Her nose shattered instantly, blood flying everywhere. Stars flickered across her vision and her knees buckled, sending her tumbling to the floor.
‘That was just to illustrate that I’m serious,’ he said. ‘I won’t be so nice again.’
Sarah looked up at him through her dazed vision, saw him glaring down at her with those cold, grey eyes, and knew he meant it. She wondered briefly whether he blamed her for the damage to his own face, and was about to extract a measure of vengeance. Put yourself somewhere else, she urged herself. Put yourself somewhere else, and don’t make a sound.
Albright reholstered his pistol and withdrew a pair of calfskin gloves from a jacket pocket. He looked at the woman, kowtowed down at his feet, and was satisfied that he could break her. Most women simply weren’t used to being hit, especially in the face. The dazed look in Sarah Cole’s eyes told Albright that this one was no different.
‘Now,’ he began, left hand wrapping itself around her long, dark hair and pulling back her head, forcing her to look at him, his right hand raised, poised to strike. ‘We’ll start with an easy one. Where are you supposed to meet your husband?’
But Sarah Cole simply looked up at him, not saying a word. Defiance?, he wondered, pausing with momentary disbelief. Well, he thought, even as his right hand lashed out towards her, it won’t last long.
63
Ben tried as hard as he could to help Amy ignore the sounds coming from the cubicle next door, holding her small head to his chest, covering her ears.
He didn’t know what all of the sounds were — a low, male voice, distorted through the wall, followed by a series of bangs and crashes and thuds — but it had been going on for well over five minutes.
Amy sobbed into his shoulder, and Ben was doing his best to hold back his own tears. Whatever was happening next door, it wasn’t good. But they couldn’t leave until Mummy gave them the special knock.
‘Shhhh …’ he whispered to his sister. ‘It’ll be alright. Mommy’ll be here soon. It’ll be okay. Don’t worry, Amy. Don’t worry.’
Suddenly, a muffled scream broke through from the other side of the wall. And before Ben could stop her, Amy’s head was up, alert. ‘Mummy!’ she cried.
64
Albright’s ears pricked up instantly. ‘Mummy?’ he repeated, a grin spreading across his face.
This Sarah Cole had been one tough bitch. He had beaten her black and blue, but she’d made no noise at all — no grunts of pain even, let alone any useful information. He’d been starting to think that she was just in shock, and therefore unable to give him anything useful.
So, just to be sure, he had screwed a silencer onto his pistol and shot her in the foot. The scream had been genuine, and the fact that she had tried to muffle the sound told him that she still had control of her faculties.
The cry from next door that followed told him everything else; she’d been hiding the kids there and was being quiet to protect them.
Admirable, he thought as he looked down at her, clutching her foot and writhing in agony, gouts of blood spilling over the dirty floor. But ultimately fruitless.
‘You’ve been impressive Sarah, I’ll give you that,’ he said, again reholstering his gun. ‘You can handle your pain well.’ He cleared his throat and rotated his neck with a crack. ‘But I wonder how well little Ben and Amy will handle it?’
He looked down at her and her saw her looking at him, eyes changing. Was it fear? Worry? Panic? Albright couldn’t tell for sure.
A second later, he realized it was something different entirely. The look on Sarah Cole’s face was rage, plain and simple.
The cry of Amy, the look on the blond man’s face, his direct threat to her children; all of it immediately erased all of the pain, the fear, the shock, replacing them with anger.
Ignoring the pain, Sarah leapt up from the floor, supercharged on the adrenaline which was flooding her body, and attacked, her hands sliding their way up to Albright’s face, scratching the skin, her thumbs finding his eyes; she felt the left thumb slip into the socket and she tugged at the soft, gooey flesh there.
She felt the blond man writhing in pain and she pulled his face forwards, sinking her teeth into the cartilage of his nose, her head whipping violently from side to side as she tried to tear it from his face.
She then felt the man slipping, and she saw her chance, senses suddenly so clear and pure, and helped him on his way, forcing his head down as he lost his balance.
Albright tried to fight her off in rising panic, but she was like a wild animal, a fireball of pure fury, energy focussed entirely on his destruction.
His balance was finally broken, and Sarah used the momentum to drive the side of his head down onto the sharp corner of the sink unit next to them. There was a dull crack, and the man fell heavily to the floor, blood pouring from his nose, eyeball hanging lazily and perversely from the gouged socket, scalp torn by Sarah’s raking fingernails, the side of his head torn open from the impact of the sink.
Sarah wasn’t sure if the blond man was dead or not, but knew she couldn’t pause, knowing that if she did, she would simply collapse in shock. She had to keep going, keep moving until they were safe. She checked her watch; they still had two minutes until the train would be in position.
She grabbed her handbag, searching with shaking hands for the two things she needed. Sunglasses to hide the black eyes, and a headscarf to try and disguise the ugly swellings that covered her head and face. She didn’t want her appearance to frighten her children.
She worked quickly, then washed the blood off her hands and checked the mirror. Far from perfect, but it would have to do. She kicked the blond man, but he didn’t move.
It was then she realized that she was stood up, despite having been shot in the foot. She looked down and saw the bleeding had stopped. In the back of her mind, she understood that it was the adrenaline that had stopped the blood flow, constricting the wound so that she could continue to function. The rest of her mind just screamed Go! While you still can!
She burst out of the toilet stall and turned to the next cubicle. ‘Ben! Amy! It’s Mummy, come on, it’s time to go!’
The door swung open and she saw her children there, terrified. They both ran into her arms, sobbing, and then she was sobbing too.
But there was no time. ‘Come on,’ she exhorted, grabbing their hands and running back to the carriage, not giving them a chance to have a look directly at her face.
They raced down the carriage towards the exit doors. Checking her watch, Sarah quickly got herself and the children braced against the door support. Seconds later they heard the deafening sound of an alarm claxon, and then the wild screech of brakes as the train was made to come to a sudden, violent stop. They watched as passengers were catapulted from their seats, across the floor of the carriage. Chaos had well and truly ensued.
65
Stefan Steinmeier stood by the side of the train tracks, stamping his feet to keep warm. He was dressed for the weather, but staying stationary would make it easier for the cold to find its insidious way past the various layers.
He had been diligent in his preparations, as was his custom, and the brightly coloured yellow saloon car had been placed by the side of the road earlier in the day.
Upon getting to the emergency RV point, he had hidden his own vehicle, then moved quickly to the yellow saloon. Getting the revs high, he slowly moved it up the embankment, until it straddled the tracks at a slight angle.