The Assassin King

It was another ten minutes before Patterson returned, bringing with him a laptop and a second man who came straight up to her and introduced himself as Raymond Hollis, and who was everything Patterson was not. Tall, good-looking, athletic, energetic, with a warm smile and shrewd brown eyes. His moustache and goatee were well trimmed, he had a gap between his upper front teeth and a gold band in his left ear. If she’d seen him out at a pub, or more likely in a wine bar, she’d have taken him for a salesman or maybe an advertising executive. A successful one, too, for he was expensively if casually dressed, with an Anonimo Nautilo watch and a gorgeous soft black leather jacket with tiny droplets of rain still on its shoulders, making it clear that he’d just come back from somewhere, so that Anna couldn’t help suspect that he was the real reason Patterson had been making her wait – for though he looked at least ten years the younger, it was instantly clear who was in charge.

He invited her to sit then placed his own chair at an angle to her, the better to watch her without being watched in return. ‘So this is all pretty unorthodox,’ he said. ‘Trying to ID people whose faces you never even saw.’ He spoke brightly, as if to put her at her ease, yet she could sense his mind at work. ‘But my colleague DI Elias tells us that your two intruders from the other night may be linked to a group we’re very interested in, so it would be dumb of us not to try, right?’

‘I know why I’m here,’ said Anna.

His smile grew broader. His eyes went the other way. ‘Not that it’s a formal process,’ he said. ‘Nothing that could be used in court, I mean. Not when you didn’t see their faces. It’s just, it might give us a helpful steer.’

‘I’m not an idiot. Can we get on with it?’

Hollis forced a chuckle. ‘No nonsense, eh? Fair enough. Obviously, photos of faces won’t be much use, so what I had Jay here do, I had him check our files for full-length shots of men who broadly fit your descriptions. That is to say, for a white male aged between forty and sixty, about six foot two or three, and strikingly thin. And also for a second white male, this one aged between twenty-five and forty, around five foot ten and very bulky. If any of these men ring a bell, we have footage of some of them too. But there’s little point looking at that if it’s obviously not them. Make sense?’

‘Good. Then let’s start with the first guy, because we’ve only got three plausible candidates.’ Patterson took this as his cue to bring up the first picture on his laptop, a fair-haired man in black leathers standing outside a pub, chatting to a red-headed woman, also in leathers, but with her back to the camera. The man was certainly tall and thin, but he himself was all wrong: too young, loose-limbed, gangling and good-humoured in a way her intruder simply hadn’t been. Anna shook her head. ‘I mean I only saw him for a few seconds,’ she said. ‘And I was terrified.’

‘It’s okay,’ Hollis assured her. ‘We all realise this is a long shot.’ He gestured at Patterson for a new photo. Meaner this time. Darker of complexion and of countenance, staring belligerently at the camera, clearly aware he was being filmed. Another biker, to judge from the black helmet with red flashes in his left hand, and from the motorbike behind. Too young again, though. Too broad. She shook her head once more. The third was even easier to dismiss, thanks to his beer belly.

‘Oh, well,’ said Hollis. ‘Let’s try your second guy.’

Patterson opened a different folder on his laptop, pulled up a new photo. It showed the upper body of a shaven-headed man in a black T-shirt, his arms muscled and tattooed, standing on the pavement outside a bookies. Big, yes, but not even close to big enough. He showed her the next, then eight more. Medium height and stocky seemed to be the build of choice among Lincolnshire’s bikers. But none had the sheer immensity of the man from her bedroom.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said finally. ‘I’ve wasted your time.’

‘Ruling people out is almost as valuable as ruling them in.’

‘Sure it is,’ she said.

Patterson gave a snort of laughter, perhaps enjoying the way she’d put Hollis down. ‘Just to be clear, love,’ he said, ‘are you saying it’s definitely not any of these men? Or only that you can’t be sure?’

‘I was petrified, like I say. That could have made them look bigger, I guess. But I’m pretty sure.’ She turned back to Hollis. ‘Do any of them have accents?’

He raised an eyebrow. ‘Accents?’

‘The big guy sounded foreign. The tall guy sounded posh.’

‘You never told me that,’ said Hollis to Patterson.

‘I didn’t know it,’ retorted Patterson. ‘Elias never said.’

‘They only spoke a couple of words each,’ said Anna, feeling an obscure urge to defend Elias. ‘And I might have been imagining it anyway. They might even have been putting it on.’

‘You don’t think…’ murmured Patterson.

‘No,’ said Hollis. ‘No, I don’t.’

‘Shouldn’t we at least ask? I mean I’ve got those new photos.’

Hollis gave him a glare. The two men might be colleagues, but Anna got the strongest sense that they didn’t much like or trust one another. ‘Wait here,’ Hollis told her. He picked up the laptop and left, beckoning for Patterson to follow. The door had a small glass viewing window. She could see Patterson’s mulish expression through it, while, out of sight, Hollis scolded him in a voice so low that she only caught the odd word.

A minute passed. Hollis poked his head back in. ‘Sorry about this,’ he said, with his bright false smile. ‘You couldn’t give us five, could you?’ He didn’t wait for her to reply but closed the door instead. Anna paced around the room again. She was genuinely cold by now. She kept breaking into shivers. The two men finally came back in. Patterson went to stand in the corner with his arms folded, his eyes on Hollis rather than on her. For his part, Hollis sat back down beside her with what he doubtless intended as a reassuring smile. Yet the more he smiled, the less comfortable she felt. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘It’s possible that you’ll recognise one of the two men I’m about to show you. It would cause us no end of grief if he learned he was under surveillance, so I need your word it goes no further.’

‘Fine,’ said Anna.

Hollis opened the laptop back up. ‘It won’t be him, mind,’ he said, with another glance at Patterson. ‘He’s too careful for that. But we might as well make sure.’ He tapped a key. A new photograph appeared, of two men in suits outside an office building, about to get into a gold Mercedes S-Class. The first – short, balding, fat and frightened – clearly wasn’t the one she was supposed to be looking at. That was the man behind: Slavic of features, with a face carved from granite, dressed in a bright white silk shirt and a sharply-tailored black suit, yet clearly a bruiser of some kind, not just from his immensity and multitude of scars, but from the way his eyes were fixed on the other man’s back, as if expecting him to make a break for it, as if wanting him to, just for the sport of catching him and making him pay. But what really got to her was the way he carried himself, his torso so bulky that it pushed his arms out from his body in a way that was so instantly familiar that she flinched and drew in a breath.

‘Jesus,’ muttered Hollis. ‘It’s him? You’re sure?’

Anna nodded uncertainly. ‘I mean I never saw his face. But otherwise…’

‘Okay,’ said Hollis. ‘Fair enough. How about this one?’ He tapped a key and a new picture appeared, of the same gold Mercedes S-Class, only parked inside a huge open building of some kind, perhaps an aircraft hangar, with the two men from the first photograph standing with their backs to the camera while they talked to a tall, thin man in a gorgeous charcoal grey suit with a cream silk handkerchief neatly folded in his breast pocket, standing in front of a silver Rolls Royce.

Anna was about to ask for a closer look when Hollis anticipated her, zooming in on his face and shoulders. A peculiar-looking man, not handsome so much as aristocratic. Or, to be more precise, a casting department’s idea of how an English aristocrat from between the wars should look. Thin to the point of gauntness, with pronounced cheekbones, a Roman nose and weirdly full lips curled into a permanent sneer. His hair was of such a glistening blackness that it had to be dyed, and he had a peculiar posture too, his chin upraised in order that he might look down his nose at the others, and his chest puffed out like some populist politician taking the podium at a rally. And suddenly she was back in her bedroom, facing a man who meant her ill. ‘It’s him,’ she said flatly.

‘How sure are you?’ asked Hollis. ‘We can’t afford mistakes. Not on this.’

Anna hesitated. How certain could she be when she’d only seen two or three pieces from the full jigsaw of his face? ‘I mean I wouldn’t like to swear to it in court,’ she said. ‘But I’m more confident than I ever expected to be. Far, far more. Who is he? Who are they both?’

‘I can’t tell you that.’

‘I told you. This is an ongoing investigation. A highly sensitive one. If word gets out…’ He glanced up at Patterson once more, still standing there with his arms folded, gazing at Hollis with an expression she found hard to decipher. ‘Honestly, we can’t afford even a whisper. Not right now. And it’s for your own safety as much as anything, believe me.’

‘My safety? Are you trying to spook me?’

‘Yes, frankly. I’m trying to make sure you don’t say a word. Not to anyone. Not even to Elias.’

‘But he’s leading the case,’ protested Anna.

‘Not any more, he isn’t,’ said Hollis. ‘He got taken off it this afternoon. I’m surprised you haven’t heard.’ And there was the faintest flicker in his eye, which might just have been satisfaction or even relief, but which might also have been merely the poor lighting, or even her imagination hard at work.