Detonator (26 page)

I waved my left arm and gave them some reassuring Euro-waffle. They seemed to relax when the shouty one recognized Hesco, and got anxious again when they realized he had both hands fastened behind his back. But by then we were inside and I’d replaced the padlock and brought out the SIG and used it to help explain what I wanted us all to do next.

I shepherded the three of them into the Portakabin. It was starkly lit and furnished, cupboards and work tables bolted to the floor, and architectural blueprints spread out on every surface. No home comforts, apart from an electric kettle and a mini fridge, not even a flat-screen TV. And no Stefan.

I instructed Hesco to take the weight off his feet. As he perched his arse sideways on a straight-backed chair, I told the guards to remove their hard hats and put them down. The younger and more nervous of the two then raised his hand and tried to wipe the sweat off his forehead. His blond hair was dark with it, and plastered to his skin.

As three more sets of headlamps swept past the site entrance, I motioned to him to sort the venetian blinds. When he’d lowered and closed them all, I chucked him eight cable ties, miming what I wanted him to do.

Struggling to tear his gaze away from the SIG, he looped one tie through another like a figure of eight and used them to fasten Shouty’s wrists together behind his back.

‘Tighter.’ I raised the pistol and aimed it at his head.

He didn’t need me to translate.

He repeated the process on Shouty’s ankles, then his own.

Finally, he did the figure-of-eight trick with his own wrists. I moved behind him and pulled each tail until it bit, then sat the lads back to back and wound the tape around their chests and necks and a nearby metal table leg. Hesco decided to stand up halfway through the process. One look was all it took to remind him that his right elbow was next on my list of targets, then both knees. He sat down again.

When I’d finished, I knelt to one side of the guards. I’d seen this set-up a million times. Shouty looked like he’d been around the block, but he was all piss and wind. He wasn’t going to risk taking a round for what Adler paid him; he wasn’t going to go out of his way to help me either. The younger one looked like he was doing shift work to put himself through college.

Those guys were solid. The threat was going to come from somewhere else.

I focused on the kid. ‘You speak English?’

He hesitated, so I let him take another long hard look down the barrel of the weapon.

‘Yes.’

‘What about the boy?’

His Adam’s apple rose and fell, but his expression told me he didn’t know what the fuck I was talking about.

I gestured at the digital clock on the wall: 01:45. ‘What time did you start your shift?’

‘Since forty-five
minuten
…’

‘Is there anyone else here?’

‘No.’ His Adam’s apple bulged. He’d have been shit at the poker table.

‘So you put the call out when we arrived.’ I took first pressure on the trigger. ‘How long will they be?’

His throat went so dry he just croaked. ‘Twenty
minuten
. No, maybe fifteen.’

I got up and walked across to Hesco.

‘So where the fuck is he?’

He opened his mouth, moistened his lips with his tongue, and said nothing.

I circled the chair and tapped the handle of the weapon on his shattered elbow. His torso went into spasm but he didn’t give more than a gasp.

‘Where?’

He turned his head. ‘I will … show you.’

He stood again, waited for me to nod, and made for the door. I didn’t believe a word this fucker said now, but I didn’t have a choice.

He still wasn’t too steady on his feet, but I wasn’t taking anything for granted. I followed him outside.

‘How many of your guys are with him?’

‘None.’ He flexed his neck muscles. I hoped it hurt like fuck. ‘He cannot escape.’

He headed away from the ribbon of light that ran along the front of the site and into the darkness at the heart of it. As my night vision started to kick in, I could see that the construction here had progressed further than it had appeared from the other side of the gate. The one-storey skeletons surrounding the base of the central block acted like a prefab maze for Hesco to lead me through.

Every shadow began to look like his friend. And my enemy. Or maybe that was just the way he wanted it to seem. I stayed two strides behind him, scanning the area, holding the muzzle of the SIG rock steady halfway down his spinal column. All I could hear was the crunch of sand and builder shit beneath our boots.

As we passed the footings of the crane, the silhouette of another blacked-out Portakabin emerged from the jumble of structures and heaps of building material beyond it. When we were less than ten metres away from its door I ordered Hesco to stop and go right, into the cover of a wall.

He gave a slight tilt of the head and did as he’d been told.

The wall was double-skinned, and chest high. I made him stand with his back to it, then take a step away, leaving his shoulders pressed against the breezeblock. His pinioned arms hung in the gap behind him. The pain was etched on his face.

I positioned myself two metres to his left and bent my knees so that only my eyes were above the top course. I scanned from one end of the Portakabin to the other. Long enough to know he was talking shit.

He shuffled his feet back towards the base of the wall and managed to lean away from it. ‘You can free my hands now, yes?’

‘I’ll free your hands when you free the boy. He’s not in the cabin, is he?’

‘No.’

‘So where?’

‘Close.’

I checked the Suunto and let him go ahead of me again. By the security guard’s calculation, I had twelve minutes before his reinforcements arrived. Or maybe seven.

He steered left, away from the Portakabin, towards a huge hole in the ground. It was at least fifty metres by fifty, lined with pleated metal plates. As we got closer, I saw massed ranks of steel pillars rising out of the freshly poured concrete two levels below us. Judging by the size of them, these were the foundations of the tower block.

Hesco stopped a couple of steps short of the edge of the yawning space and glanced over my shoulder. It was only fleeting, no more than a twitch, but it told me the younger guard had been spot on. Still keeping my distance from him, I looked back in the direction of the main gate. I knew he was expecting reinforcements. Now he was hoping I might think I was already under threat.

As far as I could tell, there was no one there.

I turned and concentrated on the foundations instead. I quartered the entire area and saw nothing. No underground recess large enough to hide a child. Just moisture glistening on the pale grey surface of the concrete.

Hesco was shifting uneasily from one foot to the other.

For a split second I could see that he was torn between letting me know how much smarter he was than me, and carrying on with his charade. Then I caught sight of something beyond him, wedged behind the pleated tin at the corner of the pit. I walked over. Bent down. Lifted it out of the crack between earth and metal.

A paperback book.

I peered at the jacket. The artwork and the lettering took fucking ages to come into focus in the gloom, even though I’d been certain about what this was from the moment I’d spotted it.

The script was Cyrillic.

But I knew what it said.

Dostoevsky.

Crime and Punishment.

I took it across to Hesco.

He ignored me. He was now staring openly towards the gate. We could both hear a wagon travelling along the main, at speed.

He took a step forward and dropped his gaze to the base of the nearest steel pillar before finally giving me eye to eye. He was very pleased with himself indeed. ‘I told you … he couldn’t escape.’

I was the first to look away. I didn’t want to see his triumphant expression for a nanosecond longer than I had to. And I didn’t want him to have the satisfaction of knowing he’d got to me.

I tried not to picture the kid being dumped in there.

Watching the first load of liquid concrete spilling down the chute.

Realizing what was about to happen.

Had he tried to climb one of the pillars? Had he felt his grip loosening as the grey stuff sucked at the crocodiles on his trainers? Then his knees?

No.
They’d have drugged him. Or killed him first.

I dropped the book, lifted the SIG and gave him two double taps. In the head, and into his chest as he went down.

I transferred the SIG to the front of my jeans and ran through my options as I melted back into the prefab maze. I couldn’t go out the way we’d come in, and I certainly wasn’t going to climb the crane. I had no idea whether there was an exit at the rear of the site, but I reckoned that was the only route I could take. And, fuck it, this wasn’t Stalag Luft III.

I stopped by the Portakabin I’d recced earlier and remained absolutely still until I’d listened, ears pricked and mouth open, for signs of Hesco’s cavalry. The shouting had stopped. Now they’d be moving into the development. If they spotted Hesco they might slow down to check him out, but I wasn’t counting on it.

A couple of torches flicked on and pierced the night, and I caught a glimpse of a shiny bald head as they headed towards Stefan’s grave and Hesco. A shiny bald head that belonged to a man who would kill me if he ever saw me again. I guessed he’d be even more enthusiastic about that idea when he spotted his mate’s body.

A couple more beams sparked up on the far side of the pit. I didn’t wait for them to join forces again and head my way. I ducked around the back of the cabin and, treading as lightly as possible, legged it in the opposite direction.

There was plenty of stuff to lose myself in there. Piles of external wall panels, stacks of piping in all shapes and sizes, pallets loaded with brick and stone, RSJs, lintels, pre-assembled balcony sections – everything was arranged with Teutonic precision, and provided me with as much cover as I could use.

A squad of forklifts and cement mixers on wheels stood to attention along the rear fence. I transferred the weapon from the front of my jeans to the back and sprinted across to a track-mounted mini-digger, one of three parked at the corner of the site. I climbed on to the driver’s seat and swung myself up on to its roof.

I heard a shout.

A suppressed round striking steel.

The whine of a ricochet.

I didn’t look back.

I launched myself at the top of the hoarding, clambered over it and slid, feet first, toecaps scrabbling, down the other side.

I landed on a raised bank and drew down the SIG again as I scanned the ground in front of me. I was at the edge of some kind of orchard. Ten metres in I was surrounded by branches full of the world’s biggest cherries, as geometrically organized as the contents of the construction site I’d just left. I didn’t hang around to admire them. The torch beams and staccato exchanges just inside the hoarding told me loud and clear that I had to get the fuck out of there.

I sprinted a hundred and fifty further, keeping as close as possible to the trunks of the trees. The sky was increasingly overcast, but I didn’t want to risk being silhouetted in the gap between the rows. Then I went down on my belt buckle, crawled swiftly left through the long grass until I was under the neighbouring canopy, and got back on my feet. I repeated the process at thirty-metre intervals until I arrived at the far end of the plot.

Beyond it stood a huge open-sided barn where they sorted the fruit before sending it to the Fanta factory. Hesco would have felt right at home there. I glanced over my shoulder as soon as I was in its shadow. The torch beams were still sweeping through the foliage and across the ground two hundred behind me.

I skirted the back of the building, ran through another neat yard and out on to the road. None of Claude’s Swiss cousins suddenly appeared out of the darkness to hammer me with a fence post on the way.

I hung a right and a left, then did the same again. I didn’t have all night for evasive action, but I needed to approach the van from a safe distance.

The parade of boarded-up industrial units came into view. I came level with the three-pallet forecourt and went in at a crouch. The cement bags between the breezeblocks and the wall hadn’t been touched. I retrieved my day sack and, hugging the front wall of the unit, scanned the stretch of tarmac on either side of the Expert.

I was tempted to bin the thing and just stay on foot, but I needed to make distance double quick.

The road was deserted as far as the junction. That was no guarantee Hesco’s crew wouldn’t have a surprise in store, but if I waited there too long the torchbearers from the orchard would catch up and fuck me over anyway.

I got as close as I could to the front of the vehicle without showing myself in open ground, then crossed the pavement, keeping low. I paused beside the radiator grille to do a quick one-eighty behind me, then got behind the wheel. Keeping my speed down and using just gears to keep the brake-lights off, I didn’t put the headlamps on until I’d turned four or five corners. Then I put my foot down.

I followed signs towards Zürich. It seemed as good a place as any to head for to sort my shit out and decide on my next move.

I looped back on to the
Autobahn
and drove towards it for forty minutes. I felt I should be thinking more clearly now – but my mind was whirring.

I flipped open the Pitbull case one-handed and fed the CD into the player. Maybe I could clear my head with some angry music. I pressed the eject button before I’d heard three chords.

This wasn’t going to work.

All I could hear was Stefan yelling, ‘Pitbull is the
man
! This shit is for
real
!’

All I could see was him pumping his fist.

All I could feel was that I’d been given the world’s most important task – to look after a man’s son – and I’d failed.

Fuck this. I needed to get a grip.