The Liquidator Read online

  It was early on a Saturday morning when Mostyn flew back into London to find a trail of urgent messages, each couched in strong language, and all demanding his immediate presence before the Chief.

  'I'm not going to beat about the bush, Mostyn,' said the Old Man, pouring liberal doses of Chivas Regal and pushing a box of panatellas across the desk. 'I'm worried. Dead worried.'

  'I should think so too. I'm not feeling particularly perky about things myself.'

  'Well? What do you think of the mess?'

  'I've only just got back, sir, give me a chance. I've hardly had time to scan the top secret appraisal of the situation; but, from what I did see, it looks pretty ropey.'

  'Ropey? Ropey? It's bloody disastrous. They've got us by the short and curlies, lad: and we've got to do something about it at the galloping double. Damn it, this thing could lead to another public enquiry. Hell's teeth ...' The Chief had formerly been a Rear Admiral, '...this is the eightth time in three years that I have been hauled in front of the PM. To him, to the Press and to most of the half-baked moronic public, this thing stinks like a Turkish tramdriver's jock strap.'

  'Yes, sir, but what ...' It was no good; the Chief was in full spate:

  'Of course we knew about that wretched pilot officer - snotty-nosed little bastard he is: ought to see him, Mostyn, all Brylcreem and no balls: and the fancy-drawers typist, we had her card marked. Known all about them for months, but, as usual, our hands were tied. Couldn't do a blind thing. No evidence. No blasted co-operation from the Service or the Special Branch. Sweet FA. Then the bleeding SB gets a lucky fluke and nabs 'em. Makes us look pretty damn silly, have another spot of whisky.' He drew a deep breath as the glasses were topped up. 'Wouldn't mind so much if this was an isolated case, but it's always happening.'

  'If only we had a way of acting without evidence,' murmured Mostyn. Almost sacrilege, he thought, to suggest something which might imperil the sacred red tape.

  'Well, that's it, old son. That's just it. I've formulated a plan: Drastic maybe,'... he shrugged his shoulders, 'distasteful too, I shouldn't wonder, but I can see no alternative.'

  'Well, sir?'

  'These people under our twenty-four screen: government department lot, embassies, service personnel, boffins and the like - as soon as we get the slightest whiff of trouble, the smallest niff of a serious security risk, then- Snap!' The Chief was nothing if not dramatic. He brought his hand down on to the desk with such force that Mostyn feared for the whisky. 'Snap! We liquidate 'em.'

  'We do what?'

  'Liquidate 'em. Dispose of 'em, shoot 'em, give 'em the wooden overcoat, the deep six, the perpetual freeze, the big sleep, the chop. You follow the drift?'

  'Chief, it's marvellous, but you'd never get official sanction ...'

  'And who, by the great Lord Harry, is talking about official sanction?'

  'But if anyone ... it's against all the principles of the free world?'

  'And who, in the name of the four and twenty virgins who came down from Inverness is bothered about principles? Did you have any principles when you were in the field? We've got to dam the flood, Mostyn. It'll cut our security leaks by half, throw their intelligence cells out of gear and, what seems to be of no little importance, it will save some of our fat greasy necks. We're bound to miss one or two; that's all in the game. We'll still be involved in a few scandals - but, with any luck, they won't be at such frequent intervals.'

  'What are the Chiefs of Staff going to say?'

  'Mostyn, have you not got it yet?' He sighed, then slowly, as though speaking to a child, continued: 'We are not going to tell the bleeding Chiefs of Staff, nor the blasted PM, nor the adulterous Home Office, nor the sodding Foreign Office. And, particularly, we are not going to tell the fornicating Special Branch. As far as we are concerned, this is to be treated as an internal problem. An entirely domestic affair. No one need know about it except you, myself and the chappie you put on the job. All your boys need know is that we have some kind of 'heavy' working for us - you can give him a fancy designation: "L'' for Liquidator something like that. We correlate the evidence and you decide if the button is to be pressed; if you follow me.'

  'I don't think any of my boys will be terribly happy about taking on this one, sir. I mean, well, without evidence ... it's tantamount to murder ...'

  'Then get a murderer.'

  Mostyn had to agree that it was a sound idea.

  'You can pay him reasonably well. We can cover that all right. Buy him. Four or five thousand a year should get a decent fellow - mind you, we don't want any of your Soho tearaways, or a bloke who's just missed getting topped. Train a chap if you've got to, but make sure he's loyal. What is the price for loyalty these days, by the way? I'm out of touch.'

  'Oh, with the right man, about four thousand or so a year; a flat and a car. Perhaps a little side arrangement - women and that sort of thing.'

  'Right. Get cracking. I don't want to hear any more about it. What I want is results!'

  As Mostyn reached the door, the Chief added: 'And for heaven's sake, old son, make sure the deaths - when they have to occur - are accidental; we don't want this thing backfiring, do we? Good luck, Mostyn, I'm sure you'll manage everything very nicely.'

  Mostyn left the Chief's office with his brain rotating like a small whirlpool. The first reaction was to look among his own men for a suitable applicant for the post of private executioner. Then, as he walked through the General Information Room, fate took a decisive hand.

  The GIR in the Department's HQ provides a round-the-clock service for the whole organisation. Here you can follow not only the major political and military global developments, but also trace and check on their smallest repercussions in any given country - even in practically any given town.

  It is a long, narrow, uncarpeted room – a subsidiary to the Central Control and Operations Room. At the far end, a great kidney-shaped desk, double-banked with telephones, is staffed by six men who sit - not unlike sub-editors in a Press office - sorting and tabulating information. Behind them, three teletype machines are lovingly tended by a trio of young women. The atmosphere is, paradoxically, one of calm tension. No one speaks above a whisper and, as the telephones work on the winking­light system, the only obvious noise comes from the teletypes as they stutter out their endless paper belt of facts.

  The room is divided by a half-wall of filing cabinets. On the right, the long wall is lined with Perspex-covered maps, the other holds a massive blackboard. In front of this stands the 'Newspaper Table' - a plain polished wooden oblong which stretches almost the entire length of the room, with sunken well­desks set into it at every four feet. At the desks an expert crew of three men and four women read, mark, cut and file from every single newspaper, magazine and periodical published throughout the world. A First Class Honours Degree is the minimum requirement for membership of the 'Newspaper Table' crew, and four of its team, at that time, had graduated from erudite fellowships at the senior universities.

  As Mostyn carne to the end of the 'Newspaper Table', he casually glanced down at the publication lying on top of the stack of newly delivered British provincial weeklies. There, on the front page, staring back at him, framed in newsprint, was the face of Sgt Brian Ian Oakes. He grabbed the paper. The photograph showed Boysie - serious and sober-suited - coming down some steps. It was captioned:

  Mr Brian Oakes leaving the Town Hall after Monday's inquest on his partner, Mr Philip Redfern.

  There was an inset picture of the late Mr Redfern: a plump gentleman of about forty: bald and smiling soupily. Mostyn pulled up a chair, nodded at the distinctly voluptuous oriental girl who was intent on working her way through the maze of hieroglyphics in a set of Chinese broadcasts, and read the news item. It was headlined:

  CAFE PROPRIETOR'S DEATH

  Partner tells of fall from loft

  At an inquest held in the Town Hall on Monday, the Coroner, Mr J.B Hepstall pronounced a verdict of death by misadventure on Philip William Redfe
rn (41), co-owner of the Bird Sanctuary Cafe and Aviary, Bolney Road. Mr Redfern died on Saturday after an accident at the cafe - a popular weekend haunt for many local families.

  Mr Brian Ian Oakes said that on Saturday evening he went with Redfern to help clear boxes from the garage loft adjoining the cafe. Redfern started to climb the ladder to the loft when Mr Oakes was called back to the cafe. Returning a few minutes later he found his partner lying badly injured on the garage floor.

  Dr A.H Anderson said that Redfern had died as the result of a fractured skull and brain haemorrhage. 'He obviously slipped as he was pulling himself through the trapdoor,' said Dr Anderson.

  Mr Redfern, a keen ornithologist – there are over 600 birds in the Bird Sanctuary Aviary - came to the town, with his wife, in 1946. He took over the old Timber Trees cafe and converted it into the Bird Sanctuary, in partnership with Mr Oakes, in 1947. Mrs Redfern died in a tragic motor accident last year.

  Mr Oakes told The Gazette: 'This has been a great shock. Philip Redfern and I were in the army together. I will probably sell the business.'

  Mostyn read the paper twice - the paper came from the Horsham area. He had almost forgotten about Boysie and the Paris incident, but now it was back, lucid with detail. He could see the two corpses and Oakes standing over them: those eyes like pools of ice-chips, and the mouth twisted in a grim smile. If ever there is a compulsive killer, it's this joker, he thought. Now I wonder? The idea was more than just a gleam in the back of his mind. He remembered thinking - in Paris - that Boysie might be useful one day: come to that, he still had a small file on him. It would be interesting to know how the old Army buddy, Redfern, had really died. Even more interesting to know about poor Mrs Redfern.

  Back in his office, he rang the Chief:

  'I think I might just possibly have a taker for your little scheme,' he said.

  'Your little scheme, old Mostyn,' chivvied the Chief. 'It's all yours now, you know. You are on your own.' Mostyn knew exactly what he meant: for a second, the cloud of responsibility passed over his damp brow.

  'My little scheme then. OK. The only thing is that I would like to run a trace on him. Can you spare me for a while? I would prefer to do it myself.'

  'Take all the time you want. Take a week.'

  'Only a week?'

  'Only a week.'

  'All right. But I'll need Special Branch cover and no questions asked.'

  'I'll fix it.'

  'Do you think they'll play?'

  'They'd better, after all the trouble they've caused us; and if they won't then I'll cancel the Department's subscription to their bloody Dependants' Fund.'

  On the following morning, armed with a Special Branch warrant card, Mostyn turned his silver-grey Bentley on to the A24 out of London and aimed it in the direction of Horsham. During the next few days, he covered a lot of ground: going west to Salisbury, then down to the Dorset coast, into the land of Lulworth Cove and windy Portland Bill. Finally, he motored up through Swindon and Shrivenham into the Vale of the White Horse, under the scarred downs of which Boysie Oakes had taken his first small lungful of air.

  He examined police records and dug into files long closed and forgotten. He chatted in public houses, visited Army camps, talked to retired servicemen and gossiped with the school contemporaries of Brian Ian Oakes. By Thursday evening he was back in London - a walking authority on his proposed recruit. He had learned how Boysie was a lad for the ladies; how he had lost his first job through some intriguing hanky­panky with a typist; he heard conflicting reports about his Service career; listened to stories about his relationship with the Redferns - especially a load of malicious stuff about Mrs Redfern, a strapping blonde whose drinking habits had ended in skid marks at midnight. He discovered that the Bird Sanctuary Cafe and Aviary had been in a definite state of moult for three years, and that Boysie was pressed for cash. Using all the tricks he knew, Mostyn became possessor of a hundred tit-bits of spicy chatter culled from sources official and unofficial, trustworthy and dubious.

  His expenses for the trip totalled £56 16s 7d. and, on his return, despite the mine of information, he had gleaned not one shred of evidence linking Boysie with the obsessional blood-lust he had perceived in the alley off the Boulevard Magenta. Both the Redferns had died accidentally, and throughout his life Boysie had not once been associated with any suspicious incident. Yet Mostyn never made mistakes. Boysie, he knew, was a born death­merchant. He had seen too many of them to be wrong. Now he would play it by ear: a few hints just to let Boysie know that his past was an open book to the Department, and the lad would come running. He would not, said Mostyn confidently, be able to resist the temptation to kill again - legally.

  So, on the Friday morning, he drove once more to Horsham, turned off down the A281 and arrived at noon in front of the Bird Sanctuary. Boysie, he was pleased to note, recognised him at once but refused, at first, to be drawn into any conversation about the Paris business. The interview lasted exactly one hour. Mostyn still smiled when he thought about it. There was no doubt that Boysie was a first-class actor. For half the time, he pretended that he did not even understand what Mostyn was getting at. But, when the full implications of the job - with its £4,000 a year, and the flat, and the car - were made known, he had bitten like a well-hooked salmon. Since then, in the whole of their relationship, neither Mostyn nor Boysie had mentioned either the past or Boysie's delight in death. But Mostyn knew and, more important, he knew that Boysie knew.

  Within a month, the Bird Sactuary had been sold, and Boysie was safely tucked away in the old Hampshire manor house which is, to the general public, the GPO Executive Training Centre. Those privy to the world of secrets know it, of course, as the most exclusive espionage academy in the world.

  The official security check, which had to be made in spite of Mostyn's preliminary investigation, turned up nothing new. Boysie - on a special course, mainly consisting of weapon training, close combat and silent kills - did well. Each week Mostyn grinned happily at the confidential report which landed on his Monday morning desk. But Boysie was essentially a countryman, basically as unsophisticated as a wolf cub, and as gauche as a deb. He was a crack shot, strong and healthy; but Mostyn wanted more than this, and after three months at the Training Centre, he brought his protégé to London for a long, arduous period of grooming and polishing.

  To Mostyn, Boysie was a challenge. He would have to be able to go anywhere, with anybody. So, for nine months - using a dozen experts who were at the constant disposal of the organisation - he preened and pruned him: set him to work on books and plays, wine-lists and music. He ran Boysie from restaurant to concert to private viewing to premiere; to tailors to museums. He even took him down to Stratford-upon-Avon to see Badel's Hamlet and Emlyn Williams' Shylock. A noted speech consultant, whose clientele includes royalty, actors and statesmen, spent eight hours a month with him. The chef and maitre d'hotel of one of London's most fashionable and exclusive hotels spent over three hours a week with him for three months. One of the leading Sunday drama critics was engaged to give a series of informal lectures on Drama; a professor from the Royal Academy of Music prescribed a course of reading and listening, and an international art expert gave a week of his valuable time.

  Mostyn personally supervised Boysie's reading - which ranged from Cervantes and Luther to Murdoch, Amis and Ian Fleming. For weeks, Boysie was marched round the National Gallery, the Natural History Museum, the Horniman Museum, the Tate, the Victoria and Albert and the Wallace Collection. Between times he took short record courses in seven languages - never becoming the least proficient in one. Mostyn had indeed given him the full Pygmalion treatment. A good deal of the crammed culture went right over Boysie's head. But some stuck, and almost a year, to the very day, after the interview in the Bird Sanctuary, Boysie was ready - a tolerable man­about-town with a smattering of small talk, a moderate taste and a veneer of sophistication, set up in the flat behind Chesham Place and waiting for work. Even at that early stage, Mos
tyn began to worry - which was not surprising when one considered that he had, by now, accepted complete responsibility for both Boysie and the whole dangerous plan.

  A month later, a civilian woman clerk from the War Office fell tragically to her death at Surbiton Station - the down line. Then there was the Embassy official in Beirut who seemed to have shot himself in the narrow doorway of a notorious brothel; the Naval officer found drowned at Portsmouth; the poor little filing clerk from the Admiralty who walked under a bus at Gerrards Cross, and the laboratory assistant who ...

  The knocking on the door shook Mostyn from his nostalgia. It was Big Bertha with Iris's file. He read through it - twice. Nothing there. Age twenty-five. Daughter of a Glaswegian doctor who had moved south in the late thirties. No political affiliations. Joined the Department in 1957 as a junior. Checked all the way through. Grade 1 Schedule two years ago. Mostyn's personal secretary for the last twelve months, so subject to the monthly check. Last check: Security Rating Al.

  Nothing that he didn't already know: she was as clean and well-screened as anybody else in the Department. But something was bothering Mostyn - and it wasn't just the fact that Iris and Boysie had infringed that blasted regulation. The tick in his mind was jumping overtime.

  He picked up the list of security alerts for the following week. First trials of a new anti­submarine device at Portland on Monday afternoon; the Duke's visit to RAF Gayborough on Tuesday morning (he paused over this one, it was marked Top Secret Priority and there was an embargo on newspapers until after the visit); on Wednesday the Russian Ambassador was being taken round an aircraft factory in Coventry, with a visit to the cathedral later in the day. Nothing spectacular.

  Still something clicked in his mind. Anyway, that afternoon, he would ring the love-birds in their little sunlit nest and put the fear of God into them. Until then, better be safe than out of a job. He dialled the Operations Room: