circled the Range Rover, clutching MP-5s and taser guns, bulky in their bulletproof vests. They knew their job. Darcey had been one of them once, not so very long ago, and she couldn’t deny that Gremaj was in capable hands. In seconds, he and three more injured occupants of the vehicle had been laid out face down on the wet grass with their wrists trussed behind their backs. Weapons were seized and bagged. One of the officers emerged from the wreckage of the Range Rover holding a white object: shrink-wrapped, the size of a house brick. He jabbed a gloved finger towards the back seat as if to say ‘come take a look at this’.
So her gamble had paid off. Darcey smiled, but it was a bitter smile as she watched the situation slipping away from her. More officers were spilling out of the vans that came screeching up in the background, taking control of the crowd that was rapidly forming around the demolition derby of strewn vehicles. Three ambulances were already on the scene, and paramedics were attending to the injured.
The chopper had touched down, rotors slapping air at idle speed, side hatch open. Its co-pilot was a SOCA agent Darcey and her team knew well. He was waving his arms for her to get into the aircraft.
The voice on the radio was demanding acknowledgement.
Darcey hesitated. Her mind was reeling at the enormity of what was being done to her. From the looks on their faces, Walker and McLaughlin couldn’t believe it either. It was a body-blow for all of them. Nobody spoke for a few seconds until McLaughlin said, ‘You’d better respond, guv.’
‘Bastards,’ she muttered, then pressed the talk button. ‘This is Alpha One. Copy instruction, returning to base. Out.’ She tossed the radio back to Walker in disgust.
‘Shitty call,’ Walker said.
‘Yup,’ was all she replied. Then she made her weapon safe, clipped it back in its holster and started walking towards the helicopter.
A person who’d just stumbled over the scene of a murder could do one of two things. The first option was to do what most normal people would do: call the cops. In Ben’s case, it was too late for that. And he wasn’t inclined to stick around to find out what Capitano Roberto Lario would make of this further ‘irregularity’. The questioning wouldn’t be so laid back this time, and he was in no mood to spend the rest of the night back in Carabinieri HQ trying to convince a bunch of very angry police that he hadn’t shot Tassoni and his guys, hadn’t dumped his .357 Magnum in some clever hiding place nearby. It was all just a bit too complicated. Ben didn’t need those kinds of complications until he’d figured out the answers for himself.
So option one was out. The second option, if you couldn’t behave like a law-abiding citizen, was to act the way the killer would act and put as much distance between yourself and the scene of the crime as possible, as quickly as possible. Ben had walked fast for a long time through the suburbs, keeping his mind blank, not letting his spinning thoughts slow him down. Night had fallen as he kept moving. Eventually, as he left the suburban sprawl behind him and the streets got busier, he’d flagged down a second cab. Another taxi, another hotel.
By ten, he’d been sitting downstairs in the empty bar and flouting the no-smoking regulations over a triple whisky on the rocks as he tried to understand what had just happened.
He laid out what he knew. Fact: Tassoni’s big ape of a bodyguard was one of the gallery robbers. Fact: Tassoni knew something about it too. Now Tassoni was dead, along with his man and a second heavy who might or might not have been involved as well. All of which meant that someone was cutting their ties. Which in turn meant that the politician hadn’t been top of the food chain. He’d been in league with someone else, someone higher and more dangerous.
And that offered the solution to a question that had been burning a hole in Ben’s mind for the last twenty-five or so hours. The robbery had clearly been some kind of co-ordinated joint operation. Italians and Russians. The two nationalities seemed to have been keeping themselves to themselves. Maybe partly for reasons of communication, but maybe also because each side knew each other and had worked together before. A bringing together of two gangs, one Italian, one Russian, required someone in each country to organise their side of things: recruitment, transportation, logistics.
Maybe Tassoni had been the guy behind the scenes on the Italian side. Whoever had killed Tassoni might then have been his Russian counterpart. Why would they do that? Fighting over the spoils, maybe, such as they were. Or perhaps Tassoni was being punished as a result of the plan going sour. The reasons why didn’t matter so much. What mattered was who was top of the food chain.
Ben lit another cigarette and thought about the man he’d killed. Anatoly Shikov. Clearly someone used to violence. Clearly someone used to getting his own way. A dangerous guy to have around. Unruly, undisciplined. Possible psychotic tendencies. Not an effective leader, not someone who could remain in command of an organised criminal gang. Yet he’d been put in charge.
By whom? An influential contact? Had Anatoly had a friend in a high place? A relative? Was he someone’s brother?
Someone’s son?
By the time he’d finished his second triple shot of whisky, Ben’s instincts were telling him that the top man, beyond any doubt, was a Russian. And no mere art robber, not sending their boys in that heavy.
Russian mafia. That went a long way towards explaining these men’s ruthlessness, the violence, the lack of hesitation when it came to pulling the trigger.
And Ben had a name to go on. Shikov.
He thought again about Donatella, and Gianni. Remembered the ghastly, haunted look on Fabio Strada’s face in the hospital.
Then he thought about justice. Who was going to deliver it to the Stradas, and to the rest of the victims, the survivors, their families? Roberto Lario? Ben didn’t think so.
It was pushing midnight by the time the hotel bar closed and he headed back up to his small room on the first floor. The door clicked shut behind him. He left the light off. By the intermittent dull glow of the blinking neon hotel sign on the wall outside, he walked over to the armchair where he’d dumped his leather jacket and picked it up. It was heavy from the weight of the .45 Ruger he’d taken from Tassoni’s place. He slipped the hotel room card key into the other pocket, then slouched back on the bed, closed his mind to the night traffic rumble wafting up through the open window, and shut his eyes.
Far away over the hills, a wolf’s howl pierced the deepness of the night: a plaintive, mournful sound, like a lament for lost souls. Grigori Shikov turned away from the railing of his balcony and walked slowly back into the shadows and silence of the house to refill his glass with chilled vodka.
He had spoken to nobody since hearing of the murder of his old friend.
First Sonja. Then Anatoly. Now Urbano. So much death. Death all around him.
And there would be more. Always more.
In his study, Shikov opened one of the display cabinets. He laid his hands on the smooth, cool veneer of the old cherry-wood box inside, carefully lifted it out and laid it on his desk. He opened the lid and gazed for a few moments at the pair of antique percussion duelling pistols nestling inside the red velvet lining. The finest Italian
