Assassins

  Tommy was soon to discover the man with the gun, who had just forced his way into the house, was about as big as an ox and was built like one.

  Sven checked the time on his watch. Dewar and Cruid had been messing about on the laptop for over five minutes now. He’d had enough of their excuses, her saying the server was down… and how the Internet connection wasn’t good round here… and then her telling him that the computer wanted her to change her password.

  ‘How annoying is that Meatball,’ Mary said, smoothing her errant hair out from her face. ‘The damn website doesn’t recognise my password. It wants me to come up with a new one. How are we supposed to get anything done?’

  ‘Enough! Sven yelled slamming his hand down on the glass table making Mary jump and causing Cruid to nearly have a coronary. Extending his arm and steadying his aim he pointed his gun at Dewar’s head. He decided he would shoot the woman first and then the old man.

  Sven saw Dewar’s eyes widen and stare at something that was supposed to be coming up behind him. He wasn’t being fooled by that old trick. The minute he turned around he knew they planned to jump him.

  ‘I aint falling for that old trick Dewar,’ Sven said, his face contorted into a murderous grin. ‘Your time’s up.’

  As he said those words his ears picked up the whoosh of movement behind him. He spun around and his face took the full brunt of the blow from a heavy copper-bottomed frying pan. "Clang!"

  Mary’s hands shot to cover her eyes. After a second she peered through two spread fingers. Cruid was clutching at his heart.

  Still upright, but wobbling, the pain in his face was just building momentum. Sven shook his head. This only added to his disorientation and the galaxy of stars he was now seeing.

  Tommy was thinking how could the guy still be standing after taking a whack in the face like that? Employing a little more force this time Tommy swung the pan in a wide arc. ‘Clang!’

  Sven’s head snapped back. He rocked on his heels. His face was a bloody mess but he remained upright. He didn’t recognise the man holding the frying pan. Sven spat out blood and a few teeth. He raised his gun about to shoot his assailant.

  Grunting with the effort, Tommy now put every ounce of strength he had into the next swing of the frying pan. "Clang!"

  It was like watching a felled oak, the way Sven went down.

  Mary blinked. There in his underpants and socks stood her lover. In his right hand he held an expensive and badly dented, Jamie Oliver, copper-bottomed frying pan. Mary blinked again and came out of her catatonic state.

  ‘Tommy, get his gun.’ Mary snapped.

  ‘Uh huh,’ Tommy said, shaking his head. ‘You get it. I don’t like guns.’

  ‘Would you rather he came to and shot you?’ Mary shrieked.

  Keeping the frying pan in readiness, should the giant wake up, Tommy bent and plucked the gun out of the man’s hand.

  ‘Now shoot him.’ Mary Dewar screamed.

  ‘What!’ Tommy said, his eyes now wide. ‘Have you gone mad?’ I am not, going to shoot him.’ Tommy offered her the gun. ‘You want him dead, you shoot him.’

  ‘God, you men are so feeble,’ Mary said, snatching the gun out of Tommy’s hand. ‘I suppose I will have to do it, unless…’ Mary looked round at Cruid.

  Cruid began backing off shaking his head. ‘No. Mary, we can’t do this. We can’t shoot the man in cold blood. We have to call the police.’

  ‘Are you crazy?’ Mary stormed. ‘Have you forgotten already that it was you who hired this thug to kill the King… And you never heard me say that!’ Mary said, turning to Castro, with a look of disgust, ‘and put your trousers on Tommy. A man in white Y fronts and grey socks is not a good look.’ Turning to face Cruid, Mary said. ‘We can’t involve the cops. We’d both end up in prison. And whilst I will eventually be released an old fart like you will die in your cell.’

  Cruid had to concede the point. ‘Ok, then. You shoot him before he comes round.’

  While the two of them continued to argue which of them was going to shoot the Swede, Tommy Castro was leant over the Swede listening to the man’s chest.

  ‘He’s dead.’ Tommy said flatly, looking up at them both whilst holding two fingers against Sven’s neck feeling for a pulse.

  ‘What!’ Mary gasped. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘I used to be a paramedic with the St Johns Ambulance Brigade,’ Tommy said, failing to mention it was twenty years ago and he only did a two-day, basic first aid course. ‘I know a corpse when I see one.’

  ‘That’s it,’ Cruid said. ‘We now have a dead man. We don’t have a choice. We must call the police and we tell then it was Tommy who killed him.’

  Tommy leapt to his feet hefting the frying pan. He glared at Cruid.

  ‘What! I just saved your miserable life you ungrateful old bugger.’

  Looking round at Mary, Tommy was waiting to hear her back him up.

  ‘Cruid has a point Tommy,’ Mary said stepping behind her Minister. ‘Whilst of course, we will be forever grateful to you for saving us, we never actually asked you to kill him.’

  ‘I see, ‘Tommy snarled, nodding. ‘So that’s how it is? Then let me remind you, I haven’t forgotten what you said about how it was you who hired this man to kill the King of Scotland. And how you were going to embezzle his fees out of the Defence budget.’ Catching Mary unawares, Tommy stepped forward and snatched the gun from her hand. He said. ‘I don’t trust you Mary.’

  ‘People, lets not do this.’ Cruid said, holding up the palms of his hands. ‘The way I see it, we are all in this together. Now, can we just stop arguing and agree what we need to do.’

  After a half a minute of silence, Mary said.

  ‘I have an idea. Only the three of us know the Swede came here. We should wait till its dark and then bury him in the back garden.’

  Cruid was worried about his wife, Winnie, who had seen him pull up on the driveway and then drive off with a strange man in his car. She will be worried. He just wanted to go home and pretend none of this happened. ‘I agree but why wait till it’s dark? If we are going to bury him, I say we should do it now.’

  ‘No,’ Mary snapped. ‘Are you entirely stupid Cruid? My neighbours looking out their top windows, seeing us dragging a corpse down my garden would be straight on the phone to the police.’

  ‘I have a suggestion,’ Tommy said to Mary. ‘Using my arc light and my mini-digger we wait till it’s dark, in an hour or so, and then using my machine we bury him under them big shrubs at the back of your garden.’

  ‘Oh, great idea, ‘said Cruid being sarcastic. ‘And what do imagine the neighbours will think when their evening TV viewing is ruined by the glare of a floodlight and the noise of a digger out the back of their houses?’

  ‘Ah, but you see,’ Mary said, sounding jubilant. ‘On one side of me is Tommy’s house, and his wife is working a night shift. The ones on the other side of me are on holiday in Corfu, and they don’t get back till Saturday.’

  And that was what they did. Soon after it got dark, Tommy got to work on digging a shallow grave while Cruid and Mary struggled to get Sven into an old duvet cover.

  It didn’t take long for Tommy’s machine to dig a shallow grave. That done he made his way back to the house crossing the lawn ruined by the tracks of his digger. Going through the garden doors he left muddy footprints on the shiny white tiles. He found Cruid and Mary struggling to drag the Swede out the dining room. Being stronger than either of them Tommy took hold of the head end while Mary and Cruid took a leg each. Puffing under the dead weight, the three of them carried the Swede across the patio, over the lawn and up to the edge of the hole.

  ‘The hole isn’t very deep.’ Cruid remarked.

  ‘It’s deep enough,’ Mary said bending to heave Meatball into the hole. Getting to her feet she brushed her hands. ‘Well done guys.’ Mary’s back was aching. ‘Tommy, you backfill the hole and Cruid you make a start on cleaning up the house. I need to go and wash my hands
. Then I want the pair of you gone.’

  As if last night hadn’t happened and she didn’t actually bury a man in her back garden, by nine o’clock the following morning Mary Dewar was back behind her desk acting as if there was nothing on her mind… only there was! She had one very urgent thing on her mind: the Swede was no longer a problem but the job he was hired to do still needed to get done. Less than forty-eight hours from now King Robert was going to shatter her world order and most likely, the minute he took on ruling Scotland, he would have her arrested and tried for his attempted murder and she couldn’t rely on Cruid not to buckle under interrogation. She picked up the sealed envelope on her desk and tore it open. She read Cruid’s resignation letter and then screwed it up and threw it in the wastepaper bin. Dewar wasn’t letting him off the hook. He’d helped her bury the man, and now he was just going to walk away, leave her with it? Not on your life!

  The King had been lucky… too lucky and whatever God it was smiling down on him had to slip up soon.

  While Mary was at her desk thinking up increasingly imaginative ways to kill the King, a very large man, spitting out busted teeth, blood and dirt, was climbing out of a shallow grave beneath a Magnolia tree. Sven might have been in great pain and his face an odd shape but that wasn’t going to detract him from his determination to extract terrible retribution on Mary Dewar and her Minister and then her neighbour.

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Holyrood Palace.

  Gavin’s legal team, beavering away in the basement of Holyrood Palace was adding the finishing touches to the edicts he planned to implement this coming Friday afternoon.

  He’d heard The Russians weren’t happy with him favouring an arms deal with Sheik Ali-bin-Lina. On Saturday he was due to sign a loan agreement with the Sheik worth fourteen billion US dollars repayable at one point below the exchange rate–over twenty-five years. Scotland would then take ownership of: twenty helicopter gunships, two second-hand battle Cruisers, six new F11 fighter planes, a ground-to-air missile defence system, a satellite surveillance system, and a range of ballistic missiles. Scotland would no longer be defenceless.

  In other talks, Gavin was making real progress with Scotland’s application to join the EU. As soon as the application was approved Gavin planned to replace the Scottish pound with the Euro. All over Scotland as people began to accept UDI, they spontaneously replaced the Union Jack with the blue and white flag of St Andrew.

  Palace Houseman Henry Pyke, seeing the King working far too many hours was now becoming worried about his health.

  ‘Gavin, I think you should ease up a bit. The bulk of your work is done. On Friday you will stand before the Scottish Parliament and announce to the world that Scotland is to embrace a modern democracy that other countries, other world leaders, will want to model. Can you not take a break?’

  ‘ I can’t let up now Henry,’ Gavin said running a hand through his hair that was getting a little long now. ‘I am so close to achieving what I set out to do.’

  ‘It is not just you that I am worried about,’ Henry said gently. ‘Fiona is struggling. You owe it to her to take a couple of days off work.’

  Gavin looked round sharply. What Henry said shocked him. ‘You’re right. I have been so engrossed in what I set out to achieve that I had quite forgotten the people who back me up… oh by the way,’ Gavin said. ‘Did I tell that I have filed a claim against the UK administration for punitive damages pertaining to the wilful destruction of the town of Bonnie… and I have passed the matter on to the International Court of Human Rights. I have formally requested that Sir Roger Bottomley be arrested and charged with war crimes.’

  Henry was left speechless.

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  10 Downing Street.

  In his office Sir Roger Bottomley was in a meeting with Terry Beaumont and the Head of MI5. His florid cheeks and the thread veins in his noise were livid when he waved a letter in the air. He stormed. ‘I cant believe it, this morning I was served with a summons, a summons, can you believe it, demanding that I attend The Hague Court of Human Rights to answer charges of war crimes?’ Looking directly at the Head of MI5 Sir Roger barked. ‘I thought you were supposed to do something about this blithering Essex pleb.’

  Should either of them want to read it, Sir Roger threw the letter on the table.

  Neither of them did.

  ‘What exactly are you doing to stop this bugger destroying the United Kingdom?’ Sir Roger bellowed at Lord Soper. ‘You promised me that you would have him neutralised, that’s the word you used, before he could do any real damage. I am seriously thinking of having you replaced Soper.’

  Lord Soper was sick of these tirades from Bottomley who he regarded as the architect of his own misfortune. He tried to explain. ‘Prime Minister, after the Scot’s botched attempt to kill him using three beat up old tanks, King Robert has understandably trebled his security. He hasn’t been seen in days.’

  ‘So where does that leave us?’ The PM demanded. ‘Up the creek without a blessed paddle, that’s where we are.’

  ‘All is not lost, Prime Minister.’ Lord Soper said. ‘Only an hour ago I received word from my Edinburgh office to say my agent is planning to take out the King on Friday. My agent has asked us would we please stop sending hitmen up there because the town is beginning to look like Dodge City.’ Lord Soper wasn’t at all sure who was hiring all these hitmen. ‘I have every faith in my agent, who despite a number of unfortunate distractions, that he dealt with in an exemplary fashion, is still on course to complete his mission.’

  ‘Never mind the blasted UK economy, what about my backers who stand to lose their trousers.’

  ‘I think you meant to say, they would lose their shirts, Sir Roger.’ Terry Beaumont interjected.

  ‘Shut up Beaumont, ‘Sir Roger blasted, feeling a bilious attack coming on. ‘When I want your opinion, I will whistle. Wasn’t it you who started all this trouble with that blasted email business?’

  ‘No Sir Roger,’ Terry lied, confident that the PM was too muddled to remember. ‘If you recall, we intercepted the email that showed the Scots were planning to overrun UK interests in Scotland. Had you not taken decisive action, they’d have pulled it off.’

  ‘I did eh?’

  ‘Most certainly.’

  ‘Decisive eh? Write that down. I may use that in my next speech.’

  Terry Beaumont was thinking, let’s hope it’s your resignation speech.

  *

  In his Edinburgh hotel room, Gent was going back over his plan. Tomorrow, sometime before three o’ clock, the King was due to cross the road to the Parliament building and announce his new laws. Drawn out of his bunker the King will be a sitting duck.

  In the Scottish Parliament Building, the world’s media, the Scottish Parliament and the UK Government waited with bated breath for the arrival of King Robert IV.

  The speech was never going to happen because the King would be dead. With time to spare, Gent planned to head over to the Busboy’s address first and then before he killed him he would extract from him the thief’s location.

  The Swedish Meatball, who Gent thought was going to be a major hindrance, hadn’t been seen since he shot the wrong man in the alleyway. Gent guessed the Swede had done a runner and by now was already back in Oslo.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Edinburgh.

  ‘Frankie,’ Beth Guardo called out through the kitchen window, ‘dinners ready.’

  Out in their garden, now looking lovely thanks to his wife’s hard work and her green fingers, DI Frank Guardo pulled off his gardening gloves and returned them along with the ball of string and his secateurs to the shed. After closing the shed door he set off down the path. The smell of food wafting through the open kitchen window was making his tummy rumble. These days his culinary expectations were somewhat dampened by the prospect of having to eat another of James White’s slimming but tasteless recipes. Three months ago, Frank had agreed with Beth that they could lose
a few pounds. It was her friend Tina Bullman that got her into buying the James White series of ‘Eat yourself Skinny” range of books that included a workout DVD, that Beth decided to put on the telly just when Match Of The Day was about start. After James White did a series of one-arm press-ups he then paraded his rippling stomach muscles. In his blue and yellow Lycra outfit Frank commented, ‘he looks like a bearded parakeet… and he’s in his twenties,’ Frank complained pointing at the telly. ‘Of course he’s got a flat stomach. Plus the guy lives on a diet of bamboo shoots and lives in a tree house!’

  Beth teased her husband ‘Aw, you’re just jealous Frankie. You don’t like the fact women buy his books and that he is handsome.’

  Frank guffawed, ‘I think not. Why would I be jealous of someone who resembles a Barbary ape? Besides, it’s bad enough that I have to endure the diet of a guinea pig, must I now endure his tree-swinging antics and miss the footie just so you can tell Tina Bullman that you watched his “cure for insomnia” DVD?’

  When the oven timer dinged, using the striped oven mitts that Frankie bought her last Christmas, Beth lifted the casserole dish from the oven and carried it over to the trivet on the dining table. Beth stepped back and admired her creation. She looked round at the sound of Frankie scraping his boots on the back door mat.

  ‘Frankie, take off those muddy shoes.’ Beth said, looking down at his garden boots. ‘I don’t want you tracking mud through the house.’

  Watching Beth ladling a featureless green broth onto his plate, Frank did his best not to show his look of dismay.

  ‘Well, what do you think?’ Beth said standing by the dining table and looking down at her husband.

  Sitting with his knife and fork in his fists, thinking soupspoons would be more practical; Frank looked up at her beaming smile and saw the sweat glistening on her brow. He smiled and then looked down at his plate. He gulped.