Killer Elite

41

Both men wore dinner jackets but the soles of their patent-leather shoes were rubber. It was their custom, when walking in cities at night, to dress in the manner least likely to alert the suspicions of patroling policemen. People in smart dinner jackets are seldom involved in the pursuit of physical crimes. Davies carried a briefcase.

At 3 a.m. de Villiers and Davies donned thin leather gloves and entered the shrub garden to the immediate right of Mac’s house. The previous night Davies had used a silenced. 22 to shatter the lamp of an unwelcome streetlight in Salisbury Avenue.

Once within the darkness of Mac’s rear garden, the two men placed triangles of black cloth over their necks. These covered the whiteness of their dress shirts and they moved like shadows into the gloom of an adjacent garden. It was possible that some busybody insomniac might have seen them enter the premises and called the police. If so, they could expect a visit during the next hour and would evade any front-and-rear police approach.

After an hour, damp and cold, de Villiers deemed it safe and they entered Mac’s garage, which functioned only as a storage shed, to wait out the early hours.

At 6:30, well before dawn, they slipped across the big open garden to the rear of the house. Both men were agile and Davies had previously checked all relevant details. Mac always kept his bedroom window wide open, appeared to sleep soundly, probably because of his medication, and apart from caged hamsters there were no animals or birds kept as pets. All windows were hinged, not sash-operated, with firm, ample outer sills.

Standing on the windowsill of the dining room, de Villiers reached up and soundlessly raised himself up to and through Mac’s open window. Davies followed. Deep breathing indicated an undisturbed Mac, so both men entered the large double wardrobe at the far side of the bed, and settled down for a further wait.

At 7:30 Pauline and Lucia rose, washed and ate breakfast. Pauline normally worked on Saturdays and, before leaving the house, would say goodbye to Mac, who had the weekends off. That morning, shortly before 8 o’clock, she popped her head around the landing door to his bedroom and saw that he was sleeping soundly. Closing the door quietly, she left for the bus stop, a stone’s throw from the house.

“What about the daughter?” de Villiers whispered as the front door slammed shut.

“She will have gone too. She has ballet or riding classes on Saturday mornings.”

Silently they emerged from the wardrobe, keeping a wary eye on the sleeping Mac.

The plan, starkly simple, had been conceived by Davies after studying Mac’s medical report and a good deal of literature on the topic of epilepsy. Cling film applied to mouth and nostrils would cause asphyxiation, and death would be attributed to a severe epileptic fit. Coroners, Davies knew, will seldom spend more time and energy than common sense dictates. If there is no reason to suspect foul play, why waste hours searching for signs of it? If the BBC World Service announcer Gyorgi Markov had not been Bulgarian or had not complained long and loud about an invisible umbrella jab in his leg, his coroner would never have initiated the blood tests that uncovered the rare toxin leaked into his bloodstream from an ampoule smaller than a pinhead.

Everyone, including his doctor, knew that Mac’s condition was gradually worsening, and death by asphyxiation following a fit would surprise no one. Davies set up the video camera on its light alloy tripod at the side of Mac’s bed head and de Villiers silently mouthed his accusation from a prepared script. A gauze-filtered spotlight was affixed to the camera. The video showed the back of Mac’s head on his pillow and de Villiers facing him from the far side of his bed. Later they would synchronize de Villiers’s voice to his lip movements. The sheikh would receive enough visual evidence to satisfy him. He would not see Mac’s face during the accusation sequence, but this would be rectified by what followed.

Davies moved the tripod in readiness for the next action. Mac’s duvet was awry and his legs uncovered, but he remained in deep sleep because of the side effects of his pills.

“What the hell?” Davies hissed in alarm. He had spotted the buzzer strapped to Mac’s ankle.

“Don’t worry,” de Villiers murmured, “many patients have them to summon aid if in distress.”

“But why on his ankle?” Davies was definitely unhappy.

“Whatever the reason, remove it,” de Villiers snapped.

With everything ready for a hasty departure while the last dark vestiges of the winter dawn remained, Davies moved to the bed head and unpeeled the cling film. He nodded to de Villiers. In a single movement they straddled Mac’s body, de Villiers pinning down his legs and arms and Davies, with his knees over Mac’s shoulders, applying the cling film to his mouth and nostrils.

The result was not as expected. Mac was not of a robust stature but he was tough and wiry. In normal circumstances he could never have unseated both men while starved of oxygen. But within seconds of the interruption to his rhythmic breathing, Mac’s limbs lashed out with superhuman power produced by a convulsive, myoclonic attack triggered by brain disturbance. De Villiers was thrown to the floor but Davies managed to retain his position. De Villiers heard noises downstairs. He pulled at Davies and both men retired to the cupboard.

Lucia had decided to skip her ballet class. She was watching television in the sitting room when she heard a thud from her father’s bedroom. She knew at once that he had fallen over, probably in a fit, and ran up to help him.

Lucia had dealt with Mac’s fits for many years but nothing like the violent convulsive attack that she saw her father was now suffering. Sensibly, she rushed straight downstairs to call for assistance from the neighbors.

De Villiers and Davies heard Mac crash to the floor and Lucia leave the house. Every second counted. They climbed down to the lawn and reached the road several gardens away from Mac’s house. Within two minutes of Lucia’s sudden appearance, both men were well separated from the scene.

An ambulance, summoned at once by the neighbors, arrived within minutes, but Mac was dead on arrival at the hospital. The cause of death was later to be confirmed by autopsy as asphyxia due to a fall and subsequent blockage of the air passage by the tongue.

At 8:30 Pauline got off the bus close by Chelsea Girl in Maylord Orchards Shopping Precinct, to be met by two policemen. They had been called by radio as soon as the ambulance crew sent news of Mac’s death.

Hallett’s watchman during the night of December 11 was a reliable man from Portsmouth who worked in a travel agency and had served some years before with D Squadron of the Territorial SAS. He remembered seeing two dinner-jacketed passersby during the small hours but had certainly not noticed them go into Mac’s garden. Nor had there been any other suspicious signs or sounds audible from his car until Lucia had burst from the front door and, soon afterward, the ambulance had arrived.

The watchman, known to all but Spike as “Wally,” telephoned Hallett’s hotel but could not make contact. He kept trying.

Hallett, unaware that the Tadnams watchers had withdrawn some days earlier on Davies’s orders, had grown impatient with his own passive waiting role and decided to put himself into the mind of the Welshman. How would he learn more about Mac? Hallett knew from Spike that Mac received occasional checkups from Professor Hitchcock, a neurosurgeon in Harley Street, but was cared for on a general basis locally. He deduced that Mac’s general practitioner, a Dr. Wylie of the local Sarum House surgery, might well have received a visit from the Welshman, posing in all probability in some suitable role. Hallett arrived early at the surgery to avoid queuing patients, only to find that the place was shut. He drove slowly back to Salisbury Avenue and found Wally’s car by the nearest phone booth.

“What’s up?” he asked.

“Mac’s daughter rushed out of the house around 8:10 and, soon after, an ambulance came and they took Mac away. I was trying to call you.”

Hallett took the phone and called the hospital, saying he was a relative. He put the phone down and turned to Wally.

“He’s dead.” He shook his head in consternation. “If you saw no one enter the premises, he may well have died through natural causes connected with epilepsy.”

He called Spike, who thanked him and asked for a full report that he would collect that evening. Hallett and Wally, after calling Mason and one other Local with the sad news, retired to their Ross hotel, Wally to catch up on his sleep, and Hallett to complete the report. That evening, soon after Spike had come and gone, a porter brought Hallett a message with a telephone number to call back.

A woman with a Welsh accent replied. She had just come off duty at the Green Dragon Hotel in Hereford. He might remember contacting her two weeks previously. Hallett did not, but he knew Mason had shown the Sumail photographs at the Green Dragon and left their hotel contact number plus the promise of a healthy tip should anyone resembling the men in the photographs turn up at the Dragon.

The woman, reassured by an eagerly affirmative response from Hallett, passed on the information that a man, very similar to the stockier of the three described, had booked a double room for the night just before she had gone off duty. Hallett took her address and promised her ten pounds for her trouble. Spike was en route and could not be contacted, but Hallett knew what to do. He went to wake Wally at once.