off balance to give me just a few seconds. Holding out my arms, I bulldozed into the two lots of black leather and, not waiting to see what happened to them, I swung my head round and looked for the ashtray. A wheezy gasp came from behind me as they made contact with the wall.
Eyes still fixed on the glass shape on the table, my body pivoted as my legs started to move toward it. Muffled shouts came from behind. That didn't matter, the ashtray did. If they were fast enough to recover, or I was too slow to react, I would never know about it.
Slapping down my palm, as if swatting a fly, I gripped the ashtray. My body was still facing the table with the two guys behind me. Swinging my head round, I focused on the old guy's now hatless head. My body turned as I took the three paces toward him, brandishing the fistful of glass in the air like a knife.
I closed in, ignoring Carpenter as he came toward me from the right.
The one I wanted was the old guy, the one with the pistol in his hand.
His face didn't register surprise or fear, just anger, as he pushed himself off the wall and raised his weapon.
My eyes were fixed on his face as I swung the ashtray downward, making contact above his cheekbone. His skin folded over just below his eye, then split open. He fell with a scream, his body banging against my legs on the way down. Stage three was complete.
I heard, rather than saw, the black shape from the right, almost on top of me.
I didn't have a stage four. It was open house now. Not even bothering to turn and look at Carpenter, I just lashed out wildly. The thick glass hammered against his skull twice on his way down, both times with such force that my arm jarred to a halt as I made contact.
I jumped onto his chest and continued to rain blows onto the top of his head. Somewhere in the back of my mind I knew I'd lost it, but I didn't care. I was just remembering the way this fucker had kept firing rounds into the woman in the elevator, and the bastards who'd ruined Kelly's life by hosing down her family in Washington.
Three times there was a crunching, cracking sound as his skull gave way.
I raised my hand, ready to hit again, but stopped myself. I'd done enough. Thick, almost brown blood oozed from his head wounds. He had lost function in his eyes and had a vacant stare, wide open and dull, pupils fully dilated. The blood spread onto the carpet, which soaked it up like blotting paper.
Still sitting astride him I rested both hands on his chest, not enjoying the fact that I'd lost control. To survive, you sometimes have to get really revved up, but losing it completely, I didn't like that.
I turned to check the old guy. The strop and the handgun were on the floor, and so was he, curled up, holding his hat against his face like a dressing and moaning to himself. His legs flailed weakly on the carpet.
Slowly hauling myself to my feet, I kicked away both weapons. The gun looked like a.38 special revolver, the short-barreled sort used by 1930s American gangsters.
Pulling his jacket off his shoulders and midway down his arms, I dragged him over the top of Carpenter and into the bathroom, leaving his bloodstained fur hat behind. It was obvious now why he always wore it: only a few wisps of hair covered his head.
He was still moaning and probably feeling quite sorry for himself, but he was alive and that meant he was a threat. My jaw was aching as I jolted up and down with the effort of dragging him, but at least my heart rate was starting to calm. There was no other option, he had to die. I wasn't happy about it, but I couldn't leave him here alive when I set off for the Maliskia compound tomorrow. He could compromise everything I was here for.
I let go of him and he slumped onto the tiled bathroom floor. I turned on the hot water and the water hearter surged into action.
The extent of the injury to his face was now clear to me. A two inch furrow was gouged in his cheek, wide enough to put a couple of fingers in. Beneath the mess of torn flesh gleamed an area of exposed white cheekbone.
A check of his wallet as he lay and groaned to himself revealed all the normal stuff. Only the money was of interest, both Russian and Estonian; once that was tucked into my jeans I went back into the bedroom.
Stepping back over Carpenter, I picked up the.38 special from the floor and one of the furry blankets.
I pulled back the hammer so the weapon was cocked. When I came to squeeze the trigger I didn't want the hammer moving all the way back before coming forward to fire the round; it might get caught in the blanket.
I walked back into the bathroom and, not even looking at his face in case his eyes were on me, I unceremoniously jammed the muzzle into the blanket and onto his head, quickly wrapped the furry nylon around the weapon and fired.
There was a dull thud and then a crack as the round exited his head and shattered the tile beneath it. I let the blanket fall and cover his face, and listened. There was no apparent reaction to the round from outside the room; this was the sort of place where you didn't ask too many questions, even if there was a gang fuck going on next door. The only things my senses picked up were the noise of the water heater and the smell of burned nylon.
I turned the water off and the water heater died as I moved into the bedroom. I dug out Carpenter's wallet and tucked his money into my jeans, too. His weapon was still in its shoulder holster, but only just. I realized how lucky I had been. Another fraction of a second and it could have been a totally different story. The pistol was a Makharov, a Russian copy of James Bond's Walther PPK, and only good as a close-up, personal protection weapon, perfect for when someone got in a huff with you in a komfort baar. At longer range it would be more lethal to throw the thing at them. No wonder its nickname in certain quarters was 'the disco gun.' I decided to keep this one. The pistol grip on these Russian versions was bulky, making it awkward to get a firm hold first time when drawing down with small hands like mine, but it was more use than the.38 special.
Carpenter's blood was thickening on the carpet, which couldn't absorb the amount leaking out of him. Pulling another blanket off the bed, I trod it down around his head to try and stop it seeping through the floorboards. I ended up grabbing his head and wrapping it in the blanket.
I opened the main door into the hall, checked left and right, then had a look at the intact telltale. Why had it failed me, why was it still in place? I could see the answer at once: It was stuck to the door frame. The sponge- strip draft protector must have been put there soon after the stuff was invented; it was now brown and gooey with age.
Lesson learned. Don't mix telltales with old draft protectors.
Switching the fire back on, I rolled up my sleeves and got to work.
38
I used the toilet-plunger handle again to prevent burning my hands, wedging it into a mine cap and fishing it out, then turning it upside down to drain.
I carried it like that into the bedroom, slipping on the old man's hat on the way. The blood hadn't soaked in as much as it had into the carpet or blanket, which probably meant the fur was real and was resisting penetration.
Laying the mine on the coffee table, I crossed the room to open the window, letting in the cold sea air big time. Waves were breaking on the other side of the road.
The explosive, which had been more or less rigid plastic, was now soft enough to extract and manipulate. I began to scoop, having first put a shopping bag over each hand to prevent the nitro from entering my blood stream via cuts on my hands or straightforward absorption. It wouldn't kill-hospitals use nitroglycerine on heart-attack victims-but it would give me a massive fuck-off headache.
By the time I'd finished the room stank of marzipan, and in front of me on the table was ten pounds of what looked like green, lumpy plasticine. It had hardened a little as it cooled, but I knew that once I played with it in my hands a bit it would become quite pliable again. The remaining two pounds or so of PE were stubbornly sticking to the sides of the mine and were too difficult to get out, so I just left it.
With the bags rustling on my hands I worked away at it as if kneading dough, trying to keep my head turned so the fumes didn't get to me so quickly. Even so, it made me feel dizzy and nauseous, though that might also have something to do with the way Carpenter and the old guy had greeted me at the door.
Once I'd got it all nice and malleable in three equal-sized balls, I pulled off the rubber part of the plunger and used the handle as a rolling pin to flatten them out. The smell of marzipan reminded me of being a kid at Christmas, skipping the icing sugar and going straight for the yellow stuff underneath.
As I kept quiet, the room adjacent to my bedroom was about to become a love nest. There was the rattle of
