Stolen Lives

by Jassy Mackenzie

  The handle turned.

  Breathe out. Aim. Wait.

  When the door began to open her finger tightened on the trigger.

  And then Jade’s knees were kicked out from under her by a pair of bare feet.

  She had just time to think—Tamsin did this?—before she fell forward hard, twisting to protect her gun as she sprawled onto the floor. The dark-haired man who had entered the room reacted, leopard-fast, to the situation and wrenched the weapon roughly out of her hand.

  Another kick; this time from him. A heavy boot smashed into her jaw. Jade’s vision went as her head snapped back, slamming into the corner of the bed, and her teeth bit deep into her tongue.

  It had been Tamsin, Jade realised in despair. She had seen Jade aiming her gun at the door, and had done what she could to save Salimovic from being shot. Jade had made a fatal mistake in turning her back on the young woman. She should have guessed that, despite the abuse she had suffered, she would still be loyal to her tormentor.

  She tasted blood in her mouth as she was dragged to her feet, shoved out of the room and hauled down a dimly-lit corridor. She struggled, tried to boot him in the shins, but she wasn’t quick enough. Salimovic wrenched her left arm up behind her back so hard that the pain was sickening and, for a moment, she thought he had dislocated her shoulder. Then he grabbed hold of her hair and smacked her head against the wall. Once more, Jade saw a dizzying array of stars before her world became a grey blur.

  She was dimly aware that he had manhandled her into a large room and was heading straight towards a heavy-looking wooden table. He didn’t slow down, but shoved her straight into it. Pinned against the table, she heard him grunt as he tugged something tough and narrow tight around her wrists. Then she was pushed to the floor and the rope was fastened to something behind her.

  She was a prisoner now. She was at his mercy, just the same way that Tamsin had been.

  Jade’s head was pounding, and her hands were beginning to throb.

  As her dizziness subsided, she saw she was in a large flagstoned room, a dining room fit for a king. Enormous glass windows, free of burglar bars, were framed by heavy velvet curtains.

  Mounted high on the walls, a row of animal heads stared back at her, their glass eyes cold, their fur dull and greasy-looking, the way Jade supposed all fur must look after its wearer had been shot, stuffed and hung on a wall.

  The kudu she recognised, and the zebra of course, but the others Jade was less certain about. Was that a blesbok, perhaps, the one with the magnificent spiral horns?

  No, this wasn’t a dining room, she realised. This was a trophy room. A place for the hunter to show off his kills.

  Jade also realised her back was starting to feel uncomfortably hot.

  A sharp crackle and a shower of sparks from behind her confirmed her worst fears. She’d been tied to the metal support of a large Jetmaster fireplace.

  Then Salimovic was standing in front of her again, breathing hard. A boot in the ribs from his foot sent her slipping sideways, the bonds cutting into her wrists, the rough floor grazing her knuckles.

  “Who the hell are you, bitch?”

  He stared down at her in contempt.

  She said nothing, and her silence earned her a jab in the gut from her own Glock.

  “And what are you doing here?”

  Jade did not reply.

  “Are you a policewoman?”

  Still she said nothing.

  “Jesus, I don’t have time for this,” Salimovic muttered. “You’ll talk now, and you’ll talk fast.”

  He reached up and lifted a pair of steel tongs off a hook on the wall, leaned over her and rummaged in the grate. Then he stepped back.

  Salimovic had picked up a burning coal.

  It had been in the fire for long enough for its outside to have formed a grey, ashy mantle, so thin it looked almost translucent, and for it to have developed a fiery inner core. When he waved it in her face, its heat seared her skin and the air around it shimmered. Jade could almost feel the oxygen being sucked into it.

  “You have the count of five to tell me what you’re doing here,” Salimovic said. “Or this goes into your eye.”

  How do you force a red-hot coal into a person’s mouth?

  Suddenly, Jade knew the answer.

  You push it in when he screams.

  “One,” Salimovic said.

  The bonds around her wrists were viciously tight. Her fingers were throbbing and they felt as if they were starting to swell.

  “Two.”

  Jade kept watching the coal. It was a hand’s length from her face; so close her eyes felt dry and irritated and her skin was prickling with fiery pinpoints.

  He was close enough for her to reach him with a kick. But she couldn’t risk it, because the coal was closer.

  “Three.”

  Jade took a deep, fast breath.

  “You were expecting Pamela, weren’t you?” she said.

  Salimovic pulled back the tongs and stared at her in astonishment.

  “You had this all set up. The fire, the coals, the rope. Not for Tamsin. You’ve already beaten whatever you need out of her. This is for Pamela.”

  The trafficker’s rapid blinking told Jade that her guess was right.

  “Were you hoping to get your hands on her money? To force her to give you her Internet banking details before you flee the country?”

  Salimovic took a step back, out of her range, and lowered the tongs.

  “You think I’m the only person who’s worked this out?” Jade lied. “Pamela’s been arrested. Naude, too. They’re both in custody and the police are on their way. They will be here any minute.”

  She’d said the wrong thing. She knew that immediately. Salimovic’s thin lips twisted into a smile and Jade realised with a sinking heart that the trafficker had realised she was bluffing.

  “I don’t think so,” he said. “I think you’re trying to fool me.”

  He raised the tongs again.

  “Four.”

  There was nothing to do now but try to and fight him off. Numbly, Jade wondered whether Terence had struggled, too.

  But Salimovic never reached five. His count was interrupted by a loud knocking on the front door.

  Cursing, the trafficker dropped the tongs. They clanged onto the tiles and the coal skittered to the floor in a shower of sparks and came to a stop next to her knee. Jade wriggled away from it.

  Then Salimovic turned and strode out of the room.

  “Xavier?” she heard him call.

  50

  In her small apartment in Hackney, Katja blinked as she came to. She was lying half-on and half-off the low couch. Her pillow, a knit-covered cushion which smelled strongly of smoke, had left a rough, indented pattern on the side of her face. It was wet with drool, and she moved her head away from its sticky surface in sleepy disgust.

  She needed a big glass of water, with three aspirins dissolved in it.

  She needed to turn the lights off.

  She needed … Oh, God.

  Katja sat upright, jolted to full wakefulness as she remembered what had happened before she went to sleep.

  She’d shared a couple of joints with the girls after they’d been at the pub, and then Rodic had phoned while she was on the bus home. She’d been too paranoid to relay the information he’d told her to Salimovic immediately, but she’d called as soon as she was inside her flat.

  Then her phone had died and she’d passed out.

  What had she told Rodic’s dangerous friend?

  She rubbed fiercely at her eyes, which were itchy and dry. Shit. She’d never even managed to take off her make-up. Leaving it on was supposed to age the skin.

  She’d told Salimovic about his car. But she hadn’t told him the most important fact of all, the one that Rodic had begged her to write down.

  Blinking, Katja picked up her handbag from the floor and rummaged inside it.

  There. She had written it. In red lip-liner on a white pa
nty-pad. Classy. She stared down at the smudged letters and gave a short laugh, which made her head hurt even more.

  Two words. He’d spelled them out for her.

  Xavier Soumare.

  The police had been asking Rodic who he was, over and over again. Apparently he’d driven Salimovic’s car away from Number Six with some woman, and the police were convinced that the two of them were working with Salimovic.

  Rodic had told Katja it was important that Salimovic should know the name.

  Katja stood up, yanked her phone out of the charger and stabbed the redial button. She’d hoped that the call would go straight to voicemail like it did the last time she’d called, but to her surprise it started to ring.

  Jade managed to flip onto her stomach and pull herself up onto her knees. Her arms were already aching from the painful position Salimovic had forced her into.

  She needed to get her hands in front of her so that she could try to untie herself. Shifting as close to the fireplace as she could get, she managed to slip her wrists under her backside and wriggle her legs through one by one.

  Now she was crouched on the floor with her wrists crushed together by the thin length of washing line, which was so tight that her fingers were beginning to swell.

  Kneeling in front of the fire as if she were worshipping it.

  After a short struggle, Jade realised that no matter how hard she yanked, sawed and twisted, the thin rope was unbreakable.

  All she was doing was cutting into her own skin.

  She leaned forward, easing the pressure on her wrists, breathing deeply as she considered her options.

  She had just one left.

  A line like this was impossible to break by hand. You could cut through it if you had a knife, which she did not.

  Or you could burn through it.

  Jade stretched out her leg and hooked her shoe over the hot coal that Salimovic had dropped. With gentle tapping movements, she manoeuvred it towards her until it was in front of her hands.

  It had cooled a little since it came out of the fire. Its crimson heart was paler, but at least it was still glowing. Bending closer to it, she could feel its heat.

  She knew that burning the line would mean burning her own skin as well.

  She had to do it.

  Gritting her teeth, Jade lowered her wrists onto the smoking coal. As she did, she thought of Terence Jordaan.

  The hiss of the coal when it touched her skin was echoed by her own muffled hiss of agony. The reek of her own scorched flesh made her want to vomit and the pain was hideous.

  She snatched her arms away. Now they were shaking almost uncontrollably. Her eyes were wet, and she was panting for breath.

  Despite her efforts, the rope still wouldn’t break.

  The heat had allowed it to stretch just a little, giving a modicum of slack in the loop, but not enough to get her hands through.

  In the distance, she heard the noise of a phone ringing.

  “One more try and it’ll be done,” she whispered.

  She lowered her hands, but stopped as soon as she felt the coal’s fierce heat.

  Go on, she thought. Don’t be a sissy about the pain.

  But she couldn’t make her trembling arms obey.

  Then she jumped as, from somewhere close by, a gunshot split the air.

  Do it now.

  Jade squeezed her eyes shut and forced her wrists onto the coal again. This time the rope broke, so suddenly that her hands slammed down on the floor.

  She was free.

  51

  Salimovic’s instinct for survival kept him alive. It stopped him from opening the front door to Xavier immediately, even though he was certain that this was a done deal.

  Instead, he called out, “Let me see the goods first.”

  After a pause, three small, navy-blue passports were pushed under the heavy door.

  Salimovic tucked the Glock into his belt, opened them and flipped through the pages. All three looked fine, with the correct photos in place, and he had to admit it was nothing short of a miracle that Xavier had managed to obtain them.

  Xavier had apparently told Tamsin that he wanted to do more business with Salimovic, that there were other passports he could provide. Greek and Spanish. Both those would be extremely useful.

  It was time to open up, then, to meet Xavier and start the negotiations.

  As he went to slide back the bolt on the door, his cellphone started ringing.

  The caller was Katja.

  “Yes?” he snapped, clamping the phone between his shoulder and ear as he wrestled with the large bolt which was stiff and rusty and needed a strong, two-handed grip to open.

  Her voice sounded toneless, the way it did when she was coming down from a monster high. He struggled to make out what she was saying above the metallic crunch of the bolt sliding back and the howling of the wind outside, which was rattling the door on its hinges as if Xavier were fighting to be let in.

  “Speak louder, for God’s sake.”

  The phone slipped away from Salimovic’s ear as he twisted the Yale lock with one hand, and the key with the other.

  “Who? I can’t make it out. The man who stole my car and helped a woman get away in it? Yes, I heard that part. Say his name again.”

  This time, as the door swung open, her words were as clear as day.

  “He is called Xavier Soumare,” Katja shouted.

  Salimovic reacted instantly. He dropped to his knees and the phone spun across the floor as the barrel of a Colt.45 appeared in the gap, followed by a black, swollen-knuckled hand. The gun went off, but the shot was too high. It exploded above him as he rammed his shoulder against the door, trapping Xavier’s wrist with a sickening crunch. The bastard didn’t drop the gun—his fingers were just about welded to its grip, but Salimovic managed to force his hand up and away, digging his nails into the man’s dark skin. Christ, his arm was as skinny as a crow’s leg, with dry, tough hooks on the end.

  Then a shove from outside forced the door open again. Its edge connected with his head, nearly toppling him over, and for a moment he thought he’d lost the battle. But he wasn’t ready to give up. He flung himself back against it one more time, with all his weight behind it, and just before it finally slammed closed, Xavier pulled his arm back.

  Salimovic was on his feet in an instant. He wrestled the bolt across, then sprinted down the corridor to where he could get a shot at the man from one of the darkened and empty guest bedrooms.

  He snatched the door open, ran across to the window, crouched down and sighted over the sill.

  Sighted at nothing.

  Xavier Soumare had disappeared.

  Had he driven away, or was he still on the premises? Salimovic didn’t know. From this window he could only just see the rear bumper of his own car. If another vehicle was parked in front of it, it would be invisible from this vantage point.

  “Bastard!” Salimovic hissed. “Jebi ga!” He was trembling in reaction, or perhaps it was simple rage. If it hadn’t been for Katja’s phone call, right now he’d be lying dead in the hallway with a bullet in his brain.

  Xavier must have been planning all along on doing this. Slowly gaining his trust, meeting up with Tamsin, even going to all the trouble of supplying him with the passports. But why?

  Salimovic didn’t have a clue. It wouldn’t be the first time, though, that a deal had gone sour like that for no apparent reason.

  He remembered that Tamsin, and now Katja too, had told him Xavier was working with a woman. That meant he must be with the whore who had sneaked through the open French door in the main bedroom and pointed the Glock at him earlier.

  Who was now tied up in the trophy room, a helpless prisoner, awaiting his revenge.

  With a jolt, Salimovic realised that the French door in the bedroom was still unlocked. Xavier could have got in that way, just as the other bitch had done. He could be inside the house by now. He could be right behind him.

  He spun away from the window,
his eyes straining into the semi-darkness, cursing the wind for its wailing when what would help him most right now was quiet.

  Moving as silently as possible, he made his way back to the master bedroom.

  He smelled the blood as soon as he entered the room; a coppery whiff, subtle but unmistakable. He froze in his tracks when he located its source.

  He was too late. Xavier Soumare had already got to Tammy.

  She lay face-up on the bed, still gagged, still bound. The right side of her face was soaked with blood. It had spilled onto the pillow and pooled in her hair.

  The dark hilt of a knife was sticking out of her right eye-socket while her left eye stared ahead sightlessly.

  Staring more closely at the gruesome sight, Salimovic noticed that her head was twisted sideways at an awkward-looking angle.

  After stabbing her, Xavier must have broken her neck in a silent, deadly and expert manoeuvre.

  “Shit,” Salimovic whispered.

  Now he couldn’t take her with him and sell her, as he had been planning. Worse, he couldn’t use her to get to her rich-bitch mother, which meant he was going to end up seriously short of cash again.

  Soumare had stolen his property, his prejilepa, his little darling.

  Salimovic knew what he had to do, but he was going to have to act fast. The French door was standing wide open, so he guessed Soumare must have fled outside after murdering Tamsin. He’d start the hunt for him later; but right now he was intent on revenge.

  He locked the door, so that the black man couldn’t get back inside. Then he reached out and took hold of the knife’s hilt. He’d seen worse in his time, but all the same he had to grit his teeth before he wrenched it out of her eye-socket. It came free with a wet, sucking noise and he wiped some of the bloody residue onto the sheet, noticing his hands were unsteady.

  “An eye for an eye,” Salimovic whispered, pleased with the irony of the expression.

  Silent as a shadow, he began to make his way back towards the trophy room.

  Jade climbed to her feet. She’d expected Salimovic to be back by now, but after she had heard the gunshot there had been silence, followed by the far-away slamming of a heavy door.