Double Identity, Brian Doswell [top 10 books of all time .txt] 📗

A Busy Morning

The barrel of the 9mm Luger felt warm in his hand and the smell of fresh cordite hung in the air like a waft of incense from a passing censer. George Ellis hated the smell but he had come to accept it as a necessary evil, a part of his job. George was a professional assassin.

George slid the phone open and keyed in a speed dial number with his thumb.

“Tell the collector, the package is ready.”

He closed the phone and returned it to his pocket.

An hour later George sat at his desk in front of the picture window of his spacious London apartment overlooking Westminster Bridge. In the distance, the familiar outline of The Palace of Westminster, with its distinctive clock tower, framed the horizon. On the desk lay the disassembled components of the Luger from which George selected the hammer and its associated firing pin. Carefully he placed the parts in a shallow saucer of white spirit to clean off the gun oil. George always cleaned and oiled his favourite Luger before a job. The white spirit would remove the oil and allow the swift running waters of the River Thames to rust the tempered steel that much more quickly.

A box of Luger parts, obtained from any one of seven selected internet suppliers, also lay on the desk top. George rebuilt the gun in a little less than ten minutes. It was a skill the British Army had taught him to do when he was scarcely more than a boy. Cadet Ellis had passed the small arms course with distinction and for six straight years he had won the Regiment’s short-target shooting competition. He was very good at close target shooting. After his tenth year in uniform, Major Ellis chose to accept the generous redundancy terms of that year’s round of defence cuts, plus an introduction to the company of sundry other ex-servicemen who enjoyed a part-time relationship with the quiet, well-groomed, be-suited men of Vauxhall.

This evening he would check his numbered Swiss bank account to make sure the anticipated sum had been deposited; meanwhile he would take lunch on the rusting floating restaurant, affectionately known as ‘The Belgrano’, moored on the south side of the river opposite the iconic gothic building that housed the Mother of all Parliaments, so revered around the world. It amused him to think that behind one of those mullioned windows sat the Minister whose budget had paid for his morning’s work. George checked his watch; the tide would be high in twenty minutes. He would drop the small screwed up tissue handkerchief over the side of ‘The Belgrano’ as the tide turned, by this evening the used firing pin would be in the mud off Deptford Quays where it would be buried by the silt that washed down river on the ebb tide. No gun in the world would ever match the imprint on the bullet they would find in the neck of the unidentified body that would doubtless be found, sooner or later, somewhere on Bodmin Moor.

George felt a moment of sympathy for the police officer tasked with the running around to identify the corpse. His gun shot would have made a considerable mess of the face and jaw bone. No hope of dental records adding to the sum of information. He assumed the collector would have done his job. The corpse would be wearing a light track suit obtained from a high street outlet, and nothing else. In due course the file raised by DCI Plod, would rise up the police hierarchy until it reached the Chief Constable who would sign off the diligent enquiries and consign the file to the archives.

A cheerful waitress brought the dish of the day, chicken curry and rice, to his table and George poured a glass of wine from the half bottle of Burgundy at his side. He enjoyed the flavours of the rich ruby red wine, especially after a job. The wine washed over his tongue and he savoured its taste. The wine and curry would not exactly complement each other but then accepting the dish of the day was a good way to remain unobtrusive. Lunching on ‘The Belgrano’ was a double bluff. On the one hand he would eat there two or three times a month, not often enough to be a regular, but often enough to be recognised. Choosing the dish of the day, made this day, like so many others, to be unworthy of comment.

George sat on the upper deck, facing up river. The breeze barely stirred the air but it helped to clear the memory of cordite from his senses. A white tour boat crowded with tourists, passed in the centre of the river and a dozen people waved to him. ‘Why do they do that?’ he wondered. I don’t know them and they certainly don’t know me. Would they wave with such friendly smiles if they had been with me earlier today? I doubt it.

The thought rekindled the mental picture of the lifeless body on the wooden floor at his feet. ‘Would he have waved to me if he had been on that boat?’

George lifted a hand to acknowledge the waves although he could not bring himself to actually move the hand in any manner that might be interpreted as waving back.

“Is everything all right Sir?” The waitress caught him in mid reverie and he turned to look up at her.

“Yes, thank you, its fine. I wonder - could you bring me the other half of this bottle?”

George poured the last of the wine into his glass and passed the empty half to the waitress.

“Certainly Sir.”

A large round red buoy floated in the middle of the river. On top of the float stood a four foot pole and on top of the pole hung a tattered red flag. George had no idea why the thing was there. He had always assumed it to be a marker for the tour boats as they all seemed to use it as a turning point. For George, it was also a marker. When the pole leaned away from the North Sea, the tide was running up river. When the pole stood upright, the tide was on the turn and when it pointed down river, the tide was running out. It was upright now, but by the time he had finished the second half bottle, it would be pointing towards Holland or Belgium or Germany or maybe all three. Then, and only then, would he blow his nose on a tissue handkerchief and allow it to slip through his fingers into the fast flowing waters below.

George declined the menu and ordered a small bowl of vanilla ice cream. “Just as it comes please.”

The waitress scribbled his order on her pad and cleared his table.

A plastic shopping bag washed past the ship’s side and, for an instant, George remembered the days when the Collector used to dump corpses in the river; not that they were ever merely thrown off Tower bridge, except maybe once. Mostly they were taken down the estuary to the marshes and left for the tide to draw them out into the shipping lanes, for the fishes to dispose of. The story that Coast Guards could determine where a body had entered the water by calculating the tidal flow was a complete myth put about by crime writers who ran out of credibility in their plots. The Collector’s job had been comparatively simple then. Now there was a new “Q” or “M” or whatever, who believed the television stories and demanded a cleaner disposal job. George did not mind at all because the Collector’s department had renegotiated the rates per job and his own rates had gone up in line with the review.

George finished his ice cream and swilled the last of a glass of water in his mouth to clean his pallet. The buoy was pointing down river.

George reached into his pocket for a tissue and blew his nose into it before scrunching it up into a ball and wiping his top lip with the paper. Casually he transferred the used tissue to his other hand and dipped back into the pocket for the prepared package. Unhurriedly he wrapped the two tissues together and then accidentally knocked over the empty water glass. A few heads turned at the sound of glass clinking on the table. They saw what George meant them to see, a middle aged man fumbling with an upturned water glass. The more observant might have noticed the used wad of tissue float from his hand and drift over the side into the Thames.

The waitress came to George’s table, ready to mop up the spilled water but there was none; he would not have wanted to get his suit wet. George asked her for his bill, paid it and left.

Big Ben struck twice as he walked the remaining few paces along the Embankment to the building where his office waited for him to clear its in-tray. George pushed open the over sized glass doors, pausing briefly to admire the coat of arms above the portico. He waved his security pass at the receptionist and strode across the marble floor to the lift.

George pressed the button marked ‘-2’ and the lift compartment descended to the lower ground floor where he walked the few steps to his office door.

The one marked, “Head of Despatch”.

Publication Date: 08-03-2010

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