Quantum of Tweed: The Man with the Nissan Micra - Conn Iggulden

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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 the 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

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