The Payback (26 page)

For a split second she was hit by indecision. If she made a break for it, it would be tantamount to admitting that she’d had a part in the murders in the house, and she’d be a fugitive in a foreign land. She might even end up with a bullet in the back. But if she stayed, there was no guarantee either that she’d be safe. She didn’t like the way these two had suddenly turned up here in the middle of nowhere. It was too coincidental.

Which meant they were probably in league with the killers.

The older one took her arm. ‘Turn round,’ he demanded.

‘Run, Tina, for God’s sake!’ she heard Milne cry, followed by the sound of him being struck hard.

She’d taken some kickboxing classes at the police gym the previous year – part of an obsession she’d developed for fitness that she knew bordered on the unhealthy. But it served her well now because she caught her captor with a ferocious uppercut that sent him reeling.

She turned and darted across the road, launching herself into the undergrowth, and running through it as fast as she could, no idea where she was going, ignoring the way the bushes and branches slashed at her face, just trying to put as much distance between herself and the house as possible.

She got about fifty yards before she ran into a ditch, lost her footing, and fell forward into a thick puddle of foul-smelling mud, unleashing a swarm of insects. Exhausted, she lay where she’d fallen, slowly getting her breathing back under control. She heard the police patrol car drive away, and wondered what would become of Milne. He’d saved her life tonight. At least once. Probably twice. When the big Russian bastard had grabbed her and pushed the gun against her head, she’d genuinely thought that was it. She remembered the way he’d violated her home three days earlier and half a world away, and now, at his mercy again, the hatred and rage had coursed through her. She’d wanted Milne to kill him.

And he had. He’d put a bullet between her tormentor’s eyes. Without batting an eyelid. That took guts. Most men, virtually all men, would have dropped the weapon. He hadn’t. It made her respect him. And now he was being taken away, either to prison or to his death, and she would never have the opportunity to thank him for what he’d done.

She found the mobile in her pocket, considered calling Mike Bolt back in England, and getting him to raise the alarm. But what could she say that could possibly help Milne? Nothing. He
was finished either way. Perhaps death was even preferable. Calling Mike would only be a fast-track way of losing her career and ending up in a Filipino prison for aiding an offender.

But the fact that she’d left him at the mercy of those two cops hurt. ‘There’s nothing more you could have done,’ she told herself. ‘And anyway, remember, he deserves all that’s coming to him.’

But she was no longer sure she believed it.

One of the many mosquitoes buzzing round landed on Tina’s face, and she slapped it away angrily.

And then heard a twig crack behind her.

She froze, palm still held against her cheek.

There was the sound of movement in the undergrowth – bushes being steadily pushed aside. Getting closer.

Tina pressed herself deeper into the mud, trying to work out whether it was best to break cover or stay where she was. She was partly concealed by a large fern, but her clothing – a white T-shirt and khaki shorts – would surely stand out in the darkness.

She held her breath, her whole body tense, and ever so slowly turned her head.

Two black work boots, scuffed at the tips, filled her vision, just a few feet from her elbow. The person they belonged to wasn’t moving. For all she knew, he could be staring down at her right now, ready to pull the trigger, leaving her to die here in a lonely, dirty backwater thousands of miles from home. Tina had to use all her willpower not to make a grab for his legs, or jump up and run. Instead, she stayed exactly where she was, still not breathing, listening to the thump-thump-thump of her heart, wondering for how long she could stay like this.

The figure didn’t move.

She counted to five in her head, wondering what the hell he was
doing. Wondering, too, how long she could continue to hold her breath.

And then he took a step forward, brushing the fern aside, and his boot landed in the mud, inches from her face. She heard him curse quietly under his breath and slap away a mosquito, recognizing the voice as belonging to the other, smaller man who’d tried to kill her back in England, and who’d almost certainly been the one who’d murdered Nick.

Anger suddenly overcame fear, and before she could stop herself, Tina had grabbed one of his legs with both hands and launched herself upwards, completely upending him.

He fell on his side into the mud, clearly shocked by her sudden attack, but already bringing his gun round to fire at her. He was wearing a balaclava, but Tina recognized the blue eyes beneath. It was definitely the man who’d tried to drown her in her bath.

She was quick, jumping on top of him, knees first, as he rolled over on to his back, and winding him. She grabbed the gun arm with one hand, shoving it away, then snatched up a handful of mud and shoved it into his face, trying to rub it into his eyes.

But he was quick too. And strong. With a single grunt of exertion, he flipped his body up, knocking her off him. She kept hold of his gun hand, though, and lashed out with her legs, as they rolled in the mud, fighting savagely. But he still had the gun, and he was stronger than her. Her only advantage was the fact that he’d been temporarily blinded by the mud. But he’d already rolled on top of her, and was wrestling the gun free, using touch rather than sight to fight this battle.

Tina knew she’d made a mistake taking him on but she still had one free hand and she used it to deliver a single rapid uppercut to his jaw. It wasn’t the best of shots but it knocked him off her, and she used the split second it afforded her to scramble away from
him, roll through the undergrowth, and jump to her feet, keeping low.

A shot rang out, the sound partly muffled by the suppressor. It passed close, but Tina kept on running, relying on the fact that with mud in his eyes and darkness all around it was going to be hard for him to hit her. Another shot rang out, but this time it sounded further away.

Finally she reached the road. In the absence of any street or house lighting it was impossible to tell whether or not it was the one they’d parked on, but there wasn’t any time to hang around trying to work it out. She tried to get her bearings, made a guess in which direction the car was, and started running along the road in that direction, conscious of the sound of her footfalls on the uneven tarmac as she scanned the trees on either side for any sign of her assailant or the car he’d driven here in.

And then, thank God, the track up which she and Milne had parked barely half an hour earlier appeared, and she saw the vague blue glint of the rental car’s paintwork, partly obscured by the palm tree.

Pulling the keys from her pocket, she raced up to the driver’s door and yanked it open. Having seen far too many scary films in her time, she had a quick look in the back, saw it was empty, then got inside. Panting heavily from her exertions, she started the engine and drove slowly on to the road, without turning on the lights. She looked both ways, saw no one, and accelerated away in the direction of Manila, putting her foot down and keeping her head low, knowing her assailant was still in the vicinity, and wanting to present as small a target as possible.

The side window exploded inwards, showering her with glass, and she screamed as the car momentarily veered out of control. She hit the verge and narrowly missed a tree before
righting the wheel and stealing a look in her rear-view mirror.

He was out in the road now, a grim silhouette with gun outstretched, and as she watched, a flame shot out of the barrel and glass shattered in the back window. The bullet ricocheted through the car, flying out of the top corner of the windscreen, and Tina floored the accelerator, bent down so low in the seat now that she could barely see over the wheel.

The car veered off the road on to the scrub and hit branches and bushes, even an ancient road sign, before she managed to pull it back on to the tarmac, her speed hitting eighty km/h as she slammed into a pothole and negotiated a bend in the road.

And at that moment, as the man who’d tried and failed to kill her twice now was swallowed up by the darkness behind, she felt a burst of elation which was better than any drug, even the booze. She might have been alone and hunted in a foreign land, but once again she’d made it.

Right then, nothing else mattered.

Sitting in the back of the police car, it didn’t take me long to work out what the plan had been. When we turned up at the house, I was supposed to get shot with the police-issue revolver that one of our assailants had been firing at me. That way it would look like the police had disturbed me, a murderous fugitive, in the midst of robbing the place, having first killed its occupants, and gunned me down. I guessed that they were supposed to get Tina out of there alive, or at least remove her body afterwards, since her presence in the house would have been harder to explain. It would be easy enough in a country like this to make her disappear, and that would have been that. Job done. And us out of Paul Wise’s hair.

Thankfully, Tina had escaped – or at least I hoped she had. My situation, however, was far more precarious. The cops who’d cuffed and bundled me into the car had told me that I was under arrest, but I knew I wasn’t. These guys were going to kill me, there was no doubt about that. In the Philippines, the hunt for justice simply isn’t carried out with the same enthusiasm you and I are used to in the west. Corners get cut. Cops get corrupted. People die.

The car moved slowly along pitch-black back roads, the older guy driving while Frogface watched me from behind the steel grille separating us, his eyes blank and cold, until eventually he got bored and started talking to his colleague in Tagalog.

I was exhausted from my earlier exertions, and now carrying an injured shoulder – though thankfully it was a flesh wound and nowhere near as bad as it could have been. But I knew I had to move fast. The doors were locked from the inside so my options were limited. At least the cuffs they’d placed on me were the old-fashioned metal ones with the hand-restraints linked by a short chain, which were the easiest to pick. The driver had also made a big mistake. By being in too much of a hurry to search me properly, he’d missed the small Swiss Army knife in my front left pocket that I was in the habit of carrying round with me.

The knife, I realized, was my one and only chance of getting out of here in one piece, and I experienced a sudden wave of panic – the first I’d had for a few years, since being held in that stuffy little room at Phnom Penh Airport – at the thought that this could finally be it. The kind of death I’d inflicted on too many others.

I fought the panic down hard. I hadn’t survived all these years by folding in the face of danger.

Trying to move as slowly as possible, I manoeuvred myself round so I could reach into the pocket. As my fingers slipped inside, I held my breath. I was sitting at an odd angle. If either of the cops turned round, I was finished. But as my fingers found the knife, they continued to talk quietly in the front.

I slipped it out and hid it behind my back, turning back round in the seat just as the driver glanced at me in the rear-view mirror. He watched me suspiciously for a couple of seconds before saying something to Frogface, who nodded and said something back. I recognized one of the words he used.
Patayan
. It meant ‘killing’,
and Frogface had turned my way when he said it, confirming what I already knew.

A few seconds later the car pulled off the road and headed down a narrow potholed track. Foliage brushed against the windows as it closed in on us, and I got the idea we were nearing our destination. Feeling round behind my back, I flicked open the knife’s corkscrew and removed the tiny screwdriver that was wound through it. Now it was a matter of pushing the end between the notches on the swinging part of the cuff and the ratchet on the other, and shimmying them open. But because I’d been cuffed with my palms outwards, as was standard police practice, it was no easy task, particularly when bumping round in the back of a car.

My heart was beating like a hammer and my wrists ached from the effort of trying to force them into a position they weren’t used to, while I tried to keep my face as impassive as possible. The driver kept checking me in the rear-view mirror, and I could see the tension in his eyes as he psyched himself up for what he was about to do. Killing someone in cold blood’s never easy, regardless of what it looks like in the movies. It’s still the final taboo, and even if you’re used to it, as I was, it takes a huge amount of willpower to pull the trigger. The driver, I was pretty sure, wasn’t used to it.

The car slowed as we reached a break in the trees and I saw that we’d driven into a clearing. The sound of insects filled the air, and I could smell stagnant water.

I had to get this damn screwdriver into the hole. If I didn’t, in the next minute I’d be dead.

Slowly. Slowly
.

I shut out every thought, every sound, concentrating everything on picking the lock.

The car stopped and they both got out, Frogface clutching his shotgun. I felt the panic come again in an intense wave as Frogface opened the rear passenger door, looking round at the same time to check that there weren’t any witnesses about. He smiled down at me. He was the man who was going to pull the trigger, and I knew by looking into those dead eyes that he’d be able to do it.