by Andy Maslen
“What?” Clearly not happy and Gabriel knew she’d want to return to the subject of his accident again. Not now, though.
“That room I was in. I shared it with this young pilot. According to him, he was a real flying ace. Old school. He told me something that I want to investigate.”
“What was it?”
“Just something to do with his last flight. I can’t tell you more, I’m sorry. But I need some help with some background. In your firm, is there someone who could dig up a bit of background on a pharmaceuticals company for me?”
“We’re headhunters, of course there is. I’ve got a couple of interns champing at the bit for something meaningful to do. What do you need?”
“Well, anything really. They’re called Dreyer Pharma. Have you heard of them?”
“Who hasn’t? They were a startup after a few senior execs jumped ship from one of the big boys five years ago. Specialising in a new technology called pharmaco-neurostimulation.”
“Viagra for the brain.”
Annie flicked her head round to look at him. “What was that?”
“Nothing. But these drugs they make, they give you sharper mental abilities, that sort of thing?”
“Exactly. And guess which executive search firm found them their new chief exec?”
“Hmm, let me think about that for a nanosecond. Lainey Evencroft?”
“Not just us, darling. Me! I found him for them after the launch partners cashed out and went off to buy yachts.”
“So you can help me out then?”
“What do you want? A full briefing, financials, key personnel, location, marketing, drug pipeline?”
Gabriel blinked. “You can get all that?”
“I’ll have one of the Jennifers do it.”
“The Jennifers?”
“That’s what we call them. Eager beavers just down from uni with a burning desire to work in the city, and enough of Mummy and Daddy’s cash propping up their rent not to have to worry about a salary.”
“Well, in that case, yes please. And Annie?”
“What?”
“Thanks.”
“It’s nothing. They’d only be photocopying CVs otherwise.”
“No. I mean, you know, for fetching me from Audley Grange and getting me there in the first place.”
“Don’t be a dick. Who else was going to come and get you? Plus it wasn’t me who got you there.”
“No?” Gabriel realised he’d not asked anyone at the hospital what had happened in the aftermath of his accident. Don Webster had been vague on the details. “Who did then?”
“Oh, it was weird. I rode in the back of the ambulance with you and they took you to St Thomas’ Hospital. The A&E was rammed with people, but they whisked you straight through on that trolley thing. I came with you as far as I could, but they made me wait when they X-rayed you. Then they took you from there into surgery. While you were there, this man just appeared. Tall, grey hair, big nose.”
“That was my old CO, Don Webster.”
“Yes, he said he knew you. He went to talk to the doctor in charge and then, when you came out of the operating theatre all patched up, he told me they were moving you to Audley Grange. He told me to bring you a change of clothes and your shaving kit.”
“Did he say how he knew I was there?”
“He said they had an arrangement with the NHS. If any ex-serviceman comes in, they get a call, or a text or something.”
“And how long did it take before he appeared? In A&E, I mean?”
“I don’t know, about twenty minutes, something like that. Why?”
“It just seems a little quick. I mean, the Army’s great at reacting fast in combat, but the bureaucracy side of things, well, let’s just say I’ve seen snails move faster.”
“I think they just look after their own. It’s all that Help for Heroes stuff isn’t it? If they left someone in a plain old NHS hospital, the media would have a field day. ‘Our brave boy left to sleep. In a corridor!’”
“Maybe.” Gabriel looked out of the window. His brain was turning slower than normal, probably the effect of the painkillers. They were making him a bit fuzzy like a vinyl album when there’s dust on the needle.
Outside Annie’s air-conditioned Audi TT, it looked hot. The fields were full of ripening cereal crops. He rested his forehead against the cool glass. Closed his eyes. Something was going on inside Dreyer Pharma. He could feel it. He needed to get close. Inside, preferably.
“Shit!” Annie said, swerving half into the hard shoulder. “Hey, you cock-bollocks, get off your fucking phone! Wanker!”
Gabriel marveled once again at Annie’s rich and inventive way with Anglo-Saxon. Her cursing sounded all the more transgressive for being uttered in her finishing school accent. Ahead of them, a gleaming black BMW was signalling left to leave the A34 at the next junction. The driver, visible through the rear window, was gesticulating. Not an obscene gesture, just waving his hand around.
“What happened?”
“That fuckwit was on the phone, I could tell as he drew level. Hands-free, little law-abiding twat, but just gassing away. Then he cut me up. Tosser!”
“That’s what I love about you, Annie. That sweet ladylike manner of yours.”
“You didn’t seem to mind my rough talk an hour ago, did you?” she said, winking at him without looking away from the road.
“Mind it? Why do you think I like you so much? You’re like one of the boys.”
“Ooh, you cheeky fucker.” She punched him hard on the thigh. “What does that make you then? A little bit bi-curious, if you were doing it with one of the boys?”
“Me? Yeah, I’m all over the place, hadn’t you heard? Maybe that’s the real reason they wanted me in Audley Grange.”
Annie was silent. No riposte or further sweary insults. Gabriel looked over. She was crying. Blinking the tears away and letting them roll down her face.
“Hey, what’s up? Why the waterworks? I’m fine, really I am.” Gabriel reached across and gave Annie’s thigh a gentle squeeze.
“You could have been killed. I heard the bang from inside the gallery. Now all you do is joke about it. Maybe you do need to talk to someone. You know, someone professional.”
Gabriel thought about Don Webster. His personal card. He turned back to Annie, brushed the tear trickling down her left cheek away with the pad of his thumb.
“I think you might be right. I’ll make a call first thing in the morning.”
Chapter 14
Sprawled in the rust-red Estonian dirt, Sarah pressed her hand to her cheek, which was flushing scarlet as blood rushed to the site of the insult. Her eyes were shining, but she was holding the tears back. Impressive, again.
“Fuck you,” was all she said. Then she got to her feet and stalked back to the truck.
Five minutes had gone by, and there was still no sign of Elsbeta. Perhaps the Bryant woman’s confidence in her daughter’s athletic ability was well founded. That would be a problem. A huge problem. They had people they could call on, but they’d still have to get to the Bryant girl before she found a phone or a lift or, God forbid, the police. Maybe they should cut and run. They could keep Bryant on the hook with dead hostages just as much as with live ones. At least until he asked to speak to his wife or daughter. He took out his knife and held it into one of the shafts of lights spearing down through the bright-green canopy. Sunlight danced along its edge and he sighed. He hated killing women. But then, a shout. It was Elsbeta.
“Kasym, a little help?”
He slammed the truck doors closed and threw the latch across, then climbed the gate and set off through the narrow slot Elsbeta had smashed into the stiff stalks of barley. He only needed to jog about twenty metres before he came face to face with Elsbeta. She was holding Chloe Bryant in a very effective armlock with one hand, but the girl was struggling to get free. He walked up to them and delivered another open-handed blow. The girl gasped and tears spurted from her eyes. He shoved his
face into hers, so close he could smell her sweat.
“I was just about to send your mother to her ancestors before coming after you. We would have put you down a well or fed you to the dogs and carried on with our struggle regardless. Pull a stunt like that again and I will. Understand?” He barked the last word so loudly she flinched, and raised her free hand to wipe his spittle of her cheek.
“Yes,” she said, so quietly he could barely hear her.
Kasym turned to Elsbeta. “Get her back in the truck, I think it’s time to press on.”
Elsbeta practically threw Chloe Bryant up and into the back of the truck and within a minute, they were back on the motorway.
After another couple of hours, Kasym pulled off and took a narrow single-lane road, little more than a track, really. The truck bumbled and jounced along the broken tarmac. He let the cracked, black plastic steering wheel slip and slide through his fingers, keeping the wheels facing broadly in the right direction and letting the potholes, alternating to left and right, do the rest. They were full of water from recent rains and reflected the sky like dozens of earthbound mirrors until the truck’s heavy wheels shattered them and sent sprays of water, now clouded with red mud, into the air.
He noticed Elsbeta had clenched her jaw.
“These shit Estonian roads’ll have your fillings out,” he said. Then laughed. “Whereas, of course, our fine Chechen roads are like driving on glass, no?”
She allowed a tight-lipped smile at that one. A victory. Small, but a victory, nonetheless. Then she pointed through the windscreen, over to the right.
“Over there,” she said. ‘Look.”
He half-stood, raising himself off his seat far enough to see over the hawthorn hedge on Elsbeta’s side while keeping his right heel braced on the floor to maintain pressure on the accelerator pedal.
“I see it.”
“It” was a curious monument. A pile of ten or twelve wrecked cars, stacked floorpan-to-roof as if by a monstrous toddler. Kasym turned a corner and slowed the truck to a stop at a pair of massive steel gates, the tops of the metal uprights split into vicious tridents, burred with jagged barbs of steel along their edges. Beyond the gates was a sprawling ten-acre plot, the front of which was occupied by a scrapyard. The yard had been abandoned by the previous owner some years back and acquired for a pittance by Kasym from the man’s children. With its sprawl of derelict land beyond the cluster of buildings in the centre, and its warren of narrow walkways and dead ends piled high with the burnt, stripped and mangled vehicles, it had served him well as a part-time armoury, forward operating base and occasional body dump. Heavy plant was scattered across the facility, including a compactor, an industrial incinerator, a couple of cranes and a backhoe.
Kasym got out and hooked a bunch of keys on a length of bright silvery chain from his trouser pocket. The grinding squeak as he turn the old-fashioned key was answered by a skittering noise made by thirty-two claws scrabbling for grip on the uneven surface of the yard floor. Two huge dogs hurtled down a canyon of more stacked cars towards the gates, their lips drawn back from their teeth, but emitting no sound at all. They were black and brown with white throats and thick, fluffy coats, like huskies.
When they saw who was attempting to break into their territory, they calmed down. The sharp ridges of stiff hair along their necks and spines flattened. Their ears flopped over. Their lips descended to cover their armoury of incisors, canines and carnassial teeth. Skidding to a stop just inches from the gate, they waited, both heads cocked to the left, as Kasym finished with the lock and pushed the gates round until he could sink long steel bolts into holes drilled in the concrete.
“Away, dogs,” he said, loudly, but not roughly, pointing at a hut at the far end of the canyon. They turned immediately and padded back the way they had come, tails wagging, perfectly in step.
Then he turned and waved Elsbeta to drive in. She had taken his seat while he was unlocking the gate. Once the truck was completely inside the boundary of the yard, Kasym relocked the gates and walked to the back of the truck, just as Elsbeta killed the engine. The motor’s timing was off and it continued to fire sporadically for another fifteen or twenty seconds, jolting and coughing, as Kasym pulled the rear doors open and released the women from the back of the truck. Elsbeta jumped down from the cab and was taking no chances this time. She stood, legs apart, some distance back, Beretta drawn and hanging loosely in her right hand. The silence was only interrupted by the odd bird singing and a distant, mournful train klaxon.
Sarah and Chloe Bryant rolled their hips round in circles, stretched and yawned, trying to get their circulation working properly again. He watched them as they surveyed their surroundings. It was not a pretty sight. Three prefabricated cabins, little more than a collection of reinforced and connected boxes, huddled together at one end of the yard. The steel sides, measuring thirty feet by ten, were painted in flat blues and reds, and could never have been attractive, even when new and clean. Now, they were scabbed with black, yellow and brown lichen that gave the painted surface a diseased look. A long, green stain had spread down one wall where a gutter joint had given way, and the windows, long uncleaned, had taken on a greyish cast. The steel bars across the frames removed even the slightest idea of windows as a building’s eyes.
“Welcome to your new quarters,” Kasym said. “More spacious than the last place and considerably harder to escape from.” He looked at Chloe as he said this, but she avoided meeting his gaze. “Let me give you the guided tour. Again.” Once they were all inside the central box, he locked the door, a steel-reinforced slab of softwood, behind him. “Follow me.”
Elsbeta prodded Chloe hard in the back with the muzzle of the Beretta.
“No more Miss Nice Guy, eh?” Chloe said, scowling.
Kasym couldn’t help but admire the girl, although he felt sure what he had planned would put an end to any lingering friendliness from the mother.
“You ladies have your accommodation through there,” he said, pointing to an open door at the end of the dimly lit cabin.
All four of them stood in the next box along the chain. There was a double bed, a modern construction of grey-painted metal frame, and a second, single, bed pushed against a wall. That still left space for a couple of cardboard hanging wardrobes with the words “Global Move Tartu” stencilled in black on their doors.
“There is a kitchen, a living room, even a laundry room. We’ll bring you some books. If you're good,” Kasym said. “We’ll leave you to get yourselves settled in. I’ll come back with your bags in a moment. One last thing. If you’re wondering about another escape attempt, please stand by the window there and look into the yard.”
Elsbeta had disappeared while he was speaking. A few moments later they saw her striding across the yard to a barn in the far corner. When she re-emerged, she was leading the two dogs on rope leashes. One was pulling; Elsbeta dealt it a sharp smack across the snout and shouted something that caused the big animal to stop dead, flatten its ears and tuck its tail out of sight between its legs. Always the alpha bitch, our Elsbeta. Best do what she says or take what’s coming to you.
She bent to the dogs’ collars and unsnapped the trigger clips connecting the leashes. They bounded away from her, running in circles around the yard, pissing up against walls, posts, concrete horse troughs, anything that would take a message that said, “our territory, stay away”. Then she looked in at the three people staring out at her and waved.
“Those are Zelim and Shamil. They are brothers,” Kasym said. “They are named for Chechen national heroes. A friend of ours bred them from Basenjis and Japanese Akitas. They don’t bark, but they are fierce. Some local druggies decided to climb over the fence a year ago. Big mistake. We had to run what was left of the bodies through a wood chipper. While I am gone, they will protect you from further incursions. I suppose they might also deter you from wandering, but that will have to be your choice. In any case, we’ll be locking you in, and Elsbeta will be staying beh
ind, so I suggest you just sit this out and wait until we have what we need from your husband, Mrs Bryant.”
“James will do what you want. Please, no more violence. Just get whatever it is you need then let us go.”
“I very much hope we’ll be able to do just that. I very much hope so. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have matters I must attend to.”
He left, closing the door behind him, and descended the stairs to where Elsbeta was waiting for him.
“I’m off to meet the others,” he said. “I want an update on what’s happening in England. Any trouble, you know what to do.”
Elsbeta nodded with a smile, looking over in the direction of the wood chipper.
*
Kasym drove the truck back the way they’d come for fifty miles, then pulled off on a slip road marked with a sign featuring a crossed knife and fork. The café was filled with cigarette smoke. Kasym drew a great breath deep down into his lungs. Bliss. Even though he had given up smoking some years earlier, he still loved that heady aroma of cheap, high-tar cigarettes. And here, on the road between Tallinn and Tartu, they were the favoured style among the truckers and farmers who comprised the clientele of this particular roadhouse. The Bon Jovi playing on the jukebox, and the Lamborghini and Manchester United posters on the walls, couldn’t disguise its utilitarian design or its roots in state-ordered provisioning of hungry and thirsty workers. Kasym noted with approval a scarred and battered AK-47 assault rifle hanging above the bar. Below it, a wooden plaque bore an engraved brass plate reading, “6 September 1991 – FREE again” The Baltic states had achieved independence from the hated Soviets decades ago, but Chechnya still had the bear’s claws in its back. Maybe not for too much longer.
Makhmad and Dukka were already waiting for him. Dukka’s round face broke into a childlike grin as he saw Kasym, and he jumped to his feet, waving one pudgy hand.
“Boss. Over here!”
A dozen heads popped up like rabbits in a meadow at this sudden explosion of noise. Makhmad scowled at his friend’s childlike display of enthusiasm and pulled him back down to his seat. Around them, the mountainous truckers and wiry farmers slowly returned to their coffee and their conversations, which now probably included unflattering references to foreigners disturbing their peace.
