I dropped the container and shoved my left fist through the hole, lighter at the ready, thumb on the roller.
‘Show me your hands!’
They got the message loud and clear. Webb put his straight on the steering wheel. He wasn’t pleased. ‘You’ve fucked up, Stone. Just stand down.’
‘Who the fuck are you? What do you want with me?’
I didn’t get an answer. Maybe I wasn’t sounding crazy enough.
I cranked it up. ‘What the fuck do you want? Tell me or I’ll fucking torch this. Tell me — tell me now!’
I glanced down. The paraffin had mixed nicely with Mitchell’s blood on the tan leather. His leg was a mess.
I heard a squeal of brakes and the scream of an engine coming towards us from the other end of the service road. Another Range Rover, two up. Black with a blue flashing light on the driver’s side of the roof. That was all I had time to register before I turned and started running in the opposite direction.
I heard no shouts, no commands to stop, no gunfire. I kept on running.
Then my head exploded. I went down like liquid. My legs moved like I was still running, but I knew I was going nowhere. Hands grabbed me and dragged my face across the hammer that had dropped me.
12
It wasn’t long before I was in the back of the undamaged Range Rover, hands secured to my ankles with plasticuffs. I rested my forehead on the leather upholstery of the seat in front of me to try to release the pressure on my wrists.
My skull had recovered from the initial pain where the hammer had connected, but I knew I was going to have a big fuck-off headache for the rest of the day. I just hoped it wasn’t a fracture and I’d get the chance to sort out the cut. I couldn’t feel any wetness, but I knew there had to be one. Maybe my parka had soaked up the blood before it reached my neck.
Both wagons backed out of the service road. The driver of mine was a big old Nigerian lad in a blue Puffa. Blue and red beads tied off each braid of his cornrows and he had a shaving rash under his chin. The guy beside him looked like Genghis Khan. He must have come straight from the steppes. He kept turning in his seat to make sure his passenger wasn’t trying to escape — as if I was going to get far even if I did.
The blue light started to flash. I could see it bouncing off shop windows as we drove down the main. We were heading out of the city.
I was flapping. None of these guys cared about what I saw or heard, and that wasn’t a good thing. It could mean they knew I was never going to get the chance to tell anybody.
I checked the dash clock: 11:17. I tried to get a view of the speedo but it was blocked by the driver’s Puffa. The sat-nav was glowing, but it was all in Russian. All I got from it was our direction of travel.
Genghis had his phone out. He grunted acknowledgements to whoever was on the other end and closed it down. These vehicles were brand new. The white one must have lost its sumptuous showroom smell, but the warmth and luxury of this one almost lulled me into feeling safe.
I gave everybody time to settle down before I tried to get some sort of relationship going. I didn’t even know if these lads spoke English.
‘The small guy — he OK? No hard feelings, eh? I—’
With a rustle of nylon jacket, Genghis turned and put his forefinger to his lips. He shushed me like a child. I nodded, returned my forehead to the seatback and began a close examination of the carpet.
There wasn’t any point in trying to talk with these guys. They were only the monkeys. And if the organ-grinder wanted me dead, I would have been dead by now. They’d have done it in the alleyway while I was half concussed. But why had they let me see their faces? And why weren’t they pissed off that I’d shot their mate?
I raised my head and caught another glimpse of the sat-nav. We were still heading west, but keeping off the M1, the main motorway. Suburbia was just beginning to take shape on the Moscow margins. The media were full of it — all the usual moaning about forests having huge holes ripped out of them to make way for gated communities with names like Navaho and Chelsea.
The road was now lined with trees and the potholes were getting more treacherous.
13
An hour and twenty-seven minutes later we turned off towards a village. I’d spent every second of that time trying not to get bounced around in the foot-well, so the small of my back was now as painful as my neck.
Genghis sparked up his cell again.
This wasn’t Navaho or Chelsea. The buildings were timber-framed and exuded an air of history. Enormous dachas, three storeys high with huge, overhanging roofs, stood behind big walls. These were the weekend retreats of wealthy Muscovites, built in the time of the Tsar. Tyre tracks led in and out of the driveways. There was no foot traffic at all. The rich didn’t need to walk and their snow was pure white.
We turned through a massive set of slowly opening wooden gates. I saw cedar tiles cladding a steeply pitched roof. Condensation billowed from modern heating ducts on the side of the old building. It looked like something out of a spy story. The whole village did.
The Range Rover crunched across the snow, flanking the dacha. Huge trees circled a snow-lined playground, gardens and a swimming-pool. I could just make out the little handles round the edge to help you out of the water. We swooped round to the back of the house and stopped behind another Range Rover with red plates. Genghis jumped out and produced an eight-inch blade from a sheath at his hip. My door opened. The blade flashed in the sunlight and the plasticuffs put up only token resistance. As I straightened, he pointed the tip of his knife towards the wooden veranda.
The cold slapped me in the face as I headed up the three steps. Crows squawked in a field the other side of the trees. I touched the swelling on the back of my head. The skin had broken, but the heat of the Range Rover had dried the wound.
Three doors led off the veranda: a bug screen for the summer, followed by a triple-glazed monster with an aluminium frame and finally the hand-carved wooden original.
I stepped into a big shiny modern kitchen, all white marble and stainless steel. It couldn’t have provided a more dramatic contrast to the exterior. I stood on a polished stone floor with the sweet smell of Russian cleaning fluids, that really intense mixture of rose perfume and bleach, assaulting my nostrils. And it was even hotter in there than it had been in the Range Rover.
A small man in his late forties sat facing me at a white marble table. His hair was brushed back. There was a hint of grey at the temples. He was immersed in a Russian broadsheet, the front page full of the Fukushima meltdown. ‘Coffee?’ Without looking up, he pointed to a cappuccino machine the size of a nuclear reactor. ‘Help yourself and sit down over here with me.’
He was wearing black suit trousers, shiny black leather shoes, a grey shirt and V-neck jumper. A white magnetic board hung on the wall behind him, covered with photos and all the normal family shit. A scaled-down red Ferrari with an electric engine was parked beneath it, next to a Tupperware crate containing every shape and size of game ball. The cappuccino machine stood beside a white marble sink large enough to dismember a body in.
‘Relax, Nick. No one else is going to interrupt us, and you’re in no danger. I just want to talk with you.’ His English was precise, but his accent was surprisingly guttural. He sounded like Hollywood’s idea of a Cold War Soviet agent.
‘Please.’ He nodded again towards the dozen or so matching blue mugs that were lined up on the spotless work surface. ‘Get yourself whatever you fancy. Then come and sit down.’