When she looked up, Elvis was still in the doorway, defiant. A slim-bladed knife had appeared in his right hand.
“Elvis don’t do this,” Kelly pleaded, getting her feet back underneath her very slowly. “It’s not worth it.”
“What do you know about that?” he threw back at her. He swallowed, tried to purge the whiny note from his voice and failed. “Where else am I gonna get hold of that kind of dosh? It’ll get me started, y’know? It’ll put me on the map.”
He wants to buy drugs most likely, Kelly realised. Ten thousand would allow him to buy in as a mid-level dealer without having to claw his way up from the bottom of the pile—if he didn’t end up dead in six months from stepping on too many existing toes. Either that or he was going to expand his budding stolen electronics sideline, like the laptop sitting on the table just behind her right hand . . .
“You really think they’ll pay you?” she asked. “You think that little blade will stop them coming in here and taking what they want and leaving you with nothing except a bad taste in your mouth?”
“Shut it!” He seemed jittery, wired, unable to keep his feet still. Kelly’s eyes flicked between the knife and the body behind it, trying to gauge experience and intent. Not much of either, she judged, but an unhealthy dose of desperation made him just as dangerous.
“Put the knife down, Elvis and we can all walk away from this—”
She saw the sudden flare in his eyes. “Nobody’s walking away!” he yelled, lunging forwards.
Kelly’s fingers closed on the corner of the laptop. She dragged it off the table and flung it round and out, aiming straight for the boy’s head.
Then she leapt for the knife.
65
Dmitry shot through a set of lights as they flicked up to amber, narrowly avoiding the front wing of a black cab as he did so. The cab driver jumped on the horn. Dmitry barely had time to curse before he was bullying the Range Rover through the choked-up traffic.
I should have used the Mercedes, he recognised. But for this job he needed the extra space not to mention the car’s off-road capability. Unmarked graves were much better dug in the middle of nowhere.
In the passenger seat—seemingly unfazed by the wild ride—was Viktor, who’d driven Steve Warwick out for his meeting with Harry Grogan on Lambourn Downs. Viktor sat with his massive arms folded, chewing gum with his mouth open and his brain shut.
Viktor might be stupid as an ox but he was strong as one too. This time Dmitry was taking no chances with that goddamn woman. He’d brought backup.
His phone buzzed insistently. Without bothering to check the caller, Dmitry threw his iPhone across to Viktor to answer. After his low-slung Mercedes the Range Rover handled like a pig, rolling alarmingly under hard cornering even if it did stick to the road. He needed both hands on the wheel.
Viktor fumbled with the phone’s touch screen controls.
“Da?” There was a long pause during which time the big man’s brow furrowed deeply. He dropped the phone to his shoulder. “How long Brixton?”
“I don’t know!” Dmitry snapped. “Traffic is awful in this city. No respect!” As if to demonstrate, he leaned on the horn in response to a bus that was attempting to creep across into his lane. “I only got the call a half hour ago. We are almost there.”
66
The cold water hit Elvis in the face like being thrown into the sea. He surfaced through it spluttering and gasping and found himself lying on his left side on the floor of the flat. He’d know that puke-coloured carpet anywhere. There was a bloodied towel under his head.
What happened came back to him in a shameful rush. Kelly getting the jump on him. He didn’t know what she’d hit him with—a truck by the feel of it. He put a hand up to his nose carefully and found it was well mashed.
“B-bitch!” he managed.
“So she was here,” said a man’s voice somewhere above him. Elvis heard the Russki accent and his guts cramped instantly. He squeezed the water out of his eyes before cautiously opening them.
The first thing he saw was a pair of shiny black boots, the kind that army guys or coppers wear. He forced his gaze upwards and found a huge guy standing in them with Tina’s kettle still in his hand. Good job it hadn’t just boiled, Elvis thought hazily. This guy didn’t look the type to check.
What he did look from down here was enormous.
Aware that his throbbing face was a little too close to those heavy-duty toecaps for comfort, Elvis tried to get his left hand underneath him to lever up. A bolt of pain shot through his wrist. He gave a yelp of surprise and almost ended up back on the floor again. The big guy grabbed hold of the back of his sweatshirt and all but dragged him upright.
It was only when he was on his feet that several things came clear to Elvis. The first was that his wrist hurt like a bastard to the point where he felt ready to throw up. The second was the truck Kelly had used to hit him was actually his best laptop which was now lying smashed on the floor near the sofa. He swore again, longer and more inventively this time.
And that’s when he realised the third thing.
The big guy was not alone.
A second man was sitting on the narrow dining chair by the window. He had his back to the light so Elvis couldn’t make out his face right away. The build came across—lighter, not so gorilla-like as the guy with the kettle. Brains and Brawn these two, and it was always Brains you had to watch out for.
Elvis knew if he was going to talk his way out of the mess that bitch had left him in this was the guy he had to convince.
“So,” the man by the window said again. “She was here, da?”
“’Course she was here,” Elvis said. He clocked the Russian accent more clearly this time and the fear it provoked lent more of a snappy edge to his voice than was wise. He tried to temper it with an ingratiating grin. “You think I’d try and diss you? No way bro.”
The man uncrossed his legs, leaned forward and made an exaggerated show of looking around the tiny living room. “And yet . . . I do not see her,” he said. “So the effect is the same, yes?”
Puzzled, Elvis tried a shrug that also wasn’t wise. The room spun crazily. He staggered and nearly fell. The giant grabbed hold of his shoulder gripping hard enough to make him squirm. Elvis’s head was banging and he could feel the sweat breaking out across his forehead, under his armpits. He tried to convince himself it was down to being laid out with a ripped-off Toshiba rather than sheer fright but didn’t believe it.
He wished he still had his blade but Kelly must have taken it with her after she’d nicked it. He still wasn’t sure how she’d managed that. One minute he was in control, the next it was lights out.