Which was the plan, and it didn’t go wrong for some seconds. The man stood staring into the workshop as if waiting for Bad Sam to emerge with his hands up; Sam, meanwhile, rose and drifted across the forecourt behind him, the crowbar in a two-handed grip like a broom handle. And then it was gone, wrenched away so slickly, he could have sworn the man still had his back to him, but for half a moment he was staring straight into his face—yesterday’s European stranger; no doubting that now—which wore no trace of emotion, and registered little effort, even as he jabbed with an elbow, hooked with a foot, and put Bad Sam into a puddle. On his back, he saw the crowbar raised high, ready to come slamming into his skull: night night. Instead, it whipped away through the air, and Chapman’s eyes followed its flight to see it pound the wood inches from the head of a woman who’d just slipped between the gates.
I don’t know who you are, he thought, but I hope you brought a gun.
Marcus arrived too late to see Louisa squeeze between the gates, but he heard her shriek; heard the clatter of heavy metal striking wood. In his ear Shirley was gabbling, and he pulled the earpiece out to focus on the here and now. A taxi had pulled up, engine running, and through its window the cabbie was asking where Stan was, he had a service booked, but Marcus was already running for the gates, which he hit shoulder first: some give, but no damage. Through the gap, he saw Louisa sprinting towards two figures in the middle of the yard: Sam Chapman prone, and leather-jacket man standing over him. His stillness, his readiness, put the fear on Marcus: not for himself, for Louisa. But there was no way he’d get through the gap in the gates:
She wished she had a gun.
The crowbar carved its lunch from the gate just inches from her head, then clattered to the ground: not a gun, but it would do. She scooped it up. Chapman was down, and the pro was standing over him but watching her; measuring the distance between them, gauging her intent. She lobbed the bar from one hand to the other, and his stance adjusted minutely, but even as she changed hands again, because there was no way she was using her left, he was moving forward, stepping inside her swing so it was only her forearm struck him, and she dropped the crowbar as the yard turned upside down.
When she hit the ground she rolled, but not far enough to avoid his kick, which caught her left hip, and her leg went numb.
Two of them, and both down. It had taken seconds.
There was no pride in the thought. He was simply monitoring the situation.
Patrice bent to collect the crowbar, the nearest tool for finishing the job, and as he did so Chapman scrambled to his feet. The old spook had been right to go for the jab, not the swing, and if they were all sitting round a café table now it wouldn’t take either of them long to persuade the woman of her mistake either. But rules were made to be broken, provided you knew what you were doing; an excuse favoured by assassins as much as poets. Patrice dropped to a crouch, his back perfectly straight, and when he swung the tool into Chapman’s knee he heard the joint pop even above Chapman’s scream. Never outlive your ability to survive a fight, Patrice thought.
He turned to the woman, but she was gone and something was flying towards him, a metal can, its contents spraying wide as it rotated in the air. It would have caught his face had he not been wielding the crowbar; as it was, he deflected it effortlessly, like a first-class batsman despatching the short ball. While he was doing that the woman was making a dash for the workshop, where any number of weapons might be waiting. So he threw the bar again: not javelin-fashion, but more like skimming a stone: it struck her ankles, and if she hadn’t broken her fall with her hands, she’d have smeared her nose across her face. And this was as much comfort as the next twenty seconds had to offer her, he thought, because any chance he could leave her alive had disappeared when she came into the yard. Though she hadn’t been alone, he remembered, a memory that took solid form the moment it occurred, as a black London cab slammed through the gates, sending blades of wood shivering into the rain; it screamed at Patrice sideways as the driver hit a handbrake turn, then tossed him over its shoulder as casually as a bull discarding an apprentice toreador.
Somewhere in the background, an angry cabbie was shouting.
“And then he got away,” said Shirley.
“Yeah, well—”
“Like a ghost. Or a ninja.”
“Or a ninja ghost,” said Ho.
“Fuck off,” Marcus told him. And to Shirley: “Yeah, like a ninja. Or something.”
