77
THE CONTACT SAID, “It’s in hand. Lennon will leave for the station with the girl. They won’t get there.”
“Good,” Strazdas said.
He sat on the floor at the foot of the bed, naked, his knees up to his chin. An icy draft explored his body. He had opened and closed the window a hundred times today. Boiling or freezing, there was no in between.
“Then I want you on a plane out of here,” the contact said. “There’s a flight from the International Airport to Brussels at eleven in the morning. I’ll arrange a taxi for you.”
“All right,” Strazdas said.
“And I want paid,” the contact said.
“Just do what I asked you to do,” Strazdas said. “Then you will be paid.”
“It’ll be done,” the contact said.
Strazdas shivered. “One more thing,” he said.
“What?”
“I need something.”
“Like what?”
“Herkus would get it for me, but he’s dead.”
“What do you need?”
“Coke,” Strazdas said.
He listened to seconds of silence before the contact said, “Fuck off.”
78
LENNON WALKED GALYA to the car, the warmth of Susan’s kiss still lingering on his cheek. A dense fog doused the world in a sickly gray-white, masking the dark sky above. Snow, now freezing as the temperature dropped, crunched under their feet. Galya wore a pair of Susan’s old trainers, at least one size too big for her, padded out by thick socks to protect her feet. She held a hooded duffel coat tight around her thin body.
He removed the sheets of cardboard he’d placed over the front and rear windshields to protect them from the frost and dumped them in the Audi’s trunk, then held the door for Galya. She thanked him in her soft voice as she settled into the passenger seat.
Lennon checked the time as he fired the ignition. Almost ten. He’d been told they wanted her in before the shift change. Well, they would have to wait a few minutes, he thought. It would be slow going in this weather, and besides, it was Christmas.
The traction control light flickered on the dashboard as he pulled out from the car park and made the right turn toward the roundabout at the bottom of Stranmillis Embankment. Galya sat in silence, buried in the coat, nose and eyes visible in the opening of the hood.
“It’ll be all right,” he said, though he wasn’t sure if he believed it himself.
She did not answer, but stared ahead as he drove along the embankment, the river lost in the fog to their right. The frozen air weighed down on the empty streets around them, exaggerating the quiet. Lennon saw no other cars, no pedestrians braving the cold.
Why had the duty officer insisted the girl be brought in tonight? Who was going to come in to question her? When pressed, the duty officer said he’d been told to make it happen, and that was that. Lennon had asked who was doing the telling, and the duty officer said DCI Thompson didn’t want the girl out in the wild. But a man as lazy as Thompson didn’t get worked up about such things unless he was instructed to do so by someone else. Lennon wondered if the someone else might be an old friend from C3 Intelligence Branch trying to make his life difficult.
He slowed the car by shifting down gears, only dabbing the brake pedal, to avoid skidding on the ice and snow. The Audi juddered and groaned as he stopped for the red light south of King’s Bridge. Even though there was no one to see it, he flicked his indicator on to cross the river.
The light went from red to amber, and Lennon halfclutched until the Audi started to pull. He released the hand brake on green, and eased the car away without skidding, taking his time to the second set of lights just a few yards ahead.
“It won’t be long till we’re there,” he said. He turned his head to Galya, but she did not return his gaze.
“I swear,” he said. “It’ll be all right. They’ll look—”
Noise erupted from somewhere out in the fog: the roar of an engine and spinning of wheels. He looked for lights, but saw none. A car burst from the gray shroud, an old four-wheel-drive Nissan, its front end lurching from side to side as the driver fought the ice. For a brief second, Lennon thought someone had lost control of the car as it rolled down the slope from Ridgeway Street. But it gathered speed, and he knew the collision would be no accident.
He stamped on the accelerator and felt the Audi jerk beneath him as its tires lost their grip on the ice- covered road. The rear end arced outward, turning the nose away from the river. Galya gasped as she realized what was happening. She covered her head with her arms as the other car slammed into the Audi’s rear quarter.
Lennon felt rather than heard the bang of the passenger side airbags deploying as his neck jerked sideways. His head connected with the driver’s side window, and lightning flashed behind his eyes.
He blinked, no idea if seconds or minutes had passed since the impact. His vision blurred and hardened. He listened. The Audi’s engine still idled, and some warning signal pinged. He looked around the car. The rear passenger-side window had shattered, the door buckled inward, but the front remained intact. Galya still sat with her head buried in her hands, her breath coming in jagged gulps.
The damage would have been greater had the Nissan been able to hold a straight and steady course, but the ice had robbed it of grip and speed. On the far side, hazed by the thickening fog and smoke from its engine, Lennon saw the driver’s door open. A man emerged, a hood over his head, a scarf around his face. Lennon squinted through the mist as the man raised his hand.
Lennon threw the Audi into first and floored the accelerator. The tires churned ice before the car hauled away, its rear end sweeping to the right, as the back window cracked and something tore into the roof lining. Galya screamed.
The Audi fishtailed as it fought for traction, and Lennon struggled to remember the driver training he’d received years ago when he joined the force. He steered into the slide, eased off the accelerator, and felt the car straighten. Every instinct screamed at him to jam the pedal into the carpet, but he kept control, concentrated on maintaining his course, not sacrificing grip for speed.
He guided the car onto King’s Bridge, used the straight to gain momentum, eased back when he felt the rear wheels skitter. As he neared the junction at the far end, he glanced in his rearview mirror. Through the reflection of the back window’s splintered glass, he saw headlights pierce the fog, one burning bright, the other dimmed by damage.
The traffic lights turned red as he crossed the junction on to Sunnyside Street, but Lennon ignored them. The Nissan’s lights drew closer, its four-wheel-drive clinging to the road better than the Audi could manage.
Lennon thought hard. Streets branched off Sunnyside to form warrens of residential roads, narrow and twisting. The Nissan might have better grip, but its advantage would be lost to the bulk its big wheels had to haul around the corners. Lennon pushed the accelerator as hard as he dared and climbed the shallow incline. The Nissan kept pace, and gained ground.
He slowed as he approached the corner of Deramore Avenue and turned the steering wheel, allowing the Audi to drift a little, before straightening and reapplying power. He barely missed the parked cars on either side of the avenue as he guided the Audi into the channel that ran between them. In the mirror he saw the Nissan follow behind, its body leaning as it skidded into the corner. It swiped one parked car, bounced across the street to glance off another, before righting itself. Alarms wailed in the night.
Barely a few feet separated the Nissan’s damaged front grille from the Audi’s rear bumper. Lennon pushed the car harder, fought the steering wheel as the back wheels danced on the ice. Up ahead, he saw the corner of Ailesbury Drive as vague shapes in the grey. Beyond that, he knew the hard right into Deramore Gardens would be near impossible, but he had to try.
