallic voice. ‘You are not paid extra for bystanders.’

  Albert could only listen in growing horror as he realised it was not Stephen Hawking at all.

  ‘The money will be left in the usual place,’ the voice continued.

  At that very moment, Albert changed careers. ‘No,’ he said, suddenly. ‘Leave it in the rubbish bin outside Eastcote station at midnight.’

  ‘Very well,’ the disguised voice said flatly, which was not too surprising.

  Albert switched off the phone, gasping. In all his years of herringbone jackets, of Burlington socks and renting tuxedoes, he had never experienced a fraction of the excitement that filled him then.

  He wasn’t certain when the bins were emptied, so at five minutes past midnight he was there, rummaging in the bin and pulling out a package wrapped in creased brown paper. When he had brought it back to his flat above the shop and opened it with shaking hands, he discovered it held ten thousand pounds.

  After finding a charger for his new phone, he’d discovered there were other ‘jobs’ on offer. He had learned not to refer to them as ‘slayings’ after Stephen Hawking’s initial pained silence. Obviously, by now he knew it wasn’t the famous physicist calling him, but it was somehow comforting to imagine the kindly genius there on the other end.

  If the bank had been even slightly reasonable, Albert would never have accepted. Ten thousand pounds had gone some way to keeping the wolves away, just not far enough. He wondered if every assassin had an overdraft and, for a moment, felt for them as a group before dismissing the idea. No doubt assassins spent their leisure time driving to casinos in Aston Martins. With buxom women, probably, the lucky swine.

  After retrieving a file from the same bin, Albert read feverishly about the activities of Peter Schenk, a wealthy and worryingly ruthless businessman. Schenk owned a number of shady operations, from betting shops to a junkyard and a bailiff company. Just reading that made Albert want to run him over.

  It was the section on hobbies that gave Albert his inspiration. Most weekends Schenk flew a hang-glider over at Dunstable, near Luton. Albert imagined the man drifting past, blissfully unaware, as Albert aimed, fired and kept Eastcote in menswear and golf balls for another decade. It wasn’t as if Schenk was a decent old buffer with a fondness for chocolate and cats. The file made it clear that Schenk was every bit as dangerous as those who rested their hopes in Albert Rossi.

  On a Saturday morning in June, Albert shut the shop early, having selected a long black coat from the rack – a 10 per cent cashmere mix, one of his best. He placed the coat, gun and phone on the passenger seat of his Micra and set off.

  Dunstable is mostly famous for its gliders, those long-winged fibreglass birds that drift over the vast natural ridge with grace and speed. They are winched along the ground until the breeze slips under the wings and they rise aloft. Like huge kites on a string of steel wire, they are flung into the heavens to swoop and soar amongst the clouds. So beautiful are they, so able to shrug off the bonds of gravity and the sullen earth below, that in those first moments of glorious flight you almost forget that what you’d really like is a bloody engine.

  There is also a sheer cliff to the north of the airfield that attracts those fans of hang-gliding who thrive on risk and adrenalin. Young fliers gallop madly to the edge and throw themselves into space. The delicate wings are toys of the air for a brief time, until they land and have to be walked all the way to the top again.

  It was a beautiful, sunny day with the sky a bowl of perfect blue when Albert arrived. He left his Micra in the car park of the gliding club and walked out beyond the buildings. In a sense, he realised, he was leaving civilisation behind. He had murder in his heart and the strong sensation that he should have chosen more appropriate shoes.

  Albert saw no sign of his intended victim as he reached the base of the cliff and began to make his way up. The path he followed wound around the hill, sometimes barely more than a track. Stumbling up it, Albert had his first glimpse of Schenk’s hang-glider on the ridge, bright yellow and jerking in the wind as its owner checked every strap before launch.

  Albert continued doggedly, peering up at Schenk each time he came into view. Far below, he could see tractors racing across the grass of the airfield to retrieve the gliders as they came to rest. It was a peaceful scene, but he reminded himself that he had not come for tranquillity. He was the angel of death and he set his jaw in what he hoped was a grim expression. Imagine, if you will, the face of a spaniel who has just been given a piece of bread covered in hot Colman’s mustard. There, you have it exactly. That was Albert’s expression. Admittedly, it was not what he hoped for, but that is often the way with men of a certain age.

  When he was close to the top, Albert stopped in frustration. Two bodyguards accompanied his target. They wore dark suits and sunglasses, which was more than enough to let him know their role in Schenk’s life. Albert could hardly take aim while they looked on. Shaking with tension, Albert saw a small track leading across the face of the final ridge. He didn’t hesitate and edged his way along it, his back pressed to the rough stone, mere inches from the abyss.

  The track narrowed until he was convinced a sudden gust would snatch him off. He couldn’t turn and the tips of his black Oxford shoes were actually over the edge, with nothing but air below.

  Albert was staring upwards as Peter Schenk launched above his head, rising into the blue sky. It was time. Albert tried to draw his gun as Schenk began to race his hang-glider in great swoops, back and forth across the edge of the ridge. The silencer snagged in Albert’s coat and he pulled the entire thing over his head in his panic. One last yank revealed the gleaming weapon but sent the coat fluttering down. Albert steadied himself as Schenk came zooming along, drunk on danger and adrenalin.

  Albert felt rather the same way himself. He braced one arm with the other and fired until the silenced gun was empty. In response, Schenk brushed a hand across his face as if batting away a wasp. In a rage, Albert considered throwing the gun at him.

  At that moment, Schenk looked across and saw Albert on the ledge, halfway up a cliff, as if suspended in mid-air. To his astonishment, Albert waved weakly at him. For an instant, Schenk wavered in his flight. His hand slipped from the control bar and his hang-glider drifted too close to the cliff face. It was then that the yellow wing snagged and tore itself apart. In a heartbeat it went from a swooping bird to a collection of struts and ragged cloth.

  Albert watched Peter Schenk spiral all the way down, overcome with something like remorse. His debt to the bank would be reduced, of course, but a man had lost his life to save a menswear shop. Somehow, Albert could not regret it. There had been something quite poignant in the way Schenk waved back at him before falling. Life, Albert reflected, did have a way of catching you unprepared.

  Chapter Three

  The following morning, Albert stirred from troubled sleep to reach out and pick up the phone by his bed. He had bought the old-fashioned item in a fanciful mood, then found that a rotary dial was nowhere near as much fun as he remembered. Calling a mobile number took ages. As he pressed the bulky receiver to his ear, he realised the ringing was still going on. He leapt out of bed like a salmon, crossing the room to the still dusty coat he had retrieved from the bottom of the cliff. It was the special phone and he tried to calm his breathing as he took the call.

  ‘Yes, Mr Hawking?’ he said, then clapped a hand over his mouth. There was a long silence at the other end before he heard the mechanical voice he knew so well.

  ‘You think this is Stephen Hawking?’ the voice asked. Even through the e
lectronic disguise, Albert could hear the surprise.

  ‘It’s my nickname for you, that’s all,’ he said, wincing.

  ‘It will do. Good work yesterday. For a man known as “Bullet”, you are more imaginative than I was told to expect.’

  Albert Rossi digested this for a moment, thinking back to the assassin he had run over in his Micra two weeks before.

  ‘I … work with whatever is to hand,’ he said, trying to sound calm and generally relaxed.

  ‘I have another job. Are you available?’

  Albert thought of the money he still owed and the constant drain on his bank account from the general lack of interest in Eastcote menswear. Despite the terror he had experienced on the cliff at Dunstable, despite the sweat that had dribbled into his eyes, he had never felt more alive. Cufflinks and bow ties were nowhere near as exciting. Perhaps one day he would even visit a casino – and not just to use the men’s room this time.

  ‘Absolutely,’ he said. ‘Drop the details off with the money. The usual place. Oh, and I’ll need some bullets.’

  ‘I see. What kind?’

  Albert panicked. There is something about a pistol that makes grown men want to pick it up. He’d spent part of the previous evening posing with it in front of a mirror. Where had he left the thing? As the voice asked again, he spotted the handle sticking out from under his pillow. Not the handle, the ‘grip’, he reminded himself. Or possibly the ‘butt’; he really had no idea. New sweat broke out on his forehead as he read out the tiny lettering on the gun.

  ‘Um … Colt Government 1911. Dot forty-five.’

  It was heavy and square in his hand, but he felt more confident just holding it. A Colt 45! A piece of America in an Englishman’s hand. Glorious.

  ‘Very well. I’ll put a couple of full clips in the envelope.’

  Albert was not exactly what you would call a ladies’ man. The great flames of youthful passion had passed him by, with the exception of one long summer in his late thirties when he dallied with an attractive widow and had even thought about asking her to marry him. The fires of his heart had turned to ash when he discovered she was also running around with the local butcher. Rather than compete with a man who could woo with sausages, Albert had sent her a dignified letter and ended it. Those golden days were still among his favourite memories, but as the sum total of a man’s experiences with the opposite sex, it was somewhat lacking.