Assassin
ASSASSIN
He heard a sound that was all too familiar.
The swish-click of a flick knife.
Then he felt it against his cheek, the point gouging into his flesh, digging deeper until blood began to run from the wound. And yet the knife was wielded with immaculate skill, drawn in light quick movements through the skin of Weller's face to expose the network of muscles beneath his forehead then down the other side of his face.
When it reached his neck he
did
pass out.
The figure with the knife cut the last piece of flesh free then slid two fingers beneath the skin as if it were some kind of mask.
Pulling carefully, the figure pulled the skin free, coaxing it away from the eyes with the aid of the blade.
It came away in one piece.
One dripping piece of skin.
The figure turned to those watching and held the mask of living flesh aloft like some kind of bizarre trophy.
Two of the others stepped forward and began removing Weller's clothes, tossing them aside until he was naked.
Then they set to work.
Also by Shaun Hutson
:
BODY COUNT
BREEDING GROUND
CAPTIVES
COMPULSION
DEADHEAD
DEATH DAY
DYING WORDS
EPITAPH
EREBUS
EXIT WOUNDS
HEATHEN
HELL TO PAY
HYBRID
KNIFE EDGE
LAST RITES
LUCY'S CHILD
NECESSARY EVIL
NEMESIS
PURITY
RELICS
RENEGADES
SHADOWS
SLUGS
SPAWN
STOLEN ANGELS
THE SKULL
TWISTED SOULS
UNMARKED GRAVES
VICTIMS
WARHOL'S PROPHECY
WHITE GHOST
Hammer Novelizations
TWINS OF EVIL
X THE UNKNOWN
THE REVENGE OF FRANKENSTEIN
CAFFEINE NIGHTS PUBLISHING
SHAUN HUTSON
Assassin
Fiction to die for...
Published by Caffeine Nights Publishing 2013
Copyright © Shaun Hutson 1988, 2013
Shaun Hutson has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1998 to be identified as the author of this work
First published in Great Britain in 1989
by Star Books, a Division of W H Allen & Co Plc
CONDITIONS OF SALE
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, scanning, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher
This book has been sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, 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.
All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental
Published in Great Britain by Caffeine Nights Publishing
www.caffeine-nights.com
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: 978-1-907565-51-9
Cover design by
Mark (Wills) Williams
Everything else by
Default, Luck and Accident
I
ntroduction
by Shaun Hutson
ASSASSIN was originally written in about three months back in 1988 and it was the first time I produced what some critics would go on to call an “urban horror novel.” Some called it totally different things but what do they know? It was also the first time I mixed horror with such concentrated and concerted use of guns, something that would continue throughout most of the books that followed it. But for all its gangland connections it is still very much the kind of Gothic horror that I had become known for.
As with everything else I've ever written it started out from one or two little nuggets of stuff that caught my interest, the first one being that one of the Kray Twins victims had just been found after about twenty years encased in concrete somewhere under a flyover near London. The other was the growing desire to work into a book more and more heavy metal lyrics which I'd been doing in chapter introductions or at the beginning or end of books. I thought of an assassin who listened to rock music while he was doing his hits and the two elements came together again.
ASSASSIN was great fun to write and it contains one of the most disgustingly famous scenes I have ever committed to paper. Those of you who've already read the book will know the one I mean and those of you reading it for the first time will know it when you come to it! I won't spoil the surprise. During promotion for the book it was difficult to describe this scene and many an interviewer looked at me as if I'd just wandered in from the local nut house when I was trying to do it. I can remember doing a radio show with the wonderful old actor Sir Michael Horden who just gaped at me dumbfounded as I tried to describe this scene but, enough of reminiscing.
Lots of the character names in this book belong to real people because people did and still do ask to be victims in my books. This was the first time I'd done this on such a large scale but it wouldn't be the last.
So, enjoy ASSASSIN and yes, all the weapons described are accurate and during a TV show for the BBC I actually re-enacted several scenes from the book firing blanks from those very weapons! This was the same show that sent me to a Harley Street psychiatrist for a laugh. He said I had borderline psychotic tendencies! Ah, those were the days.
Shaun Hutson 2013
Acknowledgements
It's strange but I was looking back at the acknowledgements in the original edition of ASSASSIN and reflecting a little sadly on how many of the people in those acknowledgements from 1988 are now missing from my life for various reasons but enough of that. This time around I would like to thank, as usual, my agent Brie Burkeman and publishers, Graeme Sayer, all the management and staff at Cineworld, Milton Keynes and of course I would like to say a very heartfelt thank you to all my readers, old and new. But most of all, thank you to my daughter who, for some bizarre reason, seems to find the fact that her Dad wrote all this stuff quite fascinating! No accounting for taste I suppose...
Shaun Hutson 2013
For my wonderful daughter, Kelly. Everything I do is for her so it seems fitting that this novel should be dedicated to her and it is with all my love.
Better to burn out
than fade away
'... Look like the innocent flower.
But be the serpent under't ...'
Macbeth
The priest was mad.
The men who forced him into the back of the ambulance had seen the face of insanity before and they recognised it now in those haggard features.
He screamed, he cursed, he threatened.
All to no avail.
He warned them that they were committing heresy. A word none of them had heard spoken before. A word better suited to distant years. To superstition.
And, as he fought to escape their grasp and return to his derelict church they found that superstition was a word which circulated with greater intensity inside their minds.
He told them they were making a mistake, told them they were desecrating Holy Ground, destroying something of untold value but they didn't listen. The old priest was insane. Who else but a madman would have lived in a derelict church in London's East End for the past eight months with only damp, mildew and rats for company? The windows had been broken, the holes boarded over in places but the priest had not left. He could not leave he had told them as they hauled him from his haven and into the waiting vehicle. They must not enter the church, must not disturb its contents.
When they told him that the remains of the church were to be demolished, that a block of fiats was to be erected on the site he had grown even more uncontrollable, flying into a paroxysm of rage which the uniformed men found difficult to cope with. He had run back towards the church screaming words which made no sense to them.
Someone had suggested sedating him but one of the men had feared the effect which a calming drug might have on a man of such advanced years and such precarious health. So, they had let him scream.
Scream that he had something valuable in his possession.
Scream that he guarded a secret.
That he and he alone knew that secret.
That he, in that stinking, vermin infested shell which had once been a place of worship, had kept the thigh bone of a Saint hidden.
One of the ambulancemen had chuckled quietly to himself as he'd listened to the aimless rantings.
To the priest's exhortations that the bone could bring life to the dead. That these men, these builders who were coming to destroy his home, were also eradicating a power which came from God himself.
The power to raise the dead.'
He must have the bone.
He had to have it. Had to retain the power. The secret.
They strapped him to the stretcher inside the ambulance to prevent him damaging himself, then they drove off, one of them seated in the back of the vehicle still listening to the madman's insane ramblings.
The church must not be destroyed.
Must not be ...
Must not ...
Must ...
He had lapsed into unconsciousness within a few minutes, his eyes bulging wide for a split second then his chest falling as if all the air had been drawn from him by a powerful suction pump.
Despite the efforts of the man in the rear of the ambulance, the priest had died before reaching hospital.
A day later the builders moved in.