The Angel by Mark Dawson Read Free Book Online

behind containers that had not been tampered with. They worked quickly, and when they were done, the weapons were well hidden. Not satisfied with just that cursory check, he jumped down and looked at the interior of the truck from the bumper, the view that the security guards would have if today was one of the days they chose to examine the vehicles passing through their checkpoint.
    ‘Well?’ Abdul said.
    ‘Very good,’ Ibrahim replied. ‘Very good.’

Chapter Nine
    I sabella wandered aimlessly all morning. She crossed the river on Waterloo Bridge, walked down the Strand to Trafalgar Square, whiled away an hour in St James’s Park and then, finally, ambled along Birdcage Walk to Parliament Square.
    She slowed her pace. There was a demonstration, anti-war protestors raging against the suggestion that the British military be put to fresh use against ISIS in Iraq and Syria. She stopped to do up a lace that did not need tying, and used the opportunity to surveil the armed police who were observing the spectacle with wary attention. She looked up to the rooftops: there were officers with video cameras recording the faces of the protestors.
    Isabella felt vulnerable, and pulling up her hood, she skirted the crowd. She put on her sunglasses, barely hearing their angry chants in response to the exhortations of the orator, who was addressing them from a raised box with the assistance of a portable amplifier.
    Her skin crawled as she walked within range of the cameras. She only regained her equilibrium as she proceeded south down Abingdon Street. She passed Westminster Abbey, and with no real destination in mind, turned into Victoria Park Gardens. The park was adjacent to the south-west corner of the Palace of Westminster and named for the tower that loomed above it. She walked by the statue of Emmeline Pankhurst and Rodin’s sculpture of The Burghers of Calais , until she was at the stone wall that looked down on the sluggish greeny-grey waters of the river below.
    She rested her elbows on the wall and gazed out onto the Thames. A towboat was hauling six barges upstream, and one of the bri ghtly-coloured commuter clippers passed it going in the opposite direction. The sky overhead was blue and clear, latticed with the fluffy contrails of passing jets.
    She had been lying to Pope. She didn’t have a flight to catch. She hadn’t known why he wanted to see her, and so she had left her return open. She had nothing to do and no place to go. There was her continued training, the regimen that she had interrupted to make this visit, and she would pick it up again when she returned to her riad, but apart from that, there was little else to occupy her. She had no friends. No connections. No reason to be anywhere or do anything. Usually, that was something that did not concern her. She preferred a life with no tethers. Today, though, looking down onto the water, she wondered whether she had it all wrong.
    She turned her head and looked at the Palace of Westminster. Her mother had dedicated her life to furthering the interests of the government whose decisions were debated within those imposing walls. She had hidden her occupation from her husband – Isabella’s father – and it had killed him. She thought about the things that her mother had told her during the short time that they had spent together. Beatrix had explained the betrayal that had inspired her vendetta. She had been unable to complete it before the cancer that had raged through her body had rendered her too weak to follow through with her original plan. She had sacrificed herself in an effort to complete her revenge; when that had failed, Is abella ha d finished the job. She looked down and found that her fingers had drift ed unconsciously up to the sleeve of her shirt, up towards her shoulder. Her fingers traced over the spot where she wore the tattoo of the rose. It marked that final death, the final addition to the set that her mother had been unable to