by Tom Wood
“And what about me? I can go. I’ll explain what happened.”
“They’ll work it out eventually by themselves.”
“That’s not the point. It’s our civic duty to report a crime. We have to. It’s the law. They can help us. They can help me.”
“No, they can’t.”
“That’s what they do. That’s the point. Slow down.”
“Soon,” he said.
“Slow down,” she insisted. “Now. You’re going to get us both killed.”
“When we’re far enough away from danger, I will. Not before.”
She thumbed the button to release the seat belt. It swiftly glanced across her chest.
He saw. “Put that back on.”
“No,” she said. “It stays off until you slow down.”
He took his eyes from the road to meet with hers. She fought not to blink under the intensity of his gaze, but she held firm. She needed to make this stand.
He looked away and the car began to slow to something approaching the speed limit.
“Engage the seat belt,” he said.
She reached for it. “If you drive crazy again, it comes off. Understood?” He nodded and she pushed the clasp back in the receiver. “Alek used to drive like a maniac when I was a kid. I hated being in the car with him. That’s probably why it took me so long to learn to drive.”
“Understood,” the man said.
“Now, please, if you don’t mind, take me to the police so I can sort this mess out.”
He said, “There is no way to sort it, at least not for the police. You need protection and the police aren’t going to protect you. They’re going to take your statement and drive you home and leave a car outside your building overnight. And then what happens if they don’t catch whoever is after you? Do you think that car will stay outside for the rest of your life? What about at your office?” She said nothing. “The police are not bodyguards. They will investigate thoroughly and completely, but only once you’re dead. Until then, you’re a waste of their resources.”
“So you’re saying I’m helpless?”
“No. I’ll help you. We’ll get through this together.”
She was shaking her head before he had finished. “No. Just take me to a police station, please.”
“Not now. We have to create some distance first. If you still want to later, I will.”
She nodded because she didn’t believe him and she didn’t want him to know. “Fine,” she said. “Then we call Alek. We need to find out if the others are okay and let Yigor know what happened.”
He didn’t respond.
“Did you hear me? I want to know if Dmitri and the others got away.”
“Later.”
“Fine,” she said again. “In the meantime, I have to use a bathroom.”
“Soon. You’ll have to hold it.”
“I can’t.”
His eyes flicked between the road and hers. She felt as though he would see through the lie had he not had to keep glancing away.
“Okay,” he said finally.
Chapter 42
The car stopped a few minutes later and Gisele was opening the door before he had finished applying the hand brake.
“I’m leaving the engine running,” he told her. “Be as fast as you can. If you hear a horn, I want you back here fast. Understand?”
She nodded without looking at him. “I’ve got it.”
The garage forecourt was empty of other cars. He’d parked close to the entrance of the store and she hurried the short distance to the doors, pushing one open with a shoulder and stepping into the warmth. The bright fluorescent lights made her squint after so long in the car. She searched with her eyes for the sign to the bathroom. A small sign was affixed to the wall above a door near the counter.
“You have to buy something,” the young man said from behind a till.
“I just want to splash some water on my face. I’ll be quick. Please.”
He was shaking his head before she’d finished talking. “You have to buy something.”
Gisele sighed and fished around in her pockets and collected some coins in a palm. She turned over her hand to set them down on the counter and headed for the bathroom.
“What are you buying?” the man asked.
She pushed open the door. “Anything. It doesn’t matter. You pick.”
Inside, she engaged the lock and leaned back against it. She took big, urgent gulps of air, then remembered what her companion had said and slowed her breathing and felt calmer. She didn’t need to use the toilet. She didn’t want to splash water on her face. She didn’t know what to think or do. She figured she had about five minutes before he would come looking for her. Gisele studied her reflection in the small mirror mounted above a sink stained with lime scale. The harsh light wasn’t doing her skin any favors. She was always struggling with her complexion, but now her makeup was smudged and her mascara had run. She was pale and drawn and her eyes were red and puffy. Her hair was a mess. Not that any of it mattered now.
She took her phone from her coat pocket. Gisele thumbed the screen and tapped in her code to unlock it. There were numerous texts and messages and updates and notifications that competed for her attention but she ignored them all and tapped the icon to make a call. Then she tapped 999.
Her thumb hovered over the dial icon.
We can’t go to the police, he’d said. He would say that. He’d killed at least two men, torturing one of them. Whoever was after her, he was just as bad as they were. She didn’t know who he was. She didn’t even know his name. He’d rescued her, but from whom? For all she knew, the men chasing her might be the good guys. Her companion certainly wasn’t. The police hadn’t been much help before, but she understood why. Nothing had actually happened to her. No crime had been committed. But they would help her now that people were dead. They would believe her. They would protect her. Like her nameless companion had.
“Shit,” she whispered aloud.
Whoever he was, whatever he had done, he had risked his life to protect her. The two men who had chased them to the train yard had shot at them, or at least him. If it hadn’t been for her companion, who knows where she would be now? Captured? Dead?
Gisele pushed the HOME button to cancel the call and slid the phone back inside her pocket. She wasn’t prepared to sell him out to the police after what he’d done, but she had spent enough time in his company. She stood on her tiptoes to unlatch the window lock and push the window open. She slid off her coat and pushed it through the gap, climbing up as it fell out of sight and wriggling through after it. It was only a short drop to the ground outside. It felt like nothing after the drop from the warehouse window.
He was waiting for her. She didn’t see him straightaway as he was standing with his back to the wall, out of her line of sight until she turned her head. Startled, she put a palm to her chest.
“Come on, Gisele,” he said. “We don’t have time for this.”
“Get away from me, you fucking psycho.”
“We’ve been through this,” he said, stepping toward her.
“You’re a psychopath. You murdered a defenseless man.”
“You wouldn’t let me torture him. So no logical reason to keep him alive. He’ll be one less enemy to potentially deal with at a later time.”
“You call that logic? He was wounded. He wasn’t a threat. He was shot, for God’s sake. And you could still have questioned him.”
“To no gain,” he said. “You took away his incentive to tell the truth. Any answer he gave would have been a lie.”
Her eyes were wide with shock and disgust at his blunt logic. She didn’t know how to respond at first. “You . . . you can’t be sure of that.”
“Hence the necessity of torture.”
“That’s no justification. Torture does not
work. In my research—”
He cut her off. “When all this is over I’ll happily debate with you the merits or demerits of torture. But we don’t have time. We need to go. I’m here to protect you, Gisele. And to do that, you have to stay with me until this is over.”
She stepped away from him. “Until what is over? What is this?”
“Until the threat against your father is over.”
“Stepfather. Those guys back there, they weren’t Russian gangsters, were they? At the train tracks, that man was British.”
“He was. As for the others, I don’t know. But you’re right, they’re not Russian mob.”
She kept backing away as he approached. “Then who are they?”
“I have no idea.”
“What do they want with Alek?”
“I don’t know that either. But they want you for it.”
“And you can stop them?”
He hesitated. She hadn’t expected that. She ceased backing away because he was no longer coming toward her.
“I can’t promise that,” he said, finally. “But there’s nothing I won’t do trying.”
She saw the sincerity in his eyes even if she couldn’t bring herself to believe him.
He continued: “The police can’t help you. We have no evidence. We have no idea who these people are or what it is they’re after, beyond you. The police can’t do anything with that. By the time they work out what’s going on, you’ll be dead. I can’t allow that. I won’t allow it.”
“It’s not up to you,” she protested. “It’s my life. I’m in charge of me. However much you care about it, you don’t care about it as much as I do. I’m not a child. I don’t know you. I don’t have to do what you say. If I want to go the police, then you should respect my decision.”
“It’s not about respecting you or not. In this instance, I know more about these things than you do and I’m the best person to make decisions on how to keep you alive.”
“Maybe so, and I will carefully consider your advice. But, ultimately, I make my own decisions. You can’t force me to do what you say.” She read his look. “Are you telling me I don’t have a choice?”
“I’m telling you that it’s better if you come with me willingly.”
“So you’re prepared to kidnap me to stop them kidnapping me?”
“It’s not like that.”
“What is it, then? What else do you call it?”
“Protective custody.”
“With emphasis on the word custody.”
He said, “For your own good. So I can make sure no harm comes to you.”
“You say it as if you really mean it.”
“Please, Gisele. Stay with me until morning. Let me protect you until then, at least. Get some sleep, and at first light if you want to go to the police then I’ll drop you off at the nearest station. By morning the police will have a good idea of what happened at the warehouse, so you’re more likely to be believed than if you go now. But until then you need to be at my side. Whoever attacked the warehouse is still out there, and if they tried that hard to get to you, they will be looking for you now. So we have to get off the streets.”
She eyed him, suspicious but failing to find a lie. “You’ll really take me to the police in the morning if I want?”
He nodded.
“Swear?”
He nodded.
“Say it.”
“Okay,” he said. “I swear.”
“Okay,” she said. “I’ll stay with you tonight. But only because I can’t get my head around any of this and I don’t even know what I’d tell the police. You’re right—I need to sleep and I have to think.”
“Good. First we need to destroy your phone. Before you protest, it could be traced. I’ll buy you a new one.”
A sigh. “Fine.”
He led her back to the car and they climbed in.
After a moment, Gisele said, “What would you have done if I hadn’t come with you willingly?”
He turned, released the hand brake, and checked the mirrors. He didn’t look at her. “It’s probably best if I don’t answer that.”
Chapter 43
They drove through run-down areas that looked worse for the night and rain. Rubbish bags were piled up near lampposts, graffiti-covered walls and bus stops were vandalized. High streets consisted of betting shops and 99p Stores and a multitude of fast-food outlets.
The café Victor selected was open all night and had the red-and-white bands of the Polish flag in the signage. The air inside seemed thick with the smell of grease, and loud with an argument in the kitchen that flowed through the fly strips hanging down over an open doorway.
Victor took a seat so his back was against the far wall and stopped Gisele when she went to sit down opposite him.
“That one,” he said, pointing to the chair next to her.
She glanced over her shoulder at the large plate-glass window at the front of the café and didn’t comment as she took it. He liked that she understood without being told that he wanted a clear view of the street outside. She was no professional, but she was a fast learner.
Victor ordered the soup of the day and a coffee and wouldn’t allow Gisele to just have the tap water she asked for.
“She’ll have a Coke,” he said for her.
When the waiter had gone, she said, “Don’t do that again.”
“Do what?”
“Order for me. Don’t tell me what I can and can’t have.”
“You need the sugar, Gisele. It’ll help calm you down.”
She studied him. “Then say that. Don’t treat me like I’m an idiot.”
He nodded. “I’m sorry. I’m not used to having to explain myself.”
She shrugged. “It’s okay. I can see you’re not good with people.”
He didn’t respond to that. They waited in silence for a moment.
Gisele said, “I have a friend from uni days. She lives in Chiswick. We could stay with her.”
“No,” the man said. “Now they’ve lost us, they could be watching people you know, expecting you to seek refuge.”
“Shit,” she said.
“It’s okay. It helps us.”
She nodded, understanding. “So they’ll be spread thin.”
“Exactly.”
“Then I wish I had more friends.” She sighed and stood. “I have to use the bathroom.” When she saw his look, she added, “Don’t worry, I’m not going to try to sneak off again. Lesson learned and all that.”
“The thought never occurred to me.”
He watched her walk to the bathroom.
The soup and the Coke arrived while Gisele was in the bathroom. The soup was Polish tomato and it was served hot enough to make an excellent projectile weapon, should it come to it. Victor ordered a second bowl of it and a ham sandwich for Gisele, figuring she’d gain her appetite when she saw it.
“Don’t be thinking I’m eating that,” she said as she sat down. “I have a rule about not putting anything in my mouth that had four legs and a face. Or two legs. Or fins. Anything that was alive, basically.”
He looked at her.
Before he could respond, she snapped, “Don’t give me any shit about it or I’ll tear your head off. I kid you not.”
“I can tell, and I assure you I wasn’t going to give you any”—he left a pause—“about it. I respect your self-discipline.”
“Really?”
He nodded. “Yes, really. Any willing sacrifice is worthy of respect.”
“Why do I feel like you’re trying to take the piss?”
“I don’t know why you feel like that. Maybe I’m not very good at giving out compliments or you’re not good at receiving them.”
Gisele’s face softened and she said, “Probably both.” She popped the tab of the
can of Coke and took a gulp. She burped. “Sorry.”
Victor ate his soup while keeping his gaze on the passing foot and vehicular traffic. There was only one other customer—an old guy in a huge trench coat who dipped biscuits into a mug of tea. The argument in the kitchen flared up intermittently. Victor’s Polish was rusty, but he got the gist of it. The new hire wasn’t working hard enough but didn’t much like being told so. Victor guessed they were members of the same family.
“Good?” Gisele asked.
“The soup?”
“Yeah, the soup.”
He nodded. “Make sure you drink all of that Coke.”
“Yes, Dad. What’s next?”
“We’ll ditch the car and take public transport. The more we vary our route and our mode of transportation, the harder we’ll be to track. A moving target is a hard target.”
She sighed. He saw that the enormity of the predicament was weighing on her so he asked, “How long have you lived in London?”
“Half my life, I guess.” The distraction worked. She relaxed a little. “I used to board in a private school in Buckinghamshire. My mother had been taught there and wanted me to have the education she’d had. I don’t know why. She grew up to marry a gangster. Great use of her education there, right? Maybe she wanted me to reach the same lofty heights. On the holidays I would go back to Russia. Within a few years it didn’t feel like home anymore. I always hated Alek and couldn’t wait to come back to England. Then when Mum died I stopped flying back on the holidays and stayed with friends. I barely heard from Alek and made no effort to contact him. He carried on putting money in my bank account every month, and I even hated him for that. I still spent it, of course. I figured he owed me for what he put me and my mother through. Now I feel like a hypocrite for taking his money when I know how he made it. I put the deposit down on my flat with his money. I intend to pay it back eventually, when I’m actually earning a real wage.”
“Commendable of you.”
“Maybe. It seems to me I have to work twice as hard to be a good person because of who he is. Not that it makes any sense.”
“Is that why you want to be a lawyer?”
“I guess so. I originally wanted to be a lawyer so I could go after Alek.” She laughed. “I’ll put that down to teen angst, though. Now I’ve calmed down a little and I don’t want to use the law against people but for them. I’m not sure why I’m telling you all this when you’re a criminal like him.”