Wanted (36 page)

‘Here we go,’ said Spartak. ‘Following a demotion due to insubordination and dereliction of duty, Dementyev deserted, only to surface again two years later, arrested for a bank robbery in Murmansk. Seems he got unlucky. An armed plain-clothes officer was in the bank at the time and got the drop on him. But then, before being handed over to the military by the police—’

‘Wait,’ Danny said. ‘At the time of the robbery, was anyone else arrested?’

More typing at Spartak’s end. He wondered what Russian governmental database Spartak was currently – and, no doubt, illegally – accessing, and which of his contacts had got him in. He knew better than to ask.

‘Just one,’ Spartak said, a slow smile spreading across his face, ‘and, from what you’ve told me about this particular elfin blonde
shlyukha
already, I’m guessing you might recognize her too.’

Another rattle of Spartak’s keyboard. Another file reached Danny’s screen. Another face that was impossible to mistake.

Glinka’s woman.

The blonde.

‘Yes,’ Danny said. ‘That’s her.’

‘Name of Vera Yaroslavovna Shepkin,’ Spartak said. ‘She was arrested alongside him in the bank. Seems like the weapons they took with them were replicas. A mistake they didn’t make the next time.’

‘What next time?’ Danny’s heart was racing now. Not one name, but two. The depressed part of him that had expected the Kid to have made as thorough a job of blitzing his associates’ past as he had done of his own was exulting now. Because now they’d discovered their names, the trail might lead them to so much more.

‘Two more robberies occurred in nearby cities in the next two months. Both were blamed on Dementyev on account of certain similarities as to how they accessed the building – ramming vehicles right through the front windows. No replica weapons this time. Six dead civilians and two dead armed guards were left behind.’

‘But why was Dementyev out and able to do this? How come he never did time?’

‘Because someone broke him out from the police station the same night he was arrested for the first robbery.’

‘Who?’

‘That I don’t know. Just that it was someone incredibly violent and incredibly smart. Three police left dead. No one saw a thing. All the cameras had been disabled.’

Danny toggled the images on his screen, staring back into Dementyev’s cold eyes. Murderous eyes. Intelligent eyes. A man with a plan for everything. Even for when plans went wrong. ‘Forget what they did next,’ he said. ‘What about what they did before?’

‘What do you mean?’ said Spartak.

‘Where did they come from? Who were they before they chose this life?’

‘You mean family?’ said Spartak.

‘Someone must know who they are.’

As had happened with the Kid’s sister, Danny knew that finding out who these two were still in contact with from their past might lead to finding out where they were now.

Spartak focused on his screen. The sound of typing took over for a minute.

‘If we’re planning to move in on the Kid,’ Ruth said softly, so softly that Spartak didn’t even look up from his work, ‘we cannot do it alone. We need
him.’

Glancing across at her, Danny saw she was staring at Spartak.

Her meaning was obvious. Two of them might be enough to track the Kid down. But to stand a chance of capturing him? They’d need the Russian too.

‘I can find nothing,’ Spartak said. ‘At least, not on this police database. No mention of any relatives being sought in connection with these crimes. But that does not mean they don’t exist. I know people, operatives, who can help. Only, Danny, you must realize this: it will take time, my friend.’

Danny thought of his daughter alone in the UK. He thought of those who had died because of Dementyev, Shepkin and the Kid. He already knew the last location the Kid had called from and how he might still be there.

‘We’re not waiting,’ he said. ‘We’re doing this now.’

‘But, Danny—’

‘No,’ Danny said. ‘Ruth here is going to tell you the GPS coordinates of where the Kid last was.’ It didn’t matter that Spartak knew her name. He’d be meeting her soon enough. He stared hard into Spartak’s alarmed eyes. ‘And you’re to meet us there this evening. Just you. But come armed and ready to finish this thing for good.’

Opening his eyes – as he tried to shriek in pain, only to find that his mouth had been taped shut – the first thing Ray Kincade saw was his own reflection in the flickering candlelight. A full-length mirror had been positioned on the wall five feet in front of him. Horrified, he saw he’d been tied with black rope to a wooden chair and was naked and bleeding from his chest and thighs, where someone had slashed him repeatedly with a blade.

Someone
. . .

He knew who . . . and strained now to turn his neck to look. But he felt his throat tighten and in the reflection saw a rope had been tightly tied round that too.

Was he here, the creature who’d done this to him? Was he watching him right now?
How the hell long have I been unconscious? Was I knocked out? Tasered? Drugged?

All Ray knew with absolute certainty was that he was never leaving this place. This was where he would die.

‘We don’t yet know why you are here, but we will find out,’ a man’s voice said, from deep in the shadows to Ray’s right – calmly, almost in a whisper.

We?
At first the word made no sense to Ray, but then he remembered being outside the lighthouse, spying on the PSS Killer, who’d looked up and had stared back at him from beside the car. Then he remembered the snapping of the twig behind him, and how he’d turned to see another person standing there – a second white, bald, powerfully built man, over six feet tall – who, impossibly, had looked exactly like the PSS Killer.

‘You’ve clearly been paid to find us, Mr Kincade.’ A second voice, sounding exactly like the first, this time coming from the depth of the dark shadows to Ray’s left.

Mr Kincade. Oh, Christ. They must have taken his wallet from the glove compartment in the car. Along with his computer and phone. They’d probably moved the car by now to somewhere it couldn’t be seen, so no one would ask questions about why it had been left there abandoned.

The voice on the right: ‘We think we know who sent you.’

Movement: Ray detected it in his peripheral vision, both to his left and to his right.

The voice to Ray’s left: ‘You’re going to help us find them.’

Help
us
. . .

Ray’s mind raced. Could it be possible that there were two of them? He didn’t want to look. He didn’t want his worst fears confirmed. He wished he was unconscious. A part of him wished he was already dead.

Two men simultaneously stepped in towards him, one from the left and one from the right. The candlelight illuminated their pale skin, making them look like they were made of wax.

They watched Ray as his eyes flickered disbelievingly between them. They were identical in every way, right down to their plastic disposable shoes and clothing. And even though their faces were half concealed by surgical masks, he could see enough to know that their faces were identical too.

But if these men – these brothers, these twins, whatever the hell they were – derived any modicum of pleasure from revealing their existence to him, it did not show.

They did not even blink. Their eyes betrayed no glimmer of amusement or triumph. All Ray registered in their flat, merciless expressions was the cold fact of his capture. He was theirs now. To do with as they wished.

‘Danny,’ the twin on the left said.

‘Shanklin,’ said the twin on the right.

Ray saw the blood-soaked surgical scissors then. They were gripped in the fist of the twin on the right. Was that the instrument that had been used to slash his chest and thighs?

‘You are going to tell us everything you know about him,’ said the twin on the left.

Ray’s eyes flicked towards him. Gripped in his gloved hands were a rolled-up magazine and a fist-sized rock.

The brother on the right told Ray, ‘Where he is . . .’

Ray tried to shout. To swear to them that he didn’t know. But all that came out was a muffled scream.

A sudden movement to his left. A fresh explosion of pain. Ray roared in agony. Something – the rock the twin on his left had been holding? – had hit him so hard in the side of the head that he could barely believe he was still conscious. He could feel blood running down the side of his scalp, trickling over his neck. In the mirror, through his blurred vision, he saw it dripping onto the floor. His hearing felt all wrong. His skull was on fire. Had this monster just fractured it?

Ray tried with all his might to stand, to tear himself free of the chair, to run. But he couldn’t move an inch, the ropes had been tied so tightly. The chair didn’t move either. It stayed exactly where it was. He remembered the little vampire tooth-marks in the floor of the dead family’s farmhouse. This chair he was tied to now had been nail-gunned to the floor.

‘In a moment, you’re going to tell us whether you’ve already informed Shanklin that you’ve tracked us here,’ said the twin on the left.

‘Then,’ said the twin on the right, ‘you’re going to tell us how to contact him.’

Ray saw that the twin on his right, as well as holding the scissors, had Ray’s phone.

‘And after that, you’re going to tell us how we can find
her
. . .’

Her?

The way he said it . . . the way he looked . . . It was the first emotion either of the twins had shown.

‘Her,’ repeated the twin on the right.

‘Lexie,’ explained the twin on the left.

Oh, sweet Jesus, no, thought Ray. Not Lexie. Not Danny’s little girl.

‘You see, she’s ours,’ said the twin on the left, stepping in close to Ray now and gently stroking his fingers along the curve of Ray’s ear.

‘She needs to witness us,’ said his brother. ‘To understand. She must give us what is rightly ours.’ He crouched beside Ray and looked steadily into his eyes, then rammed the scissor blades deep into the largest of the weeping gashes on Ray’s thighs.

Tears ran down Ray’s cheeks as, again, he tried to scream.

‘Because, just like you,’ hissed the twin on the left into Ray’s ear, as his brother continued to twist the scissor blades, ‘Lexie Shanklin needs to
see.’

Danny Shanklin, Spartak Sidarov and Ruth Silver walked in a straight line at twenty-yard intervals through the woods. Each was heavily armed and wearing camouflage fatigues.

‘Smoke,’ Spartak said, his voice crackling through Danny’s earpiece. ‘Approximately one kilometre ahead.’

Danny slowed his pace. Ahead the flat ground gave way to a gentle downhill slope. Through the trees in the distance, he now saw a thin column of grey smoke rising into the pale blue sky and, a few yards further on, the tops of the buildings down in the base of the valley. A farm, it looked like. Several barns and a main house made of stone.

‘Watch out for trips,’ Danny muttered into his mike.

His eyes were already aching, working overtime, searching for IEDs, as they had been since he and the others had left the vehicles a couple of kilometres back, in the patch of woodland where they’d rendezvoused.

The woods here, he saw, ran right the way down the slope of the valley to the farm. Meaning it might be possible to get close without anyone noticing them. Still no sign of any sentries. Which could be down to the fact that it was only just gone dawn. Whoever was in that building might still be asleep.

He flicked the safety off his AK-9, imagining both Spartak and Ruth doing the same. Spartak had supplied them with the weapons. Danny had smiled as his old comrade and friend had watched Ruth check hers thoroughly, before deeming it fit for purpose. Spartak hadn’t needed to say anything. The admiring look he’d shot Danny had been enough:
one hell of a woman,
it had said.

‘All clear,’ Ruth’s voice murmured now.

‘I see no one either,’ Spartak agreed.

‘Then let’s close in,’ Danny said, setting off down the slope, faster now, his eyes still scouring the ground before him, searching for traps.

They’d checked the GPS signal before they’d set off from the cars. It was still strong. It still hadn’t moved. Even if the Kid and the others weren’t there, the comms equipment belonging to the Kid, which was sending out the signal, still was.

Three hundred yards, two hundred . . .

‘I still see no movement,’ Spartak said.

‘Nothing,’ Danny agreed.

‘Wait.’

Danny took one more pace, then froze. It was Ruth who had spoken last.

‘I see someone, more than one . . .’ she said.

‘Where?’

‘Directly in front of my position . . .’ She was on their right flank. ‘To the right of the main farmhouse. I see three people. All are seated. None appears to be armed.’

‘Spartak?’ Danny said.

‘I still see no one.’

‘Hold your position, Ruth,’ Danny ordered. ‘Spartak: on me.’

Danny was in the centre of their line. He zigzagging swiftly through the trees, with Spartak in silent pursuit. They passed Ruth’s position without speaking and continued another hundred yards. ‘Cover us, Ruth,’ Danny said. ‘We’re moving in.’

All three AK-9s were fitted with silencers. If these people were sentries or obvious combatants working for Dementyev, Shepkin and the Kid, then Danny and Spartak would be able to neutralize them fast, and would then be in a position to recce the main buildings up close.

But – and Danny’s professionalism slipped, his breathing stuttered, his heart leaped to his throat – the three faces he saw as he moved in on the location pinpointed by Ruth did not belong to anyone working for either Dementyev, Shepkin or the Kid. Because the three people sitting at the rough wooden table in the small cobbled farmyard to the right of the farmhouse
were
Dementyev, Shepkin and the Kid.

Sitting ducks.

Inevitably, that was the phrase that rose in his mind as he stared in disbelief at the scene unfolding in even greater clarity as he continued to close in.