by James Becker
“Just a second. I need the pistol—and the bullet.”
Mallory pulled the body the rest of the way, over onto its face, the expression “deadweight” never having seemed more appropriate. Then he slid his hand up the dead man’s back, under his jacket, his fingers searching for the bullet that he now knew was there.
In a few moments he found and recovered it, the small conical shape slightly deformed after performing its deadly task. He glanced at it, then took a handkerchief from his pocket, wiped the blood off the bullet and as much as he could off his hands, then wrapped the tiny copper missile in the cloth and put it in his jacket pocket. He picked up the pistol he and the dead Italian had been struggling with and dropped it into his pocket. He daren’t leave it there because he had no doubt that his fingerprints would be all over it. His eyes caught the glint of brass and he picked up the ejected cartridge case, the last possible piece of forensic evidence.
Then Mallory clearly heard the distant sound of an approaching car, the engine’s exhaust a loud rumbling note that he recognized immediately, and he sprinted the few feet to the waiting Ford. He virtually threw himself into the passenger seat and slammed the door shut.
“Go,” he said, his tone urgent.
Robin needed no other instruction. The car was already in first gear and as Mallory fumbled for his seat belt she dropped the clutch and floored the accelerator pedal. The Ford surged forward, bouncing across the rough ground as the tires scrabbled for grip. The front of the car lifted as the wheels hit the road and bounced up, then slammed down again. Immediately Robin swung the steering wheel hard to the right and simultaneously pulled on the handbrake for perhaps half a second.
The rear tires squealed as the back of the car slid sideways across the road surface, and then the car powered forward again, Robin fighting to hold it in a straight line under full-power acceleration. As Mallory clicked the seat belt’s buckle into place, he glanced sideways at her profile. She looked cool and determined, and completely under control behind the wheel, snatching second gear as the needle of the rev counter just touched the redline. That raised another obvious question that he needed to ask her, when—if—they finally managed to find themselves somewhere safe.
Mallory twisted around in his seat and looked back down the narrow road, seeing the slightly wobbly but near-parallel black streaks where Robin had used every last bit of the power the comparatively small Ford engine had been able to produce to get them moving away from the wood.
As he looked, he saw the unmistakable shape of the nose of his own Porsche Cayman just coming into view down the lane about a hundred yards behind them.
39
Devon
When Toscanelli steered the Porsche into the clearing where he’d told Mario and Dante to wait for him, it had taken him a moment to realize what he was looking at.
He had no idea where the Ford Focus was, and for an instant he wondered if he had somehow managed to overtake it on the road as he made his way out of Exeter. But that didn’t make sense: he had to have been at least five or ten minutes behind his colleagues.
He’d taken a couple of minutes checking the Porsche to see if by any chance the relic was in the vehicle, then spent a little more time programming the GPS on the Cayman with the destination he had earlier selected. They would be meeting at a place he’d picked at random, what had looked on the map like a quiet wooded area where they could conclude their business with Jessop away from prying eyes. Only then had he driven the Porsche out of the car park, and he’d managed to catch most of the traffic lights in Exeter at red.
Then he saw the two dark shapes lying on the ground at the side of the clearing and immediately stopped the car.
He reached Mario first, but a single glance was enough to tell him that the man was dead. Toscanelli sprinted the few feet to where Dante lay, moaning in pain, his right arm clearly broken.
“That bitch,” the injured man muttered. “She—”
“Keep it for later,” Toscanelli snapped, grabbed Dante by the left arm, and with some difficulty hauled him to his feet. He half pulled him across to the Porsche, opened the passenger door, and told him to sit down in the seat. Then he walked back to Mario, checked for the man’s wallet—which had obviously been taken by Jessop, who was proving both far more resourceful and much more dangerous than Toscanelli had ever anticipated—and removed the pistol suppressor and mobile phone. There was no sign of either his Beretta or the spare magazine for the weapon.
With the dead body sanitized, or as best he could manage, Toscanelli ran over to where Dante had been lying and picked up that pistol as well, before checking the area to make sure there was nothing he’d missed on the ground. Then he sprinted back to the Cayman and put it in gear.
He suddenly recalled seeing the rear of a car disappearing around a corner as he’d approached the clearing. He hadn’t taken much notice of it at the time, because he’d been searching for the rendezvous, but it could have been the back of the Ford. He might have missed them by a matter of less than a minute.
But he knew how fast that Porsche could travel. Catching them shouldn’t be a problem, he thought confidently as he steered the car back onto the road and set off in pursuit.
“What happened?” he demanded, as he gave the Cayman its head and accelerated hard down the narrow road.
“They did what they were told, no trouble on the way,” Dante said, his face gray with pain. “Then when we got to the clearing we told them to get out of the car and stand to one side, to wait for you. They did, but then Jessop and the girl grabbed each other and hugged. You’d told us to keep them apart, and so Mario and I ran over to them to pull them apart. And that’s when it happened.”
“What?” Toscanelli could actually see the Ford now, perhaps five hundred meters in front. He guessed that he would be right behind it in only another three or four minutes.
“Mario pulled Jessop away from the girl and they started fighting each other. I had my hands full with the girl, so I don’t know exactly what happened, but there was a shot and then that bitch knocked me out.”
Toscanelli nodded to himself. “I can’t believe Jessop’s just a bookseller,” he said. “He’s acting more like a professional, but a professional what I have no idea. I think we’ve been given the wrong information about him. He’s definitely a lot more dangerous than I had ever expected him to be.”
Toscanelli glanced at Dante again. “And what happened to you? Did you fall or something when the shooting started?”
Dante shook his head. “There wasn’t really any shooting, just that one shot that killed Mario. No, it was that bitch of a girl. I grabbed her to pull her away from Jessop, and I really don’t know what happened. She kind of spun round and I think she kicked me, but whatever she did she broke my arm, then kicked my legs out from under me. Jesus, it hurt. I’ve never seen anybody move that fast. And then she did something to my throat and everything went black. When I came round again the two of them were just driving away.”
That wasn’t at all what Toscanelli had expected. He already knew that Jessop was dangerous, but from the sound of it the girl—whoever she was—was every bit as lethal. He’d assumed she was just a secretary, or maybe Jessop’s girlfriend, but she was clearly much, much more than that. Suddenly the scene inside the apartment back in Dartmouth began to make much more sense. If the woman was some kind of martial arts expert, it had probably been her who had incapacitated the two armed men he’d sent into the building, as well as attacking the third member of the group just outside the entrance door. He still had no idea what could have happened to Giacomo, what had caused those terrible injuries to his hands, and he guessed he would probably never find out.
Things were going from bad to worse. Mario was dead, Dante useless until his arm could be fixed, and all the evidence they’d so far accumulated had vanished, because it was in the trunk of the Ford. The laptop wasn’t
too important, because he’d already transmitted the files on the computer to Rome, but they still hadn’t recovered the relic, which he guessed might well be in Jessop’s pocket.
Toscanelli slammed his fist onto the steering wheel in frustration.
But he could still retrieve the situation. All he had to do was catch up with the Ford. Dante could shoot left-handed, and now there was no time or need for finesse. As soon as they were within range, Dante could pepper the Ford with bullets, and it really didn’t matter what he hit—the people inside it, the tires, or the engine—anything to stop it. Then they’d pick over the wreckage, take anything that would be useful to the experts back in Rome, and set fire to the car after making sure that Toscanelli’s pistol, the one he’d used to kill the three men in Dartmouth, was placed somewhere near Jessop’s body.
That would close one open question, because then the police would be able to prove that the three men had been killed by a pistol in Robin Jessop’s possession. Of course, that wouldn’t provide an answer to the other obvious question that would be asked after the event—who had fired a dozen or so rounds into the Ford?—but that really wasn’t his problem.
Toscanelli smiled for an instant. Perhaps if Dante was fairly careful with his shot placement, one or perhaps even both of the people in that car might still be alive when he lit the fire, and for a brief few seconds he relished the pleasurable anticipation of listening to their screams as the flames from the burning petrol licked across their bodies and began to roast their living flesh.
40
Devon
“You drive like a man,” Mallory said as Robin powered the Ford around another corner, the tires just kissing the grass verge that formed the apex. “And I mean that as a compliment,” he added.
Robin didn’t even glance at him, her entire attention focused absolutely on the road ahead, reading the bends and setting up the car for each curve.
“The product of a misspent youth,” she replied.
“What were you? A getaway driver for a gang of bank robbers?”
A smile appeared fleetingly on her face. “Nothing so exciting, I’m afraid. I passed my test at seventeen, and then my father insisted that I learn how to drive properly, as he put it. He enrolled me in a race driver school and made sure I got a competition license. I’ve still got it, actually, though I haven’t raced for a few months now.”
Mallory nodded. “Every hour that I spend with you produces yet another surprise, something completely unexpected. I suppose you can also fly a plane?”
“Yes. I went solo after nine hours,” Robin replied, “but my PPL—Private Pilot’s License—has lapsed because I didn’t bother doing the right number of hours each year. My father really wanted a boy—a boy he intended to call Robin, in fact, hence the male spelling—but when I appeared and no other children seemed to be forthcoming, he decided to make the best of a bad job. Learning to fly, the car racing, and the martial arts were all his idea. I’m also quite good on a motorcycle, and I can shoot as well, but I’m better with a shotgun than a pistol.”
“He sounds like an interesting man.”
“He was,” she said simply.
Mallory didn’t miss the past tense.
“What happened?” he asked. “If you don’t mind talking about it.”
“I don’t, but not right now, because I can see your Porsche in the rearview mirror. He’s maybe a quarter of a mile behind us, but he’s gaining fast. I don’t think there’s much chance of this Ford Focus actually outrunning him, no matter what I do.”
“Frankly,” Mallory replied, twisting around in his seat to stare out of the rear window of the Ford, “it would be a bit embarrassing if you did. I’d never be able to take my car seriously again.”
She was right. Unless there was another black Porsche Cayman driving down that lane, which seemed unlikely at best, the Italian wasn’t that far behind them. Mallory had the Beretta pistol in his pocket, but he doubted they would survive a firefight with a man as ruthless and determined as the Italian appeared to be. Their best, and perhaps their only, chance of survival lay in getting away from him.
As he turned to face forward, Robin hit the brakes hard and simultaneously sounded the horn. On the left-hand side of the road a metal gate stood open, and just emerging from it was a large, worn tractor, the dull red paint competing for dominance with large patches of rust. Hitched to the back of the tractor was a wide trailer, hay bales stacked on it.
“That could be our salvation,” Robin murmured.
At the sound of the Ford’s horn, the tractor driver had stopped abruptly, the front end of the vehicle extending about a third of the way across the lane and leaving a comparatively narrow gap between it and the hedgerow opposite.
It was narrow, Mallory guessed too narrow, to allow them to drive through, but once she was certain that the tractor wasn’t going to move again, Robin pressed down on the accelerator and the car surged forward.
“Are you sure—” Mallory began, and then shut up, because the answer to his unspoken question was obvious. If she didn’t think there was enough room to get the car through the gap, Robin wouldn’t be aiming for it.
She didn’t slacken speed, but actually continued accelerating. The wheels on the right-hand side of the car bounced over the uneven ground that formed the verge on that side of the road, the door mirror rattling against the errant branches that stuck out of the hedgerow while others scraped along the side of the car.
Robin had got it wrong, Mallory suddenly thought. The gap was too narrow for the car. He was sure of it.
Involuntarily he pulled his seat belt tight and braced his legs against the end of the foot well in front of him.
The rusty red shape of the tractor loomed ever closer, seeming to rush at them, and at that moment Mallory closed his eyes.
Then he opened his eyes again, ashamed of his brief instant of panic. Now he could see that Robin actually was going to miss the front of the tractor by at least an inch, and that was all that mattered. Scraped paintwork was one thing, but ramming into the front of a piece of heavy agricultural machinery would end the pursuit instantaneously.
The somewhat battered front of the tractor flashed by the side window of the Ford at what seemed to Mallory to be an utterly insane speed. And then they were past it. Robin gave the steering wheel of the car the briefest of flicks, and the Ford bounced off the verge and back onto the metaled road surface, still accelerating.
41
Devon
Mallory looked behind. The man driving the tractor was staring at their speeding vehicle and shaking his fist at them.
“I think you just upset Farmer Giles,” he said.
Robin snorted.
“Do I look like I care about that?” she demanded. “All I’m interested in is whether or not he’s going to pull out and block the lane.”
“He is,” Mallory replied, still looking through the rear window of the car. “He’s just turned left out of the field and he’s following us. That trailer is pretty nearly the width of the lane.”
“Good. That’ll hold up the Italian for at least a few minutes while he tries to find his way past. So what we need to do is get back onto a main road and lose ourselves in the traffic. And then we should probably ditch the car as well.”
“Maybe,” Mallory said, “but we’ll still need wheels.”
* * *
Less than thirty seconds later, Toscanelli swung the Porsche round the bend in the road, cursed fluently in Italian, and immediately hit the brakes. The Cayman’s nose flattened as the massive disk brakes hauled down the vehicle’s speed, and it fishtailed along the metaled surface of the lane.
The lane was completely blocked by a wide trailer piled high with bales of hay and moving with agonizing slowness, being pulled, Toscanelli supposed, by a tractor.
He weaved the car from side to side, sounding the
horn in one long continuous blare, and trying to look ahead to see where it might be possible to get past the mobile road block. But there were no pull-offs or gates that he could see anywhere in front and suddenly, as if in an angry response to the sound of his horn, the wide load began moving even more slowly.
There was only one thing he could do. Toscanelli pulled the car close up behind the end of the trailer, opened his door, and climbed out. He ran along the side of the trailer until he could see the old red-painted tractor that was providing the motive power, a grumpy-looking middle-aged man sitting in the metal seat.
Toscanelli shouted up at him and waved his arms, and eventually the driver favored him with a brief glance. At that moment, Toscanelli reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out his pistol. He aimed it well in front of the tractor and fired two rounds, making sure that they hit the trunk of a substantial tree to dispel any belief that he might be firing blanks.
The effect on the driver was immediate. He adjusted the controls, a gout of black smoke erupted from the vertical exhaust pipe, and both tractor and trailer lurched forward, the speed steadily and visibly increasing.
Satisfied that he had got his message across, Toscanelli ran back to the Porsche and sat in the driver’s seat, following the wide load along the lane, sounding his horn again and again as a reminder to the tractor driver. Within perhaps two minutes the load moved over to one side of the lane as the driver spotted an area where he could get at least partially off the road, and Toscanelli powered past in the Porsche.
Now as long as the lane was long enough, he could catch up with the Ford and write a satisfactory ending to his mission.
42
Devon
Mallory was checking the GPS, looking for options as the Ford sped along the narrow road.
“We’re coming up to a fork in the road in a couple of hundred yards,” he said. “Go left there. And if you could avoid leaving a skid mark on the road surface, that would be good.”