The smoke's really billowing into the room now; I can even hear the faint roar of the fire. Already I'm beginning to choke on the fumes and I sneak a look over at Radovan. Rather than wasting time with the knife in his thigh, he's limped over to the cooker where he's now picking up the saucepan of sizzling oil.
The gun goes off again, the bullet a lot closer to me this time, and I see that the struggle between my interrogator and the beautiful blonde continues unabated.
Radovan's turning round now, holding the saucepan with both hands. The blood from the stab wound is pumping out fast and running down his trouser leg, but he ignores it. He may be a ruthless, cold-hearted torturer, but the fact remains that I've killed his cousin, and whether it's about honour or emotion – and I'm guessing by the look of him that it's going to have to be about honour – I've still got to pay. But his hands are unsteady, and he's having difficulty walking. Oil drips over the top, splashing onto his shoes, where it sizzles away angrily.
This is the bastard who butchered Leah on camera while she lay helpless and terrified, who probably cut Snowy's throat as well, and now's my opportunity to make him pay. I launch myself from the floor with a speed that I'm certain he wasn't expecting, and before he can react I lash out with an ungraceful but accurate karate kick that catches the bottom of the saucepan and sends a much bigger splash of oil over his torso. This time he howls in pain, and it's a sound that pleases me. He drops the saucepan and smacks wildly at the fat as it eats away at his flesh. As he does so, I charge him low, smashing my head into his groin and sending him crashing backwards into the cooker. I can smell burning meat, and my scalp feels like it's on fire as I make contact with the oil that runs down him. He gasps, winded, in no position to fight back, and I slam the palm of one hand onto his masked head and drive it down onto the hotplate. At the last moment, he puts up some resistance, but it's too late, and his head hits the hob side on with a sound like bacon sizzling in a pan. He screams and tries to struggle free, but the leather of the mask is already melting and he's stuck fast. I push down harder, this time with both hands, ignoring the waves of heat emanating from the metal and remembering the DVD I was forced to watch of Leah being torn apart. His hands slap uselessly at me and his legs kick out, but he's finished, there's no doubt about that.
The room's filling with smoke now, and I'm having difficulty breathing. I can see no sign of the other guy or the blonde girl, and I can't hear them either. But I can hear the roar of a spreading fire.
It's time to go.
19
As I feel my way out I'm assailed by more thick waves of choking black smoke as it pours up the stairs. There's surely no means of exit down there, which doesn't leave me much in the way of alternatives. I can feel panic rising in me, but I force it down and stagger blindly away from the stairs along a short corridor. I bang into something and stumble, only just managing to regain my footing. Through the haze, I see it's the prone figure of my interrogator, and he's unconscious. I won't be getting any answers out of him now, and there's no way I'm going to make it out of here carrying him, so I step over him and keep going.
There's a door at the end of the corridor and I open it, grope my way through, then slam it shut behind me. I'm in what appears to be a storage room. There are various bits and pieces – mainly boxes, and the occasional solitary item of furniture – piled high against all the available wall space, but my attention is immediately drawn to a large aluminium beer barrel standing in the centre of the room. I feel a rush of relief. It stands directly beneath an open skylight. Someone, it seems, has already made good his or her escape from the building this way. It's got to be the girl. I hope so.
I am exhausted, panting, breathing in acrid smoke, running on empty, but a desperate desire for fresh air drives me on and I clamber onto the barrel, reach up on tiptoes and just about manage to get a decent grip on the edge of the frame. I heave myself up, push my head through the gap in the window, and gulp down the fresh, warm summer air.
An explosion comes from somewhere below me, and the whole building shakes. Christ, what are they storing in this place? Dynamite? I'm not out of either the frying pan or the fire just yet. Using my arms as leverage, I drag the rest of my body through the gap until I'm lying on the tiles of the warehouse's sloping roof, facing out towards the canal and the buildings on the other side. Joggers and shifty-looking kids in school uniform are lining the towpath on the opposite bank, staring towards the inferno in front of them, and I can see Lucas's car parked up on the pavement on the bridge over the Kingsland Road, with the hazards on. He's stood beside it, and when he spots me he waves enthusiastically like I'm the long-lost cousin he's been waiting for in Airport Arrivals. He's at least forty yards and a very long drop away. At the very least, I think he ought to be looking for a ladder.
I roll down the slope of the roof until I reach the guttering on the edge, and look down. I'm right about the drop – it's far too high for me to jump, even with my training. Below me I can see smoke billowing out of windows and flames licking the walls on the ground floor. The wheelie bin in which I deposited the guard is completely engulfed by fire, and I wonder whether he escaped or whether, more likely, he's another person who's been killed today.
I can hear fire engines approaching from several different directions, but I'm in no position to wait for them. An old building like this one is going to come down fast. Already I can feel the tiles beginning to grow hot.
I turn my back on Lucas and make my way along the tiles until I reach the western edge of the building. The roof of the adjoining property is about ten feet away. That's a long way when you're jumping at height, but if I make it I know I'm home free because I can see it's got a two-storey extension sticking out the back, meaning that I can get back down to ground level without too much difficulty.
There are men in grubby overalls staring up at me from the yard down below. 'You're going to be all right, mate!' yells one, which is easy for him to say, I think.
Thin trails of smoke are now coming through the gaps in the tiles. Not long now until the roof collapses. From somewhere down below I hear another explosion, and once again the building shudders, as do I, almost losing my balance and heading for the ground quicker than I'd anticipated. Through the gap between the two buildings I see a police car pull up and an officer jump out, holding a radio to his mouth.
I take a few steps backwards, moving off the guttering so that I'm standing at an angle on the sloping, smoking roof, and then I make a run for it. Two seconds later, I'm sailing through the air, legs flailing as I try to maintain my momentum. My feet land on the edge of the other roof. One slips and kicks out into space, but my hands scrape at the tiles, and before I know it I'm rolling down the roof in the direction of the two-storey extension. I roll straight off, one hand grabbing a piece of guttering to ease my fall, and somehow manage to land on my feet on the extension's flat roof. I run across it, feeling more confident now, and do a single hanging jump that lands me in the burly arms of two of the overalled workmen. 'It's OK, mate, you're safe now,' says the one who offered me the encouragement earlier, but he doesn't know the half of it. I'm not safe until I'm well away from this place.