The Accidental Assassin

by Jan Toms

  ‘You OK?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m missing you.’

  ‘Me too. See you at the El Sombrero?’

  ‘What time?’

  ‘Eight?’

  ‘I can’t wait. And Bar – I love you.’

  ‘Me too kid, me too.’

  Dodge hadn’t realised that the El Sombrero was a gay club and he was relieved that he hadn’t mentioned where he was going to Randy. That would certainly have aroused his suspicions.

  He saw Barry immediately, sitting at a table in an alcove. He wore dark pants and a turquoise shirt that even in the gloom emphasised the blue-green of his eyes. His face was thin, sensitive, and Roger yearned with love for this miracle who had so magically found his way into his life. Barry rose to his feet and came over and kissed him, making him feel wonderful. He couldn’t imagine any other place where they might have embraced so openly and it gave him hope. Perhaps there would be a way round. Perhaps they could move to Amsterdam, or anywhere really that was out of reach of the four brothers who would make it their business to stamp out their love. Cynically, he thought that this was one thing in which the rival gangsters would be united. Who knows, perhaps they could settle their differences through their mutual hatred of his love for Barry Hickman.

  For a while they compared notes, gently feeling their way around the central issue of what they should do next.

  ‘My brothers are gunning for yours Dodge,’ Barry confessed, taking his hand across the little table that was made from half a sherry cask. Castanets and sombreros hung on the walls, bunches of plastic oranges drooped from the rails and the whole place was lighted in such a way as to please the ecologists, using the lowest bulbs possible without actually resorting to darkness.

  ‘My brothers want to set up some sort of ambush I think.’ Dodge sighed, acknowledging what they were up against. For a while they were both silent, thinking through all the alternatives, then Barry leaned forward.

  ‘Why don’t we – you and I – set up a mutual meeting place. Harry wants to invite Vincenzo Verdi along to take you all out so we need to stop it.’

  ‘Reggie has got the same idea.’

  They stared at each other, a truth gradually dawning. ‘Then why don’t we set it up and pay off Verdi not to get involved?’ Barry bristled with pleasure at the novelty of his plan.

  ‘Will a hitman take a commission not to shoot anyone?’

  ‘I don’t see why not, it’s easy money. All he’s got to do is to come along and say that if they don’t come to an agreement then he will finish off the lot of them on both sides. That’s when we can step in and say that we arranged it and we want a settlement or else.’

  ‘Or else what?’

  Barry shrugged. ‘Or else we’ll go to the police?’

  ‘And tell them what?’ The idea was so fantastic that Dodge couldn’t think beyond the ludicrousness of the Pretty Boys and the Blue Brothers asking the police to sort things out.

  Barry shrugged. ‘I don’t know, nothing probably, but at least it should make them think.’

  ‘What about us?’

  ‘What about us?’

  ‘When are we going to tell them – we are going to tell them, aren’t we?’

  ‘Of course we will. Perhaps we could blackmail them and say that unless they stop fighting we’ll come out and then both sides will be embarrassed.’

  ‘Are you ashamed of me Bar?’

  ‘Of course I’m not ashamed. I don’t know how it’s happened, but I love you. This is our chance to get everything sorted.’ He suddenly looked full of confidence. ‘This is what we’ll do…’

  TWENTY-FOUR

  At last the police gave Victor permission to go home. He felt guilty about being so pleased, because Charity was still away and in all conscience he shouldn’t really leave Alan alone, but the lure of his own little house was too great.

  Alan was clearly worried by Charity’s sudden departure. Although she had phoned to say that she was staying overnight, she had failed to return the following day.

  ‘I don’t understand it,’ Alan said for the hundredth time. ‘She wouldn’t just stay away without telling me. I’m sure that something has happened to her.’

  Victor was equally sure that she was fine. She hadn’t been able to hide the excitement in her voice and he was convinced that she was up to something.

  He persuaded Alan to go to work because it was best to keep busy.

  ‘I’m sure she is fine,’ he reiterated, trying to reassure Alan yet again. From his experience, Charity was a girl who was more than capable of looking after herself.

  ‘You don’t think she’s been kidnapped or anything?’

  Victor shook his head, a definite no. ‘I’m sure she hasn’t. When she rang the other evening she sounded happy.’ As an afterthought, he added, ‘She even thought about what we were going to have for supper, remember?’

  Alan nodded doubtfully. ‘That’s just like Charity, always thinking about others. I just wish I knew what this was all about.’

  As Alan prepared to leave for work, Victor asked, ‘What shall I do if she phones?’ He had the day off so that he could go home and sort things out.

  ‘Tell her to speak to me without fail. I shan’t rest until I’ve heard that she is alright from her own lips.’

  ‘I will.’

  Victor washed up and dried the dishes, then spent some time ironing some shirts and tea towels and socks and underpants for Alan as a sort of thank you for putting him up. He put them into neat piles in the airing cupboard. Then, just as he was about to leave the house, the telephone rang. It was Charity.

  ‘Charity, are you alright?’ She didn’t sound like a kidnap victim but you could never be sure.

  ‘Of course I am alright, Victor. Is father there?’ When he said that he wasn’t, she continued, ‘Then I want you to tell him that I am perfectly well but that something really important has come up.’ She sounded positively bubbly but he tried to insist, ‘Alan’s worried about you. I really think you should speak to him yourself and reassure him that there is nothing wrong.’

  ‘Surely you can do that? Tell him that I am going away for a few days but I will contact him as soon as I am settled. Tell him not to worry.’

  ‘But Charity…’

  ‘Oh, and tell him not to think about trying to trace me. I know what policemen are like. If he does that I will never forgive him.’

  ‘Then why can’t you…’ he started but she cut across him.

  ‘And another thing, I’m afraid I won’t be seeing you any more, Victor. You have to understand that while you are very nice, I have met someone else. This, I’m certain, is the real thing.’ She paused and her voice changed to one of caring concern. ‘You won’t do anything silly, will you? I know you will think that your heart is broken but one of these days you’ll understand that I was right. I pride myself on having taught you a lot Victor and I’m sure that there will be someone out there who is really right for you, but that girl isn’t me.’

  ‘But Charity!’ The line went dead and Victor was miffed that he didn’t have the opportunity to say that it was he who was breaking off the relationship. He sat holding the phone and imagining all the things he might have said to her.

  At that moment, Alan walked in, startling him.

  ‘Just popped in to see if there was any news,’ he said.

  For some reason Victor felt guilty because it was he who had spoken to Charity, as if he had gone behind Alan’s back, but there was nothing that he could do.

  ‘You’ve just missed her,’ he said. ‘I asked her to phone you but she insisted that she is fine and that I should tell you not to worry – and not to try to trace her…’ his voice trailed off and Alan leapt on the last remark.

  ‘In that case I’m certain that she is in danger. That’s her way of asking me to get help. There must have been someone there, holding a gun to her head, telling her what to say!’

  ‘Honestly Alan, she sounded – well, happy. She – she s
aid that she had met someone else and that she didn’t want to see me any more. I think that you should wait for a day or two and I’m sure that she will turn up.’

  Alan was a long way away, pursuing some fantasy of his own that involved rescuing his child from danger. Ignoring Victor’s last remark, he said, ‘I should have insisted that she didn’t get involved with this case.’

  ‘Which case?’

  ‘You know very well which case, the gang warfare. I’m afraid one of them has got her and wants to hold her hostage until we meet their demands.’

  ‘Has anyone made any demands?’

  Alan looked annoyed that a little thing like that should get in the way of his righteous worry.

  ‘Well,’ Victor picked up his jacket. ‘You could dial 1471; see if you can get the last number. That might tell you where she was phoning from.’ But Charity had withheld the number. Clearly she was determined not to be found.

  Alan went back to work and Victor shook the dust of Prince Consort Crescent from his feet. He was desperate to reach Princess Alice Cottage and shut the door, immerse himself in its cosy sanctuary. When he arrived, the blue and white and red and yellow tape had all gone. He looked closely but could see no traces of blood on the gravel. The memory of Groping Joe, sprawled across the drive, sobered his mood and his fears returned with force. Was someone even now waiting in the bushes to take him out? They had got the wrong man when they shot Groping Joe but that wouldn’t stop them from trying again. For a second, he wondered: what was Groping Joe doing in his garden, but he didn’t want to pursue it. Quickly he inserted his key into the front door and went inside.

  There was some post. He picked it up and took it through to the kitchen, wishing that he had stopped to buy some milk so that he could make tea. The first thing he saw was Fluffy’s bed and a sudden yearning for the dog came over him. The kittens had been removed to a cat rescue centre for the moment. Victor wondered if they wouldn’t be better off with someone else. After all, at any moment he might be wiped out by an armed killer and then they would be homeless again. Who knew, the nameless assassin might take his revenge on them too, on helpless animals who had nothing to do with anything. The thought upset him so much that he felt on the verge of tears.

  Sitting at the table feeling thoroughly depressed, he riffled through the morning’s post and his heart jolted not once, but twice. Amid the adverts for double glazing and thermal vests were one white and one brown envelope. With a groan, he tore them open. They both seemed remarkably similar.

  The paper in the white envelope said: Monday, 8.30, the old Congregational church. How much not to kill anyone?

  Deeply confused, he delved into the brown envelope. It said: Next Monday, half past eight, the old empty church at Rowan Place. Name your price for skaring them without herting anyone.

  Really, this was too much. He still had the last cheque that he hadn’t had the nerve to take to the bank. What was all this about? Killing, scaring, hurting, the thought of any such action terrified him. He pondered long and hard and then reached a decision. He would hand the letters over to Alan and hope for the best.

  At that moment the phone rang, causing him to jolt so violently that he nearly fell off the chair. Like a rabbit cornered by a stoat he stared at it, waiting for some pronouncement of doom. The answerphone cut in and a voice said, ‘It’s the police station here, Mr Green. Perhaps you would like to pick up your dog? We’ve finished with him now. He’s at the kennels.’

  He let the relief wash over him. Perhaps he should take the letters with him now and give them to Alan at the station, only it would call for a long, complicated explanation and even to his own mind it sounded so fanciful that he wondered if Alan would believe him. He decided that instead he would pop round later and see Alan at home, keep him company, cheer him up a bit. He felt angry with Charity for the pain she was causing her father and also the manner in which she had dismissed him as her lover. Clearly it had not occurred to her that he might have had second thoughts too. She was so full of herself that she couldn’t even imagine that someone wouldn’t want her. Righteously indignant, he went to the door and poked his nose outside, looking up and down the lane just in case, then he set out for the station.

  On the way, he worried that Fluffy would have suffered further traumas and would now be even more neurotic than before. Remembering his guilt when the dog was ‘arrested’, he vowed to be more sympathetic from now on and nurse him back to full mental health.

  At the station, he was shown round to the back. There was a yard with individual kennels where police dogs could spend their working hours when they weren’t out catching crooks. A large black and tan Alsatian flew at the wire, barking a threat – or was it a greeting, Victor wasn’t sure. He thought about poor little Fluffy, how frightened he was of other dogs and how he had trembled when he had been incarcerated at the Dogs’ Home.

  ‘Where is he?’ he asked.

  ‘In here.’ The dog handler went to the cage at the end of the line and fiddled with the lock. Victor peered over his shoulder and saw a large sandy Alsatian sprawled out in the run. ‘That’s not my dog,’ he started, but at that moment a white blob of fluff appeared briefly above the dog’s shoulders.

  ‘Our Bess has taken a proper shine to your pooch,’ said the handler. ‘Inseparable they are. She’s going to miss him.’

  He opened the gate, the bitch stood up and wagged her tail at him; Fluffy, emerging from behind, bared his teeth and made a run for the officer’s legs. With great aptitude, the man grabbed Fluffy by the scruff of the neck and hauled him out. ‘Vicious little – thing, isn’t he?’ he said through gritted teeth.

  ‘He gets nervous,’ Victor offered in Fluffy’s defence, all his good intentions melting away at the sight of the squirming, snarling poodle.

  The officer put Fluffy on the ground and when he saw Victor he squeaked and ran across, his tail trembling with emotion. Victor bent down and picked him up, enduring a prolonged face wash.

  ‘Is – is anything going to happen – about the bites?’ Victor asked.

  ‘I shouldn’t think so – not as long as he only bites criminals.’ The man suddenly grinned and handed over Fluffy’s lead.

  ‘Take care then.’ In view of the recent circumstances, the words took on a prophetic meaning.

  Charity sat at the dressing table in the Royal Cascade suite and brushed her hair, thinking of those princesses in fairytales. She had certainly found her Prince Charming. At the moment he was slumped in the king-size bed, trying to replace the inordinate amount of energy he had expended at her behest.

  Charity had never enjoyed herself so much. Vincenzo was the lover par excellence. When he wasn’t making love to her he was attentive, ordering her dresses and jewellery and flowers by the bucket load. Somewhere, a member of the hotel staff was being kept busy just delivering his tributes. This was what she had been born for.

  After two days they had talked about the future. ‘Is time I leave this life behind,’ Vincent announced. For an alarming second Charity wondered if he was about to suggest a suicide pact but he said, ‘I am rich man, you know? I have many savings in Cayman Islands. Maybe I go there and live.’

  I, he had said, not we. She hastily went to correct him. ‘I have never been abroad,’ she started.

  ‘Then you come too.’

  She smiled her relief, adding, ‘I haven’t even got a passport.’

  ‘That is no worry. I get you one, today if necessary.’

  She had always thought that you had to get your photo taken and collect a form from the Post Office and then persuade someone important like your MP or a Justice of the Peace to sign the form to say the photo looked like you. Clearly there were other ways of doing things.

  After breakfast, Vincenzo took Charity to see somebody he knew. The man looked like a cross between a penniless refugee and an elderly professor of quantum physics. Vincenzo called him Rueben and explained that, ‘My friend, she need papers, passport, visa.’


  Rueben didn’t say anything, just nodded and summoned Charity with a finger to go and stand in front of a white screen, where he proceeded to take her photograph. Afterwards, he and Vincent conversed in low voices and then Rueben went into another room. Her lover said, ‘Now you will be Sophia Rosselini.’

  ‘Why do I have to change my name?’ she asked, alarmed at the prospect.

  ‘Because maybe everyone looking for Charity Grimes. Maybe your Papa send out to airports to find you?’

  She nodded, troubled by the thought of Alan’s anxiety. She had come home to look after him and to make his single status bearable and now she had added to his stress, but the alternative was to go home. Looking at Vincenzo, oozing charisma, she knew that she could not take her eyes off him for a second.

  ‘So, we are going to the Cayman Islands?’ she asked.

  ‘I think so. There we have good life. There you can be rich lady.’

  It sounded appealing.

  The passport turned out to be Italian, and although Charity complained that she couldn’t speak the language and that was bound to arouse suspicion, Vincenzo assured her that all would be well.

  ‘Never you worry, cara. Vincenzo and Sophia, we make a happy life.’

  Charity/Sophia looked forward to it like a winner collecting her lottery money.

  Alan decided to walk round to the chippy on the way home. Thinking of the times when he had longed to avoid Charity’s cooking, he now felt that he was being punished for his disloyalty. If he was honest, he had wanted her to go, and now she had and he didn’t know where. The pain was tangible. He had phoned his other daughter, Pru, wondering if Charity might have gone there, but when he asked Pru if she had been in touch with her sister lately, she said, ‘Of course not. She never bothers to ring me and I’m far too busy to chase after her.’ So much for sisterly devotion. He didn’t say anything else because he didn’t want Pru racing down to find out what was going on. In the meantime he continued to fret.

  He ordered a take-away cod and chips and added lots of salt and vinegar as an act of rebellion. Charity did not allow salt in the house. He could hear her berating him. ‘Your heart, father! Do you want to drop down dead before you reach your retirement?’