The hotel room was fairly standard. There was a short hallway, off which was a bathroom; beyond was a double-bedded room with fitted wardrobes and a small writing desk. A floor-to-ceiling sliding window led out on to the balcony overlooking the pool. The curtains were drawn and the room was in semi-darkness, a slit of sunlight cutting through the narrow gap between the curtains. The bed was unmade and in disarray, and Henry’s clothes, and some of Danny’s, were scattered around. The indent of their bodies was still visible where they had been lying and making love earlier that morning.
Loz and Henry stood sheepishly in the space between the bed and the sliding window, facing Danny and Ivankov.
‘ I think you can let her go now, don’t you?’ Henry said firmly. For any chance of survival, Henry reckoned Danny had to be away from the Russian.
Once more, it was as if Ivankov was reading Henry’s thoughts. He shook his head and pushed the Makarov hard into Danny’s waist, just above the hipbone. She uttered a squeak of pain. ‘You are a policeman, aren’t you?’
‘ Yes, I am.’
‘ I knew it when I saw you with Jacky Lee,’ Ivankov said with a hint of triumph.
‘ And that’s why you’ll never get away with this, or the murder of Jacky Lee.’
On those last words, Danny now understood who was holding her and she said, ‘Oh God!’ instinctively, then, ‘Ahhh!’ as Ivankov wrenched his arm back on her throat to shut her up.
‘ Keep quiet,’ he whispered into her ear, ‘otherwise I’ll break your neck. And as for you’ — he looked across at Henry — ‘making those stupid claims just serves to annoy me intensely, because I always — always,’ he stressed, ‘get away with it… but what interests me here and now is, what is this all about? Why were you’ — and here he addressed Loz — ‘knocking on a policeman’s door?’
Loz opened his mouth, but Henry interjected quickly. ‘He’s a witness against Billy Crane. I know you’ve come for Crane, but you’re too late, Yuri. He’s being arrested at this moment by the Spanish police on my behalf. So you can go back to Russia and tell Alexandr that the chase is over and the law has won.’
‘ I’m impressed, Mr Policeman,’ the Russian said genuinely. ‘You know my name.’
‘ That’s because you make mistakes.’
Ivankov’s face hardened at the slight to his professionalism. He looked away from Henry and pointed his gun at Loz. ‘Is it true that Crane is being arrested now?’
‘ Y-yeah,’ Loz responded hesitantly after eyeing Henry for a lead and giving the lie away. This hesitation meant that the Russian pulled the trigger and shot him. With no more than the sound the metallic click of the hammer falling to indicate firing, the silenced slug struck his shoulder, exploding in the joint on impact, sending Loz spinning back against the curtains which he tried to cling to as he fell to the floor. Blood poured out of the devastating wound and he went immediately into shock.
‘ You bastard!’ Henry snarled, but had the sense not to make a move.
Ivankov screwed the smoking muzzle into Danny’s waist and raised his eyebrows. ‘Now then,’ he said in a businesslike way, ‘do not waste my time, Mr Policeman. Just tell me the truth of the matter and where I can locate Mr Crane. I’ll be upfront with you. Even if you tell me willingly, I’m going to kill you all. If you don’t tell me willingly, then I will have to waste precious time extracting the information from you using techniques in which I’m a little rusty. But I guarantee that you’ll regret not telling me willingly in the first place. So, either tell me now and die quickly, or refuse and die slowly… the choice is yours.’
Ivankov regarded Henry with an ice-chilling stare, critically appraising the cop standing across the room from him. In that instant, the Russian made a judgment call. He pulled the gun out of Danny’s side and pointed it at Henry. ‘In fact, you’re going to die now, Mr Policeman, because I’m quite sure I’ll be able to get all the information I need from this woman.’ He tightened his grip on Danny’s throat with a hard, backwards jerk. ‘You’d be just too much like hard work.’
The gun rose and seemed to focus in on Henry’s palpitating heart.
Henry emitted a gasp of fear. He was about to back away, saying, ‘No, no,’ about to plead for his life when Danny, with a surge of strength, twisted into Ivankov and lashed out with her right hand in a sudden, chopping motion, bringing it down on to Ivankov’s wrist with such force that his fingers spasmed open and the gun dropped on to the bed.
Screaming, ‘Get the gun, Henry, get it!’ Danny kept on turning into the killer, at the same time driving her right heel down on to his foot.
Ivankov was thrown off-balance by the tiger in his grasp — but only momentarily. In a flurry of limbs he quickly overpowered her and was back in charge, though Danny refused to cease struggling wildly, antagonising him.
Briefly taken aback by the distraction, Henry was now moving swiftly across the room towards the bed — and the gun.
Ivankov saw Henry’s intentions.
Roaring, he grabbed hold of Danny’s hair in his right hand, his left hand going to the back of her neck. With a powerful jerk he snapped her head backwards with his right hand and pushed forwards with his left. He then threw her down on to the floor beside him where she flopped.
Then he went to beat Henry to the gun.
Too late.
Henry was there just before the Russian, having hurled himself across the bed, fumbling the gun into his trembling hands but still able to aim it up at the advancing figure, stopping him in his tracks.
His breathing laboured, Henry looked up at Ivankov along the barrel which trembled in his grasp.
‘ Ha!’ The Russian’s hands went up in surrender. He stepped back, stood upright, then without warning launched himself towards Henry, figuring that he would be too lightning quick for the cop who was bound to hesitate about pulling the trigger anyway. Hadn’t he already proved that once before?
Henry’s eyes took in the frame of the Russian coming at him, a wild, murderous look on his face. And he did hesitate. The conscience of a cop gnawing at him, wondering how he would be able to justify killing an unarmed man. But then he saw the stiletto blade in Ivankov’s right palm. How had that got there? Where had it come from? Down the sleeve! He was no longer unarmed. He was capable of murder.
Henry’s mind processed all these thoughts in the fraction of a second before his finger jerked back on the trigger. The bullet struck Ivankov in the cleft of skin just below the Adam’s apple, ripping out his throat. The energy from the impact contorted his body obscenely in mid-air.
Henry rolled to one side and the Russian slammed down heavily on to the bed beside him, where he lay twitching like a huge fish in a fast-spreading pool of blood, which soaked into the covers. He twitched for a long time and Henry watched, both fascinated and repulsed. A man dying, only inches away from him. A man he had killed.
When the Russian stopped moving, Henry exhaled, slumped on to his back, breathless, and attempted to regain control.
He was still on the bed, the Russian lying next to him. Dead.
He got to his feet and looked down at Loz who was whimpering quietly like a kicked dog. His eyes were closed and he lay coiled in the foetal position, prostrate in a lake of his own blood. He was in urgent need of medical attention.
Still quivering, Henry turned slowly round and looked towards Danny, lying spreadeagled on the floor on the other side of the bed. Unmoving. His legs buckled, a hand grasping at his short hair in a gesture of anguish as a terrible realisation hit him. He tried to say the word, ‘Danny,’ but no sound came from his lips.
Slowly, he circled the bed and sank to his knees, next to her. His fingertips reached slowly to stroke her pretty, flushed cheek, but he knew she was dead. Her neck had been broken with ruthless efficiency by the most dangerous man he had ever met.