about six inches and if she squeezed the bag in a certain way, a hole appeared when the zip parted.
In the basket were a couple of items from the shelves. In the sports bag were even more items from the shelves, none of which she intended to pay for. She paused near the sweet display, picked up a Kit Kat, looked closely at it, replaced it on the shelf. Her eyes moved to the corners of their sockets and she checked the aisle. Apart from a doddering old woman, Claire was alone.
She picked up half a dozen Kit Kats, squeezed the bag and dropped them expertly into the hole. Casually she dawdled along the sweet display and dropped a 10p chocolate bear into the basket. She moved on.
By the time she reached the till, her basket contained six cheap items. Her sports bag, which began to weigh heavy, contained a great deal of contraband.
At the till she paid for the stuff in the wire basket and even asked for a carrier bag.
Then she stepped out of the shop, only to be dragged back in by an irate Asian man, no taller than herself.
‘ Get your dirty hands off me,’ she screamed.
The man did not let go. ‘You steal,’ he said. ‘You steal from shop. I call the cops.’ He had hold of her biceps. ‘In there — stolen property.’ He pointed at her sports bag. ‘I watch you steal.’
‘ I’ve done fuck-all, you bastard,’ she yelled into his face. ‘If you don’t let me go, I’ll sue you for assault.’
She wriggled and squirmed and kicked out at him. Her Doc Marten boots connected with his shins and he emitted a yell of pain. Still, he hung onto her.
‘ Call cops!’ he shouted to the woman behind the till, who had been watching the encounter with open mouth and no gumption. His shouts galvanised her into action, and she reached for the phone behind her.
Meanwhile, the little Asian shopkeeper discovered he had a tiger by the tail.
Claire spat horribly into his face. ‘I’ve got AIDS, you bastard. Now you have!’
She wrenched herself free from his grasp. He lunged gamefully after her again. But, as Danny Furness had discovered, catching Claire Lilton was no easy matter.
She side-stepped him and picked up the charity box from the counter — which was shaped like a rocket — and swung round, holding it with both hands, rather like the movement an athlete makes when throwing the hammer. She did not let go of it, though. Building up force with momentum, she crashed it into the side of his head.
The box burst open spectacularly, sending a shower of copper coins into the air. More importantly, however, it felled the shopkeeper and gouged a deep gash into his head which spurted blood.
Claire hoisted the sports bag back onto her shoulder and dived out of the shop.
By the time the bloody-faced Asian looked out of the door, she had disappeared.
His Urdu was unrepeatable.
‘ Do you enjoy your work?’ Steve Kruger asked the bodyguard to his immediate right.
There was no response. The guy continued to look dead ahead.
All five men were now on the first-floor level, walking down the middle of the concourse past the shops. No one took any notice of them. They were real professionals, the type of people who, somehow, never seemed to draw attention to themselves. A skill in itself. They simply made it look as though they were out for a stroll. All five of them, Kruger included.
Kruger looked at the members of the public close by. He acknowledged that what Bussola had said was true. If he did anything foolish at this stage, he would die, possibly others too, and these guys would simply dematerialise.
And as much as Kruger didn’t want to die, he didn’t want others to be killed because of him.
Even the security cameras, which he knew were all around, wouldn’t be much use to him. They would never finger these bastards.
‘ How about you?’ Kruger enquired of the man to his left.
‘ Speak once more and you get it here and now,’ he said through the side of his mouth.
‘ Gotcha.’
They walked past the Disney Store.
‘ He’s gotta be here somewhere,’ Myrna Rosza gabbled agitatedly. She scanned the bank of TV monitors in front of her whilst the operator casually, but swiftly, clicked from shot to shot. ‘He’s gotta be here,’ she repeated desperately. She glared at Mark Tapperman. ‘This is your fault.’
The big Lieutenant shrank away from her eyes. He gave a pathetic shrug. ‘He might not be here,’ he said weakly.
‘ Don’t kid yourself.’ Myrna was caustic. ‘Once he gets an idea into his stubborn head…’
‘ You sound like you care about him.’
‘ I do — he pays my wages.’ She returned her attention to the screens. ‘Now, where the hell is he?’
They were in the security control area of the airport, in the CCTV room, peering over the shoulder of the operator who flicked through the images received from all over MIA.
‘ There!’ Myrna almost shouted, pointing to a screen. ‘Focus in there!’
The operator did as instructed.
‘ Shit,’ she said with disappointment as the high powered lens zoomed in. It wasn’t Kruger.
The frustration she was feeling could have been sliced open with a breadknife. Ever since Tapperman had called her at home with an hysterical edge to his voice and. explained what had happened, Myrna had been on a high.
Suppose Kruger had gone storming to the airport? Suppose he’d got himself involved in a situation he couldn’t handle? Suppose he was already dead meat?
Myrna had initially hung up on Tapperman and phoned Kruger. No reply. She called Tapperman again and instructed him to get a SWAT squad to the airport.
He had guffawed. ‘Just on the off-chance — impossible!’
‘ At least get some cops up there.’
‘ Right. And do you know how many cops are on-duty at this moment in Miami as we speak?’
‘ No.’
‘ Well, I ain’t gonna tell you. Suffice to say the public thinks there’s hundreds. I’d be lucky to scrape a dozen unoccupied officers together. No resources, babe. Usual story.’
‘ Then you’d better get yourself there. I’ll see you at the meeting point in twenty minutes.’ And she slammed the phone down without waiting for a response.
Myrna dressed in seconds. Tracksuit, trainers, her pistol around her shoulder. She kissed her sleeping husband and, grabbing her cell-tel on the way out, ran to her car. She constantly rang Kruger’s home and mobile numbers as she drove at warp factor six to the airport.
There was no reply.
She and Tapperman came together as arranged and using his badge and contacts, got into the CCTV room, where they had been ever since.
Myrna rubbed her eyes. She had been having trouble sleeping, not least because she had cheated on her husband not many hours before and could not get her mind off it. She had secretly, and sometimes not so secretly, been attracted to Kruger ever since she began working for him. Personal and professional considerations and responsibilities ensured it never went further than banter or mild flirtation. The previous couple of days had put an end to those issues and it had been an absolute necessity for her to finish up in Kruger’s bed. She had truly believed she could take it for what it was, keep it as a one-off, go back to equilibrium.
Instead she found herself completely disorientated. She couldn’t get Kruger out of her head, nor the memory of him out of her body.
She had been fully awake, if exhausted, when Tapperman rang, and for a while after, the adrenaline flowed. Now, it was ebbing in despair.
Standing there, in front of the bank of TV screens, she had to admit to herself that she loved Steve, had done so for longer than she cared to recall, and the prospect of not seeing him again caused her to panic.
A little squeak escaped from her lips. Tapperman shot her a quick glance.
Then; ‘There he is!’ Tapperman proclaimed confidently. He rapped the appropriate monitor with his knuckles.
