Conn Iggulden - Quantum of tweed

Victor Stasiak cared nothing for scenic beauty. His entire purpose in choosing a holiday home close by Buttermere lake was its suitability for burying his competitors. Let’s assume for a moment that they were at least dead first. It wasn’t always true, but let’s assume it anyway.

With a soft grunt, Victor Stasiak finished with his tie and held out his arms for a long cashmere coat that would have caught Albert Rossi’s interest immediately. His manservant raised it at the right moment, so that the fleshy arms vanished into the long sleeves and short-fingered, heavy hands poked out at the other end. It was a good coat and proof against the worst Cumbrian weather.

Yet such things were wasted on the man they contained. The reason for Victor Stasiak’s excitement lay not with the prospect of an invigorating walk, or even the finest of cashmere. He was looking forward to meeting his second in command in one of the most scenic spots in Buttermere. He was looking forward to it because he had discovered the man had been cheating him over a number of years.

Victor Stasiak smiled at his reflection. A contented carp looked back. He had chosen the spot carefully, a bridge over the longest waterfall in Cumbria. He would enjoy seeing his colleague falling onto the rocks below.

It was a rare event for Victor Stasiak to get his own hands dirty with such things, but the betrayal was a personal thing for him. He smiled again. A personal personnel issue. To be able to make a pun, even a weak one, in English was a source of some pride for him. He flexed his hands, imagining them around a throat. It would be a good day.

‘Bring the car round to the front,’ he told his servant. ‘Have Jonas and Walker follow me in the Audi with the dogs.’

‘Yes, sir,’ his manservant said, bowing low.

It took time to train his staff to the right level of obedience, but Victor Stasiak believed it was worthwhile. For a man who had grown up in the steelyards of a Lithuanian port, such things were a simple joy.

‘Hat,’ Victor Stasiak said.

A heavy black bowler was held out and he fitted it carefully onto the dome of a head almost as perfectly round as the hat itself. Victor Stasiak was not a fool. He knew the English bowler hat had not been in fashion for sixty years or more. As a younger man, he had been impressed by a Bond film, in which the villain wore such a hat, complete with a metal rim capable of decapitating statues. Victor Stasiak had never thrown his hat at anyone, but the idea of a razor-sharp ring of steel available to him when all else failed was very much in keeping with his character. In addition, it suited him.

As well as the smell of wet tweed, which gives the House of Lords its distinctive odour, it is another little-known fact that Britain has the most extensive network of number-plate-recognition cameras in the world. Most motorways, main roads and town centres are covered by it. The information is kept for up to five years and a policeman with an interest in a particular vehicle could, if he so chose, call up video records of its travels over that entire period.

PC George Thompson was well aware of the irritating criminal tendency to swap their own number plates for those of a tractor, or just an innocent car of the same make. Every year, tractor owners in particular were forced to contact the Metropolitan Police and point out that while they would love to have been doing a hundred miles an hour in London, it simply wasn’t possible in a Massey Ferguson. He doubted Albert Rossi had gone to those lengths to avoid detection and he was not disappointed.

Thompson sipped at a cup of dark orange tea and tapped idly at a computer in Uxbridge police station. It was six o’clock in the morning and he had come in early to gain access to a computer that usually took eleven close-written forms even to touch. He had found the password jotted down in the desk drawer and if anyone checked, the records would show his absent colleague had become fascinated by a particular Nissan Micra. George Thompson looked grim as he sipped and tapped and then worked the mouse for a bit.

He could not have explained his suspicions about Albert Rossi. The sudden appearance of cash was certainly interesting; so were the weak excuses Rossi had offered to explain his good fortune. Fishing brown envelopes out of station bins was another black mark against him. Yet there was something more; Thompson could feel it. He was a believer in instinct and when his return visit had found the shop closed and Albert Rossi apparently vanished, his instincts had stopped gently prodding and begun a more determined assault. As he sat in the office and followed the video record into Cumbria, Thompson’s suspicions picked up a cricket bat and looked meaningfully at him.

Something was up. He was aware that he didn’t have a shred of real evidence. His superiors were unlikely to fund a day away from his desk on nothing more than a series of hunches. Yet he had a week of leave to use up and there were worse ways to spend it. He made up his mind. His Rover 75 could put him in Cumbria by noon at the latest. Where was the last hit from the cameras? He checked again and nodded to himself. Four miles outside Keswick, a traffic camera had recorded the little Micra buzzing its way north. Keswick. Thompson knocked back the last of the tea. At worst, he would have a half-day by a pleasant lake, but it was just possible that he would also discover what the hell was going on.

Albert Rossi approached the house he had marked on his map, creeping down a hillside in darting movements as he passed from tree to tree. He reached the bottom, hidden behind an enormous privet hedge that ran the length of the drive, at almost exactly the moment two black cars swung round to the front door. As Albert watched, the rear one was loaded with burly men and two snarling Alsatian dogs. He sank lower into old vegetation, suddenly terrified that he would be seen.

He hardly needed his binoculars. Twenty yards from him, the front door opened and Victor Stasiak came out, sheltered from the rain by another man carrying an umbrella. Albert felt his pulse race at the sight of his quarry. The tendency to wear black bowlers had been mentioned in the file but even if Stasiak had been bare-headed, there was no mistaking the heavy frame. The coat was very good quality, Albert noted, a little enviously. It seemed crime paid rather well.

The experience with hang-gliding and Peter Schenk had not prepared him for the sheer excitement of a hunter facing a dangerous enemy. Or at least, looking at him from under a hedge. Albert Rossi’s heart pounded wildly and his hands shook as he took hold of the pistol, more for comfort than anything. It was heady stuff for the owner of a men’s clothing shop.

The thrill lasted just long enough for Victor Stasiak to climb into the back seat of the first car, a huge Mercedes. The car door was shut by his manservant and in just a few seconds both vehicles purred their way past Albert Rossi in the undergrowth, down the long drive and were gone. The gates closed slowly on unseen motors. Albert tutted to himself, but he was not disappointed. At the very least, he had confirmed Stasiak was in Cumbria. He watched as the house became quiet once more.

An experienced assassin would probably not have done what Albert Rossi decided to do next. The more professional members of that deadly craft have learned the hard way to make plans and stick with them. They have also learned not to commit small crimes that could get them caught in possession of the tools of their trade. They do not speed on motorways and they park carefully. Perhaps above all else, they do not steal a postman’s bike when it is left within twenty feet of them by a cheerful Cumbrian.

Albert watched as the gates to the estate opened once more. His gaze flicked to the red and black bicycle leaning against the hedge, then to the grey-haired man whistling as he approached the main house with his letters. Albert Rossi did not remember making an actual decision, but he was out of that hedge in a flurry of leaves, onto the bike and pedalling furiously through the gates before his brain caught up.