Silencer (7 page)

I heard a sigh of relief. ‘Good enough.’

Katya didn’t reappear for an hour. When she did, she had my mobile in her hand. She held it out and we swapped.

‘OK, we’re leaving.’

‘Now?’

She smiled and crooked a finger for me to follow her as she exited the main doors.

A shiny new Mercedes ambulance waited at the kerb, with red signs that said ‘Perinatal Clinic’ in Cyrillic and English, a driver and two nurses in crisply laundered uniforms.

‘I’ve got a couple more things to take care of at this end. Anna’s getting dressed. She says she needs her grab bag.’

I told her about our missing wagon. In our rush to get to the hospital, we’d left the bag behind.

‘Then you need to go back to your apartment, pick up a nightdress, clothes, whatever else she needs.’

‘She’s going to stay at the clinic?’

‘Of course – as long as your little boy needs to. We’ll meet you there, yes?’ She gestured at the nurses and turned to walk back into the birth-house.

I grabbed her arm. ‘Katya?’ She recoiled for a moment, as if she expected me to hit her. ‘Thank you.’ I headed for the main gate.

Sucking in oxygen, I ran all the way from the Metro, doing my best to dodge the puddles gathering around the blocked drains. I opened the apartment door and headed straight through the living room into what the letting agent had called the spare bedroom.

My boy wasn’t going to need much while he was stuck on a ventilator and being force-fed, but I decided to grab a bit of everything. I ripped open cardboard boxes and plastic bags full of romper suits, mittens, bottles, creams, and ran through a mental check-list of questions for Katya: what, where and when-type things. How long did a pre-term usually have to stay at the clinic? When would it be possible to bring him and Anna home?

I fished some Babygros and socks out of a Baby Infanti bag. It was my favourite of the maternity stores that had sprung up around Moscow for the new middle class. The idea of baby infantry always made me chuckle – it was why I’d been calling him ‘little soldier’. Anna didn’t get it, but it made me laugh.

I reversed out of the room with my arms full, and went to grab a Coke from the fridge. I didn’t even make it to the kitchen door. A plastic bag over the head slows you down at the best of times, and this one was pulled against my nose and mouth with a huge grunt of exertion. I dropped what I was carrying and threw myself back against my attacker, but he was big enough to absorb the impact.

I tried to drop to the floor and twist myself free. The grunts behind me got harder and faster. The plastic rippled as I breathed. I brought up my hands to try to tear it away but they were immediately slapped aside.

There were at least two of them.

I tensed my stomach muscles, knowing what was coming next. A fist slammed into my solar plexus and I buckled at the knees. I tried to calm my breathing – the bag was moulded to my face, like clingfilm. My sweat was like glue. The pressure around my neck increased. My head felt as if it was about to explode.

But I knew they didn’t want me dead: if they had, I would have been by now. They wanted me to collapse, to asphyxiate. They wanted me alive. So I complied. I gave myself up. I leaned forward and stopped fighting. This time they let me drop to the floor. The bag loosened; the hands controlling it shifted to my shoulders.

Before they had a chance to do anything more, I thrust up my hands and grabbed at the body above me. I felt an ear, then wet hair. I gripped the back of his head as hard as I could and raised mine, ready to take the pain. We both snarled with aggression, then he screamed as our skulls made contact and I rolled aside, pulling the bag off my head.

All I could see were bubbles of red light and starbursts of white. All I could hear was the rasp of air in tortured lungs, his or mine, I didn’t know. The pain went as my adrenalin took over.

There were two bodies. The one I’d head-butted was on his knees, trying to stem the flow of blood from his shattered nose. The other was coming in fast from my left.

Scrambling to my feet, I grabbed the TV remote from the arm of the settee. Holding it dagger-style, thumb over the top of the slim plastic sheath, I brought it down between his eyes. He staggered back but didn’t fall. I got right up close, grabbed hold of the back of his neck and rammed the remote again and again into his face.

I left him to sort out his own little world of pain as his mate hauled himself off his knees. I gave him the remote treatment too, in the temple, three, maybe four times. When the plastic finally
cracked I jammed it into his mouth, forcing it with both hands to the back of his throat. His eyes bulged as it cut off his oxygen supply and vomit forced its way between my fingers. His arms and legs flailed for a moment, then went limp. His mate had done the right thing, as far as I was concerned, and made a run for it.

I collapsed onto the settee, arms and legs outstretched, my arse hanging over the edge as I wiped his puke from my hands. The acrid smell filled the room, though maybe not as pungently as it would have done if the remote hadn’t remained stuck in his throat. Only the red power button was visible between his froth-covered lips.

I didn’t want to get up, but I knew I had to. I was the lucky one. Whoever was stretched out on the engineered oak by my feet wasn’t moving at all.

I wasn’t going to have to raise my hands in supplication and say ‘
Izvinite, izvinite
,’ to him ever again.

As I took another couple of deep, rasping breaths, I wondered what had happened to his mate. Thank fuck he’d done a runner. I sucked in another lungful of air and dragged myself upright. I went over to the door, slammed it shut and slid home the bolts.

My body shrieked at me to go and lie down for a while, but I had too much to do. I went back to the dead one. There was nothing in his light-brown leather-jacket pockets but a pack of Marlboro Lights, a purple disposable lighter, a bundle of notes and a few coins. No wallet. No ID. He was sterile. That meant one of two things to me: that they were really switched on, or they’d been told what to do by someone who was. Going by the performance of the runner, they weren’t the sharpest blades in the
drawer. Which meant they’d been taking orders from elsewhere, and he’d bottled it.

This one had a black jumper, no shirt. The edge of a tattoo showed at the V-neck. I pulled it up by the waistband to take a better look. His stomach and chest were covered with ink. There were the normal tribal tats – sunrises, flags, snakes wrapped around daggers – but the blurred, badly done ones were more interesting.

He’d obviously done time and served in the military. That wasn’t unusual in this part of the world, where conscription was still alive and well. His squaddie tattoo, a tank crushing a body, suggested he hadn’t been much of a star when he was in, just one of the chorus line. That was why he was lying where he was instead of me. The other pix were of bears shagging women and rats with numbers above their heads, which would tell anyone in the know where he’d been imprisoned and why. There was one of the Kremlin and what looked like a goblin or a dwarf holding a wand and putting a spell on the place. I couldn’t interpret them in any detail, but they were obviously the story of his life. The only chapter missing was the one explaining what he and his mate had been up to with Katya.

She hadn’t just got home when I arrived. She’d had time to take her coat off, and there was warm coffee by the answerphone. Two of the messages I’d left had been played, but not the third. Eye infection? Maybe they’d hit her, or she’d been crying. Whatever, she had a fuck of a lot of explaining to do.

I sat on the floor beside the leather jacket and punched numbers into my mobile. As ever, Katya wasn’t responding. I punched in another set as I headed for the bedroom.

‘Have you found everything, Nicholas?’

‘More than I bargained for.’ I pulled T-shirts and nighties out of her top drawer, then swept her toiletries into a sports bag, like a burglar working against the clock. ‘You at the clinic yet?’

‘Sure. He’s stable and in a unit and they’re carrying out some more tests. I’m with him.’

‘Katya?’

‘No. She took a call. As soon as we got here she had to leave.
She’ll be back later.’ She hesitated. ‘Are you staying here as well?’

‘You want me to?’ A panic alarm was ringing in my head. ‘I’ll see you both soon.’

I felt behind the bedside cabinet for my Heckler & Koch .45 Compact. The Russians loved German kit. Maybe that was why Angela’s mob had overtaken us as the third biggest arms dealers on the planet – and its third biggest exporter after China and the USA.

This thing was a snubby semi-automatic .45 close-protection weapon with an eight-round magazine. The frame was polymer the same colour as the leather jacket next door; the top-slide was black steel. It had been cheap, and easy to get hold of. Maybe the dealer had stuck it together from write-offs, like he did with the dodgy motors in his saleroom. I didn’t care much. It worked, and that was all that mattered.

The Compact had a single action, once it was made ready and the hammer was fully back, but I hit the lever on its left-hand side to release it and ensure that the trigger needed a hard squeeze, like a revolver.

With a full mag and one in the chamber I had nine rounds to kick off with, and two spare mags. If I needed any more than that I really was in the shit. I shoved it into my waistband. No need to check the safety: there wasn’t one.

I picked up all the bags and took the lift down to my battered navy blue VW Golf in the basement.

The old guy on the desk had done his usual vanishing trick and the main door was still ajar. Rain had soaked the rough cork matting he’d laid out to protect the tiles, or what was left of them.

I took the stairs two and three at a time. Before I reached the landing, I pulled out the HK and checked the chamber, pushing back on the top-slide with the palm of my hand until I could see the glint of a .45 case in the ejection opening. Instinct made me check that the spare mags were still in the left pocket of my jeans, with the business end of the rounds facing away from my bollocks. Nothing to do with protecting the family jewels: I wanted to be able to ram it straight into the pistol grip housing, not have to twist it around or turn it upside-down.

I took a couple of deep breaths and did a final shake to get the rain off my hair and my face, and turned into the corridor.

I lay down just short of Katya’s entrance, the side of my face flat against the carpet. No light spilled through the crack beneath the door. No sound, either. On my feet again, I stepped back and shoulder-barged it above the handle. The frame splintered without much complaint and I jinked right into the darkness, crouching low to present a smaller target. My HK was up at forty-five degrees, ready to react.

I kept still. I held my breath, listening for any sound above the rain pounding against the windows. The flashing red-and-blue neon sign further down the street told me it was Miller Time.

I straightened slowly, pushing the door shut, then hit the light switch. Her black raincoat was back over the arm of the dark blue settee. I quickly scanned her bedroom and shower room, half expecting to find her lying in the same condition as her mate in the leather jacket in our flat.

Her clinic pass, which hung from a red lanyard because she was always forgetting it, and her flat keys were both missing from the key-press stuck to the side of the fridge. The light was still flashing on her answering machine.

I rang her mobile and heard three rings coming from her coat pocket. The bulletin board above her landline was empty.

I tucked the HK firmly into my waistband and legged it back into the corridor – as you do when you have a vanishing woman and a missing photo to locate, a dead body to attend to, and another attacker on the loose.

The rain pummelled my head as I fumbled with the VW lock – the fob hadn’t worked since way back – and jumped in. The engine started at the third time of asking and the windscreen steamed up, to match the fog in my brain.

I didn’t drive off straight away. I had another phone call to make.

27 August 2011

05.54 hrs

I sat inches from Anna’s bed, our heads bathed in the glow of coloured lights on the ventilator and monitors. My high-backed chair stank so badly of disinfectant it was a miracle she’d managed to doze off. My boy was asleep too – or so I assumed. There had been no movement from the Perspex box on the other side of the bed since I’d got there. All I could see of him was a reassuringly pink nose poking out from a blanket. He was still wrapped up like a parcel, with the same Tubigrip beanie on his head.

The only sound was the steady bleeping from the machines and every couple of seconds the gentle hiss of oxygen. The clinic was still in night mode and all blinds were down. The window that divided us from the corridor was double-glazed. I opened the venetian blinds a touch to allow me a clear view down towards the lift and the stairs. Anybody entering this floor would have to come that way. Right now it was quiet, apart from the occasional squeak of a nurse’s shoe on the polished floor.

Anna hadn’t been too worried about Katya going AWOL. Everything in her private room was as it should be. The boy
beside her was in good shape now, and so was she. And at last she had the chance to get her head down.

The sight of her lying there reminded me of the moment she’d told me she was pregnant, and held my head against her chest. She’d stroked my hair and whispered, ‘I’ve got responsibilities now.’

Stomach lurching, I’d managed to grin back. ‘Sounds like I have too.’

I kept the HK under my right thigh and my shoulders straight against the back of the chair. Less than thirty minutes later the light at the end of the corridor bloomed, then faded. The lift doors had opened and closed. Now I saw shadows flicker against the far wall. It looked like there were three or four of them.

I eased the weapon sideways, gripping it in my right hand and resting it between my thigh and the chair arm. My eyes were fixed on the corridor. Whoever this was, I was going to know soon. There were definitely four of them. The one in the lead was a nurse. Her shoes squeaked; the others’ didn’t.