First the mandatory poses: Double Front Bicep, Front Lat Spread, Abdominals and Thighs – one of Andrea’s best, because of the definition of her serratus anterior and obliques – Side Chest, Side Triceps, Rear Double Bicep. Then was the weak spot in Andrea’s routine, when she had to turn her back on the judges to do her Rear Lat Spread. It was then that the lack of definition on her glutes let her down. But she had put a lot of thought into the outfit she was performing in: it made the most of the lateral sweep of her shoulder-to-hip taper, drawing focus from her glutes. Her last mandatory would be the Most Muscular. From that she would segue straight into Crab Most Muscular, her first optional pose.
She heard the cheers of the crowd. The British Bitch had finished her set and it sounded like it had been a good one. Whistling. Stamping. The crowd bellowing. Calling Maxine the British Bitch wasn’t an insult, it was Maxine’s professional nickname, just as Andrea’s was Andrea the Amazon. Andrea and Maxine had taken part in a number of competitions together. When Andrea had done a tour of England, Maxine had put her up in Nottingham and Maxine would be staying at Andrea’s flat tonight. They had trained together. They had put on non-competitive exhibitions together. They were friends.
Except on the competition podium. On the podium you had no friends. Out there you needed no one and nothing except raw adrenalin and aggression. Anger, even. All hidden behind the broadest, brightest, most brainless grin. Out there, Andrea’s friend Maxine became simply the British Bitch. The one to beat.
Andrea heard more cheers as the next competitor was up. She would follow her. She needed the aggression. The anger. Andrea knew where to find the anger: it was a switch she could turn on at will. All she had to do was remember. As Andrea waited to be called to do her routine she allowed the raw fire of her hate and anger to fill her body in huge surges.
The knock came and one of the exhibition-hall staff swung wide the door for Andrea to exit. It was like a lion being released into the Colosseum. As Andrea the Amazon took long powerful strides past the attendant she heard a defiant, animal roar. And realised she was hearing her own voice.
5.
Maria guessed she had been bundled into the trunk of a car. Or a van. But even that idea had seemed to drift away from her. The fact was that they had tied her wrists and ankles, gagged and blindfolded her, then put some kind of bag over her head. Finally, they had placed what she reckoned to be a set of industrial ear-defenders over her ears. It was all classic special forces stuff: total sensory deprivation to befuddle the victim. Time ceased to exist. Maria was aware that her mind had been cut adrift from her body; she was losing the concept of arms, of legs, of being connected to her nervous system. She wriggled and strained against the bonds so that the rope would burn at the skin of her ankles and wrists. It worked for an instant and the connection to her flesh was reestablished, then faded and the pain became a vague ache lingering on the periphery of her being.
Maria had had no idea how long she’d been in the trunk, or even that the car had stopped moving, until she felt hands on her body, lifting her from the van. She was placed on a hard chair and left for a few minutes, a new bond tight around her chest and binding her to the chair. The tightness of the rope around her wrists had numbed her hands and the ear-defenders and the blindfold and hood deprived her of any sense of whether she was indoors or outdoors. She thought of how people were executed like this. Deprived of sight and hearing, she wouldn’t even hear the cocking of the gun or sense the presence of her executioner. It would be sudden and immediate: her existence snuffed out in an instant. Probably not the worst way to go, she had thought, but still her heart pounded. Only a few days ago Maria had been surprised at how little she feared death. But she had learned to live again by being someone else; her life had regained some value for her. She wondered if they would ever find her body. She imagined Fabel frowning as he looked down on her corpse, her hair bizarrely dyed.
The ear-defenders were suddenly gone. The hood was snatched from her head. Someone behind her untied the gag. Maria’s pulse quickened even more. Maybe torture would come before death. The blindfold was removed. The sudden restoration of her senses disoriented her and she sat, her head tilted down, blinking in the harsh light.
Her eyes adjusted. A man and a woman sat opposite her.
She appeared to be in a small empty warehouse or industrial unit. The whitewashed walls were naked and broken by a double door at the far end and a large thick sliding metal door to Maria’s right. There was a track system suspended from the ceiling, punctuated by pendant metal hooks. She guessed it was some kind of disused meat-packing factory.
The woman stood up and snapped a glass vial under Maria’s nose. Something powerful hit her system and she was suddenly and painfully alert.
‘I want you to listen to me.’ The man spoke first. His German was thick with a Ukrainian accent. ‘I need you to concentrate. Do you understand?’
Maria nodded.
‘We know who you are, Frau Klee. We also know why you’re here – and that you are acting on your own and without the knowledge, support or sanction of your superiors. You’re completely isolated.’
Maria said nothing.
‘You may be an accomplished police officer, Frau Klee, but when it comes to this line of work you’re a complete amateur. It takes more than a cheap hair-colour job to turn you into a surveillance expert.’
Maria looked at the woman. She was young and remarkably beautiful with bright, pale blue eyes. She wasn’t someone who could merge easily into a crowd. The man frightened Maria. He had the same kind of green eyes as Vitrenko, with that strange, penetrating brightness that so many Ukrainians seemed to have. His hair was almost black, and his pale skin was drawn particularly tight over the Slavic architecture of his face. He had an efficient, lean-muscled look, but Maria got the impression that he was tired.
‘So what happens to me now?’ said Maria. ‘Why have you brought me here instead of just dumping my body in the woods somewhere? Nothing I know is of any use to you.’
The Ukrainian exchanged a smile with the woman next to him.
‘Frau Klee, we have absolutely no intention of doing you any harm whatsoever. As a matter of fact we intervened, to put it mildly, because you were going to get yourself killed. And very soon. Did you really think that Kushnier didn’t know you were on his tail within minutes of him leaving the bar?’
‘Kushnier,’ said the Ukrainian woman. ‘Maxim Kushnier. Former Ukrainian paratrooper. Low-level operative in Vitrenko’s organisation. That was as far as you got… a street-level captain who has probably never met Vitrenko face to face. How the hell did you expect to have Kushnier lead you to Vitrenko?’
‘I didn’t. I thought it was a start.’
‘And it was very nearly the end,’ said the man. He stood up and nodded to the woman who came round behind Maria and cut through her bonds. ‘We were tailing you. Not that you or Kushnier would have noticed. You were both two busy performing that waltz on the Delhoven road.’
‘If we were dancing,’ said Maria massaging her now-free wrists, ‘then I was leading.’
‘Yes…’ said the Ukrainian, with a conciliatory nod. ‘That was impressive. But while you were wandering about lost in the Rhineland countryside, we tidied up your mess.’
‘Dead?’
‘You got him with three shots. Shoulder, neck and one through the kidney. The kidney shot would have caused him agony. Fortunately for him he bled to death from the neck wound.’
Maria felt suddenly sick. She knew she must have hit him, but not finding the car had meant, until now, not confronting the fact that she had taken another human being’s life.