“Charlie, it’s me… I’m so sorry about this…”
The noise grew in the station and on the recording — the hiss of breaks.
“It’s... it’s... things really aren’t good…”
The whine of the slowing electric motors.
“Don’t lose faith in me...”
The train rushed towards him, both on the recording and in the station.
There was a crash. The earpiece went silent.
The train groaned to a stop, and the doors slid open. Leo stepped out of the way of the few people making their way out. His mind barely registered their movement. He was still thinking of the implications of what he’d discovered — the timing on the recording matched the real train entering the station. This was where Minty had supposedly collided with the train.
As the departing train accelerated away in the now-familiar rush of wind and noise, Leo shook himself back into the present. There was a phone on the tracks right here. That was too much of a coincidence.
The final passengers made their way towards the street and a quiet settled over the station. Leo glanced at the arrivals board. The next train wouldn’t be here for a full five minutes. Leo looked around at the empty platform. He knew what he needed to do.
26
“Keal, come back to me. This is important,” Semion said.
The man didn’t respond.
Semion swore, leant forward and slapped Keal hard around the face. His head swayed with the impact, then became still.
Semion swore again. He checked Keal’s neck for a pulse. It was weak but he was definitely still alive. He would need another dose. The problem was, the more he had, the less chance there was he would recover.
Semion dug his phone out and called Olezka. He needed to check this through.
“I, well... I...” Borya stuttered.
Olezka wanted him to take over some of their operations. This was a big deal. He felt himself smile.
A shrill buzz pierced the silence. Olezka pulled a small, low-tech phone from his coat pocket.
“It’s Semion,” he said to Borya. “I must get this.”
“Of course.” Borya nodded.
“Why don’t you get us that drink now,” Olezka said, holding the phone to his ear.
Borya crossed the kitchen, collected two glasses and a bottle of vodka. He knew this was one of Olezka’s favourites.
“Yes, do whatever it takes,” Olezka said. “Just get it done and then… you know what to do.”
Semion filled the syringe with the same dose as last time and held it up to the light again. No, he thought, a grin forming, a little more.
When the syringe was loaded, Semion sank it into Keal’s neck and pushed the plunger. Then he sat back on his chair and watched. As Keal’s body began to convulse once more, Semion grinned. This stuff worked quick.
“Now then Keal,” Semion said when the shaking had stopped. “A few days ago, you went to Minty’s shop and you said Borya was there.”
“Yes,” Keal replied clearly.
“Can you tell me exactly what happened?”
“It was strange because when I got there, there was a car outside.”
“Borya’s blue Mercedes?”
“No, it was a Maserati. A red one. I’d recognize it anywhere.”
Semion made a note of this.
“I went inside and picked up the stuff. Just as I was about to leave, Borya appeared from the back room. He and Minty started discussing something about the clothes Minty made. I said hello, then got out of there. There were six packages that time.”
Semion jotted the details down.
“When I left, the car was still there. Someone was sitting in the driver’s seat. I didn’t recognise them, though.”
Semion scribbled that down as his grin became a full smile.
Borya was there. That could only mean one thing.
27
As a decent, sensible person, Leo knew there were some things you just shouldn’t do. Society didn’t just tell you these things; it painted a technicolour picture of what would happen if you did them. Such forbidden acts are ingrained into popular culture; the killer gets caught, the wicked witch dies, and trespassing on railways is a terrible idea.
To this day Leo remembered sitting in a damp classroom, the rain beating hard against the leaking school windows, his shoes still wet from the journey there, and being made to watch a railways safety video. It followed the true story of a young boy who had thought it a good idea to play on a railway. Like a Shakespearian tragedy, it didn’t end well. He had been electrocuted and possibly died — Leo couldn’t remember exactly. Maybe there had been a happy ending. Either way, the video was gruesome. The boy was shown — in a reconstruction — twitching for some time on the railway’s electric line. The video taught Leo two things. Firstly, you shouldn’t dick around on the tracks, and secondly, if you avoided the electric rail, you’d probably be fine.
Now looking down at the tracks of the Berlin underground system, Leo noticed they had the same setup. On the far wall, the third rail was raised higher than the other two.
Leo thought he could quite easily jump down there, get the phone and be back on the platform in less than ten seconds. A lump grew in his throat.
Leo glanced around. The platform was empty. A voice echoed from somewhere near the stairs, but its owner was out of sight. On the digital arrivals board, the five minutes until the next train ticked over to four.
Of course, there would be CCTV, but Leo thought he could probably get down there and back before anyone had the chance to respond. He estimated it would take no more than ten seconds — ten seconds to make or break this investigation.
Leo swallowed hard, stuffed his phone deep in his pocket and stepped towards the platform’s edge. If that phone was Minty’s, then Leo needed to see it. The truth about a young man’s life or death hung in the balance.
To the left, a red signal radiated from the mouth of the tunnel. A clock on the wall counted the seconds away. To the
