A Killer for a Song Read online

  A Killer for a Song

  A Boysie Oakes Thriller

  John Gardner

  © John Gardner 2014

  John Gardner has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  First published by Northumberland Press Limited, 1975

  This edition published by Endeavour Press Ltd, 2014

  For my friend Maureen Rissik

  Table of Contents

  I - INTRO

  II - REPRISE

  III - REFRAIN

  IV - DIRGE

  V - ROMANCERO

  VI - ZARZUELA

  VII - DISCORD

  VIII - LYRIC

  IX - SWAN SONG

  X - DESCANT

  XI - BREAK

  XII - SOLO

  XIII - LEADER

  XIV - CANTILLATION

  XV - DAWN CHORUS

  XVI - BARCAROLLE

  XVII - SHANTY

  XVIII - CADENCE

  XIX - AIR

  XX - CODA

  Acknowledgments

  Extract from The Secret Generations by John Gardner

  The kinge then sent his jester forthe,

  No matter he was wronge,

  To telle the peeple he dide neede,

  A killman for a songe.

  The Ballad of the Kinge and the Jester, ANON, c 1320.

  I - INTRO

  Vamp ‘till ready

  James Gest was no Jack Jones, nor was he a Tony Bennett: and he knew it. Centred in the pool of light on the stage of the London Palladium, smooth in the midnight-blue velvet suit, he smiled acceptance of the uninspired, ragged, applause.

  True, he was not unknown. There was plenty of exposure - London, Paris, New York, even Rome. Last year an offer from Vegas had fallen through at the last moment. At thirty-six, Gest knew he was never going to make the colossal international scene that always appeared to marginally elude him.

  “Thank you,” he murmured into the mike. “Now, it’s time to say goodbye.”

  The MD raised his baton, bringing in the strings, shimmering low as Gest continued to speak.

  “Thank you for making this a good trip for me, and tonight a special memory.”

  He closed his spot - the end of the first half of supporting acts for the name comedian who had been rocking them for the last three weeks - in the same way each night.

  The tremolo rose, sliding into the first bars of what he had always hoped a large cognoscenti would, one day, immediately recognise as the Gest signature tune - Whenever I leave you.

  And,

  Whenever I leave you,

  I will return,

  And know,

  That my heart will always show,

  That I’ll never really leave you

  Again.

  Five hundred dollars he had paid for the lyric and arrangement, six years ago. Christ, it was banal; the guy had conned him.

  On the last word his voice dipped, then swooped up, caressing the note until it dropped into silence. Why in hell could he not have worked on his own individual style? This was pure imitation JJ. Even to the final spoken -

  “Goodnight. God bless.”

  The orchestra switched, up-tempoing the song, a loud and romantically happy crescendo as he walked quietly from the stage. But their hearts were not in it: the volume dropped and everything petered out. James Gest breathed a sigh of relief that this was his last night in London. He felt he could do without London for a while - cold, damp, crowded, dirty London. Screw it.

  The stagehands took no notice as he walked slowly in the direction of his dressing room, lighting a cigarette. Tomorrow, Paris.

  His twenty-five percenter, Lou Castervermentes, who called himself manager, agent, roadie and PR man, was leaning against the wall by the dressing room, chatting up a leggy brunette from the chorus line.

  Castervermentes had been with him for nine or ten years now. That, Gest thought, did not help. Castervermentes looked what he was, flashy: flashy Latin American with too many gold fillings when he smiled, and not enough charm when things did not go well. As Gest came close, Castervermentes lifted a hand to remove the cigar butt from his mouth. His fingernails were dirty.

  “The man’s here,” he said, throwing it and turning quickly back to the girl.

  “Then there’ll be work, won’t there?” Gest did not smile.

  The manager turned and looked at him, almost with contempt.

  “My kind of work?”

  He did not expect an answer, turning quickly to the girl again.

  Gest nodded and went into the dressing room.

  Caesar Chiliman was short, fat like a slug, and gave the impression that he filled the bulk of the room - a trick of personality which, in reality, had little do with his size.

  He sat on the one decent chair and Gest ignored him as he entered, walking over to the table and filling a clean glass from the gold-top bottle of milk he had bought on his way to the theatre. He drank half of the glass, topped it up, turned and leaned against the wall looking at Chiliman.

  “James,” Chiliman did not move a muscle, except for the smile, and he only did that with his lips, the hooded eyes hardly looking at Gest. “James, it’s good to see you.” His expression was at loggerheads with the words.

  “What’s on?”

  “Work. Money. It’s been a while.”

  “Only a few months, Caesar. Last December, or perhaps you’ve forgotten.”

  “I don’t forget anything connected with our relationship, James.”

  “You can’t afford to forget. So what is it?”

  “The usual.”

  “Well, I didn’t think you were coming on with a fat contract for me to babysit for the Osmonds. You been home lately, Caesar, or are they still looking for you?”

  Chiliman’s mouth twisted as though he was gathering saliva.

  “I shall be able to go soon now, James. Are you 13 interested in the work or do I have to get myself some new boys?”

  “If it’s here, in London, there’s no chance. I leave for Paris in the morning.”

  “For a two week spot at Le Nostradamus. My job is intelligence, you know.”

  “Yes, two lousy weeks at that over-priced fleapit and whore shop.”

  “You won’t refuse the money.” Chiliman gave an unpleasant, wheezing laugh. “Nor mine.”

  Gest tipped the remainder of the milk down his throat and wiped off his mouth. “So?”

  “So nothing. You can still raise a team in Paris?”

  “I can raise a team anywhere. No sweat.”

  The fat man nodded, then reached inside the breast pocket of his shapeless grey jacket, removing a neatly folded piece of paper.

  “This is a list of various people who will be attending an International Security Conference in Paris over the next ten days,” he passed the paper across to Gest, who took it without looking. “Names and the hotels where they will be staying. Only two need concern you. The last pair on the list.”

  Gest unfolded the paper and glanced down to the bottom of the closely typed page. The hotel at which they were staying was recorded as the Baltimore, 88 bis Avenue Kleber 16e. The names were James George Mostyn and Brian Ian Oakes.

  “Can do?” asked Chiliman.

  “No problem. As long as the price is right, there’s no problem at all.”

  II - REPRISE

  Return to the first section of a composition

  “Even my bloody face looks like yesterday,” Boysie Oakes said aloud, regarding himself in the mirror, preening and turning his head to get alternate profile views. In the old days, the left - his Mona Lisa side as some woman had once put it - was always considered his best. Now, Boysie was not so sure. “Face lik
e yesterday,” he sulked. “Yesterday’s bloody man.”

  Indeed a large number of yesterday’s memories surrounded Brian Ian Oakes. True, the flat was not as large or palatial as the one he had once occupied off Chesham Place, yet it was undeniable luxury compared to the hovel in which he had been forced to live during the past two years of relative inactivity.

  Boysie sloshed Aqua Manda (For Men) Pre-Electric over his jowls, regarding the fast-appearing crows’ feet around his eyes with a certain sadness, clicked on the Remington cordless shaver, and began to run it over his cheeks. The left corner of his mouth twitched slightly - a sign, as he well knew, of approaching nerves.

  Many familiar sensations were crowding in. Through the mirror, for instance, he could see the old and battered tan Revelation suitcase lying open where he had left it on the floor of the living room, its patina of hotel labels a constant reminder of the days when he had worked exclusively for the Department of Special Security, back in the stimulating, seductive sixties.

  That was a time, Boysie reflected, when life had been brim full-overflowing with fun and death and disaster: a period when Special Security, mainly in the shape of the oily slick Colonel James George Mostyn, had employed him as an agent - a liquidating agent, designed, quite literally, to cut down security risks. They had even called him the Liquidator, though he was also known by a number of other uncomplimentary names - the chop-merchant, the waste-disposal unit, and the killer-diller: names which hardly went with Boysie’s personality, for he was, in reality, the gentlest of men with a streak of anxiety which would have done credit to a highly-strung squirrel.

  It was undeniable, though, that over the years Boysie had hardened. The old anxieties still occasionally unearthed themselves, but the days with Special Security had taught him much about the world and human nature; and later, when he had slithered from job to job in the cold jungle outside the government-protected department, Boysie discovered that his soft centre was getting calloused.

  The odd thing, he thought, switching off the shaver and looking himself straight in the eyes - cold, ice-blue and clear as ever - was that since leaving Special Security he had never quite rid himself of his former puppet-master, Mostyn, the one man Boysie adored to loathe.

  It was a long time now since he had first set eyes on the iniquitous Mostyn, during the liberation of Paris when their paths had crossed so accidentally and irrevocably.

  On that particular morning Boysie had been lost - disorientated in charge of a tank. On the other hand Mostyn was fighting for his life, trapped in a cul-de-sac at the end of one of those deep-cover operations taken on by the Department in those days.

  The arm of coincidence may well be out of proportion; in the case of Boysie and Mostyn it became one of life’s more gruesome little jokes: Oakes advancing, looking for street names, free from his lost tank, with a Colt automatic loaded in his paw; Mostyn spotting him as the two Nazi agents moved in for the kill; Boysie jerking at the shout; the gun going off twice and the Nazis lying dead on the cobbles.

  It was all a terrible accident, but the sharp little Mostyn, catching the icy look of terror in Boysie’s eyes, was ready to misinterpret the signs and had his saviour marked down for a cold killer in less time than it takes to slit a chicken’s gizzard.

  It was years later when Mostyn, now promoted to Second-in-Command of the Department, had need of someone like the Boysie he had fashioned in his mind. When the two finally came together, Boysie, like the middle-aged man accused of rape, was too flattered to deny the deadly talents with which Mostyn now invested him.

  So began an uncertain and deceitful marriage in which Mostyn, on behalf of the Department, handed out the murderous assignments to Boysie together with the commodity which Oakes needed most - pounds sterling, dollars, marks, francs, escudos, gold bricks. It did not matter how it came, but the more there was, the more Boysie needed. Money, like all habit-forming drugs, is easy when you start, but very hard to handle once you are mainlining. Boysie who had guilt problems if he stepped on an ant, soon found the going tough, and so the honeymoon with the ratty, uncompromising, omniscient Mostyn was over, and the small colonel soon became, in Boysie’s mind, a two-headed monster - at one and the same time his provider and tormentor.

  When the Department was reorganised, during the Madrigal fiasco, Boysie was still not able to shake himself free from Mostyn, and since then they had worked together in a private capacity, and, two years ago there was the terrifying fiasco concerning the pirate airline, when Boysie had found himself a business partner with the greasy little Mostyn. Now he was at it again. The new flat, regular salary, the perks all came from government sources and, like an old refrain, Mostyn pulled the strings.

  He slapped aftershave onto his electrically-barbered cheeks, winced slightly, and began to pack his toilet gear into a long imitation calf receptacle, a one-time Christmas gift from the luscious Elizabeth, his steady bed and board partner during the halcyon days of life with the Department.

  Jimmy Young prattled from the radio.

  “What’s the bloody recipe today, Jim?” squeaked Boysie, fighting back. “Fillet D’Oakes sans paddles? Or Stuffed Boysie à la bourgeoise?”

  But it was ten in the morning and J. Young gave way for the news-disaster, crises, pollution, ecological despair, energy wind-down.

  The world, thought Boysie profoundly, was gradually running out of steam: eventually its engines would flame out and it would go hurtling into space, like some huge jet with fuel starvation.

  The thought made him swallow. He was flying to Paris that morning, and Boysie still could not conquer the fear of being launched into the air in a grumbling winged monster. The habit was, he considered, more dangerous now than when the idiotic Wilbur and Orville had first been foolish enough to take to wings at Kitty Hawk. Sod Wilbur and sod Orville.

  The anxiety increased as he completed packing, checked the little Baby Browning-25 automatic pistol which he always carried when working, dropped it on top of his neatly folded pyjamas, and locked his case. Why was he going to Paris? The answer was inevitable: Mostyn was why he was going.

  ***

  “Like taking iced lollies from mixed infants, old Boysie boy,” Mostyn had said, Laning superciliously against the door of the bedsitter situated in tile crummier part of the Earl’s Court Road.

  “Why me?” Boysie heard himself say.

  He could have done without the interlocutor bit really: he had heard it all before.

  “Let me come in, laddie, and I’ll explain.”

  It had been almost four years since Boysie had seen Mostyn. Not that the colonel had changed much. He was short with clean smooth upper-class features, as though he had been incubated in the hot-house of some large mansion in the shires. The tight curls were more grey, the movements more precise, the nose more sensitive.

  Boysie opened the door and allowed his old superior to place his immaculately shod feet onto the worn carpet.

  Mostyn looked around the room, a certain amount of pain reflecting in his eyes, and the nose wrinkled as though assailed by some obnoxious stench.

  “Not very pretty, Boysie. Not very pretty at all.”

  “Well, things haven’t been going too well.”

  “I do know.” Mostyn gave him a look usually reserved for idiot children. “Freelance private eyes not all that much in demand, are they? And you did rather cock up that divorce thing with Mrs. Hotlips.”

  “Hotchkiss,” corrected Boysie. “What do you know about Mrs. Hotchkiss?”

  “I’ve got eyes, laddie. All over the scandal sheets, wasn’t it? Lady employs you to watch her amorous old man and he does you as the co-respondent. Not clever, Oakesie, not clever at all.”

  “How was I to know he would come back? He’d been running true to form. He was always out till ten on Wednesdays.”

  Mostyn gave his monkey-like snigger. “Came a purler, lad. A right purler. I don’t care for your wallpaper.” Boysie tried to summon fragments of sarcastic wit. “Bl
oody beggars can’t be bloody choosers, can they?”

  “It’s sad,” Mostyn had removed a pristine handkerchief from his breast pocket and dusted off a chair before using it. “Sad that you should come to this.”

  “If you tell me you want to take me away from it all again, I’ll thump you.”

  “I think not. I can take you away from it all - yet again.” Mostyn’s hand came up. Dangling from his fingers was a key. “Forty-six Ormsby Court, Ken High Street,” he said with a leer. “All yours, son. One hundred quid a week, tax free, run of the spare grumble in the typing pool, and transport.”

  For a couple of seconds, Boysie stopped breathing. After what he had been through concerning vacuums in the wallet, it was a king’s ransom. Common sense told him to grab. Experience warned prudence.

  “Not the airline thing again?” He winced.

  “Don’t be more of an idiot than you have to be. There’s only one kind of employer who’d give you terms like that.”

  Boysie thought for a second. “Nefarious government job?”

  “In one. Give the laddie a framed testimonial.”

  “No”

  “Oh, Oakesie,” Mostyn sighed. “We’ve done this scene a thousand times. Cut the rabbiting and come along. You’ll give in eventually.”

  “What’s the catch?”

  “No catch.”

  “Field work? Death and destruction? People shooting at me?”

  “Does a hundred quid a week sound like danger money?”

  “Tax free it does. With that kind of crinkle I could afford to put down a deposit on a dirty weekend at the Hilton.”

  “You haven’t any choice, Boysie, you’re co-opted anyway. Just like your uncle Mostyn.”

  “Co-opted onto what?”

  “SEAT.”

  “Stop arsing about, Mostyn.”

  “Special Executive for Anti-Terrorism.”

  “Then I do get shot at.”

  “Not in a million years. You sit on a committee. The job’s good for a couple of years at least. The committee makes decisions on anti-terrorist activities-how to deal with bombings, hijackings, urban guerrilla warfare, airport shootouts and the like.”