The ring was in the old barn, which was much better maintained than the new concrete one and had racks of empty dog cages along each wall. That explained why it had been so securely locked.
They had me and Lesley facing the barn door while behind us stood at least two of the combat trouser brigade — both armed with shotguns. Varvara Sidorovna knew our capabilities and wasn’t taking any chances. We’d been there long enough for my knees to start seizing up and for our guards to forget we were listening.
‘This is fucking stupid,’ said Max, who had repeated this statement at regular intervals since we’d arrived here. By a process of elimination I’d decided this was the round pink-faced guy, and we knew his name was Max because his partner had used it the last time he’d told him to shut the fuck up. I was pretty certain his partner was the squinty-eyed guy and I knew his name was Barry because Max had used it when he told him to fuck off.
‘Shut up,’ said Barry.
‘Well, it is fucking stupid,’ said Max. ‘We should be well out of here by now.’
‘Not until the Comrade Major says it’s time to go.’
‘Fuck the fucking Comrade Major,’ mumbled Max.
‘I wouldn’t try if I was you,’ said Barry. ‘She’ll freeze your balls off.’
‘Oh yeah,’ said Max. ‘Seriously frigid.’
‘Look,’ said Lesley. ‘It’s bad enough that you’re holding us prisoner, but can we at least dispense with the fucking sexism?’
‘You’re a mouthy cunt, aren’t you?’ said Barry.
‘What I am is a police officer,’ said Lesley. ‘And if anything happens to me or my partner here I personally guarantee that you won’t survive the subsequent arrest.’
‘What?’ asked Barry.
‘Damage us,’ I said, ‘and our colleagues will fuck you up big time.’
‘Shut up,’ said Max.
‘Yeah,’ said Barry. ‘Shut the fuck up.’
‘Not them, you dickhead,’ said Max. ‘You shut the fuck up as well.’
My stomach was churning. I didn’t want to die in a dog fighting ring. In Essex, for god’s sake, what would my dad say? And my mum would be so pissed off with me. Better all-round if I avoided the whole dying thing altogether.
‘You know, after today you two are going to be disposable,’ said Lesley.
‘She’s right,’ I said. ‘We tracked you here through the van and we reported in before we came here.’
‘She gets you to top us,’ said Lesley. ‘And then she leaves you hanging out for the police.’
My throat was dry and I had to cough before I could say, ‘That’s a bit too risky. More likely she zaps them and then burns down this place with them in it.’
‘People are always setting themselves on fire when they do arson,’ said Lesley. ‘They’ll think you murdered us and then did yourselves in by accident. Case closed, and the Comrade Major gets away scot free.’
There was a long pause and then Max said, ‘We’re not listening to you, you know.’
But I thought they might be.
I think we might have been there for another hour after that. Barry was complaining that he wanted a slash, my knees were killing me and I had shooting pains in my shoulders from keeping my hands on my head. I did wonder, given how long Max and Barry had been standing there, whether they might be equally stiff and unresponsive.
There was nothing in my forward field of view that I could grab with impello and the bloody Comrade Major Varvara Sidorovna had instructed Max and Barry to randomly move around behind my back and stay separated so that I couldn’t just blindly smack them down. Nothing I could do was going to be faster than their trigger fingers — however stiff they got.
Still, when the barn doors opened in front of me I did my best to clear my mind and be ready for any opportunity.
It was Varvara Sidorovna carrying, I couldn’t help noticing, two plastic jerry cans. Judging from the way they weighed on her shoulders they must have been nearly full and I didn’t think it was with water. By the time I’d registered that, she’d walked briskly out of our line of sight.
‘Okay,’ she said from behind us. ‘In a couple of minutes I want you two to shoot these two in the head and douse everything with petrol.’ She spoke English with the deliberately regionless accent of a BBC Radio 4 presenter.
Being held at gunpoint is a police nightmare and you always tell yourself that should push come to shove and some vile scrote is about to actually shoot you, you’d at least make a play. Go for the gun, duck, attack the bastard with your bare hands. I mean after all, at that instant, what would you have to lose? But shove had arrived and I found I couldn’t make myself move, not even a little bit. It was shameful. I had found the upper limit of my courage.
Fortunately for me, there is no known lower limit to human stupidity.
‘They’re police,’ said Barry, just as Varvara Sidorovna had crossed back into view and was heading for the barn doors. ‘I don’t think this is a good idea.’
Varvara Sidorovna turned and her face was a picture. I’m having a bad day, it said. And now there’s you — thinking!
‘Listen, Varvara,’ said Lesley. ‘You really want to talk to your boss before you do anything hasty.’
I was still trying to make myself move and practically trembling with frustration. It’s not like I’ve had trouble doing stupid things before, I thought. Why am I finding it so hard now?
‘Varvara, call your boss,’ said Lesley, her voice tight.
‘How do we know you won’t get rid of us once we’ve done your dirty work?’ asked Barry.
‘I still need you to carry the gear when we get back to London,’ said Varvara Sidorovna.
‘Yeah,’ said Max. ‘But-’
‘Don’t make me come back there and do it myself,’ she said.
‘Okay,’ said Max. ‘But I don’t think-’
Varvara Sidorovna threw up a hand to silence Max and cocked her head to one side — listening. Then I heard it too. A car engine drawing closer, tyres crunching in the gravelly verge of the farmyard. The engine cut out and there was a creak as a handbrake was applied.
I felt Lesley tense beside me — no modern handbrake sounded like that.
There was the sound of a car door opening and then slamming shut.
Varvara Sidorovna gestured sharply to get Max and Barry’s attention, pointed two fingers at her eyes, and then at me and Lesley. Then she took a couple of cat-quiet steps to the side of the barn doors and I saw her breathe slowly in and exhale smoothly. Her face became calm, still — expectant.
There was a long silence, I could hear Max and Barry breathing through their mouths and shifting from foot to foot and the tik tik tik of something small and clawed making its way down the line of cages — a mouse? Then suddenly there was a brutal crack like a giant stamping on a plate and daylight spewed through a sudden hole in the front wall of the barn — just above the double doors. Dust exploded into the air to hang in a roiling cloud — gleaming in the sunlight. Then the front of the barn literally unzipped — bricks fountaining up and away in two diverging streams and the doors abruptly ripped off their hinges and went spinning off through the air like something from a catastrophic decompression.
Suddenly I could see the farmyard outside, brightly lit by afternoon sunlight, bricks falling out of the clear blue sky like rain, dust puffing up as they landed, thudding, on the track.
And, having made sure everyone was paying attention to the front, Nightingale walked in through the back door.
The first we knew of it was when Max and Barry came flying headfirst into the dog-fighting ring, landing right beside us. I had a brief glimpse of their shotguns scything through the air at head height — aiming right for where Varvara Sidorovna would have been standing if she hadn’t jumped and rolled to the left.