Scent of a Killer 1: an MI7 Assassin origins story

He joined the throng of masked revellers in the exclusive nightclub, looking for the man he was going to kill.

Welcome to MI7 Assassin! My new WW1 spy thriller kicks off with two origins short stories to warm you up. I had so much fun researching Scent of a Killer, the action is set in the famed Cave of the Golden Calf - the bohemian club in London’s Soho ‘given up to gaiety, brazenly expressive of the libertarian pleasure principle’. It was a favourite haunt of the avant-garde until it closed down before the war. But in my story, it stayed open unofficially, providing illicit pleasures for industrialists, generals, aristocrats and politicians instead. My favourite villain, Captain Hugh Pollard, also gets a lot more airtime in this story, and he’s such a pleasure to write.

If you missed the first origins story, His Master’s Voice, pick it up here:

His Master's Voice part 1: An MI7 Assassin origins story

Thank you to my generous paying subscribers for supporting my writing on this platform. And welcome to all recent subs who’ve joined us! You’re most likely here because of all the Doctor Who material, but I hope you’ll stick around for MI7 Assassin, because it’s a real page turner.

My paying subs get the hot thrill of reading His Master’s Voice the Sunday before it goes out to everyone else on Wednesday, but whenever you get your hands on it, I’ve love to hear what you think of it, so give me your feedback below!

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Scent of a Killer Part One

Stone’s dead comrades had left him more or less in peace since his assassination of the traitor Wichart Crowe. More or less. But they had made certain suggestions which he had chosen to ignore because he was so busy working for MI7, the military intelligence department responsible for propaganda. And if he was honest – which wasn’t easy as an MI7 agent where distortions and denials were a way of life – he was enjoying every moment of it. Working with famous writers like Lord Dunsany and A. A. Milne. And his section chief Captain Pollard, who, despite, or even because of his outrageous propaganda stories, had a certain rascally, beguiling charm that was undoubtedly helping to lead him astray.

It was only a matter of time before his his voices renewed their pressure on him. It was December 3rd, 1916 when they returned with a particularly unpleasant nightmare to remind him of who he had been and who he really was. They appeared as four gas-masked wraiths to berate him.  

You’re a poison gas projector, Sean, said Dean. Only you’re not poisoning people’s lungs, you’re poisoning their minds.  

Captain Pollard says we’re raising public morale, argued Stone. We’re helping them get through this bloody war. 

I have a suggestion, Sean,’ said Duncan. Why don’t you write your next book on a lavatory wall? It’s the perfect place for it. 

Try to understand, I need to fit in. I need to belong. MI7 are my family now.

They’re spooks and liars, son, said Sergeant Dawes.

So what do you want from me?

Atonement, they chorused behind their masks.

For all who died because of your books, added Dean.

I wrote some bloody good stories!

And you never let the truth get in the way of any of them, sneered Duncan.

You know what you’ve got to do, mate, said Ralph. 

Stone looked up at the sinister apparitions. What are you?  Figments of my imagination?

I don’t bleeding know, do I, son? said Dawes. You’re the one with the brains. You work it out.

We’re your family, said Ralph. And MI7 can never replace us.

The realisation woke him up with a start. It was a bit ‘on the nose’, as Stone’s editor would sometimes say about his writing, and as dreams so often are. His voices needed to be certain he got the message. The gas-masked phantoms disappeared, but he knew they were still inside his head, waiting for his decision. He rarely smoked, except when the dreams were this bad, but now he got out of bed, pulled on his dressing gown and looked around for a packet of Craven A. He lit a cigarette and stared out the window of the gravedigger’s cottage. A light dusting of snow was settling on the Gothic headstones of Brompton cemetery, suggesting a peace and tranquillity that he longed for but was only possible if he did as his voices asked.

He inhaled deeply, then, wide-awake, carried on his conversation with his dead comrades.

I know who you want me to kill. But it’s not going to be easy.

Maybe your brother could help? He’s got some useful contacts, Ralph suggested.

We’ve been over this before. He’s too young. We keep Tom out of this.

He helped the Mickado get back to Ireland. Ralph was referring to their Irish comrade Mick Harris who had deserted following the Easter Rising in Dublin.

That was a mistake. I shouldn’t have done it. I should never have put him in danger.

Don’t beat yourself up, Sean. If they had caught him, he’d be too young to hang.

Stone shouted at the empty room, empty and yet crowded with his invisible four comrades, as if he was back in a shell hole with them, sheltering from an artillery barrage.

I said no! I have to be a lone wolf. I’m not putting anyone else’s life at risk and there’s also less chance of my being discovered. Because I can never be betrayed. I can never be infiltrated.

Except by us, they said.

Yes, but you are me, he replied.

And that shut them up.

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Inevitably, they returned the following night. And the next. Reminding him who his next target should be. A traitor who deserved to die and whose death would help bring the war to an end.

And that was why, on New Year's Eve, wearing an immaculate evening suit and a black and silver Venetian demon mask, he gave the password to the inscrutable and burly doorman standing in the doorway of an unremarkable building in a dark Soho backstreet. The doorman stepped aside to let him pass, and he descended the black and white tiled steps towards the faint sound of music below.

There was another equally burly doorman waiting for him, who opened a heavy wooden door and silently ushered him through, into a foyer with a cloakroom and a glamorous hat-check girl behind a counter. Her full-length evening gown, refined features and haughty manner suggested she believed she had the most important job in the world. Seeing that he had no hat and coat to check in, she graciously allowed him to continue with an imperious wave of her hand. Stone nodded his appreciation. He pushed his way through heavy red velvet curtains into the dim and heady atmosphere of the Cave of the Golden Calf to look for the man he was going to kill.

The Cave of the Golden Calf, with its legendary murals and phallic Golden Calf sculpture by Eric Gill, was a self-proclaimed club ‘given up to gaiety, brazenly expressive of the libertarian pleasure principle’. Officially, it had closed in 1914. Unofficially however, it remained open, along with one hundred and fifty other illegal nightclubs in Soho. Sunk below the pavement, it sprawled across the basements of numbers 3 to 9 Heddon Street. 

Frequented by industrialists, generals, aristocrats and politicians, the masked party to celebrate the New Year was already a tableau of hedonistic abandon and licentiousness. It was a far cry from DORA’S – the Defence of the Realm Act – ‘beauty sleep order’ that all licenced premises should close at 10.30pm. 

The air was rich with cigarette and cigar smoke, spiced with exotic perfumes, and the musky scent of aroused bodies. Masked and bare-chested serving staff – both men and women – circulated with trays of champagne and cigarettes. Stone took a brimming coupe, but he didn’t drink from it. He needed to keep his head clear. He could hear an insistent bass drumming over the babble and laughter, presumably coming from musicians in the depths of the club. Many of the masked guests were imbibing a dizzying array of drugs. Stone saw cocaine, morphine and ether in use, plus a couple of substances he couldn't identify. Suitably uninhibited, some of the guests were already enjoying a medley of sexual acts with every possible combination of men and women.

As far as Stone could see, there were very few ‘bright young things’, those avant-garde aristocrats and intellectuals of the famous Coterie who had frequented the Cave in the pre-war years. Those bohemians were now serving in the trenches and many were already dead. Such as Raymond Asquith, son of the Prime Minister, who was killed during the Battle of the Somme. No, these were middle-aged and old men who were profiting greatly from the war and who could afford to keep the club secretly open, with young girls hired for the occasion to service them. There were also society women of all ages, the younger ones desperately missing their usual admirers and looking for anything or anyone to ease the pain of parting after seeing the Coterie off to their deaths or mutilation.

Stone ignored them all. What they were doing was not his concern. He had to stay focussed on his mission to find and eliminate his second traitor – young American businessman Irvin Jayden. 

He threaded his way through the dimly lit rooms searching for the distinctive Janus mask Jayden would be wearing. He would recognise it instantly, because he had purchased it for Jayden just a few days earlier. 

As he moved through the party, Stone turned heads. Even with his face obscured by his mask, he had a lithe confidence that he knew attracted both men and women. It was boosted by a few recent one-night stands he’d had, which gave him an indefinable magnetism. It was rarely admitted, but everyone knew that’s how it worked. The more successful one’s liaisons passionnées, the more attractive one became. He reflected it must be some primal instinct from Neolithic times.

On the subject of primal man, he was briefly distracted in one salon by an impressive example. A hooded man, completely naked but for a leopard skin loincloth which barely protected his modesty. His magnificent, muscular oiled body was reminiscent of the famous circus strongman, wrestler and bodybuilder Eugen Sandow, ‘whose muscles made women faint’. Stone had seen such photos of Sandow in his book Strength and how to Obtain It. But Sandow was Prussian and this man was speaking with the particular kind of upper-class accent favoured by British officers.

He was surrounded by admirers, male and female, and they in turn were surrounded by murals of exotic jungle scenes by the most avante-garde of artists. Orange and blue striped tigers, tropical birds, and misbehaving monkeys forming an appropriately fecund backcloth for this ‘Noble Savage’. Stone reflected he was like the real life embodiment of the fictional Tarzan, the son of a British lord raised by apes, a novel that had recently been published to great acclaim.   

The women weren’t quite fainting at his muscles, but several of them were lined up in front of him to see if The Strongman could recognise them from their scent alone. Stone paused for a moment, curious to see the outcome. These flappers wore gossamer-thin skirts and silk blouses, their masks crowned by dazzling feathers that shivered and flounced as they smoked Turkish Royal cigarettes and sipped their cocktails, awaiting their turn.  

‘You’re wearing Narcisse Noir’ said The Strongman, sniffing the first flapper carefully. ‘So you have to be… Nancy Cunard’.

‘Oh, my God! You’re so clever,’ said Nancy. There was a round of applause from the onlookers.

He moved onto the second flapper. ‘I smell Parfum des Champs-Élysées. That’s the perfume favoured by … Iris Tree.’ There was another round of applause.

The third flapper’s face had a mischievous expression as The Strongman approached her. She had golden curls and a classic English rose creamy complexion. Her high cheekbones and vivid blue eyes suggested she may have been a model or an actress. Stone wondered if he’d seen her in a Pond’s Cold Cream advertisement.

‘Interesting,’ The Strongman said, as he sniffed her. ‘N’Aimez Que Moi. Love Only Me. But that is not your normal perfume. It’s too heavy and powdery for you.’ He wagged a reproving finger at her. ‘You minx! Trying to catch me out, eh?’

The flapper grinned and gave a helpless shrug, to suggest that she may have just been rumbled.

‘However,’ he continued, ‘I can still smell traces of your real perfume Cupid’s Darts.’

She blushed. He sniffed her armpit and she stifled a giggle. ‘And beneath that I detect the carbolic soap of Guys Hospital where you’re a VAD nurse.’ He sniffed her other armpit and she clamped a hand over her mouth to stop herself screaming with laughter. ‘And underneath that, your natural womanly scent which I would recognise anywhere. It is… Lady Diana Manners!’

There was thunderous applause from his audience. Lady Diana passionately embraced him. ‘I think that calls for a celebration,’ she called. ‘Let’s have some jolly old Chlorers!’ She stroked his oiled muscles appreciatively, tracing her red painted nails down his torso.

‘Careful,’ warned Nancy Cunard, looking down and giggling at his virility. ‘Or he’ll snap his loincloth.’

The Strongman took off his hood with a flourish. He had his back to Stone, so he couldn’t see his features, but the man was clearly hugely admired by this new Coterie. Lady Diana handed him his mask with a sly curtsey, which he ceremoniously covered his face with, as if he were crowning himself king. It was a jewelled ram's head mask, which Stone thought was rather appropriate.

‘How does he have such a strong sense of smell?’ two of the men wondered. ‘What’s his secret?’

‘Maybe it’s to do with his work at–?’ They mentioned a place, but there was a sudden burst of raucous laughter and Stone couldn’t hear what they said.

‘Shush! That’s hush-hush, old boy.’

The games organiser, a distinctive figure in a seventeenth century plague doctor’s mask with its elongated hooked beak, wearing a floor-length black cloak, a white corset with matching bloomers, and finished with surprisingly dainty high-heeled green slippers, handed out blindfolds for the ladies to wear over their masks. 

‘Right, chaps! Trousers down. Bottoms up,’ he cajoled. ‘Let’s see if the girls can identify whose bum is whose.’ The men duly complied, dropping their trousers and lifting their coat tails up as the laughing flappers were led forward. The organiser gave them a final briefing. ‘Remember, girls. You’re only allowed one squeeze of each cheek.’ He turned to see a male interloper already fondling a bare posterior. ‘Cedric! Hands off, you naughty boy!’

Stone moved on, searching for his target. He passed the jazz band who’s drumming he had heard earlier. They were a tight group of black musicians playing ragtime and as their raucous music throbbed through the cellars, he spotted a man in a Janus mask. He was enthusiastically, but somewhat awkwardly dancing the Grizzly Bear. The party goers were meant to be imitating a dancing bear and every few moments they would yell, ‘It’s a Bear!’ 

When the dance ended, the man joined other revellers at a table with a gilded circular mirror, upon which were neatly laid out lines of cocaine. He obligingly raised his Janus mask, confirming that it was Jayden. Taking the delicate silver tube offered to him, he bent over to briskly snort up one of the lines. He rubbed his nose vigorously and shouted something exuberant up at the ceiling that Stone couldn’t catch over the hubbub. He then joined a group of body painters, naked or in various states of undress, who were painting beautiful images on themselves. Lush, luxuriant and sensual. Faces became kaleidoscopes of colour, angels and demons, luscious fruits and flowers. Sumptuous and not so sumptuous bodies, male and female, recast as Greek gods and goddesses. The ordinary transformed into the extraordinary. Jayden was keen to join in and a girl bared her back for him to paint her.

Keeping to the shadows, Stone watched his target. It was ten minutes to midnight. His hand closed on the Mauser in his pocket. He ignored the noisy orgies taking place close-by in an adjoining cellar.  It was none of his business. He only had eyes for his target.

When the clock struck midnight, he would pull the trigger.

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Next week: a £1000 cocktail and some Hanky Panky for Sean Stone