‘What about your friends at the Israeli Secret Service? Do they have an opinion?’
Her face betrayed no emotion.
‘Funny, they showed quite an interest this morning.’
She let out a surprised breath and her body tensed beneath me. I smiled. ‘Your sidekick has quite a crush on you, did you know? The other guys hanging around were regular police officers. Judging by their sour expressions, they don’t care for the security services pulling rank.’ As soon as the words exited my mouth, I realised I’d said too much. For reasons unknown I’d wanted to impress her, to let her see that I was worthy. Vanity, Reuben had often reminded me, was a capital offence. ‘How is the boy?’ I said, changing tack.
She fixed me with hard eyes. ‘Safe from you.’
In spite of every effort to curb a reaction, a pulse above my left eyelid quivered. Like a shark scenting blood in the water, she spotted my weakness.
‘Why didn’t you kill him?’
I had no answer. If I wasn’t careful she would lead me to a place I’d no desire to visit. It was her turn to smile.
‘Your failure reveals worrying inconsistency. It’s as if you give a damn.’
I swallowed hard. She wasn’t finished. ‘I wonder what the hell that’s all about,’ she said, her turn to goad. ‘Care to share?’ I did my best to retain a blank expression. Her lips curved into a superior smile. She was onto me. I stepped back. ‘You’re free to go,’ I said. She didn’t move an inch. I had the impression of her staring right into my soul. I wanted to break her hold on me. Her gaze dropped, eyes fixed on a point beyond my shoulder. I turned minutely. Next, her hand thudded into my chest and she was gone.
I bent down to see if she’d taken the briefcase. It wasn’t there. She’d performed a classic disappearing trick. Like I said, she was smart.
Conscious she’d call for reinforcements, I took a fast, circuitous route. Whether she believed me or not was incidental. We both knew what we were dealing with. We both knew what we wanted. Whether or not she would play on my team, I’d no idea.
A creature of shadows, I liked the dark: my milieu. But that night I wasn’t paying enough attention. The memory of the MI5 girl’s laugh, her penetrating stare, a blizzard of green, had sidetracked me. Quite suddenly, I found myself in a shabby lane, a cut-through between two rows of houses within spitting distance of Earls Court, reminding me of the many hutong you find in the Forbidden City in China – without the bikes and rickshaws. Lights from neighbouring streets cast a sickly glare through the gloom. I could hardly see but I could imagine the shattered walls that flanked the alley, the corrugated iron and outbuildings in varying states of disrepair. Weeds grew in knots between the cobbled stones beneath my feet. I didn’t hear another, no telltale breath, no loud footfall, but I recognised that I had company. Too late, I turned.
The guy exploded into action, raining blows, several cracking my jaw and head. I darted, lunged, parried. Bone connected. Blood spattered. Mostly mine. My adversary was bigger than me in every respect, a wall of muscle, a human Pit Bull. Grabbing me by one ear, he yanked me close with one hand, by the throat with the other. He had a bad case of halitosis; his breath reeked of garlic and Guinness.
‘Where is it, you fucker?’
‘Where’s what?’
‘The fucking hard drive.’
We were eyeball to eyeball. Blood streamed from my head. Shot through with pain, I wasn’t so far gone that I didn’t notice his strong Belfast accent.
‘You’ve got the wrong guy,’ I moaned through bloodied teeth.
Predictably he released his hold on my throat so he could mess me up some more. I arched, thrust my body back, felt my ear tear, but I was free. Enraged, he came in again at close range, fists, head and feet. Whoever he was, this clown meant business.
Under this level of fire thought vanished like the mist swirling around us. Fortunately I had good instincts and my instinct was to draw him back through a terrain of empty cans, litter and used needles towards a derelict building. He sensed my game and changed tempo. The pressure increased. I mostly absorbed the pain, landing the odd blow without doing him any serious damage. Acting the vanquished, I drew him close. Close enough to…
The length of wire flashed quicksilver against the dark and twisted round his neck with the speed of a cobra strike. In two steps I was behind him, hauling back, putting my full weight into hanging on, the struggling man twisting and turning and grunting, shoes sliding in the dirt. His fingers scrabbled to loosen the wire before it became embedded. I hauled some more. A fine spray of blood released and cascaded into the night. He fell back heavily, knocking the air out of my lungs as I collapsed beneath him. ‘Think like him and never stop thinking like him until he is dead’ Reuben had taught me. Men can do extraordinary things even when dying. I didn’t doubt that if I let go my assailant would produce a knife and make one last attempt to kill me. I clung on with grim determination until the spray became a pumping torrent of plasma and his heels drummed on the rough surface. My arms and shoulders juddering with strain, I gave one final wrench and it was over. A noise, like water gurgling down a plughole, rasped, rattled and hissed into the night.
I slid out from beneath him and dragged him by his feet into the remains of an empty building partially boarded up and smelling of piss. Rifling through his clothing revealed a wallet with five hundred pounds in sterling, no credit cards, no identification. He also carried a gun. Difficult to tell what it was in the stuttering light, but it felt like a Colt. I briefly wondered why he hadn’t used it, and pocketed both.
To conceal the bloodstains on my coat, I took it off, turned it inside out and put it back on. Retrieving the wire, I wiped it on the dead man’s trousers, returned it to my pocket, and made my way back to Reuben’s.
This time I used a conventional form of entry: I rang Reuben’s doorbell. He let me in, invited me through to the sitting room.
‘You look like hell.’
I shrugged off my coat. ‘This needs to be disappeared.’
He took it from me without a word and told me to take a seat. ‘I will get something for the cuts and bruises.’
A fire blazed in the grate, throwing shadows on the walls. I realised how cold I was and stood and warmed myself. Reuben was halfway down a bottle of red wine. There were three glasses, one empty, one his, one used.
Reuben returned with a medical kit and expertly cleaned me up. It stung.
‘Who did this?’ he said.
Had it not been for my assailant’s mean and precise line of questioning, I might have thought I was the victim of a stranger attack. If you walk in those sorts of places you’re likely to meet trouble. As it was, had to be someone with more than a passing interest in Wilding although I didn’t believe it was anyone in an official capacity. Not their style. As for the accent, well, who knew? Plenty of out of work thugs from that part of the world. I wondered whom he worked for.
‘A guy with no name built like a banned breed of canine.’ I was spent and dejected. My head and ear throbbed. I flinched as Reuben traced my face with his thick fingers for fractures.
‘You’re fine,’ he said.
I grunted thanks. I felt anything but fine and gladly accepted his offer of a drink, a Grand Vin and premier cru of a fine vintage from Bordeaux. He asked nothing more of me. He knew that I’d speak when ready. We sat in awkward silence for some minutes until I chose to deliver edited highlights. I did not tell him about my audience with a Russian crime lord and his theory that the motive for Wilding’s murder was revenge. I did not tell him about my personal run-in