Lethal Profit by Alex Blackmore Page A

at the bottom of the last flight of stairs and there were no more steps. And no door. Eva stopped, her heart thumping, and then realised she had come down a flight of stairs too far and was in a utility space with no exit. She was going to have to go back up towards him to get out. Panic singing in her ears, Eva started up the stairs two at a time, holding her breath and expecting at any minute to see those dark features appear around the corner. At the next break in the stairs she looked around her and after several seconds of rising anxiety realised she was standing right next to an emergency exit door. She threw herself against it and suddenly she was outside in the bitter night air, shivering. She looked over her shoulder but there was no sign of Leon. The door slammed behind her and she looked back again and took in the enormous tower block she had been inside. Then she turned, started to run and cried out as she hit what felt like a brick wall. Hard fingers gripped her, flipping her over onto her front, pushing her to the floor and a bag was whisked over her head. She tried to scream but the bag was pulled tight over her mouth as she felt someone trying to fasten her wrists together behind her back.
    She struggled hard and heard swearing as she succeeded in freeing one of her wrists.
    â€˜Merde!’
    Then a huge hand grabbed both her wrists behind her back and held them together as hard plastic was wrapped around them and pulled tight. Before the plastic was fastened suddenly there was a noise like a basketball thudding against a wall, followed by the sound of splintering bone and a grunt in her ear as the weight of the person lifted from her. She lay on the ground trying to figure out what was going on as noises of a scuffle filtered through the bag. When she realised she was no longer the centre of attention, Eva tried to free her wrists from the unfastened plastic handcuffs, pulling and tugging as she felt them gradually become loose. Then a gunshot rang out. She lay face down, rigid, blindfolded, confused and disorientated.
    â€˜Eva.’
    Leon’s voice. The bag was pulled off her head and Eva looked around her. Leon was behind her, pulling the last of the plastic handcuffs off her. He threw them away and then came to stand in front of her. In his right hand was the dark shape of a gun. Eva looked past him and saw a lumpen form on the ground behind the back tyre of a burned out car.

FIVE
    W ITH SOME HESITATION, A SHAKY Eva allowed Leon to shepherd her back into the tower block and up to the sixth floor where he poured her a shot of cognac. She lowered herself unsteadily onto a patched, brown suede sofa in a room that reeked of 1980s décor.
    â€˜Do you understand what just happened?’ she asked, looking at him with large, round eyes.
    Leon nodded, screwed the top back on the cognac bottle and stowed it into a drinks cabinet with only one other bottle in it.
    â€˜This is difficult to explain.’ His voice was gravelly and accented, he sounded like he never got much sleep.
    â€˜Try.’
    Leon looked at Eva as he heard the hostile tone in her voice.
    â€˜Wait there.’ He walked out of the room, glancing back at her as he went as if he was afraid that she might once again make a bolt for the door. Several seconds later he came back into the room carrying a brown paper file. He laid it down on the sofa beside her, moved over to the window and lit a cigarette.
    â€˜Read it.’
    Eva put her empty glass down on the floor and picked up the file. She could feel Leon’s eyes watching every move she made. Inside the thin file were some photos. In one, Jackson and the flame-haired girl Eva recognised as his girlfriend Valerie, and in another Jackson with a short-haired blonde whom Eva had never seen before.
    â€˜I don’t understand…’
    â€˜There’s more.’
    Eva turned over the two photos to reveal two more. This time Valerie was being photographed from a