Tina crept through the trees in silence with Milne ten feet in front of her. The foliage was less thick than it looked from a distance and was mainly made up of palm and acacia trees that hissed gently in the sea breeze. They moved slowly and carefully, both of them keeping a tight hold of their guns as they looked left and right, checking for any sign of ambush.
Tina felt a terrible heaviness in her heart. The quest for justice she’d first set out on more than six years ago with the murder of her partner DCI Simon Barron, and then of the only man she’d ever really loved, John Gallan, was finally coming to an end, and once again she found herself wondering whether she had the strength to do what had to be done. If Paul Wise was unarmed and begging for mercy, would she be able to kill him, or would she instead rely on the man in front of her to do her dirty work?
Up ahead, Milne stopped and listened. They’d been going for at least five minutes now and she could see the first light from Wise’s villa glinting through the undergrowth, as well as the lights from the access road leading up from the beach.
‘What is it?’ she whispered, stopping behind him.
‘I heard something,’ he whispered back.
And then it happened. Just like that. A figure appeared from behind a fern bush ten yards to their right, a gun outstretched in front of him, already pulling the trigger.
As she turned to face the gunman, she heard two loud pops, and Milne went down on his knees with a loud grunt, dropping his gun.
Tina opened fire, the revolver recoiling in her hands as she let off three shots in rapid succession. But she was aiming too high and the gunman had darted back down out of sight. She risked a rapid glance at Milne. He lay on his side in the dirt, one hand resting on a growing dark patch on his side. He wasn’t moving. But Tina knew that there was no time to dwell on that now. Right now the priority was her own survival. She needed to find cover, and fast.
Squinting against the darkness, and keeping her weapon trained on the spot where the gunman had been, she retreated into the undergrowth, wondering whether in fact her bullets hadn’t been high at all and had actually hit him. She didn’t think so, and she wasn’t going to risk approaching his position to find out. Instead, she slipped into the shadow of an acacia tree, using its hanging branches as cover, occasionally peering round the trunk in the direction of the road. She could no longer see Milne but thought it likely he was out of action, perhaps even dying. But she couldn’t afford to think about that prospect now.
After she’d maintained her position for several minutes and her ears had stopped ringing, she risked reloading the revolver with the spare rounds she’d brought with her, and began moving again in the direction of the house, but in a much wider arc than before, using the lights for guidance, knowing that she was hugely vulnerable to ambush. Every sense was tuned into her surroundings. This was life and death. She’d been in such positions before, but this was different. Now she was alone on an isolated island. Worse still, the people she was after knew she was here, and had just taken out her one ally.
The edge of the villa loomed up behind the foliage. A flight of steps led to a veranda that looked like it stretched the width of the villa’s frontage. She took a few careful steps closer, her movements slow and exaggerated, and stopped and listened. Amid the swaying of the trees in the breeze she could hear the sound of feet moving on the steps.
Taking refuge behind the trunk of a palm, she watched as a wiry-looking Filipino emerged through the bushes. He was holding a shotgun and looking round, as if he’d heard something.
Ten feet separated them. Tina held the gun by her side and moved her head back so it was out of sight, her heart beating hard.
And then he walked right into her field of vision. He was barely a yard away now. If he inclined his head just a few inches, he’d see her.
Instead, he turned his back and unzipped his trousers, the shotgun dangling casually from the crook of one arm, as if he were out on a pheasant shoot.
She adopted a firing stance, the revolver’s barrel pointed directly at the base of his skull.
But there was no way she could pull the trigger. She told herself it was because the noise would alert Wise and his people, but it wouldn’t have mattered if she’d had the best silencer in the world on her gun. The fact remained that, unlike Milne, she simply couldn’t kill in cold blood.
She could stun him, though. Make him lie down, then use the stock of his shotgun to knock him out while she went into the house. It wasn’t exactly foolproof – particularly as she was sure that this guy was far too careless to have killed Milne, which meant that someone else was still out there – but it would have to do.
The gunman was in full flow now.
Tina took a step forward. ‘Drop your gun,’ she said firmly.
‘No,’ said a voice behind her. One she recognized all too well. ‘You drop yours.’
Fifty-three
Nargen was thinking about the extra hundred thousand dollars he was going to earn as he told Tina Boyd to drop her weapon. In front of her, Rico, who was supposed to be helping him with security, was desperately zipping himself up.
‘It’s just as easy for me to kill you,’ he told her evenly. ‘Like I killed your friend. Now, if you haven’t dropped it by the time I count to three . . .’
She dropped it, and Nargen kicked her hard in the calf, sending her down to her knees. In one swift movement he picked up her weapon and stuffed it into his waistband before using his boot to force her down into the dirt.
‘Cover her,’ he snapped at Rico as he holstered his own weapon and pulled out a pair of restraints. He didn’t add the instruction to shoot her if she made a move, believing it all too likely that this idiot might hit him instead. She was a difficult one, this bleached-blonde policewoman, so he had to be careful. Under other circumstances he might even have found her attractive, but right now she simply represented money to him. And plenty of it.
Having bound Tina Boyd’s hands behind her back, he hauled her to her feet and pushed his gun into the base of her skull. He gave Rico a contemptuous look. ‘Get back to your post, and keep watch for our arrivals. Make sure you keep them outside until I get back. And don’t get caught out again. Do you understand?’
Rico nodded, and raced back to his position on the veranda, looking far too nervous for Nargen’s liking.
‘Now, don’t give me any more trouble, woman,’ he hissed in Tina’s ear, yanking her bound wrists up behind her back until she cried out. ‘Come on.’ He shoved her forward and, keeping the gun pushed hard against the base of her skull, guided her up the steps. When they reached the front door, he knocked hard on it. ‘Here you are,’ he said as Wise opened it. ‘You owe me a hundred thousand dollars.’
‘Get her inside,’ demanded Wise, moving aside to let them in before slamming the door shut.
He stood there, almost bouncing up and down, hands pressed tightly together, a look of childlike excitement on his pudgy face. He was, thought Nargen, an unpleasant little man with cunning, rat-like eyes, the type you wouldn’t trust under any circumstances. But Nargen had met a lot of people like that – you tended to in his job – and as long as they paid for his services, he didn’t much care.
‘Where’s the other one?’
‘Dead.’
‘Good. Good, good, good.’
Wise stepped forward and grabbed Tina by her hair, holding her face up to his. She struggled in Nargen’s grip, and he had to drive a knee into the small of her back and yank up her wrists to quieten her. ‘You dirty, dirty little whore,’ hissed Wise, his lips curled back in a malicious smile, like that on a child pulling wings from a fly. Then he cleared his throat and spat full in her face. ‘You’re mine now. All fucking mine.’
‘Fuck you,’ Tina hissed back, trying to butt him with her head.
Wise’s eyes blazed with anger. ‘Get her down on her knees!’ he snapped at Nargen. ‘Now!’
Nargen didn’t like being talked to like that, client or not, but
he swallowed his pride for the hundred thousand dollars on offer and kicked Tina’s legs from under her, using a gloved hand to push her head down.
‘That’s it, that’s it,’ muttered Wise, and kicked her in the face. There wasn’t a huge amount of force in the blow, but his polished black shoe connected well. ‘Keep holding on to her,’ he instructed, taking a step back and kicking her again.
This time he caught her under the chin and her head snapped back painfully. She tried to fall to the side but Nargen held her firmly in place. It looked to Wise like her nose had been broken. Blood ran out of it in twin rivulets and dripped on to the marble floor. Her resistance appeared to have ebbed away.
Wise grimaced as he saw the blood. ‘Messy bitch. Quick, bring her this way.’
Nargen hauled her to her feet and Wise led him down a brightly lit hall, stopping about halfway down, next to an ornate china vase as high as his waist, with long palm fronds jutting from its top. Carefully, he moved the vase to one side, then pressed the palm of his hand against a spot on the wall at face height. A low door concealed by the paintwork opened, and Wise bent down to step through it.
Nargen followed, only just managing to squeeze himself and Tina through it. He then had to negotiate a flight of steep steps down into a concealed, windowless but very brightly lit basement with a single steel bed in the middle. The cold, heavily conditioned air smelled strongly of disinfectant, and all the surfaces had been scrubbed so clean that they shone. There were powerful halogen lamps suspended from the ceiling directly above the bed, as well as a case of surgical tools open on the table next to it, and it would have reminded Nargen of an operating theatre if it hadn’t been for the leather head, wrist and ankle restraints attached to chains that were strategically placed at various points on the bed.
‘Put her down here,’ said Wise, patting the hard mattress that, as he got closer, Nargen saw was dotted in places with old and faded but unmistakable flecks of blood.
As he threw her down on the bed, he noticed that, though her face was twisted in pain and covered in blood, her eyes were still alert. Wise’s thick lump of mucus and spittle still hung from her cheek, making Nargen feel vaguely nauseous. He held her in place, keeping his gun trained on her, while Wise placed the leather head restraint round her neck, buckling it more tightly than he needed to. He didn’t bother with the wrist restraints as her hands were already bound behind her back, but instead yanked her legs wide apart and fitted the ankle restraints. All the time this was going on, Tina Boyd stared up at him contemptuously, showing a bravery that he admired. She was wise enough to know that there would be no mercy, and made no attempt to search for any.
‘All right,’ said Wise, when he’d finished. ‘You can leave us now, and shut the door behind you. Call me on my mobile when our guests arrive.’
Nargen turned and mounted the steps without looking back, pleased to get away from the smell of disinfectant and someone as clearly deranged as Wise. He could never understand men like him, men who had no control of their emotions and got too carried away with killing. It was a task that always had to be carried out carefully and methodically. That way you made fewer mistakes.
He shut the false door, noticing that it had been soundproofed, but didn’t bother replacing the vase, and walked back down the hallway, looking at his watch. Five to eight. The visitors would soon be here, and he would soon be gone. He thought about the one hundred thousand dollars he’d just earned. Added to the rest of the money Schagel owed him, his overall payment would be more than double that figure. So it had been well worth it, even if things hadn’t gone entirely smoothly, and had resulted in the loss of his right-hand man. Still, he thought as he walked out the front door, Tumanov could be replaced easily enough. There were always plenty of ex-Special Forces looking for work.
It took him a second to spot the hunched figure propped up against the balustrade facing the door, holding the gun unsteadily out in front of him with both hands. A few feet away from him, lying sprawled out on the veranda’s deck in a pool of blood, was the body of the Filipino, Rico.
Nargen was a man of swift reactions. He brought his own gun up in one fluid movement.
But he was too late. Dennis Milne had already pulled the trigger, the force of the .45 round from the police revolver lifting Nargen completely off his feet and sending him flying back into the house.
He just had time to curse himself for not finishing Milne off with a headshot when he’d had the chance, and then everything went black.
Fifty-four
As soon as I pulled the trigger, I knew I’d got him with a good shot, but I didn’t have the strength to hold up either the gun or myself after that and I slid down the balustrade on to my behind.
He’d got me with a couple of good shots earlier, and now my shirt was completely drenched in blood and my vision was blurring. The bullets had smashed several of my ribs and done God knows what to my internal organs. I’d never been shot before, which I guess in my line of business is something of a bonus. There was no pain, just a spreading, numb shock, and the feeling of my strength steadily sapping away.
The stagger up to the house was the hardest walk I’d ever done. When I’d first gone down, I’d wanted just to lie there and let death do its work, but the need to see this through had forced me first to my knees, then finally to my feet. Each and every step had made me wince, but I’ve always been determined when I’ve put my mind to it. And the need for vengeance was driving me on.
There was a guy with a shotgun on the veranda, but he’d had his back to me, and I’d managed to crawl up the steps without him hearing me. I’d had no choice but to put a bullet in him, knowing that it would alert everyone else to my presence, although incredibly, the man I’d just shot had stepped out of the villa as if he hadn’t heard anything, which was the kind of stroke of luck I desperately needed right now.
I felt something gurgling up in my throat, and I choked on a mouthful of blood, before spitting it out. I could make out the man I’d just shot lying on his back, just inside the door. He wasn’t moving. The interior of the house was silent and I wondered what had happened to Tina. Through the trees, I’d watched her being brought up here a few minutes earlier, so she had to be in the house somewhere. I knew I had to help her. I owed Tina Boyd. I’d come very close to killing her on behalf of Schagel, and even though I’d saved her life the previous night, I still didn’t feel the debt was repaid. And I wanted her to live. Desperately. She was fundamentally a decent person, on the side of the good guys. Even if it was the last thing I did – and I was beginning to realize that it probably would be – I had to make sure she got out of this place.
But my strength was ebbing away fast now, and my breath was coming in painful gasps.
I rolled over on to my side, fingers finding the handle of the revolver. Three rounds left. More than enough. With a huge effort, I clambered to my feet and half stumbled, half staggered across the veranda and through the open front door.
It felt like walking into a fridge, and I swayed, almost losing my balance. I grabbed the wall for support, momentarily overcome by a fit of shivering, which I knew was the onset of shock.
I took a couple of deep, rasping breaths and forced myself to rise above the pain.
Slowly, I looked round the grand hallway. It was very bright, and very white, and very clean. And totally impersonal. Aside from a large canvas of something abstract – a series of jagged lines in various shades of what I think was blue, although it was difficult to tell in my current condition – there was nothing to give even a hint about the sort of person who lived here. No photographs. No nothing. It was bland and cold – which, though I’d never met him, probably described Paul Wise perfectly.
And still there was no sound coming from anywhere.
Trying as hard as possible both to ignore the growing pain in my chest and to keep my wits about me in case of an ambush, I took a few careful steps forward. And that’s when I saw the heavy drops of blood on the fl
oor. They were fresh, but there weren’t enough of them to suggest that whoever had spilled them was badly hurt.
I moved on and poked my head round a half-open door, looking into an immense living room the size of an apartment. It was empty, so I retreated and began a slow, unsteady stagger down a long white corridor with doors on one side and windows on the other. I used the wall for support, the gun heavy in my free hand, knowing that I had to keep going until I found Tina.
But then a terrible wave of nausea hit me, and even though I leaned into the wall with my shoulder, trying desperately to keep my balance, I wasn’t able to stop myself falling to the floor.
I lay where I’d landed, the gun still in my hand, my head resting against the wall. A four-foot-high china vase, the only ornament I’d seen in here, stood nearby and I tried to focus on it to stop myself from losing consciousness. I had no strength left. Nothing. I was finished.
I shut my eyes, feeling an overwhelming fatigue that seemed to envelop all other thoughts, and I knew it was over. The end of a bloody, wasted life.
And then I heard it. Coming from somewhere behind the wall. Faint yet unmistakable.
A woman’s scream.
Fifty-five
The fear kept coming in intense, gut-churning waves as Tina lay bound and helpless on the bed, knowing that she was at the mercy of the one person who wanted her dead more than anyone else.
Wise was grinning at her, his hairless, almost childlike face full of a terrible sadistic glee. ‘Do you know something?’ he said, slapping her face hard. ‘I’ve waited years for this moment, and by God, I’m going to savour it.’ He slapped her face again. ‘I’m going to hurt you so, so badly, you’re going to be begging for me to finish you off.’ Slap. ‘Do you understand that, you little bitch? Do you?’
Tina worked hard not to rise to the bait. The fear was debilitating, but now there was a new emotion: pure hatred for this abomination who’d done so much harm in the world, and who deserved so much to die.
The Payback Page 26
