When you catch a man in one lie it’s a given that there are others. China had lied to me about the absence of killers on his payroll. He had also lied to me about Simone. My first priority was to trap Leonid and discover what China was up to, my second, to find out what was on China’s laptop. Something had spooked him but I didn’t know what.
I made my way out of the building and headed for the train station at a leisurely pace. I couldn’t fault China’s choice of assassin. Of average height, average weight, hair neither too short nor too long, and with colourless, nondescript features, he was Mr Forgettable. In his jeans, sneakers, T-shirt and leather jacket, he could be mistaken for any number of individuals. I wondered what he packed. Taking a punt, I guessed a Makarov with silencer, the perfect toy for the type of work he had in mind.
Reaching the station, I caught the next train to Waterloo. Leonid boarded at the same time but sat in a different carriage – his strategy, no doubt, to kill me in a quiet street without an audience. I sat back and decided to play to the man’s tune, but with me writing the finale.
I stepped out at Waterloo and took the Jubilee line to Green Park and from there, the Victoria to Kings Cross. In the old days, he’d have tried to pop me on the Underground, but with all the extra security it was unlikely he’d be that audacious. To be certain, I speeded up and fell into the unrelenting flow of workers, tourists and students, keeping my head down. A memory of another time, when I’d been the hunter, flashed through my mind. In the minutes before Billy’s death, I’d joined a similar flow of folk and tracked my prey, Billy unaware of me until the final moment. It was karma, perhaps, that I was now the hunted.
Out in the open I rolled up the collar of my jacket, slipped a hand in my pocket, felt the warm length of leather, entwined it around my fingers and, certain my would-be killer had caught up, set off.
The lock-up was a no-go so I tracked in the other direction towards Regent’s Canal. Once a slum area, much of the basin had been cleared for apartments and leisure boats, another case of regeneration changing the urban landscape for the better. If my Russian thought he could knock me off and dispose of my body in the drink, he was mistaken.
Up ahead was a narrow walkway in between two towering office blocks with windows facing the Battlebridge Basin. Not too many cyclists and joggers out today. Quiet and soulless, it would be the perfect place for my man to strike. I had other ideas.
The temperature had dropped several degrees to a malicious minus. Damp intensified the bitter cold. The light was poor. My footsteps marked time in a strange syncopated rhythm with my prospective assassin. If I got this wrong, if I had not read him right, I was a minute away, maybe even seconds, from certain death.
Out on an open stretch of moorings, it would be hard for my killer to take a shot unseen. Perhaps he was a gambling man. Maybe he was reckless. I didn’t think so. He’d hung back at the requisite distance. He hadn’t forced the pace. He hadn’t lost me. I respected him for that. An early lesson in my killing career was never to underestimate the enemy.
My destination was a brick-built arch, dark and low lying with black, icy water beneath, the ultimate place for a kill. I increased my stride, eyes straight ahead, determined not to show out even though the guy probably had his hand on the pistol, safety off on the left of the slide, finger twitching on the trigger. It gave me enough time to get ahead and tuck myself into a narrow hollow where the bricks had crumbled. My eyes are quick at adjusting to poor light and I wondered how well my Russian would fare.
Pretty well, as it happened.
He burst through the tunnel and let off two shots, the put-put sound confirming the use of a silencer and that he meant to carry out his orders with a certain amount of finesse. Luckily for me, as he fired, he continued to move forward.
I darted out and wrapped the leather tie around his neck with all the agility and speed of a black mamba. Leonid gasped, dropped the pistol, hands flying to his throat. He obviously hadn’t been instructed in the ‘never underestimate the enemy’ school of contract killing. One kick from me and the pistol hit the water. Put the odds back in my favour.
I shouted above the clatter of boots scraping, limbs flying, the noise of a man caught in the grind. ‘Stop struggling. I’m not going to kill you.’
He relaxed and I eased off the pressure. Next, he lowered his head, and as I cut him some slack, he lashed his head back, the strongest part of his skull butting me smartly on the nose. It caught me exactly on an old break, a souvenir of a game of rugby. Pain almost blinded me. A rush of warm blood cascaded over my chin and down the front of my jacket. I hauled hard to temporarily cut off the oxygen to his brain – enough to keep him quiet, not enough to kill him. But the wiry Russian wasn’t ready to give in yet. With a tremendous display of power that reverberated through my body, he bucked and twisted his muscular shoulders. I hung on with a terrible sense of déjà vu. What was it with these guys?
‘I need answers to questions.’
‘Nyet.’ His breath, sour and tainted with garlic, was too close for comfort.
‘Don’t give me that crap,’ I snarled. ‘Speak English. You understand what I’m saying.’
Clearly he didn’t because he lifted his right foot and ran the heel of his boot painfully down my shin. It hurt. Properly cross, I twisted the leather in both hands, turned up the pressure, felt the guy gurgle. He tried to dig his fingers underneath my makeshift garrotte in a doomed attempt to release the pressure, but I wasn’t budging. Any moment his hyoid bone would fracture. I felt like a guy on a high wire, desperate to keep my balance. I wanted answers. I wanted to send a strong message back to China Hayes. I genuinely did not want to kill Leonid. He wasn’t like Konstantin. He was unarmed.
‘Screw this, talk to me.’
‘Okay, okay,’ he gasped. ‘I’m fucked anyway.’
This was the equivalent of a symphony orchestra to my ears. I loosened my grasp enough to let him speak, not enough for him to try anything clever. Had anyone seen us together, we would have cut an odd picture. They’d possibly think I was getting up close and personal in an entirely different way to the one intended. ‘Did China send Konstantin?’
‘Nyet. Konstantin had his own score to settle.’
So Darren’s information checked out, which was good. I intended to pay Barry Walls another visit in the hope that Darren would have more high-grade information for me. ‘Did China kill Daragh Dwyer?’
He delayed for no more than a fraction of time. ‘No.’ I didn’t believe his hesitation was due to Leonid translating a Russian negative into an English negative.
‘But he knew it was going to happen?’
‘Da, yes.’
‘Faustino Testa?’
‘The same.’
‘China was party to it?’
‘Party? I do not understand.’
‘He helped someone else do it.’
‘I do not know. Maybe he give out information.’
Yes, that worked, I thought. China, the scheming bastard.
‘Chester Phipps, did China help with that too?’
‘I do not know for sure.’
I tightened my grip infinitesimally.
‘Maybe,’ the Russian growled back.
‘Someone tampered with the brakes on China’s car and tried to kill him.’
‘I know nothing of this.’
‘One of his men was killed.’
‘You are one crazy man.’
‘Who is China working for?’
‘This I do not know.’
Again, a tweak.
‘You cannot squeeze information out of a man who knows nothing,’ he rasped.
Leonid was correct, probably because I wasn’t asking the right questions. ‘Why did he tell you to kill me?’
‘It is not my place to ask. I do as I am told.’
That figured. ‘Have you heard the name McCallen?’
‘Never.’
‘Titus.’
‘No.’
‘Simone.’
‘Da, China wants her dead.’
‘Why?’
‘Because she is in his business, in his face, taking money, cutting deals.’
‘You know this for a fact?’ I eased off a little.
‘I know this is what China tells me,’ Leonid said, exasperated. ‘I am from St Petersburg. Asking questions gets you killed.’
With this I could identify. ‘Tell me about China.’
‘He is good man to work for. He pays good money. He –’
‘Is he under pressure?’ I didn’t want a CV or to know whether China paid into a pension plan for his employees. I wanted to find out who was pulling China’s strings. ‘Is he nervous, irritable, unpredictable?’
Leonid let out a rough laugh. ‘All bosses are like this. Never happy. Believing someone is out to rip them off and take their business. They are all paranoid. It is what they are.’ I had to hand it to Leonid; he understood the idiosyncrasies of crime lords well. I was beginning to think I was running into a dead end. Maybe Leonid was getting as cold and miserable as me, maybe he wanted to go home to St Petersburg. A smart guy, he understood that if I were to release him, he had to trade. He fell silent for a moment. I gave him time to think out his position. It took all of ten seconds. Like I said, he was on it.
‘China mentioned someone.’
‘Who?’
‘A man, a German.’
The light of recognition flared briefly inside my mind. ‘His name?’
‘I do now know. China only referred to him as the German.’
‘When was this?’
Leonid gave a big shrug of his shoulders. ‘Many months ago.’
Pallenberg, I thought.
‘Tell me more.’
‘Nothing more to tell.’
‘In what context did he mention the German?’
‘Same time he was bitching about Simone.’
A connection between Simone and Pallenberg? I sifted through my conversation with Mathilde in Berlin. Then it hit me. I put it down to his increasing success and new circle of friends. Had Pallenberg fallen in with the smart set and frequented one of Simone’s sex parties? How likely was it, and how much of a coincidence was that?
‘One other thing,’ I said, ‘where will China hole up when he flees his riverside view in Kingston?’ If I were Leonid, I’d stay far away from Hayes and get the next flight back to the motherland. Leonid’s failure to report back to base with the equivalent of my head on a plate would be enough for China to realise that Leonid, like Konstantin, had failed in his task. He would be punished severely.
‘I do not know. Maybe the warehouse.’
‘Where?’
He told me the name of a trading estate in Deptford. If China was this stupid he deserved everything that was coming to him. I released my grasp, pulled out a handkerchief and did my best to mop up the blood. Leonid took a step to the side, put a hand to the raw weal on his neck and looked at me with curious eyes. ‘You are letting me go.’
‘I am. If you see China, warn him that the next time our paths cross, I’ll kill him.’
‘But not me?’
‘Not you. You are free to go.’
He gave me another quizzical look. If I were Leonid I’d have said ‘thanks very much’ and fled. The Russian was made of stronger, more resilient material. ‘People call you Hex, the magician.’
They did once, not now. I nodded assent.
‘You are not what people say you are.’
I smiled and walked away.