Detonator (22 page)

‘I said,
where
?’

The weapon meant nothing to her. She’d already been a milli-metre away from terminal and, with a bit of help from a gutful of dishwasher salt and sheer determination, she’d fought her way back to consciousness. Whatever else was going to rat-shit in her life, this was her reward.

‘
Where?
’ I gripped her bicep and gave her a fucking good shake. ‘
Where have they taken him?
’

She wasn’t going to let the grinding of her broken ribs steal her moment of triumph. ‘I wouldn’t tell you … even if I knew …’

A smile began to take shape on her no longer flawless features, but never made it to the finishing line.

She heard the crackle of flames at the same time as I did.

I sprang up and accelerated through the bedroom and into the corridor. Grey smoke was billowing up the stairwell from the ground floor.

I rammed the weapon back under my belt and spun back into Lyubova’s bathroom. She hadn’t moved.

I soaked a hand towel under the shower. Folded it into a triangle. Covered my mouth and nose with it and tied it around the back of my neck. Then gave another the same treatment. Wrapped it around my head like a
shemagh
.

I was vaguely aware of her watching me, but she’d had her moment. I didn’t need her to slow me down any more than she had already.

I ran through the smoke, two steps at a time. When I was halfway down the second flight, a jet of superheated propane from one of the cylinders blasted through the polythene sheeting opposite the kitchen and enveloped the space below me. The shockwave of the explosion that followed drove all the air from my lungs, lifted me off my feet and punched me against the wall.

I lay on the cold stone steps long enough to be reminded that the bit of my back which Claude had hammered with his fence post still hurt like fuck. And that I had to get moving before the rest of the propane and white spirit accelerant ignited above me as well. This might have been designed to look like an accident, but there was no way it was. I wondered whether whatever triggered it had been on a timer or detonated remotely. The van in the layby, maybe?

I hauled myself up as the smoke thickened. The far side of the hall was an inferno. I pulled one towel further down my forehead and the other up on to my cheekbones. The heat seared the strip of unprotected skin between them.

The fire began to consume the stairway. If the cylinders kicked off on the floor above, I’d be completely fucked. There were a whole lot more of them there. When they ignited, I’d have a major bleve on my hands.

I couldn’t get back to Lyubova, even if I’d wanted to.

Fuck her.

Whoever was pulling the strings was clearing up after himself. First Frank’s BG. Now his ex. It was no accident that the dogs, the security crew, the maids and whoever else had pissed off. And now I had to as well, before the emergency services arrived.

I legged it up to the landing and dived through the polythene I’d sliced on my way in. I whipped off my
shemagh
and wrapped it around the nearest propane cylinder. It sizzled like bacon fat but saved my palms from being fried long enough for me to hurl it through the nearest window.

Glass and shutter disintegrated. I clambered over the sill and on to the planking. The big hole I’d made would help fan the flames, but there was fuck-all I could do about that.

The heat was suddenly fucking outrageous up there too.

The mouth of the telescopic chute was two metres to my left. The shutter one metre beyond it burst outwards. A swirling eruption of glass and splintered wood, debris and dust. But I knew worse was to come. I vaulted over the retaining scaffolding pole while I still could, raised both arms and went into the chute feet first.

It was like one of those water slides you should never make the mistake of going down on a stag weekend in Portugal, but without the jets and the chance to level out before you hit the pool. I managed to slow myself with my boots and my arse and my elbows, and hoped that I’d land on a pile of plasterboard and insulating fibre rather than metal and slate and brick and chunks of wood with nails sticking out.

It was metal and slate and brick and chunks of wood. I couldn’t feel any nails. My right knee took most of the pressure of the fall, and my arse didn’t enjoy the experience either. I lay in a heap for a moment, counting the seconds until the boiling liquid expansion vapour explosion took out the front of the wing and everything immediately in front of it.

I took a breath or two and tested all the bits of myself I needed most right now. Then I hauled myself out of the skip and hobbled across to the van.

Three or four more windows on the upper floors at the centre of the house burst outwards as I went, showering the ground with razor-sharp shards, which sparkled like diamonds in the evening sunlight. Lyubova would probably have liked that. I didn’t look up. I needed to get out of range, double quick.

Two more went, sucking in air to feed the fire and superheat the propane.

I whipped out the Sphinx. Ripped open the driver’s door. Shoved the weapon under my thigh. Rammed the key in the ignition. The engine coughed, then died, then caught. I threw the gear stick into first, floored the accelerator pedal and sprayed gravel across the tarpaulin as I took off.

No flashing lights yet. And no sudden reappearance of the Dobermanns or their handlers.

I slowed as I approached the gates and skidded to a halt between the sensors that prompted them to open for outgoing vehicles. On went the baseball cap. Now I could hear sirens. I waited for the metal railings ahead of me to shudder and swing back.

They didn’t move a millimetre.

I felt my shoulder and jaw muscles clench as I willed them to release me. The entry and exit system might have been fucked by the fusing of the ring main, or whatever had sparked up the blaze. I’d have to get out and wrench the fuckers open.

The tone of the sirens changed as they drew nearer. I knew what that meant. It meant they were reaching the end of their journey. I gripped the pistol and was reaching for the Expert’s door handle when the gates gave a shudder. Then another. And a gap between them began to widen.

I eased the van forward and, with the pressure wave of the bleve kicking in behind me, I was out of there.

My knee throbbed as I put my foot on the gas and headed away from the sirens and the flashing lights I could now glimpse through the trees to my half-right. There was no sign of the smoker in the layby.

I didn’t want to get nailed for speeding, but needed to separate myself from the chateau, then get to Stefan as quickly as possible. I took the second left, hit the brake, then the third right, then left again.

After a couple of Ks I pulled off the road. I wasn’t in cover, but about a hundred from the nearest house, and with a fair amount of foliage close by. I dusted myself off and peeled both decals off the side panels. Then I slid back the door and chucked them into the rear toolbox.

I dug out a screwdriver and swapped the registration plates for the first of the Swiss ones. The original set went into the toolbox too. This was turning into a weapons-grade gangfuck, but I had to grip it, not lose it. The remote drive for the chateau security cameras would be well out of reach of the fire, and the first place any halfway competent investigator would look. Moving freely right now was vital, especially if the van was pinged, and I was in the frame for what Hesco and Dijani had done there.

I put the degreaser down by the partition, then extracted myself from my overalls and bundled them in too.

I glanced in the wing mirror as I rejoined the main and pointed the van north towards the beach where I’d left Stefan. Smoke spiralled into the sky from the chateau behind me. The traffic ahead pulled into the kerb to make space for the two fire engines screaming towards us.

A white and green police wagon, four up, was hot on their heels. One glance at the black combat kit worn by the lads inside it told me they were TIGRIS. They were a long way from home – the Einsatzgruppe HQ was two hundred Ks west, near Bern – but the Zürich canton cops didn’t dress like that, and they didn’t have
Sécurité Internationale
splashed across their rear wings either.

I heard the rhythmic beat of rotor blades from the south, approaching from St Gallen. The heli might have been carrying a news crew or another TIGRIS team. I’d find out soon enough.

The parking area by the lake had a lot more empty spaces now, and most of the parasols had been taken down. I pulled in a fair distance from the Polo and scanned the surrounding area. Families were being shepherded towards their wagons. Nobody seemed to be there without a good reason, and I couldn’t see anyone dressed for work talking urgently into a mobile.

I got eyes on Stefan’s deckchairs. They were empty. That was when I really started to leak sweat, even from places I didn’t know I had sweat glands. On the way, part of me had still hoped Lyubova was bluffing.

The woman in the sundress was packing up her picnic basket and yelling at her twin girls to come out of the water. They weren’t paying her the slightest bit of attention. I scanned the shoreline to the left and right of them. Stefan wasn’t anywhere in sight.

I climbed out of the cab and checked out the Polo, in case he’d got bored and decided to listen to his Pitbull album, or some other rap on the radio. He’d chucked his towel on to the passenger seat, but he wasn’t in there with it. Nor was his rucksack.

I ran down a gangway on to the stretch of turf, then on to the sand. The sun was low in the sky now, and much of the heat had gone out of it. The place wasn’t nearly as packed as it had been earlier, but bunches of locals and holidaymakers were still intent on having a good time. One or two began to point at the pillar of smoke rising into the sky behind me.

Two girls in wetsuits hopped off their windsurfers as they skimmed into the shallows. Four well-oiled teenage dudes were playing volleyball at the far end of the beach, surrounded by a small crowd of kids. Stefan wasn’t one of them.

As I turned back towards the deckchairs, the mum in the sundress finally lost her patience with the twins and heaved them both out of the water. I almost collided with her as she strode back to her basket, gripping a small female wrist in each hand. She looked up, muttering something in Schweizerdeutsch, then recognized me from earlier.

‘Have you seen my boy?’

Her angry-mum face was immediately replaced by her old smiley one. ‘You mustn’t worry. He has gone with the maid.’

‘The maid? Ah … Natasha …’

‘Very pretty girl.’

‘Did she say where to?’

She frowned. ‘She told me you would know. She said they would see you later …’

I nodded again and tried to react as if this was all part of our plan for the evening. I needed answers, but I didn’t want her – or anybody else – to go on red alert.

She obviously wasn’t buying it. ‘Everything is OK, isn’t it?’

‘Sure. She just called.’ I paused. ‘Thanks for looking out for him.’

She shrugged. ‘I’m a mother. That’s what we do. She was way over there …’ She pointed towards the volleyball game. ‘Then he looked up from his book and spotted her. He waved and ran over. That’s why I didn’t worry. He was very excited.’

‘He likes her. She taught him to swim.’

I tried not to let the smile slide off my face, but my chat with Stefan about trust kept ringing in my ears, and that didn’t help. Next time I saw him I’d tell him the truth. You can’t trust any fucker. Not even nice-looking ones who once taught you how to keep your head above the water.

‘You didn’t see which car they were in, did you?’

She shook her head.

‘Or who she was with? Her boyfriend, maybe?’

‘I think there was a man.’ She gestured vaguely towards the car park.

‘Big guy? Chunky? Pointy sideburns?’ I traced the shape of them on my own cheeks.

‘Sideburns? I think …’ She started to look anxious again. ‘I am so sorry. I don’t know …’

I wanted to ask her more, but her finger was hovering over the panic button.

‘Don’t worry. It’s all good.’

I turned back towards the van, leaving her to gather her gear. I’d gone about five paces when she called after me. ‘Natasha … and your boy … I heard them say something about the cathedral …’

I glanced over my shoulder and waved. I hoped I still looked happier than I felt. The cathedral was our ERV. If he’d told her about that, he was in danger of telling her everything.

My only consolation right now was that although Stefan had drawn the thought-bubble decal he didn’t know I’d bought the Peugeot. And what he didn’t know, he couldn’t pass on.

The passenger door of the Polo opened at the press of the button. The towel hadn’t been left there by accident. Underneath it were the car keys and the Pitbull CD. And a cheap Nokia mobile.

I powered it up. A pay-as-you-go SIM, five bars of signal and a full battery. No numbers in the memory, but one voicemail from an unidentified source: ‘You will be contacted at twenty-one hundred.’ A voice like gravel. Heavily accented. Eastern European.

I’d heard it before. ‘
Fuck him. He got what he deserved.
’ Hesco had been no more than six metres away from me. He’d been talking into a mobile phone then as well.

21:00 made sense. Just before last light.

It gave me two hours.

I pocketed the Nokia and checked out the interior of the Polo – glovebox, door compartments, boot, the lot – to make sure that we hadn’t left anything behind. Now they’d pinged it, I was ditching the wagon here. It was a complete liability.

The only thing I needed was the Swiss map book. But I took the towel and the Pitbull CD as well. I left the keys in the ignition and hoped someone would nick it before the parking Gestapo hauled it on to a low-loader. It would create some more confusion. And if the bad guys had stuck a tracker underneath it, so much the better.

Back in the van, I opened the map book, laid it on the passenger seat, took a couple of deep breaths and focused.