He had been lucky. His body was badly grazed from the fall, and he had a cut on his head. His jacket was shredded in places where it had saved him from more severe injury, especially to his shoulder where the leather had given way to his shirt and then to skin at the last moment before he’d ejected from the car. His head throbbed from the pounding he had received. His cheeks were bruised, his lips cut, his nose cracked, and the skin was gone from his knuckles where he had punched out wildly. His elbows and knees were swollen but miraculously no bones appeared to have been broken, though he suspected he’d sustained a couple of cracked ribs. They sent out sharp pains if he took a deep breath or coughed to clear the blood that had trickled down his throat from a wound in his mouth.
Stratton needed a chemist or a drugstore. But, like a wounded animal, all he could think about was finding somewhere safe to crawl into and hide. He must have looked pretty horrific as he staggered along the boardwalk judging by the way that people, wearing looks of disgust, moved aside to let him pass.
Stratton had managed to get to his feet almost as soon as he had rolled to a stop against the kerb and had run into the busy market by the beach. But after several hundred yards, checking
back to see that he was not being pursued, he had slowed to a painful walk. It took half an hour to reach the Santa Monica Pier where he crossed the Pacific Coast Highway, using a footbridge. Then he climbed a steep flight of zigzagging steps cut into the cliff to reach the park on top. His apartment building was opposite.
He crossed Ocean Avenue, dodging between the slow-moving cars, and walked into the courtyard. His keys were still in his tattered pocket. The sole person he met was an old lady who waited for the elevator beside him. She only glanced at him and acted quite naturally as they entered the elevator together, as if the sight of a badly beaten man was not an unusual one in this city.
Stratton had left his tattered clothes on the floor of the living room before he underwent the painful but necessary process of washing the dirt and grit from his wounds. The stinging caused by the soap and water gradually subsided as he got used to it. He turned off the taps, stepped out of the shower and gently patted his body with a towel, which was soon stained in blood. A coating of antibacterial cream would have been ideal but for now all he wanted to do was lie down and rest.
Stratton eased into an armchair and tried to relax. But he could not set aside the day’s events. On the contrary, now that he had time to collect his thoughts the true horror of the situation came into focus. That Albanian bastard had tried to kill him, but for what? Felling one of his overzealous thugs at the DA’s office? Stratton considered the possibility it was he who had overreacted by attacking Cano. The man might only have intended to threaten him, not actually harm him. Whatever the truth, all he could think of at that moment was revenge. He wanted to kill Cano so badly that he could see himself doing it. Something intrinsic in the man, not just his murderous history, projected an image of pure evil.
Stratton’s gaze fell on the file on the table a few feet away. He
sat forward slowly, dealing with the pain, picked up the papers and sat back again. He flicked through the pages to a section containing names, addresses and contact numbers, reached for his mobile phone, dialled a number and put the phone to his bruised ear. He had one more thing to do before he took a long, hard look at the situation and came to a final decision.
Someone picked up the phone at the other end. ‘Hello,’ a gravelly voice said.
‘Skender?’ Stratton asked.
Skender was in the palatial living room of an enormous modern luxurious house. A huge plate-glass window took up an entire wall and revealed a view of an opulent marble swimming pool with a tennis court and gardens beyond, all set against a backdrop of the city of Los Angeles sprawling away into the distance far below. The décor and every piece of furniture cried grandeur. The centre of the room was a sunken square lined by broad, comfortable couches, one of them occupied by a beautiful girl no more than twenty years old. She wore a virtually transparent gold-lace dress that could be described as modest only in the amount of material that had been needed to make it. Another girl of similar age was standing by the pool, drying her slender, tanned and naked body – she’d just climbed out of the water.
Skender was wearing an unbuttoned shirt that revealed a strong grey-haired chest. Despite his age, he looked as if he could still bench-press his own weight. A wide, strong neck had a vivid scar across its front where his throat had once been slit. The wound, which was the cause of his deep gravelly voice, looked old.
‘Who is this?’ Skender asked, as he eyed the girl standing outside. She turned her back on him to raise a foot onto a sunlounger before bending over to dry her leg.
‘A life for a life,’ Stratton said.
Skender suddenly forgot about what he was planning to do to
the Russian girl who had arrived with her friend a short while ago. He gave the caller his full attention. He could hear the serious intent in the voice clearly enough and although he had no clue about the caller’s identity nor about what lay behind the cryptic comment, the subject was death. This was a commodity that Skender had dealt in all his life and which he took seriously.
‘Some lives are worth more than others,’ Skender said calmly, taking a cigarette from a silver box on a polished olive-wood side table. The girl on the couch immediately got to her feet, glided over to him and picked up a heavy gold oyster lighter from the table. She lit it and held the flame to the cigarette’s tip.
‘Ardian Cano and Leka Bufi killed an innocent woman. Turn them over to the police or I’ll make them pay,’ Stratton said softly.
Skender drew deeply on the cigarette and blew out smoke as the girl walked around him. She dragged her hand across his chest and around his back before returning to her post on the couch.
‘This woman. Was she blood or love?’ Skender asked coolly. His gaze moved to the patio door as it opened and the naked beauty walked in, the towel draped around her neck falling either side of her breasts.
Stratton didn’t answer.
‘I know how you feel,’ Skender said as he watched the nude girl brush past him and sit beside the one in the gold-lace dress. ‘Seven years ago my wife and son were shot dead in my own house. To this day I do not know who did it.’
‘What would you do if you found out?’ Stratton asked.
‘I would take them apart – slowly, piece by piece, with a pair of pliers or some tool like that,’ Skender replied as he watched the naked girl wrap her arms around her friend’s neck and put her tongue inside her mouth. Her friend responded by running her hand down the naked girl’s body from her breasts to her buttocks. Then, as her friend’s slender fingers slid between her parted thighs, the nude young woman glanced at Skender and smiled
provocatively. Skender watched impassively, his thoughts focused entirely on how the caller had got hold of a number that was known by only a handful of people in the whole world. ‘But that is my problem and your problem is your own,’ he added.
‘That’s not enough,’ Stratton said. ‘What’s your answer?’ He felt as though he’d been given it. But because of the serious nature of his likely response he needed it made clearer.
‘You just had it.’
‘I won’t ask again.’
‘I’m pleased to hear that,’ Skender said and replaced the phone in its cradle. He stared ahead as he considered the call. The threat might require his attention if it was genuine. But since he planned to do nothing it was now the caller’s move, so he would forget about it until that move was made. As he dismissed the conversation from his thoughts his eyes refocused on the naked girl who was lying back on the couch now while the other girl pleasured her with her tongue.
Skender walked over and sat beside them to get a closer look. The naked girl reached out to caress Skender’s leg but he took hold of her hand in mid-air and pushed it away. ‘No – if there’s one thing I cannot tolerate it’s affection.’
Stratton lowered his mobile phone and contemplated the brief conversation. What stuck in his mind most about it was not so much what Skender had said but what he, Stratton, had. He’d threatened to retaliate if Skender refused to comply with his wishes, and Skender had indeed refused. The gauntlet had gone down and so the question was, did Stratton really mean to revenge Sally? Was that what he had wanted to do all along but had refused to acknowledge? The whole thing was absurd in so many ways: he had made a threat without a plan to back it up and the rule was, if a plan didn’t look like it could work perfectly, abandon it. Problem was, Stratton hadn’t even made one. He realised that he
really had only one way to go: he had to devise a plan and decide on its feasibility. Basically, if it looked like he could get away with it completely he would go ahead.
Stratton flicked through the file and stopped at the report on Leka where it indicated that the Albanian was incarcerated at the Santa Monica court awaiting arraignment on the twenty-first. Stratton checked the date on his watch to confirm that it was now the eighteenth, which did not give his battered body very long to heal. The report also indicated the law firm representing Leka and detailed their scheduled meetings. A feasible way of gaining entry to the lock-up facility came to Stratton almost immediately. The main problem was how to deal with a target who was inside a jail and probably the other side of bars when there was no way of getting weapons into the building.
As Stratton stared at several coins on the table an idea began to germinate. He reached for the largest coin, a quarter, put down the file, got stiffly to his feet, and went to the table where he sat down carefully in front of the explosives box, all the while gingerly nursing his aching ribcage.
He opened the container, removed the pack of SX – a concentrated RDX compound with almost twice the explosive power of PE4 or C4 – and peeled away a portion that resembled a slice of processed cheese. He removed the plastic wrapping, laid it flat on the table and, using the small graphic knife from the kit, sliced off a length and began to roll it into a ball. It was similar to plasticine: the more he manipulated it in his hands the warmer it got and the easier it was to mould. When it was soft Stratton pressed it against one side of the quarter and shaped it into a small conical pyramid in the centre of the coin. Then he laid it on the table to evaluate it.
The packet of chewing gum that he’d bought from the Korean shop was on the table. He removed one of the strips, slid off the paper and unwrapped the silver foil. He placed the stick of gum
on the sheet of remaining SX, traced around the edge with the knife, cut away a strip the exact size of the gum and wrapped it carefully in the silver foil. Then he slid it into the paper sheath and placed it back in the packet.
The plan was workable, Stratton decided, but it needed a test run. The key elements were that he should not be seen or, more importantly, recognised and should leave nothing like fingerprints or DNA behind.
Stratton remembered seeing a
Yellow Pages
in the entrance cupboard. He got up, found the directory and took it to the couch where he sat back and thumbed through it. Just as he found a shop in Santa Monica that claimed to have the widest range of Hallowe’en and other costumes on the West Side he was suddenly overcome by a need to sleep. The day had caught up with him and he decided to work on the rest of the plan later. The urge to remain on the couch was strong but he wanted to lie flat. He put down the directory, pushed himself up, moved into the bedroom and lowered himself slowly onto the bed, his grazes stinging where the scabs that had already formed cracked with every move. He rested his head on the pillow, pulled the bloodstained towel over him and closed his eyes. Ideally he would have liked to rest for a week and recover fully but he did not have the time. There was a lot to do, most of all where Josh was concerned.
As Stratton closed his eyes the plan took shape in his mind. He realised that he was enjoying this part of the process. Preparing an operation, especially one that he was going to carry out alone, was satisfying. But before he could get properly into it Cano’s face appeared in front of him and Stratton’s eyes jerked open. Realising that the image was not real, he closed his eyes once more, forcing himself to relax so that he could fall asleep.
At that moment Stratton wanted Cano at his mercy more than anything else. He was certain, should his wish be granted, that mercy would be the last thing he’d show the bastard.
Stratton stood in front of the court buildings. He was wearing a tan jacket, ironed trousers and polished brown shoes. His hair was dyed blond and had a parting for the first time in probably more than a decade. Heavy spectacles partly covered his bruised eyes, a false
hombre
moustache more or less concealed the wounds on his lips and a goatee – or as much of one as he had been able to grow in the three days since his beating – completed the disguise. He carried a small laptop case. As he adjusted his colourful tie he headed for the entrance of the Santa Monica District courthouse and the security checkpoint where half a dozen people were waiting to be processed.
Stratton joined the queue and watched as two security guards took their time checking each person thoroughly. After passing through a standard frame detector the contents of each person’s baggage were checked and before entering the building another electronic sensor was run up and down the lengths of their bodies. Stratton passed through the frame without triggering an alarm and his laptop case was opened to reveal some pens and paperwork. He raised his hands, wincing as his cracked ribs complained. The hand-held sensor swept over his body, beeping at his trouser-belt buckle – the noise was ignored – and again alongside his jacket pocket. He produced some small change which satisfied the security guard who allowed him through.