Assassin (6 page)

'That's bullshit,' he snapped. 'We don't
need
him. He doesn't own us.'

'But we can't just walk out on him can we?' she said challengingly. 'He'd kill us.'

'Then we'll take that chance,' he said and pulled her to him, gripping her by the back of the neck, feeling her hair on his powerful hand. She responded fiercely, her hands once more drawn to his erection. This time he didn't stop her; instead he allowed her to rub his shaft gently while he lifted her sweater and bent forward. His lips fastened around one of her hardened nipples and she lay back, across the bed. Her own hands now left his penis as she undid the zip of her skirt and wriggled out of it, pushing the expensive leather to the floor.

Carter slipped off his pyjama bottoms and stood naked before her for a second before dropping slowly to his knees.

He gripped each of her ankles and parted her legs further, nuzzling the silky gusset of her panties, his tongue lapping at the edges of the material before squirming inside the loose elastic.

She lifted her legs and snaked them around his shoulders, drawing him closer, allowing him to pull her panties aside, urging him on as he began to probe her liquescent cleft with his tongue. She stroked his hair, her breathing becoming more laboured as he began flicking at the hardened bud of her clitoris. Tina felt that familiar warmth spreading across her thighs and stomach and she moaned aloud.

There was movement outside the door.

They both froze, as if turned to stone. A moment of passion preserved for interminable seconds.

Footsteps.

Carter backed away from her slowly, his eyes on the door.

Tina lowered her legs, trying to control her breathing.

'Mr Carter.'

They shot each other anxious glances.

'Mr Carter.'

He recognised the voice of the night nurse and crossed to the door.

The handle turned but he gripped it, easing the door open himself.

He peered round the door and saw the nurse standing there.

'Are you all right?’ she asked. 'I thought I heard a noise.'

'I couldn't sleep,' Carter told her.

'Would you like something to help you sleep?'

'No thanks.'

'You should try to rest.'

He nodded then gently closed the door, listening as her footsteps echoed down the corridor.

When he turned back towards the bed, Tina was pulling on her skirt.

'I told you it was useless, Ray,' she said dispiritedly.

He returned to her side and kissed her forehead.

'I'll have to go,' she told him, her cheeks still flushed from the excitement she felt.

'I hope you can get out as easily as you got in,' he told her, smiling.

She nodded.

'We can't go on like this forever,' she said. 'We have to get away.'

Carter didn't answer; he merely crossed to the door and looked out. The corridor was empty so he ushered her out, pausing to kiss her.

Then he closed the door, listening as her footsteps receded.

Carter stood with his back to the door, head bowed.

She was right. They had to get away.

But there was still Harrison.

The house had been empty for over a year.

The last paying tenants had moved out and other occupants had made the building their own. Rats, mice, spiders the size of a baby's fist - all moved freely within the derelict shell. Damp had crept up the walls like a malignant black shroud, stripping paper from crumbling brickwork. It hung in reeking tatters like putrescent flesh.

In the kitchen woodlice and silverfish scuttled over the cracked worktops, prey to the spiders that had spun their webs in the sink.

The sitting room was large, with an open fireplace which, at one time, must have been a welcoming sight. Now, instead of a glowing fire the black hole contained only a mound of dust and some rotting excrement.

The windows, smashed long ago, had been boarded over. Upstairs the three bedrooms were in a similar state of decay. In one lay a grime encrusted blanket, stiff with stale vomit. The legacy of the last human visitor to the place. A drunk who had used it as a place of shelter during a storm. But even squatters had steered clear of the house, unable to tolerate the vermin and the stench. The building and those that flanked it had been marked for demolition by the Whitechapel authorities over six months ago. The cost of making them habitable again had proved to be prohibitive and a developer was rumoured to be interested in the land. It seemed that the derelict buildings might yet prove to be worth some money but, as yet, none had been forthcoming.

The three houses stood empty and unwanted; grass and weeds in their small front gardens had grown as high as the boarded front windows. Other residents of the area stayed clear of the empty buildings. No children played near them for fear of what might lurk inside. The minds of children are capable of imagining far worse horrors than catching tetanus from a rusty nail or getting a rat bite. As far as the children were concerned, the houses were home to all manner of vile monsters and demons - which was fine by their parents as long as it kept them out of the filthy dwellings.

But there were others who found the darkness and the solitude welcoming. Others who lived happily amidst the filth with the other vermin.

Those who moved as quietly and stealthily as the creatures of darkness with whom they shared the crumbling abode.

The houses had human occupants and had done so for the last two weeks.

They paid little attention to the stench and the decay. They had known worse. Much worse.

No one had seen them arrive. No one ever saw them leave.

They chose their times carefully.

They had searched for just such a building, somewhere untended, a place shunned by those who lived close to it. Somewhere isolated and yet still close to the centre of London.

Close to their prey.

The light from the hurricane lamp cast thick shadows over the room in which the figures sat. As each one moved, its silhouette looked as if it were about to detach itself. Find a life of its own and leave the room. The room was quiet apart from the clanking of cutlery on tin cans. The assembled group didn't need plates, they ate straight from the tins, huddled around the hurricane lamp like vultures waiting for someone to die. They ate in silence.

In one corner a rat scuttled along a rotting skirting board.

One of the men in the room twisted round and flung his empty can at the rodent, smiling as it scurried out of sight.

Phillip Walton chuckled to himself and then belched loudly. He glanced round at his companions. They were all roughly the same age as him. Early to middle twenties. All were dressed similarly, too. Jeans, T-shirts or sweatshirts, boots or trainers. One of the girls was barefoot, the soles of her feet as black as pitch. Walton succeeded in catching her eye and he smiled.

Maria Chalfont returned the gesture, finished what she was eating and then wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.

Mark Paxton was picking at the head of a large spot which swelled on his chin. He eventually succeeded in bursting it between his thumb and forefinger, sniffing at the yellowish pus before wiping it on his jeans.

Paul Gardner licked the inside of the tin of meat, careful not to cut his tongue on the ragged edge. Then he too tossed it aside.

In the next room, Jennifer Thomas was defecating into a bucket already full to the brim with urine and faeces. When she'd finished she wiped herself clean with a piece of cloth then draped it over the slop bucket and wandered back to join her companions.

Michael Grant waited until she had seated herself, then turned to the wall beside him, a long-bladed machete gripped in one powerful fist.

The wall was covered by photos, some from newspapers and magazines, others taken with a camera. Some poster size, others little larger than passport photos.

Film stars. Pop performers. TV personalities. Sportsmen and women. Politicians. Businessmen.

The wall resembled a collage of the rich and famous, assembled by some insane fan.

Grant leaned close to one of the photos, an actress in a well-known soap opera and spat at it, watching as the sputum rolled down the wrinkled paper.

'Rich scum,' he said. 'All of them.' He smiled, running the tip of the machete very slowly across the pictures.

Over one of a pop star.

'Parasite,' he whispered.

Over a poster of a model.

'Whore.'

And a politician.

'Liar.'

'There's so many of them,' said Jennifer Thomas.

'We've got time,' Grant said.

'The papers have called Jonathan a madman,' Mark Paxton said, prodding his face for more spots, finding a larger one and rubbing it.

'Anyone who doesn't conform to their ideas is a madman, so they tell us,' replied Grant running his eyes over the photos once more. 'But who is to say what's mad and what's normal? Is this normal?' He gestured angrily at the photos.

'Are the lives these bastards and whores lead normal? No. What do ordinary people know of the kind of wealth that they have? Ordinary people, people like us; we'll never know what it's like to have that kind of money to abuse.'

'You grew up in a rich family,' said Phillip Walton, brushing his long hair back over his shoulders. 'So did Jonathan. You know what it's like to have money.' It was almost an accusation.

'Why do you think I left home?' snapped Grant. 'Seeing what money could do to people. Making them soft, idle. I didn't want that happening to me too. Jonathan escaped that way of life too. And all of you, you know what wealth can do. How it can turn ordinary people into grasping, self-obsessed scum. Why are any of you here?'

'The rich are parasites,' said Jennifer Thomas.

'They deserve to die,' Maria Chalfont echoed.

'They're fucking useless. All of them,' hissed Walton.

'They exploit the poor,' Paul Gardner added.

'Bollocks,' snarled Walton. 'Exploitation has nothing to do with it. You sound like a politician trotting out his clichés. This isn't a fucking political war, Gardner. It's not as if we're a bunch of revolutionaries, that's not what Jonathan wanted.'

'No, he wanted the destruction of the rich,' intoned Paxton. 'Whoever they are.'

'What will we do if Jonathan's convicted?' asked Jennifer Thomas, picking the dirt from beneath her chewed nails.

'You mean
when
not
if
,' Walton said.

'We carry on in his place,' Grant told her. 'It's what he wanted. It's what was planned right from the beginning. We carry on until we've exterminated every rich bastard we can. Trash like this.' He struck the wall with the machete, carving a photo of a politician in half.

'I don't understand why the public think so much of them,' said Maria Chalfont.

'Most people
want
money,' said Grant. 'They don't realize how it fucks up their lives. How it changes them. They live out their own fantasies through these parasites.' He slapped the wall with the back of his hand. 'They watch them on TV, read about them in the papers and they think they're something special. Something different. We'll make them realize they're not.'

'Everyone's equal in death,' chuckled Walton.

Paxton milked the pus from another spot and nodded his agreement.

'So, who's next?' asked Gardner, scanning the photos before him.

'It's not important. Any one of them will do.' Grant smiled, his dark eyes flicking back and forth. He raised the machete and pressed it against a photo of a man in his early forties. A man with a blonde girl beside him.

He pressed the razor-sharp point into the photo of Frank Harrison.

The dog heard the sound first.

Or perhaps it wasn't the sound which alerted it but something deeper. It
sensed
a presence. The animal, a cross-breed which was more alsatian than collie, got to its feet and padded across to the bedroom door sniffing the air as it moved. It whimpered slightly, raised one paw and scratched at the paintwork.

Bob Chamberlain sat up in bed, blinked myopically and fumbled for the lamp at the bedside. As he switched it on, pale light flooded the bedroom and he winced, rubbing his eyes.

The dog continued to whimper and paw at the door.

Chamberlain was about to ask what was wrong when he heard something.

The noise came from downstairs.

He swung himself out of bed with a speed and athleticism that belied his sixty-three years, reaching below the bed for the gun. He pulled out a Franchi over-under shotgun and checked that it was loaded.

There was more movement below him. Stealthy and furtive but nonetheless he heard it.

Someone was in the shop.

He'd owned the gun shop for close to thirty years now, taking over the business when his father had died. He'd only had two break-ins in that whole time. The first one had been kids, no more than sixteen. Two of the little bastards. Bob had sent them on their way with a clip round the ear. He hadn't called the law. That wasn't the way in the East End.

People looked out for themselves. If you had a problem you dealt with it, you didn't call the Old Bill. The second break-in had been more serious. Bob had been attacked in broad daylight by a couple of black blokes who'd hit him with a metal bar but, despite sustaining a bad cut to his forehead, he'd still managed to fight the buggers off, had even managed to reach his shotgun and aim it at them. It had taken all his self-control not to put some buckshot in the black bastards as they'd fled. Now he hefted the Franchi before him and moved slowly towards the door, careful to avoid the floorboards which he knew creaked. If there was someone in the shop, he didn't want them to know he was up there. Bob glanced at his watch.

3.22 a.m.

He reached down with one hand and patted the dog on the head then gripped its collar as he eased the door open with his foot and stepped out onto the landing. He stood for interminable seconds listening to the sounds which drifted to him on the stillness of the night. He heard footsteps below him, heard one of the cabinets which held the pistols being forced open. Whoever was down there obviously didn't care whether they were heard or not. Bob smiled grimly. The bastards would care when
he
got down there.