Hector started down the last flight of stairs, but before he was halfway to the platform the doors closed and the train pulled away. As the carriages slid by, Hector saw Aleutian standing at one of the windows looking up at him. Hector reached for the pistol in its concealed shoulder holster. Then he checked himself. The angle and the range were extreme. Aleutian was closely surrounded by other passengers. Hector dared not take the risk of hitting one of them as the train accelerated away.
Aleutian knew he was safe. He grinned up at Hector. It was a sardonic grimace, filled with menace. Hector’s skin crawled. He was looking into the eyes of Hazel’s murderer. His legs trembled under him with the strength of his emotions. It took him a few seconds after the train had disappeared into the mouth of the tunnel before he could force himself to think dispassionately again.
He spun around and raced back the way he had come, but he knew that it would take at least ten minutes to reach the parked Q-car. The train was carrying Aleutian away at forty miles an hour. Aleutian’s lead was far too great for him to ever catch up, even in the Q-car. He had to phone ahead and get Paddy or Nastiya to head him off. But there were a dozen or more stops where Aleutian could jump off the train before it reached the terminal at Richmond. It wasn’t possible to cover them all.
But, he was missing something. He knew he was missing something as he stormed back up the tunnel to ground level.
Think! he exhorted himself. Lead with your brain and not your balls. Where is the bastard heading for?
He burst out of the tunnel and into the street before it hit him. It stopped him in his tracks. Then he reached for his phone and punched in Nastiya’s number. It rang interminably, but he held it to his ear as he raced on at top speed.
Vicky Vusamazulu is the key. He knew it with crystal clarity. I could almost see Aleutian making the connection. With the instinct of a fox he sensed immediately that he had been betrayed. He knew that the odds of me stumbling onto him in Fusion Fire by blind chance were astronomical. He knows that someone had put me onto him. He knows that Vicky is the only one who knew both of us. She was the only one who knew that he frequented Fusion Fire. It didn’t take much for him to work out that she is the only one who could have given me the lead. The odds are ten to one on that he is on his way to revenge himself on Vicky right this minute. Come on, Nazzy sweetheart. Answer your bloody phone.
‘Hector, where are you?’ Nastiya asked suddenly.
‘I have spooked Aleutian. He made a break, and got clean away from me. My best bet is he’s on his way to Vicky. You remember Vicky’s address, don’t you?’
‘Forty-seven Gardens Lane and the postcode is TW9 5LA. It’s about three hundred yards down the road from the Kew Gardens tube station.’ Nastiya’s reply was quick and sharp. She was a pro.
‘At this moment Aleutian is on a train heading directly for Kew Gardens. You are much closer than we are. You can get to Vicky long before we will ever make it. Take a cab. Paddy and I will back you up as soon as we can. Just make it fast, Nazzy. Your pal Vicky is a sitting duck, and that bastard is a killer.’ The phone went dead against his ear. Nastiya was always sparing with her words.
He dialled Paddy and spoke to him while he ran for the Q-car.
‘Paddy, wait for me outside the Rabid Dog. I’ll be there in twenty minutes, maybe less.’
‘What’s going on?’
‘Aleutian showed up, but I made a right royal balls-up. He’s bolted and he’s running. Tell you more when I see you.’
Fifteen minutes later, Paddy whipped open the front door of the Q-car and jumped into the passenger seat before Hector came to a full halt. Hector hit the accelerator and powered away again.
‘Forty-seven Gardens Lane, TW9 5LA. That’s Vicky’s address. Punch it into the satnav, Paddy. I am damned sure that’s where Aleutian is headed.’
*
The insistent chimes of the front door of her apartment woke Vicky Vusamazulu. She sat up in bed groggily. She had taken a sleeping tablet. She glanced at the luminous dial of the bedside clock. It was almost two o’clock in the morning.
Thank God that Mrs Church is stone deaf. Vicky tried to knuckle the sleep out of her eyes. Mrs Church was her landlady. She lived upstairs and Vicky knew from experience that she switched off her hearing aid when she went to bed. She was such a strict and mean old harridan that Vicky was her only tenant.
The doorbell rang again. Vicky switched on the lights, threw back the bedclothes, swung her legs over the side of the bed and stood up. She was wearing short pyjamas in a bright floral pattern. She stumbled into the passage and went down to the door at the end.
She checked that the two safety chains were fastened securely before she went up on tip toe to peer through the peephole. The visitor outside was standing with his back to her.
‘Who is it?’ she called irritably. He turned back to face her and she recognized him.
She gasped with shock and delight and she came fully awake. She had not even known that Aleutian was back in town.
‘Open the door, bitch,’ he said.
‘Aleutian! Oh God! Is it really you? I thought you were never coming back.’ She was so excited that she fumbled with the safety chains. ‘Wait! Don’t go away. It won’t take me a second. Wait, Aleutian, my darling.’
She got it open at last and ran out to embrace him, but he pushed her aside and strode into her apartment. He walked down the passage towards her bedroom without looking back at her. She shut the front door but did not waste time re-securing the safety chains. Then she ran after him.
‘I thought you were never coming back. I should never have doubted you. I knew you would keep your word. I missed you. I missed you so very much.’ She was babbling with excitement.
He was sitting on the bed. He was watching her with a strange expression on his face.
‘Have you been good while I was away?’
‘Oh yes, yes. I stayed at home every night waiting for you. I never even looked at another man. I love you so much.’
‘You are lying to me,’ he said in that special soft and deadly tone of his that made her tremble. ‘I think you have been a bad little bitch. I think that I am going to have to punish you.’
She knew this game so well that her nipples came erect under the thin stuff of her pyjama top.
‘Take off your pyjamas!’ he commanded and she pulled the top off over her head, bundled it and threw it onto the bed beside where he was sitting. Then she pulled her short panties down over her hips and let them fall around her ankles. She kicked them away, and stood naked before him.
‘Are you going to beat me, Aleutian?’ she asked fearfully and covered her pubes with cupped hands.
‘Take your hands away and come here.’ He crooked one finger at her and she came and stood close in front of him. ‘Open your legs, bitch.’
She moved her feet apart. He leaned forward and put his hand between her thighs. ‘Open wider!’ he ordered.
She could feel his finger wriggling into her and she wanted it so badly. She thrust her hips towards him and she felt him touch the mouth of her womb.
‘You are as slimy as a bucket of eels down there, you dirty bitch,’ he said. ‘But do you understand that I have to punish you, because you have been so bad?’
‘Yes, I understand.’
‘Master. You call me Master. Or have you forgotten?’ He did something with his finger that was so painful it made her whimper. It felt as though he had torn something inside her. Her eyes opened wide with the pain. But the pain felt so good that she was already close to the point of her first orgasm.
‘Yes, I understand, Master.’
He slid his finger out of her and held it up in front of her face. ‘Now, look what you have done, you dirty little whore. You have made my nice clean finger dirty with your filthy pussy.’
‘I am sorry, Master. I didn’t mean to do that.’
‘Get down on your knees,’ he ordered and she dropped down in front of him. He held out his finger towar
ds her. ‘Suck it clean.’ She took it into her mouth. He forced it down her throat; so far that her shoulders heaved with the gagging reflex.
‘Admit it; you have been really bad while I was away, haven’t you?’
She made incoherent sounds of denial. Her face was swelling as she suffocated. He leaned back and pulled his finger out of her throat. She sobbed with relief, and her whole body convulsed with the effort as she struggled for air. She looked up at him and her eyes were bloodshot and streaming with tears.
He took his hand out from behind his back and she realized that he held a flick knife. He pressed the release button and the blade snapped out under her nose. It was seven inches long and bright as a sunbeam.
This was something new. He had never shown her this knife before. She tried to back away on her knees, but he picked up her pyjama top from the bed beside him and wound it around her neck and held her like a puppy on a leash.
‘You have been talking to people about me, haven’t you, bitch?’
‘No!’ she whispered and shook her head vehemently.
‘Don’t lie to me, you cow!’ He pricked her cheek with the point of the knife and she squealed with shock and pain.
‘Please don’t hurt me any more. I don’t like these games any more. I don’t want to play any more. Put that knife away please, Aleutian.’
‘This isn’t a game. You told Hector Cross about me, bitch.’
‘No, I did not.’ But despite the denial he saw the guilty realization dawn in her eyes. Her face contorted with terror.
‘Yes, you did. You told him where to find me,’ he laughed at her.
‘Please. You don’t understand.’ He ignored her protests, and his voice dropped to a kindly and reassuring tone.
‘Don’t worry; just do as I tell you and everything will be all right. Take your left ear and pull it out to one side as far as it will go.’ She stared at him in dumb incomprehension.
‘Do it, Victoria. Do it, if you really love me,’ he urged her, and still staring at him she lifted her hand and took the lobe of her ear between her two fingers and stretched it out.
‘That’s perfect,’ he said, and with a single quick stroke of the silver blade he sliced the ear off cleanly at the level of her scalp.
She shrieked once and then stared with fixed horror at the severed ear that she held between her fingers.
‘Now eat it. Put it in your mouth and swallow it,’ he told her softly.
The blood from her wound dripped onto her chest and ran down between her breasts. She ignored it and kept staring at her severed ear. He pricked her neck and she started and looked up at him.
‘Open your mouth,’ he told her and pricked her again. She opened her mouth.
‘Now put it in your mouth and swallow it.’
‘No!’ she said. ‘I am sorry. I didn’t mean to do it. Let me explain…’
He touched her eyebrow with the point of the knife. ‘Eat it or I will cut out your eyeballs, one at a time.’
She put her own ear into her mouth.
‘There you see. That’s not so bad. It probably tastes pretty good, doesn’t it?’ Her shoulders heaved again. ‘No. Don’t do that. Swallow it.’
She made a determined effort to obey. Her face and her throat contorted. At last she gulped it down. She was panting but she blurted out hoarsely, ‘It’s gone. I swallowed it.’
‘That’s really cool. I am proud of you.’
‘Please, please stop now. Please don’t hurt me any more.’ She was weeping bitterly and still rolling her head from side to side.
‘Stop?’ he asked with mock surprise. ‘But we have only just gotten started. There is still something you want to tell me about, isn’t there, Vicky? You want to tell me who you have been talking to about me, don’t you?’
‘I never told anybody about you, I swear it on my mother’s grave.’ Tears were streaming down her face, and she was breathing in great shuddering gasps.
‘You are lying, Vicky. I have to make you eat your other ear.’ He forced her to her knees and he seized her remaining ear and stretched it out like a piece of rubber. He laid the blade against it, and Vicky screamed.
Nastiya heard that scream.
*
Nastiya picked up the cab at the front door of the Portals of Paradise. It was dropping off four giggling and squealing Polish girls.
She pushed one of the girls aside, jumped into the back seat and told the driver, ‘Forty-seven Gardens Lane and the postcode is TW9 5LA. It’s on the corner with Kew Gardens Road. It’s about three hundred yards down the road from the Kew Gardens tube station.’
‘I know where it is, love,’ the cabby said.
‘An extra fifty pounds if you can get me there in under a quarter of an hour, cabby.’
‘Buckle your seat belt, and have your fifty-pound note ready, lady,’ he told her. ‘Here we go.’
The streets were almost deserted and he drove very fast. He pulled into Gardens Lane with minutes to spare. Nastiya pushed two fifty-pound notes through the pay window and told him, ‘Keep the change, you earned it.’ She jumped from the taxi and ran across the road to No. 47. As she went through the gate into the tiny garden she heard Victoria scream. She kicked off her stiletto heels and dropped her sequin-covered bag. She pulled her pencil skirt up around her waist and ran at the door, building up momentum. She remembered from her last visit that the lock was old and flimsy. However, she also remembered the two substantial security chains, so she launched herself with both feet together and at the last moment kicked out like a mule.
To her astonishment the lock gave way readily and the door crashed back against the inner wall. Nastiya flew through it, feet first, into the passageway beyond. She rolled back onto her feet and was running again with barely any check in her charge.
She remembered the exact layout of the shabby little apartment. The living room and the kitchen were to the right. But she could see the light under the door of the single bedroom. She kicked it open and then dodged aside and flattened her body against the side wall. She glanced around the door jamb into the bedroom.
It was a charnel house. Blood splattered the pink linen of the single bed. It had been dashed across the walls and was pooling on the fluffy white rugs in the centre of the floor.
Vicky was on her feet facing her, but Nastiya could hardly recognize the girl. She was naked. Her ears had been hacked away. Blood cascaded from the fresh raw wounds. It ran down into her mouth and dyed her teeth crimson. Blood poured off her chin and ran down her body in sheets. The room stank of blood and vomit.
Nastiya recognized Aleutian at once from the video. He was standing behind Vicky. He had her in a headlock, pinning her helplessly. In his other fist he held the bloody knife with which he had committed the carnage. He was reaching around Vicky’s body and holding the point of the long blood-caked blade against her belly button. Using Vicky’s body as a shield, he was glaring at Nastiya over her shoulder.
‘Listen to me, Aleutian. Let Vicky go and you can walk away from this,’ Nastiya told him in a calm and reasonable tone of voice.
‘I don’t know who the hell you are, blondie, but I like what I see of you. I think I have got a better plan than yours. First I am going to finish what I started with this cow I have here. Then I am going to come after you, and when I catch you I’m going to give you the best fuck you have ever had in your life. Then I am going to kill you also, but very slowly. Now I am only going to do this once, so watch closely please.’
He drew the knife swiftly from side to side across Victoria’s naked belly, cutting down deeply through her skin and muscle and her stomach wall. Her intestines bulged from the wound. The knife had sliced through them and the contents spilled from them. Then he changed the angle of the blade and stabbed it up through her sternum.
Vicky’s eyes flew wide open, staring into eternity, as the blade pierced her heart. The breath rushed from her open mouth and then she sagged in Aleutian’s grip as she died. Even Nastiya was for an
instant frozen by the brutality of it.
However, her dominating concern had switched from saving Vicky’s life to the knife in Aleutian’s hand. The knife gave Aleutian control.
She’d seen from the way he handled the weapon that he was a skilled knife fighter, probably the most dangerous she had ever faced. He knew how good he was, and he was supremely confident. He was enjoying himself. Obviously he thrived on the smell of blood and the stink of ripped bowels that filled the room. She knew she underestimated him at her peril.
She, on the other hand, was unarmed, barefooted and dressed in restricted clothing. The tiny bedroom was made even smaller by the bed in the centre. For her particular fighting style she needed space in which to manoeuvre, to retreat and feint. Most of all, she must have space in which to keep clear of that blade.
Clearly, Aleutian had reached the same conclusions, and he moved swiftly to restrict her movements even further. Still holding Vicky’s corpse in front of him as a shield, he tried to crowd Nastiya into a corner of the room. But she broke away, slipping around his left side, away from the knife.
Before he could swing his human shield around to block her, she had regained her position in the doorway. The door jambs on each side of her covered her flanks. She faced him again and fell into a fighting crouch with her hands held high and stiff as axe blades, crossed at the wrists.