The English Assassin Read Online Free Page B

she had finished, the fellatrix looked up at him, smiled, wiped her lips, swiftly closed his zip. He gave her a strained, bewildered smile in return, then he began to cough. She offered him one of her cigarettellos but he waved his hand towards the bottle on the upturned crate. She did not notice the gesture as she lit and then drew upon the long, brown Sherman’s, staring pensively at her own shifting shadow on the floor. Her eyes were blue and private.
    “Perhaps I should go back for Cornelius. We might need him if things get any tougher. On the other hand he might be dead by the time I got there. Is that my fault, I wonder? And the Cossacks are supposed to be moving in, too. Did you say you wanted a cigarette?”
    His pale face was puzzled, his gesture nervous as he lifted an exhausted hand to point again at the bottle.
    “No,” he said. “Water.”

MRS C. AND COLONEL P.
    “Yerst.” Folding her hands together on her great stomach, the fat old bag got her forearms under her unruly breasts and jostled them in her dress until they were hanging more comfortably. “’S’im, orl right.” Her three sly chins shivered. Her round, red stupid head cocked itself on one side. Her tiny eyes narrowed and her thick mouth opened. “Pore littel bleeder. Wot they dun to ’im?”
    “We do not know, Mrs Cornelius.” Colonel Pyat stepped away from the coffin which lay where Una Persson’s Slavs had left it. The other bodies were no longer visible, though the small black-and-white cat was still hanging around. “But now that you have positively identified him—” He drew off his white kid gauntlets. They were a perfect match to his well-cut, gold-trimmed uniform, to his kid boots, his dashing cap—“we can try to find out. I almost caught up with him in Afghanistan. But the express was delayed as usual. This could have been avoided.”
    “’E always wos a bit’ve a pansy, I s’pose,” Mrs C. said reflectively.
    Colonel Pyat went to the grand piano where his vodka things had been arranged by an orderly. “May I offer you a drink, madame?”
    “Where’s all them balloons gorn? I ’eard…”
    “The Zeppelins have left the city. They belonged to the Neue Deutschlanders whom we routed yesterday.”
    “Well, I’ll ’ave a small one. Did anyone ever tell yer— yer look jest like Ronal’ Colman.”
    “But I feel just like Jesse James.” Colonel Pyat smiled and gestured towards the record player on the mantelpiece. Faintly, from the Vox speakers, came the muffled sounds of a Bob Dylan record. The colonel poured an ounce of Petersburg vodka into a long-stemmed Bohemian glass, poured the same amount for himself, crossed back and handed Mrs C. her drink.
    She drained it. “Ta.” Then, with a fat, knowing chuckle, she flung back the monstrous arm and hurled the glass at the mantelpiece. “Sköl! Eh? Har, har!”
    Colonel Pyat took an interest in his white knuckles. Then he straightened his shoulders and quietly sipped his drink.
    Mrs C. ran a grimy finger round the neck of her cheap, red-and-white print dress. “’Ot enough fer yer?”
    “Indeed?” Pyat put a finger to his lips and raised his eyebrows intelligently. “Aha.”
    “Wouldna thort it. Not in bleedin’
Germany
— innit?”
    “No?”
    She turned, digging at a rotting back tooth with her thumbnail so that her voice was strangled. “Will ’e get better, Kernewl?”
    “That’s up to the boffins, madame.”
    “Courst, ’is
bruvver
—Frankie—was allus th’ nicest of ’em. I did me best after ’is dad run orft, but…”
    “These are unsettled times, Mrs Cornelius.”
    Mrs C. looked at him with mock gravity for a moment, a little smile turning up the corners of her crimson mouth. She opened the lips. She belched. Then she burst into laughter. “Yer not kiddin’—ter-her-ka-ka—ooh—give us anovver, there’s a pet… nkk-nkk.”
    “I beg your pardon?”
    “Nar—sawright—I’ll ’elp meself, won’ I?” She waddled to the grand