Death of a thin skinned.., p.1
Death of a Thin Skinned Animal, page 1
Death of a Thin-skinned Animal
‘I was born in Peckham over the Falcon Billiard Saloon On a wet Monday morning, which may account for a lot of things, says Patrick Alexander. It does not, however, account for his insight into the workings of the Secret Service, or his knowledge and expertise on the use and misuse of firearms. What he doesn’t know about those subjects could be written on the nose of a boat-tailed bullet. Perhaps his subsequent career as reporter and television writer and his travels in Russia and Europe writing special features explains his lately revealed talent as a master story-teller.
Also by Patrick Alexander
in Pan Books
Show Me a Hero
Patrick Alexander
Death of a
Thin-skinned Animal
Pan Books in association with
Macmillan London
First published 1976 by Macmillan London Ltd
this edition published 1978 by Pan Books Ltd,
Cavaye Place, London swxo 9PG
in association with Macmillan London Ltd
end printing 1980
© Falcon Plays Ltd 1976
isbn o 330 23362 z
Printed and bound in Great Britain by
Hazell Watson & Viney Ltd, Aylesbury, Bucks
This book is sold subject to the condition that it
shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out
or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior
consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which
it is published and without a similar condition including this
condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser
One of the greatest problems liberalism faces is its desperate shortage of adherents who recognise the brutal reality of an illiberal world, and who know that it is not possible to preserve freedom and everything that goes with it unless the defenders are as hard, single-minded and, when it becomes necessary, Ruthless as our enemies.
Bernard Levin in The Times
The Armalite 15 is quite probably the most lethal weapon of its type in the world today at ranges up to 500 yards impacting upon a thin-skinned animal, i.e. man.
Due to the high muzzle velocity and boat-tailed bullet design, the bullet tumbles or yaws on impact. This, coupled with the fact that the projectile expends its total energy in a very short space, causes an immense build-up of hydrostatic pressure within any body containing fluid. The resultant wound cavity is enormous and there is a tremendous shock effect.
Description of the American Armalite 1 assault rifle
issued by the distributors, Cooper-MacDonald, Inc.
The jungle was all around him.
The jungle is all around you wherever you are, his mother used to tell him when he was small. They were living in Ruislip then and he would look out of the window half-expecting a tiger to spring out of the sweet peas at the bottom of the garden.
He wished he were in Ruislip now. A childish wish, as childish as the tears he wept over Kirote, who had been dead since dawn and was beginning to smell
Mechanically he brushed the flies away from the body with one hand and his own tears with the other. He wept partly from grief and partly from self-pity, but mostly from physical weakness. He had been underfed, overworked and sporadically maltreated for two years. Kirote was the only friend he made in that time. He had shared a cell with him and six other Africans - five thieves and a simple-minded rapist
He would have liked to bury him, but there was no time for niceties. Leave him to the hyenas and vultures and whatever else scavenged that part of the rain-forest He took the knife they had taken from the dead guard and, sniffing back his tears, moved on through the bush, following narrow paths and animal tracks, always beading west, taking a bearing from the sun whenever he glimpsed it through the perpetual gloom.
His feet were tender, his legs ached, he was thirsty. But he kept on at a rhythmic pace.
They had been in the rain-forest six days, living off wild bananas and forest snails and yams stolen from the occasional plantation. Now he was alone and frightened.
I
Richard Abbott stood at the north-east corner of Trafalgar Square in the dark and the falling rain, hesitating before the next step, which simply meant crossing the street to the all- night post office and sending a cable.
But it was like crossing the Rubicon, an act of war. So he hesitated (he who hesitates is lost, his mother would have instantly said). Yet it wasn’t really hesitation, he told himself, more the moment of stillness before action, the deep breath before the high dive.
Two men went by discussing Hamlet, the classic of hesitation. But it had no relevance. After all, he wasn’t going to kill his father. The thought made him smile, and a passing woman wondered if he was mad and quickened her pace.
The wind got up suddenly and he shivered, aware of a physical discomfort he had so far ignored.
Big Ben struck two and he shivered again and crossed the wet street to the post office. Edith Cavell’s statue glistened in the rain. He had always meant to read a life of her.
Only one section of the post office was open. It was occupied by four counter-clerks, three of them reading, a tramp having a warm and an American matron with a large hat and metallic voice, seeking information.
He looked for the box containing telegram forms and couldn’t find it. It irritated him. It must be there.
'Where’s the box with telegram forms?’ he said to one of the reading clerks.’ who pointed to another clerk and went back to his reading.
He repeated the question to the other clerk, who took a form from a drawer and gave it to him.
'Don’t you usually keep them in a box this side of the counter?'
‘We put out four thousand of ’em,’ said the clerk. ‘Know what happened? They went in three days. It’s the women and kids. Take ’em by the handful. God knows what they do with ’em.’
He wrote the telex address at the top of the form, then wrote his brief message and stared at it.
’And this one,’ said the metallic voice, ’is for Homer. That’s my nephew, in Bethlehem, P.A. How long will it take?’
He caught a whiff of methylated spirits mixed with stale piss and sweat as the tramp shuffled and snuffled by.
’Would your honour spare a copper or two for a cup of tay? It’s destroyed wid thirst I am, and that’s a fact.’
’Bugger off.’
The tramp shuffled away without even looking at him.
Abbott handed the message to the clerk, who looked at the telex address.
'It’s only round the corner,’ said the clerk.
‘I know where it is.’
’I mean, you could deliver it yourself. It wouldn’t take five minutes.’
’I don’t want to deliver it myself.’
The clerk gave up and started to count the words.
'You sure you got this right?’ The clerk tried again.
’Yes.’
’It sounds funny.’
'It’s meant to be,’ said Abbott. ’It’s a joke. To laugh at.’
Outside it was still raining. He walked up Charing Cross Road to Cambridge Circus and stared at the posters outside the Palace Theatre without seeing them.
He was hungry. He needed a shave. He needed a bath. Ah, the luxury of a bath. He took a deep breath, dreaming of a perfumed bath, and became aware of a familiar stench and a familiar Irish whine.
‘Could yous be sparing a few pennies for a pour ould fella, yer honour ‘
The tramp still did not look at him, did not even realise he was begging from the same man.
Abbott was about to send him away again when an idea, or the beginnings of an idea, occurred to him. He turned towards the tramp, who looked as evil as he smelt, held on to his rising stomach by an effort of will, and smiled.
‘Sure now,’ he said, in his best bog-Irish, ‘I’ve a shilling or two to be sharing wid a dacent Irish lad.’
‘It’s Irish y are yerself?’ The tramp’s voice was hoarse with delight.
‘Irish as the pigs in Dublin.’
‘Ye speak like a man from Cork, I’m thinking.’
Abbott nodded. ‘Skibbereen,’ he said.
‘Ye don’t say? I once had an aunt in Ballydehob at the top end o’ Roaring Water Bay. A brave little place altogether. How much did ye say ye’d got?’
Abbott took out his loose change and several pound notes. ‘Seventy-eight pence. And a bit of folding money.’
‘Jesus Mary and Joseph, but that’s a tidy sum.’
‘And where d’ye suppose we’d be getting a drop of something to drink at this time o’ night?’
‘Ye’ve come to the very man, yer honour, the very man,’ said the tramp, breaking wind with excitement.
2
Frank Smith heard a church bell ringing in the distance, gradually growing louder and more insistent and finally turning into the ringing of a telephone. He was dreaming. I am dreaming, he told himself, and woke up.
He lifted the receiver off the cradle, still not sure if he was in the dream.
'Hallo?’
'Frank?'
It was Fawley, Duty Officer at Holland Park, where the Department had its discreet offices.
'We’ve had a telex we can’t make head nor tail of.’
'What do you mean?'
‘We can’t decode it. At least Jones can’t - he s the cipher bod on duty. But it’s not in the book.’
'Not in the book? It must be.’
For a moment Frank Smith wondered if he was back in the dream.
'Jones says we haven't used that code for two years.’
'Where’s the message from?'
The all-night post office by Trafalgar Square, timed three minutes past two.’
Then it's obvious. Who's our man in Trafalgar Square?’
'Sorry?'
'It’s a gag, don’t you see? Young Ronnie Simmons or some other idiot. Out on the town. Two o’clock in the morning. Stoned out of their minds. Let’s wake old Smithy up with a hot flash about the Gunpowder Plot or the Fall of Troy or something.’
There was a brief silence.
'Funny they should use a two-year-old code, though.’
'All right then, what’s the problem? If it’s not in the current book it'll be in one of the old books. Or is Jones too bloody idle to dig them out?’
Then he remembered. The old code-books were in Archives, locked in the safe. And only section heads had the keys.
'Shit.’ he said.
‘What?'
‘I'll be over.’
He put the phone down and lay back for a moment, listening to the rain on the window, thinking how warm and comfortable it was in bed and how he'd like to stay there, trying not to think about anything else - above all, trying not to think about Richard Abbott, but knowing all the time that that was who the message was from. He was the only agent in the field with an out-of-date code. Except that he wasn't supposed to be in the field. He was supposed to be dead.
He got up and reached for the carefully folded clothes on the chair by the window. He was a bachelor, a neat man and tidy in his ways, except when drunk or depressed.
He dressed rapidly, looking out of the window at the black night and falling rain, shaking his head and clicking his tongue to propitiate the unknown gods.
A waiting car whisked him through the wet black night to Holland Park, where the Department had its offices in a solidly handsome Georgian house standing well back from the road behind an ivy-clad wall. It had once been the offices of a firm of marine insurance brokers and according to a plate on the wall - if you could find it under all that ivy - it still was.
He showed his pass to the night janitor and went straight to his office.
Fawley was waiting for him and handed him the telex message, which had gone first to the Foreign Office, then by teleprinter to that L-shaped building behind Waterloo Station where Secret Intelligence Service has its not so secret headquarters. 'Sis’, as they call it in the trade, relayed it to Holland Park.
Smith stared at the message with distaste, not wanting to know what it said.
'It won’t be anything good, that’s for sure,’ he said gloomily. He went down to Archives, woke up the Duty Officer, opened one of the safes and found the code-book he wanted. He signed for it and took it back to his office. Then he started to decode the message.
After he had written it out in clear he sat staring at it.
'It’s from Abbott,’ he said, as if that explained everything. 'Abbott?’ said Fawley, 'I thought he was dead.’
'So did a lot of people.’
For a moment he wished that Abbott, his friend for fifteen years, was dead. The wish was not entirely selfish.
He picked up the phone, flashed the operator impatiently. 'Come on, come on! ‘ At last he heard the sleepy voice. 'What the hell are you doing - having a kip?’ The man started to make an excuse. 'Never mind the backchat, get me the Minister. No, make it the Controller.’
'He’ll be in bed and asleep.’
'Then bloody well wake him up.’
He put the phone down, drummed his fingers on the desk, picked nervously at his nose and stared at Fawley, who pointed to the message.
'May I?’
'Help yourself.’
The message simply said: Contract will be completed on or before the fourteenth.
'Am I allowed to know what the contract was?’
‘Why not? By tomorrow the whole deparI’m ent will know and, if we’re unlucky enough, the whole bloody country.’
He let out a worried sigh, as if trying or hoping to diminish what he was about to say.
'Abbott’s contract was to kill Colonel Njala.’
'Christ.’
'You may well call upon him, Fawley, we’re going to need all the help we can get.’
The phone rang. It was the Controller, sleepy and bad- tempered.
'If it’s anything less than a declaration of war... .’
Smith told him what it was.
'Oh my God.’
The Controller, who was sitting up in bed, suddenly felt weak and flopped back, waking up his wife, who grumbled unintelligibly and kicked him.
That cow, what do you think you’re doing?’
Th?’ said Smith at the other end.
I suppose it is Abbott? I mean, it’s not a hoax?’
The hope in the Controller’s voice was pitiful.
The message had both his safety checks.’
'He must be out of his mind.’
'Doesn’t make him any the less dangerous.’
The Controller gave a sigh like a groan.
‘What a mess. Teach them to play at power politics. . . . Bloody politicians. All their bloody fault in the first bloody place. . . .’ Another groaning sigh. 'Oh well, you’d better get the Minister. Get everybody — Ross of Special Branch - no, he’s away. Make it Shepherd since he does all the work anyway. Whatsisname from MI 5 or whatever they call it these days, and that chap from the Foreign Office - well, you know who to get. My office in half an hour. And see the bloody heating’s on, will you?’
He put the phone down and dropped back heavily on the bed, getting another reflex kick from his wife, but he was too worried to react.
He pulled the bedclothes up over his head and buried his face in the pillow as he did when he was a boy trying to hide from the world.
After a few minutes he got up quietly and dressed without putting the light on. His wife started to snore.
While the Controller was dressing awkwardly in the dark and trying not to disturb his high-kicking wife, Smith was trying to find the Minister, who was not at his town house or his country house or the flat of his recognised mistress. A steeply superior private secretary, who had trouble keeping awake, hadn’t the foggiest where his master might be. Smith kept his temper and persisted.
'What is all this, dear boy, a Red Alert?'
'An emergency.’
'What category of emergency, dear boy?’
Smith could hear him yawning. 'I don’t know,’ he said. 'What category would you put assassination in?’
'Assassination? Of my master?’ He was awake now all right.
'Of someone a good deal more important than your bloody master.’
'Good God, who?’
‘Ah,’ said Smith, giving the classic security excuse, 'that's something you don’t need to know ... dear boy.’
The secretary, getting less superior by the minute, gave him the number of the radio telephone in the Minister’s car. His master, he said, had gone out about midnight accompanied only by his bodyguard.
Smith got through to the bodyguard, an armed Special Branch man who was alone in the car, staring at the rain, outside a block of hats off the Fulham Road.
'I can’t,’ said the Special Branch man. 'He’s busy. You know what I mean? Busy. Over.’
‘I know what you mean and I know what his snotty little bastard of a secretary means. Now you get him - and quick. Over.’
'Christ, man, I can’t just go and knock on the bloody door.'
'Then try throwing stones at the bloody window. But get him. Over and out.’
Smith hung up, then started to dial Joan Abbott’s number, then hung up again. He didn’t want to ring her. He felt sorry for her yet irritated by her. He had once fancied her and, after her divorce, took her out once or twice. But nothing came of it. He was too much of a bachelor and she was too neurotic. At least, that was the excuse he made to himself. But the truth was he felt guilty, not so much about her as about Abbott. Or rather, what he suspected the Department had done to Abbott. It was a suspicion he would only half admit, even to himself. But it was there, and at times it ached like an old wound. So he kept away from her. He had enough wounds. It was a reasonable, middle-aged, prudent attitude. And he despised it.
