LITMIR.BIZ

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      ‘That's got to be drug money,’ said the Guardia Civil.

      ‘More likely people-trafficking and prostitution,’ said Falcón, who was calling Comisario Elvira.

      As he gave his report the Prosegur van pulled up in front of the last Nissan 4×4. Two helmeted guys lifted a metal trunk out of the back. Falcón hung up. Felipe had taped up the packs of money into tight black blocks and was marking up the bin liners with white stick-on labels. They put the four blocks into the trunk, which was locked with two keys, one given to Falcón, who signed for it.

      The money moved off. The scene relaxed.

      Falcón lifted out the cool box, opened it. Krug champagne and melting blocks of ice around bottles of Stolichnaya.

      ‘I suppose eight million euros would merit a bit of a celebration,’ said the Guardia Civil. ‘We could have all retired on that lot.’

      While one of the fire brigade teams winched the steel rods out of the car, the other reached through the window, cut away the air bag and started on the door frames with an oxyacetylene torch. Vasili Lukyanov's body was taken out in pieces and laid on an opened body bag on a stretcher. His arms, shoulders and head were intact, as were his legs, hips and lower torso. The rest had vaporized. His face was deeply furrowed with red streaks where the windscreen glass had shredded the skin. His left eye had exploded, part of his scalp was missing and his right ear was a mangled flap of gristle. He grinned horribly with lips partially torn away and some teeth ripped from their gums. His lap was stained dark with his blood. His shoes were brand new, the soles hardly scuffed.

      A young fireman vomited into the oleanders by the side of the road. The paramedics tucked Lukyanov into the body bag and zipped it up.

      ‘Poor fucker,’ said Felipe, bagging the suitcase. ‘Eight million in the boot and you get speared by a flying steel rod.’

      ‘You're more likely to win the lottery,’ said Jorge, taking a look at the briefcase's combination lock, trying to open it, unsuccessfully, and then bagging it. ‘Should have bought a ticket and stayed at home.’

      ‘Here we go,’ said Felipe, who'd just opened the glove compartment. ‘One nine-millimetre Glock and a spare clip for our friendly Russian comrade.’

      He sorted through the car papers and insurance documents, while Jorge worked through a selection of motorway receipts.

      ‘Something to brighten up his day,’ said Jorge, shaking a plastic sachet of white powder which had fallen out of the receipts.

      ‘And something to dull someone else's day,’ said Felipe, pulling out a cosh from under the seat. ‘There's blood and hair still stuck to it.’

      ‘He's got GPS.’

      ‘Anyone got the keys?’ asked Felipe, over his shoulder.

      The Guardia Civil handed him the keys, they turned on the electrics. Felipe played with the GPS.

      ‘He was coming from Estepona, heading for Calle Garlopa in Seville Este.’

      ‘That narrows it down to a few thousand apartments,’ said Falcón.

      ‘At least it didn't say Town Hall, Plaza Nueva, Seville,’ said Jorge.

      Everybody laughed and went quiet, as if it might not be so far from the truth.

      Another hour and they'd been through the rest of the car. They crossed over the motorway with the evidence bags, loaded them into the back of their van and drove off. Falcón oversaw the loading of the Range Rover on to the breakdown truck.

      First light creaked open at the hinge of the world as he walked back up to where the truck had hit the barrier, whose galvanized metal ballooned. The truck had been pulled away and was now on the hard shoulder, front jacked up behind the tow truck. He called Elvira to tell him that the Prosegur van had left and to make sure someone was at the Jefatura to receive the money. The forensics still needed to go over it before it could be sent to the bank.

      ‘What else?’ asked Elvira.

      ‘A locked briefcase, a handgun, a bloody cosh, Krug champagne, vodka and a few grams of coke,’ said Falcón. ‘A violent party animal was Vasili Lukyanov.’

      ‘Animal is the word,’ said Elvira. ‘He was arrested back in June on suspicion of rape of a sixteen-year-old girl from Málaga.’

      ‘And he got off?’

      ‘The charges were dropped on him and another brute called Nikita Sokolov and, having seen the photos of the girl, it's nothing short of a miracle,’ said Elvira. ‘But then I called Málaga and it seems that the girl and her parents have moved into a brand-new, four-bedroomed house in a development outside Nerja and her father has just opened a restaurant in the town … which is where his daughter now works. This new world makes me feel old, Javier.’

      ‘There are a lot of well-fed people out there who are still hungry,’ said Falcón. ‘You should have seen the reaction to all that money in the back of the Russian's car.’

      ‘You got it all, though, didn't you?’

      ‘Who knows if a few packs were lifted before I arrived?’

      ‘I'll call you when Vicente Cortés gets here and we'll have a meeting in my office,’ said Elvira. ‘Maybe you should go home and get some sleep.’

      They came for Alexei just before dawn and couldn't raise him. One of them had to scramble down the side of the small villa and get into the garden over a low wall. He broke the lock on the sliding window, let himself in and opened the front door for his friend, who took out his Stechkin APS handgun, which he'd hung on to since leaving the KGB back in the early 1990s.

      They went upstairs. He was in the bedroom, wound up in a sheet on the floor with an empty bottle of whisky next to him, dead to the world. They kicked him awake. He came to, moaning.

      They stuck him in the shower and turned on the water, cold. Alexei grunted as if they were still kicking him. The muscles trembled under his tattoos. They kept the water trained on him for a couple of minutes and let him out. He shaved with the two men in the mirror and took some aspirin, swilled down with tap water. They walked him into the bedroom and watched him while he got dressed in his Sunday best. The ex-KGB man sat on the bed with his Stechkin APS dangling between his knees.

      They went downstairs and out into the heat. The sun was just up, the sea was blue, there was barely any movement, just birds. They got into the car and drove down the hill.

      Ten minutes later they were in the club, sitting in Vasili Lukyanov's office, but with Leonid Revnik behind the desk smoking an H. Upmann Coronas Junior cigar. He had short grey hair, cut en brosse with a sharp widow's peak, big shoulders and chest under a very expensive white shirt from Jermyn Street.

      ‘Did you speak to him last night?’ asked Revnik.

      ‘To Vasili? Yes, I got through eventually,’ said Alexei.

      ‘Where was he?’

      ‘On the road to Seville. I don't know where.’

      ‘What did he have to say?’ asked Revnik.

      ‘That Yuri Donstov had made him an offer that you wouldn't have given him in a million years.’

      ‘He's right there,’ said Revnik. ‘What else?’

      Alexei shrugged. Revnik glanced up. A hard fist clubbed Alexei in the side of the head, knocked him and the chair over.

      ‘What else?’ said Revnik.

      They hefted Alexei and the chair back to vertical. A lump was already up on the side of his face.

      ‘“What the fuck,”’ said Alexei. ‘He had an accident.’

      That had Revnik's attention.

      ‘Tell me.’

      ‘We were talking and he suddenly said:

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