Текст книги "The Blood Whisperer"

Автор книги: Zoë Sharp

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6

“Tell me!” the voice commanded. “Tell me everything!”

As the lash sizzled across his exposed flesh Steve Warwick flinched in pain. He’d sworn that this time he’d take the beating without a sound, like a man, but a traitorous groan forced out past his whitened lips.

His hands were tied over his head to one of the low-slung roof beams. He twisted against the restraint cursing silently but there was no give in the mounting. And although the material itself was soft enough not to mark him it had so far resisted all his frantic efforts to tear himself free.

Blindfolded as well as bound, he strained for every reassuring noise above the hammering of his heart. His tormentor circled with slow footsteps, a deliberate measured pace on the bare wooden floor and he cringed deep inside waiting for the next blow. A hot flood of humiliation had started low in his belly and was creeping outwards. Standing at full stretch like this, naked and vulnerable, he was completely at their mercy.

“I don’t know anything,” he pleaded breathless. “How many more times—”

“Liar!” The woman’s voice cracked out synchronised with the whip and he jerked again. She struck harder this time and his groan mutated into a shocked howl, outrage and pain in equal measure.

The woman laughed. A throaty, husky purr of sound. “You are being very bad boy,” she admonished, her voice tinted with the seductive Russian accent of her birthplace. “You are—how you say?—holding out on me because you know I shall punish you, yes?”

“No! I—”

The whip landed again curling dangerously around his thigh and eliciting a strangled yelp this time. “For God’s sake be careful Myshka!” Warwick snapped. “I’ve a squash tournament this weekend. Not where it will show!”

“Do not presume. To tell. Me. What. To. Do!” The woman punctuated each shouted word with further brutal strokes while he yelled and gasped and shuddered in exquisite agony until his legs buckled and he dangled sweat-soaked from the beam, chest heaving, utterly unable to speak.

She leaned in close enough for her distinctive musky perfume to tantalise his nostrils and whispered against his ear. “You think I am some slut to be ordered around, yes? You think I am like your pathetic excuse for a wife?”

“N-no,” he managed, still panting as he struggled to get his feet under him again and wincing from the fresh weals that laced across his back and buttocks.

Without warning, she stripped the blindfold from his eyes. Warwick screwed them up against the sudden light. It took a few moments before he could squint past his own eyelids.

The fantasy subsided revealing the neat bare bedroom of the top-floor rented flat in Harrow, with its stripped pine floorboards, sturdy exposed beams and conveniently empty office space beneath. The room was dominated by the huge bed with all-white linen and old-fashioned brass bedstead.

Myshka had stepped back and was watching his recovery through narrowed eyes, still fingering the suede-thonged whip longingly. It stung like a bastard but left no lasting scars and damn if she didn’t know how to use it to maximum effect. The best he’d ever had. And having taken the traditional path through the British upper-class educational system Warwick could speak from considerable personal experience.

Myshka herself was a well-endowed brunette, her hair a long gleaming collection of shades from polished oak to copper. He’d always had a weakness for Eastern European girls with their mottled English and exotic beauty. And Myshka knew how to dress to make the most of what she had.

Tonight she was wearing a tightly belted raincoat over long glossy leather boots. The little bitch did that just to tease him he was sure—not letting him see the rest until she was good and ready.

He wriggled his fingers experimentally to return the blood-flow but Myshka made no immediate move to release him. He eyed her impatiently.

“Come on darling let me down,” he said aiming one of his killer smiles. “If you don’t give me a couple of minutes’ rest you won’t be getting your reward tonight.”

Myshka pouted and for a moment he thought she was going to refuse. Then she stepped forwards and reached up to unhook his hands, rubbing her body deliberately against his as she did so.

“You promised to tell me all about Matthew’s poor dead wife,” she breathed into his mouth. “Did you see her body? What was it like? Was there lot of blood?”

Warwick pulled a face at this last question, pushing her away far enough to deal with his bonds. “Sorry to disappoint you darling but it was all over by the time I got there. Well almost all over, anyway.”

Myshka’s fingers froze on the knots. “Almost?”

“Yeah, Matt called in some specialist cleaning firm to deal with the mess. They tried to tell him it wasn’t suicide.” His eyes were on the swell of her breasts beyond the tightly wrapped raincoat. “You ask me it was just a scam to try to squeeze more money out of him.”

She finished untying his wrists and Warwick hauled her against the length of him rough enough to make her gasp. As his hands groped her backside he could feel the outline of stocking tops and suspenders under the thin material of the coat. He yanked greedily at the belt.

Maybe this is your lucky night darling and I won’t need a couple of minutes’ rest after all.

“Did it work?” Myshka asked.

“Oh yeah, I’d say so,” he muttered engrossed in his task.

“Pay attention!” She fisted a hand in his hair to drag his head back. “Did he believe them—that she did not kill herself?”

“Ow! Yes, no, I don’t know!” he protested, too surprised to be angry yet. “When I got there everything had ground to a halt while they consulted higher authority. Whoever it was must have told them to stop pratting about though. By the time I left they were hard at it. Matt says they’ve got the place nearly good as new.”

Myshka turned her grip into a caress. “Maybe I should ask them to clean up here when I am done with you, yes?” she suggested. “Who were they?”

“McSomebody-or-other, I think. McCarron—that was it. Big white vans with Specialist Cleaning Services on the side. Can’t be many of those in the phone book,” Warwick said with the beginnings of irritation in his voice. “I wasn’t paying attention. For God’s sake—Matt will have the details if you’re really so desperate to know.”

Then with a grunt of triumph he yanked the belt apart and spread the coat wide. Under it she was naked apart from a leather suspender belt and fishnet stockings, her body hair shaved to a minimum. His eyes ran hotly over her perfect pale body, hands following. He wasn’t gentle but she never seemed to want him to be.

She stood quietly accepting of his touch and smiled at him. A beautiful woman who became breathtaking when she smiled. In one hand she still held the green silk tie she’d used to bind him, now torn and distorted beyond repair.

“Your poor tie,” she said with mocking eyes. “Was it your favourite?”

“No I hated it.” He plucked the tie from her grasp and flung it across the room then shoved her backwards until they hit the bed. She went sprawling onto the mattress. He followed her down murmuring against her skin, “It was a present from my wife.”

7

Myshka sat in front of her dressing table mirror. She was alone in the flat. Steve Warwick had satisfied himself and left for some meeting he pretended was more important than it was. Later he would go home to his pathetic little mouse of a wife. Myshka was left to smear away the whore-paint and try to scrub the smell of him from her skin.

She took a long inward drag on her cigarette and blew out a thin stream of smoke towards the ceiling. Warwick did not like her to smoke in the flat—it was not allowed. Myshka gave a tight little smile. She did many things that were not allowed.

A long time ago when she was growing up in a small town ten hours’ train ride from St Petersburg Myshka’s most heartfelt ambition was not to be cold and hungry. Later, when she realised what those things meant, it was her desire not to be poor. After she started to grow in ways that men could not help but notice—and as a result acquired warm furs, a paid-for apartment, meals in the finest restaurants and a generous allowance—she realised not being poor was no longer enough. She wanted to be rich.

So she had made friendships with rich and richer men but even then it did not satisfy the empty spaces in her soul. Being given a new Mercedes-Benz for no other reason that the paintwork matched her eyes was very nice of course, but she remained as much a possession as the car itself.

And as she grew older and the lavish presents came perhaps a little less often it was then Myshka realised that what she really wanted above all else was power. It was better than money because where power went money soon followed. And it was better than sex—which in her experience was all about power anyway.

The acquisition of power was a challenge that sent her pulses fizzing in a way no sexual thrills had ever done.

She stubbed out her cigarette.

“Soon,” she promised her reflection.

She picked up her iPhone, scrolled through the contacts and set it to dial. It took a long time for the call to be picked up with a brusque, “Da?”

“Dmitry,” Myshka said huskily. “I begin to think you not love me anymore.”

“I was in a meeting,” Dmitry said. He had learned his English younger than Myshka and so his use of it was smoother.

Somewhere behind him Myshka caught a sudden burst of loud music and raucous voices.

“Where are you?” she demanded sharply. “It sounds like a peasants’ market.”

She heard him suck in a breath. Dmitry had once worked in just such a market selling cheap western imitations at anything but bargain prices.

“We are at a hotel,” he said. “There is a wedding party here.”

Myshka sniffed. “And he is there?”

“Of course he is here.” Dmitry’s tone warned her not to start anything. “He is my boss.”

“For now, yes?”

She heard him twist as if to cover her words. “Myshka—”

“We may have a problem,” she said switching to Russian.

“What kind of problem?” Dmitry stuck to the language of their adopted country. Sometimes she wondered if he did it just to put her in her place. Or try to.

“Lytton called in cleaners.”

This time the intake of breath was harsher and more apparent. “Instead of the police?”

Myshka rolled her eyes. “Not that kind of cleaners,” she said. “Kind that come after police. They looked at place where she die and somehow they know.”

Dmitry swore low and vicious but she heard uncertainty beneath the anger. “How?”

“I do not know. You make . . . mistake, perhaps?” She only phrased it as a question to salve his ego just a little.

There was a long silence at the other end of the line and she knew he would be pacing. When Dmitry was under pressure he could not stay still. “What happened?”

Myshka was reluctant to let him off the hook so soon but she said, “In end, nothing. “They report, wait for a time and then are told to clean anyway. I am merely keeping you—how do the English say it?—up to scratch.”

“Up to speed,” Dmitry corrected missing the intended irony. “Who are they?”

Myshka lit another cigarette and gave him the details she had coaxed or goaded out of Warwick—and how she had done it. She knew Dmitry did not like to hear such things. He was a man for whom sex and violence did not mix. A pity.

“And will your sick little puppy keep you up to speed?” he asked when she was through.

“He will do whatever I tell him,” she said and gave a throaty chuckle, “just as long also I tell him he is very bad boy.”

Dmitry swore again. “I have to go,” he said quickly. “Keep me informed, hmm?” And he cut the connection without waiting for her to speak.

Myshka pulled a face and put the phone down slowly. “You are welcome,” she said. “But next time . . . get it right, yes?”

8

Kelly arrived home late to find someone had nicked the low energy bulb in the hallway again. It happened regularly enough for her to keep a small LED flashlight permanently on her key ring. That at least allowed her to navigate the tangled assortment of bicycles and pushchairs behind the front door without breaking anything or impaling herself in the gloom.

Her flat was three flights up on the top floor of a shabby Victorian mid-terrace house. The young letting agent had done his best to extol the property’s virtues as he’d walked her up that first day. But by the time they reached the final dirty landing high under the eaves he hadn’t the heart or the breath for what remained of his sales pitch. He’d allowed her to wander through the scant three-roomed flat in silence.

Kelly had made his day by taking on the lease anyway.

The place had been lavishly described as a “cosy studio apartment in need of some modernisation” which translated as “crummy dwarf bedsit” in anybody else’s language. But it was affordable and a stone’s throw from Battersea Park on the south side of the Thames. And besides, Kelly had just been released from somewhere much worse.

After five years in a cell barely ten feet by eleven with cellmates who snored or sneered or ranted—and even one who tried to suffocate her while she slept—the three-hundred-square-foot apartment had seemed like untold luxury whatever its condition.

Her first task had been to tackle the place like a crime scene, suiting up and sanitising every inch, a two-foot segment at a time. She painted it in pale creams and greys and golds that made the most of the modest skylight and the single window. The transformation had taken up an entire weekend and proved a cathartic exercise.

As she slipped inside tonight and re-engaged the locks she reminded herself yet again that she was shutting the rest of the world out not shutting herself in.

She dumped her keys in the terracotta pot in the two-pace hallway, along with the rotor arm from her ancient Mini. Removing it proved the cheapest way to immobilise the car whenever she left it parked on the local streets.

Not that it was worth stealing but people round here were apt to overlook the more-rust-than-paint bodywork and the kerbed steel wheels if a vehicle fired and ran.

And Kelly had taken advantage of the prison educational programmes to learn motor-vehicle maintenance, so for all its sorry appearance the Mini was endlessly reliable and nipped through gaps in traffic like a jet-propelled skateboard.

She switched on the shaded lamps in the living area, one either side of the sofa that folded out into her bed. It didn’t bother her that the flat was tiny. It was her space, her retreat, her solitude. A place where nobody had the right to roust her in the middle of the night to order her outside so they could pick over her belongings at random.

And it had a priceless feature that the letting agent hadn’t been remotely aware of never mind thought to use as leverage on the rent.

Now, Kelly went into the tiny bathroom and opened up the narrow skylight above the sink. She used the edge of the bath as a single step and levered herself carefully through the opening out onto the roof.

The skylight led out onto the interconnected rooftops that had become her secret refuge. A huge rolling contour map of hips and valleys dotted with TV aerial forests and chimney stacks that rose like rock formations towards the sky. She’d taught herself to navigate the slate and tile landscape like a ghost so those beneath never knew she was there.

For a moment Kelly stood balanced easily on the sharp slope and breathed in the night air above London. The smell of freedom.

She picked her way nimbly across the slanted rooftop avoiding loose wires and broken tiles by instinct and familiarity. The end of the terrace butted up against a taller building, its elderly brickwork face providing a relatively easy ascent.

The first time she’d scaled this wall Kelly had shaken with delayed reaction afterwards but now it was almost second nature. She moved smoothly, continuously, using the mortar gaps and concentrating on texture and grip. Free climbing was risky but by ensuring she always had three good points of contact she could contain the risk. And the prize made it worth the effort.

Kelly’s favourite spot faced nominally north-east. From there perched on the ridge with her back to a substantial brick chimney she could see the glow of Big Ben, the giant London Eye Ferris wheel, the four huge funnels of the disused power station at Battersea and the glimmer of a thousand lights reflected on the slow water of the river.

Even if she shut her eyes she could point to every landmark in turn, see them spread clearly across the canvas of her imagination. She’d always had an excellent memory, had once been noted for her ability to recite facts and figures in court with absolute conviction and without recourse to notes.

But suddenly six years ago she’d had a blackout. A total void that stretched for hours. And when she’d come back to herself she’d discovered that all the evidence—for which she’d always had such respect—pointed to her being a murderer.

Her victim’s name was Callum Perry. She remembered that much. Secretive and cryptic, Perry had called her claiming to have information she needed to know about a dead prostitute. That case looked straightforward at first glance but Kelly had run into anomalies. Questioning them had not made her popular in some quarters.

So she arranged to meet him. That was the last thing she knew until she woke next to his corpse.

So for the first time she’d found herself in the dock rather than on the witness stand, assailed by roiling uncertainties. She’d believed herself to be innocent but didn’t know it. Not for certain. And certainly couldn’t prove it.

Her friends—ones she’d made through her work and all connected with law enforcement—steadily melted away. Even those who thought she might be innocent were told by their chain of command that if they valued their careers they’d cut her loose.

She thought of David as she hadn’t thought of him in years. As she had conditioned herself not to think of him. David who had shared her life, her heart, until …

She’d felt him pulling back from her right from the moment of her arrest, had often thought he’d only stuck around as long as he did because it looked worse to go than stay. In the end he’d stayed too long and the wash of associated guilt had almost drowned him alongside her.

David resented her for that she knew. Held her bitterly responsible for the permanent stall in promotion that followed. He’d hoped for chief superintendent if not higher. Now he was likely to see out his twenty-five as the longest-serving detective inspector in the Met.

The police, it seemed, were very quick to turn on their own.

Alone, all Kelly could cling to was faith in the evidence she’d always trusted. That it would somehow come to her aid.

But the evidence had let her down.

Now, she thought back to the scene of Veronica Lytton’s supposed suicide.

“I know she was murdered,” she told herself. Even if the evidence was gone—all bar a few digital images and her tainted expertise. Neither of which were likely to stand up in court. Especially when she had personally helped wipe out all physical trace.

Safe in her eyrie looking out over London she hugged her knees to her chest and shivered despite the balmy air.

9

Dmitry slumped in the driver’s seat of his black Mercedes-Benz, watching and waiting.

It was a long time since he’d had to sit like this in silence and darkness waiting for his prey. Not since the old days, he thought sardonically and half-smiled. In some ways he almost missed it.

But since he had left his homeland Dmitry had tried hard to acquire western sophistication. Take the car for instance. The ten-year-old S-Class coupé was all Dmitry could afford but he’d made up for the age by kitting it out with huge chrome alloys and heavy tint on the glass. Very classy. Back home it was the kind of motor that would have brought people out onto the streets to stare as he passed. In London it didn’t warrant a second glance.

But for something like this the car’s anonymity was a good thing.

He’d been waiting for three hours. Three hours without a cigarette and with nothing to occupy his hands. Nothing to occupy his mind either except idly wondering how far to go with the message he had come to deliver. A little further with each passing hour most likely—something had to make up for this boredom.

He was parked in a side street near the Tube station at Stonebridge Park in northwest London. As he arrived he’d caught glimpses of the arc of the new Wembley stadium in the distance. It was an area more industrial than residential which was a good thing. Not that people were likely to look when they heard noises outside anyway.

Such a polite race the British. So careful not to get involved even to the point of allowing a stranger to be beaten to death on the very steps of their home. Besides, he was a stone’s throw from the North Circular inner ring road. The constant traffic flow even at this time of night would mask any small sounds. Dmitry prided himself that he was good enough for there to be little else.

In fact his only brief worry was the Ace Café just a little further along the road. It seemed to be a local bikers’ haunt and there was a lot of coming and going, and groups of people milling around outside. He shrugged it off. If anything the bad press bikers usually got meant they could well be blamed for his actions.

And then finally the lights flicked off in the office window above the line of roller-shutter doors.

At last!

Dmitry was out of the car and across the road in a few seconds, moving fast without seeming to hurry. He made sure to blip the locks on the Mercedes as he walked away from it. It would be bad news if the car was stolen while he was otherwise engaged.

He was only a few strides away from the main door to the building when it opened. Dmitry tucked in close to the wall so he merged with the shadows. The light that flooded out of the doorway briefly illuminated the figure of a man, just enough to confirm his target.

Dmitry already had one hand wrapped around the short baton in his coat pocket. Now he pulled it out and extended it with a sharp upward flick of his wrist. The sound of the baton’s segments telescoping outwards and locking into position was designed to resemble that of a shell being racked into the chamber of a pump-action shotgun. The sound alone made most people freeze but this guy ducked and swung on a reflex.

The first blow landed short. It was still enough to send the man back and down, grabbing hold of the door frame in an attempt to keep his balance. He gave out a grunt and brought his left arm up instinctively to protect his head. Dmitry aimed for the exposed elbow, hearing the muffled crack as the joint exploded.

This time the man let loose an enraged bellow as he collapsed onto the laminate floor, rolling to escape the pain. Dmitry followed him inside, kicking the man’s legs clear of the door so he could close it behind them. No point doing this in full view of the empty car park.

Now he could take his time to coldly and scientifically deliver blows that inflicted misery as much as lasting damage. Killing the man would be counterproductive he knew. All he needed to do was scare him into silence.

When Dmitry figured he was scared enough he stood over him staring down as if to read meaning in the jerky spasms of his limbs. The man’s cries had dribbled away to groans. He lay with his face against the wall in a greasy puddle of his own spittle and blood.

Dmitry nudged him over onto his back with his foot, leaned in close.

“You see me?” he demanded.

The man opened the eye that wasn’t completely swollen shut, swallowed before he could speak. Even then he hesitated as if this might be a trick question.

Dmitry sighed. “Remember my face, friend. You have poked your nose into something that’s none of your business and my boss is very upset. So let it lie—or you will be seeing my face again for sure. Yes? And next time I will not ask so . . . politely.”

There was another hesitation, then a slow fractional nod.

The hesitancy might have been due to pain or confusion but Dmitry did not leave that to chance. Just in case, he repeated his message with several more, brutal blows and followed them up with another verbal warning, laying on a dose of extra threat.

When he was done he carefully wiped the baton on the man’s clothing and forced it shut against the powerful spring in the base.

Then he walked out of the building and pulled the door neatly closed behind him. Halfway back to the Merc he lit his first cigarette of the evening and inhaled the smoke deep into his lungs.

A job well done, he considered.

Yes, perhaps after all he did miss it.

Getting back to central London took less than an hour. Dmitry cruised with the stereo on and didn’t go out of his way to attract attention.

As he pulled up to the underground parking garage the transponder behind the Merc’s front grille sent out a signal that opened the security gates. A few minutes later Dmitry had slotted the car into its bay and was taking the plush lift to the penthouse apartment high above.

He let himself in and pocketed his keys. Voices came from the living area. When he pushed open the doors he found Harry Grogan sitting alone at the head of the dining table with one of the twenty-four-hour news channels playing on the huge flatscreen TV on the far wall. Grogan was eating a steak so rare it still bled onto his plate.

He was a big man wearing a three-grand suit and a hand-finished shirt that Dmitry felt did a passable job of disguising the middle-aged slide of muscle into fat. When his hair started to grey and thin he’d shaved his head down to the scalp. It gleamed now under the ceiling spotlights.

“You’re late,” Grogan said.

Dmitry bowed his head briefly. Partly in acknowledgement of the rebuke and partly to hide the flare in his eyes.

“I am sorry boss,” he said. “I was dealing with a . . . minor problem.”

Grogan stared at him steadily while he chewed another mouthful then picked up his wine glass. “Anything I should know about?”

Dmitry shook his head. “No,” he said stonily. “It is nothing I cannot handle.”