by John Niven
Ian McKay had bought a box of twelve from an old soldier who’d snatched them from the armoury at Aldershot just prior to being demobbed in 1945. The grenades were part of a consignment that had left the Mills Munition Factory in Birmingham just before the outbreak of World War II, in the summer of 1939.
So the answer to Ethel’s question was seven.
Seven seconds.
A second and a half between Ethel pulling the pin and throwing, two seconds in the air, another two and a half seconds for it to sink the three metres to the bottom of the deep end of the pool and one second for Tamalov to frown into the water and say, ‘What was tha—’ before –
KAA-BOOOOMMMMMMMM!
Of course, due to the increased density of the conducting agent, the force of an explosion is greatly magnified underwater – the grenade erupted, sending a plume of water and shrapnel over a hundred feet into the air. Tamalov was knocked flat on his back, his ears ringing like cathedral bells. Benny and the two girls, the closest ones to the explosion, were all sent flying thirty feet across the patio – all knocked unconscious.
Vanessa was screaming. Franco was stumbling around, his ears ringing, soaked head to foot, a mirror-full of drenched cocaine in his hands. He dropped the mirror and was reaching inside his jacket for his gun when he heard the sound of a pump-action shotgun being viciously racked and felt something very hard being pressed into the small of his back and the words ‘Drop that fucking thing or I’ll turn your fucking kidneys into pâté’. Franco understood the tone, if not the exact sentiment. He dropped his Beretta onto the deck and turned to see a very out of breath old lady, her face obscured by a balaclava with the word ‘FUCK’ scrawled across the forehead staring him down. He started to laugh at the demented sight but Ethel drove the butt of the gun straight into his face, breaking his nose, and Franco went down, hot tears spurting from his eyes.
‘Julie!’ Vanessa cried, recognising her before she even tore her balaclava off, as she scooped her up into her arms and hugged her.
Tamalov was struggling up into a sitting position by the pool when he felt a foot going into his chest, driving him back down. He looked up at the figure standing over him, its face obscured by a black balaclava that had the word ‘FEAR’ printed across the forehead in crude Tippex. It was pointing a very large handgun right at him.
‘You’re dead, all dead …’ Tamalov was trying to say, his attempts at speech hampered by the fact that he could not hear his own voice, only the numbing ringing in his ears.
He looked up – beyond astonishment – as Susan ripped her own balaclava off, revealing her red, sweating face, catching her breath as she said, with as much brightness as she could muster under the circumstances, ‘Hello, Mr Tamalov. It’s us, the Frogs!’
SEVENTY-TWO
DUMAS WANDERED THROUGH the Mercedes showroom in shock, his feet crunching on acres of broken glass. It looked like a bomb had gone off: the blue neon Mercedes logo cracked, blinking and hanging by a wire, smoke and petrol fumes filling the air, his wrecked police car sitting atop the ruin of the SLK, looking like it was trying to mount it. The whole scene was lit by the soft strobing of the red and blue lights of the other police cars and the ambulance that had arrived, and soundtracked by the murmuring and gasps of the large crowd of clubbers that had gathered at the hastily erected ‘DO NOT CROSS’ line his men had erected. He turned to Wesley and tried to speak but found that words would not come. Wesley was strongly reminded of the perpetual expression of Chief Inspector Wilson.
‘Looks worse than it is,’ Wesley offered hopefully. ‘Lick of paint …’
In the background, something caught Dumas’s eye – a prostrate form on a stretcher being rolled towards the waiting ambulance. They had, of course, lost both Tamalov and the old English ladies in all the chaos.
‘Bit of MDF …’ Wesley went on.
Dumas started towards the stretcher. ‘Pardon,’ he was saying to the paramedics wheeling it. ‘Pardon …’
The two guys looked up from the prostate, gurgling form of Boscombe, towards Dumas, and realised what he was begging them for. ‘Non! Non!’ the lead medic yelled, shielding Boscombe as Halles came in from behind and grabbed Dumas by the shoulders, holding him back. His request for one clean punch at Boscombe’s face being denied he settled for kicking a large section of plastic bumper (it had been torn off his police car as it mounted the kerb) across the street and screaming ‘FUCK!’
A uniformed gendarme came running under the police tape and started whispering urgently to Dumas and Halles, the three of them forming a huddle. Wesley shuffled closer. He caught the words ‘explosif’ and ‘Tamalov’ before Dumas was clapping his hands together and shouting to his men, several of whom started running towards their cars. Wesley ran towards the ambulance where Boscombe was now being loaded in, a thick surgical brace already clamped around his neck, tight straps binding him to the stretcher as it was hauled upright, his arms folded across his chest. ‘Sarge?’ Wesley said. It was not unlike talking to the villain Hannibal Lecter, lashed to his mad trolley.
‘Urfff?’ Boscombe said woozily. He had already been shot up with painkillers.
‘I’m just gonna go with these guys. I’ll catch up with you later.’
‘Arroogghh!’
‘Yeah, I think it’s your teeth …’
‘Eeef?’ Boscombe said through his wrecked bombsite of dentistry. But Wesley was already off and running towards one of the French police cars revving its engine by the glass-strewn kerb.
SEVENTY-THREE
‘YOU THINK YOU can torture me? You stupid old bitches!’ Tamalov screamed. ‘I have been tortured by the head of the KGB!’
‘Oh, this is hopeless,’ Susan said, flopping down into an armchair.
They were in the living room. It was the size of a tennis court. Franco, Benny and the club girls were all in a corner, lashed up with duct tape. Tamalov was dripping wet and duct-taped to a chair in the middle of the room, shivering in his boxer shorts, surrounded by Julie, Susan and Ethel, who was now happily back in her wheelchair, Jill having fetched it from the car. Vanessa and Jill sat together on one corner of a long L-shaped sofa. Jill had her fists in her ears because they had just spent fifteen minutes repeatedly asking Tamalov where their money and passports were and repeatedly getting ‘fuck yourself’, ‘fuck your mothers’ and, more simply, ‘fuck you’ in response. In fairness, Julie thought, their attempts at ‘torture’ had been fairly lame: a couple of mild slaps in the face and some variants on the ‘tell us or else’ line of questioning. It had hardly been Olivier in Marathon Man.
‘Look, just … just BLOODY TELL US!’ Susan yelled.
Tamalov laughed.
‘Right,’ Ethel said, wheeling towards him. She put the barrel of her shotgun to his forehead. ‘Where’s our money?’
‘Ethel!’ Susan said.
‘What? You think you can shoot a man in the head with that?’ Tamalov said. ‘Have you any idea what would happen, old woman? My brains on the ceiling, the walls, your faces? You think you could do that?’
Ethel’s finger tightened on the trigger.
‘Come on,’ Tamalov said. ‘Shoot! Hag!’
‘Ethel!’ Julie cried now too.
‘Oh FUCK IT!’ Ethel said, letting the gun drop. Of course she wasn’t about to shoot the bugger in cold blood at point-blank range. She punched him very hard in the face, however. ‘Ha!’ he cried.
This was proving tricky, far trickier than they’d imagined.
‘Oh, he’ll never tell us!’ wailed Jill. Again.
‘Do shut up, Jill,’ Julie said.
‘The police will be here soon …’ Vanessa said.
‘She’s not wrong,’ Ethel said. ‘Someone must have heard that grenade.’
‘RIGHT!’ Susan said, standing up. ‘I’VE HAD JUST ABOUT ENOUGH OF THIS! Jill, Julie, help me drag him into the kitchen. Ethel, Vanessa, watch them.’ She indicated Franco, Benny and the girls. ‘Bring the boys in when I tell you.’
; With a crash and a bump the three of them dragged the chair with Tamalov on it into the kitchen, the heavy doors closing behind them. Tamalov cursed them all the way in a blend of Russian and English: ‘you stupid fucking bitches … useless daughters of whores … your cocksucking mothers are …’
‘Oh really!’ Jill said.
‘Yeah, can we mute this please?’ Susan said.
‘Certainly,’ Julie said. She flattened a strip of duct tape across Tamalov’s mouth, reducing him to muttered ‘Ummmmfs’.
‘Right,’ Susan said, looking around the vast marble-and-chrome space. She opened the enormous fridge and saw a whole chicken on the shelf. ‘Good, I’m also going to need a bottle of ketchup, some red food dye, two plums, a glass of water, some TCP and a very sharp knife.’
‘Oh, come on,’ Jill said. ‘What are you going to do with that lot? He’s been tortured by the head of the KGB.’
‘Yes, well,’ Susan said, fishing a pair of rubber gloves out from under the sink, ‘I used to be head of make-up and special effects for Wroxham Amateur Dramatic Society.’ She snapped a glove on and looked down at Tamalov.
SEVENTY-FOUR
SUSAN WORKED INCREDIBLY fast, up to her elbows in the mixing bowl. The Tamalov household was very well stocked: he had everything except for the plums, but she’d made do with two peaches. She imagined the stones were a little large for true authenticity, but they’d probably get away with it. You can create illusions of reality – make people think they’ve seen things they really haven’t seen …
‘Julie,’ Susan said, not looking up from the mixing bowl, into which she was now dipping a piece of chicken skin, ‘get his boxer shorts off.’
‘Uh?’ Julie said.
‘Quickly!’
‘Uh?’ Julie and Tamalov both said now.
Julie did so while Tamalov struggled and cursed.
Julie ripped them down to the floor. ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘is it that cold?’
Tamalov grunted some muffled obscenities.
‘Right,’ Susan said through gritted teeth as she leaned down and started slathering the mixture all over Tamlov’s groin, splashing some of it on the floor, on his chest. ‘Get ready to shout for the others, Jill.’
‘I don’t underst—’ Jill said.
Susan grabbed the bottle of TCP and a dishcloth. ‘OK, Julie, you’ll need to pull his thingy back.’
‘Do what?’ Julie said.
‘You know …’ Susan nodded at Tamalov’s groin. ‘His … foreskin.’
‘Dear God!’ Jill exclaimed.
‘And, ah, why are we doing that?’ Julie asked.
‘Oh, for God’s sake – just do it!’ Susan hissed. She was pouring a very generous amount of TCP onto that dishcloth. Tamalov’s eyes widened and he started trying to say stuff through the tape gag.
‘Ah …’ Julie said, finally getting it. She looked at Tamalov’s tiny, uncircumcised penis with some revulsion and swallowed. ‘OK,’ she said. ‘Hardback for the full Kojak …’ Out the purple peanut popped.
‘Right, here we go. This might sting a bit …’ With one hand Susan rammed the TCP-soaked rag into the very eye, the most tender part of Tamalov’s tender parts, as, with the other hand, she simultaneously ripped the duct tape off his mouth, taking a bit of his lip off too.
In the next room Vanessa and Ethel were looking out of the big picture window with its views into the darkness, the lights of Marseilles twinkling in the distance. They were just fancying that they could faintly hear sirens in the distance when …
The scream.
It was inhuman – something an animal might make at the most extreme moment of duress, in the moment before death.
‘COME QUICK!’ Jill shouted from the kitchen, as Susan taped Tamalov’s gag back in place. ‘THEY’VE GONE MAD!’
‘You two.’ Ethel pointed the shotgun at the gagged Franco and Benny, whose heart rates had just fairly spiked if their faces were anything to go by. ‘Move it.’ Vanessa helped them to their feet, their legs still tied together, hopping and shuffling towards the kitchen door, Ethel’s shooter at their backs. They were pushed through the kitchen door and their eyes widened at the appalling scene before them.
Tamalov writhed on the floor, screaming into his gag, shouting, kicking, tears streaming from his eyes. There was blood everywhere, but nowhere more than his groin: it was a horror show, an operating theatre.
Susan stood beside him, panting, covered in viscera, with a huge kitchen knife in her trembling right hand and something red, wet and unspeakable in her left.
‘Wh … what …’ Vanessa gasped, her hands going to her mouth. ‘What have you done to him?’
Susan threw a wad of gore onto the white-tiled floor in front of the two henchmen – a gout of bloody skin and a couple of ruined orbs – as she cried ‘WE CUT HIS BLOODY BALLS OFF!’
Ethel said, ‘Jesus. Fucking. Christ.’
Franco fainted.
Benny started screaming.
Vanessa started dry-heaving.
‘YOU!’ Julie said, pointing at Benny. ‘You’re next!’
Tamalov was going berserk, his face fluorescent with the effort of trying to shout through his gag as Benny collapsed to his knees and started gibbering into his own gag. Julie ripped it off and it all came out very fast:
‘NononononopleasedownstairsingaragethereispanelinflooreverythingthereIshowyoupleasenonoIbegyouplease!’
Tamalov moaned and started banging his head off the floor.
‘OK, garage. Panel in the floor,’ Susan said. ‘Is there a back way out of here?’
Tamalov was trying to scream something through his gag. Benny hesitated. Susan held the tip of the knife to his balls. ‘At the back of the garage! A tunnel! It runs five hundred metres! There is car at the end! Please, don’t hurt me.’ Benny was crying now.
Susan couldn’t resist it. She slipped Tamalov’s gag off for just a second. ‘YOU IDIOT! YOU FUCKING FOOL!’
She slapped it back on.
‘Great,’ said Julie. ‘Let’s go.’
SEVENTY-FIVE
JABBER COMING OVER the radio as they drove very fast through the dark hills, the first rays of dawn appearing in the sky to the east. Wesley was wedged in the middle of the back seat between two uniformed gendarmes, Dumas was in the passenger seat with another plain-clothes officer driving beside him. Dumas and the two gendarmes were doing something Wesley had only ever seen happening in cop movies: they were loading guns. Dumas was slotting fat brass cartridges into a nickel-plated snub-nosed revolver while the guys on either side of Wesley were checking the loads in their magazines before ramming them back into the butts of their sleek black automatics and pulling back the slide thingies. They made exactly the kind of noises as they made in the films, a metallic ‘clack’, except it was much, much louder in real life.
‘How long?’ Dumas said, snapping his pistol shut.
‘Seven or eight minutes,’ the driver said, glancing at the satnav’s ETA and taking a bit off to allow for their speed.
‘Remember, no shooting except on my order, OK?’ Dumas said. The gendarmes nodded, grim yet excited.
Holy shit, Wesley thought as they skidded round a bend at ninety kilometres an hour, heading up into the mountains, the Sarge would have loved all of this …
SEVENTY-SIX
THEY WERE IN a basement vault, raking the walls with torch beams. Julie’s first thought was that it was not totally unlike the room where they found the late Barry Frobisher: hardcore pornographic videos lined the walls for a start. But there was more, much more. A huge cache of automatic weapons, a pile of forged passports of many different nationalities, a block of what she assumed was cocaine the size of a car battery, and there, smack in the middle of the room on a trestle table, was their holdall. Susan unzipped it. The money looked to be untouched. Nestling right on top, all burgundy and beautiful and proud, were three British passports: one each for her, Julie and Ethel. She passed one to Julie. They were nicely aged, with crenellations in
the covers, little tears here and there, ruffled pages. You honestly couldn’t tell the difference between these and the real thing. They examined the photographs. Remarkable. Exactly what they’d asked for. Masterpieces really – especially Ethel’s.
‘Back in business,’ Julie said.
‘No time for that,’ Susan said. ‘Come on. Let’s get this over with …’
Back up the stepladder, back through the hatch, lugging the holdall between them, and into the strip-lit garage. They’d already found the well-hidden door to the secret passage. They could hear the sirens clearly now, closing in. Ethel and Jill were already saying their goodbyes. Just the five women, here in the garage. Susan grabbed Vanessa and gave her a tight squeeze. ‘You take care of yourself, darling. Just remember what we told you to say and stick to your story.’
Susan stood back and Julie moved in. She embraced Vanessa and whispered something in her ear, something the others couldn’t hear, while pressing something into her palm. Julie stood back, tears in her eyes.
‘OK?’ Julie said.
‘Oui,’ Vanessa nodded, fighting tears too, those sirens right on top of the place now.
‘Right, guys, time to choose: the tunnel or the bum-palace.’ This was Ethel, obviously.
‘Goodbye, Julie.’
‘Bye, Vanessa, sorry about this …’ Julie said, peeling a strip of duct tape off.
SEVENTY-SEVEN
DUMAS LED THE way down the long white hallway, revolver out, armed officers crouching behind him, watching his clenched left fist for a signal, Wesley right at the back, fervently wishing he had a gun, having, in fact, to stop himself shaping his hand into a childish pistol.