I ran from the room, into the lounge and out through the front door. Clutching Layla's keys, I sprinted to the gate and produced the only one that would fit a large padlock. I shoved it in, gave it a twist and the chains fell away.
Lynn was already sliding back into the passenger seat. I jumped in and fired up the ignition. The engine caught. I sat there for a moment too long, air con kicking in, working everything out in my head.
Could the device have been her handiwork . . .?
I registered something out of the corner of my eye – a glint, nothing more: metal catching moonlight.
Something on the move; something coming at me – fast. I hit the gas.
Too late.
As the wheels spun I heard the scream of another engine a second before it rammed the Audi side on. It cannoned into my door, catapulting me off my seat and into Lynn as Mansour's car was slammed into the wall. In the same instant the airbags exploded and the side window shattered into a thousand fragments.
Sand and dust and yelling filled the air. The airbags pinned my body back against the seat and my arms to my sides. I couldn't get to my weapon. Boots crunched on the bonnet. Somebody was trying to pull the driver's door open, but it was too buckled to move.
There were urgent, angry shouts and a crowbar crashed down against the windscreen – once, twice, again . . . The lamination crazed like a spider's web, but the glass didn't give. The boots stomped across the roof as I struggled for the weapon. My door was still being pulled at, the distorted metal screeching against the frame.
More shouts, but not in Arabic.
The sunroof imploded. Glass rained down onto me like confetti, then something hard and metallic struck my shoulder then my head and I saw white starbursts in a sea of black.
I forced myself to fight it, but when I was grabbed by my arms and pulled towards the roof, I was too weak to resist.
The shouts were muffled now, but the blows weren't. And then, in the far distance, as I felt myself being lifted, I heard a woman's voice.
108
I came to on a hard, cold floor. As I struggled to focus, blurred pinpricks of light danced across my retinas. Stars. I was looking up through the hole I'd made in Layla's roof.
There was something sticky in my mouth. The taste of metal clung to the back of my throat. Blood, or the crowbar? The tip of my tongue did a quick inventory. As far as I could tell, I still had all my teeth.
I couldn't move my feet. They were tied to my wrists and elbows behind my back.
My eyes still wouldn't focus, even though I commanded them to. As the haze cleared, I found myself facing the fireplace and the rogues' gallery.
Seeing the pictures brought it all back again: Layla . . . Lesser . . . the daughter . . .
I heard a noise to my right and managed to turn my neck against the pain. No more than a metre away, and similarly bound, lay another prisoner.
Lynn had bruises on his face and cuts to his head that had come from something a bit more vigorous than an open hand. He'd gone down fighting.
'It's Lesser's daughter.' I strained to get eye to eye. 'That fucking bitch is—'
'I know. She made me listen to her life story.'
'Tell me.'
He shifted a fraction to try and take some of the strain off his plasticuffs. 'Her name is Mairead. Likes to be called Mary. Don't try calling her any other names.' He grimaced. 'She doesn't take kindly to it.
'She was born in Libya, lived the early part of her life here – while Lesser commuted back and forth to the Irish Republic. But Layla became a prime target for the Israelis, and we had Lesser in our sights. So they moved her away.'
He nodded at the pictures on the mantelpiece. 'The child-minder is Lesser's cousin. She never registered on our radar. Lesser, I suppose, visited the kid when he could, but when we took him out, any links we might have picked up between them vanished altogether. It was as if she'd never existed.'
'And now?'
'She's president of the Richard Isham fan club. Thinks the sun shines out of his arse – to the extent that she happily organizes drug runs to finance the cause. She's a zealot, Nick, devoted to the cause – but that's nothing compared to what drove her to this.'
'Don't tell me. She wants to avenge her father's death.'
Great. And Lynn and I didn't just have a ringside seat at Mairead's circus – we were the stars of the show.
'Who's she teamed with this end?'
'Russians. Mansour was involved, too, though whether officially or as a freelance, I have no idea. After he got out of prison, it wasn't antiquities that took his fancy; it was drugs. I should have realized.'
