Kate reappeared in the far doorway, and I thought for a moment that she hadn’t found what I’d sent her for, until I realised she had stuffed the bundle of plastic strips into her waistband to keep her good hand free. I was about to beckon her over, to hand her the gun to cover me as I applied our makeshift handcuffs, but I was interrupted by Kearney beginning to turn towards me. I twitched the gun his way and he froze, his hands spread in a placatory gesture, but he did not turn back to the wall. He knew how much leeway I had to grant him, and I knew that in his place I too would be testing the resolve of my captor, seeing if I could stretch that leeway into a loophole.
He started talking, and I let him. I wasn’t paying attention to his words, and they washed around me without leaving a permanent impression. I had my line already drawn, and whilst he didn’t cross it I was prepared to let him talk. In any case I wanted to a few moments to consider my next moves, to be sure of not blocking Kate’s sightlines whilst I worked. I thought I could afford the time for that. I was wrong.
If I had listened to Kearney I might have made a better showing. As it was I noticed too late the momentary warmth in his expression and the softening of his stance, and before I could interpret it I had heard, too late, the step behind me, and Stevie’s giant hand was closing round my own, with Kate still standing in the far doorway – and looking about as sinister, I thought bitterly, as a chocolate bunny as she did so.
But I had only a moment’s view of her, and the thought did not detain me. I was already turning into Stevie’s hold, and there was a moment that passed without thought. He had the longer reach, but I was inside his guard where it could not assist him, and though he was the bigger man he had never been taught to use his bulk, except in intimidation. It was over in seconds, before Kearney and his men were fully aware of it, but I could hear them stirring, and as I lifted my eyes there was Matt in front of me. I could deal with him as rapidly as with Stevie but it would use, still, more time than I had. In another minute Kearney would have marshalled his men, and even with the gun I would be hopelessly outnumbered.
I took a stride forward, over Stevie’s encumbering body, determined to do what I could, but even as I moved there was a soft rush and a glint of light beside me, and Matt staggered and fell to his knees, his left hand clasping at his right shoulder, and at the knife hilt that had abruptly appeared there. My back was to the wall before I knew what I had done, and I had the room covered again, and a moment’s grace to look again at Kate.
Her left arm was still extended from the throw; I could see the end of the sprung sheath below her cuff, the sheath I had managed, in all honesty, to miss in my hasty search. She smiled, and shrugged, and took a tie wrap from her belt with her agile left hand, the hand that sinister lady favours, and went on quietly with her work, as if we had never been interrupted.
*** * ***
A word from the author
Hello, reader.
Thank you for dropping by, and for staying along to the end. I hope that you’ve enjoyed my company. If you want to find out more about my writing, and about other writing that interests me, you can follow me on Twitter where I’m @findingthelady, or visit my Facebook page, Brightsmith Gamp. I’d also be delighted to make your acquaintance on Goodreads, where I am simply Alex Brightsmith.
For now, adieu, and thanks for coming along for the ride.
Alex
*** * ***
Read more about Kathryn Blake
Both Kathryn Blake and Daniel Thwaite first appeared in the contemporary thriller Viennese Waltz. It is available from all major ebook retailers, and starts like this . . .
You always wanted to see Vienna.
Kate paused a moment, checking her footing, only half aware of the little islands of silence forming and spreading in the crowd below her. She had a moment to reflect that he was right, though she had needed the reminder no more than she had needed his final advice.
Make it look good.
It was a light, fine evening fading into dusk. She was an eye-catching presence, straight and slim and silhouetted starkly against the pastel sky. And she was ready. She took two light steps, and she launched herself, with all the confidence of meticulous planning, across the busy street.
This was maybe not the view I had in mind.
That’s Viennese Waltz, your introduction to Kathryn Blake, flamboyant traceuse, nerveless pickpocket, unrivalled cat-burglar . . . Kate is whatever she needs to be; what better place to meet her than Vienna, that city of a thousand faces? If she herself is disappointed with the city, it is because she has half expected, beyond all reasonable probability, to walk into her mother’s baroque fantasy, but she can reconcile herself to that. So it is not her mother’s city; she is not her mother’s daughter, and she is not in Vienna for the dancing.
But Kate is wrong: Vienna is always about dancing, if not her mother’s bright waltzes by candlelight, then her father’s intricate cold war quadrilles in the dark. Distrusted by her own Department, and thrown onto her own resources, she must pick her way between old friends and new enemies, to find her own answers to old questions.
Carefully-plotted and emotionally involving, this is a book whose well drawn characters and fine prose can be savoured at leisure. It’s also page turner whose intrigue, strong capable women and exotic locations can beguile away a long journey.
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Coming soon
Kathryn Blake returns soon in Find the Lady:
Who is the girl currently calling herself Kathryn Blake? Where does she come from and . . . where does she belong? To her potential employer, collecting statements about this troublesome asset, one thing is clear: this lady is never the lady you expect her to be, she is the pea under the thimble, the grinning queen who was never in the pack.
For instance, here’s what Thierry Dupois had to say about his first meeting with the girl he only knew as Bella . . .
It was raining.
Okay, I know, you asked about the girl, not the weather, but my memory of her is all bound up in it. It had been coming down in steady grey sheets all day, the kind of rain that works its way into your soul, and it formed the perfect backdrop to my unease. The job was going fast, running out of my control. A week earlier, all I had to worry about were the guidelines on how hot a packet I could pass on, and still expect my badge to protect me in court. Now I was huddled in the cab of a stolen truck, watching the rain and as much of Dieppe port as I could make out through my fogged windscreen, waiting for my cargo, and for Bella.
So I remember the rain, and in the rain, I remember her.
Perhaps it was just that the weather matched my mood that night, as I waited in the cooling cab of my truck for my load and for my passengers. I wasn’t ready for passengers. I wasn’t ready for this at all. I should have had months to feel my way in; I’d been prepared to be patient, expected to be frustrated long before I’d made progress. I’d had it thoroughly drummed into me that undercover is for the long game, but here I was in Dieppe, waiting.
I’d had my licence for less than a year when I first met Xavier. I’d got myself the beginnings of a reputation, but I’d barely got started on that carefully calculated fall from grace. I hadn’t even managed to get myself fired yet. I must have said the right things. He slipped me a few packages. I opened them carefully, let two get through, arranged for the other to be found in a strictly random search. I hadn’t liked that, either. We couldn’t pull the trick too often, but it had been altogether too much to let pass, and it didn’t seem to have dented Xavier’s good opinion of me.
One November evening he told me he had a truck and needed a driver – told me to get sick, skip work and be available. I’d thought it was just a beginning. I’d been pleased. And then he’d said casually that I was especially honoured.
“Bella’s coming along for the ride,” he’d said.
I wasn’t meant to get so far so fast. I’d heard of Bella, and I knew I wasn’t ready. It kept running through my head as I w
aited, the thought just as insistent as the steady rain.
We’d first heard of Bella about six months before. It was never much, just fragmentary mentions on wiretaps and surveillance tapes. She was half a phantom, before that night. A whisper, a threat. Don’t write me off as some romantic frog. Bella was more frightening than ten years to life, and these are hard men I’m talking about. They believed in her arrangements, and generally they were right to. We’d had some good lines on Kimine’s affairs, but they’d fallen apart. A dozen raids, two of them fair sized busts, and three probable convictions to show for it. All three of them were men who would have been home free if they hadn’t tried to make a little extra on their own account, and they knew it. They were going down quietly, implicating no one, despite our best efforts. They all had more faith in Bella than in the witness protection scheme of which we were so proud. Even reliable narks got superstitious about Bella; if they gave us her name we counted ourselves lucky, it was about as much as we ever got.
Take Claude Chanel. Chanel had been dead right about one thing, and as far as I know one thing only, in all his miserable life. He’d stood at the threshold of a rundown apartment in Rouen and said “I don’t like it, something’s wrong.” I know he said that, because there were six of my colleagues on the other side of the door. His companion had asked scathingly if he wanted to go home and tell Kimine that they’d given up the job because he’d had a funny feeling.
“I’ll tell Kimine whatever the hell you like,” he’d said, “as long as you tell Bella.”
We never did get much more than that. She worked for Kimine – for him or with him, we weren’t even sure about that – and she didn’t take kindly to idiots who diverted from her very clear plans without good cause. She was French, or Arabic, or maybe Swiss. She was an ice goddess. She could see in the dark.
I believed about a tenth of it, and it wasn’t entirely Bella who was tying my stomach in knots. There was Jacques Martin, too. I’d arrested him once, in Marseille, and he wasn’t supposed to be involved in Kimine’s business. When I say I arrested him, that’s not entirely true. I was on the team, there were a score of us, it was dark, and I didn’t interview him. In short, he had no reason to remember me particularly. Even so, it hadn’t done my nerves any good the first time I saw him with Xavier.
So here I sat at Dieppe port, in the dusk, in the rain, in the cold cab of a hot truck, waiting.
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