Candleburn

by Jack Hayes

  The Aspinals had a chateau of a home. Transplanted to Kensington, it would easily have been worth £20 million. He loved the fact that to Asp, it was a mansion in one of the most up-market districts the city had to offer: Jumeirah. And yet, he’d heard Alex several times deride the three storey building as a ‘pokey suburban hole.’

  As he leaned against the balustrade, he could smell the fine fragrances of garlic, lemongrass and ginger wafting from downstairs. Alexandria was working her magic in the kitchen.

  “Ah, sleeping beauty awakes,” she said when he reached the bottom of the staircase.

  “Good evening Mrs Aspinal,” Mehr said, admiring the watercolour finger paintings by Ginny and Pepper that were stuck to the fridge with alphabet magnets.

  Alex had on an apron and was vigorously slicing vegetables for a Thai stir fry.

  “Mehr,” she said without looking up from the chopping board, “how long have we known one another?”

  “Longer than a gentleman should admit, without wishing to provide indications of the lady’s age,” Mehr replied.

  “So I think we’re past the Mrs Aspinal phrase,” Alex laughed.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Mehr said. “If it’s okay, I’m just going to use your bathroom.”

  He left the kitchen and wandered towards the lavatory. From the second floor, the childish noises of the girls resonated as they argued with the house maid.

  “But I don’t need a bath,” he overhead Ginny say. “Sniff me – I’m fresh from the sea.”

  A squeal and clatter of pots from the kitchen.

  Zain stopped and turned.

  “Alex?” he called.

  A muffled noise. Scuffling. More pots.

  Zain ran back to the kitchen.

  “Holy shit!” he exclaimed.

  Mehr Zain was staring straight down the muzzle of a pistol.

  ***

  Blake’s Audi nipped through a hedge. Leaves fluttered behind it like wedding confetti.

  The pool area.

  Blake swore loudly and whacked the brakes. The car skidded, caustic smoke erupting against the brown-stone crazy paving. Swimmers shrieked and leapt out of the way, some diving into the water, others running for cover. The wheels ground to a halt, the car shifted parallel to the pool’s edge.

  Blake pounded the accelerator.

  More squealing from the tyres.

  The Audi left a trail of black against the rock slabs. White plastic sun loungers and deck chairs buffeted off the bumper as Blake hurtled away.

  The car bounced onto the grass, then through a flower bed, then back to grass.

  The Nissan roared as it leapt through the hedge seconds later. It crashed down onto a table, obliterating it. Brittle shards of plastic exploded in all directions. The car was unstopped and zipped a diagonal route around the pool.

  “Damn,” Blake said. “I’d hoped you fancied a swim.”

  He turned his Audi away from the hotel, heading towards the back courses. These were less used at night and therefore unlit by the giant, football stadium lights that illuminated the holes closer to the hotel.

  A golf cart hurried to move aside as Blake whisked past.

  The Nissan was less careful, tossing the cart asunder, a rapacious beast intent on its kill.

  Grass hillocks.

  Blake took the humps to the first fairway as quickly he dared. He angled left, and then turned for a narrow tarmac path to a bridge across the main artificial lake.

  He gained ground on the Nissan, whose suspension struggled with speed on the uneven terrain. Blake reached the bridge. Damn. Too narrow. Handbrake turn. He skidded again.

  The Nissan gained velocity as it hit the bitumen.

  Blake was now heading back towards the hotel, along the bank of the lake. Shit. He wanted to put distance not only between himself and the Nissan but also the building, otherwise, with a mere snap of a mobile phone, his licence plate would be in the hands of the police.

  That would mean this night-flight chase would be for nothing – as soon as he returned to the highway, he’d be picked up in a heartbeat.

  So far, he hoped, everyone had been too surprised to catch a snap of him. They might have recovered in time to get a photo of the Nissan.

  Blake followed the line of the water as it rounded and began to ease back away from the clubhouse. Foot to the floor, the Audi purred as it pushed back up through 70 miles per hour. Then 80. Then 90.

  The buffeting from the rough grass was beginning to affect his handling.

  100 mph.

  Blake’s phone, held fast in the hands-free cradle attached to his dashboard began to buzz. Backlit in neon blue, a name appeared. The Audi sailed over another hillock and twisted as it lost traction, wheels gouging holes in the fairway as the trunk span sideways.

  Blake jerked the steering wheel, regaining control.

  He chanced a look at the phone, vibrating aggressively like an angered bumblebee.

  Alice.

  “For fuck’s sake,” he shouted.

  The Nissan was a tank, ploughing on regardless of the obstacles in its path.

  Blake’s phone rang through to voicemail and went silent.

  He was increasing his advantage on the Nissan as he sped away from the hotel but it wasn’t enough. He needed minutes of time and for all the danger he was putting the Audi through he was gaining seconds.

  The phone began again.

  The car hit a steep hump.

  The hump hid a bunker.

  The Audi’s nose arced higher. It left the ground and Blake sailed through the air. The sand trap was at least five metres wide.

  The phone went quiet.

  Despite the lift the Audi received from the hillock before it left the earth, Blake didn’t think he’d make the far side. He felt his weight decrease as he began to rise up in his seat. The car was beginning to fall. If the drop from this height didn’t break his spine, it could easily crack the delicate machinery on the underside of the Audi.

  A broken camshaft or shattered axel and it was all over.

  The phone began again.

  Buzz, buzz, buzz.

  Blake’s fury, pent up over a year and a half, took over all rational thought. His thumb whacked the ‘receive’ button.

  “What?” he yelled tersely.

  The car hit the ground with a calamitous boom. Blake punched forward in his seat. The seatbelt caught him. Jeffrey howled in protest as the cat-box on the back seat, securely gripped by a network of restraints, shuddered.

  The car had fallen short of the bunker’s edge.

  “Shit,” Blake thought.

  If the car got stuck...

  No voice came from the other end of the phone, only sobbing.

  The Audi’s back wheels surfed on the sand.

  “Come on...” Blake muttered.

  The front left tyre found grass.

  “Yes!” he hissed.

  Crying from the phone.

  Ripping grass loose from the side of the bunker, the Audi’s left tyre slipped back.

  “Damn it...”

  But that gave enough torque to bring the right tyre to the soil. It was now that the independent driving of each wheel paid off. The right tyre grasped the earth as a climber might that first handhold upon reaching the top of a cliff. The handling improved. The Audi A4 lurched.

  “Blake,” a sobbing woman’s voice came over the speaker.

  The car bolted forward, sprinter from a starting block. A fog of sand, ejected by the car’s back wheels plumed into the sky.

  “Kinda busy here,” Blake yelled.

  Alice’s voice began wailing.

  Blake willed the car faster as he bounded through more rough, before winding back to the smoother driving of the fairway.

  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so, so, sorry,” Alice wept, in between deep gasps and sobs.

  In the rear mirror Blake could only see one headlamp in pursuit. The Nissan must have taken some damage from that last jump.

  “Get to
the fucking point, Alice.”

  The engine changed pitch as he pushed up through 110 mph, the grass underneath the car sounded like the sea washing its chassis. The Nissan had lost a heady piece of ground as it failed to match his pace on the flat.

  “I took your mail,” she blubbered. “I took it, I stole it and I opened it and inside I found a key and I kept it and I’m sorry – please, please get them to stop.”

  “The key,” Blake thought, twitching the Audi off into a gap little wider than his car between a bank of trees. “So that’s why it didn’t arrive.”

  A scream sliced through the air. Its intensity hurt Blake’s ears.

  “Please!” Alice begged. “No, no, no! No! Don’t burn me again! I’ll do whatever you want!”

  “Burn you?” Blake exclaimed. “What are you talking about?”

  “You need to bring them the box. Bring them the box. Please, bring them the motherfucking box,” she shrieked.

  Another scream.

  Silence.

  In the car, the air seemed colder. The hairs on Blake’s arms began to stand.

  Still, the Audi raced on. The Nissan had lost a few more metres distance.

  “Alice?”

  Blake forced the car through another narrow gap between a line of trees. Branches whacked against the outside metal.

  No answer.

  “Alice?”

  “Yes?” came the feeble voice.

  “Are they there in the room with you?” Blake asked.

  “Yes.”

  Paths of probability trees stretched away in Blake’s brain, every bit as real in his mind in that moment as the saplings outside that scraped against the car’s doors. Options upon options. Tactics, then counter-tactics. Each branch was a play; if I make this move, my opponent will...

  But they all hinged on one question.

  “Alice. Can you see their faces?”

  The Audi emerged from the trees and into a darkened portion of the grounds, well away from the hotel. The sprinklers here were blitzing the grass with water – great pounding cannons blasting jets hundreds of feet across the landscape. Booms and blasts, the most violent of north European storms, buffeted the vehicle.

  Blake switched the wipers on.

  “Yes,” Alice said, icicles of fear hanging from her voice.

  Blake ran his tongue around his mouth. It was suddenly very dry.

  “Then I’m sorry, there’s nothing I can do for you.”

  A wail from the other end of the phone.

  A new voice. It had a soft melodious feel, a beautiful baritone oakiness. Blake estimated its owner to be Arabic, late twenties, perhaps early thirties, UK-educated, with a possible stint at a military academy.

  “Mr Helliker, I presume?”

  “And you must be Aarez?”

  A laugh.

  “Good! Good!” Aarez said. “I always like it when my reputation precedes me.”

  “Not really,” Blake replied, “I hadn’t heard of you until an hour ago.”

  “Ah,” Aarez replied. “A quick learner then, that is also good. We have your friend here in her flat and you have something that belongs to us, so I propose a trade.”

  “I take it that these gentlemen currently in pursuit of me in their car are affiliated with you?” Blake asked.

  “A black Nissan Pathfinder with tinted windows?” Aarez asked.

  “That’s the one,” Blake replied, struggling with the tussocks as the steering shook.

  “I understand you’re engaged in a little cross country excursion?” Aarez continued. “Now, if you were simply to pull up to the side and hand over the box, you and your colleague would be able to go on your respective ways.”

  Blake glanced at his mirrors. The Audi climbed a bank, returning to a smoother fairway. The engine rose in intensity again. A sprinkler blasted his car, barrage of artillery, blurring his view.

  As the water flew away, through the torrent he could make out a fifty second advantage on the Pathfinder. Not enough, despite his best efforts at losing them.

  Faster, still faster.

  He checked his speed: 120 mph.

  “Stay with me,” he said calmly to Aarez.

  Blake hit the brakes.

  The Audi began to slide on the sodden grass.

  The back of the car fished to the side. Blake didn’t correct the half spin and allowed it to bring the vehicle perpendicular to his original path. He pulled a lever under his seat and popped the boot.

  Blake shouldered his door wide as the A4 glided to a halt with a shudder.

  The Nissan was charging towards him, single beady eye gleaming as it pushed through the last of the sprinklers and their fire-hose fountains. It was barely forty seconds away.

  Blake ran to the boot and hoisted it wide. There it was: the puzzle box. Thirty-five seconds.

  “Still there?” he spoke into his blue-tooth headset.

  “Yes,” Aarez replied. “You’ve pulled over?”

  “I have. Stay listening.”

  Thirty seconds.

  Blake ignored the box.

  He grabbed the airline bag and pulled it toward him, unzipping it in a single, fluid motion.

  Twenty-five seconds.

  Blake grabbed the P90, flicked the safety and brought it to bear.

  Twenty seconds.

  “Here’s my answer,” he said with raw brutality.

  A burst of ten rounds, low aim. Flashes flecked the grille of the Nissan. Fifteen seconds. A second burst. Ten rounds, into the engine block. Ricochets clattered as metal mashed metal.

  The motor sputtered.

  Blake raised his aim. A third volley. The windscreen cracked, then shattered. Fragmented black glass surrounded his pursuers, bursting in slow motion and scattering into the wind.

  Blake fired a fourth broadside, directly into the cabin.

  The Nissan swerved, upended over its nose, somersaulted and plunged straight into a water trap.

  “Still there?” Blake asked.

  “Oh yes,” Aarez replied with calm amusement.

  Blake, P90 still held face high, paced forward.

  “Good.”

  In the water, there were splashes as two people, mere contours in the night, climbed from the wreckage and began to make for the sides of the pond.

  Blake depressed two buttons on the side of the rifle. A powerful narrow white torch beam sliced through the air. It was followed an instant later by the sinister red of a laser finder.

  He tracked the beam to the back of one of the men swimming through the water. Blake shifted his stance. Three grouped shots. The body arched. It sank beneath the dusky surface. Blake paced forward, scanning for his other pursuer. Little splashes. The second man was struggling to get a purchase on the sides of the bank.

  Blake sidestepped once more. The red laser beam picked out the back of his foe’s head. He pulled the trigger. Three more slugs. The man slumped. His body slipped back into the lake.

  “Clear enough for you?” Blake said coldly, returning to his Audi.

  “Crystalline,” Aarez said. “You realise you’ve consigned your friend to a painful death.”

  “Kill the bitch. I never liked her anyway.”

  In the background Alice began screaming.

  “You arsehole! You arsehole! Just bring him the fucking box! What’s wrong with you? Why can’t you ever do anything that you’re told?”

  “Why don’t you tell them who’s the boss?” Blake advised. “That’s sure to assert your authority.”

  Blake returned the rifle to its bag and slammed the boot.

  “You’re a ruthless man, Blake,” Aarez said with clear delight in his voice. “I like you.”

  “I’m so glad,” Blake replied. “Because your respect is very important to me. So let me make things clear: I’m no fool. You’d have killed her before I ever got close to you. And you’d have killed me too.”

  “True, true!” Aarez agreed, giggling.

  “So the best I can do for her is to ensure
her death is short and quick. Because a sadist like you would otherwise drag it out for hours.”

  Blake slammed the Audi’s door and started her back up.

  It seemed like hours since he’d crashed the hotel grounds. The dashboard clock flicked alive and showed it had all been less than seven minutes. Still, the air would soon fill with sirens.

  “And how do you plan to prevent me from making her death even longer and more painful than the evening has so far been?” Aarez enquired.

  “Oh that’s easy,” Blake said. “You’ve given away your precise location: you’re in Alice’s flat. And now you know that I’m coming for you.”

  30

  Mehr Zain looked past the pistol pointed at his heart and the lean, white Russian holding it; in the garden Alex was kicking and trying to scream. Another Russian was dragging her towards the back exit to the compound. Zain heard the front door open. Three African labourers entered, armed with baseball bats.

  “Come quietly,” Anatoly said. “No-one need be hurt.”

  In the garden, Alex wriggled an elbow free. Zain saw her swing a violent blow at her captor’s face.

  Anatoly was distracted by the noise. Zain grabbed the wok, bubbling hot on the stove, and whacked it across the gunman’s head. Food and hot fat spattered everywhere. As Anatoly fell, Zain kicked at his hand. The pistol flew through the open door with the precision of a striker’s penalty kick and landed in the dark of the garden.

  Zain put a second boot into Anatoly’s chest as Alex, fists bunched, slugged at her attacker in the garden.

  “Want a piece of me?” she yelled. “Let’s see how you like eight months of kick boxercise training.”

  As Alex flailed, Zain grabbed two high-end kitchen knives from the block beside the sink. He hurled them at the Somalis stampeding towards him.

  The first whistled through the air and struck home. Instant kill. The second, knocked aside by a well-timed swing with a bat, clattered harmlessly to the ground.

  A battle cry from the kitchen.

  Zain saw Anatoly rise from his heap and charge forward, teeth bared. In the garden, Alex went for an over-ambitious kick. The Russian grabbed her leg and laughed as he punched her repeatedly in the face.

  Anatoly tackled Zain about the waist.

  A wide sweeping arc of a baseball bat whipped over both their heads as the Somalis missed their target.