Candleburn (15 page)

“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.

Fending
off blows and bites from the Russian, Zain fell against the framed paintings on the wall, bringing them to the ground.

“Get
upstairs,” Anatoly called. “Grab the kids.”

More
beatings.

Zain
kneed Anatoly in the groin as they rolled on the floor. He could see Alex being pulled into the house semi-conscious by her hair. Before he could help her, he dodged another sweeping bat swing and ran towards the lounge.

“A
weapon, a weapon,” he thought.

Vases,
statues, cushions.

Anything
he could find he threw at his pursuer.

A
scream.

Zain
instinctively turned his head in time to see the maid’s body fall down the centre of the stairwell and land on the hall chequerboard tiles with a wallop.

He
didn’t even see the baseball bat that cracked across the side of his skull.

“Take
them to the van,” Anatoly said, cradling his injured pistol hand. “And if these two give you any more trouble – shoot the kids first.”

***

The Audi soared through the chain-link fence and skidded as Blake spun onto the road. He revved the car back up to top speed and streaked onto the Al Khail bypass. This road was still under construction and police cameras had yet to be installed.

That
occasionally meant there were patrol cars with human speed traps, but he decided to chance it. Minutes later and he turned off the motorway and reverted to the side roads.

A
few twists and the Audi entered the labyrinthine warren of Dubai’s main industrial park.

The
Al Quoz area had been designed by a fiendish genius. There were perhaps twenty entrances that allowed cars in. There were perhaps only three ways out. At first thought, driving through the warren seemed a bad idea but Blake decided that since it was deserted after dark, it would prove a useful place to regroup.

Al
Quoz was notorious, not only for being a maze, but also for having extremely poor street lighting at night. Blake whipped the car past three lockups and down a quiet back alley.

He
stopped and switched off the engine.

He
pulled out his torch, grabbed his phone and ran to the back of the car.

Opening
the boot, he pulled out his work issue laptop.

“Come
on, come on,” he thought as it slowly booted.

A
minute passed.

He
plugged his phone into the computer.

More
time.

“No
pressure,” he muttered. “Man and cat found murdered on Dubai industrial estate in pitch darkness.”

A
car drove slowly past.

Blake
instinctively hid his torch beneath his fingers.

“Shitting
hell.”

The
car moved on.

His
heart was in his throat.

He
exhaled.

The
computer acknowledged he’d jacked his phone in.

Blake
clicked a few buttons and backed up all his numbers. He took his SIM card out and snapped it in two. He then removed the battery and hurled it onto the roof of a nearby two-storey industrial unit.

Circling
the Audi, he checked the front of the car for damage.

Blake
ran the torch back and forth. The bonnet was scraped badly. There were dents in the grill. A cruel gash ran along the passenger-side door showing naked silver through the dark-red paint. Crucially, the lights weren’t smashed. Blake wouldn’t be getting his deposit back from the leasing company but also he wouldn’t be stopped simply for driving the streets in her.

He
tapped the aluminium roof lightly.

“Good
girl,” he said. “Got to love a solid bit of German engineering.”

Still,
he’d need a change of wheels sooner rather than later. There was no satellite tracking device in the vehicle but he was unsure as to the capabilities of his pursuers. For all he knew, they could tap into the police camera network, or even the Road Traffic Authority’s automatic street-toll payment system.

“Paranoid,
much?” Blake whispered as he opened the boot once more and fumbled through his holdall.

He
removed a complete change of clothes and the tiny jerry can of spare fuel he kept for emergencies.

Moving
back into the darkness he stripped off everything he wore, including his socks and underpants. He put the clothes he took off in a pile at the side of the alley as he donned each new article. He didn’t believe he had a tracking device about his person but an old adage from his first boss at Rubicon came into his mind as he upended the fuel can over his old outfit.

“You
can say one thing about paranoid people in this line of work,” he said, slipping a fresh pair of shoes on. “They tend to live longer.”

Blake
flicked a match at the pile and watched it go up in flames.

“Good
bye old life.”

The
petrol-fuelled fire burned quickly, the orange blaze soon becoming too hot to stand near.

“Sod
it. I wasn’t enjoying working here much anyway.”

Blake
got back in the Audi and started her up.