Vendetta (30 page)

Tower of London.

Royal Mint.

Tower Bridge.

Then she figured out what she was looking at – a map of St Katharine Docks. Why would someone have hidden a map of the area? Maybe they were planning on stealing the Crown Jewels from The Tower? Yeah, right, Rio told herself sarcastically as she stood up. Next she opened the small plastic bag. Whistled when she saw what was inside – several passports with various names and nationalities. So she’d been right, Katia Romanov was getting ready to leave the country, but as someone else. No one was leaving this city, not on her watch.

She left the evidence scattered on the floor and took the stairs two at a time.

‘Martin? Martin?’ she called out as she reached the ground floor.

No response.

She searched the main room. No one there.

Checked the next room, a morning room that was bare except for the fireplace. No Martin.

She called his name again as she made her way into the long kitchen. She found him with his back to her, sitting at the wooden table.

‘Martin?’ she said as she moved round to face him.

His head was down, his chin brushing his chest.

‘Detective.’ She pushed his head up and stumbled back in shock.

Blood gushed from a deep, thin line around the front of his neck. She swivelled round, but only had time to take one step as she saw a hooded figure standing behind her.

Flash.

Something moved towards her. An arm. Holding something. She tried to move. Too late. Something hard smashed against the side of her head.

As Rio fell into deep blackness she didn’t remember the arm or what hit her. But she did remember what she saw on the arm. A red star tattoo.

sixty-eight

9:05 p.m.

The hit man, now calling himself Felix Bloom, heard the knock on the door just as he’d decided to leave. The contractor had kept him waiting too long, way too long. With or without the money, it was time to get out of town. So the knock at the door – just as he was placing his silencer in his pocket – took him by surprise. Probably the contractor, but he wasn’t taking any chances.

He pulled his gun out. Approached the door.

‘Who is it?’

‘Room service.’

He recognised the squeaky voice of the young man who’d brought him a late lunch forty-five minutes earlier. But still . . . He kept the silencer primed behind his back as he slowly opened the door. The young man grinned at him; he held something in his hand.

‘There was a delivery for you, sir.’

The hotel employee held out a mobile phone.

But Felix didn’t touch it; instead asked, ‘Who left it?’

‘I don’t know, sir, I wasn’t there when it arrived, I was just told to bring it up to you.’

Probably the contractor’s way of ensuring they were communicating on a clean channel.

He took the phone. Gave the boy a crisp note. Closed the door. The phone rang almost immediately. He looked at the screen. Number blocked. It rang a second time. He placed the phone to his face. Took the call.

The phone exploded in a shock of light, blowing half his head away.

sixty-nine

Rio woke to a screaming pain in the side of her head and face. Nasty. Deep. Like glass shards digging away at the right side of her brain. Where had the pain come from? She tried to pull herself up, but couldn’t. Tried to scream, but couldn’t. Tried to see, but the world was a desolate black. Something covered her face. No, not just her face, but her whole head, like another layer of unwanted skin. And her lips were stretched wide around something rammed inside her mouth. Her teeth dug into it, her dry tongue curved below it. It was soft and rough but she couldn’t push it out.

Can’t breathe, can’t breathe, can’t breathe.

Yes you can, yes you can, YES YOU CAN.

Deep breaths. Deep breaths.

Innnnn. Ouuuut. Innnnn. Ouuuut.

She tried moving again. Her arms. But they were stretched away from her body. Held fast by bindings round her wrists that kept her locked to something hard and cold. Her fingers moved, though, but with a stiffness that made them feel like they would snap and break off. She tried moving her legs, but they were tied too. Wide apart.

Flash.

An image shot through her mind.

Her looking down on a dead woman.

Bath.

Elena.

Murder.

All of Rio’s senses kicked in as she finally figured out where she was. Tied spreadeagled to the bed in a house in Camden.

Flash.

She saw the arm moving towards her.

Flash.

Saw the tattoo.

Oh God
.

Martin with a mini-waterfall of blood gushing from his throat.

Desperately, Rio arched. Tugged at her arms. Her legs. They wouldn’t move. She tried again, the tendons in her muscles extending to breaking point. She arched the middle of her body up. Struggled in the air as the breath inside her tangled inside her throat. Puke rose from her belly to the back of her mouth. Bitterness soaked her tongue.

Choking. Choking. Choking.

She swallowed the vomit.

Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.

What was that? A noise. A single tap against the floorboards. A light rush of air. A footstep. Breathing.

Oh God
. Someone else was in the room.

She collapsed back against the bed. Cringed back into the softness of the mattress beneath her. Tap. Tap. Tap. The footsteps got closer. Then quiet. The type of quiet that only ever bears bad things. The heat of a shadow fell over the bed. Fell over Rio. The mattress dipped near Rio’s left side.

Deep breaths. Deep breaths.

Fucking innnnn. Fucking ouuuut.

She jumped when something touched the skin below her neck. Hard. Cold. Sharp. The pinpoint of a giant needle? Then it moved downwards, towards her blouse. Snapped into the material.

Oh God.

A knife. It moved back up. Dug into the centre of her bra. Slashed her bra wide open.
Made quick work of splitting her skirt. Moved down. The blade cut into the elastic of her panties and scraped against the hair and skin underneath them. Rio fought back when she felt the cold air touch her naked vagina. She arched up, twisting frantically from side to side. No fucker was going to put their dirty dick inside her. The knife moved away from her body. She waited for the feel of the hands forcing her legs apart. The body. The stabbing inside her.

Waited.

Tap. Tap. The person stood somewhere near her head. She felt the dreaded other person for the first time as fingers held her left arm, just below where they were bound at the wrist. Rio screamed soundlessly as the knife stabbed into the skin below her wrist and ripped down, slashing skin and veins. Blood pumped out, shooting pain all over her body. Then more pain as the same was done to her other wrist. Dizziness and confusion settled over her as the blood leaked out of her body.

Tap. Tap. Tap. Footsteps. No more sound. No more light breathing. Her attacker was gone. Blood pumping out of her wrists, Rio knew she didn’t have long to live.

seventy

9:15 p.m.

The first thing Mac saw when he reached Katia’s home was Rio’s BMW. Bollocks, that’s all he needed – another confrontation. He needed to think what he was going to do about Rio before he went into the house. He could wait, keep himself low in the car until she left. But he didn’t have time for that. The clock was ticking away towards the delivery. No, somehow, some way, he was going to have to get into that house. Only thing he could do was to hold Rio at gunpoint and spirit Katia away – that’s if Elena’s sister was there, of course. He didn’t like the idea of putting a piece in Rio’s face, but what alternative did he have?

He reached inside his pocket for the pill bottle. Nothing. Frantically he searched his other pockets. Nothing. Bollocks, bollocks, where was the stuff? He needed to be hyped up when he did this. His head was already feeling like it was on a one-way journey of departing his body for good. He checked his watch. No, he didn’t have time to lose.

He eased out of the car and closed the driver’s door as quietly as he could. On his toes, he approached the house, keeping his footsteps slow and even. When he reached the front door he realised that it was open. He frowned; it wasn’t like Rio to give a person an opportunity to slip in and out or out and in. He remained silent, listening. Nothing. No voice, no telly, no radio. Just an unsettling quiet. He pulled his gun the same time he pushed the door. No one. Crept inside. Silence. Still on the tips of his toes he stepped inside, hiking the gun higher. He stretched out his arms and moved. Darted his gaze around, trying desperately to gather an alertness that his body was fighting hard against him feeling. Long slim passageway, mirror, coat rail, but nothing else. He tipped open the first door he came to. Sitting room, no one inside. Kept moving until he found the open door of the kitchen. There was someone at the table, head snapped over.

‘Don’t move,’ he whispered behind the seated figure.

No response. Not even an automatic reflex. Quickly he stepped round. Faced the person. Couldn’t help the sound that left his mouth when he saw the pool of thick blood dripping over the edges He tipped up the head of the person who he already suspected was dead.

Tipped up the chin. ‘Jee-sus,’ Mac let out when he realised he was staring into the sightless eyes of Rio’s right-hand man, Detective Jamie Martin.

Immediately he swung round and started yelling, ‘Rio. Rio.’

Mac kept the gun high as he shot out of the room. Took the stairs two at a time.

Paused at the top of the landing. No one. He kicked open the first door he came to.

No one.

‘Rio,’ he bellowed again as he shot back onto the landing.

He crashed into the second room and stopped dead. Someone tied to a bed. Blood around them. Clothes ripped down the middle exposing breasts, vagina and skin. Dark brown skin. God, Rio.

He dropped to his knees. Yanked off the pillowcase covering her head. Her head lolled to the side, eyes closed.

‘Fuck,’ he said as he pulled the gag – an orange flannel – from her mouth.

He laid two fingers against the pulse in her neck. Couldn’t find one.

No. No.

He wasn’t going to believe that she was gone. She couldn’t be . . . He felt a pulse, but it was weak. Quickly he looked over Rio’s body. Saw the damage done to her wrists. Saw that the cuts were vertical. Whoever had done this knew that the quickest route to death from a slit in the wrists was not horizontal but ripped straight up or down. He needed to stop the bleeding or she wasn’t going to make it. Quickly he grabbed up the flannel and wrapped it round one of her wrists. But he needed something to do the same to the other wrist, so he bolted out of the room and found the bathroom. Seconds later he was back with a white towel. He tied it tightly round her wrist. Placed a finger to a point inside Rio’s elbow and pressed. Did the same with her other arm. Now all he could do was pray that the force he was applying to her pressure points combined with the makeshift tourniquets around her wrists would stop the flow of blood.

His phone went, but he ignored it. Just kept up the pressure. If anything happened to Rio . . .

‘If you think you’re going to die on me, think again you stubborn, big-mouth cop,’ he let out, staring at the sick brown tone of her face.

He kept the pressure up.

One minute.

Two.

Three.

His phone went again. He ignored it.

Four.

Nearly at five, the blood slowed down. Eased back. Disappeared. He gazed down at her spread legs. Had the bastard raped her as well? Gently he pushed her legs together. He took out his phone. Voicemail from Reuben. He listened.

Delivery coming in early. 10.30.

Shit. He needed to get across to Reuben’s now, at Club Zee. He checked his watch.

9:12.

One hour and eighteen minutes.

That didn’t give him a heck of a lot of time to make it to Reuben before the new delivery time. But what about Rio? He couldn’t just leave her. But if he didn’t, he’d never make it. He rubbed the inside of his nose with the tips of two fingers. What was he going to do? A wave of weariness coursed through him. He was so tired, so tired. He searched for the pills. Empty pocket. Then he remembered they were long gone. No chemicals to help him make his decision. Rio or Elena’s killer? Bolshoi. Rio.

He punched in a number.

‘Bartholomew Station . . .’

‘Listen. You need to send an ambulance to Eight Calvin Street . . . Just bloody listen, it’s Detective Inspector Rio Wray and Detective Martin. They’re both down . . .’

He snapped off the connection. Gave Rio one last look before rushing for the stairs.

seventy-one

9:40 p.m.

Mac made it to Club Zee fifty minutes before the new time of the delivery. The security on the front door was heavy, a total contrast to the easy in-and-out access Mac had experienced earlier in the day. The same two men who’d been on guard duty at Reuben’s house stood with menace and an air of steel as they checked out the street. Mac got straight into the frisk pose when he reached the door but – obviously remembering him from earlier – one of the men nodded and let him through.