Smoke and Mirrors (4 page)

“Shit, the cops got you?” one of the men interjected.

“Just as well, since it stopped them looking for you,” Kolnikov retorted. He didn’t sound pleased. For the first time in her hearing, his voice actually sounded dangerous. “I told you not to be there.”

“We didn’t trust them,” the villainous one said gruffly. “We were looking out for you. Besides, we weren’t there. We were outside in a car.”

“Aren’t you both missing the point?” the woman demanded. “Rodion, you brought a cop to the only safe house we have.”

“She isn’t a cop. She’s just a writer with a sideline in translating and the bad luck to speak Zavreki. Shall we go inside, or hold a breakfast party in the rain?”

As he spoke, he reached around the other woman and took hold of Nell’s arm. It wasn’t a rough grip, or even an obviously firm one, but she didn’t make the mistake of trying to escape it. Even though she felt like that troublesome toddler again being marched politely yet irresistibly into the house.

“Rodion?” she murmured disbelievingly. “Rodion Romanovich Kolnikov?”

He only smiled and wiggled one eyebrow.

The young, bespectacled man, introduced simply as Ilya, took her coat and bag and hung them on the banister. Without being told, the hairy man—Boris—appeared to be moving the stolen car into the garage at the back of the house.

Within minutes, Nell found herself in a large, warm kitchen, drinking black coffee and eating bacon and eggs provided by the suspicious woman—a tall, leggy blonde of the kind who always manage to look elegant whatever they wear and whatever the time of day. She hadn’t introduced herself, and Kolnikov seemed too tired or too distracted to bother.

Observing her surreptitiously, Nell decided she was older than she’d first thought—definitely well into her thirties and possibly even pushing forty, although in such a graceful way that age only added to her physical charms. An unlikely gangster’s moll, perhaps, but then Kolnikov, to the inexperienced Nell, at least, was a somewhat unlikely gangster.

He sat beside her, wolfing down toast and bacon like a starved teenager. She couldn’t help being thoroughly aware of him, not touching her but so close that a careless movement could cause contact at any moment. She was very careful not to make that movement.

At last, he sighed, laid down his knife and fork, and leaned back in his chair. “Thanks, Annoushka. Didn’t realise how hungry I was.”

The woman took his plate away with one hand and ruffled his untidy blond hair with the other. “You’re always hungry. Now, go, sleep. We can talk later.”

He nodded. Distractedly, he pulled a packet of cigarettes from the pocket in his sweatshirt and threw it onto the table, his gaze moving around the others and coming to rest on Nell.

“Don’t mind me,” she said, laying down her fork. “I’ve finished. Have one.”

His lips tugged upward. “I don’t smoke.”

She frowned. “Then what the hell’s the point of those? To have an excuse for carrying matches?”

Although the familiar half-smile stayed on his lips, it looked frozen there. He stood. “To have an excuse for nervousness.”

She stretched her neck to look up at him. “You? Nervous? Of the police? Please.”

“Oh, I’m nervous of lots of things,” he said. “Lots and lots.” His eyes fell, and he walked toward the door. “You must be as tired as me, Nell. Come on, I’ll show you where you can sleep.”

Nell stood wearily and followed him. Suddenly, she felt the kind of bone-deep tiredness that longed unconditionally to be horizontal. As they left the room, the woman’s voice followed them so clearly that Nell suspected she was meant to hear.

“I don’t trust that girl. How come she speaks our language and just
happened
to be there when Rodion was shot at?”

Nell was too tired to accord it more than a lopsided quirk of her lips. But unexpectedly, Kolnikov said, “You must excuse my sister. She has a mother-hen complex and doesn’t yet know all the facts.”

That jerked her head round to him. “Your
sister
?”

He smiled faintly, lifting her coat and bag from the banister as he began to climb the stairs. “Did you imagine she was my wife?”

Nell grabbed the banister and hauled herself upstairs beside him. “To be honest, I didn’t imagine you’d bring either with you into a gang war.”

“Anna is very much involved in my—er—gang war.”

“Got to love equality,” Nell muttered. She reckoned Anna could handle a submachine gun as well as anyone. Although she probably didn’t need one. She could annihilate enemies with her laser stare.

When they reached the first floor, he waved one hand around the several doors. “We all sleep on this floor. There are spare rooms upstairs.”

“So what was the Royal Hotel for?” she inquired, gazing at the opulent ceiling roses and fine, antique wood panelling as they climbed the next flight.

“My town residence,” he said blandly. “A place for the people I wanted to find me.”

She curled her lip. “Do you never lose a thread in all this—intrigue and deception?”

“Trust me, it’s come damned close.” His voice seemed to crack, and she glanced round in genuine surprise. But already he was striding ahead, taking the stairs two at a time, and her moment of unexpected, unwanted sympathy was gone.

He flung open the middle door at the far end of the hallway. “This is the biggest room, beautiful views, en suite bathroom but unfortunately no tea- and coffee-making facilities.” He pulled himself up, when she had the odd feeling there was more nonsense pushing up from behind. He must have been very tired. While she leaned against the wall just inside the door, he dropped her bag and her coat on the large, double bed, and walked back toward her.

Coming level with her, he paused, and her heart began to beat harder. His lips tugged into a faint curve. “Sleep well. I’m watching your back.”

****

After a bare three hours sleep, Detective Sergeant Lamont was not in the best of moods. Hectoring phone calls from nebulous security organizations had hardly helped the situation, and he was aware he was frowning direly when he pushed his way into the suspect’s room at the Royal Hotel.

A woman constable had tipped up the mattress and was scouring beneath it. Two more constables were emptying drawers and cupboards, and another was rifling noisily in the tiny shower room.

“Gone, I take it?” Lamont snapped at his colleagues in general.

“Looks like it,” Livingstone answered. “No sign of him. A toothbrush, toothpaste, and a few items of clothing in a rucksack, nothing else.”

“No passport?” Lamont asked without any hope. The man’s excuse for not producing it last night had been that it was in his room.

“Nope.”

“Well, here’s some more mud for this case. Interpol and the Russian police matched his fingerprints and the tattoos. One Rodion Andreyevich Kosar. Wanted in Russia, the US, and Switzerland for theft and suspected bank robbery. Escaped from prison in Russia two years ago. Whatever passport he used to get into the UK is false. And his movement into the major league of organised crime appears to be recent. Plus, he’s attracted the attention of some very hush-hush eejits in London.”

“Really?” Livingstone sounded more entertained than anything else. But then, he hadn’t had to speak to said eejits. “And the victims last night?”

“The woman was Russian. Irina Davidova. The other was Edinburgh waster, Tam Murray. Word is, Tam was working for some major-league players.”

“Russian?” Livingstone suggested.

“Probably. What the hell are two Russian crime syndicates doing fighting a turf war in Edinburgh?” Lamont demanded.

“Beats me,” Livingstone admitted, turning back to the chest of drawers he was searching.

“Wait, there’s more,” Lamont said heavily. “Remember the translator last night? Nell Black? Well, she’s missing.”

“Missing? In what way?”

“Missing as in she’s not at home and her car’s still parked in MacDonald Road where she left it last night. Plus an old lady living in MacDonald Road reported seeing two people—roughly fitting the descriptions of our man and Nell Black—bursting through her security door and bolting through her close into the back court first thing this morning. Not long after they left the station, in fact. When uniform turned up to investigate, they found a bullet hole in the security door, and two bullets buried in the wall. Plus, would you believe, in the car park close by, a car burst into flames, killing its driver. Oh, and Nell’s phone was found in a litter bin in Causewayside.”

Livingstone closed his mouth. “Shit.”

“Shit indeed.”

Livingstone scratched his head. “What the hell does that all mean?”

“Search me. I think it means someone tried to kill them, and they bolted.”

“The translator… Was she in on it with him, then?”

“The security eejits said no, which probably means yes.” Lamont sighed. “She was nervous about something. I put it down to being plonked in a room with a murderer, but it could have been worry for him. I never saw it coming, though.”

“Me neither. I pegged her as pretty straight. Maybe she was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“Maybe. I’m having her background checked. But either way, we need to find her. And him. Before all hell breaks loose in this city and we’re flooded with blood as well as heroin.”

“Picturesque, Sarge.” Livingstone applauded.

Lamont smiled sourly. “Am I ever anything else? Has anyone checked on this bastard’s alibi yet?”

“Afraid so,” Livingstone said. “The barmaid and the manager remember him, all right. She says he asked her out and wrote down her phone number. The manager says he
was
playing chess with one of the punters. Won, apparently. They both claim he didn’t leave until after ten thirty. Which makes it damned tight to have walked to Abbeyhill and started a fire that was so out of control before eleven.”

“Maybe.” Lamont wasn’t convinced. The alibi looked too elaborately planned, as if he’d tried to stand out and be remembered. Anyone could have driven him to the warehouse. He kicked the empty bottom drawer of the chest shut. “But he did it all the same. The bastard told us he did.”

“Did I miss something?”

“Aye. An education. Razz Kolnikov? The main character in the Russian novel
Crime and Punishment
is called Raskolnikov.”

“And was he guilty?”

“As sin,” Lamont said with relish.

Chapter Four

Rodion opened his eyes. For a moment, disoriented, he lay perfectly still, letting location and memory find him. His face was wet. No condition in which to plan.

He wiped his face on the pillow, then threw off the quilt and rose, naked, from the bed, heading straight for the shower. Under the hot, powerful jet, he gasped and wished grief and guilt and betrayal could be washed away as easily as sweat and tears.

Irina was dead.

He hadn’t meant her to be. She shouldn’t have been there. That she was proved Anna had been right and he wrong: Irina had betrayed him, placed yet another sin upon his head, and ruined his last foolish, idealistic belief that everyone involved in bad things didn’t have to be bad. Irina had inspired his protective instincts, eased his troubles for a while, made it easier to keep going. And now she was dead because of him, and he, a little wiser, a little emptier, had to clear up that mess with all the rest.

He wished she wasn’t dead. He wished he could turn back the clock. How far would he go? Two years? Five? Ten? More?

It didn’t matter. He had to deal in reality.

He turned off the shower and grabbed the towel, rubbing his skin vigorously as if that would somehow wake up his numb brain cells.

Timing was everything. He had to have Gadarin and the cops in exactly the right places if he was to get away with this and keep anyone who mattered alive.

He threw the towel on the floor.
Anyone who mattered.
He was tired, so bloody tired of playing God.

Padding through to the bedroom, he opened the wardrobe and took out a clean pair of cotton trousers and a loose white shirt. Good planning attire.

He was just zipping his trousers when Anna knocked on the door and stuck her head around. “I thought I heard you up. Can I come in?”

“Be my guest.” He threw his arms into the sleeves of the shirt and began to fasten the buttons. “Everything quiet?”

She nodded, sitting down on the bed. “The cop’s still asleep.”

“She isn’t a cop,” he protested mildly.

“Not the point. Whoever she is, you do know you can’t trust her?”

“I don’t trust anyone, Anna. Apart from you. And those two idiots downstairs, despite all the evidence against them.”

“Those two idiots,” Anna said, fixing him with her big-sister stare, “told me there was someone in the warehouse when it went up.”

“I didn’t know until I’d done it. And then I couldn’t get them out.”

“It was Irina, wasn’t it?”

He turned away, because among all the other things he couldn’t bear right now was the fact that she wouldn’t say
I told you so
. He picked the comb off the chest of drawers. “Yes, it was Irina, and one of Gadarin’s Scots boys.”

For a moment, she didn’t say anything. Then, “I’m sorry, Rodya. Not that she’s dead. But for all the rest. It wasn’t your fault. You’re still not the bad guy.”

He dragged the comb through his hair and threw it back down. “Stop it, Anna. We both know exactly what I am. The question is, now, what I can do with it.”

“And what
will
you do with it? Now that you’ve stirred everything up. Gadarin will want blood, and you’ll be perfectly justified in asking for Marenko’s help. He might even kill Gadarin.”

“A nice side benefit,” Rodion agreed.

“Only he’s just as likely to start a bloodbath… Anyway,” she added restlessly, picking up the book on his bedside table, “once he’s here, how do we get him to reveal where the treasure is?”

He smiled. “We don’t have to. We can convince him to move it.” He glanced at the book in Anna’s hands. She was playing with it rather than looking at it. Which was probably for the best. The maze of his plans was hard enough for him to keep track of. He knew from experience that others went mad trying to remember what thread led where and how.

“Or at least,” he added, “that’s one plan.”

Anna held the book up in front of her face, the title toward him.

Dreaming of Darkness
by Nell Black.

He should have known Anna would have seen it already.

“Is this the other?” she asked.

“Yes,” he admitted. “It could be.” One way or another, they
were
all getting out. It was time.

****

Nell gazed up at the low, rough wooden ceiling. Her heart beat like a rabbit’s, not with fear but with sexual excitement. She could smell burning wood, feel the warmth from the fire on the far side of the cabin. She lay on an old featherbed that dipped in the middle, and knew with a series of intense, very physical thrills that her moment of bliss was at hand. Hours of bliss, if she was lucky.

A tall, powerful, naked man lay between her legs, making exquisite love to her. His blond head was buried between her breasts as he kissed and caressed them with long, lean fingers. Her nails dug into his back in sweet anticipation, and the tattoo on his shoulder blade rippled under her fingers: a blazing sun, dripping flaming balls of fire down his back. He lifted his head, groaning with pleasure as he pushed into her, slow, sensual, and sexy as sin itself.

“Rodion,” she whispered. “Rodion.”

She couldn’t bear it, and yet she reached for it, panting. He arched his back, thrusting harder, and the red and orange tattoos stretched tight across his chest. So much more picturesque than the simple flames licking up his forearms—those were his first tattoos, courtesy of a school friend. But the elaborate phoenix rose up from the fire on his chest with professional artistry. The flames stretched up and over his left shoulder. She could almost imagine it was those fires burning her up in this intoxicating ecstasy.

She fell into orgasm with gradually building wonder as he continued his slow, sensual strokes, pushing her higher and higher and keeping her there.

Desire clouded his eyes, parted his full lips as they began to smile. And still he pushed into her, measured and even, although his whole body trembled and he shouted out with the force of his own climax. “Yelena!”

****

Nell woke, her heart thundering. No one called her Yelena, not since her mother had died…

Oh Jesus fucking Christ, did I just dream that? I
really
don’t need this…

She dragged her hand through her hair, trying to ignore the hot tingling between her legs.

Okay. Think rationally.
She’d just spent a rather intense few hours in Rodion’s peculiarly beguiling company. He was good-looking. He was undeniably sexy. And she hadn’t been laid in so long her subconscious had to pick
someone
to fantasise about. Pity it was a criminal. Huge pity it was
this
criminal, but hell, it was only a dream. Like everyone else, she lived with those all the time. No big deal.

Suitably calmed, she glanced at her watch. Ten past four. Outside, the rain pattered on the window, comfortingly normal. She pushed back the quilt and got up.

Twenty minutes later, she crept down the stairs, listening intensely to the silence. But it was an old house and a large one: the fact that she couldn’t hear anyone didn’t mean there was no one there. The other rooms on her floor had been empty guest rooms, giving nothing away of the people who appeared to be living here. But the floor below was where
they
hung out—Rodion and his sister, Ilya Petrovich and Boris Ivanovich.

To her surprise, all the bedroom doors on this floor were ajar. Pressing her head to the varnished wood frame of the first, she knocked extremely quietly on the door and peered in. It was Anna’s room. Feminine sweaters, trousers, tops, bags, and scarves were scattered on the bed, although there was no sign of their owner. Nell was feeling better disposed toward the other woman after her sleep. Discovering clean knickers, a pair of jeans, a couple of tops, and a sweater lying on her bed when she came out of the shower had helped a lot. In the circumstances, prying into Anna’s room seemed rude.

I’m just not cut out for this.
Hastily, she moved on to the next door, which stood wide open. No one was inside, and yet she knew instinctively that this was
his
room. Kolnikov’s. Rodion’s. Whatever his wretched name was. Although she couldn’t see it—thank God—she could almost imagine his aura still hung around it. She seemed to feel an echo of the electrical excitement that came with his presence.

Or perhaps it was just the scent of whatever shower gel he used. Faint but definite, the smell clung to her nostrils as she stepped over the threshold.

Her heart hammered. Ignoring the unmade bed, she walked over to the chest of drawers. There was nothing on the surface apart from a comb and some loose change, as if he’d emptied his pockets before he undressed. With a quick glance over her shoulder, she slid open the top drawer of the chest. Socks, underpants, a small, rumpled pile of T-shirts.

What the hell was she looking for anyway? A bag of heroin? Guns? Semtex? A handy list of criminal and terrorist contacts? And in the extremely unlikely event that she found any, what the hell could she possibly do with them right now? She was alone in the lion’s den.

At last, with odd reluctance, she looked toward the bed, a king-size divan with the quilt still thrown back and a dent in the mattress and the pillow where he’d slept. Uncomfortable thought. On the other pillow lay a trade-size paperback book. Her eyes passed over it toward the bedside table—empty like its companion on the other side—and came slowly back to the book. It couldn’t be.

She hurried across the room and stared. Oh yes, it was her book.
Dreams of Darkness
by Nell Black.

When the hell had he had the chance to buy that since this morning?

No chance. None at all.

What’s it about?
he’d asked her in the café. But she hadn’t told him, even though she could recite the back of the book blurb by heart. “
A dark, disturbing tale about dreams and foresight…
“ “
Nell Black is the Scottish-born daughter of an immigrant from the isolated ex-Soviet republic of Zavrekestan. She holds degrees in Russian literature and works as a freelance translator.
Dreams of Darkness
is her stunning first novel, inspired by one of her own dark dreams which came tragically true
.”

Perhaps it was something he’d picked up in an airport shop and never got around to reading until her name had reminded him of it?

Perhaps. Coincidences happened. Didn’t they?

Whatever, she’d been skulking in here too long. Anna must have been aware as soon as she’d got up, since the arrival of the clean clothes had been so well-timed. She should show herself downstairs.

Hastily, she crept back toward the door, slid out into the hall, and ran quietly downstairs. From somewhere came the sound of rock music.

At the foot of the stairs, she paused, looking straight across at the front door. Light flooded in through the original Victorian stained glass in the top panel. Beyond it, the big storm door stood open. How hard would it be just to walk through the door and keep going? She was in Fife, not the west Highlands. Surely she wouldn’t have to walk far to reach civilization? Or to hitch a lift?

A bulky shadow fell across the door, a key slid in the lock, and Boris came in. He nodded to her, closed the door, and wandered off in the direction of the kitchen.

Nell blinked. He hadn’t looked remotely bothered whether she stayed inside or not. Perversely, she lost all desire to escape and followed him into the kitchen.

Boris was pouring himself a large mug of coffee, but as she came in, he pushed it wordlessly toward her and plucked another mug from the hooks above his head.

“Thanks,” Nell said. She glanced around her. “Um—where’s Anna?”

“Gone shopping with Ilya.” Boris sat down at the table and yawned prodigiously.

Nell blinked, stupidly surprised by such a mundane activity. She leaned back against the worktop, took a sip of coffee.

“Have you known them long?” she asked casually.

The scarred, black-bearded face looked serene. “A few years.”

She nodded and gazed out of the kitchen window. She couldn’t see much except misty grey skies and rain on the window. “Where are we exactly?”

“Fife,” Boris said in apparent surprise.

She smiled patiently. “Yes, but where in Fife? Are there any towns close by?”

“No,” said Boris regretfully.

Nell gave up. “You really
have
known him a long time,” she said wryly, and Boris actually grinned as though he understood exactly what she meant. “Where is he?”

“Rodion Andreyevich? In the parlour.”

“Thanks,” Nell said again. In her mother’s country, using the first name and patronymic—son of whoever—was still a common sign of respect. It seemed an unlikely formality in the supremely casual company of the man she still thought of as Kolnikov. Sipping the coffee, she wandered out of the kitchen and made her way around the other rooms on the ground floor. A spacious dining room with a large mahogany table and chairs; a smaller room with a computer on a large desk, which might prove useful. Still no sign of a phone, though.

She walked at last toward the rock music and pushed open the final door. What Boris had referred to as the parlour turned out to be the large sitting room at the front of the house, all fine wood panelling and heavy velvet sofas, and a magnificent fireplace before which knelt “Rodion Andreyevich” himself.

She’d steeled herself to see no aura. Just for a moment, she thought she’d got away with it, could blame her earlier visions on tiredness and an overwrought imagination. Then the fresh logs in the fire burst into a roaring blaze so suddenly that she actually jumped. The glow seemed to spread around Rodion, bright gold and orange and red.

Fuck, there is something seriously weird about that guy…

Over the music, she said aggressively, “Fire just explodes all around you, doesn’t it?”

“I thought you might be cold.”

She’d forgotten the odd, velvet power of his voice too, in the few hours since she’d last heard it. She wasn’t cold, but she still shivered.

He half turned toward her, rising to his feet in one smooth movement. Recently combed, his hair was as tidy as it ever got, she suspected, and yet, like the rest of him, the unstyled mop was curiously attractive, falling across his sharply delineated, handsome face. He wore light cotton trousers and a loose, white, long-sleeved shirt. As if he were on a Mediterranean yacht in high summer, rather than a draughty Victorian house in a wet, Scottish spring.