The Hit List Read Online Free PDF Page A

trying to explain to foreign parents that for most conditions the local NHS hospital
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    was a better and safer bet than even the most expensive clinic.
    ( The lift was waiting on the ground floor. Slater thought this strange: it usually remained on the top floor once Matron had retired to her quarters for the \ night. She slept next to the sick bay. There was also a knight nurse, a willowy redhead named Jean Burney. j1 Slater had caught Jean's eye once or twice and detected 14 definite twinkle. Since she was always on duty in the Lfvenings, however, he had not had the chance to poliow it up.
    He stepped out of the lift, heard the doors slide shut ehind him. The sick bay was arranged around a ijuare lobby containing a pair of sofas, a low table and le night nurse's desk. On two sides of the square were lined-off enclosures; these were for junior boys, id none appeared to be occupied. Nor was the night nurse's desk. Perhaps Jean Burney gone to the toilet. Slater decided to go straight jugh to the sixth form bay. Passing the desk, jwever, he saw that a table lamp had fallen and ashed, leaving curling fragments of glass on the Jrhite linoleum floor. Among the glass were smears of Gently shed blood. More splashes led towards the for to Matron's quarters and the sixth form bay. Had accidentally knocked the lamp to the floor and len cut her hand on the broken glass? She didn't look
    clumsy type.
    $' And then, at the edge of a smear of blood by the sr, Slater saw a faint chevron-shaped imprint. It was
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    no more than an inch long, but he recognised it instantly. No member of the teaching or medical staff wore commando-soled boots, and the boys all wore regulation lace-ups.
    He froze, instantly alert, felt the familiar thud of his heartbeat as the adrenaline kicked in. For a moment he paused, ears straining for the slightest sound, and then moved at a crouch to the passage door. It opened, but not easily. Something heavy had been laid against it. Silently he raised himself to the level of the glass panes in the upper half of the door. The lights were offin the corridor but he made out a human shape - two bare legs, the faint scrabbling of fingers. Gently, Slater forced the door open, pushing the figure away from him until there was room to squeeze through.
    It was Jean Bumey. Slater recognised her by her hair. She had been blindfolded and gagged and her | wrists were taped behind her back. Drying blood ran | from both nostrils, her lower lip was split, and her nose i looked broken. She was unconscious.
    She was breathing, though, and Slater quickly ripped off the gag and the blindfold and cut the tape from her wrists with the Mauser penknife he carried on a lanyard in his trouser pocket. For the moment this was all he dared attempt. The intruder, or intruders, could still be in the building.
    There was sufficient light for Slater to see that all three sick bay doors were closed. An attempt to enter any of them could invite a bullet. The fourth door bore a nameplate marked matron - Mrs T Mackay.
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    Silently, he turned the handle and slipped inside. He had barely closed the door behind him when a bedside light snapped on and a nightie-clad figure struggled to an upright position.
    'Yes?' she began sleepily, assuming Slater to be Jean. Seeing that he wasn't her tone changed to alarm. 'Mr |$later, may I ask what on Earth--'
    'Keep quiet!' he hissed. 'There are--' 'Come any closer and I'll scream,' hissed Mrs ackay. 'What the hell's going on? What are you--' 'Intruders. They've knocked Jean out. I think ley're after one of the boys - probably already taken I want you to ring security, the police and the admaster in that order. And I need a weapon.' 'You whafi Mr Slater, they might be--' 'Armed? I know. They could also be getting away one of the boys.' His eyes searched the room, ited on the reproduction Hepplewhite chair in ich Mrs Mackay liked to watch Emmerdale and tEnders.
    hard, downward stamp