She felt so exposed and vulnerable that she was close to tears, and she thought she wouldn’t be able to go on, but her memories gave her strength. He tried to push himself up from the bed with his arms behind him; he managed to get to a sitting position, but his upper body seemed to be wavering and a sweat had broken out on his forehead. He was making a groaning sound deep in his throat. Zelda hooked her thumbs in the top of her panties, gritted her teeth and slid them down over her thighs. If this was the price she had to pay, so be it.
When she had finished and stood there naked in front of the bed, the music still playing, Tadić gasped, fell back and gave a long sigh, then went silent. Zelda stood stock-still for a few moments, watching, listening, but he made no movement. His eyes were closed. Carefully she moved closer to listen to his breathing. It was slow and shallow, but he was still breathing. She lifted an arm and let it fall. It thudded back on the bedcover.
Zelda took the knife from her handbag and sat astride his chest. With both hands, she lifted the blade high in the air and... she froze. She couldn’t do it, couldn’t kill a sleeping man. Not even a monster like Goran Tadić. She let her hands fall and clutched the knife to her stomach. Come on, you fool, she chastised herself. This may be your only chance. Don’t forget what this man did to you, did to all those others and will do to others to come. The world will be a better place without him. Kill him. The images rushed through her mind, the pain of his rough thrusts, the scratching of his beard against her shoulder, the sickly cigar smoke and soundtrack of pounding rap music.
Again she raised the knife high, but again she couldn’t plunge it. For a moment, it was as if she was looking down on the scene from above, seeing this half-crazed naked woman holding a knife, and the man unconscious beneath her. She watched herself lower the blade, hold it against his throat, and she willed herself to push. She couldn’t. The blade pricked his skin. Blood welled up. She held it over his heart and tried there. Still nothing. Once more, she raised the knife.
He opened his eyes.
He reached for her, grasped her breasts.
Then she was inside the half-crazed woman again. She was the half-crazed woman.
She brought down the blade as hard as she could.
The knife struck him full in the throat. Zelda pulled it out. Blood sprayed on her thighs and belly. His hands went to his throat, and his breath started coming in sharp bubbling rasps. Zelda raised the blade again, and hardly watching where it went, plunged it down into his left eye. He gave one last twitch, almost tossing her from her perch on his chest, and that was it. She felt the blade go all the way through and stick in the inside of the back of his skull. She wiggled it loose, and as she pulled it free, his eyeball slipped out and dangled over his bloody cheek. She didn’t need to feel his pulse to know that he was dead. There were no more gurgling sounds, no more movement.
Zelda collapsed with a sob on the other side of the bed, crying, shaking from head to toe. She didn’t know how long she lay there before stirring, making her way back to the bathroom, vomiting down the toilet and running the shower. She stood under it as long as she could and as hot as she could bear it, then dried herself off. She washed the knife in the sink, watching the diluted blood trickle down the plughole. Christ, she had done it. She had killed Goran Tadić. Now, after the release, the numbness set in. She felt nothing when she walked back into the bedroom and saw his bloody corpse on the bed, but she knew the reaction would come later.
Zelda dressed quickly and gathered her things together, making sure she didn’t leave anything behind. As one final measure, she took a towel from the bathroom and wiped off every surface she thought she might have touched. She didn’t think anyone would be checking for fingerprints or DNA, but it seemed the sensible thing to do, the thing people always did in the movies. The thing Modesty Blaise would do.
There was no way Tadić’s people were going to allow any sort of official police investigation into what had happened to him. They would probably find his body first. Then they would cut it into pieces, get rid of it and clean up the room. Nobody would ever find it or know what happened. Before Zelda left, she took one more look at him lying dead on the bed, the matted bloody hair on his chest, the eyeball hanging out. Christ, how she hated him. Now he wouldn’t be able to harm anyone ever again.
She checked the corridor, saw there was no one about, left the DO NOT DISTURB sign in place, then took the lift down and walked out through the front door without looking back. Around the corner, she hailed a taxi and took it straight back to her hotel. There would be no more trains tonight, but she would be on the first one tomorrow morning, back up to Yorkshire to wait for Raymond, to resume her life again and try to put all this madness behind her.
‘Nelia Melnic worked for a man called Trevor Hawkins. Old style NCA, if you can imagine the organisation being old enough to have such a thing. He ran a department out of Cambridge Circus dealing with sex-trafficking in all its ugliness. But you probably know that already. Last weekend, Trevor Hawkins was killed in a house fire. Investigators say it was a chip-pan fire, though no one figured Hawkins for a chip eater, unless they were triple-fried in goose fat. Anyway, the body was too badly burned to reveal any signs of drugs, and there were no indications of physical violence on the bits that remained. There’s no forensic evidence of criminal activity, but the investigating team knows that fires can easily be made to look like accidents. That said, there are no signs of a break-in, and nobody saw anyone visiting the house that evening. Not that that means anything. Most of them were either out or watching telly behind closed curtains. His immediate neighbours were away. His wife was visiting her parents in Bath for the weekend. No one even noticed the fire until it was too late.’
‘So you think—’
‘I don’t think anything, Banksy. I haven’t finished yet. We were concerned about outside interference. And quite rightly. It’s an international matter. But you’ve just given me a bit of information I didn’t have; the NCA doesn’t have. That Nelia Melnic saw a photograph of Keane with a Croatian trafficker. No doubt Hawkins saw it, too. And then Hawkins dies in a mysterious fire. What would you think?’
‘I wouldn’t jump to conclusions,’ said Banks. ‘I’m sure that Hawkins and Zelda saw pictures of lots of traffickers in the course of their work. But I agree it might be more than a mere coincidence. Zelda didn’t tell me his name, but she did say that he’s evil and he likes to hurt the girls.’
‘Would she have identified Keane for them, too?’
‘Probably not. She didn’t know who he was until Annie showed her the photograph of Keane we have. It was the other man she recognised.’
‘Tadić? That makes sense. The NCA team are very interested in him now he seems to be spending a lot of his time over here organising transport and destinations for the trafficked girls. But the point is that this Zelda woman walked by Hawkins’s burned-out house earlier this week. One of our men was photographing everyone who passed by, just in case.’
‘I suppose she was curious,’ said Banks. ‘He was her boss, after all.’
‘That’s exactly what she said. But would you go to the trouble of taking the tube to walk past your boss’s house if it burned down?’
‘Surely you can’t think Zelda had anything to do with the fire?’
‘We know she didn’t start it. She was in Croatia at the time. We’ve checked with the airlines. We’ve no idea where she went, but she rented a car from Franjo Tudman Airport in Zagreb. And we don’t believe she hired someone to do it in her place. In fact, we have no reason to believe that she had anything to do with Hawkins’s death at all. But she did walk past his house. We were wondering why, what it is she’s after. And after what you’ve told me, we now have in Keane a man who likes fires, and kills. So you tell me.’