screamed and rolled away. His hand fluttered above the injury: too
painful to touch. Tears dribbled down his cheeks.
'Try anything’, Liam said, 'and I’ll take a penalty kick with your
skull. Understand?’
He got only a whimper in response. Priya looked on, her arms folded.
She wore a grim expression, as though she disapproved of his methods.
You’ll see a lot worse than this before we’re done, he thought.
There was a tense silence in the kitchen. Then Yuri turned away.
He lifted the coffee pot and poured quickly, slopping some on the
table.
'If you would fight me for her, maybe you want to fuck her?’ He
nodded towards the ceiling. 'Maybe I tell Valentin how you feel?’
Joe didn’t rise to the bait. He and Yuri had formed a mutual enmity
from the beginning. It might have deterred Joe from taking the job,
if not for the fact that Yuri was rarely on the island. He was Valentin’s
personal bodyguard, and Nasenko spent at least two weeks of every
month attending to his various business interests around the world.
The rest of the time was divided between the Reach and his apartment
in Belgravia.
Yuri was in his mid-forties, a short burly man with thick black hair
and dark eyes. His features were large and unprepossessing, and his
skin had the look and texture of old dough. One side of his neck was
disfigured with scar tissue where someone had once thrown battery
acid over him. Legend had it that he had ignored the burns until he’d
disarmed his attackers and killed them both with his bare hands.
The Ukrainian said nothing as he spooned three sugars into his
coffee. Finally he picked up his cigar from the side plate he was using
as an ashtray. He inhaled, then jabbed the cigar at Joe.
'Clean up and get ready. You take Cassie to Brighton in thirty
minutes.’
'I thought we were leaving at six.’
'Not any more. There is something to collect at Merrion’s.’
Joe glanced at his watch. 'We’ll be cutting it fine. What time do
they close?’
'Don’t worry about that. Just do it. And say nothing to her.’ Yuri
bared his teeth, but it couldn’t have been called a smile. 'Valentin
has arranged a surprise.’
'Okay. What’s the real reason for going early?’
Yuri glared at him. 'His visitor arrives soon. He wants no distractions.’
'Must be an important meeting.’ When Yuri showed no sign of
responding, Joe indicated the yacht, sitting squarely in their field of
vision. 'Is that anything to do with it?’
'This is not your concern.’
Joe kept his voice level. 'If Valentin wants to change the plan, I’d
expect him to tell me in person. How do I know I’m not just running
some silly errand for you?’
'He is busy. He tells me, and now I tell you. And for Valentin, you
are here to fetch, to carry, to be good little worker and keep your fucking mouth shut.’
Joe clenched his fists. A glint in Yuri’s eye suggested he would relish
a fight, and yet he didn’t seem overly disappointed when Joe forced
himself to relax.
'We’re going to have a talk about this tomorrow,’ said Joe quietly.
'Get a few things straight.’
Yuri threw back his head and laughed. 'Tomorrow? Very good. See
how I tremble with fear!’ He motioned towards the door. 'Now go.
Go before you make me angry.’
Reluctantly, Joe turned away. He knew he shouldn’t let Yuri rile
him, nor should he keep trying to fight Cassie’s battles for her. If
Valentin chose to keep her in the dark, it was her responsibility either
to have it out with him or to put up with it.
Crossing the kitchen, he earned another long-suffering smile from
Maria. He walked along the hall and descended the stairs to the staff
quarters, aware that the prospect of a night away had just become a
lot more inviting.
Eight
Liam knew from the floor plans that the garage could be accessed
via the house. He hurried through a kitchen so enormous that it was
probably larger than some of the flats he’d rented over the years.
Then into the adjoining utility room, where he discovered the door
into the garage was locked. He looked round for a key but couldn’t
find one.
He was about to kick the door in when he remembered the estate
agent’s keys. He pulled them from his pocket, saw that several were
on a keyring of their own, along with a plastic tag marked DREAMSCAPE.
The second one he tried slipped easily into the lock.
The garage was stifling, the air as thick as soup. Although it was
large enough for four or five cars, the interior was clad in timber;
there was no natural light and not much ventilation. It was like
stepping into a sauna.
At least Liam didn’t have to grope for a light switch. The system
operated on movement sensors, and a bank of fluorescent tubes
fired up as he crossed the threshold. The ceiling was built low to
accommodate a strengthened floor for the games room overhead, the
centrepiece of which was a full-sized snooker table.
Years since I played snooker, he thought, grinning slyly as he reflected
on some of the other things you could do on a snooker table.
That brought him back to the estate agent, and the man’s secret
assignation. This woman he was screwing could turn up at any moment.
Two extra hostages before they’d even got set up. Not exactly the best
of starts.
'Well, bollocks to that,’ Liam said, his voice resonating in the large
empty space. At least he had the experience to know that things like this
always happened. There was even a motto for it, for Christ’s sake: Expect
the unexpected. What mattered was how you dealt with it.
Reaching the big double doors, he paused, thinking he’d heard a
noise back in the house. A muffled cry, maybe?
He waited a second, wondering how Priya would react if the man
made a grab for her. Whether she could fight him off.
But there was no time to go and check. The last thing Liam wanted
was the estate agent’s lover rolling up just as he got into the Renault.
So hurry . . .
Valentin Nasenko had a permanent staff of more than twenty people:
personal assistants, maids and housekeepers, gardeners and bodyguards.
Some were based on site at Valentin’s various homes around the world,
while others travelled with the man himself. At Terror’s Reach there
were usually two or three live-in staff, including Joe.
Their quarters were in the basement: four bedrooms which opened
onto a communal open-plan living area and kitchenette. Joe’s room
was about ten feet by eight, decorated in neutral colours, with a single
built-in wardrobe and an ensuite shower room. The only window was
a narrow skylight that ran along the side of the house and poured a
little daylight into each of the rooms.
It was an arrangement similar, in Joe’s opinion, to a prison cell.
Certainly Yuri seemed to think so. He took any opportunity to help
himself to one of the guest bedrooms on the second floor, rath
er than
languish down here.
The room could be locked, but since it seemed likely that Valentin
had access to master keys, Joe kept his personal possessions in a metal
strongbox stashed beneath a spare blanket in the bottom of his
wardrobe. As well as nearly ten thousand pounds in cash and a couple
of cheap pay-as-you-go mobile phones, the box contained credit cards,
passports and birth certificates in two different names, including the
one by which his current employers knew him: Joe Carter. There
were also half a dozen photos, growing increasingly dog-eared but still
without question the most valuable items in the box.
After taking a cool shower and dressing in jeans and a short-sleeved
shirt, Joe packed a small rucksack with toiletries and a change of
clothes. He debated for a second, then added his Leatherman multi
tool to the rucksack and put one of the mobile phones in his pocket.
Before closing the box, he allowed himself a few moments to look
at the photos. He’d considered framing a couple and keeping them on
his bedside table, but the same cautious instinct advised against it.
He knew the other staff viewed him as an oddity because of his
reluctance to reveal anything about himself. It wasn’t always pleasant,
deceiving people on matters both trivial and profound, but he’d long
since learned to live with it. He didn’t have any choice.
And on that bum note, he locked the box and put it back in the
wardrobe. Picked up the rucksack and left the room, his heart beating
faster at the thought of making the call – and the question he would
be compelled to ask.
Like almost everything else in Dreamscape, the garage doors incorporated
a fancy gimmick. Operating on an electric motor, they were
constructed from what looked like rigid vertical slats of hardwood. But
instead of sweeping outwards, tiny hinges on each slat allowed the
gates to bend and retract into a housing concealed within the curved
side walls. It was an impressive sight as the gates shuffled apart and
seemingly disappeared, but Liam was in no mood to admire it.
As soon as the gap was wide enough he ran to the Renault, started
it up and drove into the garage. Then he hurried over to the van,
casually checking the road in both directions. No one in sight.
He was glad of that, but it also freaked him out. Five houses all on
their own on a little island. No pubs, no restaurants, not even a corner
shop. If you suddenly needed a packet of cigarettes or a crate of beer,
you were looking at an hour’s round trip to the nearest town.
Of course, most of the people who did live here had servants to
run errands like that. But it still wasn’t for Liam. No, he’d take their
money and get himself a place somewhere busy and vibrant and anonymous.
New York, or perhaps Madrid. He’d once been on an amazing
stag weekend in Madrid.
He reversed past the gates, pulled onto the driveway and into the
garage. Stood and watched the doors rattling together, and when they
were shut he gave a nod of satisfaction. Everything back on track.
He opened up the van and took out a couple of plastic restraints
from one of the kitbags. There was a lot more stuff to unload, but
most of it could wait until the other teams were here: a job for the
knuckle draggers.
A neat little Louis Vuitton case caught his eye. God only knew
what Priya had brought with her. A change of clothes and some
toiletries, fair enough, but somehow she’d managed to fill up a whole
case.
Maybe there was some nice lingerie, he thought. So far she’d
presented herself as quite the prim little maiden but, as he knew from
experience, that kind of woman sometimes turned out to be a tigress
in the bedroom.
Liam caught himself whistling as he retraced his steps through the
house. He was feeling lucky, thinking about Priya and lingerie.
Thinking about christening the snooker table. It wasn’t till he reached
the kitchen that he detected a subtle change in the air. Something
had gone badly wrong.
He recognised the smell immediately: hot, metallic, foul. The
stench of a slaughterhouse. A second later he reached the hallway
and saw the large spreading pool of fresh blood.
Nine
For a moment, Liam considered aborting the whole operation. It was
one thing to expect the unexpected. Quite another to foresee a problem
on this scale.
He watched the blood creep across the floor and settle, hot and
viscous, darkening the grooves between the sumptuous oak floorboards.
He’d never get it all out, he realised. No matter how rigorously he
cleaned up, traces of it would remain, soaking deep into the floor.
And blood meant DNA. It meant evidence that could put him in
prison for the rest of his life.
Almost as quickly, Liam understood that the job had to continue.
There were too many elements already in play. And far, far too much
at stake.
Tearing his gaze from the blood, he focused on its source. The
estate agent lay on his back, arms thrown out at his sides, one leg
straight, the other slightly crooked. If you lifted him upright it would
look like a dancer’s pose.
His throat had been slashed just below the Adam’s apple, but Liam
guessed it was one of the stab wounds to the chest that had killed
him.
'What happened?’
He looked at Priya. She was sitting at the foot of the stairs, her
elbows resting on her knees, her lower arms dangling free as if she
blood, and there was a spatter line on her jeans, crossing both legs
just below the knees. Her head was tipped forward, her hair a graceful
curtain across her face.
There was no response, so he said it again. 'What happened? Did
he try to attack you?’
Priya raised her head, parting the curtain of hair. 'He said he felt
sick. Asked if he could go to the toilet. I said no.’ Her voice was even,
but sounded a little tight. She was very still, he noticed. Not trembling.
'He
started to get up, said he just needed to turn over, but then he
lunged at me. He grabbed my ankle, tried to pull me down.’
Liam sighed. This was precisely why he’d proposed that she move
the cars.
'I couldn’t let him overpower me. Not with so much at risk. I just. . .
I had to defend myself She gestured towards the weapon at her feet.
It was a military-style boot knife with a double-edged blade.
'Where did that come from?’
'I always carry it.’ She met Liam’s eye. 'For protection.’
He nodded, filing the information away. 'Wouldn’t a single cut have
subdued him?’
'He kept coming at me . . .’ She shrugged. 'I had to stop him. Let’s
face it, he was a dead man from the moment he opened the front
door.’
Liam grunted, neither agreeing nor disagreeing. He couldn’t rid
himself of the feeling that her explanation was a bit too slick. He was
about to say s
o when a burst of dance music startled them both. It
was coming from the estate agent’s body.
His phone.
When Joe went back upstairs the house was vibrating with the undercurrent
of panic that accompanies the preparation for any kind of
journey with young children. In the kitchen, Cassie was packing milk
and bottles and bibs for Sofia. Joe heard the fridge door open, followed
by a crash. Cassie swore, and Maria offered soothing words as she
came to the rescue.
Yuri appeared, dumped a couple of overnight bags in the lobby
and stalked away, muttering into the phone clamped to his ear. Joe
caught the words: 'Ten minutes, okay?’
Passing through the kitchen, where Maria was mopping up a spillage,
Joe used the internal door into the garage, which had the look and
feel of a school gymnasium. At Christmas Valentin had been briefly
gripped by the notion that Jaden should grow up to be a professional
basketball player, the better to earn his keep, and so he’d had hoops
and a synthetic floor installed. Not surprisingly for a six-year-old,
Jaden’s enthusiasm for the sport had quickly waned, and after a few
weeks the garage had reverted to its former use.
Vehicle keys were stored in a steel box mounted on the garage wall. Valentin’s beloved Porsche 911 was away for a service, which
left two other cars: a brand new Mitsubishi Shogun and a 7 series
BMW. Joe opted for the Shogun, knowing Cassie preferred it to
the BMW.
As the big double doors swung open, the glare from the sun was
dazzling. Joe rolled the Shogun onto the driveway, got out and opened
the boot. Cassie was already at the front door, holding Sofia in one
arm. She was flustered.
'I can’t find her other sunhat.’
'It’s on the back seat.’
Cassie managed to smile and look annoyed with herself at the same
time. She reached for the baby’s buggy, propped against the wall. Joe
beat her to it.
You take care of the kids. I’ll load the car.’
She nodded. Frowned again as she realised that her son was still
absent. 'Come on, Jaden! We’ve got to hurry.’
There was a muffled shout from the toilet along the hall. Cassie
wasn’t amused.
'They obviously want me out of the way,’ she grumbled. 'All this
sudden rush, before his precious visitor arrives.’
Joe was searching for something constructive to say, without