‘That’s my boy,’ Maria said to herself. ‘You’re definitely Viktor.’ She pulled out and realised that she now had the same problem that the van driver had had: the van now prevented her from following Viktor’s car. She looked at the van driver lying crumpled on the ground. In the same situation in Hamburg she would have given up the pursuit and made sure that the driver was okay. But this wasn’t Hamburg. Slamming the Saxo into reverse, Maria cut up a side street. On the way in she had driven up Mercatorstrasse, the main route into Chorweiler and guessed that Viktor would be heading along Weichselring in its direction.
She took two rights, which she reckoned would bring her out onto the Weichselring. It didn’t. She cursed and looked wildly around for some landmark that would give her a clue to which direction she should take. She floored the accelerator and drove at high speed towards where the street swung left. She took the next right and saw the traffic on Mercatorstrasse. Maria had bypassed Weichselring completely. She reached the end of the street and was stopped at a red light. She scanned the Mercatorstrasse in both directions but could see no sign of Viktor’s distinctive Chrysler. The lights changed but she still had no idea which way to turn and didn’t move off. A car had come up behind her and the driver sounded his horn. She looked in her mirror to mouth a curse. A colossal American car with a colossal Ukrainian driver. She held her hand up in apology and pulled out onto Mercatorstrasse, turning left and hoping that Viktor would do the same. He did. Maria had no idea how she had managed to beat Viktor to the junction, but now the target she had intended to follow was following her. Her mouth became dry at the thought that it might not be coincidence but intention. Could he have spotted her outside the apartment block? Viktor did not look to Maria as if he was the most highly trained of Vitrenko’s goons. He was all thug and no soldier, she thought. But, there again, most Ukrainian and Russian gangsters had a Spetsnaz background and the way Viktor had dealt with the van driver had certainly been expert if a little unsubtle. She pulled up at the next set of traffic lights, looking in her mirror to check if Viktor was indicating a turn. He wasn’t, so she went straight on. He followed. Up ahead there were a couple of free parking bays. Maria indicated and pulled into one. Viktor drove by without looking in her direction and Maria let another couple of cars pass before pulling back out. She sighed with relief. As far as she could see the anonymity of her car had protected her from detection and she fixed her attention on the ridiculous tail fins of Viktor’s 1960s Chrysler, three cars ahead of her.
They drove south through the city for about fifteen minutes without going back onto the A57 autobahn that had brought her to Chorweiler. Viktor made two stops to collect, both in run-down areas. After the second stop Maria became concerned when she found herself immediately behind Viktor, the two previously intervening cars having turned off at different junctions. She held back as much as she could, but whenever they stopped at traffic lights she ended up bumper to bumper with Viktor. If he looked in his rear-view mirror, he would see her face clearly. She tugged her woollen hat further down over her brow. Maria no longer had a clue where she was, but she tried to make a mental note of the road endings she passed. They were still within the city but the architecture changed from residential to industrial and she became painfully aware that there were fewer cars on the road, making her tailing more conspicuous. Eventually they passed under the autobahn and came into another residential area indicated by a yellow Stadtteil sign as Ossendorf. She noted the name of the road they passed along, Kanalstrasse, and followed Viktor as he turned along a street lined with four-storey apartment blocks. Now her and Viktor’s were the only cars driving along it. Maria decided to break off rather than risk Viktor identifying her as a tail. She took the next on the left, did a U-turn to face the road she had left and parked at the kerb.
Maria cursed under her breath. She took the Cologne street plan from the glove compartment and checked Ossendorf. Her instincts had been right. This was a residential area and not a short cut to anywhere else. Either Viktor lived here or he was doing another pick-up. She would wait half an hour. If it was another pick-up, then he would probably come out of the area before the half-hour was up, and more than likely by the same way he had come in. And if she were unsuccessful either way, then she would watch Slavko’s apartment every day and pick up his trail again.
Maria was hungry. She hadn’t eaten since her insubstantial breakfast of coffee and toast. And with the engine off she couldn’t switch on the heater. Her lightly fleshed frame felt chilled to the bone. That old feeling. The cold made her scared. She looked at her watch: three-fifteen. Already the sky was dark with more than the clouds. If it got any darker she would have significant trouble locating Viktor’s car. She remembered her shock at finding Viktor’s car behind her at the traffic lights. What if it hadn’t been a coincidence? What if he had been onto her from the start? All kinds of irrational fears began to well up inside her. Suddenly an idea came to her and she spun around suddenly to make sure that Viktor’s car wasn’t there, sitting behind her in over-styled American menace. It wasn’t. She turned to face front again. Pull yourself together, she told herself. For God’s sake get a grip.
It was then that she saw the improbably long profile of Viktor’s Chrysler glide past the road end. She had been right: it had been a collection and he was heading back. Maria switched on the car lights, started the engine, and headed after him.
4.
Thirteen… fourteen… fifteen…
Andrea counted each one silently and focused on her breathing, each inhalation hissed through tight-drawn lips.
Sixteen… seventeen…
She had added two kilos to the bench press. If she did twenty reps, three sets, that would mean that by the end of her routine she would have lifted an extra one hundred and twenty kilos.
Eighteen… nineteen…
She felt the muscles around her jaw set hard with every push. No need for a facelift if you did this kind of thing. It was called radiated stress. The whole idea was that with each exercise you isolated one part of your body, one set of muscles, to maximise the benefit to that area. But the muscle and sinew of neck and jaw always strained under the effort. The first sign of someone beginning a weight work regime wasn’t on their bodies, it was in their face.
Twenty.
Andrea eased the bench press slowly back to its resting position. It was the great thing about multi-gym equipment: you didn’t need a spotter to buddy you through your routine. But Andrea knew that when it came to building bulk and definition, it was the free weight that worked best: the system used since the gymnasia of the Greeks and Romans. But using this high-tech equipment freed her from the need to engage with anyone else in the gym.
She took a slug of water from her bottle, sprayed the bench seat and back with anti-bacterial spray and wiped everything down. The etiquette of the gym. She liked coming at this time of night. It was always quiet. Few people, no noise, no chat. Even the usual dance-track muzak was switched off.