‘Two very bad guys suspected of very nasty attacks in Majorca, Malta and Cyprus. People have been left blind. That said, guess what? They’ve never yet faced a court for it, because — guess what again? No one wants to give evidence against them. I’ve got the details of who they are suspected to be by plundering various intelligence databases.’
‘Names?’ Henry said.
‘Yuri Gregorov and Vladimir Kaminski.’
‘Photos, prints, antecedents?’
‘On file. Just because they haven’t been to court doesn’t mean they haven’t seen the inside of a police cell, rare though that is. They do have a couple of minor convictions, actually… and they do have another speciality. They steal cars to order, usually big four-wheel-drive ones.’
‘OK, thanks for that. You know what went on up at Joe Speakman’s today?’ Henry asked. Tope said he did. ‘In that case, link up with the scientific people and see if one of these guys is our dead shooter.’
‘You serious?’ Tope said.
‘Deadly.’
‘Shit… sorry… can I add something?’
‘Yep.’
‘These guys are ex-military and ex-secret police — in the most recent incarnations of these things in the new Russia. Y’know, new versions of the KGB and all that? But now they allegedly work for a big Chechnyan ganglord called Oscar Malinowski, a guy who’s grown very fat and rich in the last twenty years as Russia’s crumbled internally. And they’re both as hard as nails.’
Henry and Flynn glanced at each other.
‘Er…’ Tope hesitated.
‘Spit it out,’ Henry urged.
‘If they’re up there, something’s going on, Henry — something big and unpleasant. They operate as a team and if you have killed one of them, the other will be mightily pissed off. So just be wary, Henry. They’re not above paying cops a visit. In fact they’re suspected of maiming and blinding a detective in Cyprus… so watch it.’
‘That’s if they are these guys,’ Flynn cut in.
‘Yeah, maybe they’re not…’
‘Anyway, Jerry — do some more digging for me, will you — as well as liaising with the scientific people to see if we do have a match.’
‘I will.’
‘What about that other job?’ Henry asked Tope.
‘Much as I’d trust Flynn with my life,’ Tope lied, ‘it’s really just for your ears, Henry.’
Even though Tope had said nothing, the implication of his reluctance to speak made Henry suddenly feel slightly queasy — even more ill than hearing he might be prodding a hornets’ nest full of Russian nasties.
‘No prob…’ Henry’s mind whirred. ‘Look, get me what you can on this gangster Malinowski will you and email me with everything else you’ve got… I’ll pick it up on my Blackberry… and I’ll speak to you in the… shit!’
During the course of the phone call, Henry had reached the village of Hornby and turned right to head out towards Kendleton in the unlit back of beyond. He had been aware that there was a vehicle behind him, but hadn’t paid it much heed as it hadn’t been right up his backside and his concentration was on what Tope was saying. Now, almost without realizing it, he was out on the tight, narrow country roads just wide enough for two vehicles to pass with care in opposite directions, a few inches to spare between wing mirrors. So far there had been no oncoming traffic and Henry’s car and the one behind had been the only vehicles on the road.
Up to that moment, the car behind had kept to a reasonable distance.
As they hit a stretch of road clinging to a steep hill with one of the tiny tributary streams that fed the River Wenning down an almost perpendicular drop to their left, the main headlight beams of the following car came blazing on like aircraft landing lights and the car itself surged up behind the Mercedes just as he was talking to Tope.
There were four big headlights fitted along a cowcatcher attached the front radiator grille and Henry’s car was brightly lit up, casting a long shadow ahead of himself. Then, on this tight, narrow, steep-sided and dangerous road, the vehicle swerved out, the horn sounding angrily, and moved to overtake.
That was the moment he said ‘Shit’ to Tope.
He had nowhere to go to make space for the idiot who must surely have seen that a manoeuvre like this, on that stretch of road, was not an option.
Flynn twisted round in his seat, looking over his shoulder. He knew from experience that the road was not built for this because he’d once been all but forced off it by — spookily — a black Range Rover, the type of vehicle behind them now.
It wasn’t the same car, nor quite the same stretch of the road, but it was the same move, and then it had been daylight and he could see. Henry, despite all the light surrounding him now, didn’t have that luxury.
He gripped the steering wheel, hunkered down, decelerated and clung to his position on the road in the hope that the vehicle behind might get past without colliding. He knew that he could not afford to veer to his nearside, he’d be on the grass verge.
But passing clearly wasn’t the driver’s intention.
The Range Rover blasted its horn again as it came parallel, then deliberately shunted left with a crunch and tearing of metal on metal.
It was no accident. Not a misjudgement. It was a premeditated act.
The steering wheel was almost thrown out of Henry’s grasp, but he hung on tenaciously, hardly daring to tear his eyes from the road ahead.
The Range Rover slammed left again.
This time Henry was forced off the road.
The Mercedes crashed through a low hedge, then plunged down the steep hill towards the brook at the bottom of a narrow valley.
Henry grappled with the wheel, fighting it as the front of the car bounced into and out of deep ruts in the banking, throwing him and Flynn around in their seats like they were on a high-adrenaline Disney ride.
Suddenly there was a sheep in the headlights, the beam catching its strange brown eyes. It gave Henry a look of astonishment, then fled into the night a second before the car would have flattened it.
Then the front wheels dropped into a deep rut. The body twisted, then it flipped over and somersaulted, crashed onto its roof, bounced, kept going, landed on all four wheels. But the momentum was too great and it did another three-hundred-and sixty-degree forward roll, moving with agonizing slowness, again thudding down on all four wheels right in the centre of the stream at the bottom of the hill. The engine stalled and died.
Henry was still holding the steering wheel, completely amazed he was still conscious and alive, cowering under the crumpled roof which, though extensively damaged, was magnificently still protecting the occupants. Even then, he thought, ‘German engineering.’
He looked sideways at Flynn. He was still conscious, too, but had a deep, jagged gash on his hairline from which blood gushed across his face. He wiped it away from his eyes.
For a few moments, both men were speechless and slightly confused.
Back up on the road, at the top of the steep banking, the Range Rover stopped diagonally across the road, the front wheels just over the edge in the gap that Henry’s car had made in the hedge. The powerful headlights shone down on the Mercedes a hundred feet below.
Henry blinked as he looked stupidly upwards at them, his brain in turmoil, trying to work out what had just happened, wondering what the guy in the car was doing now.
In a matter of seconds he’d been forced off the road and was now in a fucking stream!
Then outline of a man shape stepped into the headlights, silhouetted by the beams.
Henry saw it and assumed the driver had stopped to give assistance after his dangerous driving. He had done a ridiculous, fucking stupid, dangerous overtake, lost control on the way past, clipped the car he was passing — and now his conscience had kicked in.
That’s what Henry would have liked to think.
The fact that the shadow of the man clearly showed him to have a machine-pistol in his hands made Henry think differently.
