‘Don’t worry,’ he said, turning back to Piravani. ‘He’s—’ But the Italian was no longer propped up against the table. He had slumped to the floor. Hammond rushed across to him. ‘Marco?’
‘I don’t feel good, doctor,’ said Piravani through gritted teeth. ‘He caught me with a shot.’
‘Where? I can’t see any blood.’ Hammond scanned Piravani with the torch, anxiously but in vain. There was no sign of a wound, though his dark clothing and the confusing interplay of shadows made it hard to be sure.
‘Somewhere in my gut. Gesù, it hurts.’
If he was bleeding internally, there was nothing Hammond could do for him without getting him to a hospital. He pulled out his phone. ‘I’ll call for an ambulance. What’s the emergency number?’
‘It’s lucky for me you don’t know.’
‘Don’t be stupid, Marco. What’s the number?’
‘We call no one, doctor. The police will be close behind any ambulance. Ask yourself how many others are on Todorović’s payroll. We have to get those tapes to The Hague.’
‘You’ll never make it without proper medical attention. What about the Voćnjak Clinic? I could contact Miljanović.’
‘You think we can trust him?’
‘I think we have to.’
Piravani pondered the dilemma for a moment. Then a phone started beeping – in Uželać’s pocket. ‘That’ll be his back-up boys. They heard the shots and want to know he’s OK. We’ve got to get out of here before they come looking for him. Maybe we can contact Miljanović once we’re clear of the house.’
‘Can you walk?’
‘I’ll have to.’ Piravani levered himself back on to his knees. Hammond knelt beside him, supporting him beneath his arms. The torchbeam caught drops of blood on the floor. He was bleeding, though not copiously. Any exertion might change that. But it seemed that was a risk they were going to have to take. ‘Get the gun. It’s behind me.’
‘I didn’t even know you had a gun,’ said Hammond, fumbling in search of it with one hand as he continued to hold Piravani up with the other.
‘Bought it last night. A gun is a wise precaution in this city, doctor. As you’ve discovered.’
‘Were you the first to fire?’
‘Oh yes. I reckoned he’d be watching you, not me. Nailing him then was the only chance we had.’
Hammond found the gun and picked it up carefully. It was smaller than Uželać’s, a snub-nosed revolver that Piravani must have found easy to conceal in his boilersuit. ‘Got it.’
‘Good. Put it in your pocket.’ At that moment the phone stopped beeping. ‘They’ll wonder why he hasn’t answered. They’ll probably wait five minutes at least to see if he comes out, but we don’t have much longer than that. How many are there?’
‘There were three of them with Uželać at Kalemegdan.’
‘OK. Let’s say three. One will stay by the van. Another will follow Uželać’s route in – he must have tracked us through the snow to the open window downstairs. The third will guard the front gate. They’ll reckon they have us surrounded.’
‘And won’t they?’
‘No. Because Gazi’s a paranoid son-of-a-bitch, like I told you. Milošević was a prisoner in his own house by the end. Gazi saw the danger of that happening to him and constructed—’ Piravani winced and broke off, then took a slow, soothing breath. ‘He constructed a tunnel. It runs from the cellar to a sewer access shaft in the next side-street. I loosened the manhole cover when I went out this evening. It’s how I was planning to leave. There’s a second van, doctor. Parked near by. We just have to hope … the new owner of this place … hasn’t blocked the tunnel.’
‘You’re in no condition to scramble along a tunnel, Marco.’
‘I’m in a condition to try. Help me up.’
Getting Piravani on to his feet was a struggle, but Hammond managed it, ignoring as far as he was able the jabs of pain from his ribs. The Italian was obviously in much greater pain and seemed to be functioning on willpower alone. They staggered past Uželać’s motionless body through the sticky pool of his blood to the door, where Hammond left Piravani propped against the wall for a moment while he retrieved the rucksack, with the box of tapes zipped away inside. Then they lurched across the landing and started down the stairs, Piravani leaning heavily on the balustrade as he negotiated each step. To Hammond’s relief, there was no apparent increase in his bleeding. But the relief was highly conditional. The likelihood was that his abdomen was slowly filling with blood. Willpower would only carry him so far.
The entrance to the cellar was beneath the staircase in the hall: a door opening on to steeper, narrower steps that led down into a gulf of darkness. Hammond was supporting most of Piravani’s weight by now. The Italian had to stop to recover his breath and gather some strength before they proceeded.
They descended into tomb-like chill and musty air that caught in the throat. Casting the torchbeam ahead of them, Hammond saw a large, concrete-floored chamber, mostly given over to the storage of unwanted furniture. A wine rack covered one wall, no more than a quarter full with bottles, empty metal shelving another.
‘I either sit down or fall down,’ gasped Piravani, resting against the upturned legs of a stack of dining chairs. ‘Put one of these near the shelves.’
Hammond lifted a chair out of the stack and set it down, then led Piravani across to it. The Italian gave a sigh of relief as he flopped on to it that sounded like air escaping from a punctured tyre. He held his head back as if only by doing so could he prevent himself toppling forward.
‘How do you feel, Marco?’ Hammond asked, unable to tell in the dust-moted torchlight how pale he actually was.
‘Weak. That’s how, doctor. But we don’t have time for—’
There was a noise above them: a creaking board from the direction of the kitchen. Instantly, Hammond switched off the torch. Total darkness enveloped them. Neither man spoke or moved. Piravani’s shallow, faltering breaths were the only sound in the cellar.
As his ears strained to catch any further noise upstairs, Hammond hoped, more fervently with every passing second, that the creak had just been some random expansion or contraction of the woodwork. He would not allow himself to believe that one of Uželać’s accomplices was already in the house.
But they were. Because there came in the next second the distant, muffled beeping of Uželać’s phone. And the hurrying, undisguised footfalls of someone hunting the sound.
Piravani grasped Hammond’s shoulder and pulled him close enough to whisper in his ear. ‘Be quick. There’s a gap at one end of the shelving that you can reach into to pull it away from the wall. It’s hinged at the other end. The door to the tunnel is behind it.’
‘He’ll hear me for sure, Marco.’
‘I know. Give me the gun. I’ll hold him up here while you get away.’
‘I’m not leaving you.’
‘You have to. I can’t go any further. The tunnel’s about a hundred metres long. It leads to a hatch into the sewer access shaft. There’s a ladder from there to the manhole.’
‘I’m not leaving you, Marco.’
‘Only one of us is thinking straight, doctor. If you stay with me, the tapes will end up with Todorović. You have to deliver them to The Hague. Otherwise all this has been for nothing. Don’t try to leave the country by train or plane. Here’s the key to the apartment. And the key to the other van.’ He wrestled them out of one of his pockets and pressed them into Hammond’s hand. ‘There’s a recorder you can play the tapes on in my bag. Take that and my money belt in case you need to bribe your way out, then drive to the Romanian border. The E70 will get you there in—’
Uželać’s phone had stopped beeping. There was total silence in the house. Then they heard another floorboard creak.
‘He’s found the body,’ Piravani continued, calmly but urgently. ‘He’ll start searching the rest of the house soon. It could take him a while to get down here, but I won’t have the strength to
push the shelving back into place after you for much longer, so we have to move now.’
Hammond tried to force his brain to decide what he should do, but it simply would not obey. Either he abandoned Piravani or he gave up trying to escape. The chances of them both surviving were vanishingly slim. He was frightened, but he was also angry. He did not deserve to face this stark choice. But here it was, before him.
‘Promise me you’ll get the tapes to The Hague, doctor. It’s all I ask.’
‘Marco, I—’
‘Just promise me.’
And there, in that instant, the choice was made. It formed as something hard and sharp in Hammond’s mind. He squeezed Piravani’s hand. ‘I’ll do everything I can.’
‘Give me the gun.’
‘Here.’ Hammond folded Piravani’s fingers round the handle of the revolver.
‘Don’t worry about me. I’ll phone for an ambulance as soon as I’ve dealt with our friend upstairs.’
‘You do that.’
‘Thanks for not mentioning the money.’
‘What money?’
‘Gazi’s, of course. It’s what got you into this, remember.’
Hammond had genuinely forgotten. The money. How pitiful his attempt to buy Gazi’s silence seemed now. How pitiful – and how pointless. ‘I don’t care about that any more, Marco.’
‘I’m glad to hear you say that, doctor.’
‘It’s true.’
‘Good. Go now.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Oh yes. I’m sure.’
‘I’ll see you, Marco.’
‘I hope I’ll see you too, doctor. Buon viaggio.’
Hammond switched the torch on, waited a second for his eyes to adjust to the brightness of the beam, then moved to the end of the shelving unit and reached into the gap between it and the side wall. He was able to squeeze his fingers behind the unit. Setting the torch down, he grasped it with both hands and started pulling.
At first, it would not budge. He filled his lungs, disregarding the pain from his ribs, and tried again. This time the unit moved, scraping loudly across the floor and pivoting out from the concealed hinges at the other end. He shone the torch into the space behind and saw the door of the tunnel: thick steel, fastened with two large bolts.
He glanced back at Piravani, who urged him on with several flaps of his arm. Hammond raised a hand in acknowledgement – and farewell. Then he dodged behind the unit and made his way to the door.
He slipped the bolts, pulled the door open and shone the torch along the tunnel. It was about four feet wide and six feet high, running dead straight into total darkness. The walls, floor and roof were rough cement, festooned in cobwebs. A man would have to be desperate indeed to use it as an escape route.
He stepped into the tunnel, pulled the door shut behind him and tapped it three times as a signal to Piravani. Then he started walking.
He had to stoop slightly to clear the roof, and judging distance when he was carrying the only source of light was more or less impossible. He hurried forward, struggling to prevent his mind dwelling on the possibility that his exit might somehow be blocked. He had never suffered from claustrophobia. He knew the fear he felt to be entirely rational. A muffled thud behind him was surely the shelving unit sliding back against the door. Whatever choice he had vanished with the sound.
Eventually, his torchbeam picked out a gleam of steel ahead. He quickened his pace and saw what it was: a circular hatch, about two feet in diameter, set in the wall at the end of the tunnel.
The lever on the hatch was even stiffer than the bolts had been. He was sweating in the sub-zero chill by the time he had shifted it and the pain from his ribs seemed to have invaded every part of his body. He had to give himself a moment to recover before he could open the hatch. And then all he saw, at the end of a short crawl-way, was a second hatch.
The pain did not matter now. He wanted out of this. He wanted to see night sky above his head. He clambered into the crawl-way and wedged himself against the wall. Then he grasped the lever and heaved at it. It gave.
A gust of foul, sulphurated air confirmed he had reached the sewer access shaft. The hatch opened out into it, adjacent to a metal ladder that led up twelve feet or so to the manhole cover. He could see the cover as he leant out into the shaft with the torch, grab-holes set tantalizingly around its circumference. Concerned that the beam might attract attention, he switched the torch off and thrust it inside his boilersuit, then braced himself for the ascent.
Exactly how he made it from the crawl-way to the ladder was obscured by a fog of pain. But there he was, hauling himself up, hand over hand, rung, by rung, in the choking darkness. He had counted the rungs before switching off the torch and now he counted them down as he climbed.
But somehow he had miscounted. There was one fewer than he was expecting. The faint moonlight seeping in through the grab-holes fell on his knuckles as he grasped the topmost rung. He had made it.
Whatever Piravani had done to loosen the manhole cover had been effective. It required little effort to raise it clear of its lip. Hammond peered out along a dark, deserted street. There was no van in sight. He tried the other way.
And there it was, no more than ten yards from him, a battered old Transit very similar to the one they had driven to Dedinje earlier in the night. He pushed the cover aside, then, with one final effort, hoisted himself up through the manhole.
He crouched in the road, summoning his resources. He had always considered himself a fit man, but he did not feel it now. He wondered what was happening back inside the Villa Ruža. And then he tried not to wonder. Piravani wanted him to make good his escape, not waste time agonizing.
He stood up, toed the manhole cover back into position and headed for the van, feeling in his pocket for the key. He reached the driver’s door, grasped the handle and tried to slide the key into the lock. But it would not fit. He took out the torch and shone it at the lock, assuming he must somehow have missed the keyhole. But no. That was not the problem.
The problem was ice. The van had been standing there since Friday in sub-zero temperatures and the lock had frozen. Piravani’s foresight had not stretched as far as bringing a can of de-icer with them. Hammond swore under his breath, took off one of his gloves and rubbed the lock, then cupped his hands and blew warm air on to it. But it made no difference. The lock was frozen solid.
So was the lock on the passenger door. He had his getaway vehicle. But it was of little use to him if he could not get into it.
There was only one thing for it. He took the hammer out of the rucksack and with several blows smashed a hole in the passenger’s window, then reached in and opened the door using the internal handle.
He was actually congratulating himself for having the presence of mind to enter that side rather than showering the driver’s seat in broken glass when he heard a shout from somewhere behind him. Glancing back, he saw the flash of a torchbeam.
‘Stanite!’ came a bellowed voice from the direction of the beam.
In the same instant, several lights came on in villas and gatehouses lining the road that until now had been veiled in darkness, streetlamps flickered into life and an alarm – it had to be the Villa Ruža’s – began wailing loudly.
‘Stanite!’
Hammond had no intention of waiting to find out what the word meant. He scrambled into the driving seat, with the rucksack on his back pushing him so far forward that he was bent over the steering-wheel, and began searching for the ignition. But the dashboard was a confusion of shadows and he could not find it.
Then he did see it, thanks to the torchbeam shining into the cab. The man who had shouted at him was nearing the broken window. Hammond thrust the key into the ignition and turned it. The engine spluttered and died.
‘Stanite sada!’
He turned the key again. This time the engine spluttered and started. He shoved the gearlever into what he hoped was first and pressed his foot down on the accelerator.
Only as the van skidded forward did he realize that the windscreen was opaque with ice. Even if he had been able to find the headlamp switch, it would have been of little use to him. He wound down the window and leant out. The road ahead was clear and the tyres had begun to grip. Steering was awkward, but he dared not slow down.
The streetlamps were a help but also a hazard. They might well enable the man with the torch to catch the van’s registration number. If, as Hammond suspected, he was a security guard for one of the villas, he would probably phone it into the police within minutes. The getaway had already gone wrong.
Hammond’s orientation was not holding up well either. As he reached the end of the road and slewed right, he hoped rather than judged that he was turning away from the Villa Ruža, not towards it. The gentle downhill slope seemed to confirm he had made the correct choice, but he knew he could not drive much further like this. He would have to stop and clear the windscreen.
But he could not afford to stop yet. He had to put some distance between himself and the villa. He glanced at the illuminated speedometer. He was only travelling at fifty kilometres per hour, though it felt a lot faster thanks to the cold air blasting into his face. He pushed the accelerator down further.
Then the steering suddenly slackened. He was skidding on black ice as the slope steepened and a crossroads loomed ahead, with no buildings visible beyond it. He stabbed at the brake, but that only exaggerated the skid. The van took its own course, surging across the junction, mounting a kerb and careering down a grassy incline.
Hammond jerked his head back into the cab as bushes and branches began slashing at the side of the van. The wheels were juddering, the whole vehicle bouncing. Instinctively he let go of the steering-wheel and threw himself down across the seat, expecting a collision with a tree or some other large obstacle at any moment.
But no collision ever came. The van began to bog down in the snowy ground and the shrubs it was bursting through slowed it still further until eventually it ran out of momentum and shuddered to a halt.
Hammond pushed himself up and craned his head out of the window. The van was embedded in snow and mud up to its wheel arches. It was clearly going nowhere. The engine had already cut out, probably because the exhaust pipe was blocked. He swore wearily, took off one of his gloves and rubbed his face. What the hell was he supposed to do now?
Blood Count Page 17