Reaper

by A P Bateman

  She almost stood on Michael. Stopped herself in time. She crouched down and prodded him. He groaned. Her eyes were well-adjusted by now and she could see he was bleeding from his chest and stomach.

  “My back,” he said weakly. “My back hurts…”

  Caroline tried to roll him and examine the wound, but he was a dead weight and he wheezed, a trickle of blood reaching the corner of his mouth. She looked at the two holes, both were ragged and large enough for a golf ball to pass through. She could picture it happening, The Beast shooting him as he climbed the fence. He would have dropped over heavily, crawled desperately to this place.

  “Michael,” she said, prompting him to answer. He didn’t, but he was still breathing. “Michael, tell me about the car. Where is it?”

  “The Village,” he grunted. “Skhimili.”

  “Where is the village?”

  “I need a doctor,” he said.

  “I need the car,” she paused. “We can’t go anywhere without the car. Where are the keys?” He tapped his hip pocket, but his hand was almost moving in slow motion. Caroline snatched them out and stuffed the bunch into her pocket.

  “Green Opel Corsa,” he said. “It is parked beside a general store,” he paused. “Where I got you the foods in sealed bags… the cola…” He was trailing off, his eyes opening and closing in time with his shallow breathing.

  “The village, Michael,” she urged. “Where is the village?”

  “Keep going,” he said. “Keep heading the way you were. It is two-kilometres. You will come back for me?”

  “Of course,” she lied.

  She wasn’t being malicious. The man had helped her, but he would be dead within ten to twenty-minutes. There was no point in telling him so. She was about to leave when the thought of him being discovered occurred to her. If they found him, pressed him for information, he could tell them where she was heading. She bent down and spoke slowly and clearly into his ear.

  “Michael. I must end this. Helena will not stop looking for us. I am going to double back around the farmhouse and kill her. I have Jurgen’s gun, she won’t expect me to go back.” She tucked the pistol into her back pocket and took the keys out. She looked at the keys, quickly worked out which one was for the car and which looked like house keys and she slipped the car key off the bunch. “Take these Michael. Keep them safe. I will be back for you soon. You are going to be okay.” She pressed the bunch of keys into his hand and stood up. She took a pace, then stopped and turned around. “Thank you, Michael,” she said with genuine emotion in her voice. “Thank you for getting me out…”

  52

  Neil Ramsay gratefully accepted the coffee and paced over to the window. His own window afforded glimpses of Table Mountain, while Marnie’s looked over the choppy blue-green waters of the Atlantic Ocean. He couldn’t decide which view was better, but as he sipped the milky coffee and mulled it over, he decided he could watch the Atlantic from his usual holiday retreat in Cornwall but would probably never see the beauty of a sunrise over the prodigious landmark again.

  Rashid perched on the edge of Marnie’s hastily made king-sized bed and sipped his breakfast tea. “Nice view, isn’t it?” he said to Ramsay’s back.

  “Not bad,” he said. “I’m surprised you noticed it.”

  Marnie had powered up her laptop, purchased their tickets and had already been briefed by the technician at GCHQ. She glanced up at Ramsay, then shared a glance at Rashid.

  “Anything I should know?” Ramsay asked, his back still turned on them, the rising sun casting a golden hue across the surface of the water in front of him.

  “The account used to pay Botha was set up in the Channel Islands, but the money made its way to it via Luxemburg and Switzerland,” said Marnie.

  “Not that,” Ramsay said curtly. He sipped some more coffee and turned around. “I’m referring to the poorly-made bed, Rashid still wearing the same clothes he wore last night.”

  “I was sleeping, then threw the bed together when Rashid knocked!”

  “Yeah, and I couldn’t sleep, thought I’d come around and see what was happening.”

  “And the clothes?”

  “I’m a grubby sod.” Rashid shrugged. “Hey, I’m travelling light.”

  “And I’m engaged!” Marnie protested indignantly.

  Ramsay held up his hands in mock surrender. “Okay,” he conceded. “I was mistaken. Just doesn’t help things, people getting together in the service. There’s too much at stake. Pillow talk for one thing, conflicts of interest for another,” he paused. “Just look at King. He’s storming around Europe taking out mafia brotherhoods. He wouldn’t be doing that if he was not emotionally involved with Caroline.”

  “Brotherhoods?” Rashid asked.

  Ramsay took out his phone and thumbed to a text. “This was sent in the night, from Mereweather,” he paused, before reading out the name in his best Italian accent. “Monteverdi Marittimo,” he said. “Some mountain town in Tuscany, Italy. An Italian mafioso called Luca Fortez was hit at his home, his family threatened. He was a real piece of work. Took down other mafia families, moved in on their assets. A cold, vicious bastard, by all accounts.”

  Rashid shrugged. “Good. The world is a safer place. Or at least Italy will be.”

  Ramsay nodded. “No doubt. But it doesn’t end there. A deal was being struck between Luca Fortez and a group of Russian gangsters, or Bratva. The Russian boss was a man called Nikolai. Not sure it it’s a Christian name or his surname, but he was an even bigger piece of work. He wound up dead as well. The police suspected the deal went wrong, but I have it on good authority that it was merely made to look that way.”

  “Whose authority?” Rashid asked.

  “We have an open line of communication with Interpol. They are working with Italian intelligence, their internal intelligence and security agency.”

  “And?” Rashid prompted.

  “This Nikolai character was in deep with Sergeyev once. They were enforcers for the Bratva. They worked along the Black Sea resorts at the same time Helena Milankovitch was there.”

  “Coincidence,” Rashid countered. “All these Russian shits know each other. And they move on each other’s territory all the time. They’re backstabbers. Just because they are both dead, it doesn’t mean King had anything to do with it. It’s a dangerous lifestyle.”

  “CCTV showed King was there.”

  “Where?”

  “This Monteverdi place.”

  “So?”

  “So, the man was there.”

  Rashid shrugged. “He was there, big deal! A lot of people would have been there. It’s Tuscany. It’s a popular tourist spot. Half the middle-classes go there to drink prosecco and become cultured twats for a weekend. See some shitty leaning tower and reflect how good it is that the all the chavs still go to the Costas.”

  “You’re a loyal friend.”

  “Only type of friend in my book,” Rashid said, glaring at him. “Unless they have footage of King popping some guy in the head, deny it and move on.”

  “Now, look here…”

  “Deny it!” Rashid shouted, interrupting him. “And move on… Caroline is in trouble and King is working the angles, the only way he knows how. He’s buying her time.”

  “And we’re looking for Helena. To find Caroline,” Ramsay protested. “Find Helena, find Caroline. That was your input, I’ll remind you!”

  “Stop!” Marnie shouted. She stood up and walked over, hovering between them. “Let’s take a moment. We have her secret bank account. We have traceability, a link that she paid a South African government agent to set up his colleague and organise a hit. In doing so, he endangered a British government agent. But what use is all that? Botha is dead. There’s no material witnesses and nobody to prosecute. The South African’s aren’t going to come forward because they passed up one of their own. Had us do the dirty work in return for questioning him and gaining access to his computer. This investigation has dried up. We need to conc
entrate on location. And we have that with this place in Georgia. A location where Helena’s laptop has been recently.”

  Ramsay considered this for a moment. He placed his coffee cup down on the table and looked at Rashid. “Have you heard from King?”

  “No,” he lied.

  “And do you think Georgia is the next logical step?”

  Rashid nodded. “I do. We know Helena was in Sweden, and we know that King went there, as instructed in the letter. But we don’t know what happened in Georgia, or how important it is, but if the laptop was there, the IP address used, then we need to check it out.”

  Ramsay turned to Marnie. “All right then, cancel the tickets to Stockholm. Get us on the next flight you can find to Tbilisi. Unless there’s somewhere closer?” he paused thoughtfully, looking at his watch. “Okay. Let’s meet downstairs for breakfast in half an hour. That will give you enough time to get some tickets booked. I’ll check in with Thames House, let Simon Mereweather know what our next line in investigation is.” He walked to the door, let himself out as Rashid finished his cup of tea.

  Rashid drained the remnants, placed his cup down on the table and smiled. “Close?”

  “Close.”

  “Well, I’m glad he went for Georgia,” he said.

  “It would have been awkward telling him I’d already bought them,” she smiled. “God, I was worried, began to wish I hadn’t listened to you.”

  “I’m glad you did.”

  She walked over to him, stood barely half a pace away. “Well, you were extremely persuasive…”

  Rashid moved in close, bent down and kissed her. She responded, her tongue slipping inside his mouth, both searching. She pulled away first. “Oh god,” she said. “You’ve made me cheat on my fiancé!”

  “I haven’t made you do anything. You wanted to. You just didn’t know it until last night.”

  Marnie sighed and nodded. “Neil said half an hour,” she said. “And I’ve already bought three tickets to Tbilisi.”

  Rashid wrapped his hands around her and guided her to the bed. He gave her a firm shove and she fell backwards and giggled. “More than enough time,” he smiled. “For me, that is.”

  “Great, just what every girl wants to hear…”

  53

  With no time difference between Sweden and France King arrived in Bordeaux International airport at a little after midnight. He cleared passport control quickly, and with just a carry-on leather overnight bag, he was through the airport and at the Hertz car hire desk within twenty-minutes of touching down.

  He hadn’t slept on the flight, couldn’t remember the last time he had. He was tired but was comfortable driving the two-and-a-half-hour drive, stopping at a service station and truck stop for a pot of tea and some pastries just outside of Bayonne. Fuelled and quenched, he drove the Renault hire car to the furthest and quietest part of the car park, switched off, reclined the seat and fell asleep almost instantly.

  He hadn’t slept well, waking each time a large articulated lorry activated its airbrakes manoeuvring at slow speeds at the fuel stop. But he had been tired, dropping back off to sleep almost as quickly as he had awoken. At seven he drove back to the service station and washed quickly in the filthy toilets, grabbing a cup of tea to go on his way out. He stopped at the tobacco kiosk and bought a gas lighter and a medium-sized flick-knife. He pocketed both. They were useful tools to have, although he hoped he wouldn’t need them. He only had around five miles to travel and figured that he would be early enough to catch her, but not too early as to descend upon her at an unsociable hour and risk finding her uncooperative at the intrusion. That was if she was still around, hadn’t been found or disappeared.

  King parked the car just down from the chalet. He watched, waited for a sign she was there. The BMW was parked on the driveway, but it was in a different position to when he had left it. Anna Sergeyev had used the vehicle, even if she had moved elsewhere. She had said she had funds, enough to live on, and King had told her the chalet was hers for up to two-weeks. That seemed so long ago now, but it had only been just over a week. He glanced at himself in the rear-view mirror. He was gaunt and drawn, his eye sockets dark. He had not taken care of himself after Caroline had been taken. He imagined he’d lost a stone or more from not eating properly. He was a big man, but still hadn’t carried enough flesh to take such dramatic weight loss. It was more than that though, weeks of poor sleep had taken its toll too. He looked hollowed out, and his dark close-cropped hair now carried more salt than pepper at the sides.

  King stepped out of the car. He checked the flick-knife in his pocket, relaxed a little. A good blade was as good as a small pistol up close. In many cases, he thought he could do more damage with a knife than a small calibre pistol ever would. He hoped he wouldn’t need to put the theory to the test.

  The house stood in its own grounds of about half an acre. There was a pool to the rear and the grounds were largely turned to lawn with shrubs and rockeries and a bank of four-foot-high bushes along the rear of the property separating it from farmland in the form of meadows. To the front of the property, a narrow road cut through the fields and a low wire fence with rustic wooden posts served as a barrier but had seen better days. From what King could make out, the grass was now far too long for grazing and would most likely be turned to hay or silage before long. Which meant that this area would not have been looked in on by the landowners for weeks. The house was about as private as it could get.

  King hovered around the entrance and checked over the gardens. There were no signs of anyone. As he looked at the house, scanned over the windows, he saw nothing. He slipped over the stone garden wall and walked along the side of the house. He saw the pool, noticed swimwear hanging on the line. He thought about testing them to see if they were wet or dry, but it was early and there was dew on the grass and it would tell him nothing. If they had been used this morning, then they would be wet. If they had been left out all night, he imagined they would be in the same state. He continued but paused after a few steps as his senses caught both smell and sound at once. He could smell the aroma of coffee, hear the faintest clink of china. He knew that there was an alcove with a firepit-come-barbeque in the lee of the building, the perfect place to catch the morning sun. As he rounded the corner, he saw Anna Sergeyev sipping coffee, clad only in the skimpiest of beach wraps. He could see her body, the outline of her nipples against the damp cotton. He averted his eyes as he glimpsed lower, catching everything she had to bare. Anna looked up, stunned for a moment, but visibly relaxed. She did nothing to cover herself, adjust the position she was seated in. King was sure she made a point of it.

  “I didn’t think I would see you again,” she said. “My husband’s murderer, my saviour…”

  “I needed to talk.”

  “Talk, talk, talk,” she said. “And there was I thinking you were a man of action.”

  King pulled out a chair and sat down. It changed his view, as well as the dynamic. “I need to ask you some questions about…”

  “Helena!” she interrupted. “Always about Helena.”

  “Why do you say it like that?”

  “It was always about her,” she said. “The most popular, the most sought after. I was a whore. I am not ashamed, because I was both popular and good at it, and in turn, that kept me alive. It kept me in better places, with less grimy men. Men who tipped and treated me and after they did what they did, cared enough to call again. If I was not so good at it, then I would have spent my life in a hovel chained to a bed and thrown scraps. Worse than a dog.”

  “I’m sorry,” King said awkwardly.

  “Don’t be. I met my husband doing such work. He gave me a wonderful daughter, and he was kind to me. He was an evil man, a beast and a killer. He could be cruel. But not with me, nor our daughter. He kept me a prisoner, this is true, but it was an incarceration of luxury and privilege.” Anna sipped some coffee, placed the cup down thoughtfully and looked at King. “Helena was the one every man wanted, my
husband included. But she was too spirited to control. She brought many problems to my husband, to the men he worked with.”

  “Nikolai? Romanovitch?”

  “Oh, you’ve done your homework,” she said sardonically. “And don’t forget Russia’s esteemed leader! Do you know about him?”

  King nodded. “I do. Or at least, I have been told.”

  “But do you believe it?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Well, be damned sure. Only in Russia can a murderer and rapist, a former Bratva piece of scum become president. He is seen as a man of the people because he came from a poor background, served in the military for three years, just a foot soldier but he did his service. And then he held roles in construction, was instrumental in large developments and connecting Russia through its road networks. He was behind the trans-continental road development, theoretically connecting Europe to America via Siberia and an ice road across the Bering Sea in winter.”

  King had heard of the project, even thought it would be a fantastic thing to do when he finally left playing cowboys and Indians behind. “And nothing ever comes up of his past, working in the Bratva?”

  “He has paid off, bribed or killed all those who would do him harm.”

  “Except Helena.”

  “I think he thought she was a woman who would never tell of her past. Married to one of the wealthiest men in the world, making Britain her home, a changed woman. A professional business woman with her own clothing line, a woman who courted the press and frequently went to openings and official engagements. She was hardly going to start talking about working as a whore in her homeland.”

  King nodded. In a way, it made sense. Secrets relied upon staying that way only by two people’s silence. The Russian president obviously felt that there was a status quo between them, but what he wouldn’t have counted on was Helena’s fall from grace. She had resumed her affair with her former lover, used his exceptionally specialised military skills as a way of getting out of her relationship with her billionaire husband, and keep what assets she would have been entitled to. She had deceived, connived and conspired with others to make her husband’s death look like a murder, but as part of a terrorist organization’s bigger plan. But she had been caught, by chance, as King had investigated the Home Secretary, a silent partner in her husband’s company. Misappropriation of government funds, an undeclared conflict of interest had sparked King’s investigation, but had crossed paths along the way. Helena had been found out by dumb luck. Now, she was discredited, a wanted criminal and her assets had been seized. She would have known this at once, severed all links with her current life and looked at how to come out on top. She knew all about the Bratva, knew the world they lived in. And at the same time as she built an empire, she sought revenge for what they had done.