“I don’t understand,” she persisted, glad he couldn’t see her, the sweat beading her upper lip.
“You didn’t send the money.”
“Captain — ”
“My relationship with my bank is as strong as the one I imagine you have with your bank in Hong Kong. They give me twenty-four-hour service, something I never thought I needed — until I started doing business with you. Well, when I couldn’t sleep this morning, I called them, gave them the wire transfer number, and asked them to check its progress. Ms. Lee, they had no record of the wire, nothing anywhere in their system. Nothing, absolutely nothing.”
Ava drew a deep breath, struggling to keep her voice even. “I can’t understand how that’s possible unless there was a glitch during the transmission process. Let me contact Hong Kong and check it from that end,” Ava said. “I assure you — ”
“- that it is shit. The only thing you can assure me of is that every word you’ve said to me is shit.”
“Captain — ”
“My bank called your bank,” he said with finality.
God, she thought, surely no one actually told them about the dummy wire?
“A very friendly young woman on the international desk at your bank told the friendly young woman from my bank that there was no record of the wire on file. No record, no wire. Simple enough, I think.”
That wasn’t the worst thing he could have been told, she thought, her mind spinning, searching for an explanation, any explanation, that would at least buy her a little time. “Given the nature of the transfer, my people may not have used standard procedures,” she said. “You need to let me call or email Hong Kong.”
Robbins went quiet. He’s thinking, she thought, with a glimmer of hope. “Yes, I think we both know that you need to contact Hong Kong, and this time to tell them to actually send the money,” he said slowly. “The one thing I grant is that you know how to stick to a story. The thing is, the more I listen to it, the angrier I get.”
“Captain, please — ”
“What? You thought this would actually work? You thought so little of me as to try something this stupid?”
Oh God, Ava thought. When was the last time she had misjudged a situation quite so badly? When was the last time she had misjudged a man so badly? “I can fix this,” she said, still not wanting to admit culpability, not wanting to bring up Plan B.
He ignored her, and Ava felt him slipping away. “You know, you shouldn’t have tried this. We had an arrangement and I was fully prepared to honour my end. Now you’ve changed all that, and I have to decide what I’m going to do.”
“I can fix this,” she said.
“Yes, I have no doubt you can fix it, but the details may change. I’m not going to rush into anything with you, so have no fears about my being rash. I’m going to take some time to think this over. In the meantime, you need to do some thinking about what you’ve done. I think you need to make penance. You need to be punished, Ms. Lee. You need to be taught a lesson.”
“Captain, I can’t even begin to tell you how bad I feel about the way this process has been mangled. Just give me the chance to get it fixed.”
“That half-hearted apology doesn’t quite make up for the transgression,” he said.
She knew what he wanted, but she just couldn’t give it to him. It was one thing for him to be ninety-five percent sure of what had happened and another for him to be one hundred percent certain. She had to leave a shred of doubt. She couldn’t prostrate herself. “I’m sure that as we talk this through — ”
“No, we’re finished talking for now. I need to think and you need to reconsider your position and your attitude towards me. I have spoken to my brother and asked him to help you rethink everything. His ways may be a little rough but I expect you to take it like a big girl, and when he’s finished we can look at this again through fresh eyes.”
“That is — ” she began, but he was gone, the phone line dead. She put Robbins’s mobile on table, her mind in a muddle. What the hell is he talking about? she thought. Then she screamed as the back of her neck and her right shoulder exploded. The pain brought her to her feet, but before she could turn her left leg collapsed and she fell forward against the kitchen wall.
He was behind her, a thick leather belt in one hand, a baton in the other. How had he managed to move so quietly? she thought. She twisted to press her back against the wall. She knew it was the belt that had hit her shoulder and the baton that had jabbed into the soft flesh behind her knee. For some reason the details became important. He held the belt by the buckle so that he could hurt her without scarring her flesh. The baton was close to a metre long, longer than any she’d ever seen, and it was made of fibreglass, a high-tech innovation hardly necessary for the purpose it was meant to serve.
“It’s never a good idea to screw around with my brother. He isn’t a turn-the-other-cheek kind of man,” Robbins said.
“No one screwed your brother.”
“That isn’t what he thinks, and that’s all that matters to me. He told me to strap you, and that’s what I’m going to do,” he said. “If you’re cooperative it’ll be over before you know it.”
She shook her head.
He held up the baton. “I know how to use this but I’d rather not. The belt won’t break anything, but this might, so I advise you to lie still for the belt. It’s your choice, though.”
She flexed her leg. It ached, but she could move it.
He was at least two metres away, the distance giving him time to react to anything she might try. The baton was poised and the belt hung by his side, waving back and forth. “You need to think about the big picture,” he said, enjoying the sound of his voice. “I give you a bit of a beating and my brother plays nice with you again. Not such a bad deal, the way I look at it.”
She shook her head again.
The belt lashed out, catching her across the top of her thigh. Ava shifted her feet.
Robbins took a step back, cautious. “Don’t let my size fool you. I can still move quickly,” he said.
She slid slowly to the ground. He stared down at her, his eyes now tightly focused on her for the first time since she’d met him. Ava lowered her head. Her arms fell to her sides. Slowly she pressed the small of her back firmly against the wall, tightened her glutes, and pushed her hands into the floor. “This isn’t necessary,” she whispered.
“My brother thinks it is, and I agree with him. You are a sneaky little cunt, a cunt who got caught,” he said, raising the belt.
“Don’t,” she said.
“I’m losing my patience,” he said, the belt drawn completely back.
She sensed rather than saw the motion, and when he took the necessary step forward to hit her, she uncoiled. The belt went flying past Ava’s face as she left the wall, her right heel driving into his groin. He groaned and staggered but didn’t fall, the baton flailing in her direction.
The kitchen was cramped and Ava was still hemmed in against the wall, vulnerable to even the wildest of swings. She jumped to the right, the baton grazing her left arm. His head was turned and all she could see was his right eye. She thrust. He moved at the last second, too late, and her fingernail pierced it, drawing blood almost instantly. He screamed, his belt hand going to his eye, finally giving her room and time to manoeuvre.
She moved farther right, away from the still-thrashing baton. Her right hand formed a fist, the middle knuckle of her index finger extended like the end of a pile driver, and then she leapt, the knuckle driving into his ear. He rocked on his heels, backing up some more.
Ava couldn’t believe that he hadn’t collapsed, though he was staggering now and looked disoriented. The last blow had moved him completely out of the kitchen and into the living room. She circled wider, to the side where his vision was impaired. He hadn’t dropped either the baton or the belt, but the belt hand was still held to the eye she had damaged, blood trickling through his fingers. She moved in on him from behind and jumped onto his back, her fingers digging into his neck, searching for a carotid artery.