Silencer (12 page)

I stepped carefully into the dim hallway and was immediately smothered by the stench of alcohol and cigars. The suite was designed like a large apartment. There were three doors in front of me, all open. A mirror-light had been left on in the bathroom, allowing me to make out shapes but not colours.

I stood and listened as I closed the door quietly behind me. I held my breath, tuning in to the new environment. There was no rush. They were asleep; if they weren’t, they would have heard me by now, or I would have heard them. The only sound was the gentle hum of the air-con.

I put the U of the latch back over the thumb, then retrieved the wooden doorstop from my jeans. I wedged it under the door as hard as I could, about three-quarters of the way along from the hinged end. Then I sat on my arse, braced both hands on the floor behind me, and pushed it in even further with the heel of my boot. I fed the end of my belt through its buckle to make a noose and got back to my feet.

The thick-pile carpet and Oriental rugs muted my movement towards the bedroom. The smells were stronger here, and a flowery perfume joined the blend. I moved to the right as I entered the room, to avoid creating a silhouette in the doorway. I three-quarters closed the door with my shoulder, and looked across a floor strewn with clothes to a bed the size of a third-world nation. Two bodies lay back to back in the middle of it, asleep, now the deal had been done, among a mess of crumpled sheets, covers, pillows and cushions.

The larger shape on the right was wheezing gently. The closer I got, the louder it became. I wrapped my right fist around the free end of the belt, keeping the noose as big as it could be. The cabinet on his side was covered with glasses and empty bottles from the minibar. He’d drowned a cigar in one of the glasses.

I spread my left hand and eased it under his head. He murmured appreciatively. He’d be thinking he was in Never Never Land, bless him, and this was just part of the fun.

But the fun wasn’t going to last long.

I slipped the noose over his head, stepped back and heaved the belt with both hands until it was tight around his neck. He gave a long-drawn-out groan and started to struggle, not trying to escape, just wanting to work out what was going on, and how the fuck he could breathe. By the time his brain had worked out that this was real life he was bucking and snorting like a horse.

I let go with my left hand, picked up one of the tumblers and brought it down on the side of his head a couple of times to reinforce his sense of reality.

I wrenched again with my entire body weight to try to get him off the bed. It was like trying to shift an elephant. I heard him slurp and retch as his Adam’s apple went into overtime. He’d lost the ability to swallow. If he wasn’t fully conscious by now, too bad. The mixture of sleep and alcohol wasn’t making his reactions any sharper but as his head bounced over the edge his arms flailed to break his fall.

I kicked out as soon as he hit the carpet. I wanted to come on like a savage, like I was out of control. I kept stamping and pulling, hammering my boots into his body. I got one between his legs and he curled up with a strangled grunt and grabbed onto his bollocks. The pain would be as horrendous in the pit of his stomach as it was between his legs.

The whippet stirred from her drunken sleep. Pulling on the belt with my right hand, I leaned over and grabbed a fistful of her
mad hair with my left. I gave it a couple of twists and yanked her towards me. She cried out and brought up her hands. I didn’t know what she was saying but I didn’t need to. I tried to sound as gentle as possible as I pulled her towards me.

‘
Sssh …
’

I planted a boot firmly on Diminetz’s face and kept the pressure on the belt to make sure that was where his hands stayed. It’s a natural instinct to fight against the thing you think is going to kill you, and in this case the thing was round his neck, stopping his body getting oxygen. I wasn’t aiming for total restriction. Twenty per cent of your oxygen is needed to service your brain, and his brain was what I was there to probe.

The skin prickled on my back as the moisture broke cover. I pulled the whippet up close and treated Diminetz to another couple of kicks before slamming my boot back down on his face.

‘
Sssh …
’

I waited for them both to calm down. They couldn’t see much of me in the gloom but I hoped they’d feel at least the noise was comforting.

As Diminetz continued to fight for breath, the whippet was flat out, belly down, head over the edge of the bed, a few centimetres from the top of my boot. I twisted her head round, bent towards her and whispered, ‘You speak English?’

She tried shaking her head as she mumbled away in local but the pain got in the way.

I looked down at what I could see of her face and gave her another reassuring
sssh
. I let go of her and pulled out my iPhone. Her skeletal shoulders heaved as she, too, tried to fill her lungs.

Lena answered after three rings: ‘You have him?’

‘Yep. Tell this woman he’s with that, if she stays calm, she won’t get—’

I heard a rustle below me.

Shit!

The whippet was on her feet and sprinting for the door like I’d just fired a starting pistol. Her feet snagged in the kit they’d tossed on the floor and she stumbled, but not for long. I followed her, dragging Diminetz with me as fast as I could, but she’d made it to the main door by the time I exited the bedroom.

She pulled and jerked frantically at the handle, breaking into sobs of fear and frustration as she realized it wasn’t going to open. Dragging Diminetz with me, I caught up with her. The doorstop had lived up to its name – but she didn’t even seem to have noticed I’d swung the security latch back into place.

I grabbed another handful of hair and yanked her down, then turned and dragged them both back towards the bed like a psychopath in a cheap horror movie.

I tied the free end of the belt as tightly as I could to the in-pipe of the nearest radiator. If Diminetz struggled, he’d choke.

‘Nick?’ Lena’s voice was coming from my jacket pocket.

Everything had calmed down. The dim light was helping; it was for me, anyway. Like the other two, I was taking big gulps of air by now, trying to get my breathing back to normal after this little bit of excitement. Sweat dripped down my back.

Diminetz was more switched on than I’d thought he’d be after seeing him in action down at the bar. He wasn’t flapping: he seemed to be conserving his energy as best he could while trying to get into a comfortable position to work out what the fuck to do next. He leaned back to get the most out of the couple of milli metres’ play in the belt. He wanted to get his brain working as much as I did.

‘Nick? You OK? You OK?’

Lena’s voice got louder as I liberated her from my pocket and put her to my ear. ‘Yep. All good here.’

The whippet sat on the floor, arms hugging her knees against her chest, back against the black-leather sofa. She wasn’t the slightest bit embarrassed about being naked. I guessed that was part of the job spec.

‘Lena, tell this woman that everything’s going to be all right. She’ll be safe as long as she does what she’s told. I’m not here to hurt her.’

‘Is she OK?’ She sounded more concerned about the whippet’s welfare than mine.

‘She’s more than OK. She doesn’t look like one of your victims. I’m passing the mobile to her now …’

The iPhone disappeared under the mass of hair. I picked up one or two Moldovan mumbles. Diminetz was all ears. Saliva oozed out of his mouth and down his chin to merge with the blood streaming from where I’d whacked him with the tumbler. His chest rose and fell as he fought for air.

She handed the phone back and said something to Diminetz. I could have stopped her but maybe what she’d said would be good.

‘You’re right. That one is no victim.’

‘This is what I want you to tell Diminetz …’

He raised his head at the mention of his name. I couldn’t see his eyes in the gloom, but I was sure they were trying to burn into the upstart he could see towering above him.

‘Tell him I’m going to ask him some questions, and that we’ll both be much happier if he answers. Because if he doesn’t try to make sense, I’m going to kill him.’

‘You can’t! That wasn’t what we agreed! I can’t be part of anything that—’

‘Just tell him, OK? I want to scare the shit out of him. That way he’ll save his own life, and he might very well save Katya’s. Tell him that once I find out where she is I’ll go. No one has to know the information came from him.’

Lena was still flapping. ‘Nick, no killing. I will not be part of it.’

‘I’m not going to do it. I just want him to think I am.’

I lowered the phone and shoved it against his ear. He answered Lena in pissed-off mode but managed to hold his temper. His head came up again and I pulled away. I couldn’t see if the good-cop-bad-cop routine had worked.

I switched on the bedside light. They both blinked and the whippet buried her head between her knees so a curtain of hair fell across her face. But not Diminetz: he seized the opportunity to size me up.

He wouldn’t have noticed me in the bar, but he certainly recognized me now.

I looked into his bulging eyes. ‘Yeah, that’s right, mate. The one
in the photograph.’ I didn’t care if he understood or not. I just wanted to rattle him some more.

I got back on the iPhone to Lena. ‘What did he say?’

‘He said why should he tell you anything. What’s to stop you killing him anyway? Why would you let him live, so he can warn people you’re looking for her? Why would he do that?’

He stared at me as I listened. There wasn’t a trace of fear in his eyes, just sheer pragmatism. That was impressive. Maybe Frank had been wrong: maybe Diminetz wasn’t destined to remain in the gutter after all.

My eyes drilled into him. ‘Tell him I’m not here to kill him. I’m here to collect Katya. If he doesn’t tell me what I need to know, I’ll find her eventually anyway. And I’ll make sure that when I do I’ll tell any fucker in this city who’s in the mood to listen that he gave me the information. Tell him I guarantee he’ll be fucked. He’s got a good thing going at the moment, why spoil it?’

I stared at him, unblinking, throughout. He caught the tone of my voice. When I handed the phone back to him, he listened without looking up. He stared across the room instead. His lips curled into a smile as he waffled back.

‘What did he say?’

‘She’s already out of the country. He said you should feel happy that she’s gone. Otherwise you and your wife would be in even more danger than you are now.’ She didn’t pause
for breath. ‘Nick, what’s happening? Anna? You never said—’

‘I’ll explain it all later. Did he say where she was?’

‘All he knows is that they took her to the airport and put her on a flight to Frankfurt, then on to Hong Kong. They told her someone called Soapy would be waiting for her. Nick, she could be anywhere by now. Soapy could be a broker. You need to tell me what is happening. Is Anna in danger?’

I took a breath. ‘That’s what I’m here for, to make sure she isn’t.’

‘Maybe it’s because she’s Hispanic. Maybe they need a specific tissue match.’

‘Ask him.’

Diminetz sparked up, jerking his head towards the phone. I held it against his ear again and he sounded as though he’d switched into Samaritan mode.

‘Nick, he says he has the Hong Kong number on his cell.’

Diminetz muttered something to the whippet, then looked at me for permission to get her moving.

‘Nick, all he wants is to get this over and done with. He will forget the whole thing if you will.’

I nodded at the whippet and watched her go over to Diminetz’s bedside cabinet. ‘He says this is not only bad for business, it’s very embarrassing. And he said—’

I watched her and I thought:
Shit, there’s no mobile.

I turned to dive into the hallway as the whippet spun back towards me with a pistol screaming whatever the Moldovan was for
You fucker!

The first round kicked off and she screamed and stood, arms at full stretch, firing rapid and uncontrolled shots. The TV took a round, then the mirror above it.

There were two more shots, one of which hit the radiator.

As soon as I reached the cover of the hallway, I checked behind me. Pressurized water was spraying across the room. By the time it reached the rug it had turned a deep shade of crimson. Diminetz had taken a round in the chest and he wasn’t fighting. His legs were still.

The whippet had stopped firing but she continued shrieking like a witch.

Then I heard Lena scream too.

I shoved the iPhone into my jacket pocket. The front door was being rammed hard enough from the corridor to part it from its frame but the wedge and safety latch were doing their jobs. They would keep the BG at bay for a while. I flung open the bathroom door and almost flew out of the window onto the roof of the first-floor veranda, taking time only to make sure my feet were lower than my head.

I slid off it, landing hard on the wooden deck of the terrace a couple of metres below me, closely followed by a shower of slate splinters. I lay there for a second, making sure nothing was broken, then scrambled up and stumbled into a run. I headed out into the darkness of the park with Lena still yelling in my pocket.

03.18 hrs

I stood in the Cosmos service alley, back in a world I’d thought I’d never inhabit again – hiding in the shadows, shivering in the damp and cold. For one reason or another, I seemed to have done that my whole life.

It still felt OK, it still felt comfortable – which was strange, because it wasn’t as if I needed to do this shit for a living any more. Anna and I weren’t short of cash – not enough for a yacht, but enough to get by on; enough to last quite a while if we were smart about it. After that, who knew? I wasn’t going to worry about it until I had to.

When I was younger, I always thought that having a big wad was all you needed. When I did get a couple of serious paydays, I hadn’t really known what to do with it. A motorbike, maybe some new trainers, was as far as it went for me. But with Anna and our son I needed a cleverer plan, and hanging about in the dark in places like this wasn’t part of it.