‘Where is he?’
‘The large sitting room – where else?’
I followed him along the corridor to the kitchen.
‘Mr Nick, please come back down when you’ve finished. Remember, I have mail and a gift for you.’
‘You sure there’s no one else in the house?’
He looked a bit startled, then glanced around him as if I’d asked the most stupid question on the planet. He was right. It was Sunday: the staff had the day off. We’d normally have bumped into at least a couple of cleaners, maids and a few chefs by now.
I dumped my holdall on the table, and pulled out the pair of red-handled pliers I’d bought on my little shopping trip. Seconds later, I was walking up the wide staircase to the long marble corridor with the ten-foot Greek gods and the Louis XIV repro that so many people had been slaughtered to pay for.
3
Stefan was pouring whisky from his decanter into a heavy cut-glass tumbler. His back was turned; he raised his glass and gazed through the floor-to-ceiling windows at the lake shimmering in the distance. The room smelled of cigarettes and alcohol. Empty glasses lay next to an overflowing ashtray on the coffee-table. Spread all across it were maps of DRC.
I carried on towards him with my left hand extended. The right stayed by my side.
‘What do you want here?’
I brought the pliers up, locked them on to his right earlobe and twisted. His glass of thirty-year-old malt fell to the ground and smashed.
I pulled him towards the sofas. He didn’t fight it, just squealed like a pig. Everyone does.
‘Two things.’ I spun him round to the front of the sofa and pulled him down on to the sumptuous red and gold cushions. Still keeping a firm grip, I moved behind him and pulled so he pressed himself firmly against the backrest. I had his undivided attention. ‘First – where’s
Standish?’
‘I’m here.’
The dividing doors burst open. Standish faced me square on. In his hands, aimed at my head, was a baby Glock 9mm.
I got the message and released the pliers.
Stefan backed away to the windows. ‘I don’t want any mess! I don’t want any of this piece of shit left in this house. Besides . . .’ He grabbed one of the golden ropes that held back the big red velvet curtains and headed towards me. ‘I’m going to kill him myself.’
He got to within a couple of paces, pulled back his arm and hit me hard across the face with a big open hand.
Stars burst in my head as I crashed on to the coffee-table. I crumpled on to the floor and crawled towards the dividing doors to get away from him.
The two of them started shouting. Standish wanted it done here and now. I glanced up. He was breathing hard. His face was full of scratches, lumps and bumps.
My head was clearing. I focused on the baby Glock. What the fuck was I going to do next?
Standish was fuming. ‘I told you to be careful, didn’t I? I told you there could be trouble. Why haven’t you got a weapon? And some security?’
Stefan made a couple of turns in the rope and looked down at me with a smile that suggested he’d done this sort of thing before and enjoyed it.
Fuck this. If I was going to die, I was going down fighting.
I kept focused on the baby Glock, everything else burned out.
I swung a foot to catch Standish in the leg. It was the only thing I could hit.
He took a step to one side, which threw him a little bit off-balance.
I jumped up and grabbed the weapon in both hands, forcing it upwards, trying to twist it out of his hands.
It didn’t happen.
I pushed harder and he fell backwards. I ended up on my knees.
The rope went round my neck from behind and tightened.
I had to keep my hands on the Glock. I clenched my neck muscles, still trying to twist the weapon out of his hands and into his face.
I couldn’t move forward into Standish any more. The rope was pulling me back.
Stefan heaved some more. I kept a grip on the weapon, brought my elbows in, held it as tight as I could, trying to keep the fucking thing pointing upwards.
My head started to swell, my vision to narrow.
I was still gripping the weapon as Standish fell forwards and head-butted me. It landed on my cheek. He did it again, and got me just above the nose. I saw more starbursts.
And then the rope pulled deeper into my neck and I knew it was all over. I got pulled away from the Glock. My hands slipped off it.
I was only vaguely aware of the echo of footsteps on marble and the two bodies that screamed into the room from the corridor.
4
The first one banged something hard on
Standish’s head.
He crumpled.
A big black guy rushed past me and I heard a dull thud followed by two double-taps. The rope released suddenly and I fell forward. My face bounced off Standish’s. Blood and grey stuff oozed from the side of his head.
‘It’s OK, Nick.’ The way he growled it in that fucking Glaswegian accent of his, it still sounded like a death threat.
I pushed him away. ‘No! No!’ I spat the words into Standish’s face as I pulled the cord from my neck and got it round his.
I started pulling.
Standish’s eyes were open and vacant. His face was swollen.
I thought of Bateman, and I thought of all the kids lined up on the airstrip with a smile on their faces, and all the kids we’d killed back at the mine, and what had been left of the kid’s face I blew off at the river.
Sam’s hands pulled at my shoulders. ‘It’s all right, it’s over. He can’t be any more dead than he is.’
He started to lift me off.
5
I leaned against one of the sofas, coughing and spluttering, trying to gulp in oxygen, trying to recover. My pulse was doing push-ups in my neck and my windpipe felt like it was getting crushed.
I could see Crucial by the drinks cabinet, the baby Glock almost smothered in his hand. Stefan lay by his feet. There were two new holes in his face.
‘Turned out nice again, eh?’ I could hardly speak.
It got a smile out of Crucial. I could see that the cement round the diamond I’d given him was a lot thicker than it was on the conflict one.
Sam was on his knees, rifling Standish’s pockets.
‘How the fuck did you two get here?’
He pulled out a key fob with the Audi sign, key attached. ‘Lex has eyes and ears in the police HQ in Pretoria. They kept an eye on the flight manifests.’ He pushed Standish’s head with the heel of his shoe. ‘We knew that if he was alive he’d make his way to Switzerland eventually. Just like he said, he was going to sort things out. Soon as we knew he’d booked on to the flight to Zürich, we caught the one the night before, picked him up at the airport and followed him here.’
‘What for?’
He stepped over Standish to lean against the sofa with me. Crucial was pulling the covers off a couple of red and gold cushions.
‘I could ask you the same. Remember what Standish said? Man is the problem. No man, no problem . . .’
He watched Crucial ease the covers over Stefan’s and Standish’s faces to soak up the blood on the move, then grab Stefan by the arms and drag him towards the door.
‘Seems we all had the same idea.’
‘Nope – mine was even better.’
Sam threw Crucial the keys.
I held out a hand. ‘Wait.’ I turned to the dividing doors. ‘Giuseppe! Get the fuck in here!’
He stepped into the room, shoulders drooped, head down. He looked up at me like a schoolboy caught smoking behind the bike sheds.
‘Sit down!’
He tiptoed round the bodies. He was scared but in control. His eyes bounced between the two new faces.