He had a sense that if he followed the wall to the left he would arrive eventually at the area where the trolleys had been left, not far from where they’d parked the car. It was possible – unlikely, but possible nonetheless – that Nikola had already got out of the building. More plausible was that she’d either been caught, or was roaming somewhere inside, trying to evade capture.
Calvary felt the exhilaration in his belly like an accelerated pregnancy. Wherever she was, he’d find her. Make her safe. He had what he needed: Gaines’s whereabouts. All else was detail.
Something batted at his heel and he looked over his shoulder and suddenly he was tumbling, rolling over his shoulder again, this time on the hard concrete of the pavement. He’d been kicked, a low blow at his foot, expert, and it had sent him spinning. Through the blur of movement he saw the man, young, lean, coming in fast. Calvary extended a leg, rigid, and his boot caught the man in the stomach and jackknifed him, but he’d been ready and had tensed his abdominal muscles and so the blow wasn’t incapacitating. His extended knuckles raked at Calvary’s throat. Calvary parried with a sweep of his own fist, followed up with a jab at the man’s face. He fell short but the man jerked his head back and lost some of his impetus. Calvary heaved with his leg, threw the younger man off and was up again and running.
He came through the window after you. You should have been expecting that.
He rounded a corner into a blaze of sunlight, but that wasn’t why he recoiled. A car was heading towards him, breaking the rules, riding across pavement and chipping flint off bollards. He dodged left, finding himself hard up against the cold of the wall. The car slammed to a stop behind him and he ran on, aware of two presences at his back now, the lean man and whoever had come out of the car.
Nikola, he thought. Where are you? Did you get out?
He had the address where Gaines was being held. It was what he’d been seeking ever since the job had started to go wrong. He was close, he was so close. It couldn’t play out like this. He refused to let it.
Ahead he fancied saw the car park where they’d left the rental VW. It was unlocked with the keys tucked above the driver’s mirror. He just had to reach it, climb in, grab the keys and take off. Lose them, then circle back, find Nikola.
Then get Gaines.
The first blow crashed into the backs of his legs, dropping him into a kneeling position on the pavement. The second lashed across the back of his head, knocking the world into a grey, sickly haze. At some point he turned, felt his head crack the concrete. Saw two faces swimming over him. He punched out, hit something soft, saw one of the faces rock away. Then fists, battering his visual fields, crowding all else out.
It wasn’t supposed to play out like this.
The final blow landed and the daylight reversed itself into night.
*
Krupina reeled away from the window. She’d lost them, Calvary and Arkady, round the corner.
To the policeman’s confounded and terrified face, she said, for show: ‘My Embassy will expect a full explanation of how this was allowed to happen.’
She stormed out of the ward into the corridor. Gripped her phone, stared at the screen.
Calvary. Slipped away like quicksilver.
As though responding to some psychic communication of hers, the phone vibrated. Arkady.
‘We’ve got him.’
She closed her eyes.
*
The kid was scared, no question about it. But he hadn’t pissed himself yet.
Bartos brought his face close. This one wouldn’t spit.
‘You heard the shot.’
The kid tried to avoid his gaze, but couldn’t.
‘Your friend – Jakub, was it? Yes.’ Bartos edged closer. The boy’s fear smell pulsed off him. He wasn’t even tied. Was parked in the bare wooden chair without any restraints except the knowledge that he was helpless.
Bartos had barged through the door a few minutes earlier. He’d noted Miklos’s quick shake of the head and had known the young man – Max, he’d admitted to – hadn’t said anything.
‘Brainy guy, that Jakub. And how do I know this? Because his brains, lots of them, are painting the walls of the room next door.’
For a moment Bartos wished Janos was there. His deadbeat son hadn’t been good for much, but he shared his father’s sense of humour and knew when to appreciate a joke.
‘So I ask you once more, Max. How do we find your friend, Calvary? An address, a contact number. A car licence plate. Any of them will do.’
The sweat beaded on the boy’s forehead. His mouth quivered.
Bartos sat back on his heels. ‘Who are you, anyway? You and your late buddy Jakub? Do I know you? Has Bartos Blažek ever had anything to do with you before?’ He chewed the inside of his cheek, watching the wide eyes. ‘And how are you connected to this Calvary guy?’
The silence stretched between them until it was close to breaking point.
*
Blackness shaded to slate like dawn in a stormy sky. The aural veil began to lift as welclass="underline" a miasmic slurry of sound gave way by degree to human speech, then distinct voices.
Calvary had been aware, intermittently, of travel. The ragged rumble of a vehicle’s chassis under his back. Hands beneath his armpits, lifting him. A supported propulsion forward and downward, his partially suspended feet tripping over steps that receded beneath him.
By the time his vision cleared entirely and he was able to be certain of what he was seeing around him, rather than experiencing it in some sort of dream, his overwhelming sense was of nausea.
He was in a windowless room of some kind, lit only by a naked bulb hanging from the ceiling by a cobwebbed flex directly above his head. By angling his eyes downwards he could make out flagstones. The sour, winey smell suggested he was in a cellar.
He was seated in a steel chair with one leg shorter than the others. His legs were secured to the chair with plastic ties around the ankles. Thin, tough cord lashed his waist and chest to the back of the seat. His arms, curiously, were free. He flexed his elbows, rolled the shoulder joints.
He had no idea how long he’d been unconscious.
Somewhere off in the darkness, fluid dripped in an intermittent rhythm.
The uniformity of the shadow shrouding his immediate environment was torn open as a shape detached itself and stepped forward. A woman. The woman. Fiftyish, or past seventy. Of medium height, dumpy, ungainly. The flesh hanging off her like peeling wallpaper. Blue ribbons of smoke twined towards the lit bulb from the cigarette between her fingers.
‘Mr Calvary. You’re awake, I see.’ She spoke English, her accent heavy.
His eyes were beginning to adjust to the gloom. He could make out the horizon where the far wall and the ceiling joined. Over to the right, beyond the woman, sacks packed to splitting were piled man-high.
To the left, he made out a small wooden table. An orange lead curled from a wall socket up to the surface of the table.
The lead ended in a grey appliance, scarred and dull but instantly recognisable.
An electric hammer drill.
TWENTY-ONE
The young man, Arkady, peeled out of the shadows beside the woman. In his right hand he bounced something. He tossed it at Calvary.
Calvary caught it, left handed. He didn’t need to look at it to know what it was. A squash ball.