by Zoe Sharp
Russian.
Kelly shrank back. Already they were unbolting the loose box next door, slamming the door again with a shout of, “Clear!” The grey horse was leaning against his own door craning his neck round to watch them as if it were the most exciting thing he’d seen in ages.
There wasn’t time to hide and nowhere to go anyway. Kelly caught a glimpse of a face appearing, prodding the horse back, then there was more shouting, triumphant this time and the door was thrown wide.
“Got her!”
The horse, startled by the sudden raised voices, took a couple of quick steps in reverse. Kelly had to dart to one side to avoid being flattened and put a steadying hand on his rug at the shoulder.
It was only as she did so that she saw the alarm in the faces crowding the open doorway. Somewhere behind them a man swore.
“Christ, she’s in with Mr Grogan’s colt!”
Something in his voice tipped it. Acting on pure survival instinct Kelly grabbed hold of a handful of mane. She had to reach up a long way to do it. She lifted her booted foot and placed it, edge on, against the grey horse’s impossibly fine-boned thoroughbred front leg, just level with his knee.
“Come any closer and the only races this horse’ll be running in future will be three-legged ones,” she snapped, injecting as much quiet savagery into it as she could manage. They had to believe her. If they didn’t . . .
The threat had an electrifying effect on her audience who froze horrified. The grey horse merely flicked an ear in her direction and watched her with a calmly trusting eye.
“What the hell are you after?” someone asked, sounding shaken.
It was a good question. For a moment Kelly’s mind went blank. “I want to talk to the vet,” she said. “Brian Stubbs. Bring him here.”
There was some muttering and shuffling and then everybody seemed to take a step back, parting so a newcomer could step forwards. He filled the doorway. The Russian hard-hitter, Kelly noticed, was at his shoulder.
The new arrival was not Brian Stubbs but she had no difficulty recognising him from his picture.
“Stubbs isn’t here,” Harry Grogan said, his voice a low growl. “Will I do?”
92
Dmitry was cruising Brixton giving shit to anyone he thought might have information about Kelly Jacks. According to all those he’d threatened so far, nobody did. He tried not to think about the stubborn resolve on the faces he encountered. Myshka had been right, he acknowledged with a sour smile. His treatment of the kid in the flat had cost him valuable co-operation.
Dmitry’s iPhone rang. Viktor. Dmitry answered it one-handed while he drove. He was tired and frustrated and he badly wanted to go home and stand under a hot shower for a long time.
“Da?”
“She is here,” Viktor said without preamble.
“What?” The tremor though Dmitry’s hand made the Merc swerve slightly. He didn’t need to ask who. “What is she doing there?” And almost as an afterthought, “Where are you?”
“Still with horses,” Viktor said, as always a man of few words. “She is talking to him.”
Dmitry checked his watch and the thickening traffic around him and swore.
“I will be there fast as I can,” he said. “Stall them.”
“How?” He could almost hear Viktor’s frown.
“Use your imagination! Don’t forget—you were there too.” At the warehouse. You held her down while we killed the boy . . .
But even as he disconnected and threw the cellphone onto the passenger seat he knew with a terrible feeling of constriction in his chest that Myshka’s grand scheme might all be over.
93
“So,” Harry Grogan said, his voice a whisky-dry rumble, “you want to tell me who put you up to crashing in here threatening to nobble my best horse?”
“When it comes to threatening, you damn well started it,” Kelly fired back.
Grogan was leaning in the open doorway apparently relaxed but carefully blocking her exit at the same time. He’d told everyone else to make themselves scarce, including the hulking Russian who’d clobbered her. Kelly wasn’t sure whether to be reassured or not by his desire to banish potential witnesses.
Now Grogan sighed and fixed her with an implacable stare. “I think you’d best explain that—while there’s still a chance we can sort this out . . . amicably.”
Kelly felt laughter bubbling up in her throat, recognised a wisp of underlying hysteria and swallowed it back down again.
She had taken her foot away from the grey colt’s foreleg and he’d twitched himself out from her grasp to stretch towards his owner near the doorway, hopeful of some treat or other. Grogan rubbed the animal’s sleek head without taking his eyes off Kelly.
“Where do I start?” she queried. “How about with the warning you sent to my boss Ray McCarron—to keep his nose out of your business? A warning that came wrapped in a beating bad enough for him to need surgery.”
“Ray McCarron? Never heard of him,” Grogan said flatly. “Next?”
The blatant denial shocked but at the same time didn’t surprise her. She pressed on. “What about setting me up to take the fall for Tyrone Douet’s murder?”
“Now that does ring a bell. I believe I saw it on the news,” he said without a flicker. “But I believe the police were fairly sure you were the one they were after. So how exactly did I manage that little party trick?”
“By having one of your Russian thugs stick the knife in my hand after they’d dosed me with ketamine—probably supplied by your crooked vet.”
“Ah that’s why you were asking for Stubbsy,” Grogan said. “Who happens to be a very good vet I’ll have you know. He may have one or two personal weaknesses but as long as he indulges them in his own time then quite honestly I don’t give a monkey’s.”
“I notice you don’t deny the Russian thugs are yours.”
Grogan shrugged. “I have offered employment opportunities to a number of people from the former Soviet Union,” he agreed blandly. “And if they’re lacking in the social niceties, shall we say, that’s only to be expected. Practically a Third World country these days isn’t it?”
Kelly thought of Steve Warwick’s wife Yana who’d apparently been traded like a chattel. Third World was too advanced, she decided. Medieval was more like it.
“Are you trying to tell me you have no control over your own men?” Kelly demanded. “That you let them rampage around London beating up whoever they like and using your name as justification for it?”
The grey colt had taken another step forwards and was nuzzling Grogan’s pockets now, impatient for his due. Grogan ignored him.
“My name carries weight in certain circles,” he said. “If people choose to bandy it about without my knowledge that doesn’t mean I’m responsible.”
“I suppose you’re not responsible for the ten grand price you put on my head either?” she threw back at him.
The mention of money finally seemed to have some effect. Grogan raised an eyebrow, looked her up and down. “What is it you’re supposed to have done that makes you worth that kind of money?”
Kelly knew she should take her time about replying. That now she had actually provoked a response, however slight, she should make the most of it, play her cards close to her chest. Instead she allowed him to exasperate an answer straight out of her.
“What have I done?” she repeated. “I spotted the botched job your men made of Veronica Lytton’s so-called suicide. And ever since then you’ve been trying to shut me up—one way or another. Well, it may have worked last time but there’s no way anybody’s putting me away again for something I didn’t do.”
Grogan took a breath. She saw his chest rise, his mouth open, then a large figure stepped suddenly into view, grabbed him roughly by the shoulder and yanked him away, spinning him against the outside wall of the loose box.
The grey colt scuttled backwards swinging his hindquarters dangerously close to Kelly. She jumped out of the way
.
When she looked back at the doorway the big Russian who’d thumped her was standing firmly planted in the aperture. The double-barrelled shotgun Kelly had seen earlier was pulled up hard into his shoulder. He was aiming it square at Kelly’s chest.
She watched dumbfounded as the knuckles of his fingers began to whiten around the first of the triggers.
94
Dmitry flashed an Audi saloon that was dawdling in the outside lane of the M4, muttering furiously under his breath as the offending vehicle moved over with leisurely arrogance.
He had pushed and bullied his way out of London in record time and was now heading west at slightly over a hundred and twenty miles an hour. It was the kind of speed where other traffic was constantly in his way and his temper was in shreds.
But he had told Viktor to use his imagination when it came to dealing with Kelly Jacks and that, he realised, could well turn out to be a huge error of judgement on his part.
Viktor was a man whose imagination usually leaned towards extreme violence.
Dmitry took his hand off the wheel just long enough to stab the redial button on his iPhone but Viktor was still not answering. Dmitry’s own imagination painted all kinds of nasty pictures about why that might be.
He pressed his right foot down a little harder on the accelerator.
95
Harry Grogan stood in the stable doorway staring down at the inert figure lying face down in the horse’s bedding. There was surprisingly little blood but what there was, the shavings were doing a good job of soaking up.
“Is he dead?” the girl asked, her voice strangely composed.
Grogan gave her an assessing glance. “Take more than a shovel round the back of the head to kill old Viktor,” he said. “Stupid bugger, waving a bloody shotgun around near my colt.”
He set the shovel down to one side of the doorway and glanced at his horse. The animal was going spare, clattering against the kickboards at the back of the box as if trying to climb out over the walls. Grogan winced at every knock against those priceless legs.
The grey colt was not happy about being approached. His fear translated into a display of temper with ears laid flat and back hunched, stamping his feet down. Sweat darkened his coat in patches, the veins popping through.
There was movement in the stable doorway and the lad who looked after the colt elbowed Grogan aside as he went to his charge, making soothing noises in his throat. Any other time, Grogan would have sacked him for behaviour like that, but the way the horse was immediately reassured made him hold his tongue.
“We need to move him out of here sir,” the lad said over his shoulder. Grogan couldn’t tell if he was the one being addressed or the trainer, who’d reappeared also.
“What about him?” the trainer asked nodding to Viktor’s body sprawled in the entrance to the stable.
“What about him?” Grogan asked brusquely. He turned to the lad. “Just get on with it son. If the horse tramples all over the big daft bastard while he’s about it, maybe it’ll teach him a lesson.”
Between stable lad and trainer they managed to get a bridle onto the colt’s aristocratic head and led him out. The horse made a big production of needing to sniff at Viktor before he’d step over him then lifted each leg exaggeratedly high and bounced away across the yard alongside the lad, up on his toes and still blowing hard.
“This might be enough to put him off his game for the big race,” the trainer muttered as he hurried after them, not waiting for a response.
Because he had a bloody good idea what that response might be . . .
Grogan pulled out a large white handkerchief to clean his hands. “Nothing like making your excuses before you begin is there?” he said dryly.
The girl gave no reply. He looked over and found she’d picked up the fallen shotgun and was now aiming it in his direction with a certain degree of competence about her.
He carried on wiping his hands, apparently unconcerned. “Know what you’re about with one of those things do you?”
“I’ve fired a few in my time.”
He grunted. “Shooting into some water tank in a ballistics lab is not the same thing as into flesh and blood though, is it?”
“Hadn’t you heard?” she asked tightly, almost a taunt. “Killing people isn’t a problem for me.”
Grogan paused, staring at her. “I’ve met some killers in my time sweetheart,” he said. “But you’re not one of them.”
She smiled. “Want to put that to the test?”
No he didn’t. He tucked the handkerchief back into his pocket keeping his movements nice and slow and said instead, “Why did you come?”
“I wanted to talk to Brian Stubbs.”
“Like I told you, he’s not here,” Grogan said. “You want to talk? Fine, let’s talk.” He glanced down. “But I’m not standing around up to my knees in horse shit out here to do it, so either we go inside and sit down like two adults or you can sling your hook.”
And with that he turned and walked out of the stable, stepping over Viktor’s unconscious figure a lot less carefully than the colt had done.
It wasn’t until he’d made it unmolested across the yard that he felt the tension go out of his neck.
96
Inside the farmhouse was old-fashioned and slightly scruffy. Kelly took one look at the cluttered worktops, the overflowing sink and the soot stains above the ancient Rayburn and decided that the trainer probably lived alone.
The walls were largely covered with pictures of horses. Black and white shots of old victories going back forty years.
The kitchen itself was empty apart from a couple of ancient Labradors sleeping close to the front of the Rayburn. One dog raised its head when Kelly entered, gave a wide yawn and settled down again.
She moved quietly across the dull tiles, still clutching the shotgun. Only one door out of the room stood open and she could hear movement beyond. She hesitated just outside then stepped through quickly as if expecting an ambush.
The room was a small bare sitting room with French doors leading out onto a mown but otherwise bare garden. Kelly could see the post and rail fence bordering the driveway beyond. The room boasted a large boxy television set and a video recorder stacked with tapes labelled for old races. Racing papers formed decorative stacks at either side of a well-worn armchair.
Harry Grogan was standing at a sideboard on the far side of the room with his back to her, pouring a stiff Scotch on the rocks. He turned as she came in, lifting the bottle.
“Join me?”
Kelly shook her head.
“You can put that thing down,” Grogan said nodding to the shotgun. “I’ve said we’ll talk. I like to think I’m a man of my word. You’ll not get any more out of me that way.”
Slowly, reluctantly, Kelly let the twin muzzles droop until the only thing they menaced was the ugly floral pattern on the carpet which, she felt, probably had it coming.
“I have to hand it to you,” he said sipping the drink and watching her closely while he did so. “There’s not many people would have the guts to beard the lion in his den as it were.”
“I think you’ll find it’s the lionesses who do all the hunting.”
Grogan raised his glass in salute. “And the lion who gets to muscle in on the kill afterwards and take the best for himself without the work.”
Kelly sighed. “Shall we stop waving our dicks around here?” she said. “Because I think that’s one contest you’re always going to win.”
His face didn’t register anything but she thought she caught the faintest glimmer in his eyes. They were small and deep set, seeming to dominate within his shaven skull. She had the impression of a man who knew his own strength on many levels. And not just so he could crack open a man’s head with a shovel.
“I don’t know about that sweetheart,” he said at last. “You may not have a dick but you’ve certainly got balls.”
He moved round the armchair and sat down, ignoring the way she da
rted back as he approached.
“So,” he said, “you think I’ve put a price on your head for interfering in my business in some way, is that it?”
“More or less.”
Again there was no immediate reaction. He took another sip of whisky, swallowed and then let out a low chuckle.
“Care to share the joke?” Kelly asked, aware of a tart edge to her voice.
“The joke?” Grogan said. “The joke is sweetheart that I’m just a simple businessman—have been for years.”
