‘Now, you make one sound and I’ll stick this fucking thing down your throat and pull the trigger. I couldn’t give a flying fuck if your dad’s the richest man in the world or Sinbad the fucking Sailor. Do you understand?’
‘You dare to threaten me?’ Hassim said, his voice cracking.
Doyle nodded. ‘Fucking right,’ he hissed. ‘And you’d better get used to it. Do we understand each other?’
Hassim hesitated.
Doyle took a step closer, the barrel of the gun inches from the boy’s head.
‘Someone tried to break in,’ Doyle said quietly.‘l tried to protect you.
That’s what I’m here for. Shots were fired. You got in the way. What a tragedy. That’s what the police would hear and that’s what they’d believe.
Now, you wanted to test me. You’ve done that. Let’s call it quits and let me get that poor fucker a doctor.’
The servant was lying prone on the bloodied carpet, his life fluid still pumping into the thick, expensive pile.
Hassim swallowed hard.‘You would kill a child?’ he said softly.
Try me,’ Doyle told him.
‘What kind of man are you?’
Doyle laughed humourlessly.
Hassim put down the Stanley knife.
Doyle holstered the automatic. ‘What happened in here tonight,’ he said, ‘is between you and me.’
‘If my father found out about this he would have you killed,’ said the boy.
‘And that’s supposed to scare me, is it?’ Doyle snapped. ‘He’d be doing me a fucking favour. Now, are you going to keep your mouth shut or not?’
Hassim nodded.
Doyle turned towards the door.
‘Excuse me, Your Highness,’ he said quietly and stepped out into the corridor.
Hassim stood staring at the closed door. When he tried to move he found that his legs were shaking.
What the hell happened in there tonight?’ Doyle took a bite of his sandwich and raised his eyebrows.
Melissa Blake nodded in the direction of Prince Hassim’s room.
‘The kid showed me something,’ Doyle said. ‘I showed him something.’
‘What happened, Doyle? If you touched that boy …’
‘I never put a fucking hand on him. Ask him. You know if I had he’d have come screaming to his old man.’ He wiped some crumbs from his mouth. ‘How’s the servant?’
‘He needed twenty-six stitches and a couple of pints of blood,’ Mel said.‘He won’t say what happened either.’
‘Has the Sheikh asked?’
Mel shook her head.
‘He probably knows what that little bastard did anyway,’ Doyle mused.
Mel glanced at her watch. 2.11 a.m.The house was silent. The Sheikh and his family were sleeping, as were those servants not needed for night duty.
‘Do you want some company?’ Mel asked.
Doyle stood up and offered her the chair.
She smiled and shook her head.
He watched as she sat down on the floor next to him, slipped off her shoes and
drew her legs up beneath her.
‘How are you coping?’ she wanted to know.
‘With sitting on my arse outside the bedroom of some psychotic Arab kid?’
Doyle said. ‘I can think of better ways to spend my time.’
‘I meant with the job.’
‘Like the man said, it ain’t what it used to be, but it’ll do,’ he murmured.
‘We move tomorrow. All three of us. A new job. Cartwright phoned me earlier.’
‘What about the Sheikh?’
‘He’s going back to Saudi. His business here is finished.’
‘And us?’
‘Another client. You must have done okay, Doyle. I mean, Cartwright hasn’t sacked you.’
Doyle took another bite of his sandwich. ‘Who made this?’ he asked.
‘I did.’
‘You’re quite domesticated when you have to be, aren’t you?’
Mel smiled and shook her head. ‘Domesticity isn’t for me, Doyle,’ she told him.
‘Career woman?’
‘You could say that.’
‘What about boyfriends? There must have been one or two.’
‘I didn’t come up here to talk about my private life,’ she said a little warily.
‘Fair enough. I was just making conversation.’
‘Polite conversation?’
‘About as polite as I get.’
There was a moment’s silence between them finally broken by Mel.
‘Yes, there were boyfriends,’ she confessed.‘A couple long term but I’ve always been wary of getting too close to people. My parents were both killed in a plane crash when I was twelve. They were everything to me. I’ve always been frightened of getting close to anyone in case I lose them too. Does that sound crazy?’
‘I know exactly what you mean,’ he told her.
‘Blokes are always saying that women want commitment. I must be one on my own.
I’m as happy with a one-night stand as any bloke would be.’
He grinned.
‘Does that make me sound like a tart?’ Mel wanted to know.
‘It makes you sound honest. Just give me a shout next time you fancy some uncomplicated sex.’
They both laughed.
Doyle watched as she stretched first one leg then the other out in front of her. She flexed her toes then returned to her sitting position.
‘Please, Mel, sit on the bloody chair, will you?’ he said, again getting to his feet.
‘I’m fine, really. I shouldn’t be here anyway. I just wanted to make sure you were okay.’ She smiled that infectious smile at him.
‘Didn’t the Sheikh want to know how one of his servants got cut up?’ Doyle asked.
She shook her head.‘It’s not his concern,’ Mel said.
‘His kid is waving a fucking Stanley knife around and it’s not his concern?’
That’s the way things are. It’s a different culture. A way of life we’ll never understand.’
‘Good. I don’t want to understand it’
‘But you wanted to understand the IRA.’
He looked at her, puzzled for a moment.
‘You were undercover in the CTU. You infiltrated the IRA on a number of occasions. You must have had to understand them to do that.’
That was different,’ he said quietly.
‘Who was Georgina Willis?’
The question took him by surprise. He looked angrily at Mel.
‘What the fuck’s that got to do with anything?’ he snapped.
‘Cartwright said she was your girlfriend. He said she was killed when—’
‘Cartwright should keep his fucking information to himself.’
‘I’m not prying, Doyle. I’m just making conversation. I’m interested.’
‘In what?’
‘In you. If we’ve got to work together then it’s in my interests to know about you.’
That depends what you want to know. Georgie’s not relevant to this. Or what went on between me and her.’
They regarded each other silently for a moment, then Doyle took a sip of his tea. It was cold but he swallowed it anyway.
‘Look, I said I wasn’t prying,’ Mel told him.
‘Just forget it, Mel. I have.’ He reached for his cigarettes but Mel shook her head. Doyle muttered something under his breath and shoved them back into his pocket. ‘Right, no smoking, I remember.’ He exhaled wearily. ‘So, tell me about the next client.’
‘His name’s William Duncan. He runs a pharmaceutical company. He’s rich.’
‘Aren’t they all? Who’s after him?’
‘Muslim extremists. A fatwa’s been declared against him. His company was building a new factory in the Middle East, apparently they bulldozed some holy ground.’