Read Online The Purple Contract by Robin Flett - Free Book Online

Institution.'
    Unconsciously they had both stopped walking again, this time standing facing each other on the peaceful canalside.
    'We want to you to assassinate Prince Charles before he becomes King!'
     
     

 
 
 
 
4
     
Largs
     
    'You want a paper, pal?'
    'What?'
    'Fifty pence.'
    Hollis looked down at the teenager and the off-white, poor quality newspaper he was thrusting forward: Flag of Freedom on a red banner emblem.
    'Get lost!' The Communist chicken had long since lost it's head––it just didn't know it was dead yet. The boy glared at him and moved off around the bar, in search of easier prey.
    Dave Jordan shook his head in disgust, lifting the two glasses of beer and handing one to his friend. 'Jeez, what does it take to fill a kid's head with that crap? What is he: fourteen, fifteen?' He followed Hollis to a table at the far end of the L-shaped public bar, set in a semi-circular booth.
    The Essex Bar graced a lengthy street of seedy shops in Islington, not one of London's more salubrious areas. It had once been a favourite haunt of Jordan and Hollis, had been in fact been an important meeting place and clearing house for most of the local criminal fraternity. That had been a lot of years, and several owners ago. Nowadays it was a much more civilised, although just as noisy place to enjoy a glass or two with an old friend.
    'His parents could knock it out of him easily enough––but then they may have put him up to it in the first place,' observed Hollis cynically. 'Anyway, in a few years time he'll probably be at some University or other and the gooks can just brainwash him again at their leisure.' He swallowed some beer and shrugged. 'The world's goin' to shit, Dave, and that's a fact!'
    'Yeah, sure is.’ Jordan hesitated before adding the next bit of news. ‘Did you know that Dilly's back in the UK?'
    Hollis looked up, surprised. 'No.'  Dilys Fenwick was the girl he had lived with when he first moved from London to Edinburgh. He hadn't seen her in ten years.
    'Uh-huh. Second marriage didn't last either. I don't think she liked the weather in Finland much anyway, pretty cold in the winter.' He watched the expressionless eyes opposite. Nearly expressionless, he cautioned himself, this is sensitive ground; better watch it. 'If you'd like to see her before you leave––'
    'There isn't time.'
    'Right.' Not true of course, Jordan would be taking Hollis to Heathrow to catch the Edinburgh Shuttle in a couple of hours, but the booking could be changed easily enough. Change the subject. 'What's this I hear about you wanting to retire? Don't you know you can't claim old age pension until you're sixty-five?'
    Hollis snorted. 'Gojo been shooting his mouth off again?'
    'Nah.' Jordan grinned. 'It was mentioned, that's all. He thinks the world of you, Mike. I think you've got him worried.'
    Hollis sighed and drank some more beer. 'Yeah, well, I've had a good run, but it can't go on for ever. Sooner or later I'll open the wrong door, or turn my back once too often, or walk out of a hotel into a gunsight.' He looked around the crowded bar. 'I get tired of watching everyone and everything. Checking every doorway, sitting in a bar with my back to a wall just so I can have a beer and a chinwag.' He flicked a thumb round the booth they were sitting in and saw his friend's eyes narrow: it had never occurred to Dave Jordan that Hollis' choice of seating was anything more than convenience.
    'Jeez, I never thought––’'
    'Don't worry about it. But, yeah, sometimes I think I'm getting too old for this sort of thing––not as sharp as I used to be. That's why I'm not sure I want this one, or any other one for that matter.'
    Jordan was making rings on the varnished tabletop with the wet bottom of his glass. ‘That bad, huh?’
    Hollis said nothing.
    'Seriously, Mike, if you feel that way about it then I'm not goin' to sit here tryin' to talk you into it. Fuck it, it's only money!'
    They listened to the hubbub around