Kelly swallowed as much to keep her silence as to clear her throat.
McCarron waited a few moments for her to speak then sighed again. “Look Kelly love, why don’t you let me help—”
“It’s a bit late for that,” Kelly said and cut the call. A few minutes later she pulled back out onto the motorway and headed for London.
103
“Where we go?” Viktor demanded. “Is middle of night.” He was leaning forwards slightly in the passenger seat so he could hold a towel-wrapped ice pack against the back of his head and he still sounded groggy.
Anyone else hit that hard with a shovel would have a fractured skull or be dead, Dmitry thought from the driving seat. Not Viktor.
“I told you,” Dmitry said, his own voice terse. “The boss wants us to pick up Myshka.”
“Why?”
Dmitry shrugged. “He was in a pissy mood. I didn’t ask.”
Viktor considered this for several miles.
“Is shame,” he said at last. “I like Myshka.”
Dmitry took his eyes away from the road for long enough to flick him a quick stare but saw nothing in the other man’s face. “So do I,” he agreed. “She’s clever—maybe more clever than the boss, eh?”
Viktor turned to look at him, an incredulous frown creasing his brow. “She’s a woman,” he said in such a tone of finality that Dmitry knew there would be no arguing with him.
“I noticed,” he snapped. “And keep that damn towel over your nose. I don’t want blood on the leather.”
They were in Dmitry’s Mercedes heading deep into the Berkshire countryside, the lights cutting swathes through the narrow lanes, startling the occasional fox and rabbit that scuttled for the verges as the big car flashed by. At one point Dmitry saw the flutter of huge pale wings at the periphery of his vision—an owl perhaps—disappearing into the moonless night.
He wished himself anywhere but here.
He waited for Viktor to query what a sophisticated woman like Myshka was doing out in the wilds but it never seemed to occur to him. Viktor was a good foot soldier, Dmitry thought. He followed orders without question, broke heads when they needed to be broken. His lack of imagination made his loyalty without question—he could not be bribed, threatened or reasoned with.
“This is it,” Dmitry said catching sight of a reflective marker in the tumble of brambles by the side of the road. He braked and swung the Merc carefully along a narrow track. The tree branches clawed in alongside and overhead, lending the darkness another eerie suffocating layer.
Dmitry had been brought up on folk tales of ghosts and wolves and demons. Tales designed to keep a child frightened and in line. He was not a child any longer but he would have taken the most dangerous ghettos of the city over this untamed wasteland.
Viktor showed no signs of alarm about his surroundings. That lack of imagination sometimes had its advantages.
“We walk from here,” Dmitry said switching off the engine and climbing out. He turned the collar of his coat up against the cold, hunching his shoulders down.
“Soon be winter, eh?” he said over his shoulder, pulling on gloves and retrieving a powerful flashlight from the Merc’s boot. “What passes for winter here anyway.”
“In Moscow the winters freeze a man’s breath still in his mouth, remember?” Viktor asked solemnly. He lifted the ice pack away from his skull and something twitched around his mouth. “You grow soft Dmitry.”
“I do, my friend,” Dmitry agreed. “But not so soft.” His eyes slid past Viktor’s face. “Hello Myshka.”
The big Russian turned. Myshka approached out of the gloom, dressed in a long black coat with a fur collar and a hat to match. She carried a flashlight in her gloved hand and lifted her booted feet carefully over the uneven ground.
She stopped a few metres away and set the flashlight down on its end. It was the type that doubled as a lantern. For a moment none of them spoke. She fished in her pockets for cigarettes, lit one and inhaled deeply until the end glowed like hot coals.
“So he sends you for me and you come, yes? That’s how it is between us?”
Between us? Dmitry wondered sharply. Surely she hasn’t . . .?
“Yes,” said Viktor simply.
She gripped the edges of her coat as if about to strip. “And nothing I can . . . offer you now will change your mind?”
Viktor paused a moment, regretful, then shook his head slowly.
“Am sorry,” he said.
Myshka’s eyes sought Dmitry’s face, cocked an eyebrow to ask him a very different question. Dmitry hesitated then gave a tiny shake of his own head.
Myshka sighed. “So am I,” she said.
Her voice was cold and clear. Something about it must have penetrated Viktor’s brain. His head lifted like a dog suddenly catching the scent of danger. He started to turn, not towards Myshka but to Dmitry, bewildered questions forming in his eyes.
And as Viktor turned away from her, Myshka pulled out a squat black pistol from inside her coat and shot him through the neck.
The sudden noise and light and heat in the darkness was astounding. Dmitry staggered sideways as if hit himself, disorientated by the report that thundered away through the trees and blinded by the flare from the muzzle.
When he looked back, Viktor had dropped to his knees in the dirt, hands clasped weakly to his ruined throat. The round had passed straight through and carried on into the night, tearing a pathway of wanton destruction. Blood gushed between the big man’s fingers, pulsing out at a rate that was clearly unsustainable.
His eyes were fixed on Dmitry’s, his gaze gentle and uncomprehending when it should have been enraged. Viktor tried to speak, producing only a muted gurgle. He collapsed very slowly onto his side, chest heaving as his lungs flooded, and lay there shuddering.
Dmitry had seen enough gunshot wounds to know there was nothing to be done for him even if he’d wanted to. He caught movement and realised Myshka had moved to stand next to him, the gun held loosely at her side. She was staring down at Viktor with only mild curiosity in her eyes.
“He is too stupid even to know when he is a dead man,” she said, her voice breathy. She raised the gun, aiming for Viktor’s head this time. Dmitry caught her arm.
“No,” he said. “We are not so far from civilisation that gunshots won’t be investigated.”
Myshka pursed her lips. The light from the makeshift lantern seemed to make her eyes appear very bright. “You would let him suffer?” she asked, something almost triumphant in her tone.