Gomes whipped the Luger across my face. Blood welled from my lips and nose. I spat it at him. He drew his foot back and aimed his steel-capped boot between my legs.
As his foot swung towards me I grabbed his ankle with both hands, pulling with all my remaining strength.
Gomes was carried forward by the momentum of his kick and that, as much as the little strength I could muster, made him lose his balance. I grabbed at his gun. We grappled on the floor. I had the advantage of already being on my knees. I pushed myself upright, launching a kick at his face. There was a gratifying crunch and his grip on the gun loosened.
Luger in hand I swung towards Guerno, who had jumped at me. I felt his hot breath on my face, an overpowering odour of onions and rotten eggs. He clasped me in what he imagined was a bear hug, grinning insanely through blackened teeth. My gun hand was jammed between us. Angling the Luger towards him I pulled the trigger. There was a muffled explosion, a burning on my stomach and his face creased in disbelief. The bullet had ripped through his heart, out through the armpit and into his shoulder.
I pushed the body towards Romeo, who seemed much slower. He was looking stupefied, the submachine gun pointing at the floor. He reached out to catch Guerno like a giant doll, staggering back under the weight.
Escape seemed possible, but I’d forgotten Gomes.
With blood streaming from his nose he lunged at me like a lunatic, apparently obsessed with retrieving the Luger. He jumped from behind, one arm encircling my neck, the other stretching for the gun. Fortunately he’d forgotten his own pistol still hanging in its holster at his waist.
I was unprepared and fell towards the floor under his weight. My breath came gulping out, my lungs still not recovered from the ravages of Guerno’s truncheon. His grip tightened. Trying to distract his attention I flicked the gun into the centre of the room. It worked. He pushed me off and darted towards the gun.
Romeo was gently laying Guerno on the carpet, apparently oblivious of me. But the front door had opened and the third police guard was coming in. I jumped into the kitchen, slamming the door behind me.
The Beretta I’d hidden in the oven was the most beautiful gun I’d ever seen.
The kitchen was long and thin, stretching from the door to the window. On one side a plain wall. On the other a decrepit cooker, cupboard and, beside the door, a sink. I climbed into that, if Gomes started shooting through the door it was the only place I could avoid the bullets.
Nothing happened immediately. Then Gomes shouted, ‘Come out you bastard, you can’t get away.’
I remained silent.
‘Come out now or we’ll take you out in pieces.’
There was another brief silence. Then a burst of submachine gun fire ripped through the door at thigh level. The lower door panel disintegrated, as did the window. That should bring more police running. The door was kicked open and Romeo hurtled in, gun in hand, an expression of fierce determination on his face. He didn’t stand a chance. As he entered, looking straight in front, I shot him in the side of his head. He spun against the wall, falling forward along the floor, one arm stretching towards the window.
Gomes appeared in the door, the colour draining from his face. He wasn’t used to seeing someone crouching in a sink pointing a gun at his head. His own gun pointed uselessly at Romeo’s body.
‘Drop it,’ I said, ‘and tell your other goon to do the same.’
He complied with alacrity and I heard the thud of a pistol on the lounge carpet. Clambering from the sink I motioned Gomes back. He stood beside the sole survivor of his three thugs. The front door was open but there was no sign of life in the corridor; I shut it.
There were a lot of questions Gomes could answer, but no time to ask them. At any moment more police might arrive, drawn by the gunfire. But either Gomes had come with just three men and the photographer or the others had orders to stay downstairs. The sound of shots coming from a room where Gomes was ‘interrogating’ someone was not perhaps unusual. In any event nobody appeared.
I couldn’t risk searching them, Gomes was mad enough to try jumping me. So I ordered the two men to strip to their underwear and handcuff their right ankles together, Gomes facing his subordinate’s back. Then I marched them into the bedroom and handcuffed Gomes’ wrist to the bedstead.
I had ordered them to kneel at the foot of the bed. As I bent to fasten the handcuffs Gomes grabbed at me. I’d hoped he would, it gave me an excuse to stamp hard on his hand.
‘No more tricks now.’
He replied with some inaccurate remarks about my ancestry in general and my mother’s in particular.
Before I could leave there was a knock on the door.
‘Captain Gomes,’ a voice said.
‘Enter,’ I barked in a weak imitation of Gomes.
Another policeman appeared, his gun in its holster. He looked around in bewilderment, his expression turning to disbelief as he saw the submachine gun I was pointing at him.
‘Is there anybody else outside?’
Instinctively he shook his head. I shut the door.
‘In there.’ I motioned to the bedroom. He stared in horror at his handcuffed captain but paid no attention to the mutilated body of Miranda Gonçalves. I took his gun and fastened him to the bed with his own handcuffs.
Three or four minutes had passed since the shooting. There would certainly be more police around and they might be getting curious. They could be awaiting the return of the one who’d just arrived. I flushed the handcuff keys down the toilet and hid the five police pistols in the oven.
Then I remembered the phone in the bedroom. The line was dead. Julia had gone.
‘Did you hear all that?’ I asked the silent instrument in Portuguese. ‘Most of it, good. You probably missed the fun in the kitchen.’ I paused, grinning at Gomes who was staring venomously at me. ‘You got the last bit on tape. Marvellous. Keep it at the Consulate, I’ll be right over.’
After ensuring they had nothing to throw at the curtained windows to attract attention I collected my bag and the submachine gun and left.
The apartment block was long and thin with a corridor running the length of each floor between the two lifts. At each end there were two entrances, the main one and a smaller one at the rear. Pedro’s apartment faced the back and I could see a police car outside the exit at this end, pointing away from the other entrance. Gomes undoubtedly had more men at the front.
The corridor outside was empty. At each end a staircase circled round the lift shaft. The windows on the staircase looked out from the front of the block. Far below two police cars and a jeep were parked outside the entrance.
I ran along the corridor to the other lift at the far end. Another police car stood outside the second entrance; I could only hope the back entrance wasn’t guarded.
I slowly started down the concrete stairs. The lift opened on to the front lobby meaning it could be watched from the car outside, but the stairs finished at the back, in a corridor that kinked around the lift shaft. From their car Gomes’ men therefore couldn’t see the foot of the stairs but someone was standing below me. Unless he had his back to the stairs and was stone deaf, he must see me before I could grab him. I had to get him away from the staircase.
I ran back up to the lift and pushed the button. When the doors opened I signalled for the ground floor and jumped out. Racing downstairs I was just in time to hear the lift opening and boots shuffling towards the front of the block. I glanced warily round the bend in the stairs. There was nobody there. I descended quietly to the bottom step.
The corridor from the front lobby to the back entrance, forty feet away, was empty. I’d only got halfway to the back entrance when the lift clanged shut. Quickly I crouched between two of the rubbish bins lining the corridor.
I heard the guard return although I couldn’t see him.
I was really in a mess, trapped halfway between the stairs and the back entrance. I had to go one way or the other but if I moved the man was bound to stop me. Every second delayed made the discovery of Gomes and the other two, trussed in Pedro’s apartment, more likely. I’d decided to jump the guard and risk the consequences when he was joined by someone else.
‘Anything happened?’ the newcomer asked.
‘Nothing. Only the lift came down empty just now.’
‘Yeah. I saw that from the car.’
‘What’s been happening outside?’
‘Sergeant dos Santos is getting nervous; you know what an old woman he is. The captain is still up with the Englishman. There was some shooting, dos Santos wants to know what happened.’
The other snorted.‘Nobody need worry about the captain. He’s a tough bastard. Did you hear what he did to the woman? I’m glad I’m not in that Englishman’s shoes.’
‘I heard. I don’t see why that was necessary.’
‘It’s an example. Nobody else will do what she did.’
‘But what did she do?’
There was a silence before the new arrival continued. ‘Anyway, dos Santos wants you out the back. He’s sent a couple of others round already. And he’s sent Valfordo up to see what’s happening.’
There was no time for subtlety, the inquisitive sergeant would soon send more men up to Pedro’s apartment.
I jumped out. ‘Stand absolutely still.’ Neither had been looking towards me, the surprise was complete. ‘Drop your guns, quickly.’ The guns clattered to the floor. ‘OK back here carefully. Gomes can’t reward dead heroes.’
Near the back entrance a large cupboard was let into the wall, a rusty key in the lock. Inside was a collection of brooms, mops and pans. There was enough room for my captives but it wouldn’t be very secure. One of them had handcuffs so I ordered him to manacle their legs together and pushed them into the cupboard.
‘Try escaping while I’m still here and you’ll be dead,’ I warned.
After dropping the keys and pistols in a rubbish bin I ran to the back door. Sauntering towards me were two policemen, both with submachine guns. I raced to the front lobby. Three yards away stood an empty police car, pointing up the street, away from the apartment block.
At the other end of the building sat the police cars and jeep I’d seen from upstairs. A lone policeman stood beside them.
I raced to the empty car, throwing my bag and gun in before me. The guard hadn’t noticed me but as I accelerated away, rubber burning from the tyres, bullets whistled past. I turned left, out of sight.
The car had to be dumped. I doubled back, four blocks north of the apartment, and found my own car. Not until I’d transferred the bag and submachine gun and had left the police car behind did I start to relax.
There was only one worry now: to make sure that as I moved away from Gomes Julia wasn’t closing in on him.
Julia should have stayed listening to the phone. She couldn’t have helped and her priority ought to have been discovering exactly what was happening, exactly what information Gomes could get from me. But I wasn’t displeased she’d ignored the textbook. Now I had to find her. That shouldn’t be impossible if she kept to the direct route. She would still be half an hour away.
It occurred to me that she might have her walkie-talkie. So I stopped, took my set from the boot and tried to call her without success. I turned on the car radio, hoping that as she came within range she would pick up the music on her set and realise what was happening. She didn’t but it wasn’t important. We spotted each other almost simultaneously, with Julia slamming on her brakes and jumping out of her car.
‘Thomas, you’re all right.’
We crushed each other, and then lips fumbled together. I’m not sure which of us was more surprised.
We pulled apart in mutual embarrassment, in my case reinforced by the knowledge that, unless Gomes had struck lucky, there were only two ways he could have learned about Pedro’s supposedly secret apartment. Directly or indirectly the information came from Pedro or from Julia.