Питер Ловси - The Finisher

Diamond took out his phone and checked for texts. “Everyone’s in place. All exits covered.”

They heard the two women come down the stairs.

Olga appeared first, wearing a borrowed white housecoat and light grey slippers with hippo faces. She’d brushed her hair and fixed her make-up and didn’t look as if she was suffering. After Ingeborg was introduced, they busied themselves removing hippos from chairs for somewhere to sit. Maeve, not wanting to be in the same room, offered coffee and fled to the kitchen.

“She is fantastic friend,” Olga said.

“When we met last night, you said you wanted to speak to me,” Diamond said, keen to get on.

“That is true.”

“So?”

“I am homeless lady now, house full of people in white suitings. Nobody tell me when I can go back.”

“They’re checking for evidence. It’s a large house, but I should think they’ll be finished soon. If you need extra clothes or anything else personal to you, make a list and we’ll have them brought over. You were questioned, I was told, and you claim to know nothing about your husband’s criminal activities. I find that hard to believe, Olga.”

She looked back at him without blinking, as if deciding whether she was being insulted. “Listen, I am God-fearing lady, speak only truth. Konstantin he is typical Russian husband, say shit-all to me. You know. You meet him.”

“Didn’t you ever ask him about the house in Duke Street and what went on there?”

“Konstantin buy nice houses to rent is all I know.”

“Your trainer Tony Pinto lived there.”

“Tony come to Sydney Place, my home, okay?”

“He was the gangmaster and Konstantin was his controller and you say you didn’t know what they were up to?”

“I say this many times over.”

“All right. You claim to be innocent. Let’s move on. You invited me here this morning. What else do you want to say to me?”

She nodded. “Konstantin is prisoner, yes?”

Diamond’s eyes switched briefly to Ingeborg. The exchanges had been civil so far. Everything could be about to change. “He’s under arrest and being questioned. If he’s charged, he’ll appear before a magistrate and then a judge.”

“Big trouble, yes?”

“That depends what he’s accused of. He’ll have a chance to defend himself.”

“You lock him up how long?”

Keep it impersonal, he told himself. “I don’t lock him up. I don’t deal with him. The judge decides these things.”

“How long?”

“Do you understand? I don’t decide.”

She pressed him harder. “What is punishment for trafficking?”

“If he’s found guilty under the modern slavery act, you’d better prepare for bad news, Olga. It’s going to be prison.”

“How many years?”

“That will be at the judge’s discretion.” She wouldn’t understand what he meant, but the obfuscation would soften the blow.

“For life?”

He tried to look as if the possibility hadn’t crossed his mind. “That would be the worst possible outcome.”

“Worst for Konstantin.” Olga’s chest started shaking and she rocked back in the chair, arms flapping like a hen vainly trying to take flight. The only things that flew were several hippos from the table beside her.

Hyperventilating? An epileptic fit? Diamond looked to Ingeborg for assistance.

Then Olga found her voice and laughed heartily. “Worst for Konstantin, best for Olga.”

She was rejoicing in the prospect of her husband being banged up for years.

“What will you do?”

“I stay here in Bath. Enjoy myself.” She was fitting in the words between bursts of belly laughs.

“That may not be possible. Your house could be seized if it was bought with laundered money.”

“No problem. I buy another. Great Pulteney Street is nice.”

“Can you afford it?”

“Sure. I have money in bank, my money, clean money. Why do you think Konstantin marry me? My daddy he is capitalist pig, top businessman in Russia, has many companies. I ask, I get.”

“Won’t you be lonely?” Ingeborg asked.

“What for, be lonely? I have friends. Friends at church. English friends like Maeve.”

There was another sound from upstairs like a chair being moved.

They all went silent. And now heavy footfalls crossing the bedroom floor removed all uncertainty.

“Someone’s up there,” Diamond said.

“Is Maeve, I think,” Olga said.

As if on cue, Maeve stepped into the room with a tray of steaming coffee cups. “Did I hear my name?”

“Who’s upstairs?”

Diamond didn’t get an answer and didn’t expect one. He’d see for himself. He almost knocked the tray from Maeve’s grasp in his hurry to get out of the room and check. His damaged foot pained him but didn’t stop him from taking the stairs two at a time. He crossed the landing to the bedroom above the living room and immediately saw a window fully open, the stay unfastened, the curtain flapping in the breeze outside. Below the sill was a chair that must have been put there to climb out.

He went straight to it and looked down. In the time he’d taken on the stairs, nobody could have got far. He was expecting to find someone hanging from the sill or clinging to a downpipe or even standing on the small square of lawn at ground level.

He was wrong.

Across the street was Keith Halliwell.

Diamond called out, “Did anyone jump for it?”

Halliwell shook his head.

“Then how the hell—”

He didn’t get the question out. He was silenced by a sharp hit from behind. His right kidney took the force of it and before he could react to the pain, he was gripped in a tackle as ferocious as anything he’d ever felt in his rugby-playing days. He was dragged back from the window, flung on the bed and pinned to it. A forearm pressed his face into the bedding and a massive hand grabbed his arm and jerked it upwards behind his back until he yelled for mercy.

“Murat!”

The word meant nothing to Diamond. He had almost passed out from shock, suffocation and the near certainty that his arm had been wrenched from its socket.

“Murat!” The voice was Olga’s and she was bellowing her disapproval in words he took to be Russian. They needed no translation.

Diamond’s attacker got the message and acted on it, relaxed the hold, removed the shoulder choke, released the suffering arm and rolled off the bed.

Diamond still couldn’t move. He lay winded, wounded, inert and angry with himself that he’d stupidly walked into the trap. The open window and the chair beneath it had so taken his attention that he’d not checked to see if anyone had been waiting behind him poised to attack.

Ingeborg’s voice broke through the ringing in his ears. “Are you okay, guv?”

Dumb question in the circumstances, but what else could she have said?

“I’ll let you know.” He tried to extract his face from the bedding, felt an explosion of pain in his neck and flopped down again.

“Maybe if you roll the other way,” Ingeborg said.

He wasn’t willing to try.

“Who the hell was that?” he managed to say.

“I’ve no idea.”

Then Maeve’s voice joined in. “Murat is Olga’s boyfriend. He must have thought you were up to no good, coming up the stairs like that.”

Boyfriend? Olga was a married woman.

As if she read his thoughts, Maeve said, “He’s a lovely guy. A gentle giant really.”

“Really?” Diamond said with as much irony as he could express with his face flat to a mattress. Giant, yes. Gentle, no.

“He’s staying here, helping Olga get over her shock of being made homeless. I’m sure he didn’t mean to hurt you.”