Angela gave a shiver.
‘You don’t have to remind me,’ she said. ‘I can still see that man in my mind’s eye.’
Bronson slid the magazine into the pistol, pulled back the slide and released it, to load the first round, then removed the magazine and placed it in his pocket. Then he inserted the full magazine, giving him a maximum of sixteen shots. The suppressor made the weapon far too bulky to be concealed, so Bronson removed it and slipped it into another pocket on his jacket. He tucked the pistol into the waistband of his trousers, made sure that it was invisible under his jacket, and then glanced across at Angela.
‘Right,’ he said, then echoed her statement of a few minutes earlier. ‘Let’s go.’
77
Finding a cab wasn’t difficult, even that late in the evening, and less than five minutes after they’d stepped through the front door of the hotel, they were sitting in the back of a rather battered Mercedes and heading towards the international airport.
When they arrived, Bronson paid the fare and then led Angela towards the arrivals hall. He was reasonably certain that any watchers would be covering departures, expecting that he and Angela would be trying to leave the city. As he’d expected, there were large groups of people milling around on the pavement outside the building, perhaps waiting for friends to pick them up, or just deciding whether to take a taxi or bus.
‘I’ll be as quick as I can,’ Bronson said. ‘There are plenty of people around here, so just try to merge in with the crowds, and you’ll be safe enough.’
He kissed her lightly on the lips, then stepped to one side, strode across the pavement and disappeared inside the building.
Angela knew that what Bronson had said made sense. Of all the places in Madrid that they could have gone to avoid pursuit, the arrivals terminal at the international airport was one of the least likely. And he was right about the crowds. Granted, most of the women of about her age who were outside the building had the black hair and tanned complexions that were characteristic of Spanish nationals, and with her pale skin and blonde hair she stood out to some extent. But there were enough girls and young women with fair hair in the crowds for her to feel relatively inconspicuous. And she only needed to be there for about ten minutes or so, she hoped, before Bronson would reappear and then they could leave.
It was actually closer to fifteen minutes before he walked out of the building and beckoned to her to follow him. The two of them followed the directions which Bronson had been given, and made their way to the parking area reserved for vehicles belonging to the car hire companies operating at the airport.
‘It should be somewhere in this row here,’ Bronson said, depressing the button on the remote control.
He was rewarded by flashing indicator lights on a Renault Megane a few yards away, and stepped over to it, opening up the passenger door for Angela to get in. Then he sat down in the driver’s seat and familiarized himself with the controls before taking his satnav from his pocket and attaching it to the windscreen in front of him. When Billy had sent the information to Bronson’s computer, he’d supplied the recorded position of the mobile phone in latitude and longitude, and as soon as the unit was logged on to the navigation satellites, he input the precise location. By the time he’d started the engine, the satnav had already calculated the route.
‘You’re not going to just drive straight there, are you?’ Angela asked, buckling her seatbelt.
‘No.’ Bronson was studying their destination on the small screen of the satnav. ‘Depending on how accurate the triangulation was for that mobile phone,’ he said, ‘it looks as if the place we need to get to is a part of this industrial estate. It’s called the Polígono Industrial Los Planetas. So what we’ll do is get over there and drive past the building that is closest to the coordinates Billy sent me. Once we’ve checked the area and identified the most likely location, then we’ll work out a plan of campaign and decide the best thing to do.’
He put the car into reverse, backed out of the parking slot and drove away. It wasn’t a long drive, and within just a few minutes they were heading down a road that appeared to be recently constructed.
‘I think that must be it,’ Bronson said, gesturing towards a large building, presumably a kind of warehouse, the only building within a large plot. Three cars were parked outside, and a light was burning in the window beside the entrance door on the right of the building. Most of the rest of the frontage was occupied by two large roller-shutter doors, which obviously allowed large vehicles to enter the building for loading or unloading.
It looked as if the industrial estate hadn’t been quite as popular as the builders had probably hoped, because there were vacant lots on both sides of the road he had just turned into, each displaying a for-sale sign.
He carried on to the T-junction at the end, and then again turned right, his route taking him behind the building that Billy the Kid had identified. Time spent on reconnoitring, as Bronson knew only too well from his days in the Army, and to a lesser extent in the police force, was never, ever, wasted. Unfortunately, there wasn’t very much in the way of cover in the area behind the warehouse, no convenient stands of trees or even collections of shrubs or bushes that could be used to conceal his vehicle.
But there was a building occupying part of the adjacent lot. This structure was surrounded by a high wire fence, the small car park protected by a tall gate, which looked as if it was controlled electrically. An attempt had been made to impose some sort of order on the grounds inside the fence, but it all looked a little sad and unkempt. The sign above the building, giving an estate agent’s name and telephone number in large and hopeful letters, said it all.
The street on the opposite side of the building was, Bronson realized, ideal. The vehicle would be on the road, ready to be driven away, only about fifty yards from his objective, but completely out of sight.
‘This will do nicely,’ he said, pulling the car to a halt beside the wire fence surrounding the structure. Then he turned to look at Angela.
‘So what’s the plan?’ she asked.
‘For the moment, you stay here. Sit in the driving seat, keep the keys in the ignition ready to go, and the doors locked. Open all the windows about six inches so you can hear what’s happening outside. If anybody apart from me comes anywhere near the car, just start it and go. Turn left onto the road in front of you, then take a right at the T-junction. According to the satnav, just beyond that there’s a biggish roundabout. Take the first exit, and park somewhere along that road, so I’ll know where to find you. If anyone you don’t like the look of comes anywhere near the car when you get over there, drive away and come back to the same spot ten minutes later.’
‘Got it,’ Angela said. ‘And while I’m driving around this area trying to avoid the bad guys, what exactly will you be doing?’
‘I’m just going to take a look around, that’s all. Watch the building for a few minutes, check where all the doors are located, that kind of thing. When I’ve done that, we can decide what our next move is going to be.’
Angela nodded.
‘Just make sure that’s all you do,’ she said. ‘Don’t try some kind of one-man assault on the building.’
‘Trust me, Angela. When have I ever let you down?’
‘Frequently,’ she replied, giving him a quick smile.
Bronson leaned across the car and kissed her, and in moments he’d vanished into the gloom of the late evening.
78
As soon as he had gone, Angela climbed nimbly into the driver’s seat, turned on the ignition to lower the electric windows, as Bronson had asked her to do, and locked all the doors. Then all she could do was wait. And hope.