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“They’re in the car park,” I hissed to Z, inching around the corner, staying low. From our vantage point we had a clear view of the car park, lit in opposite corners by two dim lamps on tall stalks. I saw Christine standing by the car, leaning back in through the window, speaking to someone inside. The other occupant climbed out, and my stomach flipped, nausea filling me. Up until this point I’d been hoping Winter had somehow made a mistake about Allan’s involvement, but there was no fucking mistaking it now. He came around the side of the car, his face pulled into an unhappy frown, looking older than I’d ever seen him.
A tall, hulking figure came into view, and I held my breath. Petr.
“We should be recording this.” Zayde’s voice was almost inaudible, but I heard him perfectly. Lifting my phone, I hit the video button, just in time, as Petr started to speak.
“The boss is concerned. Vasily is gone, and we know nothing about his disappeared captive. He is…how do you say…spooked, and talking of pulling the operation, and switching to a new location.”
“No, no, no. That is not acceptable.” Christine was agitated, pacing up and down in front of the car. Even for this clandestine meeting, she’d still dressed in heels and some kind of tailored wool coat. “This is mutually beneficial. I offer you unfettered access to the docks every week. Where else will he get that? Does he want to get caught? I know how much this trade means to him, Ivanov.”
Petr’s jaw set as he stared down at her, towering over her small frame. “He is displeased. You cannot guarantee safety any longer. It is no longer worth the risk to him.”
“Don’t family connections mean anything to him?”
Family connections? What the fuck?
His lip curled into a sneer. “Your family connections? You are no family of the Strelichevos.”
She straightened up, her hand whipping out to slap him around the face, and both Zayde and I gasped, immediately trying to silence our reactions. “How dare you speak to me that way? Do not forget, without me, your gang of thugs wouldn’t have half of the business you do here in England.”
He stared down at her, unfazed. “You greatly overestimate your importance. This arrangement will be terminated, unless you can guarantee our safe passage to and from the docks, and no more disappearances.”
Allan stepped closer to him, placing a hand on his arm, and they spoke in hushed tones, in what I assumed was Russian. Both their voices were low, too low to make out, their tones agitated.
“What the fuck do you think is going on?” Z hissed in my ear. I shrugged, shifting on my feet.
As soon as I shifted, I wished I hadn’t.
My foot dislodged a small stone, sending it skittering towards a metal roller door, and it reverberated off it, making the loudest fucking sound known to man. All three of their heads snapped up towards the corner we were hiding in.
“Run!” We backed away as fast as we could, then raced around the corner. Zayde started heading in the direction of the bike, but I pulled him in the opposite direction. The bike would be too loud, and there was the danger of either Allan or Christine recognising it if they saw it. Instead, we ran, hugging the hotel wall, rounding the corner and ducking down between two of the cluster of large bins that stood outside the back entrance to the hotel. My heart was fucking pounding as we crouched there, tense and waiting.
Zayde reached down and fished out something from his pocket, and handed it to me.
I felt the cool, smooth metal of the flick knife handle in my palm, and my breathing slowed. We had weapons. We could call for backup if we needed to. Yeah, Petr could be a problem due to his sheer fucking size, but we could take him. Allan wouldn’t be a problem, and unless Christine was a secret ninja, she wouldn’t be, either. But the best thing to do was to remain hidden and hope to fuck that they didn’t find us. Being discovered at this point was the worst outcome.
“We don’t reveal ourselves unless we have to.”
Zayde nodded in agreement, his eyes glinting in the moonlight. He fucking loved this. Guaranteed, if it had only been Petr here, he would’ve been tempted to go after him and fuck him up. Which wouldn’t help our cause, not while we were still searching for answers.
Soft footsteps sounded, close to our hiding place, and I saw the top of a shaved head come into view. For a big guy, Petr seemed to be able to sneak around really fucking quietly, which wasn’t good for us.
I settled into a crouch, ready to spring out and jump him if he reached us and found us hiding between the bins, when there was a screech that went straight through me, reverberating through my skull.
“What the fuck is that?” Zayde winced, putting
his hands over his ears. Petr’s head swung towards the noise, and his whole demeanour relaxed. He stepped back, then turned away in the direction he’d come from. There was the sound of scuffling, and as we left our hiding place, I found what I knew I would as soon as I’d heard the sudden noise.
Foxes. Two foxes. Under the glow of the streetlamps, they snapped and pawed at each other, teeth bared, the high-pitched screeches sounding from their jaws as they scuffled.
“Never saw foxes fighting before. Thought they would sound like dogs. But this is fucking ear-splitting torture,” Z muttered.
“Yeah. Come on, let’s go.”
We left the foxes to their fight, creeping back around to our original hiding spot. I’d accidentally left the video recording, so there would be a whole load of the view of the alleyway and the inside of my pocket.
“Urban foxes are disease-ridden vermin that should be eliminated,” Christine was saying as we got within earshot, her tone haughty.
“She needs to be fucking eliminated,” Zayde whispered to me, and I laughed.
