The Accident Man

82

Andrei Dimitrov was dragged from his deep, vodka-soaked oblivion by the distant sound of gunfire. He propped himself up on his thin horsehair mattress and rubbed a hand across his aching head. He could have sworn he’d heard a pistol being fired, somewhere off in the distance. But now there was nothing but the silence of the early hours.

And then a thought struck him, making his guts swoop like a thrill-seeker on a rollercoaster ride. What was the time? He scrabbled for his watch and tried to make sense of the luminous dial. Ten past four. He was supposed to take over watch duty from Vasili Rutsev at four. If Vasha got pissed off and told Kursk, he’d be in deep shit.

Dimitrov tumbled from his bed and searched around on the floor for his clothes and shoes, trying not to wake Titov, who was snoring and farting in the adjacent bed. His MAC was in a metal cabinet next to the bed. He got it out and stubbed his big toe against the bedstead, adding one more pain to the grim effects of a desperate hangover. Dimitrov groaned under his breath. He was getting too old to drink this much.

He crept past Kursk’s bedroom and made it down to the ground floor without getting caught. Still bleary-eyed and aching, he shoved open the door to the basement and headed downstairs.

It was the smell that hit him first, the unmistakable acrid bitterness of a fired gun and the sweet sickliness of spilled blood. Dimitrov woke up fast as the adrenalin hit his bloodstream – the ultimate natural hangover cure. He crept down to the basement corridor.

“Rutsev!” he shouted. “Vasha!”

There was no reply.

Dimitrov made his way to the control room. The door was ajar. He kicked it open, holding the MAC at his shoulder, ready to fire. Then he let the gun fall to his side when he saw the bloody mess that had once been his comrade’s face. God knows, Rutsev had been a sadistic bastard and his friendship with Igor Titov got sicker with every day that passed, but they’d fought together in Afghanistan and Chechnya, and on the streets of Moscow. Who’d have thought he’d get blown away in a luxury chalet in the Swiss Alps?

But who’d shot him? Dimitrov racked his brain, trying to recall whether there’d been any signs of forced entry anywhere in the house. He’d swear not. But no one in the house could have done it. The boss was upstairs screwing that stuck-up tart Petrova. Titov was out cold and Kursk had no reason whatever to attack Rutsev. There’d been no arguments, let alone fights, during the course of the evening.

That left just the Englishman. But he was in no state to kill anyone. And anyway, he was strapped to a chair in a locked room.

Wasn’t he?

Andrei Dimitrov looked at the monitor that showed the interrogation room. Then he looked again, and his blood ran cold.

The chair was empty.