Page 134 of King’s Ransom

4071FB: JUST CHECKED WITH MY CONTACT AT THE BRIGHTON BRATVA. KING’S WIFE HAS HIRED SPEEDMAN TO CLEAR HER NAME. HE SPOKE TO OBEROV AND ALSO WENT TO THE S.H. MORGUE

4071AY: HE’S GETTING TOO CLOSE. WE WILL HAVE TO ELIMINATE HIM. WON’T WE DR SPEEDMAN? SINCE I’M SURE YOU’RE READING THIS NOW. YOU KNOW, I ENJOYED CHATTING WITH YOU WHEN YOU WERE IN THE SAUNA AT 59WEST. SEE YOU AGAIN VERY SOON. XOX

Pure fear shot through me.

AY knew I was reading this.

He knew we’d hacked his comms.

I spun in my little room, my heart pounding, as if I might see him standing there in the darkness with me.

But I was alone.

My heart rate levelled off and I began to analyse his words.

I enjoyed chatting with you when you were in the sauna at 59West . . .

So, it had been AY who had shoved me into the sauna and spoken with me.

I’d met this guy . . .

I’d talked to him . . .

He’d been with us inside 59West during the whole thing on December 21st.

The balls on this man . . . I thought.

What he knew about me was disturbing.

He knew I was working for Yasmina Ivanova.

And that I’d met with Roman Oberov.

And that I’d gone to the Sleepy Hollow morgue.

And he’d seen me himself at the mill.

I recalled the dark figure—standing eerily still in the falling snow on the other side of the stream—watching me as I had emerged from the ruined water mill behind Georgy and Heidi.

It had been him.

This wasn’t good.

It all showed a level of calculation—plus confidence and ruthlessness—that I’d never witnessed in a criminal before.

‘There are no criminal masterminds in the real world,’ my criminology professor had said.

But Monty Woods was scared fucking shitless of Modern Alchemical Solutions. The legends he’d heard about it on the darknet were truly frightening.

And now here was ‘AY’, the man behind Modern Alchemical Solutions, writing directly to me.

Maybe there were criminal masterminds—

Bringgggg!

The old phone beside my cot rang so suddenly it made me jump.

The landline . . .