The Nothing Job (16 page)

Having run to the buggy at the back of the restaurant, they had lost visual with the two cars and even when they bounced on to the track along the bottom of the gorge, they still could not see Scartarelli's transport. Henry assumed they had met the ERU by now – so it was a huge reality check when, as they skittered around a rock-strewn corner, they came face to face with Scartarelli's Range Rover bearing down on them like a charging bull.

Obviously they
had
met with the ERU but had managed to do a U-turn and evade capture and were now tearing away in the opposite direction. It looked as though the Nissan and its occupants hadn't been quite so lucky.

An expletive, coupled by a blasphemy, came out of Henry's mouth. There was going to be a head-on crash.

The Range Rover was almost on top of them – and if there was a collision, there would be only one winner. And it wouldn't be the buggy. Henry and Georgia would be crushed and mangled and the Rover would clamber over the wreckage.

Georgia screamed.

An impact was inevitable.

She wrested the steering wheel down to her right and the light buggy jumped off the track out of the way of the big 4WD at the last possible moment. However, the trackside wasn't an even, tarmacked hard shoulder. It rose steeply and immediately. The buggy ran up it, but flipped over and suddenly Henry and Georgia were in the drum of a washing machine as it rolled twice, both of them screaming, then incredibly landed – crash/bounce – on all four wheels, the engine still running.

They were covered in dust.

For a second, Henry was disorientated, then his equilibrium came straight back. He was astonished to find that not only had they flipped three times, but they were back on the main track and facing the direction taken by the Range Rover, miraculously undamaged.

He and Georgia exchanged looks. They knew how lucky they'd been.

Her brown face had gone ashen, but though shaken, she was unhurt and determined.

‘You OK?' he asked.

She nodded, said nothing, struggled with the gear lever, then they were moving in pursuit of the Range Rover, a bit like a whippet chasing a tiger.

Henry looked over his shoulder. ‘No signs of reinforcements.'

‘The Nissan's probably blocked the track.'

‘Will the Range Rover have to go back up to the restaurant?'

‘No – the road splits below it. He can get away by heading further up the gorge. There are many tracks crossing the Akamas which a car like that could use,' she shouted over the din of the two-stroke as she floored the gas pedal and went for it with grim determination.

When they reached the split in the road below the Last Castle, the rising dust along the right fork indicated the route the Range Rover had taken – powered straight on, going deeper into the gorge.

‘I know these trails well,' Georgia went on, not hesitating. ‘He could easily lose us if he gets too far ahead, but his options are limited in that basically there's only two ways to go, left or right. Going left he could get across to Polis, but I guess he'll be going right towards Pafos. It's easier going, but I won't assume anything.'

They reached another split in the track – left, right? – but the rising dust indicated right. She swerved in that direction without stopping.

She stuck doggedly to the trail of low dust, the springy buggy bouncing with delight over the boulders and rocks, skidding through corners, and judging by the height of the dust trail they followed, they were closing in on the Range Rover. Tantalizingly, though, it remained out of sight.

During the chase Georgia managed to pass Henry her mobile phone and shouted for him to call Tekke.

He looked at the display and saw it was set in her native language. ‘It's all Greek to me,' he shouted in her ear, eliciting a laugh from her.

However, the buttons on most phones throughout the world do the same thing and Henry managed to connect to Tekke with the phone clamped tightly to his ear to eliminate as much of the sound of the buggy's screaming engine as possible.

‘Where the hell are you?' Tekke demanded urgently.

Henry looked at Georgia. ‘Wants to know where we are,' he yelled.

‘Heading in the general direction of the E709 – that's the road leading over to Prodromi,' she shouted grimly, concentrating on driving and not killing them.

Henry relayed that to Tekke, who made some sort of response, but he could not tell what. Then the phone went dead and he looked crossly at it. No signal bars showed.

The buggy careened around the next corner where the track narrowed and rose steeply for fifty metres before opening on to a barren plateau of rocks and harsh shrubs. But slewed across the track, barring any further progress, was the black Range Rover. Scartarelli and his companion stood ready to confront their pursuers.

Scartarelli's arms were folded across his chest. His henchman had a gun in his right hand. He was crouched in a marksman's stance, left hand supporting the gun in his right. At the moment the buggy slapped on to the flat, his hands rose and he fired.

Henry heard the crack of the shot. He jerked instinctively to his left and felt the disturbance of air as the bullet whooshed past his face, narrowly missing him and passing between the two detectives, out of the back of the buggy.

Henry cowered as best he could, there being no protection afforded by the open-fronted buggy. Georgia fought for control, won, and once more rammed her foot on the accelerator, changed down a gear and aimed the buggy at the two men.

The man with the gun dropped into a crouching combat stance.

Georgia twisted the wheel and zigzagged towards him, making aiming tougher and tougher for him – but not stopping him loosing off two more shots. Henry saw the muzzle flash, heard the bangs. The bullets went somewhere, but not into Henry or Georgia.

She continued to bear down on the men until they realized she was not going to stop, meant business and they had better move fast. At the last moment they parted like synchronized swimmers, diving away either side, their faces a picture of disbelief and horror.

Georgia slammed the brakes on hard. The buggy skidded and slithered on the gravel, and angled to a halt near the Range Rover. As it stopped, she smacked the quick-release catch of her seat belt and leapt out of the bucket seat, smoothly drawing her own weapon from her handbag as she rolled over. It was as though it was a move she practised in training: the lady draw, perhaps.

As she jumped right, Henry went left, in the direction Scartarelli had scrambled. The man himself had rolled into the dirt and was rising to his feet, frantically trying to draw a weapon from his leather jacket. At least that's the impression Henry got.

Henry dived for him at the same moment as he heard the discharge of a gun from the other side of the buggy. But with no time to check this out –
Scartarelli was pulling out a pistol
– Henry had to move decisively.

He threw himself at Scartarelli, smashing his right hand away, then following this up with a shoulder barge into the solar plexus, driving himself hard and forcing all the air out of the man's lungs with a noise like a deflating football.

The gun windmilled out of his fingers.

Henry, now in his own world of determination, fixated on keeping himself alive whilst at the same time flattening and overpowering his opponent, continued to force him over. He landed squarely across him, then rose up like a demon and crashed his right elbow into Scartarelli's cheekbone. He followed this up with a hammer-like blow to the temple with a fist, sending all the fight out of him.

Henry was back on his feet in an instant, trying to see what had happened to Georgia – but Scartarelli, dazed and battered as he might have been, launched himself for the discarded gun. Henry also went for it, seeing it was a snub-nosed, six-shot revolver of some type, not a pistol as he'd first thought. He reached it first, kicking it away, then scooping it up and pointing it unerringly. Scartarelli sat up groggily, but Henry decided to take no chances. He flat-footed him in the chest, sending him sprawling and hearing a satisfactory clunk as his head connected with a rock.

Only then could he find out what was happening on the other side of the buggy.

Henry smiled. Georgia was dragging the henchman across the ground by his collar. A flower of bright-red blood blossomed around the man's left shoulder where she had shot him. She threw him down and returned Henry's winning smile before flicking a few strands of hair away from her flawed, but beautiful face, and blowing out her red cheeks.

A
s Henry Christie had always suspected, it was very unlikely that the wheels of justice would spin quickly in the case of Paulo Scartarelli. Not because it was Cypriot justice. It would not have mattered where in the world Scartarelli had been detained, there was no way he would be extradited from anywhere, no matter how willing the authorities, within the promised two days. It just didn't happen – such was life – but he was surprised that it took only four weeks, in itself a miracle. The problem, as ever, was defence lawyers and Scartarelli wasn't going to be taken to the UK without a legal battle of some sort.

And just to draw out the process, he hired and fired a series of quite capable lawyers until a high court judge said enough was enough. Twenty-eight days after his arrest, Scartarelli was ready to be handed over to the British authorities – Henry Christie, in other words.

Since the arrest in the Akamas, Henry had been involved in shuttling back and forth to Cyprus because there was no way he would have been allowed to remain on the island for that length of time, despite pleas that fell on deaf ears. By the time Scartarelli was ready for collection, Henry was heartily peed off with travelling backwards and forwards on cramped planes. He was glad, in some ways, that the episode was drawing to a close.

And as his final journey to Cyprus ended and he and Bill Robbins clambered down the steps of the easyJet Boeing 737, hopping on to the bendy bus to take them to the terminal building at Pafos, Henry did have one big regret that this was all soon going to be over.

It was like being sardined into a packed Tube train, swaying and bumping into other people as the bus lurched across the tarmac on its short run.

‘You must be well used to this,' Bill Robbins said.

‘Yeah – and pissed off with it all.'

‘Yeah, right,' said Bill sarcastically. He had not been back to Cyprus since the first visit. ‘I really hate coming to nice, hot countries,' he mocked.

‘Just eff off, Bill,' Henry said quietly. It had been another tiring journey, beset by unexplained delays, crap food, shrieking kids and simmering air rage inside him.

Bill pulled his face and shut up. ‘Whatever,' he did manage to say.

For once, Henry's bag was one of the first to come along the conveyor belt and he left Bill fuming because his was nowhere to be seen.

‘See you out front,' Henry said.

He passed through customs and into the arrivals hall and the reason why Henry was filled with such mixed emotions was standing there waiting for him.

DS Georgia Papakostas.

Henry literally felt himself go weak at the knees and they approached each other and kissed formally on the cheek.

‘Where's Bill?'

Henry jerked his head backwards. ‘Still waiting.' He looked at her, mesmerized, unbelievably ecstatic to see her again even though it had been only a week since he last visited the island. She smiled widely, her eyes playing over his face; she, too, was overjoyed to see him.

‘Where's Tekke?'

‘At the police station in Pafos. We'll meet him there.'

Bill appeared through the door of the baggage hall, lugging his suitcase behind him, a big smile on his face at seeing Georgia. After an effusive greeting they were taken out to the Terrano and Georgia drove them from the airport.

‘What's the plan this time?' Henry said, rubbing his hands together.

‘I've booked you into a hotel in Pafos – separate rooms.' She eyed Henry. ‘Tonight we'll chill. Tomorrow is paperwork day, then the day after he's all yours to take back – and that's the last we'll see of you,' she concluded wistfully. ‘But,' she went on brightly, ‘I do have some news of my own, kind of mixed.'

Henry waited.

‘Promotion – detective inspector.'

‘Oh, well done,' he said genuinely.

‘Yeah, brill,' Bill perked from the rear.

‘What's the mixed bit?'

‘Tekke is being moved and I'm taking his place. He's being posted to Protaris on the other side of the island.' She gave Henry a short smile that said an awful lot.

Henry and Bill didn't see Georgia or Tekke that evening. They went out for a meal in Kato Pafos, down at the harbour. Henry was eager to see the spot where Haram had been murdered and the Pelican, though they didn't dine there. However, they ate and drank too much as usual, then hit the sack. Both were exhausted from the long flight and the delay.

As soon as Henry's head hit the pillow, it was lights out.

The morning after, a uniformed cop picked them up after breakfast and took them to the main police station in Pafos where they met a strained-looking Georgia and an extremely grumpy Tekke who spent the time communicating with them in monosyllables. They were clearly not a happy couple, but Henry tried to ignore it as much as possible and get on with what they were there to do – complete the file-checking with the Cypriot lawyer who was representing the police.

Scartarelli's fate had been sealed at a hearing two days earlier and this was the final run-through of the extradition papers. It was certain his lawyer would be engaged in the same activity and if anything was found out of place, it had to be spotted and dealt with.

Eight hours after starting, the task was complete.

Henry, Bill, Georgia and Tekke sat back and watched the lawyer leave. Then there was a collective sigh of relief.