The Hit List Read Free Page B

course -- like a juaddie on the piss. He'd never quite sorted out the vhole clothes thing. Or, for that matter, the accent ing. Or the posh restaurant and vintage wine thing it was supposed to work so well with women. Or iiy of that host of other 'things' that made for an easy jgress through life.
    But he did, Slater mused ruefully as the cold dusk athered around him, have certain skills. At this ioment there was a hot shower waiting for him and ith luck a pot of tea and a plate of Jammy Dodgers in le staff room. If he ended up drinking the tea alone, irell, bollocks to the lot of them. It was a billet, and all igs considered, a comfortable one. He pulled on his sweatshirt. With a fair wind behind aem Masoud and Paul and the rest of the lads should
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    punch holes through the Wellington defence on Saturday. Train hard, fight easy.
    As he made his way towards the school buildings, Slater's attention was caught by a vehicle on the public road beyond the boundary wall. It was a Cherokee four-wheel drive, proceeding at about twenty miles an hour. Even given the warning signs outside the school, this seemed unnaturally slow for the road, and Slater realised that he had noticed the vehicle driving in the same direction and at the same speed earlier in the day. The Cherokee was a maroon colour, he remembered, although now in the failing light it looked almost black.
    For a moment he wondered if the driver was a parent. A lot of the parents had Cherokees - it was pretty much Bolingbroke's signature vehicle - but not many went for the tinted window option. What was the point of spending all that money, after all, if no one could see who you were? And none of the parents considered themselves bound by the local speed restrictions, as this driver clearly did. Slater watched as the four-wheel drive crested a rise and passed out of sight. He had memorised the number.
    Anxious to unload his misgivings and forget the incident with a clear conscience, Slater walked over to the main gate, where a white Mondeo, bearing the mailed-fist logo of a private security company, idled at the verge. The car was more of a public relations stunt than anything else, in Slater's opinion. All it served to
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    was to underline the fact that the children of some
    ;ry rich people were in residence - a fact which the !$lue and gold school notice-board (motto: Fortitude, fTruth, Valour) made clear at a glance.
    It was Bolingbroke's proximity to Heathrow -- less 'than fifty minutes in a chauffeur-driven Lexus -- which ittracted the overseas customers. Summer visits were l,Vspecially popular. Parents could fly in in the morning, 'take in a lunchtime meeting and a dash down Bond Street, and then spend a lazy couple of hours in a itieckchair pretending to understand the rules of cricket. Rather fewer of these parents, Slater had observed, volunteered for duty on the rugby touchline. In the winter months, he supposed, parents were happy for the formation of their sons' characters to proceed on trust.
    But there were real security issues, as there were i wherever the children of the super-rich gathered. And 'while the school did not wish to turn itself into a high tech prison - much of its commercial appeal lay in its [traditional appearence and atmosphere -- it wished to : make clear that it took these issues seriously. Hence the white Mondeo.
    And hence, Slater assumed, the chugging exhaust. What made people leave their car-engines switched on for hours at a time? He knocked on the driver's side window, which was blurred with condensation.
    The driver lowered the glass, releasing a warm odour of fart and processed food, and regarded him suspiciously. Beyond the driver a second man was
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    leafing through a pornographic magazine.
    'Hi! My name's Slater. I'm the games master.'
    The driver, a heavy-set man in a Barbour jacket, said nothing. A half-eaten meat pie sat in its foil dish in his lap. Pastry crumbs speckled his