84

Carl Venner waddled up and down his office, a freshly lit cigar clamped in his mouth, wringing his hands, directing his anger alternately at Luvic, who was chewing gum and smoking a cigarette at the same time, and the Russian. ‘Boys, this is not a good situation. It is just so not good.’

He raised his hand to his mouth, removed his cigar, then began biting the skin on the end of his index finger again. Tearing at it.

The Russian, who rarely spoke, said, ‘We need get Yuri out of hospital before he wake.’

‘Either get him out or silence him,’ Venner said.

‘I don’t kill my brother,’ he said darkly.

‘You work for me, Roman; you do what I fucking tell you.’

‘Then I no work for you.’

Venner strutted up to him. ‘Listen, you piece of shit. You’d be fucking driving a tractor in the Ukraine if it wasn’t for me, so don’t ever threaten to quit, because I just might accept your resignation, and then what the fuck do you do?’

The Russian looked sullen but said nothing.

Luvic mimed a chop across his own neck with his hand. ‘I fix.’

The Russian walked across to the Albanian and planted himself squarely in front of him; he stood a good head taller than the former bare-knuckle fighter. ‘You kill my brother,’ he said, ‘I kill you.’

The Albanian stared mockingly back at the Russian, still chewing his gum. He brought his cigarette to his mouth twice in rapid succession, taking two quick drags, inhaling sharply and blowing the smoke out, then said, ‘I do what Mr Smith say to me to do. I obey Mr Smith.’

‘We have an even more urgent problem,’ Venner said. ‘That fuckwit creep John Frost – Gidney – with his goddamn weather reports, well there’s one fucking report he got wrong!’

The two men looked at him quizzically.

‘Acid rain! Bad-hair day for him today.’

The Russian grinned; the Albanian, who had no sense of humour, did not get it. He had put the Weatherman’s body in the sulphuric acid tank, as was normal; in a couple of days he would move the bones to the hydrochloric tank. After that there would be no trace of him left.

‘Our problem,’ Venner went on, ‘is we don’t know what he did, what he said to anyone. And he lied about his phone, right?’

The Albanian nodded his confirmation. ‘It was in his car, outside, switched on.’

‘We know what that means, right?’ Venner said.

Both his employees nodded.

‘The police can get his phone company to plot his route across Brighton and Hove – exact times and places. Gentlemen, we need to bail, I’m afraid. We need to get out of here and go back to base in Albania until things calm down.’

‘I prefer stay here,’ the Russian said.

Venner tapped his chest. ‘I’m fifty-nine. You think I want to spend any part of what’s left of my life in that shithole country, if I don’t have to? It’s even got the world’s ugliest women. We’re here in this country because we like it here. But you guys have fucked up.’

‘How?’ the Russian said, looking angry now.

‘How?’ Venner said, as if astonished by the question. ‘Mik gets followed from somewhere in Kemp Town to a car park in the centre of Brighton-’

Interrupting him, the Albanian said, ‘Yes, but I lose him in the car park.’

‘Yes – and your goddamn Golf and all.’

‘I will get that back.’

Ignoring him, Venner turned his rage back to the Russian. ‘Your idiot brother attracts the attention of the police, then gets in an automobile wreck and lets them get their hands on his laptop with our film of D’Eath on it, and you don’t think that’s a fuck-up?’

The Russian was silent.

‘Here’s what we do,’ Venner said, his tone suddenly more conciliatory. ‘We shoot the film of Mr and Mrs Bryce right now, and get rid of them. Then we’re out of here. We’ll go to Paris this afternoon. Then on from there. OK?’

Two silent, reluctant nods.

Then the Albanian said, ‘Where we do the film?’

‘Here,’ Venner said. ‘In this room. I have some very creative ideas. Mr Bryce has put us through a lot of grief; I want to hurt him. And I’d like to see him watch all the things we are going to do with Mrs Bryce first.’

He looked at the Russian. ‘Roman, go bring them up here. Just untie their legs and gag them with gaffer tape – I always like tearing that stuff off.’

And suddenly, his mood buoyed by the thought of some very inventive things he was going to do to the Bryces, Carl Venner began to hum.

85

‘Tom!’

The sudden, hushed urgency in Kellie’s voice made Tom look up. Shit! The rectangle of light had appeared again at the far end of the room. Someone was entering, a tall, thin man in black. The eastern European.

Tom dived to the floor, on top of the Palm to smother the light. Quickly, groping with his hands, he found the PDA, located the power button and pressed it in hard to switch it off. Had the man come to empty the bucket? Tom wondered, a little irrationally. He pulled his arms tight to his sides and squeezed his legs together, faking the original position he had been trussed up in as best he could. He lay still, watching the torch beam steadily jig across the floor towards them.

Then it was right in his face.

‘Mr Bryce, I take you upstairs now. We make you and Mrs Bryce movie stars!’

Tom, quaking with terror, was thinking that any second now the man was going to see that his cords had been removed. He must see that, unless he was blind!

‘What do you mean, “movie stars”?’ Kellie said, her voice cracking with fear.

The man swung the beam onto her face. ‘We enough talk! Maybe you like quick fuck? Mr Bryce, you like watch me sex your wife for you?’

Tom’s terror suddenly switched to fury. ‘Touch her and I’ll kill you,’ he said.

The man rounded on him and shouted imperiously, ‘ENOUGH TALK I SAY!’ He stabbed the beam of the torch right into Tom’s face. ‘YOU QUIET. YOU ARE NOT THREAT ME!’

Then the man knelt down. Tom heard the sound of tape ripping and realized what was coming next. Blinking hard, he could see the man was leaning over him. He could smell cologne on him, a sharp, masculine tang.

Tom stiffened.

He knew he had just one shot at this, that was all. He hadn’t thought it through, he just had to do it.

The man was holding a wide strip of gaffer tape between his hands. ‘You close mouth,’ he said.

‘Can I just blow my nose?’ Tom asked.

‘No blow!’

‘I’m going to sneeze!’

And in that moment he detected the hesitation, just the briefest wavering by the man. It was enough.

He sprang sideways, rolling over once, grabbing the bucket with both hands and lifting it, then turned and found the torch beam straight in his face. Kellie was safely to the left, well out of range. With all his strength he hurled the contents of the bucket straight at the flashlight beam.

He felt a few sharp pains on his hands like stings, droplets of the acid, but barely registered them as his ears filled with a terrible, piercing scream of agony.

The torch fell to the floor. Tom could just see the man staggering back clutching at his face. Had to get him! He had to grab him before he got out of reach!

Had to.

Tom lunged, launching himself forward in a full rugby tackle, aware there must be some acid on the floor but beyond caring. This was his only chance. Somehow, his arms almost leaving their sockets, he just managed to grab the man’s right ankle before the chain snapped tight against his own, jolting him to a halt. Then, with a strength he did not even know he had, he yanked the ankle back towards him.

The man fell back across him, writhing, screaming, howling pitifully, clawing at his face with his hands. Kellie was screaming also.

‘Tom! Tom! Tom!’

‘HELP!’ the Russian cried. ‘HELP, YOU HELP, YOU HELP, PLEASE HELP!’ Then he just started bellowing in agony, clawing at his face, at the same time writhing, trying to wriggle away from Tom.