‘I don’t understand,’ Ana said, as Dani prodded the pile of bloodied fabrics with her toe, as if she expected it to come to life.
It didn’t.
‘Did you check he was dead?’ Dani said.
‘No! I only wanted to get out. But I stabbed him. In the chest, in the back. He wasn’t moving. He must have been dead.’
‘Except he’s not here now.’
Dani saw a flicker of doubt in Ana’s eyes.
‘You don’t believe me?’
‘Where’s the knife?’ Dani asked.
Ana glanced around the room. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Did you drop it? Take it with you?’
‘I don’t remember!’
Dani bit her tongue. She scanned the room. First she looked to the chair in the middle. Just a plain old wooden chair, although it was bolted to the ground. Why? There was no sign of the rope that Ana had claimed had tied her to it. Next Dani looked over to the workbenches. There were no tools laid out now, like Ana had claimed. Tools which Ana had believed Alex was about to use to torture her with.
What was going on?
Was Ana lying?
‘What is this place?’ Dani said.
She didn’t get an answer from Ana, nor had she expected one. She was thinking out loud. She moved over to the dusty metal shelving unit in the far corner, where there were several similarly dusty cardboard boxes. Dani reached out and flipped the lid on one of them. Discs for an angle-grinder. They looked ancient. She moved to the next box. This one was more curious. Not tooling at all. She reached in and her hand came back out clutching onto a swatch of leather, all ragged at the ends like it had been cut or torn from a bigger piece.
‘How did Victor and Alex even know this place existed?’
Once again she got no answer from Ana. Dani put the leather to one side, then reached into the box once more, and this time pulled out a pendant necklace.
What the hell?
‘Ana, what—’
Dani looked over her shoulder. Then spun around abruptly, her eyes fixing on Ana’s petrified and teary face. She was still standing right by the door.
Except now she wasn’t alone.
Dani hadn’t heard the newcomer at all. How on earth had they moved so stealthily?
Dani’s gaze moved first from Ana’s terrified eyes to the glint of metal held up against her neck, then traced across the thick gloved hand, the black-coated arm and along – until she was staring into two dark eyes behind Ana.
Two dark eyes in a bulbous face that Dani immediately recognised, even though she’d only ever seen him before in photographs.
Nicolae Popescu.