The Blood Whisperer (47 page)

Grogan reached the lifts and looked round automatically for Viktor then scowled. Staff, he realised, stabbing a finger on the call button, were starting to be a right royal pain in the arse. It was time for an organisational shake-up.

And he’d start with bloody Dmitry. Grogan knew he’d told him to make himself scarce but this was taking the piss. He’d expected to be photographed out there with a glamorous woman on his arm and muscle by his shoulder. Instead he’d be facing the cameras alone and that put out the wrong message for a man in his position. It was all about perception. He dealt with people who needed to be convinced he was still a force to be reckoned with or they’d start trying to elbow in and take what he’d fought so hard to acquire.

There would be hell to pay later.

The lift arrived. Grogan checked his watch as he stepped inside. He was cutting it fine but he knew he made the trainer nervous and that in turn communicated itself to the horse. Better for him to arrive at the last moment, stay only as long as necessary then return to his lofty aerie to watch the race itself.

And if he was compelled to spend this moment alone, that was just the price of his success.

Grogan fished in his pocket and dragged out his cellphone, hit the speed dial for Dmitry one last time. The number rang out half a dozen times then disconnected. Grogan blinked and tried again. This time it hardly rang before disappearing into silence.

“Ignore me would you, you ungrateful little bastard?” he murmured. “I’ll cut you off at the knees—you and your—”

The lift doors opened at the ground floor. Standing outside them was a high-ranking member of the Jockey Club who stepped back when he saw the grim expression on Grogan’s face.

“Good God Grogan, you look like you’re off to the gallows. Something I should know about the form of that colt of yours?”

Grogan took a breath, squared his shoulders. “Not at all, my lord,” he managed. “And just to prove it why don’t you come and watch him saddled with me?”

“Eh, of course old chap,” the man said. “Delighted.”

But Grogan did not miss the hesitation and would not forget it either.

One day all these bastards are going to give me the respect I deserve . . .

Dmitry was in the stairwell climbing when his phone buzzed. He reached for it, saw Grogan’s name come up on the screen and rejected the call without pausing. It rang again immediately. Dmitry almost threw the phone through the window, stabbing the button to ignore it again.

“
Svoloch!
” he growled, repeating Myshka’s earlier curse.
Scum.

Above him he heard a door slam, glanced upwards but saw nothing. He swore again, in several languages this time, as he took the stairs two at a time.

The lift doors were closing as Dmitry yanked open the door leading from the stairwell. The floor indicator light showed the lift was heading downwards.

He spun and ran back for the stairs.

As soon as the lift began to slow, Kelly jammed her finger on the Doors Closed button and sent it back up again praying the software wouldn’t have a nervous breakdown and leave her stranded and exposed.

Fortunately the machinery obeyed without protest, climbing steadily. Kelly had no idea what the word she’d caught actually meant but she’d reacted on inflection and accent. It sounded kind of Russian and filled with invective. Either would have been enough to spook her. Both together sent her fleeing.

The lift reached the top floor and she braced for attack but when the doors parted the corridor was empty. She dived out and ran to the private box where she’d left McCarron and his charge.

She burst in, slammed and locked the door behind her. Someone had pulled the fur coat back over Steve Warwick’s body, she saw. Her imagination had the cover moving slightly as though the corpse under it still breathed.

McCarron rose shakily from a chair. She took one look at his face and knew.

“Where’s Yana?”

“I’m sorry Kelly love,” he said. “I went to use the bathroom. I told her not to open the door for anyone except you but—”

“And she did a runner,” Kelly said flatly.

“No, I think they took her. I heard a scream—by the time I got back out here she’d gone. I’m sorry.”

“Not your fault.”

Kelly shook her head reluctantly. Yana wasn’t telling her the truth about what happened but that didn’t necessarily make her guilty of anything more than evasion.

McCarron nodded to the locked door. “I’m guessing you didn’t find the cops, then?”

“No but I was almost found by the Russian guy—Grogan called him Dmitry.”

“The one who jumped me?” From his face Kelly couldn’t tell if McCarron was pleased or unnerved at the prospect of meeting his attacker again.

“The one who jumped both of us,” she said.

He dropped back awkwardly into his chair as if exhausted or defeated. Or both. “Christ Kel, if he’s got her . . . we’ve got to do something.”

“I know,” she said. “And as soon as I work out what, I’ll get back to you on that.”

Matthew Lytton had worked out in theory how to free himself, but the practice proved long-winded, frustrating and painful.

His wrists were bound behind him with plastic cable-ties, the kind he’d used hundreds of times on site to secure pipes or wiring. Once they were zipped tight the only way to release them should have been with cutters. He’d long ago discovered that jamming something like a nail-head between the locking tab and its ratchet track would loosen them off.

Of course, there was never anything like a protruding nail about when you needed it. He searched fruitlessly, writhing on the concrete floor and ruining his best suit in the process. Something tickled his nose and he twitched away but it was only a shed rose petal from the crushed buttonhole at his lapel.

He froze then squirmed until the miniature bouquet was right to his face. The roses had no scent but he guessed that some varieties were bred only for their colours. What the buttonhole did have, however, was a good sharp pin securing it.

Getting the pin loose with his teeth was the easy part. As was dropping it to the floor and manoeuvring to grasp it between fingers and thumb. But trying to contort his wrists far enough to reach the ties—when he couldn’t see what he was doing and his head felt about to explode—almost defeated him.

Lytton struggled for what seemed like hours. And every time he moved it was as if his head was filled with liquid that sloshed backwards and forwards inside his skull creating an almost unbearable pressure. The effect was motion sickness that left him in constant danger of throwing up.

He gritted his teeth and kept working at it. He had only a hazy picture of what had happened to bring him here. His conversation with that smug copper O’Neill was reasonably in focus but after that it started to blur. He even thought he’d seen . . .

No!

With a final burst of adrenaline-fuelled anger his wrists came free. The wrench nearly made him pass out, the room spinning crazily so that he had to grab the floor and hold on until it stopped lurching under him.

Hesitantly, he sat up and reached to his face, half afraid of what he’d find. A sticky mess covered his eyes and he groped for the end of his tie to scrub at it until he managed to peel his eyes open.

The first thing he saw was the blood. His hands were coated with it, mostly dried and cracking and laced in deep under his nails. His wrists were raw.

Lytton reached up to his head gingerly but apart from a lump the size of half a tennis ball it felt reasonably intact. He’d seen enough pub brawls in his youth to know scalp wounds could bleed like a bastard.

Good job I have a thick skull.

He looked round then slowly and carefully and saw he was in a storeroom. He could hear the commentator starting the build-up to the big race and realised he should have been out there—both of them should.

Looking down at his hands, at his ruined tie and bloodstained clothing, Lytton couldn’t suppress a twisted smile. Not quite the image of sophistication he’d wanted to present.

Still, getting out of
here
was a good plan before whoever had dumped him like this came back to finish the job.

He was sitting propped up against some kind of packing case covered with a sheet that slid sideways as he pulled himself to his feet. When the room stopped swaying around him Lytton glanced down at it automatically.

What he saw there had him stumbling back.

“Jesus Christ . . .”

When Dmitry’s iPhone rang again he was outside. He was standing on the lower walkway where Kelly Jacks had made her death-defying leap the last time they’d met here, scanning the crowd in vain for any sign of her.

He was reluctant to venture further out onto the racecourse. Something told him his prey was still in the building and being spotted out here by Grogan would be . . . awkward at this stage.

“
Da?
” he said, terse.

A female tut-tutting noise in his ear made him jerk the phone away as if burned. He checked the display and scowled.

“What do you want Myshka? I’m busy.”

“Is that any way to speak to me when I call to help you?”

“Unless you have access to the racecourse CCTV system and can track one woman in thousands, you cannot help.”

She sniffed. “No faith. You not need to find
her
if she find us, no?”

Dmitry simmered in silence for a moment. He didn’t mind so much that Myshka was the bright one, if only she didn’t have to
gloat.

“Go on.”

“Where are you?” And when he told her she commanded with supreme confidence, “Get back up here—quietly. I have perfect bait. She will come.”

The trill of a cellphone caught Kelly by surprise. Not recognising the ringtone, she glanced across at McCarron but he shrugged.

“I only have one cellphone Kelly love and I believe you may have, erm, borrowed it.”

She stood, swung to try and get a bearing and then stilled.

“Oh you have to be kidding me . . .”

The morning suit jacket over the body of Steve Warwick was moving she saw. It shivered gently with each vibrating ring of what must be his own phone, still in his pocket.

With great reluctance Kelly patted him down. Half of her was hoping that the damn thing would stop before she found it but luck was not on her side. The display screen showed a number she was not familiar with.

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” McCarron asked.

Kelly gave him a lopsided smile. “Hell no.” But she pressed the button to receive the call anyway. “Hello?”

The tinny speaker emitted a burst of noise so loud and distorted that Kelly almost dropped the phone. It took her a moment to distinguish the voice and another to recognise it.

“Yana?” she said loudly. “For heaven’s sake calm down. Where are you?”

“I–in another box, I think,” Yana sobbed. “They bring me here—”

“Who?”

“Man who work for Harry Grogan. He grab me. They lock me in here. I frightened!” Her voice rose into a wail on the last word.

“Stay with me Yana! We’ll come and find you. Don’t worry.”

“Hurry! She say she kill me—woman who kill Steve. Oh God, they here! I—”

Her voice chopped off into a harsh shriek followed by a background clatter and then silence.

“Yana?
Yana?
”

McCarron was at her shoulder, his battered face pale enough for the bruises to stand out lividly against the anger. “Where is she?”

“Grogan’s box by the sound of it,” Kelly said without thinking.

He wheeled, had nearly made it to the door before she caught his arm—the one without the cast.

“Ray for God’s sake, what do you think we can do? And how on earth did Yana just so happen to get hold of a phone? This whole thing has ‘trap’ written all over it.”

“And if it isn’t—what then?” McCarron asked. “I’ve stood by in the past and let people get away with murder Kel. I’m damned if I’m going to do it again.”

Kelly led McCarron out of Lytton and Warwick’s private box and to the entrance to another that was only two doors down.

“Are you sure?” he asked.

Kelly nodded. “Shula gave me a rundown so I wouldn’t get lost with orders.”

“Shula?”

Kelly shrugged and indicated her borrowed uniform. “She’s the one who gave me this.”

But McCarron’s attention had been diverted by the smear of blood on the door handle. “Why grab Yana and then stash her so close?” he wondered aloud. “It makes no sense.”

“There’s a lot about this that doesn’t,” Kelly said looking up and down the corridor before dragging out her makeshift picks. McCarron noticed that she avoided touching the blood as she delicately raked the pins inside the lock. “Ready?”

He took a breath, aware of a sudden tremble at the backs of his knees. “Would it make any difference if I said no?”

Something flickered at the corner of her mouth. “You were the one overcome with gallant bravado a few moments ago,” she said and pushed the door open.

Yana was sitting slumped at the wide table, a mirror of the one where her husband had been beaten to death. She was cradling her head in her hands and jerked upright when they entered.

“Are you all right love?” McCarron would have hurried forwards but Kelly put out a warning hand.

“Of course she is,” Kelly said in a dangerously soft voice. “It’s all going just about according to plan, isn’t it Yana?”

Yana raised her head slowly, her eyes reddened and her face swollen with tears. She gave a helpless shrug. “I–I not understand . . .”

“Did you beat your husband to death yourself or just help tie him down while your pal Dmitry did it for you?”