The International Assassin A Sexy Times Crime Thriller (2 page)

He smelt of
Gucci by Gucci
, which could only mean he hadn’t slept with anyone in my absence. I had a good nose for these things.

“Did you miss me darling?” I inquired.

“Of course,” he replied. 

We liked to play these little games. I was never entirely sure if I was just Johnny’s job or he actually loved me.  

But I loved Johnny. At least at the time I thought I did, it’s not until you really love someone that you realise what love truly means, but at the time compared with the average Rupert hanging around the wine bars of the Kings road Johnny was excitement personified.

I was twenty-six when Johnny recruited my unique talents into the clandestine world of international killer elites. Johnny wasn’t rich but he was charming and charismatic with a mop of
just got out of bed
hair and a slightly dirty smile that suggested you would have an enjoyable evening in bed with him. As a bored young socialite whose life consisted mostly of the idle gossip of friends, shopping in Sloane Avenue and endless social engagements of dinner and drinks life in Chelsea had become something of a bore. 

Then I met Johnny. 

Unlike most of the trust-funded polo jocks who cruised the bars looking for unsecured relationships Johnny wasn’t money - old or new.  His talents for MI6 entirely lay in his ability to persuade willing conspirators to aide him.  According to Johnny MI6 doesn’t like to do her Maj’s dirtiest work directly, it’s much more palatable for the Whitehall apparatchik to outsource such indiscriminate state-sponsored mayhem to third-parties that are easily deniable, expendable and replaceable. 

Johnny’s job was to identify such individuals, by his very nature he was
Her Majesties Gigolo
and would very possibly be knighted for services to the crown, an O.B.E for seduction perhaps. Being seduced by a scoundrel was of course a delightful turn of events. Rarely can a girl claim to be bedding a proper spy, he was a simply marvellous plaything for a girl to possess.

But Johnny was full of secrets, he might as well have had TOP SECRET tattooed across his derriere. Information flowed in one direction with Johnny. I have no idea why he asked me to kill Vladimir, if I had asked he would have simply dismissed it.

‘
You don’t need to know, you don’t want to know, then if you get caught you can’t tell them anything that would give them reason to think you did it
’ he would tell me.

He had a point. 

Given my social situation - a wealthy family, property in several countries, a good education at England’s finest girls school and a degree in PPE from Oxford I had absolutely no reason or motive to kill complete strangers. 

There was possibly a second a reason. If you don’t know anything about a person then you can’t feel emotional about ending their life. You cannot reason to yourself as to why they should, or even deserve to die. You can create your own reason. They could be a child murderer, a Nazi, a rapist or someone who tortures kittens.

In Vladimir’s case I considered he was the sort of person that had sex with prostitutes probably in a manner my mother had suggested no girl from SW3 should ever indulge a man, he then probably beat them up for cheap kicks. For my personal sense of natural justice that was enough cause to stab him in the neck with my Loubi’s sharpened poison heel. 

“Breakfast at the Grosvenor?” Johnny asked, which meant Johnny wanted to have breakfast at the Grosvenor but merely asked me if I would like to as I would be paying. 

Johnny liked to have breakfast in hotels. 

Nobody pays attention to people eating breakfast at hotels according to Johnny.

“That would be delightful darling,” I replied. “They do a simply marvellous eggs Benedict.” 

Johnny tapped the driver on the shoulder.

“Grosvenor.”

“Right you are Sir,” the driver replied. 

Even he didn’t know Johnny’s name. Nobody knew Johnny’s name, at least that is what I had often thought. As I would later discover there was one person at least who knew
exactly
who Johnny was.

“I have another job for you,” Johnny told me calmly as he dissected the hand-reared back-bacon with skilful precision. 

“Really?” I said as I sipped the late breakfast Champagne, a cheeky
Dom Perignon ‘97
vintage which was much more delicate than the friskier Bollinger served by Emirates. 

“So soon?”

“It’s more of a personal request from someone who may be useful,” Johnny replied cryptically.

“Go on.”

“His daughter has taken up a relationship with someone our friend would prefer she wasn’t involved with.”

“Who is it?”

“He’s a music artist,” Johnny replied. “If you can call it music…” he added disdainfully.  

Johnny liked Tosca so I deduced the musician in question was probably a rapper.

“Lives in Hackney. A hateful place. It’s like Mogadishu. Without the prospect of UN intervention.”

I smiled at Johnny. He could be most amusingly
Etonian
in his disdain for the proletariat.

“If it’s allowed to continue it would cause something of a scandal. Before he was famous he used to be a car thief and a supplier of recreational pharmaceuticals.”

Johnny having finished the bacon set to work on the pork and herb sausages.

“Sounds a delightful chap,” I replied.

“All very distasteful. Has a rather unflattering tattoo on his face,” said Johnny with a sneer. I nodded.  Johnny abandoned the sausage and picked up the Champagne and looked at me. “Still lives in a council tower block. Needs to look like a suicide. I’d like you to throw him out of a window,” he said with the matter of fact casualness of asking me to take his suit to the dry cleaners. “I appreciate that might be somewhat complicated,” he added “For you.” 

Johnny was being polite. Being a little over five-foot seven inches and with a build my mother would describe as
elfin
the prospect of throwing a well built east-end warbler off his council flat balcony presented certain challenges no matter how much time I spent in the gym at Chelsea harbour. 

I considered Johnny’s request. 

He was implying that I might wish to ask for his involvement. This was unusual for Johnny, and certainly the notion of a MI6 agent risking his cover to throw a minor league celebrity off a balcony was a surprise. The result of him being caught in such an involvement given he supposedly worked in a organisation concerned with international espionage not the disposal of troublesome working class musicians would be somewhat serious.

“I can take care of it,” I told him. 

“Are you sure?” he asked nursing his Champagne.

“Of course,” I replied confidently. He nodded and toasted my glass before downing the Champagne.

“We better buy you a hoody,” he suggested. “You can’t go to Hackney dressed in Prada. At least not genuine Prada.”

“Maybe a little fake Burberry,” I added. 

“No need to go that far darling,” he smiled.

He needn’t have bothered, committing murder was one thing but wearing fake designer tat was beyond any morally acceptable boundaries for me. I would sooner be caught red-handed with a blood soaked dagger than be photographed by
Hello!
Paparazzi wearing market stall rags.

“I should bloody think so,” I told him curtly reminding him there was a line in the sand for Queen, Country and even Johnny.

The hotel concierge approached us.

“Mr. Van Sant? There is a phone call for you,” he said.

Johnny looked slightly surprised for a second. Why on earth would anyone be calling him here?

“Really?” asked Johnny, more statement than question.

“Yes Sir. They said it’s urgent. A family emergency.” Johnny looked at the waiter suspiciously.

“I think you have the wrong person,” he replied before drinking his Champagne.

“Very sorry to disturb you Mr. Van Sant. There’s probably been a mistake.”

Johnny nodded.

“I’m sure they have the wrong number. Tell them to try the Ritz.”

“Yes Sir,” the waiter departed. I looked at Johnny but his face betrayed no answers and he offered no explanation -fabricated or otherwise.

We returned to my home after breakfast. We lived in an apartment on the first floor of a red brick mansion block overlooking Cadogan Gardens. I had acquired a mews house behind the block to house Johnny’s most prized possession, his Quantum Grey Aston Martin DBS that I had bought for his birthday the previous year. Of course it might not have actually been his birthday but as long as he didn’t move the date I suppose one day was as good as another for celebratory purposes.  We had a social engagement that evening and I was tired after the nights on-board entertainment with Vladimir therefore elected to have a shower and go straight to bed, the Champagne was starting to give me a light headache.

As I dozed I considered what Johnny had asked me to do, to say a trip into the wild council estates of Hackney was out of my comfort zone was an understatement. I had grown up spending my time almost entirely in the wealthier neighbourhoods of Chelsea, Mayfair and Westminster apart from the odd trip to friends who had moved to Hampstead. The rest of London was a mysterious place full of people of questionable character. I felt much safer in Belize than most provincial parts of the capital. Johnny of course would know this, which is what made his request all the more strange. Despite the dangers of being caught with an illegal firearm in a country under strict anti-terrorism legislation I would carry a gun. I reasoned even the postmen in Hackney probably needed to pack some heat given the borough’s reputation of being home to
murder mile
. Also, unusually for a girl of my class, I would go on public transport at least from the neutral ground of Holborn onwards. The potential of leaving a witness to blab about the strange behaviour of a Chelsea
it-girl
travelling into the inner city social-housing hell would not be acceptable and I wasn’t in the mood to murder a taxi driver. I could happily kill taxi drivers most Friday nights outside
Nobu
when it was raining but merely to suppress a witness was an unnecessary cost of life. I tried to sleep and formulate my plan.

As
Boromir
would have possibly said if assigned such a task

‘
One does not simply walk into Hackney
.’

Chapter 2

I WOKE
up just after seven. One of the advantages of drinking Champagne (at least quality champagne as opposed to the factory-engineered piss produced for Essex party girls) is that it doesn’t leave a hangover. Unfortunately the dehydrating effects of a long-haul flight followed by a boozed-up breakfast and afternoon nap all conspired to produce a similar effect. We were due to have dinner at eight at The Ebury with Anoushka, Piers, Charlotte and her new mystery beau.  

If I had a nemesis it would be Charlotte. 

She had perfected the art of being an exceptional bitch whilst managing to portray to all others the innocence of a six-day-old kitten. I have lost count of the times I have seen her paint her face with the ‘
I’m going to cry because you’re mean
’ pout despite the certain fact she would kill her own offspring for the latest
Birkin
bag. 

We had arrived late, after oversleeping and missing my Pilates session I had decided it was better to be late and pristine than allow the cattish bitch any more ammunition to reinforce her own ego. 

Johnny had gone with a black
Tom Ford
suit. Since Charlotte would no doubt wear an over-revealing white number to show off her fake spray-on tan I decided to wear a black
Chanel
cocktail dress with zebra print Loubi heels and an obnoxiously decadent
Van-Graff
diamond necklace complimented by
Tiffany
earrings.

Charlotte (despite her Chelsea pretensions) wasn’t monied enough to have a safe full of ice and no matter her best efforts to procure a hedge-fund manager or minor member of the Saudi royal family she had yet to secure a suitable enough husband candidate to fund the lifestyle she mistakenly felt entitled to.

Since there was an outside chance I would have an opportunity to off the horrid wench in the powder room I took my trusted Beretta concealed in a special compartment of my Vuitton Birkin bag.

The dinner crowd was already onto starters by the time Johnny and I arrived. Charlotte greeted me with the sincerity of a crash test dummy. More surprising was the mystery dinner guest - a tattooed
oik
who looked like he was there to sell heroin and pills.

“So this is your mystery man Charlotte?” I asked her with a level of disdain that suggested she had brought a bag of Foxy’s dogshit to dinner.

“Yes, I’d love you to meet Sean,” she said. Smugly.  She would love me to meet him perhaps but I would rather be introduced to Idi Amin and Pol Pot.

The scruffy individual stood up and smiled to reveal half his teeth were constructed from gold - probably melted down from
Elizabeth Duke
sovereign rings stolen off his benefit scrounging neighbours.

“Awight darlin?” he said in some sort of
yardie
accent. He offered his hand, which had
HATE
tattooed across his fingers below an assortment of what appeared to be gold painted costume jewellery - most notable of which was a large ring with what I can only describe as two ladies of questionable character engaged in an act of fellatio on a man sausage. I reluctantly shook hands with him and immediately wiped it on the napkin reminding myself to ask the waiter to take it away, burn it in a secure enclosure and provide a replacement. Picking up Foxy’s poop in Hyde Park was a more pleasant experience than shaking his sweaty working class hand.

“Oh how
quaint
,” I replied in my best Roedean girls English. “Are you an actor?”