Smoke and Mirrors (2 page)

“Anything that might eliminate you from our enquiries,” Lamont said smoothly, before spoiling it by adding, “Any reason we might discover anything incriminating on you?”

“Like what?” Kolnikov asked, apparently amused.

“Petrol,” Livingstone said dryly. “Matches.”

“Is that how the fire was started?” Kolnikov enquired.

“We don’t know yet. Please answer the question.”

He did them the courtesy of appearing to think about it. “I don’t have a car here, so I haven’t been near petrol to my knowledge. Matches…” He held up the cigarette and shrugged. “And I crashed about on the stairs of the warehouse as far as the first floor before I realised it was useless.”

“We’d also like to take your fingerprints and DNA swabs,” Lamont said.

Gallini opened his mouth, presumably to object, but again his client merely shrugged and said, “Fine.”

Nell could almost have imagined he was innocent.
Aye, right, Mr. Razz Kolnikov.

“In that case, interview ended at”—he glanced at his watch—“three fifteen a.m., in order to take evidence swabs from Mr. Kolnikov.” He stood and regarded Nell. “Would you mind sticking around?”

“Sure.” Sleep was overrated. She’d already resigned herself to the fact that she wasn’t going to get any for a long time. Besides, the caffeine pills had clocked in, and she felt
almost
bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.

****

It was six thirty a.m. and almost light. Nell, fortunate enough to find a café open on Leith Walk to catch the shift workers and early starters, sat staring into her black coffee. She felt as if her eyes were kept open with matchsticks, and yet her brain was churning so fast she couldn’t have slept on a featherbed with the sandman in attendance and lullabies in the background.

It was years since she’d been in a police station.
That
police station. And the memories it stirred up didn’t help her to deal with the rest of tonight’s crap. She shivered, wondered if Derryn would know if she just went home. Or was someone watching her watching the street? Uncomfortable, unsafe thought.

At the police station, she’d hung around in an outer room for a while, just in case Kolnikov chose to say anything while the police took away his clothes. He didn’t. She’d only glimpsed him once through the swinging door as his clothes were returned to him. He’d been sitting in a dull white bathrobe that seemed too small, his head back against the wall, his eyes closed, his long legs spread casually wide and constantly vibrating to the tapping of his feet, which seemed to be the only part of him moving. In different surroundings, it would have been a sight worth memorizing. Even with the ends of the robe dragged together almost as far as his throat, as if he were cold, he was a sexy bastard. Nell’s body had acknowledged it, surprising her with its brief, shocking stir of interest.

She didn’t want to think about that either.

She took a sip of coffee and hugged the warmth of her cup in both hands while she gazed out the window. Rain was spitting down in a halfhearted sort of way. Apart from the passing cars, the street was almost empty. A woman hurried by with a bawling baby in a car seat.

The café radio played mindless pop music, interspersed with quite inappropriately cheerful chatter. A young man yawned behind the counter and began to fry bacon and sausages. Nell’s stomach rumbled.

And then she saw him. Kolnikov. He was walking down the pavement toward the café, hands in the pockets of a battered black leather jacket, his long legs striding, more, it seemed, because they couldn’t travel any other way than because he was in a hurry. He appeared to be whistling.

The police had found no reason to hold him. So far.

Nell’s heart lurched.
Don’t look in,
she willed him suddenly. Then,
Oh hell, yes, please look in.

He looked in. He stopped first to examine the menu in the window. But she didn’t think he even saw it. He looked pale and exhausted, his lips tighter, his fine jaw more rigid than in the police station. And his blue eyes weren’t hard or cold. They were blank with something very like misery. Then his gaze dropped, and he saw her.

She caught a flicker of recognition, even a faint upward tug at the corner of his mouth. For an instant, she held his gaze, descried a flare of intense, almost predatory interest that swiped at her breath.

Then he walked on.

Fuck.
Suddenly there were two reasons to call him back, but if she thought about either she wouldn’t be able to do it.

She was at the door before he’d taken two steps. “Mr. Kolnikov?”

He paused, glancing back over his shoulder. She wondered what she looked like to him. A professional young woman fully made-up at six thirty in the morning, wearing a smart business suit and hanging out the door of a café only one step up from a greasy spoon. With her eyes held open by imaginary matchsticks. This was such a bad idea. She was in way over her head, and he must be able to see it…

“Are you all right?” she asked reluctantly.

There was the faintest pause, then: “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Because you’ve been up all night being questioned by the police just for trying to help strangers?” It was too close to the words used by his solicitor already. She added quickly but honestly, “You look ill.”

“I’m not ill. Just tired, I guess.” He glanced at the café window. “Is the coffee any good?”

“Good enough,” she said, going back inside.

Stupidly, her heart hammered in her breast. She was careful not to make eye contact as he came in, gave him space. He didn’t need to talk to her. She didn’t
want
him to talk to her.

And yet the writer in her was curious. He wasn’t like any criminal type she’d encountered before. He wasn’t anything like she expected of an arsonist. A possible gangster. A murderer.

Chapter Two

He wasn’t sure what made him go into the café. Perhaps because he always had plans and always took every opportunity to further them, even when his whole body, his whole being ached.

Perhaps because the girl was pretty. Perhaps he just wanted coffee. Perhaps because right now there was nothing better to do, and despite her presence in the police station, the girl had the kind of soft, innocent face that didn’t belong in any of this.

But as he slid into the seat opposite her and pushed a second cup of coffee across the table to line up behind her first, he understood his chief motivation was distraction. Any distraction, to stop him thinking, remembering, regretting. To make the senseless, helpless anger go away. Just for a few minutes.

He almost felt guilty for his selfishness. Especially when an unmistakable twinge of alarm crossed the girl’s face, quickly hidden in her murmured thanks. She was afraid of him and yet had still forced herself to be a good Samaritan. Thank God—she might just be interesting too.

He let his gaze travel over her. Thick, dark brown hair bundled up at the back of her head into a tidy but pleasantly seductive style that allowed some locks to fall forward over the contrasting creamy skin of her face. Her nose was slightly snubbed, her eyes large and dark and humorous, at least under normal circumstance, and fringed with long, thick lashes. She wore just enough makeup to get him wondering what she looked like without it. Her mouth was generous, eminently kissable, with the faintest laughter lines on either side, mirroring the smaller, only just visible creases around her eyes. He put her age at late twenties. About his own.

His let his gaze fall openly to her slender throat and the teasingly parted white shirt that didn’t quite reveal the cleavage he knew was there. She had very nice breasts; so nice, in fact, that he began to harden as he imagined holding them in his hands, sucking them as he plundered the rest of her sweet little body. Oh yes, that would be distraction.

“So,” he said, raising his eyes reluctantly to her face, “is that what you do for a living? Translate for the police?” He picked up his teaspoon and stirred his coffee, even though there was no sugar or milk in it. He still needed his hands to be busy.

“For a living? I’m flattered you could think so,” she said lightly. “Actually, it’s my first time translating for the police.”

“I’d like to say it’s my first time being questioned by them, but it wouldn’t be true.”

Yes, there it was again, a spark of alarm darkening her soft, brown eyes and quickly hidden by her long lashes. But she rallied at once, looking straight at him. “The police in Scotland or in Zavrekestan?”

“Does it make any difference?”

“I don’t know. My mother was never complimentary about the Zavrekestan police.”

He smiled at her, just to see the effect. “Are you making excuses for me, Miss Black?”

The effect turned out to be a rather charming blush. He decided to push it, just to see how far he could go, how much prettier she’d get. Only she took him by surprise.

Her head tilted with conscious bravery. “A man like you doesn’t need excuses, does he? Not if he’s special enough to get away with it in terms of the police and his own conscience.
Razz Kolnikov
.”

The flush hadn’t faded from her face and neck, so he amused himself by watching her deliciously shaped lips as he smiled at her. “You’ve read
Crime and Punishment
,” he observed.

“My degree’s in Russian and Soviet literature,” she said dryly. “It would be more surprising if I hadn’t.”

“Then you think I’m guilty because of the name I chose?”

“I think you’re a dangerous risk taker with the name you chose. It’s a famous novel in any language, and it’s only a matter of time before somebody over there—”—she jerked her head across the road in the vague direction of Gayfield Square police station—“puts your names together and comes up with Raskolnikov.”

She drained her coffee without breaking eye contact and reached for the next cup. He liked her.

She said, “What did they do to piss you off? Make assumptions?”

“Something like that.”

“They’ll come after you, you know,” she warned, rather touchingly.

“That’s all right. They won’t find me.”

She laid down her cup. “You gave them a false address too?”

“Oh no, but I’ve no intention of going back there.”

“But your stuff—”

“There’s nothing worth missing, and in any case, they’ve probably trashed it by now.”

She stared. “This isn’t Zavrekestan.”

“I’m sure things get trashed and stolen all the time at the Royal Hotel.”

She sat back and regarded him.

He smiled back. “So, if you don’t normally translate for the police, what
do
you do?”

“I’m a writer.”

“Yes? What do you write?”

“Fiction. Novels.”

“Publish any?”

“One.”

“Make any money?”

“No. Which is why I supplement my income with translation work. Mostly literary. But that’s dried up a lot recently. I registered with this agency who got me the job last night out of the blue. First time they’ve contacted me, to be honest.”

“I expect they struggled to find anyone fluent in Zavreki. What good luck for me that you happened to be living here.”

“Isn’t it?” she agreed cordially. “Why didn’t you just accept a Russian speaker?”

“I’m not Russian. What’s your book about? The published one?”

“Now you’re making conversation,” she accused, and he gave a breath of laughter. He never made conversation.

“Actually, I’m not. I’m genuinely interested.”

“Have you got a computer?”

“Doesn’t everyone?”

“Then look it up on the Internet. I use my own name to write.”

“Short and sweet. I’ll find it. Will it get me your phone number too?”

She flushed again, a curiously erotic sight, as the beast in his trousers acknowledged. “Not unless you really want it,” she said unexpectedly.

It had been a long time since he’d seen anyone blush so much, and he knew a sudden urge to follow its course all through her body, to keep her rosy skin hot and flushed as he pushed into her welcoming depths. Lust had always been the best distraction for him. Which, of course, was how he’d got into this mess in the first place.

He leaned forward, arms folded on the table. “Are you flirting with me, Nell Black?”

Even before he’d said all the words, he knew he’d gone too far. The teasing gleam in her eyes morphed into alarm, and her eyelids drooped in embarrassment. She wasn’t, it seemed, a flirting kind of girl, and besides, whatever tug of attraction she felt between them, she was already scared of him.

He sneered at himself, trying to keep the blackness at bay, because he’d have to get through this day without losing himself in blind, wild sex. With this increasingly desirable female body. Some girls you just couldn’t get for a cup of coffee and a beguiling grin.
Oh well, to the back burner with you, Nell Black.

She lifted her gaze back to him, almost defiantly, and surprised him all over again.

“You mean I can compete with the barmaid at Deacon Brodie’s?”

Oh yes, she was intriguing. His grin was quite spontaneous this time. And with what he knew was probably the last shred of decency left in his body, he decided to let her go. At least for now. She deserved rather more than an oblivion fuck with someone like him. And right now he just wasn’t capable of the higher functions necessary to see the rest of it through.

“There’s no contest,” he said lightly and downed the last of his coffee. “Come on, I’ll walk you to your car by way of thank-you. Where are you parked?”

“Just across there in MacDonald Road.” Her voice said she hardly needed an escort for so short a journey. Or for any other journey, come to that. But since she didn’t forbid him, he stood and waited politely for her to pick up her coat and bag and then held the café door open for her. That drew a surprised flicker from her eyes too. Either the men in her life weren’t courteous enough or it wasn’t the behaviour she expected from criminals.

Two minutes, three at the most, and he’d be alone. It was necessary. He needed to think, to plan. And yet all he really wanted to do was collapse and forget. Just for a little while. Crossing Leith Walk by her side, he recognised he was clinging to the last moments of her company just to stave off the excruciating loneliness he’d have to deal with sooner or later. And still he was pathetically grateful to her.

She stopped beside a slightly battered-looking mini and turned to face him, rather like a soldier awaiting orders for a suicidal mission. “Do you want a lift?” she blurted.

A lift. Did she mean that? Was
sh
e being polite now, or did he still have the possibility of that oblivion fuck he so craved?

A blink of early morning sunlight glinted off her soft, brown eyes. He lifted one hand, and she flinched before forcing herself to be still. Interesting. He touched her cheek anyway, a strictly one-time-only caress of regret. Smooth, soft, and warm, even in the damp cold of the morning, her skin tempted him with possibilities. But…

“No.” He couldn’t do it to her.

She shivered under his touch. Her breath caught, sounding almost panicked. As she spun away from him with a quick, nervous smile, the sun sparked red against the brown of her hair. And when she stilled, fitting her key to the car lock, the red remained—a round, red, definite dot.

Fuck.

He hurled himself into her, knocking her flat on the ground with his body over hers. Even through the thud and her involuntary cry, he heard the snap of the bullet hitting the tenement wall only feet away. Her eyes, huge, stunned, frightened, stared into his.

She jerked under him in obvious panic, kicking and pushing against his shoulders with the hand she had free.

“Keep down,” he said urgently. A quick glance confirmed what he already knew: a long street of tenements without a turnoff. “Our only cover is the parked cars. First doorway we can get into, take it.”

“What…?”

He moved off her, dragging her to her knees and then her feet, still crouched behind the car. A glance over his shoulder caught the figure balanced on the tenement roof on the other side of Leith Walk, rifle raised for another shot.

He didn’t wait for it but bolted along MacDonald Road, dragging the girl with him. He crashed his shoulder into the first door, shattering the security lock, and almost fell into the common entrance, pulling the girl with him. Something whizzed into the door as it fell closed again behind them, but he didn’t pause to look.

He bolted past the stairs, past the curious old lady in a dressing gown at the front door of the first flat, and straight to the door at the back of the building that led out to the communal yard.

“What’s going
on
?” Nell gasped out.

“A hit,” he answered, swiftly scanning the yard before he pulled her on toward the opening into what looked like a car park beyond. “Silenced but just as deadly.”

“Someone’s trying to
kill
you?” she squeaked.

“And you, I’m afraid.”

“But
why
?”

He paused behind a large wheelie bin to check out the car park. Two likely candidates for stealing; no obvious witnesses. Or assassins. “Revenge, I imagine,” he answered the girl. “Though I never expected them to be quite this fast off the mark.”

“Oh Jesus Christ, am I in the middle of a gang war?” She jerked her hand free of his. “You
did
torch that fucking warehouse last night, and now the owners are
really
pissed off.”

He paused to look her in the eye. “You knew I torched it. It’s been scaring the pants off you since before you walked into the interview room. You should have followed your instincts and kept away from me. But since you didn’t, I’m afraid I’m all that can keep you alive for the next few hours, so let’s go.”

He took her arm this time, just in case she bolted anyway, and marched her out of the backyard and into the rougher stone car park. Her whole body shook, but at least her resistance took the form of passive rigidity rather than actually fighting him.

When they reached the dull grey Nissan he’d earmarked for stealing, he unlocked it in the usual way and shook his sweatshirt sleeve down over his palm before he opened the door.

Then he let go of the girl. “Passenger side,” he commanded.

She didn’t say anything, just obeyed, walking around the front of the car. He got into the driver’s seat and felt under the dashboard for the necessary wires. These days, he took only seconds to hot-wire a car. He began to think they might just get out of this without too much more effort.

He glanced up at Nell, who’d reached the headlight on the passenger side. She looked as tense as a coiled spring, which should have warned him. But he was depending too much on her fear and innocence. She took him completely by surprise when she abruptly changed direction and ran toward the street.

The car sprang into life, already too late. Another car swung into the car park and screeched to a halt. A man spilled out of it, pointing a handgun right at Nell. It all happened so fast, there was no time to drive to her rescue. There was no time to do anything except leap back out of the half-stolen car and stare.

Nell froze.

Which made her as good as dead. It was like putting your hands up to these bastards—just gave them an easier shot. And the girl had absolutely no idea what she was dealing with.

Focus, imbecile!

The assassin’s car burst into flames. The assassin screamed, thrown forward by the force of it, and Nell stumbled backward, clutching her head in both hands.

He ran forward, grabbed her, hustled her back into the Nissan, and sped off before anyone even came out to see what was going on. He drove fast. There had been at least two gunmen out to get them and there was no way of knowing how many others, so his first priority was to get out of the area. His second was to ditch the car, steal another, and get to safety.

White as a sheet, Nell sat beside him, her eyes huge, her whole body shaking with reaction. She breathed as if she’d run a gruelling three thousand metres. But he’d no time to bring her out of it. Not if he was to keep them both alive.