The Assassin King

De Bruin slowly recovered consciousness from his stun gunning, yet he remained in a highly disoriented state, fuzzily aware of things happening around him but unable to make sense of them. He was lying face down on the cabin floor, twitching involuntarily from time to time, his groin damp with what felt like his own urine, while blood and drool leaked from the side of his mouth.

Elias and Warne came to stand beside him. He could see their shoes and hear them talking, but it might as well have been in another language. His hands were taken and pinned behind his back. He heard the Velcro rip of gorilla tape being pulled from its roll, then his wrists were bound so tightly together with it that his fingers began to tingle. Elias heaved him up onto the bench across from the hatchway and strapped him in with a belt. The moment he was let go, however, he slumped helplessly forward, though it put such stress upon his spine that the pain finally roused him and he sat up as best he could and rested his head back against the cabin wall.

Bubbles of blood kept blowing out of his left nostril to burst in a spatter of ticklish flecks on his upper lip. He longed to wipe them away, but couldn’t. His mouth was so sore that he must have hit it when he’d fallen, though he had no memory of doing so. He’d bitten his tongue too, while his gum and lower lip were puffed and aching, as when the dentist’s anaesthetic is wearing off. Then there was the cold wet chafing of his trousers against his thighs, taking him back to one of the more humiliating moments of his childhood, lying curled up in a ball on the changing room floor while his classmates gathered around him to taunt him for pissing himself, which he’d only done in the first place out of terror of another of their beatings. The memory stirred in him an old hatred, an old defiance. He squared his shoulders and sat up straighter. He wasn’t that pathetic, whiny creature Len Brown any more, he told himself. He was León Alessandro de Bruin, a man of stature, wealth and influence.

He turned his head left, defying the crick in his neck. Victor was at the controls, his hair badly matted with blood, but clearly recovered from his earlier blow. Anna Warne was on the bench seat behind him while Elias was sitting copilot, making calls on the cockpit radio, bragging about having de Bruin in custody and about to talk, the triumphalism in his voice only fuelling de Bruin’s determination to say nothing. He looked the other way. There was no sign of Andrei. He must have fallen. At once, he started fashioning strategies to blame him for everything.

The coast came into view below, from Skegness up to Ingoldmells and the pale blur of Chapel St Leónards. He owned properties in all three. Then came Croft, site of one of his earliest solo projects, converting a pair of rundown semis into six starter apartments. All he’d ever done was provide people with places to live, yet they’d still try to make him out a monster.

Elias came back from the cockpit. He gazed down at de Bruin with his forehead creased, as though de Bruin was an oversized sofa that needed taking up a spiral staircase. He’d found a bottle of water somewhere. He uncapped it then held it for de Bruin to drink. His pride told him to refuse, but the sticky dryness of his mouth overruled it. He swilled the first mouthful around and spat it out sideways, then nodded for another, which he swallowed gratefully.

Elias plucked the silk handkerchief from de Bruin’s breast pocket. He moistened it then dabbed away the worst of the blood from de Bruin’s lips and chin with surprising gentleness before stuffing it back again. He stood up, recapped the water, took out his phone to film. ‘Mr de Bruin,’ he said, enunciating loudly and clearly over the roar of the twin propellers, ‘I am arresting you on suspicion of murder, kidnapping and attempted murder. You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence. You have now been officially cautioned. Do you understand?’

‘I want my lawyer,’ said de Bruin – or would have, at least, had his tongue and mouth been working properly.

‘You kidnapped a woman and tied her to a block of masonry to dump her into the sea,’ said Elias. ‘You knocked your pilot out with a fire extinguisher in full view of a police officer. Then you took off with that same police officer clinging to your wing. Cooperation is your only chance, and even that’s not much.’