Looking Good Dead

had come to get them, which, Tom realized, meant he must have the keys to the shackles. He seized the torch and cracked it down with all his force on the back of the man’s head. There was a tinkle of glass and the light went out. The man was silent, motionless, and for an instant the only sound in the room was the ghastly hissing coming from the man’s head, accompanied by a new smell, a vile stench of burning flesh and hair. Tom retched; the acid seeming to fill the air with an invisible caustic haze. He could hear Kellie coughing too.
    He found the Palm, switched it on and rummaged in the man’s jacket pockets. Almost immediately he found a small chain with just two keys on it, and pulled it out. He stood up, shaking from shock and fear, not knowing if someone else was about to appear at any second, knelt and using the light of the Palm found the keyhole. But his hand was shaking so much he could not get it in.
    Jesus, come on, please!
    Finally it slipped in. But it would not turn. It must be the other one, he realized. Somehow he got the second one in straight away; turned it. The lock sprang open, and seconds later he was limping across to Kellie. His hands were really stinging now, but he had no time to think about that.
    Crouching beside her, he kissed her and whispered, ‘I love you.’
    She was staring at him, wide-eyed, near motionless with shock. He unlocked her ankle shackle, then started working on the tight knot on the cord binding her legs. His hands were shaking again; the knot was so tight, so damned tight. It wasn’t moving. He tried again. Then again. ‘Are you OK, my darling?’
    She said nothing.
    ‘Darling?’
    Nothing.
    Then, in a tone that sent a shiver rippling beneath every inch of his skin, she said quietly, ‘Tom, someone’s coming into the room.’
    He looked up. Straight into a torch beam coming from the doorway. Then he heard the chiding voice of the obese American. ‘You are one silly boy, Mr Bryce. Very foolish indeed.’

    The beam swung away from Tom’s face, around the room. In seconds it would find the Russian on the floor. Tom, his nerves jangling, made a snap decision; he had no idea what the outcome would be, but it could not be any worse than waiting here, crouched down, for the American to come over.
    He sprang up and ran at the doorway, aiming straight for the man in the puce shirt standing in it. He just ran, head down, screaming at the top of his voice, ‘YOUUUUU HIDEOUS BASSTAAAARRRRD!’
    He vaguely took in that the man was trying to pull something from his pocket. Something black, metallic. A gun.
    Then, running flat out, he struck the American full in the stomach with his head. It felt like hitting a massive cushion. He heard a winded gasp, felt a sharp jarring pain in his own neck, and a moment of blackness. The American tumbled backwards, and Tom fell with him, hitting the floor with his head between the man’s legs.
    Then a hand grabbed his neck from behind, a hand that felt cold and hard, more like a metal pincer than human flesh. It released his neck and a split second later grabbed his hair, jerking his head painfully up, then pulling him right over onto his back, thudding the back of his head down on the floor and holding it pinioned there.
    Tom looked straight up into the stubby barrel of a handgun, and the eyes of ice behind it.
    The man was stocky and muscular, with gelled spikes of short, fair hair and heavily tattooed arms. He was wearing a white singlet, with a gold medallion on a chain which was almost touching Tom’s face, and he smelled of sweat. As he stared down expressionlessly, he was chewing gum, mashing it with small, intensely white incisors that reminded Tom of a piranha fish.
    The American was staggering to his feet.
    ‘You want I kill him?’
    ‘No,’ the American gasped, puffing and wheezing. ‘Oh no. We’re not going to make it that easy—’
    Suddenly Tom heard a commotion a short distance away. A male voice shouted, ‘POLICE! DROP YOUR GUN!’
    Tom felt his hair released. He saw his assailant turn in shock, then without any hesitation raise his gun and fire several shots in rapid succession. The noise was deafening; Tom’s ears went numb for a momentand his nostrils filled with the reek of cordite. Then his assailant, and the American, vanished.
    An instant later he heard a different voice, English, cry out, ‘I’ve been hit. Jesus, oh Jesus Christ, I’ve been shot!’

86
    Grace, emerging from the large elevator,