Fire Hawk (27 page)

He crept to the corner of the building, then moved gingerly towards the back, painfully aware of his vulnerability. At the end of the side wall he put his head round.

The man was just an arm's length away from him. Sam held his breath. Suddenly a lighter flame flicked on. For a couple of seconds it illuminated a face. A familiar face with a scar.

He jerked his head back. Suppose Rybkin was armed? He himself had no weapons at all. Not so much as a boy scout's whistle. As he inched back trying to think of his next move, his foot trod on a piece of tile that cracked like a pistol shot. There was a sharp intake of breath from the terrace.

He stood stock still for what felt like several minutes, hardly daring to breathe. He was on the point of deciding to make a dash for the road when a thin beam of light pierced the gloom from the front corner of the house, followed a split-second later by a muffled thwack.

Jesus!

He was being shot at. A silenced pistol. The torch beam had picked out a stack of roof tiles three paces away. He ducked behind it, his heart exploding through his ribs. Another thwack sent chips of terracotta zinging
around his ears. He threw himself on the ground, grunting with pain as his shins hit something hard.

‘Viktor,' he yelled, pressing his face to the earth. ‘It's Sam Packer, you idiot. Remember me?'

Silence, apart from the rasp of heavy breathing. He thought it was the other man's, then realised it was his own.

‘Sam Packer! Well I'll be damned. So it
was
you at the Paradiso.' The voice was a growl, the accent half New York, half Moscow.

‘Shouldn't have run off like that, Viktor. We could have had a nice drink together. And a talk about old times.'

‘Seeing you there was a surprise, Sam. And in our line of business surprises are not often welcome. Now, come out so I can see your face.'

To do so might be suicide, but he had little choice.

‘Okay, but put that fucking gun down.'

‘Just come out. And watch your language,' the Ukrainian barked.

Sam stood up carefully and brushed himself down. His shins felt sticky as if they were bleeding again. He stepped into the beam of the torch, half expecting the thump of a bullet in the chest.

‘You know, I thought you were a thief,' Rybkin pretended. ‘This country's full of them, and most of them come from Russia.' He laughed, but hollowly.

Sam shielded his eyes from the torch.

‘You've lost weight since we last met,' Rybkin remarked, shining the light at his waist.

‘Been on a crash diet,' Sam retorted, suspecting Rybkin knew about Baghdad. Chrissie could have told him.

Rybkin moved closer, keeping the light in Sam's eyes and the pistol with its neat silencer pointed at his midriff. ‘You took a big risk following me, you know. I could have killed you just now.'

‘Like the way your friend killed Chrissie? Or . . . or was it
you
who did that?' The words had come out of their own accord.

‘Tch, tch.' Rybkin let out a long sigh. ‘That's why you've come, yes?'

‘Why else? And take that bloody light out of my eyes.'

Rybkin pointedly left the beam where it was to remind him who was in charge.

‘Turn around. Put up your hands.'

‘Now that's not very friendly, Viktor.'

‘Just do it.'

Slowly and fearfully Sam obliged. Rybkin felt his armpits and trouser waistband for a weapon, then patted his jacket and ran a hand down each leg, outside and in.

‘You've got a luvverly touch, darling,' Sam lisped, trying to defuse the situation.

‘Okay. Enough of your shit.' Rybkin lowered the beam and stuffed the gun into his belt. ‘Come inside the house. But don't be dumb my friend. You go in front where I can see.'

Sam picked his way through the builders' debris to the porch and entered the hall.

‘To the left,' Rybkin ordered, the torch revealing rough plastered walls with electric cables protruding and an internal arch with its door not yet hung. Beyond was the large room Sam had looked through from outside. The floor was bare concrete. In the middle stood two wooden chairs and a small trestle table. On it was a bottle of vodka and two glasses. ‘Sit please.
Now
we will have a drink together.'

There was a candle on the table, stuck to its rough surface with melted wax. Rybkin lit it with his cigarette lighter. Then he sat opposite Sam and filled the glasses.

‘
Budmo!
' said Rybkin, raising his.

‘Absent friends,' murmured Sam.

The vodka was warm. They drained their glasses in
one. Rybkin refilled them. As he did so Sam noticed the hand clasping the bottle had the end digit of one thumb missing. The Ukrainian had changed out of his green jacket and was dressed now in a blouson windproof with its zip half undone. A patterned sweater showed underneath. The flickering candlelight exaggerated the crookedness of his jaw and his unreadable brown eyes watched with a wary concern.

This was the man who'd known about Chrissie's peanut allergy. So had
he
chosen the method by which she should be killed?

‘Why did you do it?' Sam growled, plunging straight in again. ‘Why did you kill Chrissie?'

‘
I?
' Rybkin protested, his voice pained. ‘You must not say such a thing. You don't believe that?'

‘You were with her the night she died.'

The Ukrainian's jaw set as hard as stone.

‘No games, Viktor. What happened? To start with, you can tell me why you're in Cyprus.'

Rybkin didn't answer immediately. Sam guessed he was trying to assess how much he knew so as to decide how much truth he would need to offer up to season the soufflé of lies he was concocting. Behind his back the glass doors to the terrace were open. Outside, a bat swooped and looped, its squeak on the limits of their hearing. In the far distance Limassol glowed and flickered like a distant conflagration.

‘You know,' Rybkin began, his voice thoughtful and slow, ‘you and me, we are the same. We do the same job. So we understand each other. Yes?'

‘Don't give me that guff. What are you doing here?'

‘Look, my friend, there are things that happen in this world that people like us have to know about, yes? To know, but maybe do nothing about. We are policemen but we are not policemen. You understand?'

‘No, I don't. Tell me why you're here and what happened with Chrissie.'

Rybkin sucked in air.

‘You see . . .' His voice when he spoke again began high like a falsetto and swooped deeper as the words emerged. ‘Some of my countrymen, they . . . Well, it is my job to know if they are doing things that are not exactly legal, yes? I told you that in Kiev. So when they come to Cyprus for
biznis,
then it is good that I come too.'

The answer was absurdly inadequate. Sam fixed him with a steely look.

‘And you visit their half-built homes in the middle of the night—'

‘Sometimes it's nice to be alone, my friend. That's why I came here. And I like the view.'

‘Or perhaps this particular little palace belongs to you?' Sam mocked, spreading his arms.

‘Of course not,' Rybkin replied carefully. ‘It belongs to one of those men that I speak about.'

‘The man who was also with Chrissie on Tuesday night. The man who killed her,' Sam persisted.

Rybkin looked uneasy. ‘The other man who was with Chrissie,' he acknowledged simply.

‘Go on.'

‘What can I say to you, when you think you know everything already?'

‘Don't play with me, Viktor. What happened on Tuesday? How come you were all having a cosy drink together, then a few hours later Chrissie gets murdered?'

Rybkin sucked in air again. ‘I will tell you the truth. I don't
know
what happened later. I wasn't there.'

He held up his glass. Sam shook his head, leaving his own full glass on the table. This man was lying to him. Pretending he wasn't responsible.

‘No more vodka. You can drink alone.'

‘A pity. You see, in my culture it is impolite to refuse.'

Rybkin shrugged. He tossed back the drink, smacked the glass down on the table, sat back in the chair, and tucked his thumbs into his belt.

‘All right. I will tell you everything I know. I met Christine completely by chance at the Mondiale when I went there with a colleague for a drink. Big surprise. You can imagine. For her and for me. Well, of course I introduce Christine to my colleague. Then we have a drink together to celebrate this happy coincidence, but it soon becomes clear to me that it's not
my
company that Chrissie is interested in. You get me?' he asked pointedly.

Sam didn't answer, convinced this was bullshit.

‘I could see that she and my colleague had things they wanted to do together. Alone. You understand me?' His eyes were like lasers. A faint, manipulative smile flickered. ‘Of course you do. You know her appetite pretty good. Or you used to. Quite strong and healthy, huh?'

Sam bunched his fists on his lap and kept his mouth firmly closed.

‘I tell you, my friend, they were sniffing each other like dog and bitch. You never saw anything like it.'

Sam tried to shut his mind to what he was feeling.

‘I warned her Sam. I did tell her to take care.' His eyes crinkled with contrived concern. ‘You see, I liked Chrissie. I liked her very much. We go back years, she and me. So when my colleague left us for a couple of minutes to go to the john, I took my chance and warned her that he was real hard case. I told her to watch out because he was a guy who didn't believe in rules. “No limits”, that's what I told her.'

Sam faltered. Maybe there was some truth in what Rybkin was saying. He fought back thoughts about what ‘no limits' might have meant in the context of what happened later.

‘Who is he, your
colleague
? What's his name?' he snapped.

‘I can't tell you. It's confidential information. You know that,' Rybkin whispered, refilling his glass and adding a drop to Sam's so the liquid reached the rim. ‘Come on.' He raised the vodka. ‘Let's drink to Chrissie, God rest her soul.'

Sam held his look for a few moments, wanting to believe that beneath the veneer of crocodile concern there might be an ounce or two of sincerity in this man whom Chrissie had considered a friend. He picked up his glass.

‘Chrissie,' he whispered, then drank.

‘You know, this beautiful island can be a dangerous place, my friend,' Rybkin whispered, his words full of an understated menace.

‘Particularly with men like your
colleague
running around,' Sam answered gratingly. ‘What is he?
Biznisman?
Mafiya? And what about you? What's your relationship with him? You work against him, or with him?'

He was remembering the
banya
in Kiev.

Rybkin's face set like granite. He rubbed his scar.

‘You see, you damned English, you always have a problem understanding my country. You think everywhere in the world they play cricket. The same rules that you have. Fifteen men on one side, fifteen on the other. And virtue always wins.'

‘Eleven.'

‘What?'

‘
Eleven
men in a cricket team,' Sam corrected.

‘You see? You just proved it. You expect me to know these things,' Rybkin smirked. ‘But look, you know my point, Sam. In my country virtue does not get its reward. No person can be on any
one
side. No person can be what you Anglo-Saxons call straight. We are different from you because to survive we
have
to cheat. All of us. In the
countries of the former Soviet Union it is our way of life. It's the way we've always lived. And now more so than ever. Under socialism there was a kind of fairness, but not today, not any more. You know this Sam – you been to my country. People cannot live on what they are paid.'

His broad shoulders lifted as if to say that surely the whole world understood this by now.

‘In my country, if you're sick, the doctor is there for you
free.
Oh sure. But if you want him to make you
better,
if you want medicine or surgery then you have to put money in his hands. Because the guy's got to eat somehow. Same with school-teachers. Your children will be taught for nothing. Free education is your right in Ukraine.
But,
to pass your grades, to get a certificate when you leave, then you got to pay. You got to give your teacher money so she can eat too. It's normal now for us. You understand?'

It was a given for Rybkin. A fact. A statement of the obvious.

‘And you?' Sam snapped, his chin jutting. ‘You get
your
payoffs from the criminals you're supposed to be fighting?'

Rybkin shrugged again. ‘I showed you in Kiev how it is. These New Russians, they have many businesses. Some are criminal, some are not. But because in Ukraine we have crazy laws and a crazy tax system, even normal businesses have to cheat. ‘So, you ask about me? I guess I'm kind of like a street priest to these guys. I mix with them so I understand their lives. I can't stop them sinning, nobody can, but I can tell them when they go too far. Being there among them, I'm like a warning that if they step too far out of line, the big judgement
will
come for them.'

‘And like a priest you hold out your hand and the sinners put coins in it,' Sam mocked. ‘Only in your case it's folding money.'

Rybkin's jaw set firm. ‘I have to live, my friend.'

‘By taking dollars from arseholes like the one that murdered Chrissie.'

‘Believe me, I feel terrible about it. I introduced her to him for God's sake. How d'you think that makes me feel? Look, when I next find that guy I'm really going to let him have it.'

Rybkin's pretence at innocence was now nauseatingly transparent. Sam narrowed his eyes.