One Dead Witness (26 page)

Meanwhile, the little Asian shopkeeper discovered he had a
tiger by the tail.

Claire spat horribly into his face. ‘I’ve got AIDS, you
bastard. Now you have!’

She wrenched herself free from his grasp. He lunged gamefully
after her again. But, as Danny Furness had discovered, catching
Claire Lilton was no easy matter.

She side-stepped him and picked up the charity box from the
counter - which was shaped like a rocket - and swung round, holding
it with both hands, rather like the movement an athlete makes when
throwing the hammer. She did not let go of it, though. Building up
force with momentum, she crashed it into the side of his
head.

The box burst open spectacularly, sending a shower of copper
coins into the air. More importantly, however, it felled the
shopkeeper and gouged a deep gash into his head which spurted
blood.

Claire hoisted the sports bag back onto her shoulder and dived
out of the shop.

By the time the bloody-faced Asian looked out of the door, she
had disappeared.

His Urdu was unrepeatable.

‘
Do you enjoy your work?’ Steve Kruger asked the bodyguard to
his immediate right.

There was no response. The guy continued to look dead
ahead.

All five men were now on the first-floor level, walking down
the middle of the concourse past the shops. No one took any notice
of them. They were real professionals, the type of people who,
somehow, never seemed to draw attention to themselves. A skill in
itself. They simply made it look as though they were out for a
stroll. All five of them, Kruger included.

Kruger looked at the members of the public close by. He
acknowledged that what Bussola had said was true. If he did
anything foolish at this stage, he would die, possibly others too,
and these guys would simply dematerialise.

And as much as Kruger didn’t want to die, he didn’t want
others to be killed because of him.

Even the security cameras, which he knew were all around,
wouldn’t be much use to him. They would never finger these
bastards.

‘
How about you?’ Kruger enquired of the man to his
left.

‘
Speak once more and you get it here and now,’ he said through
the side of his mouth.

‘
Gotcha.’

They walked past the Disney Store.

‘
He’s gotta be here somewhere,’ Myrna Rosza gabbled agitatedly.
She scanned the bank of TV monitors in front of her whilst the
operator casually, but swiftly, clicked from shot to shot. ‘He’s
gotta be here,’ she repeated desperately. She glared at Mark
Tapperman. ‘This is your fault.’

The big Lieutenant shrank away from her eyes. He gave a
pathetic shrug. ‘He might not be here,’ he said weakly.

‘
Don’t kid yourself.’ Myrna was caustic. ‘Once he gets an idea
into his stubborn head. . .’

‘
You sound like you care about him.’

‘
I do - he pays my wages.’ She returned her attention to the
screens. ‘Now, where the hell is he?’

They were in the security control area of the airport, in the
CCTV room, peering over the shoulder of the operator who flicked
through the images received from all over MIA.

‘
There!’ Myrna almost shouted, pointing to a screen. ‘Focus in
there!’

The operator did as instructed.

‘
Shit,’ she said with disappointment as the high powered lens
zoomed in. It wasn’t Kruger.

The frustration she was feeling could have been sliced open
with a breadknife. Ever since Tapperman had called her at home with
an hysterical edge to his voice and. explained what had happened,
Myrna had been on a high.

Suppose Kruger
had
gone storming to the airport? Suppose he’d got
himself involved in a situation he couldn’t handle? Suppose he was
already dead meat?

Myrna had initially hung up on Tapperman and phoned Kruger. No
reply. She called Tapperman again and instructed him to get a SWAT
squad to the airport.

He had guffawed. ‘Just on the off-chance -
impossible!’

‘
At least get some cops up there.’

‘
Right. And do you know how many cops are on-duty at this
moment in Miami as we speak?’

‘
No.’

‘
Well, I ain’t gonna tell you. Suffice to say the public thinks
there’s hundreds. I’d be lucky to scrape a dozen unoccupied
officers together. No resources, babe. Usual story.’

‘
Then you’d better get yourself there. I’ll see you at the
meeting point in twenty minutes.’ And she slammed the phone down
without waiting for a response.

Myrna dressed in seconds. Tracksuit, trainers, her pistol
around her shoulder. She kissed her sleeping husband and, grabbing
her cell-tel on the way out, ran to her car. She constantly rang
Kruger’s home and mobile numbers as she drove at warp factor six to
the airport.

There was no reply.

She and Tapperman came together as arranged and using his
badge and contacts, got into the CCTV room, where they had been
ever since.

Myrna rubbed her eyes. She had been having trouble sleeping,
not least because she had cheated on her husband not many hours
before and could not get her mind off it. She had secretly, and
sometimes not so secretly, been attracted to Kruger ever since she
began working for him. Personal and professional considerations and
responsibilities ensured it never went further than banter or mild
flirtation. The previous couple of days had put an end to those
issues and it had been an absolute necessity for her to finish up
in Kruger’s bed. She had truly believed she could take it for what
it was, keep it as a one-off, go back to equilibrium.

Instead she found herself completely disorientated. She
couldn’t get Kruger out of her head, nor the memory of him out of
her body.

She had been fully awake, if exhausted, when Tapperman rang,
and for a while after, the adrenaline flowed. Now, it was ebbing in
despair.

Standing there, in front of the bank of TV screens, she had to
admit to herself that she loved Steve, had done so for longer than
she cared to recall, and the prospect of not seeing him again
caused her to panic.

A little squeak escaped from her lips. Tapperman shot her a
quick glance.

Then; ‘There he is!’ Tapperman proclaimed confidently. He
rapped the appropriate monitor with his knuckles. The camera shot
in, focused. Myrna’s heart shuddered so hard in her chest she
nearly fell over.

The screen showed Kruger, surrounded by four tough looking
guys, stepping through a sliding door. There was an anxious
expression on his face, as well as an injury of some sort which
Tapperman could not define.

‘
Where the hell’s that location?’ he demanded.

Kruger, his four friends and a couple of other people were
standing by a bank of elevators which would take them to the
multi-storey parking lot.

The elevator arrived, the doors opened. A flood of people
disgorged and dissipated. Kruger and the others stepped inside the
large elevator, constructed to carry about twenty people plus
luggage. A woman turned to him. ‘Which level?’

‘
The top, please.’

She pressed her own selection, then his.

Just before the doors eased shut, a big hand stopped the
process and forced the doors to re-open.

Two extra people stepped in. A man and a woman ... a couple,
bickering about something, like they’d been together too many
years.

‘
C’mon, you go damned bitch, we’re holdin’ people up
here.’

‘
You stop bad-mouthin’ me, you asshole,’ the woman replied,
apparently fuming with anger. ‘You ain’t done nothin’ but since we
arrived.’

‘
Well, you deserve it, you lazy slut,’ the man said. To the
rest of the people in the elevator he said, ‘’Scuse us.’ He yanked
the woman between Kruger and the bodyguard to his left. ‘We’ll
carry this on back here.’

Kruger’s expression did not change. His eyes showed no flicker
of recognition. But inside, his stomach lurched. The hairs on the
nape of his neck prickled with excitement. He hoped the guys behind
him weren’t staring at his neck, otherwise the game would have been
given away.

The doors closed. The elevator rose smoothly, stopping at
various levels, allowing people to step out. No one else got
in.

Kruger heard snatches of the couple’s argument which had been
reduced in volume. It was clear there was a major domestic going
on.

‘
You’ll be tellin’ me next it’s healed up,’ the man hissed. ‘I
ain’t had it for weeks.’

‘
You don’t deserve it, the way you treat me.’

‘
Nag, nag, nag,’ the man said spitefully.

‘
An’ you do nothin’, nothin’, nothin’.’

Eventually the only people remaining in the tin box were
Kruger, his four buddies and the warring couple, all obviously
destined for the top level.

When the elevator arrived, the doors slid open.

Kruger was about to step out when one of his captors grabbed
his elbow and held him back. Another said to the couple, ‘After
you.’

‘
At last,’ the woman said, ‘a gentleman.’ She smiled
maliciously at her partner.

‘
Bitch,’ hissed the man, shouldering his way out, pushing her
ahead. They turned right.

Kruger got a shove in the ribs and stumbled out to the left.
From the corner of his eye he saw the couple move towards a
car.

Although they were on the top level, there was still a roof
over their heads, and like most high-rise parking, the lighting was
relatively poor.

Kruger led them towards his Chevy, parked at the very end of
the level. His mind worked furiously, trying to decide what to do,
wondering what Tapperman and Myrna, the perfect couple, had planned
... if anything.

Shit, shit, shit,
he said to himself,
trying to make a decision.

The closer he got to his car, the more certain he was he would
have to make the opening move.

Without further thought he went for it.

He stopped abruptly in his tracks. The bodyguard directly
behind him walked straight into him. The ones either side went on a
few paces.

As soon as he and the man made contact, Kruger swivelled at
the hips and in a flowing, single motion, rammed the point of his
elbow into the man’s chest, connecting with the sternum. Kruger’s
arm rose and he smashed the back of his clenched fist into the
man’s face, making a wonderful, crunching sound, like a wooden
ruler snapping.

The whole movement took less than a fraction of a
second.

Even so, fast as it was, Kruger saw that guns were already
appearing from nowhere in the hands of the remaining three team
members.

‘
Move, Steve, move!’ Tapperman bawled.

Kruger looked up, saw Tapperman and Myrna about twenty feet
behind. Tapperman’s body was fully exposed. Myrna was crouching
over the hood of a parked car. Both had weapons drawn, ready for
combat.

Kruger knew he had to keep going.

He grabbed the lapels of the nose-smashed bodyguard and swung
him round into. the gunman to his left, pushed and let go. They
mangled together with spectacular success. Using the momentum
generated by this manoeuvre, Kruger dived down between the two
nearest parked cars, into cover, out of the line of fire. Tapperman
yelled, ‘Armed police! Drop your weapons!’

The two bodyguards who were not busy turned instinctively
towards Tapperman, guns rising.

They moved instantaneously as professionals should when faced
with a situation for which they had been trained.

The two bodyguards who had been positioned to Kruger’s left
side and were therefore not affected by this startling move, spun
on their heels quicker than ice-skaters to face Tapperman and
Myrna. Their firearms were rising and aiming as they did
so.

The one who’d had his face broken by the back of Kruger’s
fist, though dazed by the blow, still had the presence of mind to
drop to his knees so he would not get in the way. The fourth one,
who’d watched Kruger disappear between the parked cars, threw
himself to the ground between the cars nearest to him. He also had
his gun ready and as soon as he hit the deck he was looking
underneath the car towards where Kruger had landed.

This particular bodyguard was certain of one thing: even if
this little task of theirs got flushed down the pan, Kruger would
still die.

That was professionalism.

Tapperman saw them swinging around at an alarming rate. He
noted the glint of firearms and did not intend to
hesitate.

As both of the bodyguards were moving at roughly the same
speed - lightning fast - there was little to choose, target-wise.
So, because Tapperman was standing on Myrna’s right-hand side, he
chose to shoot the guy on his right.