Angel and the Assassin

my age and my shoulders were filling out. I matched him in strength and
    height, but he was my superior, or so he thought, because he was older. As a prefect it
    was his job to inspect our dormitory every night before bed, looking for illegal food
    and dirty books.
    He thought he was in the army.
    We stood beside these narrow, hard little beds, that the parents—not mine—
    were paying a fortune for us to sleep in, while a nasty teenager, who thought he was
    Flashman from Tom Brown‟s Schooldays, marched up and down looking at us like
    we were filth. Every night he would look at me and find something wrong. He would
    say, “Your bedside table needs dusting, Saunders, but what can we expect from a
    council estate charity case?”
    Things like that.
    The boys who had not yet got a beating from me would laugh. Those who had
    would look at Conran with pity.
    Conran thought the worst thing that had happened to the British school system,
    and especially College Grange, was that caning had been officially banned in 1988.
    He was the only one I was nervous of, but I never let him know that.
    I was in my second year at College Grange, thirteen years old, when the parents
    all came for Sports Day and my mum got on the train and came all that way to

    Angel and the Assassin
    13

    watch me win all the races, as well as the high jump and long jump. She screamed
    her head off during the races, cheering me on, while all the posh mums looked at her
    with disgust. That night Conran sneered at her cheap clothes and Scouse accent, and
    my apprehension turned into rage.
    I waited until lights-out and got out of bed. The boys saw me go, but no one
    dared say anything except Freddie. He said, “Saunders, get back into bed, you’ll get
    into such trouble.”
    I told him that Conran needed a lesson in manners.
    I found Conran alone in the showers wanking himself off with a porn magazine
    full of women with big breasts and shaved pussies. For a moment he was terrified at
    getting caught, until he realized it was only me and then he got belligerent, telling
    me to get back to bed or he would order me to have cold showers for a week. He had
    the power to do that.
    I threw my pyjamas on the floor and raped him. We were equal in strength, but
    he had never in his life been as angry as I was most of the time, and after the way he
    had sneered at my mum, he was lucky I didn’t rip his cock off.
    He never told anyone what I did to him and he never spoke to me again until
    the day I walked into his office in Vauxhall Cross at the age of twenty-two after ten
    months of training with the Secret Intelligence Service. Most recruits spent a couple
    of years in training, but I had a natural talent for the work. He’s been my handler
    ever since.

    Kael closed the book and returned it to its hiding place. He pressed a button on
    the console beside the bed and watched the blinds lower slowly, cutting out the
    bright morning sun. In the comforting darkness he stretched out and then curled up
    on his side like a child. He closed his eyes and slept solidly for twelve hours.

    14
    Fyn Alexander

    Chapter Three

    Cape Cod, Massachusetts

    Angel stripped off his clothes and dropped them on the floor, knowing he would
    never get around to washing them. He had to leave in the next couple of days, and
    he couldn‟t carry much, just the few things he really wanted.
    His mother had left early that morning, gone to live with her new boyfriend in
    France without leaving a forwarding address, let alone inviting him to go with her.
    Boyfriend was a stupid word; the old creep was at least seventy. Angel‟s stepfather
    had been away on business for several days and had returned just that evening, so
    she had made her escape. That morning Angel had gone down to the kitchen, and
    Maria-Jesus had said, “ Mrs. Andresen gone .” Then she had shrugged and hugged
    him.
    He couldn‟t stay in the same house as his stepfather. The guy couldn‟t stand
    him, and it was entirely mutual. They had lived in the same house for five years,
    and Sven had never said a kind or civil word to him. Even if Angel did not plan to
    move out, Sven Andresen would throw him out as soon as he found out his wife had
    left him.
    In the en-suite bathroom, Angel switched on the light and turned on the hot
    water in the shower. He loved his bedroom and bathroom at the Cape Cod house.
    They were much bigger than at the Manhattan apartment. More than anything he
    loved hitching up the cape to