He pushed Riley through the gap and stood looking around for a moment, his great head swaying from side to side. Then he grunted and propelled her towards a small square of posts and planks at one corner of the development. Above the posts hung a large metal chute with a cut-away mouth, shiny and battered with use. A cement lorry stood close by.
As they neared the planks, Riley could see they guarded a deep shaft lined with boards and sprouting rusty metal rods thick as a man’s thumb. It was the foundations of one of the main support pillars for the building.
McManus peered over the edge and grinned drunkenly. “Long way down, I reckon,” he taunted her. “You any good at diving?”
He began to pull the nearest planks aside and Riley struggled furiously as she realised what he was about to do. McManus seemed unaware, intent only on clearing any obstacles. She waited until he bent over to clear the lip, then twisted her body until she was side on to him. With every ounce of her strength, she stabbed her leg out and downwards, the side of her shoe connecting with the outside of his knee.
Even on a man of McManus’s solid build it was a weak point. There was a crunch as his knee gave way, and he roared with pain and anger and fell sideways, his flailing hand grabbing hold of her clothing and dragging her down with him. He grunted and swore, launching himself onto his knees over her, his eyes blazing with a fierce light and spittle spraying from his mouth.
“Bitch!” he shouted, and grasped her shoulders ready to flip her over the lip of the shaft. As his hands fastened on her, Riley remembered her father telling her that one thing no man ever expected a woman to do when defending herself was to use her head. Scratch, yes, Scream, even — and kick. But never the head.
“In your dreams, you pig!” she screamed and, as McManus pulled her towards him, she launched herself forward, using his own strength against him.
As her head slammed into his face she felt his breath against her skin and heard a crunch as his nose took the full power of the blow. His hands released their grip and he fell back with a roar of pain, blood spraying down his front.
Riley scrambled away from him, looking for a way out from the building site. Somewhere nearby a car stopped in the street and doors slammed. Police?
McManus staggered upright and lifted his gun, spittle and blood dripping from his face, a look of shock and outrage twisting his features. She kicked again, this time at a pile of cement powder at her feet, trying to scoop it up into his eyes.
“McManus!” A man’s voice shouted from behind her.
There was a blur of movement as somebody ran past her, and she heard a loud slap of something hard against flesh. Then she was grabbed around the waist and dragged away through the gap in the wall, away from what was happening at the lip of the shaft.
The last image she had was of two figures; the huge McManus teetering on the edge of the hole, his arms scrabbling for a hold on thin air; and another man, slightly smaller and slimmer, standing before him. Then came then sound of a blow and McManus seemed to dance backwards before plunging silently out of sight. The other figure began turning away, his face set and hard.
John Mitcheson.
Riley sagged against whoever was holding her and looked up to see Frank Palmer smiling grimly. “Palmer, you idle bastard,” she muttered, fighting the urge to throw up. “I thought you were supposed to be protecting me.”
“Yeah, right,” Palmer retorted calmly. “Try telling McManus that.”
Chapter 39
Riley opened her eyes and stared out at the passing scenery. She was in the back of Mitcheson’s car and they were driving past a row of shops and estate agents, with the tall shape of a holiday hotel in the background. The sky was deep blue without a cloud in sight, and the pavements were crowded with tanned bodies in shorts, T-shirts and sunglasses. She vaguely recognised the outskirts of Malaga on the way to their hotel and slumped back onto the seat, stunned with relief.
“Welcome back,” said Palmer, handing her a bottle of water. “You went out for a few minutes there.”
She took it gratefully and swallowed half the contents. It was warm and slightly metallic. “What happened?” she asked. Her throat was sore and her voice sounded as though she’d been smoking cigars all her life. She was surprised to find she had both shoes on. “You got my other shoe.” Her clothing was another matter; she felt grubby and soiled and covered in a gritty substance. Cement powder. Then she remembered.
“We cleaned up,” said Mitcheson, before she could ask. “No clues.”
“Except for McManus,” she said. She also remembered the cigarette lighter but decided the chance of the police latching onto it was too remote. “Will they notice him?”
Mitcheson shook his head. “I doubt it. That shaft looked deep. Unless he survived the fall and begins to shout, they won’t even look. We left the Mercedes where it was.”
Riley shivered, imagining the process when the men returned from their siesta and began pouring cement into the shaft. The gruesome thought was countered by remembering that it could so easily have been herself down there if things had gone differently. “He knew Ray Grossman was dead.”
They both looked at her. “He told you?” said Palmer. He looked at Mitcheson. “He must have rung the villa. That’s not good.”
Mitcheson said nothing.
“He was really angry,” Riley continued. “He was drinking heavily and saying he was being cheated.”
“I wonder if he told them where he was,” Palmer pondered, lighting a cigarette.
“If he did it won’t do them much good,” Mitcheson responded coldly. “Anyway, as far as they know, he’s taking care of Riley… and probably having some fun in the process.” He glanced in the rear-view mirror. “Sorry.”
Riley preferred not to think about it. If she dwelled on what might have happened, she knew she’d be useless from here on. Right now she had to blot it out of her mind and concentrate on the next moves.
“Won’t they look for him?” she asked.
“I doubt it. Lottie’ll go berserk but that won’t last long. He was always more Ray’s man than hers. She’ll just convince herself he’s had enough being bossed around by a woman and scarpered. The worst he’s done is taken the Mercedes. She might put the police onto him for that, knowing her. She’s a vindictive woman.”
Riley tapped Mitcheson on the shoulder. “What about you?” she asked. “You’re not going back to the villa, are you?”
Mitcheson shrugged and pulled out to overtake a gaggle of cyclists. “I have to,” he said quietly. It sounded like the end of the matter, and Palmer glanced across at him, smoke dribbling from his lips. He returned her look and raised an eyebrow.
Riley sat forward on her seat. “Mitcheson, are you mad?” she asked bluntly. “They’re about to start running drugs and people into the UK and you think you can carry on working with them? Anyway, why do you have to? You talk as though you’ve signed a blood oath with them.”
They had reached the Ascona. Mitcheson pulled into the car park and cut the engine. He looked at them in turn.
“It was me who got the lads into this,” he explained. “I was offered the job through a contact providing I brought some men in with me. I knew they were having a hard time after leaving the army, so I recruited them.”
“And you feel responsible? They’re big boys, you know.”
Mitcheson nodded. “They served under me in Bosnia.” He glanced at Palmer. “Ask him — he knows what I mean.”
Palmer shrugged and got out of the car, followed by Riley. She leaned back in and stared at Mitcheson with a cool expression. “I’m grateful for what you did back there, John,” she said quietly, “but I’m not giving up on this one. That woman’s got to be stopped. The only way I know how is to gather all the information I can and let the police have it. I’ve already sent a report back to England. Brask will probably run it past the client editor to keep him sweet until I get back. But if he wants to break the story immediately, that’s his privilege. You could end up being scooped up with the rest of them.”