Die Twice (58 page)

She sat up and eyed me coolly, like it was me who ought to be watching myself. ‘It's nice to know you care, Max, it really is. But you don't need to worry about me. I know what I'm doing.'

Elaine was a feisty lady and definitely not someone to be messed with, but at the same time her words didn't do much to reassure me. I remember the American commander of another mercenary unit in Sierra Leone saying exactly the same thing just before he disappeared into the jungle on a one-man reconnaissance near the diamond fields of Bo.

The next day an RUF patrol ate him.

*   *   *

In the end the weather was too decent to be indoors, especially as I hadn't set foot outside Elaine's apartment for getting on for forty-eight hours. Joe was right: I probably wasn't the Old Bill's top priority. Yes, I'd slapped a couple of them, plus got one inadvertently pissed on, but people do that to them all the time. It's all part of being a copper, getting slapped in the line of duty. It's like soldiers – it's what they join up for. The action and all that shit. Granted, they were probably looking for me, but I didn't think my crime was so heinous that they'd be scrambling the helicopters and plastering up the Wanted: Dead or Alive posters just yet, so that afternoon we went out for a stroll round Clerkenwell, arm in arm like true romantics, taking in the sun and the warmth, enjoying it the way the tourists do.

On the way back to the apartment we stopped at an Italian deli and I bought some ingredients: anchovies, black olives, fresh oregano, canned Italian tomatoes and, most important of all, a six-pack of bottled Peroni. I found some spaghetti in Elaine's food cupboard and, after a bit of exercise of the bedroom variety, cooked us both a pasta dish my ex-wife had taught me to make years back on one of the few occasions we'd been talking. Puttanesca. Whore's spaghetti, the fiery sauce unfaithful Latin wives would make for their husbands because it tasted like it had taken hours to prepare when in reality you could knock it together in twenty minutes, leaving yourself ample time for an afternoon's shagging. Perhaps she'd been trying to tell me something.

Elaine had to be at the club at nine-thirty, and before she went I told her I'd feel happier if she left the place, which I know was a bit cheeky, given the fact I hardly knew her, but to be honest with you I was beginning to think that maybe something could come of this.

‘You're a talented woman,' I told her, assuming that she was. ‘You know how to run a place. Why don't you look for a job somewhere else?'

She stopped in front of me and gave me a look which said: Don't push your luck, sonny. In the heels of her black court shoes, she was only an inch below me in height. ‘I hear what you're saying, Max, and I will leave. But it'll be in my own time. Understand? I'm a big girl now, I can look after myself. Thanks for the concern, but save it for people who really need it.'

Which was telling me.

After she'd gone, I sat demolishing the Peroni and trying desperately to find something decent to watch on the TV, which, not for the first time, turned out to be a fruitless task. I ended up watching a programme about a family of chimpanzees living in the African jungle. It all started off quite nicely as well. The chimps were messing about, grooming one another and generally acting all cute like they do in the zoo, and I was even musing about what a nice, laid-back life it would be being a member of the ape fraternity when all of a sudden everything went a bit mental. A friendly-looking gibbon appeared up in the trees near the chimps' camp, and one of them spotted him. Well, the next second the whole lot of them were howling and shrieking like a bunch of Millwall fans on angel dust, and before I had a chance to even work out what was going on, they were charging after him through the undergrowth, much to the excitement of the breathless narrator.

After a dramatic five-minute chase they cornered him up on one of the branches, and then, to my horror, ripped the poor little sod apart, disembowelling him with their bare hands while he stared mournfully up at them. They then began to eat him alive, as casually as you like, which to my mind was really quite disgusting. Especially as it was on TV when kids could be watching. And to think these beasts are meant to be our closest relatives.

One of the chimps was staring cockily at the camera while he munched on a hefty piece of gibbon offal, and I got a nasty sense of
déjà vu
because he really reminded me of that treacherous toe-rag Tony, sitting up there like he owned the place with what looked suspiciously like a smile on his face.

Maybe the bastard had been reincarnated.

I switched over at this point, having no desire to get into a staring match with a familiar-looking monkey, and cracked open another Peroni. It made me wonder what I'd have been doing that night if I'd never agreed to take on the Fowler contract. Probably sitting alone at home watching something a lot better. Life would have been a lot easier, that was for sure, but then again it would also have been a lot more boring. And sometimes that's worse.

What I didn't know then, though, and what I do now, is that my troubles were only just beginning.

Monday, thirteen days ago

Iversson

I was woken up by a faint sobbing, almost like a kid's. My eyes snapped to attention and surveyed the room. It was dark, but the light from the street shimmered through the window, providing a murky orange glow, and I could make out a figure at the end of the bed. It was Elaine. The clock on the bedside table said 1.25.

I sat up, fumbling for the switch on the bedside lamp. ‘Elaine? What's happened?' The light came on and I inhaled sharply, squinting against the brightness. Her make-up had run where she'd been crying and there were the beginnings of a bruise on her right cheek, just below the eye. The low-cut black blouse she was wearing had a tear in it that exposed the top of her bra, and it looked like an attempt had been made to rip it off which hadn't fallen too far short of success.

She looked at me, trying to maintain some sort of dignity, but the effort was too much and she began to cry again. ‘Oh, Max…'

Confused and worried, I jumped out of the bed and took her in my arms. ‘Elaine, what's happened?'

For a while she didn't say anything, just sobbed quietly against my chest, and I let her get it out, not wanting to hurry her. Finally, she lifted her head and turned away. ‘Leave it, Max. Please. I'll be OK.' She took her top off with her back to me – the first time she'd done that – and threw it in the corner before unclipping her bra.

‘Elaine, tell me, please. You can't just come in like this and not let me know what's up. Has someone hurt you?' I went over and put my hands on her shoulders, rubbing them gently as I tried to relax her. ‘Come on, tell me.'

‘I can't,' she said, still keeping her back to me. ‘I don't want you to do anything stupid.'

It was a bit late for that. The last four days had been one stupid thing after another. But I didn't say this, knowing that patience alone would get it out of her. ‘Do you want a drink? A brandy or something?'

She nodded. ‘That'd be nice.'

I went through to the kitchen, found a bottle of brandy, and poured her a generous slug. I poured myself a glass of water.

When I returned to the bedroom, she was sitting on the edge of the bed in her dressing gown. She'd stopped crying and appeared to have calmed down a little. ‘I'm sorry about that,' she said, and thanked me as I gave her the drink.

I sat down on her dressing-table chair so that we were facing each other. ‘There's no need to apologize,' I said quietly, ‘but I want to know what's happened. Please.'

‘Why? It won't do you any good.'

‘I'll be the judge of that.'

She stared at me for a long moment, and I thought then that even upset and humiliated she looked beautiful. And vulnerable. For all her tough exterior, she bled just the same as anyone else. ‘Just tell me, Elaine,' I said again.

She exhaled for what seemed like a long time, then looked up at the ceiling. ‘Krys Holtz came to the club tonight.' I felt something strong in the pit of my stomach, unsure whether it was fear or anger, thinking that it was probably both. ‘He asked to see me in the office that Roy used to use. When I got in there he started questioning me about the accounts, about how much we were taking, where the money was going, and all that. He seemed to think I knew all about the dealing that went on there. I told him that that side of it was nothing to do with me, and gave him all the paperwork. I didn't like his attitude. He was treating me like some sort of third-class citizen. I'd heard he was a real bastard but I didn't expect him to be quite so fucking out of order. He kept calling me “hired help”, and then, when I couldn't tell him what he wanted to know about the dealing, he told me I was a lying bitch. He said that we'd all been cooking the books down there. Roy, me, and Warren Case, the bloke who supplied the doormen.' She was fiddling intently with a ring on her index finger as she spoke, and shaking her head. Finally, she looked me right in the eye. ‘You know me, Max, I don't like being insulted, whoever it is doing the insulting. I told him I was telling the truth and if he didn't believe me that was his fucking lookout. Then I told him I was leaving.'

‘What happened then?'

‘He hit me. The bastard stood up and smacked me right in the face.' She touched her cheek where his fist had connected, and I felt the rage building. ‘I couldn't believe it. No man's ever done that to me before, not in my whole life. Then he came over and picked me up by my hair, telling me I was going to have to learn some fucking manners. The whole thing happened so fast I didn't even have time to be scared, so I called him a cowardly cunt and tried to knee him in the balls, but he just stepped out of the way. Then he started slapping me round the face with one hand and half-strangling me with the other, and all the time he kept saying that I was going to have to learn some manners.' She stopped for a moment, and I thought she might lose her composure, but she held on, her voice quiet. ‘At one point, I think the dirty bastard must have started getting turned on because he pushed me back onto the desk and I could feel him getting all hard up against me, and he was saying I was a fucking whore and pawing me all over, getting really worked up … Christ, it was horrible. I tried to fight him, Max, I really did, but he was so fucking strong. I could hardly breathe with his hand round my neck. I thought he was going to kill me.'

I went over and put my arm around her. I felt sick to the gut. It was difficult to believe what I was hearing. I wondered how much worse things could get. ‘Did he rape you?' I asked quietly, desperate for the answer to be no.

She shook her head and removed her hands from her face, but still didn't look at me. I felt relief that lasted for all of about two seconds. ‘He did other things,' she whispered, her disgusted tone leaving little doubt as to what those things might have been. ‘And when he'd finished, he just looked at me like I was nothing and told me to fuck off. Like I was nothing, Max. No-one … no-one's ever done that to me before.' She shook her head slowly like she was trying to shake the memories out of her head. She looked distant, and I thought then that I didn't want to lose her. To be honest, amid all the frustration and rage in my head, that was when I sort of knew I loved her. A bit hasty, yes, but sometimes these things really do happen.

We held each other for a long time. Five minutes, ten minutes, it was difficult to tell. It could have been longer. Eventually she sighed and took a drink from the glass of brandy.

‘I need a cigarette,' she said.

‘I'll find you one.' I opened up the drawer of her bedside table and found a pack and a lighter. I lit two and passed one to her.

‘Don't do anything, Max. For Christ's sake. I just want to forget about it, that's all. At least now I've left the club. I don't think anyone's going to expect me to work my notice after that.'

‘What? You're going to ignore the fact that a piece of shit like Krys Holtz did that to you?' I tried to keep my voice calm, knowing that she could hardly be blamed for wanting to put an incident like that behind her, but it was difficult.

‘He's Stefan Holtz's son, for fuck's sake! What can we do?'

I shook my head. ‘Fuck that. I keep hearing about these Holtzes and how fucking invincible they are, but let me tell you something, no-one's invincible. I might be on the run but I'm not going to leave London with my tail between my legs. And I'm not going to move one more fucking foot until I get this sorted out.'

‘It won't help anything.'

‘It'll help me,' I said, and got up and went to get the rest of the brandy from the kitchen. My blood was up; I needed something to get it back down again. I poured myself a glass, then took the bottle back to the bedroom and poured some more for Elaine. ‘You know something, I've never met Stefan Holtz or any of his extended family, never done a fucking thing to any of them, but these people seem to be doing everything in their power to fuck up my life.'

‘They fuck up a lot of people.'

‘There's one way I can get back at them. And get revenge for what happened to you. I can off that arsewipe Krys.'

‘Don't be stupid.'

‘I'm a trained soldier, Elaine. I'm perfectly capable of doing it. And it'll make me feel one hell of a lot better.'

‘Then what happens? You'll be on the run for ever.'

‘I'm on the run anyway, so what's the difference? And I'll have got them back, for me and for you. Krys'll be dead, and his dad'll have to live with the fact that he's lost a son. And if I do it right, they'll never know it was me.'

Something in her face hardened. ‘He's not going to be that easy to kill, Max. Someone like him's got a lot of enemies. He's got bodyguards.'