Chapter 40
As we pivot over the rail, I can feel his knife at my side, but I have the guy in a bear hug, and he’s still so shocked to be going over the edge of the landing that he’s not able to do much with it.
If I land on the blade, I’ll have yet another problem, but my thinking is now short-term enough that anything which keeps me alive for the next second and a half feels like a good bet.
As we go, we bounce off the chandelier – hard enough to smash it half to bits, not nearly enough to slow our descent.
And then we’re tumbling together, upside down, and a few confused impressions push themselves through my brain without me having time to focus on any single one.
I shouldn’t have bothered giving up smoking for my health.
I should have met these guys years ago and travelled around with them, having fun, rather than leading a solitary existence with only my rules for company.
I should definitely have slept with Em a second time.
That’s enough of that. The hall floor is rapidly becoming the biggest thing in my field of view, and there’s nothing to do but see who lands on top.
Drum roll …
No, don’t be daft. I land on top. Obviously. Which is why this book is not called My Time As an Elite International Assassin.
There’s a crack as we hit the ground. It’s organic.
I roll off, and can tell as soon as I peel away from the guy that he’s dead.
Not a bad way to go. Quick, certainly. What about me?
I think I’ve fractured my wrist, which was partly beneath him, and took not only my weight but plenty of his.
Even if it isn’t broken, it hurts like hell.
And – oh, fuck – there’s blood coming from my mouth.
I put my hand to it and examine it for a bit.
I can’t quite make the connection between the two.
There’s a word for when you’ve hit your head this hard. What is it again?
Em gets to me first, and makes the kind of comforting, sensitive comment she’s been trotting out since the day we met. ‘Al, you tit.’ She kneels and gingerly takes my functioning hand.
‘Yeah,’ I manage to say. I’m a bit winded.
‘Where’s this blood coming from?’
‘Don’t know.’ It feels as if the plates of my skull are sliding over each other. Thinking is a bit tricky. Where am I again?
Elle catches up, and takes over from her sister.
She squeezes my mouth open and looks inside with a phone torch.
‘It’s all right. You’ve just bitten your tongue.
It’ll bleed for a bit but it’ll heal fast. And this …
this isn’t even fractured as far as I can feel.
Maybe a hairline.’ I wipe my mouth on my spare sleeve as she gently lowers my wrist, and glance sideways at the man who was trying to kill the three of us about a minute ago.
I’m still a bit confused, and as I look at his body, I think, God, pal, what happened to you? before remembering that I did.
‘Can you move your other arm? OK, good. And your legs? All right. I think you’re OK to move. Uuuup we get.’
Em is looking at me with bafflement. ‘Al, we’d have thought of something else. Why did you do that?’
‘I’m sure …’ I pause to breathe. My thoughts are clearing a little. ‘Sherlock Holmes … did it once.’
‘You silly bastard.’ She’s still holding my hand, though, even though I’m on my feet. ‘You all right?’
‘I think so.’
‘Good. Don’t do that again.’
Elle has taken the dead man’s pulse at his neck – although his neck is at such a surprising angle that you wouldn’t think she’d need to – and gets her phone out of her pocket. ‘I’m ringing Claudia.’
‘Now? When someone has died and we were the ones who … when we were present? Are you insane?’
‘It’s Claudia, Em. We can trust her. I won’t tell her you’re here. If we do have any hostile powers after us, I’d like us to know for sure.’ Elle gets out her phone, takes a picture of the guy’s face, and starts texting.
Em thinks of something else. ‘Shit.’
‘What?’
‘Jonny.’
She helps me up, and together we run and hobble to the door, which is still wide open, and look out into the dark front garden. ‘Jonny?’
A shape looms up before us – a tall, unruly shape, with none of the feline grace or poise of an international man of mystery. Its T-shirt reads DON’T BLAME ME, I TOOK THE BLUE PILL in neon green. The figure opens its mouth.
‘What’s up? Sorry. Gatepost cameras took a bit longer than I thought.’
‘Jesus, Jonny.’ Thank God. He’s absolutely fine.
He looks at me and frowns. ‘What’s going on in here?’
We pull him into the front hall and fill him in, although the corpse does most of the work for us. He nods. ‘Quick exit?’
‘Very quick.’
Jonny lumbers off to pack up his kit. We’re all ignoring the dead man, surrounded by fragments of chandelier, but Elle is on her phone, and looking worried. ‘Em.’
‘What?’
‘Claudia’s texted back already. She’s working late.’
‘And?’
‘We were half right. This guy is government.’
‘Which government? Chinese?’
Elle shakes her head.
‘Somewhere like it? North Korea?’
She grimaces. ‘British.’
The others help me gather my things together, and in about six minutes we’re ready to head. By then I’m feeling much better – physically, anyway.
As we finish piling our things in the hall, we look back at the man on the floor.
It’s not like Davy. He genuinely looks all right.
If it wasn’t for the angle of his neck, he might be having a nap.
If it wasn’t for the huge serrated knife, he might just have been a homeowner who met with a terrible accident.
And if it wasn’t for the mountains of DNA evidence tying us to the place, we wouldn’t need to worry at all.
We did discuss burying him in the garden, but it wouldn’t do us much good.
With the way things have been heading lately, we’ll be lucky to get through the next week.
Elle asked if anyone wanted to say anything, but I don’t know what you can say about someone you’ve known for two minutes who you then killed in self-defence, so we just put a big tablecloth over him for a touch of propriety, and I mutter, ‘Sorry.’
All our things are at the front of the hall.
Em and I have been discussing where we go next.
Between Bowling Ball and this, Balfour Villas is now officially subprime.
I know a place over in Richmond, a nice house belonging to a TV presenter who I happen to know is filming a home renovation show in Puglia for the next three months.
None of us has thought about the fact that the man lying behind us is – according to Em and Elle’s sister – a British spook.
And Claudia isn’t going to get the chance to track our whereabouts either, because Em turned her sister’s phone off, and confiscated it for good measure.
I saw the screen over her shoulder. Claudia was texting every three seconds when Em got to it.
The last two messages I saw were Wait and You should know.
With adamantine self-control, she switched it off even with the three little dots on the screen, and dropped it into her bag.
The Uber is en route to us, two streets away, so we’re going to scurry through the dark garden just as it arrives, hop in, get to the centre of town, split up and reconvene at the new place.
We bundle out, shut the front door behind us, and cart the bags across the garden. As we go back and forth, Jonny dives into the undergrowth to retrieve all the cameras he just installed.
Em, Elle and I are in the street, huddled around our little pile of bags. What a forlorn bunch we make. My teeth still feel loose in my head.
‘Who was he?’ That’s Elle. ‘Who would send a British spy?’
‘I don’t know, love. We’ll work it out at the next place.’ Em is trying, but she doesn’t sound convinced.
Just as the Uber turns the corner, before we can even give it a wave, there’s a shout from behind us, followed by a bang. It’s a noise – I am beginning to recognise, although I wish I wasn’t – that could only be made by a gun going off at close range.