The Birthday Girl (31 page)

She grabbed the letter-opener as Sabatino released her breasts and began to force her dress up over her hips. 'No!' she shouted.

He seized the back of her neck with one hand as he used the other to tear off her panties. The cotton ripped like paper and then she felt his hand on her flesh, roughly prising her legs apart. 'No!' she screamed again, and lashed out behind her with the letter-opener. She missed, her elbow banging into his thigh. She swung her arm lower, this time just missing his leg. Sabatino laughed at her clumsy attempts to attack him. He let go of her neck, using his knee to keep her pinned to the desk as he tried to take the letter-opener from her. He caught her wrist and twisted it savagely. She released the opener and he tossed it to one side. Mersiha heard it rattle against the wooden floor.

He pushed her skirt higher, up around her waist, and then she heard his zip being opened. The sound was virtually identical to the sound of her knickers tearing. She tried to push her upper body off the desk, but Sabatino forced her down with the flat of his hand. 'Struggle as much as you want,' he hissed. 'The more you struggle, the more I'll enjoy it.' He moved against her, forcing her legs apart. Something hard nudged against her inner thigh and she felt suddenly sick as she realised what it was. Memories flooded back. The men. The grasping hands. The sweaty faces. Her mother, begging.

Sabatino's knee pushed her right leg to the side. 'No,' she gasped. She lifted her foot up, then raked it down his leg, the heel scraping the flesh through his trousers. His leg jerked away and he howled. Mersiha kept driving down and impaled his foot with her heel. She put all her weight on it, pushing herself backwards and screwing her heel down. Sabatino screamed and let go of her, staggering backwards. As he pulled his foot away, the heel of her shoe snapped.

She whirled around, panting and shaking. She was in a half-crouch, her hands forming talons, her eyes wild, standing lop-sided because of the broken shoe. Sabatino was hopping on his good foot, muttering and cursing, his eyes filled with hate.

They both looked at the gun at the same time. Mersiha leapt for it. Sabatino tried to grab her but she slipped by him and dived on to the couch. She held the gun in her left hand and fumbled the clip with the right. Before she could ram it home, Sabatino hit her from behind, knocking her to the floor. As she fell she slammed the clip in place. Sabatino limped towards her as she rolled over and pulled back the hammer with her thumb. 'Don't,' she said, but he was beyond listening. He had a crazed look in his eyes, his mouth was bared into a sneer, and his trousers were wide open. He stumbled towards her, limping on his injured foot, his hands reaching for her. Mersiha fired twice. Both bullets hit him in the chest and he fell on top of her, still grabbing for the gun. He got his hands to the weapon and despite his injuries began to wrestle with her for possession of it.

He was strong, far stronger than she was. She felt the gun start to slip from her sweating fingers and she whimpered. She couldn't move her legs and the weight of his body made it difficult to breathe. One of his pudgy fingers squeezed into the trigger guard. She tried to pull the weapon away from him but he was too powerful. Blood trickled from between his teeth as if his gums had suddenly gone bad and dribbled down over her dress. She yanked at the gun and it went off, the noise deafening her. The bullet hit Sabatino in the throat. His hands jerked and the gun fired again. The bullet tore through the side of his jaw, blowing away bone, flesh and teeth. Mersiha screamed and from somewhere got the strength to roll out from under his dead weight.

She sat up, out of breath, her finger throbbing where it had been pressed against the trigger guard. There was blood on her dress. She wiped it with her hand and it smeared across the black material. It was all over her hands, wet and sticky.

Someone banged on the door, so hard that it rattled. 'Mr Sabatino? You okay in there?' Mersiha stood up. Sabatino had fallen on to the gun and she tried to roll him over. He was too heavy to move. She grunted and stood over him, holding his ankles and pulling his legs. Using all her strength, she could manage only to slide him a few inches. The gun remained trapped under his body. The door banged THE BIRTHDAY GIRL 255 again and Mersiha dropped his legs. They hit the floor with a dull thud. 'Mr Sabatino! You all right?'

Mersiha backed away from the body. There were footsteps on the stairs outside, and the sound of someone kicking the door. She went over to the window, hobbling because of the broken heel. She kicked off her useless shoes and examined the window. Outside was a rusting fire escape which led down to the car park, two storeys below. There was no lock on the window. She slid it open. Two shoulders crashed against the door as she climbed outside, then she realised to her horror that she'd left her bag on the floor. She dashed back into the room, grabbed it and practically dived through the window and on to the fire escape, scraping her knees on the bare metal. She ran down the steps, taking diem three at a time. She heard two gunshots and the sound of the door splintering as she reached the asphalt and ran barefoot into the darkness.

Allison Dooley lay back on her bed, watching the television with the sound turned right down. She was tense, dreading the phone * fa call from Mersiha's parents which she was sure would come 1 before her friend got back to the house. She looked at the alarm clock. It was after midnight. She kept telling herself that it was far too late for them to call, that they'd be asleep, but her imagination insisted on coming up with alternative scenarios: a T. fire, a break-in, a hundred and one reasons why they might get on the phone and wake her mother from her drunken slumber. She'd thought about disconnecting the phones but decided against it in case Mersiha called. There was nothing to do but wait and worry.

A stone rattled against her window, startling her. She swung her legs off the bed, but before she could get to the window a second pebble hit the glass. Allison looked down on Mersiha, standing in the garden. She crept downstairs. Her mother was ^ lying face down on the sofa, snoring, her left hand still holding the empty wine bottle.

She tiptoed to the kitchen and opened the back door. Mersiha rushed in and dashed upstairs. Allison relocked the door and followed her. She found Mersiha sitting at the dressing table, looking at herself in the mirror. 'So, how did it go?' she asked, closing the door and throwing herself on to the bed. Mersiha didn't answer. 'Come on, you promised,' Allison whined.

Mersiha shook her head, but said nothing.

'What was he like? Where's the dress?' Mersiha was still wearing her school clothes, though she'd put make-up on since she'd left the house. 'Put the dress on for me, please. Come on. You owe me, Mersiha.' She reached for the bag but Mersiha pulled it away and hugged it to her chest. Allison got off the bed and stood behind Mersiha and looked at her reflection in the dressing-table mirror. For the first time she could see that her friend's eye make-up and lipstick were smeared. 'What's wrong?' she asked.

Mersiha shrugged. 'It was nothing.'

'Did you have a fight? Is that it?'

Mersiha smiled wryly. 'Yeah. Sort of.'

'Did he hurt you?'

Mersiha stared at her reflection in the mirror. 'No,' she said quietly. 'He didn't hurt me.'

Bzuchar Utsyev sat in the back of the stretch limo as it drove through the wintry streets of Baltimore, his face set in stone. His two bodyguards knew better than to disturb him so they too sat in silence. Utsyev hadn't said a word all the way from New York. The limo hit a pothole and lurched to the side as the driver fought to control the steering wheel, but Utsyev appeared not to notice. It was a cold morning and the few people on the streets were huddled in thick coats for warmth, their shoulders hunched against the bitter wind that blew in from the Inner Harbour.

'Here we are, boss,' the driver said, bringing the limo to a smooth stop in front of The Firehouse. Utsyev climbed out and stood staring up at the converted fire station. A man in a THE BIRTHDAY GIRL 257 black overcoat was standing at the entrance, an unlit cigar in his mouth. He dropped the cigar on to the floor and stamped on it. 'Mr Utsyev,' he said, extending his hand.

Utsyev ignored the greeting. 'Who the fuck are you?' he growled. It was the first thing he'd said since the limo had pulled on to the New Jersey Turnpike.

'Vincenti,' the man said, letting his arm fall to his side. 'I worked for Mr Sabatino.'

'Not any fucking more you don't,' Utsyev said, barging past him and into the darkened nightclub. 'Show me where it happened.'

Vincenti followed on Utsyev's heels as he walked across the dance floor, their footsteps echoing off the brick walls. Several members of the nightclub staff stood around as if at a wedding party where the bride had failed to turn up. Utsyev's two heavies followed at a safe distance. They'd seen Utsyev's explosive temper before and didn't want to be too close if he erupted.

'Are the police still here?' Utsyev asked as he climbed the stairs.

'Been and gone,' Vincenti said behind him.

Utsyev didn't speak again until the two men were in the office, the door closed behind them. 'So tell me what the fuck happened,' he said, staring at a darkened patch on the wooden floor. There were no chalk marks on the boards, no sign other than the dried blood that a body had once lain there.

'It was a girl, a young girl. Seventeen, maybe eighteen, black hair. Pretty. Sabatino's type. I mean, Mr Sabatino's type.'

'And?'

'And she was with him alone. Then we heard a struggle. Then gunshots.'

'A struggle?'

'Yeah. We thought your brother was, you know . .. fucking her.'

'You can't tell the difference between sex and a struggle?'

Vincenti looked uncomfortable. 'Sometimes it was difficult to tell with Mr Sabatino. When he was with a girl there was often a lot of... noise.'

'Noise?'

'Yeah. Crying. You know. He was a bit...'

'Rough?' Utsyev supplied.

'Yeah, rough,' Vincenti agreed, clearly relieved that Utsyev understood.

'This girl, you'd seen her before?'

Vincenti shook his head. 'He didn't know who she was.'

Utsyev turned and studied the broken door. 'You kicked the door down?'

'Yeah. Me andjacko.'

'And?'

'She was long gone. Down the fire escape. Your brother was already dead.'

Utsyev went over to the bloodstains and knelt down. He rubbed the dark brown patch with a gloved hand, then sniffed at it, like a tracker seeking a trail to follow. 'How many shots?'

'Four.'

'Professional?'

Vincenti frowned. 'Nah, I don't think so. It was ... messy.'

'Messy? What the fuck d'ya mean, messy?'

'There were two shots in the chest, then one in the neck and one in the side of the head. Like she'd panicked. There was a gap between the first two shots and the second.'

'Which is what a pro would do. Whack him, then two shots up close to make sure.'

'Yeah, but you'd put two in the temple, or the forehead. She blew away half his face.' Vincenti spoke rapidly, less nervous now that he was being asked about technicalities.

'How long before the cops got here?'

'Ten minutes. Fifteen at the most.'

Utsyev stood up, rubbing his gloved hands together as if trying to get rid of the dried blood. 'What did you tell them?'

'That someone came up the fire escape and hit him while we were outside. We saw nothing, just heard the shots.'

Utsyev nodded his approval. 'They buy it?'

'Seemed to.'

Utsyev walked over to the window. The frame and glass were covered in white fingerprint powder. There were dozens of THE BIRTHDAY GIRL 259 prints - it was an old building. He opened the window and stuck his head out. The car park below was almost empty. 'Anyone see her go out?'

'No, Mr Utsyev. No one.'

Utsyev pulled back into the room. 'Okay,' he said, 'show me what you've got. What was your name again?'

'Vincenti.'

'Show me what you've got, Vincenti.'

Vincenti took Utsyev back into the corridor and along to another office. He stepped aside to allow Utsyev and his two bodyguards to enter and then closed the door behind them before opening a safe in the corner. From the safe he took a handgun, a pair of black shoes and a pair of torn panties. Vincenti held out the handgun. 'It's a Heckler & Koch, but an unusual model.'

'Serial number?'

'Yeah. Another reason why I don't think it's a professional hit.'

Utsyev nodded and picked up the panties. 'You got contacts in this godforsaken city that can trace it?'

'We've a coupla cops on the payroll can do it for us if the gun's legit.'

Utsyev absent-mindedly crumpled the white panties and wiped his nose with them, as if they were a handkerchief. 'Do it,' he said. 'And do it fast.'

'Understood,' Vincenti said.

Utsyev suddenly realised what he was doing with the panties and tossed them into the safe. He picked up the broken shoe and examined the heel. 'You're working for me now, Vincenti. Stick with me all the time, in case I need you.' He gestured at the two bodyguards. 'That's Kiseleva. The guy with the acne's Ostrovetsky.' The men nodded neutrally at each other. Utsyev tossed the shoe into the safe. 'I wanna find this fucking Cinderella, and soon.'

Mersiha spent her last day at school in a state of near-panic, certain that at any moment the police would walk into her classroom and take her off to jail. She was unable to concentrate on any of her classes. All she could think about was the gun she'd left at The Firehouse, trapped under Sabatino's body. The police would be sure to trace it to her father, and then it would all be over. And even if by some miracle they didn't find out that the gun was registered in her father's name, he'd discover it was missing the next time he opened the gun cabinet. It wasn't fair, she kept thinking, it just wasn't fair. All she'd been trying to do was help her father, and now it had gone horribly wrong.

She racked her brains for a way out of her predicament, but she kept going around in circles. There was no way she could get the gun back; her fingerprints were all over the weapon; the doormen would be able to identify her; she'd gone there with a loaded gun in her handbag. There wasn't a jury in the world who wouldn't think that she'd gone there with the intention of killing him. Premeditated murder, that's what they'd call it, even though she'd gone there only to scare him. The worst she'd intended was maybe to shoot him in the leg like she'd done with Dr Brown. It had been a huge mistake, she realised that now. The biggest mistake of her life.

At lunchtime she sat in the cafeteria with a tray of uneaten food in front of her. Allison walked up with her sandwiches and orange juice and was about to sit down, but then thought better of it and moved off to another table. Allison ate in silence, from time to time looking nervously across at Mersiha. She'd long stopped pestering her for details of the previous night's rendezvous.

Mersiha considered telling her parents what had happened, knowing that it would be better if they heard it from her rather than from the police, but at the back of her mind was the vague hope that something would happen to save her. It wasn't retribution that she feared because she'd already resigned herself to the fact that she would be punished. What she couldn't bear was the pain she'd see in her father's eyes when he discovered what she'd done. The pain and the THE BIRTHDAY GIRL 261 disappointment. She looked down at the stainless-steel knife on her tray. She pictured herself taking the knife and drawing the blade across her wrist, imagining the blood drip, the way it had splattered down from Sabatino's wounds on to her black dress. Maybe that would be the best way out. At least she'd be spared the look in her father's eyes.

She reached for the knife and toyed with it. The blade was too blunt, she realised. She'd need something sharper. A razor blade, something that would cut cleanly and deeply. There were razor blades in the bathroom cabinet, she remembered. Katherine used them in her safety razor to shave her legs. Mersiha could lie in the bath, stretch out in the warm water, and do it. She held the image in her mind, lying naked in the warm water, one hand stretched out of the bath, blood running down her arm and on to the tiled floor, the razor blade clutched in the other hand. She imagined Katherine and her father bursting into the bathroom and finding her, crying over her body. Then the funeral, her coffin bedecked with flowers and wreaths, the priest talking about a young life cut short, her father crying, grieving the way he'd grieved for Luke. She shivered. No. She wouldn't kill herself, no matter how bad it got. She put the knife down on the tray. There had to be a way out, she thought. Allison was looking at her, a sandwich halfway to her mouth.

Mersiha forced a smile and Allison immediately looked relieved, taking the gesture as an indication that she should move tables. She picked up her tray and slid into the chair opposite Mersiha.

'Aren't you hungry?' she asked, nodding at Mersiha's untouched tray.

'Not really.'

Allison leaned over anxiously. 'Mersiha, I don't know what's wrong, but if there's anything I can do to help, all you have to do is ask, okay?'

Mersiha was touched by the girl's obvious sincerity, and she felt a sudden wave of guilt for the way she'd used her. 'Thanks,'

she said. 'But there's nothing you can do. There's nothing anyone can do.'

I Allison continued to eat her lunch, keeping a wary eye on 262 STEPHEN LEATHER her friend. Across the room, one of the teachers on cafeteria duty stood up to go, leaving a newspaper on the table. Mersiha jumped to her feet, knocking her tray and startling Allison. 'Sorry,' she said, dashing over to grab the discarded newspaper. It was an afternoon edition of the Baltimore Sun. She stared at the front page, taking in the stories as quickly as she could: a steel mill had announced redundancies, a little girl had fallen from her bedroom window, the President said he wanted to build closer diplomatic and trade links with China, and the police had discovered cocaine worth ten million dollars in a discused warehouse in the city.

Mersiha flicked anxiously through the paper. She found the story on page three. It was the biggest piece on the page, describing how the owner of The Firehouse had been shot to death. There was a black and white photograph of Sabatino standing in front of the nightclub, a bottle of champagne in one hand, a glass in the other. A police spokesman said it appeared to be a burglary that had gone wrong and that there were no suspects. Mersiha frowned. There was no mention of the gun, no description of the assailant. She re-read the story. It said that police were working on the theory that a man had climbed up the fire escape and had been surprised to find Sabatino there. There was definitely no mention of the gun. Or her shoes. And it said man, not woman. How could that be? Maybe it was a trick, maybe the police were deliberately withholding information like they did on television cop shows, hoping that she'd give herself away. But that didn't make any sense. At the very least they should have used an artist's impression of her - the doormen had seen her up close. There was something wrong. Something very wrong.

Freeman jabbed at his intercom button. 'Jo, any sign of Maury?' 'Sorry, no. He's not at home either.'

'Okay, can you get me Josh? Ask him if he'll pop in, will you?' 'Sure thing, Tony.' Freeman looked over the new Thai contract as he waited for THE BIRTHDAY GIRL 263 the Development Director to arrive. The Thais had already telexed twice requesting early delivery, so he was eager to get it couriered out to them. It was a pleasant change for customers to be pestering CRW for orders. Generally it was the other way around. But as Anderson had pointed out, it was just one contract. His intercom chirped. 'Josh is on his way up,' Jo said. Freeman signed the contract and took it out to her.

'Fed-Ex, please, Jo. I don't want this one getting lost in the mail'

Josh arrived, a file under his arm and a pair of blue-framed spectacles pushed back into his red hair.

'Hiya, Josh. Go right in,' Freeman said. He followed him in and closed the door. 'How's production?' he asked.

'No problems - full steam ahead,' Josh replied. 'You can really feel a change in the optimism, you know? That Thai order has really boosted morale.'

'Yeah, that was the contract I just gave Jo.' Freeman sat down and steepled his hands under his chin. 'Look, Josh, I'm going to need your help. I'm taking my daughter to Colorado and I'll be away from the office all next week. I'd like you to hold the fort.'

Josh looked startled. The? But what...?'

'Maury's having a few problems of his own right now,' Freeman said.

'I knew his mother-in-law was sick, but I didn't...'

'Yeah, it's a bit more complicated than that,' Freeman interrupted. 'He's been under a lot of pressure and I think it'd be better if he took some time off. I know you can handle it, Josh. You know this company inside out.'

Josh nodded, clearly flattered by the offer of extra responsibility. 'I'd be more than happy to, Tony. Anything I can do to help, you know that.'

Freeman sighed with relief. 'Jo can field most of the minor stuff, and there are no major contracts to be negotiated,' he said.

'What about the bank?'

'I'll have a word with Walter. This Thai deal has given us some breathing space, so he'll be cool about it.'