Mark Burnell - The Third Woman

These thoughts coalesced, gradually giving him something to focus on – a lifeline to cling to – which was crucial.

He knew that beyond all doubt.

‘I’ll bring you something to eat when I get back.’

‘You’re going out?’

I pull some tape from the roll and bite through it, leaving me with a six-inch strip. ‘For a while. Don’t get over-excited. You’ll still be here when I get back.’

‘Wait. What are you going to do with that?’

‘I told you. I have to go out.’

‘Is it for my mouth?’

‘Yes.’

‘Please don’t. I swear I won’t make a sound.’

I raise an eyebrow. ‘Do I have your word on that?’

He starts to fidget, snagging himself on his bindings .

‘Relax,’ I tell him. ‘I won’t be long.’

But he’s not relaxing. His breathing quickens. The colour drains from his face. Being gagged is never pleasant but he seems to be over-reacting .

‘Start breathing through your nose.’

He shakes his head .

‘Calm down.’

He swallows. ‘You don’t understand …’

‘Doesn’t matter. The sooner we get this over with, the sooner I’ll be back to take it off.’

‘Please – don’t do it.’

‘Look, I’m not walking out of here so that you can shout the house down. Now stay still.’

His grey skin starts to glisten. I step forward and try to place the tape over his mouth. He thrashes his head left and right .

‘For God’s sake, stop it!’

In his panic, he starts yelling. The chair rocks beneath him. I try to grab his hair but he ducks forward .

‘Calm down! I’m not going to hurt you.’

‘Get the fuck off me!’

My backhand swipe catches him on the cheek just below the right eye, snapping his head to the left. The contact feels like an electric pulse. It runs from the bones in my hand up to the shoulder socket .

For a moment, he’s stunned into submission. So I move behind him, grab his head in a lock and smear the tape across his mouth .

‘Now relax. And breathe through your nose.’

It was a beautiful day, no clouds to obscure a diamond sun set in sapphire sky. The moment she set foot outside the building she felt lifted. She chose to forget Newman and his reaction to the tape. A chilly breeze sent shivers through the Seine.

She crossed Pont Louis-Philippe and returned to Web 46 on rue du Roi du Sicilie, just five minutes away from the apartment. She didn’t bother checking any of her own e-mail addresses. Instead, she used a neutral Hotmail address – Joan Appleby – to send a message to Cyril Bradfield.

> Cyril – having a lovely time in NZ. Off to Sydney next week. Then Melbourne, Alice Springs, Darwin. HK next month, then home. Hope you’re well – Joan.

Then she created a new Hotmail address – no name, just a series of letters and numbers – and sent a second message to a third address. This one had been established by Bradfield but had never been used. He checked it twice a month to keep it active, but never did so from his own computer. A message from Joan Appleby would direct him to it.

> Cyril, Jacob and Miriam are dead. Whoever did it is after me. You’re in danger. Everything’s gone. If you can, contact me through our friend. Love, you know who.

When she’d finished, she went to a nearby café and ordered coffee, orange juice and an omelette. She hoped Bradfield would remember the process. When it came to technology beyond his own field of expertise, he remained stubbornly ignorant.

Apart from Stephanie herself, Bradfield was the only link between the Fursts and every version of Petra. Which meant that he was probably already dead. If he was alive and safe, he’d know what to do. And if he was alive and under duress, he’d still know what to do; she’d given him a secure way out.

> Contact me through our friend.

Any involved party reading that phrase would assume it referred to Petra. And Bradfield would confirm that. But he knew that in an emergency all Petra’s addresses were to be considered redundant. If he was in trouble, he’d be able to warn her in his response.

Guy Grangé, an immobilier on boulevard Magenta in the 10ème arrondissement . There were one-room and studio apartments for sale in the window. The digital images were fuzzy. The meagre rentals were hanging from a felt-covered board inside.

Central heating and cigarettes robbed the air of oxygen. The office was staffed by a middle-aged woman with tinted lenses in her glasses and tinted streaks in her hair. Defeated and grey, she was sitting beneath a cheerless property calendar with a photograph of a commercial rental. Nobody had bothered to turn the page since October.

Stephanie showed the woman the receipt she’d found in Golitsyn’s attaché case. ‘There’s no address on this.’

‘No.’

‘And no phone number.’

‘With short-term rentals, we keep the address and only issue the invoice number. It’s a question of security.’

‘Security?’

‘This isn’t the 16ème , you know. The people we deal with, well … ’

Somewhere near the bottom of the heap herself, she still found plenty of others to look down on.

Stephanie showed her the keys she’d taken from Golitsyn’s case. ‘I have these but I don’t know where to go. My boss has gone away. I’m supposed to go over and check everything.’ She glimpsed the signature on the bottom of the receipt. Medvedev’s, naturally, not Golitsyn’s. ‘You don’t know how difficult these Russians are …’

The remark sparked a lightning strike of solidarity. ‘Almost as bad as the Africans.’

Stephanie rolled her eyes in sympathy. ‘Say one thing, do another.’

‘That’s the least of it. You know something? We lose money with them. Seriously. Even when we take it in advance.’

‘ No . How?’

‘The condition of the places when we take them back – you wouldn’t believe it. Disgusting. As for the Chinese – I don’t know where to start …’

She was in her stride now, reaching into the memory bank for the worst offenders. And as she did so, she gathered a scrap of paper and a felt-tip pen.

New York City, 06:20

There was someone downstairs. John Cabrini sat up in bed, ears straining for the sound inside over the sounds outside; a distant dustcart, an alarm, two Cubans arguing on the pavement beneath his window.

The more he listened the louder the silence became. Until it was broken by a second clunk. Definitely inside.

He got out of bed and pulled on a grey towelling robe he’d stolen from a hotel in Turin. He wasn’t going to confront anyone in a pair of navy boxer shorts and a string vest. In the drawer of his bedside table was a Ruger P-85. Evelyn, his wife, had never let him keep a gun in the house. He’d bought the weapon three months after she’d died. Unable to endure the prospect of a life without her, he’d intended to use it on himself. At the last moment – safety-catch off, forefinger squeezing – he’d hesitated.

That had been fourteen years ago. The gun had never been fired. But on four previous occasions he’d been ready to shoot, two of them in the last twelve months. Both times, the intruders had vanished by the time he’d reached the pizza parlour downstairs. Both times, there’d been broken glass on the floor and no cash in the till.

Angelo’s on West 122nd Street in Harlem. Nothing fancy. Just good pizza and cheap prices. Part of a chain of seven Angelo’s restaurants in Harlem and the higher reaches of the Upper West Side and Upper East Side. Michael Cabrini, John’s younger brother, owned the business, employing his wife, two sons and a handful of nephews. As he was fond of saying, ‘Franchises ain’t worth shit unless you got someone you can trust running them. That means you, John. You and the boys. No outsiders.’ Which was why the empire had halted at seven; his brother had run out of employable sons and nephews.