Smoke and Mirrors (12 page)

“‘The fuck’ is none of your business. Go away, Anna.” He closed the door on her firmly and went to find his clothes. The girl in his bed slept on. He let her until he was dressed and therefore less likely to jump her again. Then he sat on the edge of the bed to put on his sneakers, and watched her for a moment. Her face was beautiful in sleep, like a sculpture, only hinting at the vitality and humour and strength of will beneath. He wondered what she was dreaming of.

“Nell,” he said, lacing up his second shoe. “It’s time to wake up and grass up.”

Her eyes sprang open, and he had the fun of watching the expressions flit through them. Immediate panic. A melting softness as she remembered what they’d done. And then wariness mixed with confusion.

“What?” she said blankly, grabbing at the quilt to make sure she was decent. A bizarre behaviour, considering what he’d seen of her and done to her last night.

He said, “We’re going to Edinburgh so you can grass up my drug deal to the cops, remember?”

She dragged her hand through her tangled hair and nodded, frowning rather endearingly as she tried to make her sleepy brain work.

He stood up. “See you downstairs in fifteen minutes?”

Her fingers touched her forehead in a sarcastic salute. He knew an urge to kiss her. He resisted that, but he did let his hand touch her cheek in a quick caress that sent heat flooding into her face. Embarrassment or desire, there was no time to discover which.

He said, “You’re a sweet lover. I’m glad we’re going to do this again.”

Her eyes widened—defensive, defiant, because it was the morning after a one-night stand, and he knew instinctively she’d been here before. She’d been hurt that way before. “What makes you think that?” she said carelessly. Keeping the upper hand.

“You.” He winked. “You dreamed it, remember?”

And as he turned away from her and went to rally his troops, he realised he was looking forward to the repeat. Not just for the sex, but for
her
. Her company. Her sheer unexpectedness.

Rebound, he warned himself.

Chapter Nine

Nell reentered Gayfield Square police station almost exactly thirty hours after leaving it. She couldn’t think too much about all the things that had happened between, or she thought her head would explode. And yet as she walked up to the desk, images kept flashing in front of her eyes. Rodion’s anguished face at the café window. Hitting the ground under him as a sniper on a rooftop tried to kill her. A car bursting into flames and burning up the man in front of it. The fiery figure emerging from the flames in the house in Fife. Rodion going down under the punch of the trawler captain. Rodion standing semi-naked before her, tattoos gleaming. Rodion above her, making love to her with fire in his eyes.

“My name’s Nell Black,” she said to the policeman at the desk. Her voice sounded strange, almost like a recorded message. She pulled herself together. “I’d like to speak to Detective Sergeant Lamont, please.”

“Take a seat,” the policeman said laconically. “I’ll see if he’s available.”

Of course he was available with almost startling speed, appearing himself to whisk her into an interview room.

“Am I glad to see you,” he said, closing the door and waving her to a seat. “We thought the worst when we couldn’t find you. Are you all right? Can I get you a cup of tea?”

“I’m fine.”

His frowning gaze scanned her face as he sat opposite her at the table. “What happened?”

Liars give themselves away to those trained to look for the signs. Rodion had told her to stick to the truth. It was one of the few things he’d said to her on the journey to Edinburgh. He was distant, silent, so completely different from the passionate man who, only a few hours ago, had made such devastating love to her. There was no humour, no fun, no melting compliments murmured in that deep, velvet voice that turned her inside out. He’d dropped her at the top of Leith Walk without even getting out of the car. For some reason, she wanted to cry, even though she knew his mind had to be cool and calculating, preparing for however it was he planned to keep himself out of police custody and still extract the information he needed from Marenko. It was just that she’d never see him again, and a tiny sign of warmth from the best lover of her life would have been a nice touch.

Get over it.

At the last moment, after Boris and Ilya had grinned and saluted her, after Anna had given her a lopsided smile by way of farewell, and she’d finally closed the car door and turned away, he called after her, “Hey, Nell.”

She’d paused, glanced back over her shoulder. And for an instant, his blue eyes had blazed into hers, as warm as she could ever have wished.

“Sweet dreams,” he’d said.

Laughter that might as easily have been tears had caught at her throat, but she managed to shout, “Bastard!” as the car pulled past her. His hand had waved back at her out the open window, the tattooed fire winking on his wrist…

She drew in her breath, dragging herself back to the present. What happened? Lamont wanted to know. Bloody good question.

She said, “I saw Kolnikov in Leith Walk after I left the police station. We were standing beside my car in MacDonald Road, talking, and someone tried to shoot us. Two people, in fact. He—Kolnikov—stole a car and got us out of there.”

“Where did he take you?”

“I don’t know exactly,” she said honestly. On both journeys, her head had been so full of other stuff that she hadn’t been paying attention. She really was terrible at this. “Over the bridge. On the coast. Somewhere in Fife. He said I shouldn’t go home, that Gadarin, this Russian crime boss he’d pissed off, would find me. He brought me back this morning.”

“Why?”

She shrugged. “No reason not to. He’s wriggled out of whatever grouse they had against him—presumably to do with the burned warehouse—and now he has business to do with them.” She raised her eyes to Lamont’s face. “With Gadarin. And someone called McLintock.”

Rodion had given her the latter name during the journey over from Fife. He was, apparently, a hoodlum known to the police all over Scotland. A major local drug supplier based in Glasgow, who was always at least one step back from the dealers the police occasionally managed to take off the streets. It obviously meant something to Lamont, whose eyes began to shine in a very predatory manner.

He leaned across the table. “And you know this how?”

She smiled deprecatingly. “I’m a writer, Sergeant. I keep my head down, and I listen. He was on the phone a lot. There’s someone else going to be there. Kolnikov’s boss, I think. Another Russian called Marenko. I understand he’s some major badass, there to keep Gadarin and McLintock in line, because I don’t think they trust Kolnikov.”

Excitement blazed out of Lamont’s eyes. He shifted in his seat as if he couldn’t be still much longer. “And is this just a meeting between hoods, do you think? Or is there actually going to be an exchange of some kind?”

She looked him in the eye. “An exchange of money for heroin. I’ve seen the heroin.”

“With Kosar?”

“Kosar?”

“Kolnikov’s real name. He was taking the piss the other night. Did you see the heroin in his possession?”

She nodded. If he got out as planned, it wouldn’t matter. If he didn’t, he’d go to prison anyway. She shivered.

“Is there much?” Lamont asked.

“It’s a big parcel. Several kilos, I’d say.”

Lamont’s breath hissed out. It might have been pleasure. “And this exchange is happening in Edinburgh? Did you catch where?”

Nell nodded. “And when.”

****

The seedy manager of the even seedier Royal Hotel—which was, in fact, more of a hostel for the homeless, the penniless, and those with very few standards—greeted him with the news that the police had been here and searched his room. “I let them in,” he added.

Rodion shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. I presume you’re meant to phone them when I come back?”

“
If
you came back. They didn’t seem to think it was likely.”

“But you kept my room?”

“Aye, but—”

“I’ll pay double if you don’t see me until tomorrow.”

The man didn’t even blink. “Fair enough.”

Rodion made his way toward the narrow stairs.

The manager shouted after him, “Someone else was looking for you last night. Another Russian.”

Rodion lifted one hand in acknowledgment. He already knew about the Russian and wasn’t entirely surprised when he opened his door to find Marenko facing him from the one rickety chair, looking dangerous and loading a pistol with the ease and speed of long practice.

“Kosar,” Marenko drawled. “How kind of you to drop in at last.”

“You’re lucky it’s me and not the police, or your arse would be in a cell before lunch.”

“Where the fuck have you been?”

Rodion swung the large rucksack off his back and dropped it on the floor beside his upturned mattress. “Getting the goods. You could have cleaned up while you were waiting.”

The room was totally trashed. What was left of his belongings were strewn on the floor, the bed taken apart. The police might have left it like that, or Gadarin. Or Marenko might have made his own search. Rodion didn’t much care.

Marenko, however, narrowed his baby-blue eyes at the suggestion. Rodion had known he would. He was thirty years old, looked ten years younger and angelic to boot with his curly golden locks and baby face.

Perhaps that was why he stood so much on his dignity. Certainly he didn’t care to have his important position in the Bear’s organization belittled. He knew a thousand different ways to kill, could do it as cleanly or as messily as was required. He didn’t even get off on it. In a way, Rodion could have understood that more. He just took life, damaged life, for a nice fat salary and an awesome reputation. If Marenko liked anything, it was seeing fear in people’s eyes. Rodion had learned early in their acquaintance to show none. So Marenko didn’t like him. Deliberately, Rodion treated him like the Bear’s maid, and, at the moment, at least, Marenko had to put up with it because of Rodion’s value to the organization.

If that ever changed, of course, Rodion could look forward to a long and very messy death. If Rodion didn’t send the enforcer to a much quicker one first.

Marenko’s eyes flashed venom at him. “You can’t clean up a shit hole like this. What the fuck are you staying here for?”

“To meet the shit,” Rodion said in apparent surprise.

Marenko’s hand gripped the pistol as if it were Rodion’s throat. “One day, I’m going to put a bullet in that smart mouth of yours.”

Rodion looked him in the eye. “Especially the stupid shit.”

“Aren’t
you
the stupid shit who pissed Gadarin off?” Marenko retorted. “To the extent that’s forced me to come to this piddling little country, just to save your ass?”

“I got us two deals,” Rodion pointed out. “For little more than the price of one. And you’re here to save the Bear’s business, not my highly expendable ass.”

Marenko’s eyes narrowed. “
Did
you burn the last shipment?”

Rodion was the organization’s incendiary expert, among other roles. When things went on fire, it generally played to the Bear’s advantage, and Rodion was rarely far away.

He shrugged. “No, but it did us no harm. We’ve got a surplus, and Gadarin needs to keep his market going. We make more money and are seen to bail Gadarin out. He’s not important in the British market. McLintock is. He’s got the punters, and his network stretches right over Scotland, with connections in London too. He just needs a reliable supplier. We can use that to expand, bring the stuff in through Scotland, and supply the lucrative London market.”

It was a sound plan, and Marenko’s reluctant nod acknowledged it. “There’ll be backlash in Russia if we take Gadarin out.”

“Maybe.” Rodion yanked the mattress down onto the bed and sat on it. “Nothing you can’t deal with, though, providing there’s good reason.”

“And will there be good reason?”

“That’s why I sent for you,” Rodion said provokingly. “Gadarin tried to kill me already. I’ve smoothed his feathers, so a show of force and the Bear’s faith in me may be enough. If it isn’t and he tries to fuck us over, you can do what you do best.”

Marenko’s face told Rodion he was looking quite hard for the insult, but, finding none, for once, he turned his attention to practicalities.

“So where are the goods?”

Rodion kicked the rucksack at his feet. The assassin’s jaw dropped. “You walked through the street with it in your backpack?”

“Sure.”

“Fucking insane moron,” Marenko muttered. “Where’s the meeting to be? Did Gadarin choose it?”

“Oh yes.” Rodion smiled faintly. “In the basement car park of a building due for demolition. The deal is, all cars are left outside.”

Marenko frowned with annoyance. He liked to swan into hoods’ conventions in an expensive car and swan out again the same way without using his legs, unless it was to turn from one kill to the next. “Why, for fuck’s sake?”

“Presumably so there’s nothing for me to set on fire.”

Marenko’s curiously empty gaze fixed on him. “Are we being set up? We need to check the building.”

“My guys are doing it now.”

“And if Gadarin’s there already?”

“He won’t see them.” Rodion’s lips stretched without humour. “And if he does, he’ll kill them, and you have the perfect excuse to take Gadarin out.”

****

Lamont held open the front door of the police station for her, then followed and stood for a moment looking across the square. A watery sun had managed to poke its way through the clouds at last. It might even be a nice day.

Nell felt numb. She had one more thing to do, and then she could just pretend none of this had ever happened. That she’d never met Rodion, never got involved, never slept with him…
Fuck, did I really do that?
That the dreams and the auras meant nothing. That a man couldn’t really cause things to spontaneously combust or talk to someone through fire.

She shivered. His face, half-smiling, danced behind her eyes, and she blinked it away.
No, please, no.

“I can get a patrol car to drive you home,” Lamont said with unexpected anxiety. “There was no sign of—interference—when we checked your flat before, but just to be on the safe side—”

“It’s all right. I’m not going home just yet. But thanks.”

He thrust a card into her hand. “That’s my direct line and my mobile. If there’s anything at all…”

She nodded and pocketed the card. It was on the tip of her tongue to ask him to call her when it was all over. How else would she know if Rodion and the others were safe? She’d never know what happened to the children, what any of them did with the rest of their lives.

And that was just as it should be.

She glanced up at Lamont. “Thanks,” she said instead and walked away.

****

It took local knowledge to have come up with a venue like this. A tall, condemned building awaiting demolition, standing in a bleak wasteland protected from prying eyes by high, enclosing walls. And an underground concrete car park which even the most determined arsonist couldn’t set on fire. It could have been any city in the world: London, New York, Moscow… But it was Edinburgh, and McLintock had come up with it.

Rodion had come up with the daylight timing and the disguising hard hats. Then no one would notice the men parking in the wasteland or “inspecting” the building itself. Gadarin had bought it because there were fewer opportunities for a double cross in the daylight. Rodion didn’t let that fool him. He was depending on Gadarin doing the double-crossing.

Rodion hummed an old lullaby to himself as he slouched across the wasteland, shoved chewing gum in his mouth, and dropped the paper on the uneven ground. He kept into the shadows of the right-hand wall, counting the cars. They’d come early to check for booby traps. He’d have smiled at that if he hadn’t been so sure of being watched. Even Marenko hadn’t figure out yet that he didn’t need bombs or incendiary devices. The Bear, so far as Rodion knew, kept that piece of information strictly to himself, since if word got out, Rodion would be far too much in demand. Other organizations, even people within the Bear’s own inner circle, might think it worth the risk of taking him on for such an asset.