As I boarded the Cathay Pacific flight to Manila that night, stuck in economy with all the guest workers returning home for their holidays, it struck me that there really was no justice in the world.
Six
When Tina Boyd shut the front door of her end-of-terrace cottage behind her and walked through to the kitchen, she felt more like a drink than at any time in the past six months. She had, however, resisted buying a bottle of something on the way home. There was no way she was going back to the booze now. Not after the damage it had done to her over the years. Thankfully, there wasn’t a drop of it in the house. Instead she poured herself a pint of orange juice and sparkling water – her evening tipple these days – and took a couple of sizeable gulps before sitting down at the kitchen table, lighting a cigarette, and contemplating the latest developments in her turbulent life.
From the start, Tina had regretted getting involved with Nick Penny. She knew from bitter experience that affairs with married men never worked out, and caused pain for all concerned. It had happened one night several weeks before Christmas when he’d come round to her place for one of their update meetings. More and more, they were tending to meet at hers. It was easier to talk there without anyone listening in, and at the time she hadn’t thought there was anything untoward about having a married man round, because their relationship had just been business, even though she found him vaguely attractive. But that night he’d poured his heart out to her about the strains of the libel case, the pressure on his marriage, everything. She’d listened and sympathized, feeling sorry for him, because she knew how hard things could get sometimes, knowing from the way he was looking into her eyes that he wanted something to happen.
She hadn’t made any overt move, but at one point when he was talking, she put a hand on his arm and gave it a squeeze, and then when she’d got up to go to the kitchen to refill her water glass she’d brushed her hand against his – a small but knowing gesture.
He’d followed her into the kitchen, put his arms round her waist, and pulled her to him.
They’d kissed. Hard. The first kiss she’d experienced since a fumbled one-night stand in Costa Rica the previous summer. And though she’d pulled away and protested, the weakness in her tone was obvious, because he’d kissed her again, and this time she hadn’t pulled away. They’d made love on her living-room floor, and it had been everything lovemaking should be: intense, passionate, noisy.
Afterwards, she’d felt horrendously guilty. She’d never met Penny’s family but knew full well what damage she must be inflicting on his relationship with his wife, even if he had been the instigator. And the thing was, she couldn’t even blame the booze. She’d done it all of her own accord.
She’d tried to draw a line under what had happened. Told him that it couldn’t happen again. Yet it had. On far too many occasions. So many that it had soon become the reason for their meetings, and the ongoing investigation into Paul Wise had taken a back seat, something that nagged at her even more. She really liked Nick Penny, far more than she’d expected. Although he was in turmoil in his personal life, he wasn’t needy, could still make her laugh, and remained driven by his convictions. But she knew it couldn’t last and that one day, probably sooner rather than later, it would end in tears and recriminations. So she’d called it off. He’d begged her to reconsider, but she’d been adamant. It had to end. For the good of both of them, and the good of their case against Wise. Eventually he had accepted the inevitable, and promised to call her only when he had further information.
They’d spoken only once since then, the previous Thursday. He’d told her he missed her and asked if she’d reconsider her decision, but had seemed fine enough when she’d said no. There had been no sign of any deep depression that might have ended in suicide. As she’d told DS Weale, Nick just didn’t seem to be that kind of guy. There had still been too much life in him, even given the knocks he’d taken, for him ever to have considered ending it all. It was one of the reasons she’d found him so attractive.
And now he was dead. Just another name in a growing list of dead people who’d become close to Tina. Her partner in CID, DI Simon Barron, stabbed to death more than six years ago now. Then her lover, John Gallan, an apparent suicide that she knew was the work of one of Paul Wise’s henchmen. Back then, people at work had started calling her the Black Widow – a moniker that would probably have faded if it hadn’t been for the death a few years after that of her boss in CMIT, DCI Dougie MacLeod. He’d been murdered during a case Tina had been heavily involved in, and once again she’d become the Black Widow, this time in the media. God knows what everyone would make of this latest death.
She knew it would take all her self-discipline not to fall off the wagon this time. Given that she had a high-profile history with the media, her relationship with Nick was almost certainly going to be made public, which would mean lurid headlines; the wrath of Nick’s wife; embarrassment and wisecracks at work. The next few days were going to be tough.
To try to head things off as best she could, Tina had called the station as soon as she’d finished with Weale and spoken to her new DCI, Bob Levine. Levine was a solid enough copper, and was regarded fairly neutrally by those under him, but like a lot of the older male police officers he’d always been wary of her, and Tina knew that he’d have preferred it if she hadn’t been part of his squad. She’d told him what had happened, not leaving out any details, knowing that they’d come to light anyway, and unsurprisingly, he’d been furious. Not so much with the fact that she’d had an affair with Nick, but more with the fact that she’d remained involved in an unofficial attempt to get Paul Wise.
‘How do you think that would have looked in court if Penny had got done for libel?’ Levine had demanded. ‘That you’d been working with him? You might have ended up being sued yourself. You’ve got to learn when to let go.’
Tina had heard this plea plenty of times before. A year back, she would have told him in no uncertain terms that she would let go when Wise was finally convicted of the crimes he was responsible for, but this time she didn’t bother. Instead, she wearily apologized before giving him the rest of the bad news from the day. Gemma Hanson, the single mother who was their witness in the upcoming murder case, had decided to withdraw her statement identifying their alleged killer, even after Tina had spent more than an hour trying to persuade her to relent, and promising to get her fast-tracked into the witness protection programme.
At this point, Levine had become sympathetic, knowing how much pressure she was under, and had told Tina to take the rest of the day off. ‘Take next week off as well. Have a rest. You’re due it.’
She wasn’t quite sure if this was an order or not, but in any case, she’d accepted. At least it would give her an opportunity to look into Nick Penny’s death.
But she knew she was going to have to be careful. Nick’s killer had known about the affair, even though it had finished a fortnight earlier. Either Nick had volunteered the information or, more likely, the killer had been watching him and had seen the two of them together. Since their last few face-to-face meetings had been here in her new house that could only mean one thing: he’d been watching her too.
She stubbed out the cigarette and walked over to the window, looking out into the blackness of her small garden, unable to see anything, before yanking the curtain across, and repeating the process on every window on the ground floor. The thought of being watched made her feel both violated and uneasy. She loved this house. Located in a pretty Hertfordshire village just outside the M25, she’d bought it because she could no longer bear to live in the apartment that had been her home for the previous three years. There were too many bad memories there. This place represented a new start for her, away from the violence and temptations of the city – a small, friendly community where the air was fresh and where she didn’t need the booze to prop her up. And now it felt like it too had been invaded.
She wondered then if her house had been bugged. It was fairl
y secure, with decent locks on the doors and windows, but she hadn’t got round to getting an alarm system installed yet, and knew from experience that it wasn’t that hard to break into somewhere without leaving a trace if you knew what you were doing. And she had little doubt that anyone hired by Paul Wise would know what he was doing.
Tina cursed herself. She of all people should have known that you could never underestimate someone like Wise. It wasn’t as if she didn’t have the capability to check that her house was protected from electronic eavesdropping. In her bedroom drawer she kept a shop-bought bug finder that could pick up almost all over-the-counter listening devices, but she hadn’t bothered using it for months now. If she was honest with herself, she hadn’t expected Wise or any of his associates to be checking up on her. She and Nick simply hadn’t unearthed anything that would make it seem worthwhile.
There was only one way to find out whether or not her suspicions were justified, but as she started up the stairs to get the bug finder, her mobile rang.
It was DS Weale. He asked her how she was doing.
‘I’ve been better. Any news?’
‘Only that I’ve managed to get hold of those phone records you wanted. I’ve just emailed them through to your personal account.’
‘Thanks,’ she said, suddenly feeling worried that she was being listened to and taking care to choose her words. ‘And there’s nothing on there that stands out?’
‘It’s just the numbers, I’m afraid. No names attached. You’ll have to check them yourself.’
‘Thanks. I appreciate what you’ve done.’
She raced up the stairs, aware that she needed to access her account fast to intercept his mail. If there was someone bugging her place, he may well have planted spyware on her PC capable of picking up every keystroke, which meant he’d have access to all her email.
Which meant that . . .
‘I don’t want anyone to find out I’ve helped you, ma’am,’ continued Weale, sounding a little unsure of himself now. ‘So if you could delete the email and not tell anyone about it . . .’
Reassuring him she wouldn’t, she rang off and strode into her bedroom, switching on the light.
Then froze as she heard movement behind her.
Seven
Tina didn’t even have time to turn round, her assailant was that fast. An arm encircled her neck, dragging her backwards into a choking headlock.
Out of the corner of her eye she saw a gloved hand come into view at waist height, holding a syringe. She was still wearing her thick winter coat, so her assailant pulled it back to expose the top of her jeans-clad thigh and turned the syringe round in his fingers, ready to jab it into her leg. At the same time he increased the pressure on her neck so that she could barely breathe as she was pulled into his chest.
But Tina had been on the wrong end of violent assault too many times before, and she reacted fast, using her forearm to knock the hand holding the syringe out of the way, buying herself a precious second and a half. She kicked her legs up in the air and reached back with her free hand, grabbing her assailant between the legs and yanking his balls with all the strength she could muster.
He grunted with pain and his grip on her throat slackened, allowing her to wriggle free. She felt him instinctively stab her with the syringe, but this time the coat got in the way, and although it hurt, she knew it hadn’t broken the skin.
He grabbed at her but she managed to dive across her brand-new double bed, rolling off the other side and landing on her back on the carpet.
Now she saw her attacker properly for the first time. He was a big guy, at least six three, with broad weightlifter’s shoulders and powerful arms. He was dressed in a dark hooded top with the hood pulled up, and a scarf covered the bottom half of his face. Above it, his skin was pale and his eyes narrow and cold.
And then a second man, dressed similarly but a lot smaller, came into the room. Now Tina knew she was in real trouble, because he was holding a nine-millimetre pistol which was raised in her direction. Her assailant began to move round the bed towards her, still holding the syringe.
‘Come quietly, Tina Boyd,’ said the gunman calmly in a foreign accent that she recognized immediately as Russian.
She was trapped. There was pepper spray in her coat pocket but she knew it would do no good against people like this. Not when one of them had a gun.
The man with the syringe was smiling now. She could see the laughter lines forming round his eyes. He was enjoying this – the bastard – and she wondered if he was the one who’d killed Nick Penny.
A potent cocktail of fear and rage surged through her and she sat up suddenly, leaned back, and yanked out one of the drawers from her bedside table. She grabbed something out of it and threw the drawer at the man with the syringe.
He swatted it away easily, the contents spilling over the bed. Underneath the scarf she could hear him chuckling – a deep, rumbling sound – as he regarded the weapon she’d grabbed: a simple handheld torch.
‘Inject her,’ snapped the gunman. ‘Quickly.’
The man with the syringe loomed above her, a wall of muscle, then leaned down in order to haul her up, speaking a steady flow of Russian to her in excited, breathless tones.
Which was when Tina yanked the lid from the top of the torch, flicked a switch on at its base, and rammed the bulb-end hard against her assailant’s leg, just above the knee. There was a loud, angry crackle as eight hundred thousand volts of electricity surged out of the torch, which also doubled as a stun gun. She’d bought it the previous year in Panama, just to make her feel safer at night, and this was the first time she’d used it in anger.
Tina held the button down to keep the current flowing, but for a couple of seconds her assailant didn’t move, and she thought with a sudden panic that it might not be working. But then he let out an audible yelp and stumbled backwards, falling to the floor and juddering wildly as the shock surged through him.
‘Move and I’ll kill you!’ shouted the gunman, pointing the gun at her head.
But Tina knew that if they intended to kill her so soon after they’d murdered Nick they were going to have to make it look natural, which meant there was no way he was going to pull the trigger. So she grabbed her bedside lamp and chucked it at his head, before jumping over the bed and making straight for him, pressing the button on the torch as she did so.
Unlike his colleague, the gunman knew the damage she could do with it and he reacted decisively, grabbing her wrist and twisting it painfully as they fell together into the wall.
Her wrist felt like it was going to break, and instinctively Tina dropped the torch, but she still had the presence of mind to get hold of his gun arm so that he wasn’t pointing the weapon at her. Then, recovering as best she could, she drove her head into his face, kicked out at him, and turned and ran out of the door.
He was after her like a flash, and before she could get to the stairs he’d got hold of her again and was pushing her bodily towards the bathroom.
She fought back furiously, lashing out with her legs and trying to kick him in the shins, but he was a lot stronger than she’d expected and the momentum was with him. Together, they crashed through the door opposite and into the unlit bathroom, Tina in front.
That was when she saw that the bath was full, and she realized immediately that they’d run it in order to drown her.
Digging her heels into the newly tiled floor, she tried to turn round, but he had her in a surprisingly tight bear hug, the gun gripped firmly in his right hand, tantalizingly close but impossible to grab. He might have been a lot smaller than his colleague but it was becoming abundantly clear to Tina that this man was the more dangerous of her two assailants.
As if to prove this, he suddenly let her go, and before she had a chance to react he punched her once, very hard and very accurately, in the kidneys, before grabbing her coat by the collar and pushing her into the tub.
The cold water sprang up to meet her and she instinctively he
ld her breath as her head went under. Knowing she only had one chance, she managed to flip herself round in the water so she was on her back and facing upright. Her attacker’s expression was determined as he clambered in on top of her, pushing all his weight into her midriff. A gloved hand covered her face like an immense spider, and she was pushed under again.
She struggled wildly beneath him, making no noise as she worked to conserve the air inside her and hold down her rising panic. She’d always had a fear of drowning, ever since she’d fallen in the river at the age of four, at an outdoor birthday party. Now those terrifying cold moments came back to haunt her as she felt the pressure begin to grow in her lungs, knowing she only had a matter of seconds before the big attacker with the needle recovered from the electric shock she’d given him and rejoined his colleague. Then she’d be finished.
She managed to slide a hand out from under her and in one movement grabbed the oyster-shaped china soap dish from the top left corner of the bath where she always kept it and slammed it into the side of her assailant’s head.
He cried out and slipped slightly in the water, and though he didn’t release his grip on her, it loosened enough for her to strike him again in the same place, and with a little more momentum, an increasing desperation in her movements as the urge to breathe grew ever stronger.
Grunting, he grabbed at the offending arm, but in doing so he shifted his weight from her midriff and she managed to break free from the water, knocking him to one side as she slid round in the tub, sending waves of water splashing over the side. Behind her, from the hallway, she could hear staggering footsteps as the big man returned to the fray.
‘Bitch!’ hissed the gunman, losing his cool and striking her in the cheek with the barrel of the gun as they struggled together in the water.
She felt a cut open up but adrenalin overrode the pain of the blow and she forced herself upright, still gasping for breath, and jabbed her middle finger into his eye, feeling its softness as she tried to poke it out. He yelled out in pain and she scrambled over him, yanking at the handle on the bathroom window. She couldn’t remember whether or not the bloody thing was locked, but knew that if it was, then she was finished, because the big man was already at the bathroom door, a low foreign curse rumbling from his lips.
The Payback Page 5
