by Sean Black
András grabbed his cell phone and set to work. “What about the media? We can tell them he’s a missing person. Make up some story that he’s had a breakdown.”
“Good idea, but let’s save it for tomorrow. If we can’t find him by then we can go the public appeal route. Yuksia, Ty, you’re with me.”
Ty tossed a chocolate wrapper into a wastepaper basket. “Where we going?”
“Lane’s apartment. He’s going to need money, a change of clothes.”
Yuksia didn’t move. She had taken her screw up of leaving the keys in the car pretty hard.
“Yuksia?” said Lock.
She looked over at him. “You really want me to help you after what happened?”
“We need you,” said Lock. “I need you. Now, let’s save the post-mortem for when this is done. We have to find this man before it’s too late. So far he’s not exactly made the best decisions. In his current mental state I don’t see that changing.”
Chapter Eighteen
Heart thumping, Michael Lane pulled into a quiet side street just off Arany János Street. He switched off the engine of the Skoda, got out, locked the car and pocketed the key fob.
He briskly walked the quarter mile to his apartment. He scanned the front entrance. Everything appeared normal.
Stomping his feet to try and force some heat into them, he waited until a neighbor was leaving, kept his head down, brushed past them before the door closed again, and walked inside. He took the stairs up to his apartment. Fingers crossed, he lifted the door mat outside the front door. The key he had left for Katya was still there, undisturbed since he had left to go to work all those weeks ago.
Slowly, he turned the key in the lock, and opened the door. Inside, the apartment was empty. But someone had been here. He could tell from the open drawers in one of the bedrooms.
He only stayed long enough to grab some cash, a credit card, and fresh clothes. He exited the building less than five minutes later wearing a raincoat and with a wool cap pulled down low over his eyes. Tucked inside his coat was one other item – a large Sabatier knife plucked from the butcher’s block that sat on the kitchen counter next to the range.
Outside, he walked the few short steps to József Attila Street, flagged down a yellow taxi, and gave the driver the address. He settled back into the seat and closed his eyes.
The taxi cab pulled up a few doors short of the club on Rózsa Street in District 6. The entrance was guarded by two imposing doormen. For a second, Michael almost lost his nerve. He paid the driver, took a deep breath and stopped out of the cab. Keeping his head down, he walked straight past the two doormen and inside the club.
It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the gloom. Scantily clad young women moved among the mostly British and German tourists hustling for business. Michael stood near a railing at the back of the club and scanned the stage where a young blond woman was busy gyrating around a pole while a stag party of drunken Brits screamed various obscenities at her. One of the men in the party jammed a hand down his pants and started to masturbate, cheered on by his pals. The girl on stage, her eyes glazed over, kept dancing as the DJ turned up the music to drown out the catcalls.
Michael kept scanning the crowd. It had been a long shot. There was very little chance that Katya would be back working here. Not after her promise to him.
Finally, in a booth off to one corner, Michael spotted a girl he recognized. She was gyrating her hips against the groin of a disheveled middle-aged businessman. The girl grabbed his tie and pulled the man’s face down towards her bare breasts. The man grinned idiotically and reached back to grab her ass only to have his hand slapped away.
Michael pushed his way through the crush towards the girl. She looked up from her lap dance as he approached. She leaned in and kissed the businessman on the cheek, her lipstick leaving a perfect kiss-shaped smear that marked him out as hers. She patted his knee and walked over to meet Michael.
“I’m looking for Katya,” he shouted over the din.
The dancer motioned for him to follow him. There were private areas in the back of the club where the dancers could negotiate with client for extra services not suited to public performance. Michael hesitated but trotted after her as she turned and walked through a bead curtain.
The swell of the music fell away. She turned to face him. The wide smile she maintained for the customers fell away, replaced by a look that fell halfway between a sneer and a snarl. “You want to find Katya?” she said to him.
He dug into his pocket and came up with a bundle of notes. He knew what motivated the dancers. “Here, if you can tell me where she is you can keep it all. There’s more too. I need to find her.”
She laughed, reached out and took the notes. “You really want to know where she is?”
Michael glanced around. If one of the club’s security had seen him coming back here then he was in big trouble. “That’s what I just said. Now can you help me?”
The dancers hand’s fell to her hips. She looked him up and down. “You are a stupid man. She is with Hugo. You know, her husband. Michael, she was always with Hugo.”
The impact of what she was saying sent Michael stumbling back. His face flushed. He felt like he might be able to vomit. “What are you talking about?”
“What did she tell you? That she loved you? It’s the game. You think you just happened to run into her that evening in the park? That was it a coincidence like in some dumb American romance movie. It was all planned. Now you had better get out of here. And if you tell anyone what I told you then I’ll make you regret it, Michael.”
She strode past him, brushed through the curtain, and disappeared, leaving behind the smell of sweat, stale cigarette smoke, and perfume. Michael struggled to process what she had just said. How did she know where he had met Katya? It couldn’t have been a set-up. Hugo must have paid her to tell him this story so that he would give up looking for Katya. Katya wasn’t married. And not to Hugo. He was her boss. That was all. Katya had been married. But her husband had died, hit by a train outside St Petersburg, leaving her, at the age of just seventeen, as a widow with a small child to look after and no parents to help. That was how she had fallen into this life.
In a daze, Michael walked back into the club. The two doormen were at the bar, scanning the crowd. Michael knew who they were looking for. He turned round and headed back the way he’d come.
One of the bouncers spotted him. He nudged the other one. They began to shove their way through the crowd, elbowing people out of the way. A drunken tourist took a swing at one of them, and was quickly felled by a crushing elbow to his face.
Michael walked past the private booths, past a locked store room and found a fire door. He pushed through and out into a dark alleyway. He took to his heels, winded after the first fifty meters.
He stopped, doubled over, his hands on his knees as he fought catch his breath. Glancing back he saw the two super-sized doormen run into the alleyway, and look around. Michael straightened up and took off again, ignoring the searing pain in his chest, and the slowly dawning knowledge that he’d been a fool, not once, but twice, and that it might still cost him his life.
Chapter Nineteen
Ty strode into the living room of Michael Lane’s apartment and began looking around. “Bedroom’s clear,” he announced.
Lock had turned on the iMac and was checking the history on the Safari browser. It made for interesting reading, but the last time it had been used was the evening before the abduction. The last few websites Michael had been looking at related to international sex trafficking. He had also looked up the British visa requirements for a Russian national looking to relocate to the United Kingdom on a permanent basis.
The toilet flushed and a few moments later Yuksia emerged from the bathroom. She glanced over Lock’s shoulder at the computer screen. “Anything?”
Lock shook his head. He closed the browser window, and got up from the desk. He followed Yuksia th
rough into the kitchen. She opened one of the cabinets, took out a package of coffee, opened it and smelled to see if it was fresh.
Something caught Lock’s eye. The presence of the abnormal. The absence of the normal. He stepped around Yuksia who was busy starting to make coffee.
The wooden knife block sitting next to the cooking range had an empty slot. Going by the arrangement of the knives, and the position and size of the slot, the knife that was missing was one of the larger blades.
Lock pulled one of the remaining knives from the block as Ty came in. Lock held up the knife. “Check the drawers. See if you can find a bigger one of these knives.”
Yuksia helped them look. They rifled drawer and cupboard. No knife. The set remained incomplete.
“Ty, check the bedroom again. If he felt like he was under threat before the abduction, he might have kept it handy,” said Lock.
Lock walked into the hallway. It wasn’t there. A few minutes passed. Ty returned. “Maybe it broke. Or a neighbor borrowed it,” said Ty.
“No. It was here before. I’m sure of it,” Lock said. “He’s been back here.”
“So where is he now?” Yuksia asked.
Chapter Twenty
Both András and Robertson jumped up from their seats as the designated kidnap phone began to ring. The two men traded a look. Robertson picked up one of the pair of headphones plugged into the handset, while András grabbed the headset with the microphone. Robertson reached over and activated the recorder. It was only then that he gave András the thumbs up. They were running silent.
“This is András,” he said in Hungarian.
András didn’t recognize the voice of the man on the other end of the line. He sounded older and more cultured than the person he had had been dealing with before. His accent was more Russian than Hungarian, the tone more polished.
“Put your boss on the line,” the man said in English.
András glanced over at Robertson. Robertson motioned for András to hand him his headset. The two men swapped.
“This is Robertson. Who am I speaking to?”
For a second Robertson thought The Russian may have hung up. His question was met by silence. Robertson didn’t say anything. The Russian was either still there or he wasn’t. By prompting him, Robertson would be conceding ground, and indicating his own anxiety. Silence was one of the most powerful weapons in a negotiation between two parties.
“I gave you back Michael Lane. I held up my end of the bargain. But now he is causing trouble for me.” The Russian paused. “I’m sorry. This is out of my control now.”
Robertson started to speak, but The Russian was gone. Robertson slammed his hand down hard onto the table. He wrenched off the headset and threw it down. He walked to the window, grabbed his cell phone from his pants pocket, and scrolled down until he reached Lock’s number. It didn’t take a genius to work out what The Russian had just told him.
Chapter Twenty-one
The streets were quiet, save for the distant sound of late night revelers heading home. Michael Lane kept walking, checking over his shoulder every few feet to make sure he wasn’t being followed.
He turned a corner onto Andrassy Avenue, Budapest’s main shopping street. A dark-colored 5-Series BMW was parked facing him, its engine idling. Its lights blazed suddenly to life. His heart skipped a couple of beats.
The BMW pulled out into traffic. He caught sight of a middle-aged woman at the wheel. He relaxed a notch, but he couldn’t stay out here. They’d find him. It was only a matter of time.
He had to get to the airport. They surely wouldn’t try to take him from a busy airport terminal with all its security. If he could just get a flight to London then he’d be safe. But first he had to make one last trip back to his apartment to pick up the passport he’d stupidly forgotten to collect on his last brief visit.
He had the plan in his mind. In and out. Grab the passport. Take a taxi to the airport. Get on the last flight to London, or the first one leaving the next morning if he had already missed the evening flight. He could sleep in the terminal if he had to.
Chapter Twenty-two
Lock glanced at his watch. It was twenty-three minutes after midnight. The last flight to London had long since departed.
So much for easy money. So much for forty-eight hours in Budapest.
Lock listened carefully to what Robertson was telling him. He thanked him for the information, and ended the call. Ty and Yuksia looked at him.
“It’s real simple,” said Lock. “We have to find Michael Lane before they do.”
“And if we don’t?” said Ty.
“Then he’s still going home. Only he’ll be in a wooden box in the hold.”
Chapter Twenty-three
The white builder’s truck turned the corner onto Hild tér. An elderly man walking a small herd of terriers hurried them along as they snapped in the direction of the truck. The truck came to a stop. Two men got out of the front cab. They moved to the back of the truck, and opened the rear doors. One man climbed up into the back of the truck and pushed a thick roll of plastic sheeting over the lip of the truck bed. The other man grabbed the end and they slowly hauled the roll of sheeting up the steps to the apartment entrance.
A third man stepped from the lobby’s shadows, and unlocked the door. He held the door open for the two men. They moved inside. He closed the door behind them. They edged up two more steps, and took a left, making for the main stairway. It split in two directions. They went left.
With much grunting and heaving, the two men carried the roll of sheeting up the stairs. As they reached the first landing, they paused to catch their breath. The third man moved ahead of them. Once they had caught their breath, they began to climb the next set of stairs.
In under ten minutes, they had reached the third floor landing. The man who had been waiting for them in the lobby took out a key. He opened the door into Michael Lane’s apartment. He held the door open for the two men. They moved past him. Once they had moved clear of the door, he closed it.
They dumped the roll on the floor. The third man killed the lights, plunging the living room into darkness save for the street lights outside on József Attila Street. One of the men dug out a pack of cigarettes. He tapped out a cigarette from the pack and produced a small plastic lighter. As he flicked a thumb at the wheel, the third man snatched the lighter from his hand. Cigarette smoke would be a giveaway that someone was in the apartment
“You can smoke when we’re finished,” he said, stepping into the kitchen, opening a drawer and pulling out a heavy pair of scissors.
“Which room?” asked the first of the moving men.
The supervisor nodded behind them towards the spare bedroom. He took out a piece of paper with the room’s dimensions, including the ceiling height from his jacket pocket. He laid it out flat on the breakfast bar. Using the torch light on his cell phone, he showed them the measurements. They would need to cut six pieces of the heavy black plastic sheeting – one for each wall, and one each for the ceiling and floor.
Dismemberment could be a messy business. The third man had argued with Hugo about the location. It involved unnecessary risk. It would be easier to take the Englishman back to the printing plant, or to another location entirely. But The Russian had been adamant. He wanted to send a signal.
To kill a man in some unseen location was shocking. To cut him into pieces inside his own home – a home that lay in the heart of the city’s most upmarket district – would send a much stronger signal. The Russian and his wife already had three new prospects lined up. One was the CEO of a German bank. The Russian saw this as the best way of making sure that he would not be messed around in future.
The third man nodded to the others. “Come on. We have a room to re-decorate.”
Chapter Twenty-four
Michael Lane stood directly outside the apartment door and took a deep breath. Beyond the frosted glass and metal grille of the door, the apartme
nt lay in darkness. As quietly as he could, he turned the key in the lock, and slowly pushed the door open. He pulled the key back out, and jammed it back into his pocket. He pulled the knife from inside his coat, and gripped the handle.
The blade still in his hand, he stepped into the open plan kitchen/living area. Apart from the green tinged dots of light from the digital displays of the oven and microwave, it was pitch black. He looked across at the glass doors in the living room that led out to the balcony.
The metal storm shutters were down. He was sure they had been up when he’d left. He tightened his grip on the handle of the knife.
He took another step forward. As he put his foot down, a hand came from nowhere and clamped across his mouth. Another hand gripped his wrist, levering it painfully back. Pain shot up his arm. His grip loosened. The Sabatier knife fell from his grasp and clattered onto the wooden floor.
The lights came on. The person holding him leaned in to whisper in his ear as Michael got sight of three men sitting like a row of ducks on the couch in the living room. Their hands and feet were tied with various items of his clothing. Socks had been jammed into their mouths to keep them from talking. He was sure he recognized at least one of the men from the night club.
Facing the three men was a tall, white man with short hair. He had a handgun pointed at the three bound men. He glanced across at Michael with a smile. He looked completely in control and perfectly relaxed, as if holding three men at gunpoint was an everyday occurrence.
The man with the gun spoke. “We’re here to take you home to London, Michael. But we’re going to need you to do exactly what we say, when we say it. If you don’t then we might as well just let Grumpy, Dopey, and Happy here finish turning that room back there into a wet room, and slice you up for dog food.”