The Reluctant Assissin

PUFFIN

Contents

1 The Killing Chamber

2 Gym Girl

3 Macho-Nerds

4 Alt-Tek

5 A Visit to the Outhouse

6 Victoriana

7 The Battering Rams

8 The Red Glove

9 Golgoth Golgoth

10 Mr Charismo

11 The Old Nichol

12 Unto Dust

Epilogue

Books by Eoin Colfer

AIRMAN

BENNY AND BABE

BENNY AND OMAR

HALF MOON INVESTIGATIONS

THE SUPERNATURALIST

THE WISH LIST

ARTEMIS FOWL

ARTEMIS FOWL AND THE ARCTIC INCIDENT

ARTEMIS FOWL AND THE ETERNITY CODE

ARTEMIS FOWL AND THE OPAL DECEPTION

ARTEMIS FOWL AND THE LOST COLONY

ARTEMIS FOWL AND THE TIME PARADOX

ARTEMIS FOWL AND THE ATLANTIS COMPLEX

ARTEMIS FOWL AND THE LAST GUARDIAN

GRAPHIC NOVELS

ARTEMIS FOWL: THE GRAPHIC NOVEL

ARTEMIS FOWL AND THE ARCTIC INCIDENT: THE GRAPHIC NOVEL

THE SUPERNATURALIST: THE GRAPHIC NOVEL

AND FOR YOUNGER READERS

THE LEGEND OF SPUD MURPHY

THE LEGEND OF CAPTAIN CROW’S TEETH

THE LEGEND OF THE WORST BOY IN THE WORLD

To Finn, Seán, Grace, Jeremy and Joe

The Killing Chamber

BEDFORD SQUARE. BLOOMSBURY. LONDON. 1898

There were two smudges in the shadows between the grandfather clock and the velvet drapes. One high and one low. Two pale thumbprints in a black night made darker still by blackout sheets behind the thick curtains and sackcloth tacked across the skylights.

The lower smudge was the face of a boy, soot blackened and slightly shivering inside the basement chamber. This was young Riley, brought this very night on his first killing as a test.

The upper smudge was the face of a man known to his employers as Albert Garrick, though the public had once known him by a different name. His stage name had been the Great Lombardi, and many years ago he had been the most celebrated illusionist in the West End, until during one performance he actually sawed his beautiful assistant in half. Garrick discovered on that night that he relished taking a life almost as much as he enjoyed the delighted applause from the stalls, and so the magician made a new career of assassination.

Garrick fixed his flat murderer’s eyes on Riley and gripped his shoulder, long bony fingers pressing through the fabric of the boy’s coat, pinching the nerves. He didn’t say a word but nodded once, a gesture heavy with reminder and implication.

Think back, said the inclined chin, to your lesson of this afternoon. Move silently as the Whitechapel fog and slide the blade in until your fingers sink into the wound.

Garrick had instructed Riley to haul a dog carcass from the Strand to their Holborn rooms and then practise his knife work on the suspended remains so he would be accustomed to the resistance of bone.