Vendetta (22 page)

‘Put him down, over there.’ The nurse pointed to a fourth cubicle where a makeshift bed waited.

As Mac placed the boy down, the woman called out, ‘Doctor.’

Female doctor, tall, looking professional but with tiredness lining the corners of her eyes, stepped out from one of the other cubicles. Her gaze went immediately to the Milos. She moved across and spoke to Mac at the same time.

‘What happened?’

‘He got caught up in an explosion.’

She looked at him quizzically, but he wouldn’t say any more than that. The doctor started examining the injured child. Then threw some medical terms at the nurse. The nurse nodded and went into auto-action. Mac stepped back as she dragged a small trolley across the room. It rattled with the clang of medical instruments on it. Then she got an IV drip ready.

She turned to Mac. ‘You need to wait outside. I’ll get someone to take details from you in a while.’ She caught his eyes. ‘We’ll do everything we can for your son.’

Then she turned. Whipped the curtain round the cubicle. Mac didn’t move straight away. All he could feel was the emptiness now in his arms. Finally he moved. Stepped outside the room. But he didn’t leave. He stared through the door, with the chant of her words drumming in his head.

Your son.

Your son . . .

Mac stared at the medical team that worked furiously on Stevie. He’d tried everything he could to get his boy breathing once he’d got his body back to the shore. Nothing had worked. But he wasn’t giving up, not on his Stevie. That’s when everything he’d learned about how to deal with an emergency as a cop kicked in. He’d taken out his phone. Hit the Internet icon. Punched in details for the nearest hospital. Found it. A quarter of a mile away. Picked up his son. Placed him in the car.

He didn’t remember the drive. Didn’t remember entering the first building he’d got to. The café on the ground floor. Didn’t remember the collective inhalation of surprise and shock that sounded from the people at the tables. From the man at the checkout till. Didn’t remember the doctor arriving and taking Stevie from his arms. All he recalled was standing in the corridor and looking crazily through the glass-panelled windows as they worked on Stevie. When the doctor checked the clock on the wall, he knew it was too late. His blue, blue-eyed Stevie was gone. Laid out, his lips a strange shade of blue. And that’s when he’d ended up on his knees. And cried. Just cried.

‘We’ll need to call the police immediately,’ the doctor said to the nurse.

The nurse nodded as she stared at the boy on the bed. They still weren’t sure about the extent of his injuries, but at least they’d managed to get him breathing and stabilised.

‘Find the father outside,’ the doctor continued. ‘Get as much detail as you can from him. Reassure him. But don’t mention the police.’

She followed his instructions but when she checked the corridor outside, there was no sign of the father.

forty-eight

Should he make the call? The question batted around Mac’s brain as he sat tense in the driver’s seat of the car outside the building that housed the butcher’s and Calum’s office. He pulled out his mobile. Toyed with it in his hand as he decided whether to contact Reuben. No doubt word had already reached the arms dealer about what had gone down at the car wash, but he wouldn’t know what had happened to his son. Mac knew he shouldn’t feel a fuck of emotion, not for a man who ran an illegal arms-trafficking outfit. But Reuben wasn’t just a criminal; he was a father as well. A man who gave his kid a lavish birthday party. A man who would be devastated by what had happened to his boy, just like Mac had been twelve months ago.

He made his decision.

‘It’s me.’

‘Sergei’s dead . . .’ There was control in the other man’s voice, but Mac could also hear the spark of something else. Anger? Grief? He wasn’t sure, but whichever it was, this man’s world had been thrown down a path he wasn’t expecting.

‘I know . . . Listen . . .’

But Reuben ploughed on. ‘I can’t find Milos. No one can find—’

‘I took him to the hospital . . .’

‘Is he dead?’ All the emotion dropped away from Reuben’s tone.

‘He’s at Mission Hill. They’re working on him. I think he’ll be fine . . .’

The line went dead. He stared at the butcher’s shop below Calum’s office. The shop appeared shut up. He stayed put, watching, double-checking that the workers inside the butcher’s were indeed gone for the evening. When he was satisfied that no one was around, he drove the car to the mouth of the alleyway he’d used to get into Calum’s office that morning. He got out of the car. Moved to the boot. Opened it. Back at him stared the bulging eyes of the gunman who was trussed up inside. Mac popped a pill. Swallowed.

‘Me and you need to have a little chat,’ Mac said.

He dragged the man out of the car and reopened the butcher’s for business.

A fist slammed into the man’s jaw for a second time, spraying a mist of blood into the air.

Mac flexed his aching fist as he yelled, ‘You and I need to sort a few things out. Let’s start with an easy one – who ordered the car-wash job?’

But the gunman tied down to the butcher’s block only glared back. They were inside a large room at the back of the shop, which was well below room temperature and filled with deadly implements laid out cleanly and tidily on shelves. Mac’s plan had been to use the deep freezer. Hoist the murdering bastard from a hook next to the carcases of dead animals, but with the tips of his toes touching the floor so that he felt the rage and pain from the bullet hole in his leg. But then he decided that positioning the wounded man in such a way maybe wouldn’t give him access to what he needed to get the truth. No, flat on his back was where he needed this killer.

‘Can’t remember? That’s OK, we’ve got time. Let’s try the woman who was shot in the hotel, the gun and grenade play at the car wash. Who ordered them? Same people?’ Mac thought for a moment before adding, almost as if he was merely curious, ‘And my miraculous escape at the car wash. How did that happen? Was that orders . . . or was I just “lucky”?’

The last question had been plaguing Mac. The man had had a chance to take him out but hadn’t taken it. Why? Was that what had happened at the hotel; he’d been deliberately shot, but in such a way that would’ve been no threat to his life? The chemicals from the pills rushed through his blood, building a power within. He sucked in a mammoth breath, the air in this death-house some of the sweetest oxygen he’d ever tasted.

‘Come on – rack your brains. Try harder . . .’

The man let out a sharp laugh that wasn’t reflected in his eyes. Then he spat out a tooth from his bleeding mouth. Clamped his mouth defiantly tight. Furious, Mac raised his fist again, but froze with it in mid-air. Smashing this man’s face into oblivion wasn’t, he suspected, going to get him any nearer the truth. He needed to make this man feel pain, real pain. Mac dropped his hand as he twisted round. Walked over to a collection of aprons hanging from aluminium hooks. He pulled one off, surprised at its weight. Then he realised that this was no ordinary apron, but made of thin stainless steel, probably to protect a butcher from the impact of a slipping knife. He eased it on. Turned his attention to the shelves showcasing a butcher’s tools of the trade.

Hammers.

Some kind of flat scraping instrument.

Wire brushes.

Long, thin, steel tool with a wicked point at one end.

Curved knives.

Butchers’ knives in different sizes and blades.

Meat and bone saw.

Mac chose the long tool with the pointed end that reminded him of a screwdriver. He strode back to the man and stopped beside his legs. Located the bullet wound. He touched the outer edges of the hole with the steel in his hand. The man flinched, but didn’t call out. Mac deliberately grazed the hard point around the mangled mix of flesh and blood in the top of the wound. Harsh, rapid breathing blew out from the other end of the butcher’s block. Without warning, Mac forced down. Nice . . . and . . . slow. Maximum agony. A high scream bounced around the white tiled walls. Mac considered shoving the cloth back into his mouth, but decided against it. Sometimes the sound of your own scream intensified your feelings of terror.

‘Hotels . . . the doctor’s clinic . . . and of course we can’t forget the car wash. Quite a little list. Go on – give us a hint. Why did the doctor have to go? Or are you the kind of hired gun who doesn’t care about the details?’ Mac finally demanded as the steel kept up its journey. ‘But you know who hired your gun, don’t you?’

Only screams answered him. Mac increased the pressure of his hand. Hit something hard. The bullet. His hand stopped.

‘They might not have given you a name. But you know . . . people like you always do . . .’

Rapid breathing, no answer.

Mac pushed down. The man’s body arched as high as the ropes around him would allow. There was no screaming this time, only the sound of a noise that Mac equated to the death cries of an animal. But still the man refused to talk. In frustration, Mac pulled the steel clear of the wound and threw it angrily to the floor. He stomped back to the shelves. Pulled off the saw and a knife with indented lines just above the edge of its blade.

Headed back, to his captive’s head this time. The man’s eyes were watery with pain, his facial muscles twitching and his lips moving like he was in the midst of a prayer. Mac placed the knife flat against the block. Kept the saw in his hand.

He stared his prisoner directly in the face. ‘See my eyes? You know I’m going all the way with this. Now help yourself out by helping me out – name the person who’s pulling your strings.’

The man gobbed pink spittle into Mac’s face. Mac wiped it off with the back of his hand. Pulled the man’s ear with the same hand and started sawing. A sharp spurt of blood hit Mac’s apron. Then the blood oozed thickly down as the flesh tore.

‘OK. OK,’ the man yelled, the sound of his breathing noisy and nasty in the room. ‘I’ll tell you . . . tell you.’

Mac stopped. But didn’t remove the saw.

‘I’m listening.’

‘We never touched any woman in a hotel.’ Each word shook as the man grappled with the pain eating into him. His raging breathing pushed his chest high. ‘We saw you for the first time when you went into the doctor’s.’

Mac shook his head with mock disappointment. ‘That’s a shame.’

Mac inched down the saw. A full-throttle shrill tore up the room again.

‘It’s true,’ he screamed, his head shifting from side to side, as if trying to wake up from a nightmare. ‘We were only contracted to take care of the doctor and the young Russian.’

The saw froze. ‘The doctor and Sergei?’ Mac briefly floundered and wondered aloud in anguish, ‘But what about the woman?’

No answer. Quickly Mac placed the saw on the block and replaced it with the knife in his hand. He put the tip of the knife against the man’s throat. The air coming out of the man’s nose and mouth was ragged and shallow.

‘Keep talking.’

The man closed his eyes. Abruptly, with one swift move, he shoved his head up and forward, ramming the knife deep into his windpipe.

forty-nine

5 p.m.

The assassin was dead, but Mac still had one more card left to play.

‘
He takes care of all of Reuben’s awkward jobs.
’

Mac remembered Sergei’s words about Calum as he hacked and crowbarred and finally shot off the chained doorway that divided the butcher’s storeroom from a staircase that led up to Calum’s office. The room upstairs was locked off too, but Mac fired two more shots into that. He’d lost patience with long methods that day. He walked into Calum’s office determined to ransack, but without much idea of what he was looking for. But Calum had some answers, Mac was sure of that; he just didn’t know what the questions were yet.

He strode past the shotgun that was still propped up against the wall, and headed straight for the desk. Jumbled papers, a couple of pens, paperclips and computer. Nothing of interest. That was typical of the security consultant; he might have been lower than a snake’s belly, but he was still a professional. Never leave secrets lying around. His computer was on but Calum’s main activity on it seemed to be playing solitaire. Mac went through the desk’s drawers. Nothing. A filing cabinet with folders and three bogus cops’ badges. But nothing else. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.

He kicked the wall.

His rage hit the red zone and he started pulling books and files off the shelves and shaking them to see if anything fell out. When nothing did, he threw them on the wooden floor with increasing violence. Finally, he swept a row of books to the floor and watched them crash downwards. He stood, breathing heavily, and looked around the room. His gaze came to rest on the lead that hung from the back of the computer. Calum had used it that morning to plug into the back of Elena’s phone before declaring it had been wiped.

Mac hunted around in his pocket and found Elena’s phone. Plugged it in to the lead and took the seat in front of the screen. A few moments later a pop-up appeared announcing, ‘New Hardware Detected . . .’ It flashed a few times before giving way to a window as a program started up. The application had a title bar announcing it had been developed by ‘Blank Frank’ of Novosibirsk and there was a mobile phone number next to it. In brackets after that, Blank Frank had included the message, ‘If you want support, you’re out of luck!!! Ha ha!!!’ Across the screen spread information about the make, the phone number and the network.