Chameleon - A City of London Thriller (9 page)

Gillian helped
him to his feet, and with her hands on his cheeks she kissed him.
There were tears in her eyes, knowing what was to come.

“
Nick, you
are brilliant. You are utterly wasted here. You could have done
anything you wanted. I love you so much.” His niece linked his arm
as they walked back to the lodge; Nick was smiling and blushing at
the compliment.

***

It was dusk
already and the two of them had enjoyed a ploughman’s salad for
dinner, uncle and niece sitting in companionable silence. They
walked over to the sofa and sat down. Nick was tall and muscular;
he had never really carried much fat as he was exercising all day.
His dark hair was greying and thinning but his eyes were bright.
There were few outward signs of his critical illness. Gillian had
been told by the consultant that Nick could have treatment that
would prolong his life by as much as six months, but that he was
refusing all medical advice on the topic. Instead he had chosen to
have palliative care only, in his home, via a Macmillan
Nurse.

Gillian asked
her favourite question of Nick, knowing that he would never tire of
giving her the answer.

“
Nick, tell
me how I came to be the future Lady of the Tallgarth
Manor?”

Nick embarked
on the story that had been familiar to his niece since her
infancy.

“
Andrea
Bailey was the brightest and prettiest woman ever to adorn this
manor house. She was employed as estate manager, following a spell
at Windsor Great Park and after obtaining her degree at Reading
University. She lit the place up and she made it pay for the first
time since my grandfather’s time. Harold was useless and Bernice
was even more useless; she could spend money and boss people
around, but she had no idea what she was doing. Andrea changed
everything. She lived in this lodge at the time, and I had a
bedroom in the main house.

All was well
when Denton Miles III turned up to understudy Andrea before
returning to Virginia to manage his family’s estate, about twenty
times the size of this one. I adored Andrea, but we became so close
as colleagues that any romantic allusions were just that,
allusions. Denton was a great kid, likeable, intelligent, funny and
so caring. Despite the age gap of about ten years, I guess Andrea
just fell for him. He stayed the summer and headed back to the USA
when he was told that his mother was ailing. They both knew that
returning with a fiancée ten years his senior would not play well
with his parents, and so they said goodbye and parted as
friends.

Andrea didn’t
realise she was pregnant until weeks later, when the sickness
started and didn’t stop. She was determined to go ahead with the
birth and she asked me if I would be a surrogate father to her
child. I would have done anything for her, if I’m being
honest.

Investigations
into the continued sickness led unfortunately to a diagnosis of
cancer, ironic now considering my present situation, but she
refused chemo because it would have probably terminated
you.”

Nick reached
across and took Gillian’s hands in his.

“
She died
when you were just four months old. She never achieved her dream of
celebrating your first birthday. Harold and Bernice didn’t have
children of their own, and the option of having a child without the
inconvenience of sex, pregnancy and delivery appealed to them. I’m
not entirely sure Harold knows what to do with a woman in bed,
anyway.”

Gillian and
Nick both sniggered, but she caught a flash of pain cross his
face.

“
Are you OK?”
she asked, her voice laden with concern. Nick nodded, and reached
over to pick up a bottle of morphine laced brandy. He took a
generous swig and waited for the pain to subside.

Gillian looked
at the prescription label and sighed.

“
You do know
that this is suicide juice, don’t you? They give it to terminal
patients, instructing them to take a tablespoonful every six hours,
at the same time warning them that three spoonfuls at once will
lead to unconsciousness and death.”

“
I know,
Gillian. But I don’t have long, and as a gamekeeper I wouldn’t let
an animal suffer like this. I want you to let me go.”

“
Why
me?”

“
Because
you’re the only one who loves me enough to miss me.”

***

Nick died two
days later. After a few days the family gathered for the reading of
the will. Despite her parents’ best efforts, Gillian inherited over
a hundred thousand pounds in cash, along with another one hundred
thousand pounds from Nick’s life insurance policy.

Her parents,
aggrieved that their suggestion that she donate half of the money
to the upkeep of the estate was ignored, made her pay for the
funeral. The funeral was lavish and sentimental. No-one in the
Hampshire area had a bad thing to say about Nick, and Gillian was
surprised to hear from a number of women whose husbands had not
beaten them again after Nick had ‘had a quiet chat’ with
them.

A man who
could easily have been a clone of Nick, except for his close
cropped hair, took Gillian to one side and introduced
himself.

“
James
Mellanby. I served with Nick in the Army, special services section.
Your uncle wanted me to have a word with you about your
future.”

Nick’s old
army friend knew all that there was to know about Gillian, and so
his next invitation was not unexpected.

“
Gillian, we
have your health records, your psych report from University, we
know about your academic achievement in science, and I had one of
my colleagues watch you compete in the shooting world championships
last year. We would like you to come to London and speak to a
recruitment officer for the Special Intelligence
Services.”

So it began.
Gillian Davis trained hard and qualified as a spook, a spy or an
intelligence operative whilst completing her Masters Degree and
Doctorate. Her speciality was ‘authorised assassination’; the
Americans termed it ‘wet work’ or ‘termination with extreme
prejudice’.

The British
Intelligence Services were more circumspect, using ironic terms
such as; ‘Retirement’, a seemingly natural death using no weapons,
‘Redundancy’ where the assassination was intended to send a message
that one of the world’s security organisations were involved, and
finally, “Permanent re-assignment” where the assassination left
clues implicating another person or agency.

Gillian took
to the work with relish, and found herself working in
internationally diverse teams, but her most regular partner was the
best sniper in the business, Douglas Mc Keown, who insisted his
surname was to be pronounced as Mc Ewan. All of which was
irrelevant, because he was always called Mac or Scotty.

Chapter
1
4

Barbican
Tower, City of London. 2008

Gillian had
been with the Agency for almost five years when she received her
latest assignment.

Perry Jensen
was about to be permanently re-assigned, but he didn’t know it. He
probably believed that at thirty two he was too young to ‘move on’.
If that was the case he should have been more honest, or more
careful.

Jensen had
been a hacker as a teenager, a geek as a student and a playboy as
an adult. His lifestyle was funded by his company, which in large
part was reliant on Jensen’s encryption software. Who better than a
hacker to protect your secrets?

Perry had
worked for most major companies, at one time or another, providing
encryption software, at very high prices too. If greed and pride
had not overcome common sense he would have lived until a ripe old
age. Unfortunately he had provided bespoke encryption software to a
company he knew only as Thames Consulting Partnership, but which
was actually a front for MI5. Even then he would have been fine if
he had then left them alone with his complex encryption software,
because they believed it was world class, but sadly he could not
resist the old temptations.

One evening,
when he was bored and sitting in front of his computer, he decided
to see what Thames Consulting did for a living. Opening up a back
door he had created in the software, he went in and looked around.
He saw nothing of interest and he moved on quickly to another site,
but his presence had been noted. Even at this point he may have
been merely spoken to by his client and warned, had he not
arrogantly accessed the highest level file in the system, which
contained codes allowing nuclear submarines to ‘go dark’ and change
their rules of engagement to include initiating a
launch.

Of course,
Gillian did not know any of this, and so her task was simple. Kill
him, leave false clues, mislead the police and ensure the crime is
never solved.

***

Gillian
entered the tower through the bin store at ground floor level. The
bins or refuse skips were large plastic containers with wheels,
which allowed the refuse collectors to move them into position for
the truck to lift them. Gillian walked behind the empty containers
and came to a metal door; it was locked and protected by a key
code. Gillian typed in the key code, which was hardly a secret as
every refuse truck in the city had a list of the key codes for each
tower block.

She was now
inside the refuse bay where the skips in use were placed. There
were two skips, one green and one blue, each one situated under a
galvanised metal chute. As she picked the simple lock leading to
the emergency staircase a black bag came hurtling down the chute,
crashing into the almost empty green skip.

She left the
door closed but unlocked. The emergency stairs were bare concrete
and at ground floor they smelled of refuse and rotting food,
courtesy of the bin store. Gillian ran up the stairs to the third
floor and removed her jumpsuit and cap, letting her hair fall
loosely around her face. She took a quick look in the compact
mirror and touched up her make-up. She left the jumpsuit and the
cap in the emergency stairwell, which was rarely used, and placed
her makeup back into her shoulder bag.

Happy that she
was looking her best, she stepped into the corridor and knocked on
the door to apartment 314. A slightly overweight man answered the
door; he was in his thirties with thinning blonde hair. His eyes
dropped immediately to the ample cleavage his visitor displayed,
and then eventually his eyes rose and met hers. Gillian smiled, and
in her best Sloan Ranger voice said, “Hi, I’m Mandy. I’m staying
with the oldies down the corridor and they said you were a computer
genius. Can you help me?”

Jensen stepped
aside and invited the beautiful woman inside, closing the door
behind her. As she walked in, appraising the apartment and its show
home appearance, Jensen was rubbing his hands with anticipation and
checking out her butt.

“
Do you have
a problem with your laptop, is that it? I can see that your
software is in good order,” he quipped, looking again at her
chest.

Gillian smiled
sweetly and then threw out her hand so swiftly it was a blur. Her
fingers were curled into her palm and the heel of her hand hit
Jensen in the centre of his forehead.

His head
rocked backwards and then rebounded forwards. He was unconscious
and concussed by the time he hit the floor. The simple martial arts
technique that Gillian had utilised was intended to shake the brain
around in the skull so that it collided front and back, shutting
down to protect itself.

Gillian took a
pair of yellow Marigold plastic gloves out of her bag and slipped
them on. If her mother could see what her daughter got up to in her
marigolds she would have a fit. In the kitchen she found what she
needed - a large pair of scissors - in an unused knife block.
Taking the scissors firmly in her right hand, she plunged them deep
into Jensen’s chest, puncturing his heart. His body jerked,
expelled some air and collapsed flat on the floor again.

Now Gillian
had time for some fun.

She found a
banana in the fruit bowl and snapped off half of it, eating the
piece in her hand, and the remaining half she left on the TV table.
Moving to the cupboards, she removed a wine glass and two whisky
tumblers. She put a splash of whisky from the spirits shelf in one
glass and a healthy serving of sherry in the other. She then took
two different lipsticks from her make-up bag and smeared Boots No.7
Red Crystal on the rim of one glass, and then she smeared L’Oreal
Purple Pearl on the rim of the other. Finally, she filled the wine
glass with a rich red Bordeaux before throwing it in the face of
the dead man and dropping the glass beside him.

This was fun,
she thought. A brilliant idea occurred to her. She removed one of
his shoes and took it with her.

She laughed as
she wondered what the scene of crime officers would make of the
mystery of the missing shoe.

***

When Gil, as
she was known by her colleagues, reported in for work the next day
she was asked to report directly to Human Resources, where she was
informed that her services as ‘Intelligence Analyst’ were no longer
required. Nonetheless, as long as she maintained her silence, as
required by her contract, her positive vetting agreement and the
Official Secrets Act, she would receive a modest pension until she
was sixty years old and in receipt of her full old age
pension.