Scott Mariani - The Sacred Sword

‘Three ways.’ Mills smiled. ‘That’s more like it.’

Cutter zipped up the bag and hefted its weight over his shoulder. ‘We ain’t done yet, boys. There’s at least one more of these hidden away. He can’t have spent it all.’

‘Where next?’ Mills said.

‘Sauna room,’ Grinnall suggested.

Cutter dismissed the idea. ‘Nobody’d put cash in a sauna room.’

‘Tool shed? Gardener’s hut? Lodge house? Garage?’

‘Not secure enough, any of them.’

‘Swimming pool?’ Mills said. The enclosed all-season pool, with its luxuriant changing rooms, had always been strictly off-limits to the hired help. Penrose was a poor swimmer, but had been seen splashing around in there once or twice.

Cutter nodded. ‘Can’t fucking hurt to check it out. Let’s go.’

They stepped over the spreading blood of the three dead men and left the kitchen. The pool was housed in a metal-framed glass building adjacent to the main villa, most directly accessible from where they were via an outer walkway that spanned the length of the house and overhung the cliff’s edge. The men passed through an arch and out into the cool night. The stars were bright, their reflection glittering like diamonds over the surface of the Tyrrhenian Sea and the rolling surf.

‘I’m dying for a slash,’ Mills announced as they walked.

‘Can’t you hold it in for a few more minutes?’ Cutter said scathingly.

‘Seriously, I’m fucking bursting. Catch up with you in a sec, okay?’ As Cutter and Grinnall headed on towards the pool building, Mills paused to undo his flies and step up to the iron railing at the edge of the walkway. He braced his feet a little apart and sighed with relief as he urinated through the gap in the railing. His arc of piss disappeared over the edge, dissipated in the breeze and splashed on the rocks far below.

He barely had time to react as a pair of hands grabbed him by the ankles and pitched him headlong over the edge of the balcony. By the time Mills opened his mouth to scream, he’d already dropped fifty feet, a dark cartwheeling figure silhouetted against the starlit surf. His brains were dashed out on a jutting piece of rock halfway down the cliff face, and it was a silent corpse that splashed down into the water and was immediately engulfed by the waves.

It hadn’t been long before Penrose had recovered his wits and scrambled to his feet to run back into his office. Cutter’s invasion of his personal sanctuary, and the loss of the forty-two thousand euros in the garbage bag, were quickly bringing reality home to him.

And it wasn’t just money he stood to lose. He was suddenly convinced that the police must be on their way at that very moment to arrest him. Scurrying to the window, he threw it open and listened hard. He could hear nothing but the roar of the surf. No sirens, not yet. But they could come at any minute.

He hurried over to his desk and started hunting through the drawers for all the plans he kept inside. Lists of names, photographs of his victims; the discs containing the child pornography downloaded onto Lalique’s computer; the artist’s impression of the sword; detailed descriptions of every operation he’d painstakingly designed. All his hard work was now nothing more than evidence, enough to sink him so deep he’d never come back up.

He had to get rid of it all immediately. Grabbing the waste paper basket from under the desk, he shook out all the crumpled pages of book notes and started throwing the incriminating material into it.

Now, he had some matches somewhere, he thought feverishly, left over from the romantic candlelit dinner that had never happened, thanks to that ungrateful bitch Daria Pignatelli. He found them on the side, struck one and tossed the burning match into the waste paper basket.

He watched as the flames leapt up and the evidence began to blacken and curl. The incriminating paperwork caught light. The computer discs twisted and melted. He was safe now.

That was when it occurred to him that it was a wicker basket, and it would catch fire along with its contents. By then the flames were already spreading fast and he couldn’t stamp them out with his bare feet. The office began to fill with smoke. Penrose coughed.

The pool building comprised four integral changing rooms behind wooden doors labelled SPOGLIATOIO 1–4. Each contained its own luxurious shower cubicle, large wardrobes for clothing and shoes, storage units for towels, robes, hairdryers and assorted items, and lockers for personal effects, offering several possible hideyholes for a bag full of money. After a couple of minutes’ fruitless search of Spogliatoio 1, Cutter went next door to see how Grinnall was faring.

‘Bugger all luck,’ Grinnall said, standing in a heap of towels and slamming the lid of an empty storage unit.

‘Where’s Dave?’ Cutter asked with a frown. Grinnall shook his head. Cutter sighed and headed for the entrance, pausing at the poolside to glance lovingly at the holdall and its one-point-two-eight-million cargo. Grinnall bustled angrily into Spogliatoio 3, ripping into the storage spaces and muttering to himself about what he’d like to do to that twisted little fuck Penrose Lucas.

‘Dave?’ Cutter called outside. ‘Oy! Mills!’ There was no sign of him anywhere. Cutter strode back inside the pool building. He was about to say something to Grinnall when he stopped and did a double-take.

The holdall full of money was no longer where it had been sitting just a moment ago.

‘Terry, why’d you shift the bag?’

Grinnall came out of the changing room, looking disgruntled. ‘What?’

‘Where’s the money?’

‘I don’t know. Where’d you put it?’

‘Right there. Don’t wind me up.’

‘I’m not fucking winding you up. I never touched it.’

‘Then where the fuck is it?’ Cutter said, frowning deeply. His immediate thought was that Dave Mills must have sneaked in and made off with it. He panicked for a second and was about to run outside after him — but then he realised that wasn’t possible. His back had only been turned a moment. He looked all around him. Was he going crazy?

Then he spotted it. A dark shape at the bottom of the pool, sitting on the tiled floor of the deep end. ‘Oh, fuck, no!’

Without an instant’s hesitation, Cutter dived into the pool and began swimming towards the bag with powerful strokes. As he reached it, six feet underwater, he prayed the money wouldn’t be ruined.

Grinnall was standing anxiously at the edge of the pool, watching and praying much the same thing, when an arm suddenly snaked out from behind him, locked tightly around his neck and hauled him backwards off his feet towards the open door of Spogliatoio 3.

Ben knew exactly who he was dealing with. Brown had provided detailed profiles on Penrose Lucas’s hired guns. The big guy in the leather coat was Terry Grinnall. Thirty-six years old. Ex British Army, but he’d only followed that career long enough to learn that he could kill more people, with greater impunity and for a lot more pay, as a private soldier. Bosnia, Afghanistan, Africa, the usual trail of blood and money. Somewhere along it he’d encountered former Para, Steve Cutter.

But the trail ended here. Ben dragged Grinnall inside the changing room and slammed the door shut with his foot. He grappled the man to the floor, keeping his left arm locked around his throat and his right hand over his mouth.

Grinnall was as strong as he was heavy. He flailed out with his fists and feet and tried to smash Ben in the face with the back of his head and bite his hand. Ben squeezed harder, flattening his windpipe shut. Grinnall bucked and thrashed like a wild man.