Bridge saw her opening and kicked out, landing a blow square in Novak’s kidneys. He crumpled to the ground, dropping the useless Grach. She moved in for another strike, but he recovered quickly. With a single smooth action he pulled and extended his baton, swinging it at her knee. Bridge’s leg buckled as it hit, and she dropped to the ground. Suddenly Novak was on her, holding her down with one hand, the other lashing out with the baton. She raised her arms, taking the stinging blows on her forearms instead of her face.
“So he was right about you,” said Novak, tossing the baton aside, and now Bridge noticed a slight accent. St Petersburg? She couldn’t be sure, and this wasn’t the time to wonder. His breath was a sour mixture of alcohol and German cigarettes, and as he closed his thick hands around her neck, she couldn’t help noticing how smooth and uncalloused his hands were, more like an office worker than a stereotypical Russian thug. It all reminded her of an old boyfriend at uni, and not one she particularly wanted to remember.
She tried to break his grip, or roll him off her body, but it was no use. He was too strong, and too heavy, to prise off easily. He squeezed, slowly but firmly. Bridge flailed her arms around, reaching for something, anything, to use as a weapon. Her fingers touched something hard, solid. Darkness blurred the edges of her vision, all of the focus on Novak’s smiling, gloating face. She walked the solid thing toward her by her fingertips, closed her hand around it, swung it up and around at Novak’s head without a second thought, because there was no time for thought.
The wooden fruit bowl hit the side of Novak’s head with a satisfyingly deep crack.
It stunned him enough for Bridge to push him off and roll out from under him. Gasping for breath, she pulled herself to her feet and staggered toward the hallway. She tried to call out to the landlord, but all she could manage was a hoarse croak. Surely he must have heard the commotion. Would he just assume it was the police going about their business, or would he come to check? If he did, would Novak kill him, too?
Strong, bulky arms closed around her from behind, swung and tossed her back into the apartment. She tried to find her footing, failed, and fell into the kitchen. She pulled herself to her feet, catching a glance out of the window. She expected to see gendarmerie cars, maybe a patrol van, in the street outside, and Novak’s colleagues rushing into the building. But there was nothing.
The window exploded behind her. Novak had drawn his sidearm, a SIG Sauer SP2022, and this gun was definitely loaded. But he was unsteady on his feet, still reeling from the blow to his head, throwing his aim off. He took another step toward Bridge, steadying himself, ready to fire. She grabbed the nearest thing on the countertop, an aerosol spray cleaner, and clamped hard on the nozzle. He winced and coughed as the spray covered his face, shooting blind again. This time he barely missed Bridge’s head, sending a bullet into the wall two inches from her head.
She closed on him, still spraying the aerosol, grabbing for the gun with her other hand. Novak screwed his eyes tight against the cleaner spray, and Bridge saw tears streaming down his face, but he held onto the pistol with a grim, determined strength. He squeezed the trigger again, shattering a line of splashback tiles above the counter.
The spray was running out. Bridge adjusted the aerosol can and drove it into Novak’s face base first, then bit into his hand. He cried out and finally dropped the pistol. Bridge braced herself on the counter and kicked him in the chest. He rolled with the blow, and she crouched to retrieve the gun.
As her hand closed around it, Novak grabbed and swung a cooking pan from the stove, slamming it into her shoulder. She staggered back, firing at him as he continued forward. The bullet hit him in the thigh, and he cried out. But his momentum carried him through, falling into her before she could brace herself, and now Bridge fell back, expecting to slam into the wall, but there was no wall, only the empty hole of the shattered window, nothing to stop her from tumbling backwards, out and down…
To land on the tiled roof of the balcony below. She groaned with pain and rolled onto her front, looking up and down the street as she ran through options in her mind. She could turn back, kill Novak, and then escape back down the stairs. But the Russian had proven a hard opponent, and what if the landlord saw her leaving, after all this noise and destruction? Worse, what if the rest of the street came out to see what the noise was? At this moment the road was empty, but lunchtime or not, that surely couldn’t last. Someone must have called the police. Every moment she spent here was another moment she risked arrest and, no doubt, a fatal ‘accident’ in custody.
Or she could run from this position. She was now outside, Novak had a bullet in his leg, and she had his gun. More worryingly, Novak somehow knew who she was. If the police weren’t already searching for her, the murder of a gendarme would put every other policeman from here to Lyon on the lookout for Bridget Short. Not that she intended to keep that name, compromised as it now was. There was a clean passport, under a new ID, in the lining of her case back at the guest house. She didn’t have time to change her appearance, but a new name would give her a short head start over Novak and the police. She probed her knee with her fingers, relieved to find it
