Quantum of tweed

Chapter Nine

PC George Thompson almost choked on his lemonade when he saw Albert Rossi again. For a moment, he thought there would be a nasty repeat of their first meeting, but this time with Rossi thumping him on the back. He had been sitting at a table under a cafe awning, coincidentally close to the Nissan Micra he had followed north, when the man himself strolled by, whistling to himself as if he didn’t have a care in the world.

As a general rule, policemen don’t enjoy the sight of cheerful, carefree people and PC Thompson was no exception. He finished coughing out the last gulp of lemonade he’d inhaled and stood up suddenly to bar Albert Rossi’s path. They faced each other in mutual suspicion and surprise.

For the first few moments, Albert could not reconcile the face of the policeman with his recent experiences. In Albert’s mind, the policeman had a definite context and a cafe in Cumbria was not it. For his part, PC George Thompson could hardly believe how bedraggled and muddy Albert Rossi was. He looked as if he’d leapt through a hedge, hiked over a mountain and slid down a hill until a tree arrested his descent.

All of that was in fact true. It had been a busy morning for Albert Rossi. Mud-spattered and weary though he was, he was also feeling very pleased with himself. He recognised the moustache and smiled.

‘Afternoon, George,’ Albert said cheerily. ‘Or I suppose it’s evening by now. I didn’t expect to see the long arm of the law so far out of London.’

PC Thompson narrowed his eyes at this casual use of his first name.

‘I’m on leave for a couple of days,’ he said grimly. ‘Might I ask your reason for suddenly visiting the Lake District?’ He remembered Rossi as a nervous little man, not this breezy fellow in hiking gear with a mischievous expression.

Albert Rossi was in the pleasant situation of knowing he had committed no crime barring the theft of a bicycle. Oh, he had intended terrible dark deeds, no doubt about it, but as it happens, none of them had actually come off. He didn’t even have the gun any longer. All in all, it had been a lovely holiday and he couldn’t resist tweaking the nose of a policeman who had lost his power to intimidate.

‘Just getting away from the smog, George, don’t you know? Bit of fresh air, hiking in the rain, seeing God’s creatures up close — that sort of thing.’

‘I see. So it wouldn’t have anything to do with a large amount of money in used notes then?’

It was, admittedly, a stab in the dark to see what reaction he would get. Albert Rossi only chuckled and tutted in gentle reproof.

‘No casinos around here, George. Just hills and… waterfalls and things. Beautiful. You should try it a bit, before you go back. Now, lovely to see you, but I’ve a long drive ahead.’

Albert Rossi even considered patting the policeman on the shoulder, though in the end he thought that might be a step too far. He felt PC Thompson’s stare between his shoulder blades as he reached his car and dumped the rucksack into the boot. Perhaps he can be excused the cheery wave he gave the policeman before settling himself in and tuning the radio to his favourite station.

Bonnie Tyler began to build towards a powerful chorus and Albert grinned to himself, put the car in gear and went home.

A week later, Albert took some of the money he had been paid and walked it through the polished doors of the Ingot in Quebec Street, London. He stood in the entrance and breathed in the atmosphere: the dark tables, the quiet hum of talk, the click of chips and the tinkle of ice in glasses. He was wearing a rather nice dinner jacket and he’d worried it would be too much in London, but he was able to relax when he saw how smartly dressed the other patrons were. As he changed a thick wad of cash for chips, he wondered how many of them were assassins enjoying the fruits of their labours. Probably not more than half a dozen at most, he thought.

By the time he came out, some six hours later, darkness had fallen in London. Albert took out a large linen handkerchief and wiped his forehead as he stood in the discreet light from the club. It had been an extraordinary evening. He felt wrung out, as if he had lived a year in just a few frantic hours. He could feel damp patches under his armpits, despite the double-strength antiperspirant he had put on earlier. He had won! For one golden evening, the gods had looked down on Albert Rossi and actually smiled. He had never had an evening like it.

In the beginning, he had put a hundred pounds on black and doubled his money. It was meant to be his farewell to the life, the insane bet that would be his final two-fingered gesture to NatWest and their letters, to all bad men and assassins everywhere. Flushed with that success, he had picked a number at random and put two blood-red chips on it. To his amazement, the croupier had pushed a big pile of chips over to him just moments later.

It is perhaps not too surprising that Albert Rossi went a little wild at that point. He’d bet on the low eighteen numbers, he’d bet on the high. He’d bet on odd numbers, then the double zero. To his delight, a crowd had gathered around him and at the peak of it all he’d even had the experience of seeing the croupier check with the floor boss.

The floor boss had looked at Albert Rossi. A slight smile had crooked the side of his mouth. Perhaps he saw only the owner of a gentleman’s clothing shop in the Ingot that evening. Yet for those few, glorious hours, Albert was a little more than that. He was an assassin — retired. And he won again, after the floor boss nodded to let the stakes ride.

They brought him drinks and a plate of canapes that he wolfed down, as he hadn’t eaten since lunch. He nodded to the croupier to put a thousand on number seven while he was still chewing on an avocado and prawn delight — and it came in, the perfect silver ball answering every one of his prayers. He had felt drunk on the magic of it all. Finally, the universe had given up treading on Albert Rossi. He only wished the manager of his local NatWest branch could be there to witness his triumph. The man would bite through his own hat in frustration, Albert was sure of it.

In the end, Albert pushed a tower of chips onto the square for black and watched as the silver ball bounced around, clicking and spinning. Somehow, he knew his luck had run out long before it came to rest in a red slot. A sigh went around the group who had gathered to watch. They looked at Albert hungrily, their eyes gleaming as they stared at the remaining stacks of chips by his right hand. Every one of them was well dressed, but for the first time in his adult life, Albert was immune to such things. There was a moment of silence as they waited for him to ride the loss and risk it all.

If he had been nothing more than a man who sold coats and socks, he might have been taken in by the false friends on all sides. Yet Albert Rossi had stared death in the face, mostly as it was plummeting past him. With a quiet sigh, he had stood up, stepped back and asked to have his remaining chips cashed in.

Outside, a light drizzle began that couldn’t even begin to dampen his mood. Despite that final loss, he had a thick bundle of notes in every pocket of his jacket and coat. He shook his head in quiet disbelief, staring at his hands in the rain as if the magic they had contained might still be seen. Somehow, he knew it had gone and gone for ever. It was a last gift and he would retire with it.

The road outside the casino was still busy at that time of night. Umbrellas hid the faces of passers-by and Albert jumped when one of them stepped in close to him without warning. He looked down at a Colt Government pistol complete with sinister black silencer. Albert gaped at the weapon, then looked slowly up into the face of the man carrying it. It was the first time he had actually seen the flinty features of John Halliday and there was nothing to reassure him there.

‘We meet again, Albert,’ Halliday growled at him. ‘Though this time you have no car handy to run me over.’

Albert was already wearing a ‘surprised spaniel’ sort of expression. As the new information sank in, it became, by degrees, ‘spaniel found next to a chewed slipper’. The dazed happiness drained slowly away, leaving him feeling dizzy and slightly ill. Memories flashed at him and he made a soft, moaning sound. Was it good manners to congratulate a man on being alive when you were the one who had run him over? Albert had no idea.

‘That was an accident,’ he said, spluttering.

‘Oh, I could have believed that,’ Halliday said, leaning still closer and sticking the gun into Albert’s midriff. ‘One look at you and the words “clumsy, careless bastard ” spring to mind. But there’s more, isn’t there? I made contact with my employers and do you know what they said? Do you know what they told me?’

His voice had risen and a few passers-by glanced over at the pair of men standing against a wall. One of them raised his eyebrows for a moment before hurrying on, but that’s all you get in London, even if you run down a road naked.

Albert sighed. ‘They told you I’d been carrying on with your jobs.’ A faint hint of rebellion came into his tone, surprising them both. ‘Pretty well, too, as it happens.’

Halliday responded by jamming the gun further into Albert’s stomach, making him wince.

‘They did say that, yes. But they do not appreciate sporting amateurs in this game, Albert. I hardly had to mention it before they employed me to sort this little problem right out!’

‘I have money on me,’ Albert said, looking into Halliday’s insane eyes. ‘Enough to pay you back for the jobs I did. You could just take it and go; no one would ever know. I’m finished anyway.’

‘That’s a very decent offer, Mr Rossi. A month ago, I might have accepted a nice offer like that.’ Halliday smiled, which revealed a white glare of teeth and bleached gums that made Albert blink. ‘However, there is the little matter of evening up the scales, Albert. I believe in scales, you see, in balance. When a man runs me over, causing me a ruptured spleen and a heart attack, there has to be justice. Do you understand? I’m not here for the money. I’m not even here to make a point about bleeding amateurs. I’m here for justice.’

Now that Albert was looking for it, he saw that Halliday was not in fact in the best of health. The assassin looked very pale and beads of sweat stood out on his forehead. Halliday swayed as he stood there and he kept blinking as if he was having trouble keeping Albert Rossi in focus. For the first time, Albert thought about shoving the man away and trying to make a run for it.

What happened next happened very quickly indeed. Out of the crowd, a burly figure stepped up suddenly and dropped a heavy hand onto John Halliday’s shoulder.

‘ Right! Whatever’s going on, I’m getting to the bottom of it right now. You’re both nicked!’

It was perhaps the wrong thing to do to a man who had released himself too early from a heart ward. There was a dull thump and Halliday collapsed in a sprawl. PC George Thompson saw the gun for the first time as it clattered onto the pavement. His jaw dropped open and as he looked up he saw a wisp of smoke from a hole in Albert Rossi’s jacket. Their eyes met and, without a word, Albert folded on top of Halliday.

‘Bloody hell,’ PC Thompson said to himself, in awed wonder.

He had chosen to wear plain clothes to follow Albert Rossi, but he reached into his textured polyester coat and removed a police radio, snapping out the details of the incident over the crackle of static. In the middle of London, paramedics and police would be only a minute or two away, but PC Thompson knelt and took Halliday’s pulse anyway. The man was dead, his false teeth halfway out of his mouth. PC Thompson stared at them in confusion. Sharks weren’t in it.

When he reached Albert Rossi, he patted the man’s cheek and took his wrist, but with a sudden gasp Albert pulled it away and sat up, shaking his head groggily. His gaze took in the crouching policeman looking as if he’d seen a ghost, as well as the dead body lying next to him.

Slowly, with shaking hands, Albert Rossi opened his coat and pulled out a bundle of banknotes, tied with a gold band. His eyes widened as he saw a hole all the way through them, then he reached further to another bundle in his jacket breast pocket. There was a hole in that bundle as well, but there was also a slightly misshapen bullet.

‘Bloody hell!’ PC Thompson said again. ‘Better than body armour.’

‘I think you did me a bit of a favour there, George,’ Albert said weakly.