We drew simultaneously. Crack and flare. Her gun had been strapped to her thigh. My shot nicked the top of her left arm, a flesh wound. Hers hit my gun hand, removing the top of my little finger in one clean swipe. I wouldn’t bleed out but, with my gun dead on the floor, I was out of action.
‘Kick it away.’ Her cold-as-night eyes glittered with triumph and hatred. They reminded me of Billy. I got it then. It all locked into place. I did as she ordered.
‘Take your jacket off – slowly.’
I peeled it off with difficulty. Rivers of pain coursed through my damaged hand, which I clutched tight to my chest, holding it upright, attempting to staunch the flow of blood.
‘Throw it to me.’
I complied.
‘You have no reason to smile,’ she said.
‘I always smile when I learn the truth.’
A picture of swollen pride and arrogance, she viewed me with contempt. ‘You think yourself so clever, so superior, the great untouchable Hex, the man who oozes menace.’
‘Is that what your father told you?’
‘I wish he could see you now.’
‘You disappoint me. A daddy’s girl at your age is pretty sad.’
She let off another shot. It parted the hair on my head and grazed the top of my scalp. Heat fled over me and warm blood trickled down the back of my neck. She was about to take me apart bit by painful bit. She held a Sig-Sauer P228, favoured by the US intelligence agencies, and she’d fired twice. She had eleven shots left.
‘You made him suffer and now it’s your turn.’
‘Suffer? What about the thousands of innocent people he wanted to annihilate?’
Simone wasn’t in listening mode. I doubt she ever was. ‘You hounded him for months. He never slept in the same bed more than two nights. You turned his friends against him, everyone he’d ever known. You took everything from him, his family, his reputation –’
‘Spare me. This is the monster who personally squeezed a guy’s brains from his head because he didn’t like the way the man looked at him.’
‘To stay on top, you have to be strong. My father was a great man.’
‘He really did a number on you, didn’t he? Did you take lessons in manipulation from your daddy too?’
Pain flashed, white hot, and shot through the outside edge of my left thigh. Blood bloomed and spread across my jeans in a relentless flow. I gripped the wound tight with my good hand. I wanted to yowl. My heart rate stuttered. Adrenalin flooded my system. I hoped she read in my eyes what I really thought of her, that she was an unhinged, murderous and self-indulgent bitch.
‘You’re the same as the rest,’ she said, cool as chilled plasma. ‘I’m going to hunt you down and make you scream until you beg me to put a bullet in your brain, isn’t that what you said?’ she jeered. ‘Now look at you, an amateur. Hayes thought he could outsmart me and Benz was a deluded fool.’
‘You killed Hayes, Phipps, Dwyer and Testa and handed McCallen to Benz?’
She nodded. ‘A gift based on mutual self-interest.’
Billy had once told me that he was Jewish. I wondered whether Benz the anti-Semite ever knew that he was doing business with a Jewess.
‘What about Pallenberg?’
‘Again, it suited Dieter and it suited me. Pallenberg was McCallen’s asset and lover.’ As she said it, her eyes drilled into mine. ‘Lovers make good bait, don’t you think?’
‘And you acted together with Benz?’
‘For as long as it suited.’
‘Our escape must have upset your plans.’
‘An irritation, nothing more, as you can see.’
Whose idea was it to lock the door to the cellar in the hope that we’d drown?
‘You can die thinking about it.’
‘I have no intention of giving you that pleasure.’
Her mouth worked into an approximation of a smile. ‘Have you any idea the number of times I could have taken you? It was me who pulled the light trick in Montpellier, me who took a pot shot at you in Berlin. I know where you live. I know who you see.’
‘Then why didn’t you kill me?’
‘The clue is in the name.’
‘Bagatelle,’ I said. ‘You play games.’
Her smile was almost proud, as if she admired my electric thinking. ‘It’s what I do. When and how you die will be when I decide, when I choose.’
Looked like she was close to making that decision. ‘You can’t win. You know that, don’t you?’
She tossed back her hair. ‘I’ve lost count of the times people say such things – always when their situation is hopeless.’
I did my best to shrug. Pain route-marched through my leg and out through my toes, every nerve ending raw and exposed. Time to change tack. I let out a low moan, vocalised the excruciating pain I was in. I had no need to act it up. ‘McCallen and the combined forces of the security services will come for you.’
‘Over one dead hit man?’
She might be right. With me dead, it would be easy to pin everything on me. Flynn was halfway there, the film he had scripted already in the can. I shook my head. ‘McCallen is persistent,’ I gasped. ‘You should know that. She won’t give up, not after what Benz did to her. She knows where you are. She’ll find you.’
Simone pulled a little girl face. Her mouth formed a grotesque pout. ‘But McCallen isn’t here now. It’s simply you and me, my love.’
‘Chemistry like ours is hard to find, is it not?’
‘True, I’ve never had a woman like you.’
‘I admit we’re good together, you and I.’ The accompanying smile was slow and seductive.
‘We could work things out, Simone. You and me, think about it.’
Silence crawled into the space between us. Her face was a blank canvas, unreadable, her brain tuned out. For a moment I thought I had her. Suddenly, her lips twisted and out of her mouth burst a series of full-throttled French obscenities. Finally, she swore in my native tongue.
‘Fuck you. How do you think that would honour my father?’
I would not have put Billy Squeeze and honour in the same sentence, but my opinion was of little interest to her now. The light in her eyes had died as if it had gone out inside. She was getting into the zone, her finger dancing on the trigger. I turned side-on. I didn’t feel like humouring her any more.
‘How did a nice girl like you become an assassin? Is it a recent career move or have you always dabbled in the dark arts?’
‘I’m a quick learner, yes?’
‘Exceptional.’ Blood oozed through my fingers.
‘I modelled myself on the very best.’
‘That would be me,’ I said, no smile.
‘Was you.’ For a second I thought I read pity in her expression. ‘My father held you in high regard. He studied your methods, did you know that?’
In effect, I’d created a ghoul by proxy. Exhaustion swept over me. Maybe shock would get to me quicker than blood loss.
‘You didn’t really understand him at all,’ she said, wistfully. ‘I spoke the truth about my adoptive parents. I also spoke the truth about my mother.’
‘Justine?’
Her dark eyes hardened. ‘Yes.’
‘But that would mean –’
‘They were both my parents.’
‘And your father loved you.’
‘Like I always knew he would, as a father should love his daughter. When he found out what my mother had done, that she had given me away, he came to me even after all those years and made provision for me.’
‘The house,’ I said.
She nodded.
‘And he turned to you when he was in trouble?’
‘Where else could he go? Together, we worked out a plan, in case things should not work out.’
Hence the fancy financial arrangements. ‘Does anyone else know about this?’
‘Nobody but you.’ Stunned by the disclosure of a long-held secret, a shutdown expression entered her face.
With this moment of dark revelation between us, the dynamics shifted. At the same time, the sound of skidding tyres on gravel rebounded through the room. Simone glanced towards the window. It was the moment I’d been hoping for.