The Assassin King

The fight was lost before Anna even realised she was in it, Andrei grabbing her by her hair to slam her head against the van’s metal floor, stunning her for long enough for de Bruin to close the van’s rear doors and then take over, pinning her shoulders to the floor with his knees and gagging her with his hand. Andrei meanwhile wrested the van’s keys from her weakened grip then clambered over the seats into the front. He reversed out of their bay and headed for the exit, turning right onto the main road and accelerating away. ‘Where now?’ he asked, over his shoulder.

‘Just drive,’ said de Bruin. His scarf had fallen away during the struggle, revealing his face flushed with a strange excitement. He pressed his hand unnecessarily hard down upon her mouth, his teeth clamped together from the effort, as much to hurt her as to keep her quiet. ‘Where is it?’ he demanded.

Anna shook her head, bewildered. He ran his free hand all over her in a crude mockery of a pat-down, squeezing her breasts and feeling between her legs before trying the various pockets on her winter jacket. He ignored her house keys but took out her phone, powering it down before tossing it to Andrei when he stopped at a set of lights, for him to throw out the window. Then he continued his search of her pockets until finally he found her uncle’s wallet with its contents still clipped together in their evidence bags. His eyes lit up. He separated one of these out from the rest then lifted it to his mouth to tear it free with his teeth. The plastic ripped, however, and the gold wedding ring inside fell to the floor and rolled away.

The look on his face told Anna the truth. Not her uncle’s after all, but de Bruin’s own. Presumably, to justify all this craziness, with his and his wife’s initials inscribed around the inside, along with the date of their wedding and perhaps even traces of blood and DNA from the bodies between the fields. Uncle Dun must have found it and kept it as a hold. No wonder de Bruin had stalked her outside the pound last night. No wonder his biker friends had come for her bag.

All this passed through Anna’s head in a blink even as de Bruin lunged for it. His eagerness was his undoing. His knee slipped from her shoulder, tipping him off balance and releasing Anna’s arm for a moment, enabling her to grab the ring herself before he could recover. Yet what to do with it? There was nowhere to hide it or throw it that he wouldn’t retrieve it instantly. So she popped it in her mouth instead, and swallowed.

De Bruin’s snarl turned terrifying, his skin flushing bright red and his lips drawn all the way back over his teeth. He meant to kill her, she could read it on his face. Perhaps he might have done so, too, had he not needed his ring back first – for how would he explain it being found in her stomach? He pinched her nostrils together, punched her in the stomach to make her gasp for air, then tried to thrust two of his gloved forefingers down her throat to make her vomit. She bit down hard instead. He yelped and snatched back his hand, then clutched it around her throat and began to squeeze, only to be struck suddenly by an idea so delightful that his fury left him in an instant, leaving him looking almost gleeful instead. ‘Call Victor,’ he shouted out to Andrei.