Ugley Business (7 page)

I took that as assent, fished around in my bag and found my gun.

No. Didn’t want to have to clean blood out of the car again.

Illegal stun gun. Excellent.

I manoeuvred the prongs to the outside edge of my bag, letting it fall against his leg, my heart thumping, hoping this would work, and pressed the button.

Nothing.

Damn bloody thing was out of charge. Phones, cameras, tasers, they all run out of juice when you need them.

Balaclava Guy was getting anxious now, waving the gun and going, “Drive! You! Drive! Yes!” He sounded kind of stupid, and there’s nothing like a language barrier to get you really pissed off with someone. I pulled out my SIG and aimed it at him.

“No,” I said. “I will not drive. I don’t know how much you know about guns but this here is a nine millimetre and it will kill you if I pull the trigger. And I’ve just split up with the best sex I’ve ever had and am ever likely to have, so I am
not
in a good mood. And I hate to sound like a man but,” I ran my eyes over his revolver, “mine’s bigger than yours.”

For a second we stared at each other while I willed my hands to stop shaking. He didn’t lower his gun, so I sucked in a breath and shot his gun arm.

It probably wasn’t the cleverest thing to do, and I was pretty sure someone would have heard, but no one came rushing out of my house because, I suspect, they’re all too damn lazy. This was the country: it was an old house and there were game shooters and farmers around. If you heard a loud noise, generally you ignored it. Balaclava Guy was shrieking and clutching his arm, where there was a lot of blood that I’d have to clean up later. His gun had fallen into his lap and I picked it up, opened the barrel like Luke had shown me, and emptied the bullets into my hand.

Now what to do? Balaclava Guy was still whinging and mumbling in whatever language he spoke. I couldn’t leave him there and go back inside. I didn’t want to call Luke.

I fished around for my handcuffs, and when I couldn’t find them, flipped open the cubby box between the seats.

Balaclava Guy tried to make an escape, but I waved my gun at him. “I can shoot you again if you want?”

He looked at me with fear in his eyes, and shook his head.

“Good. Glad we understand each other.” There was a length of rope in the box, useful when pulling things out of the mud. Ted was very good at pulling things out of the mud. I used the rope to tie Balaclava Guy to the seat, binding his wrists together, ignoring his foreign protests, and sent a text to Chalker.

Going to see Angel. Not back tonight.
Then I drove off, out of the village and up towards the office, feeling very pleased with myself.

When I got there, I realised I was probably going to need some kind of help getting Balaclava Guy out of the car. And possibly he might need some medical attention, too. I wanted to find out who he was before he bled to death.

I sat there for a while, Balaclava Guy whimpering annoyingly, and thought. First off, I wasn’t going to call Luke. Not only did I need to take a break from him for now, I also didn’t want to have to run to him every time I needed help with something. My warrant card said I was a special agent. I could damn well look after myself.

I checked my watch. Half past nine. Maria.

“I need your help,” I said when she answered.

“What kind of help?” she asked cautiously. “If this is about Luke, I’m not—”

“It’s not about Luke. I have a…a situation here. I need you to help me out.”

“What kind of situation?”

“One that requires assistance,” I said through gritted teeth, not sure how much Balaclava Guy understood.

She asked where I was, sounding intrigued when I told her, and said she’d be there in fifteen minutes. She turned up in twelve.

“Impressive,” I said, running my eyes over her little red 205, which was panting and shuddering.

“Felt like breaking the limit,” she said. “Who’s this guy?”

“Dunno. He turned up and told me to drive. Not sure how much English he speaks.”

“He’s injured…”

“Yes.” I twirled my gun and nearly dropped it. “He drew on me so I drew on him. And then I shot him.”

“Anywhere fatal?”

“Lower arm.”

“Oh.” She looked disappointed. “You want to put him downstairs?”

“Yep.”

“Okay.” She went to her car and got a mucky rag out of the door bucket, the sort you use to wipe condensation off windows. “He needs blindfolding.”

Good plan. Why hadn’t I thought of that?

Balaclava Guy could walk okay, so Maria guided him up the ramp into the office, her own ten millimetre Glock pressed to his head as a reminder. I swiped my red pass on the control panel and unlocked the door, and when we were in, went to the bookshelf on the right hand wall and took off a file. There was another control panel there, and I swiped my card again, keyed in a code and glanced at Maria.

“Can you block his ears? I really should have chosen another thing for my voice recognition.”

She grinned and pressed the gun against one balaclava’d ear, and her hand against the other. “Go ahead.”

I spoke my name into the microphone, the control panel lit up, and the bookshelf broke in half and slid apart to reveal a little steel elevator.

“Remind me,” Maria said, “to change mine as well. Giving your name is not a smart thing to do.”

The lift went down one storey—at least I think it’s only one storey—and swooshed open onto a small but very expensively decked out lab. At the end of the lab was a small cage, its bars set into thick glass that could be hidden behind steel shutters if we wanted. We pulled Balaclava Guy over and Maria lifted her gun and cracked him on the head with it.

“I should have a heavier gun,” she said as he went down. “That took more effort than it used to with my Browning.”

“Won’t have killed him, will it?”

“Nah. Just keep him quiet.” She took off the window rag and pulled the balaclava away with it, and it occurred to me that she could easily have just turned the balaclava around to block his eyes. But then that wouldn’t have been as much fun, would it?

He was reasonably good-looking, I was surprised to see, with high, Slavic cheekbones and messy dark hair. Yeah. He could easily have been quite cute, if he hadn’t tried to kill me.

You know, I never thought I’d have to say that more than once.

Maria pushed up his shirt sleeve and checked the bullet wound. “Nice job,” she said, going over to one of the cupboards, which all required swipe-card entry, and getting a pair of large tweezers out. She extracted my bullet, put it in a metal bowl in the one of the refrigerated cupboards, then cleaned and wrapped a bandage around the wound. While she did this I checked his pockets for ID, and found a Czech passport.

“Interesting,” Maria said. “And also incredibly stupid. Who carries their passport around with them?”

I hoped she wouldn’t be going through my bag any time soon.

“Staszic, Petr,” I read. “Twenty-eight. Occupation: civil servant.”

“Doesn’t look very civil to me,” Maria said. “You want to leave him here?”

“Last time I did that someone escaped.”

“That was because of insider treachery,” Maria said. “Text everyone there’s someone down here. That’ll do.”

I drove back home with Shawn Colvin on the ghetto blaster to calm me down. It’d been a hell of a day. This time yesterday I was greeting sunburnt holidaymakers with Angel. This time yesterday I knew I’d have Luke to go back to.

He called me a couple of hours after I got in, and he sounded pissed off.

“What did you do this time?”

I felt myself prickle. “I didn’t do anything,” I sniffed, then added suspiciously, “Why are you asking?”

“The unconscious and bleeding Czech in the lab.”

Oh, him. “That wasn’t my fault. He got in my car.”

“When?”

“Just after you left.”

“Christ.” He paused. “You okay?”

I picked at a thread on my pyjamas and reached for another Pringle. “I’m fine. He pulled a gun on me but I shot him.”

“You’re sure he was armed? You didn’t shoot an unarmed man?”

I glared at the phone. “I have his gun if you want to see it.”

“Any good?”

“How the hell should I know?”

Luke sighed. “Did you knock him out?”

“Maria did.”

He sighed again. “Why was Maria there?”

“Because I called her.” Idiot.

“Why didn’t you call me?”

I was silent for a bit but he didn’t seem to be working it out. “Do I really need to answer that?”

“I thought we were having a professional relationship.”

“Yes, but not tonight.”

Luke sighed a third time. “I’ll see you tomorrow?”

“I guess,” I said, thinking,
Not if I see you first.

And then I couldn’t sleep.

The first thing that kept me awake was Petr Staszic. Why was he there? Where did he want me to go? Who sent him? I was having trouble believing anyone that incompetent would be acting on their own directions.

Although, look at me.

Why did he want me? He must have been following me to know I was at my parents’— Oh God, the car in my rear mirror!

In the grip of curiosity and insomnia, I pulled a flannel shirt on over the shorts and bra top I slept in, shoved my feet into my trainers and took Ted out for a midnight run. I parked up on the lane outside my parents’ house and got out my flashlight, hoping the neighbours wouldn’t think I was a burglar.

There was no car anywhere visible. I checked for about half a mile in either direction, then the fields around the house, and I was about to give in to the cold and go home when I saw something glinting under the hedgerow.

Around here there were very few hedgerows left. Farmers have pulled them all up top make bigger fields that are easier to plough, and then edge their land with fences or rows of regular hedge. There weren’t many thick, micro-environment, proper hedgerows left, and I’d bet my last fiver that there was only one with a motorbike under it.

And that hedgerow was right here in front of me.

Now, I know naff-all about bikes, but I could tell this one was cheap and nasty just looking at it. It wasn’t very heavy and it was very simple—if rather wet and muddy—to pick up and carry to my car. The very best thing about having a Defender is that you can fit a motorbike in the back. Well, okay, not the very best thing, but a damn useful feature.

I was just shutting up the back of the car when a torch flashed on my face and a voice said, “I don’t think that’s yours.”

I turned, my hand shielding my eyes, and began, “Yes, but—”

Then my ears kick-started my brain, and my eyes got in motion too, and I realised the man with the torch was Harvey.

“What are you doing here?”

He looked confused. “What are you doing here?”

“I live here. Well, used to. That’s my parents’ house. The owner of this bike ambushed me this evening. So I’m impounding it.”

“Impounding?”

“Well, confiscating, really. I could learn to ride a bike.”

“More of a scooter, really,” Harvey said, peering through the back window. He swung the beam of the torch back on me. “Ambushed, you said? Are you okay?”

“Better than him. What
are
you doing here?”

“Waiting.”

“Waiting?”

“I followed a guy on a scooter up here hours ago.” He gestured to a car parked in one of the neighbours’ drives. How thick was I? How didn’t I notice there was actually someone in that car? “He went up the drive but didn’t come back down.”

“He came with me. Why were you following him?”

“He works for a guy I’ve been tracking. Dmitri Janulevic.”

I shook my head. “What’d he do?”

Harvey made a face. “Nothing yet. But he has before, and he’s gonna this time. I’ve been all over after him.”

“All over?”

“China. Russia. Czech Republic. And now here.”

Aw. I was touched we’d been included in such an exotic list.

“Well, the biker’s name is Petr Staszic,” I said. “However you pronounce it. I don’t speak Czech.”

“I do,” Harvey said.

Hello.

Five minutes later, I had him blindfolded in the back of the car—the passenger seat still being a little bloody—and on the way to the office. I took him down to the lab and pulled off the blindfold.

“Ta-da.”

“This is the SO17 headquarters?”

“Well, it’s sort of just quarters. We’re very small.”

Harvey gave me a lightning once-over, a slight smile on his face.

“Don’t,” I warned. “My ego’s already had quite a bashing today.”

“I wasn’t gonna say anything uncomplimentary.”

“Hmm.” I went over to the cage and unlocked the shutters. They clanged back and Harvey stared at Petr.

“What did you do to him?”

“Nothing! Well, apart from shooting. But he had a gun on me.”

“Fair enough.” Harvey, from the Land of the Free, shrugged.

“Maria knocked him unconscious. We were planning on coming back in the morning.”

“Is this standard hostage procedure?”

“It’s standard procedure for people who attack me.”

“I’ll bear that in mind,” Harvey said, and walked over. “Is there an intercom?”

I nodded and switched it on. Then I set up the vid camera I’d brought down with me, and said loudly to Petr, “Wake up.”

He did, with a jolt, and babbled something in Czech.

“What did he say?”

“He’s not Czech.”

“He said that?”

“No, he said, ‘What’s going on?’ But he said it in Russian.”

“You speak Russian?”

“Of course.” Harvey, old-school CIA, gave me a bewildered look.

“It’s on my to-do list,” I said. “Ask him where he’s from.”

The answer came back as, “Russia.”

“So why did he have a Czech passport?”

“He’s a Czech citizen.”

“Dual nationality?”

Harvey paused to remember the word, and when he did there was another pause, this time from Petr.

“
Da
,” he said cautiously, and Harvey and I looked at each other and shook our heads.

“Ask him something in Czech,” I said. “Something complex.”

Harvey rolled out a question and Petr gave a hopeful smile. “
Da
?”