I was right. The bastards had waited to see if I survived. I had no idea how long my escapade had taken but it was clearly for a far shorter time than it felt. I slipped back into the bushes and walked and crawled in the opposite direction to the truck. Eventually the ground flattened out a bit. I stuck my head up. In the gloom I thought I could make out the turn off to Anna's place. I flashed my phone torchlight. It was. Dropping back off the road I rang. She didn't pick up. I was right. She was mad at me. I rang again. Twice. When she did answer she snapped.
`What?'
`Don't hang up, please. I ran off the road. I'm at your turnoff. Can you come and get me, please?'
The words all came out in a rush. I couldn't let her ring off. There wasn't much juice left on my phone and I could freeze to death walking the three kilometres to her place. Especially if it started to snow again.
`Okay, I'll be there in a minute. And the food?'
Trust Anna, ever practical. `Gone, I'm afraid.'
`Shit.' She rang off.
I curled in a ball to conserve as much body heat as I could. I'd warmed up as I struggled through the rough terrain up to the road but as soon as I stopped I knew my body would quickly shut down unless I stayed warm.
Anna arrived in minutes and as soon as I saw the lights approaching I raced to stand inside the corner of her road. If I'd waited there earlier and the truck came by the driver would have seen me. Now there was no sign of them as Anna pulled up. I jumped in and she stared at me for what seemed an age. Then she made a quick U-turn and headed back to her farm without a word.
As we drove through her gates I saw a large silver car parked outside her front door. I turned to her. She shrugged and jumped out. She ran around and opened my door then pointed to the back door. The utility room, where you took off your muddy boots and wet clothes before you went into the house proper. She walked with me as I slowly limped alongside her. She still hadn't said anything.
I jerked a thumb back at the car. `Visitors?' I said trying to sound as if it was a common occurrence.
It wasn't though. She never had visitors except me, particularly at night. Or did she? What did I know of her everyday life? Even before I went away. I only visited from time to time and I always had to call first. Not that she ever said no, but…. Maybe she did have other visitors. She was young, attractive, and just because she held me at arm's length it didn't mean she kept everyone there.
Once we were inside she stepped back and took a good hard look at me. I knew I must have looked pretty bad, soaking wet, covered in mud and bits of bushes but it wasn't until I got into the light that I realised how bad. I was filthy yes, but I was also white faced and streaked with blood. Mostly scratches from twigs with a couple of reddening splotches where I'd fallen against some rocks, that would be ripe coloured bruises eventually.
When she peeled off her anorak I saw that she was looking quite glamorous. For her, that is. A silky shirt with her better jeans and gold earrings. I felt quite pleased until I wondered if she'd made the effort for the other guest. The one with the big car. She handed me a towel then left me standing there.
There was no greeting, no peck on the cheek, no welcome home. After talking earlier in the week I'd sort of felt she might have been loosening up a bit. That maybe she'd missed me. A bit. But that was Anna. Always cool and defensive.
I heard voices murmuring. The visitor was male. That had my antennae up. Anna was back in minutes with the bathrobe and track suit I kept here and pointed at the bathroom.
`Warm up. You look freezing.'
I pointed at the sitting room, but she sashayed away in front of me as bouncy as I'd ever seen her. The visitor must be quite something I thought sourly as I ran the shower.
As the warm water reached into my frozen core, my stomach twisted. A very serious attempt had been made on my life just down the road from Anna's home. In Kashmir I didn't think the attempts on my life had anything to do with R.S. Holdings. Bale had never told me why he'd tried to get me killed. The attacks were tied to the very nasty Vlado Mladenovic but I couldn't see any connection. R.S. was a far-reaching company but Vlado was organised crime. Somehow I couldn't see him avenging his cousins in faraway Australia.
After tonight though, I would certainly revisit that. Not that I really believed it. Men like Vlado Mladenovic didn't give a shit what happened to the people around him. Any more than Anna's grandfather Milos Mladenovic, his uncle had. No, it was something else. And here was a stranger at my lady's door. Was he an assassin too? Was that why I had to go over the side? To keep me from meeting this visitor?
Ten minutes later, I was warm, dry and clean. I'd checked out most of the scratches and while still limping found that I was surprisingly free of damage despite my wannabe assassin's best intentions. How I would explain the loss of my car to my insurance company would be a challenge, but I'd really come out of it remarkably well. Now all I had to do was stop them trying again.
As I headed for the living room Anna appeared. She took my arm.
`I was wondering where you were.' She stepped back and looked me up and down. `Yep, you'll do.' She giggled. It was so unlike her that my eyebrows almost reached into my hair. Then at the doorway into her living room she suddenly turned and kissed me. Full on the lips. I was so startled I stood rigid. But that wasn't the only reason.
Sprawled across her sofa was a man. A very handsome man. Around forty, dark hair with sexy grey wings at the temples, tailored clothes, and very expensive handmade shoes. The shoes matched the top of the range Mercedes parked outside. Something flickered in his eyes then was instantly gone. It was the same as David Bale, but far less obvious. He was surprised to see me. Was that because he was expecting to be spending a cosy night alone with Anna or had he recognised me and thought I would be at the bottom of a mountain? One small clue might or might not tell the whole story and this guy was good.
I decided to play along. I made a point of trying hard to look cool and sophisticated. Unrealistically, considering my crumpled chain store track suit that had seen better days. Many better days. This bloke had never worn a chain store anything in his life. Who the hell was he, had Anna told him about me and why was she acting like a teen with a crush?
`Oh, Harry, this is Michael.' She was almost tittering.
I walked over to him with my hand outstretched. `Harry Nichols.'
He stood and took my hand. It was dry and firm. There was nothing untoward in his manner now. Indeed, I felt he was working hard to cover the shock my appearance had given him. The one that said I was supposed to be dead.
`Michael Bentford.'
His voice was the result of very expensive English schooling. I got a familiar jolt. I'd met Michael Bentford before. Not the man in front of me but many just like him. Powerful, wealthy, charming, well presented. There was something sleek about him. He looked to me like he was wearing his urbanity like a skin over something else. Something far closer to barbarity. The more I looked at him the more I was sure that Michael Bentford was a fake. I thought I'd have a crack at guessing how he might have known Anna.
`Been in Australia long, have you?' I could feel Anna's eyes boring into my back and I knew how I sounded. Like I was a jealous teenager. `Known Anna long?'
`Harry.'
`I mean, I know you lived in England, Anna, and I just thought...' I was digging an ever-deeper hole. Give him every chance.
Sure enough he rescued me. `No, I’ve only been here a couple of weeks but my parents knew Anna's parents and suggested I look her up. So here I am.'
He was so polished that he made me look like a graceless clod. `Sorry,' I said, `I didn't mean to sound like the ugly Australian.'
He laughed. `I thought only Americans were ugly.'
`Oh no, we do a good line in that too.'
`Well, perhaps everyone does sometimes.'
But not you, I thought. Not accidentally.
As long as he thought I was an idiot, I might be relatively safe. If, as I believed, he knew something about tonight's events, he would be less likely to fear a graceless clod than an investigative journalist with a big-time reputation for being a giant killer. Hopefully he'd leave here with a reduced opinion of me. I wondered what Anna had told him about my adventure. If anything. This was where her reticence might really pay off.
He looked past me, smiling. Waiting? Then he jumped up and strode towards the kitchen where Anna had dug something out of the freezer including some garlic bread and was making up a large bowl of salad.
`I hope there's enough to go around,' I said, uncouth again. I grabbed some plates and mentally ditched the cosy fireside evening I had planned. Just Anna, me and the fire.
Instead I had to try to fathom why the hell such a man wanted me out of the way so he could visit my girlfriend with no questions asked? Who wanted me not just out of the way, but dead. What did he want from Anna Felby and what was his connection to Vlado Mladenovic, for I had no doubt whatsoever there was one?
My best chance was to keep playing as close to the gormless twit as I dared. It was a fine line though because gormless twits don't get to write big time stories about big time crooks like Roger Timpson. Or to feature in international documentaries that they wrote. There was also the complication of Anna. She knew I wasn't a naive idiot.
My choice was to appear to get a bit drunk and tell stories about Kashmir including the assassination attempts which I'd play down. And to make it clear that my network knew about it all including David Bale's involvement and his association with Milan Pavlovic. I would also try to slip in the name Mladenovic including that it was Anna's grandfather's name.
My bet was he knew all about that and it would show. I was also interested to see if he made any phone calls. Maybe to a couple of blokes in a truck sitting in the cold on the Marysville - Lake Mountain Road while it snowed. But I didn't think he would. This guy was way further up the food chain than that.
I still had no idea why Vlado Mladenovic would be interested in Anna. To embrace her back into the family? Yeah, right.