Carver - By Tom Cain Page 0,5

behind it, then shoved with the full force of his body against the weight of glass and water. It lifted a few centimetres, then a little more, until finally it toppled over and shattered against the floor. A slippery, slithering mass of fish and crustaceans poured out, blocking the pursuers’ path with flapping, claw-waving bodies.

In the second that diversion bought him, Carver darted through the door and down a short corridor towards the kitchen. There were more shots behind him. He felt the fizz of the rounds going by and saw the glass front of a wine cooler disintegrate up ahead.

Leaping over the shards of shattered glass, he careered into the kitchen itself. Two women were standing by the stove: one elderly and clad in black, the other barely out of her teens. They shouted unintelligibly at Carver as he looked around, searching for an escape route.

The men were only seconds behind him. The women were shrieking. The stress seemed to dull and confuse his vision, making it impossible to see clearly. Carver tried to stay calm, to concentrate on the immediate task in hand and ignore the voice in his head telling him he was soft and out of practice, reminding him of the days when he had never gone anywhere unarmed or unprepared.

Surely the kitchen would have a rear exit? If it didn’t, he was a dead man.

2

* * *

YES, THERE IT was: a door half-hidden behind a pile of empty boxes. Carver sprinted across the room, kicked the boxes out of the way, barged through the door, and found himself at one end of an alley that ran between two other buildings. It opened up on to one of the narrow, twisting streets, lined with shops, that wind through the town of Mykonos like tangled strands of spaghetti.

Island custom mandated that you could paint your house any colour you liked so long as it was white. But no one said what colour the doors, the windows, the verandas and the staircases that ran up the front of almost every building had to be. Vivid splashes of deep-blue, turquoise and scarlet paint clashed with the shocking magenta of the bougainvillea that grew from every tiny open scrap of bare earth.

The street was packed with tourists, oblivious to the chaos down by the waterfront: couples; groups of women out shopping together; men walking arm in arm in testament to Mykonos’s reputation as a place where anything went so long as no one got hurt. Carver plunged into the crowd, making his way as quickly but unobtrusively as he could, a lean, fit figure in olive-green cargo shorts and a pale-blue cotton shirt, slipping purposefully between the ambling sightseers; a natural predator among a crowd of herbivores.

As he moved Carver was constantly scanning the faces around him, his senses alert for any sign of danger, his subconscious constantly analysing what he saw. Two young women shrieking with laughter at something one of them had said: safe. A young couple nestling together as they walked, his arm across her back, oblivious to everything except their own love: safe. Two men together, both shaven-headed, looking around … one of them glancing at Carver … catching his eye … reaching beneath his jacket … not safe! Not safe!

Carver ran, barging the lovers out of the way; crashing between the two young women, who reacted with shrieks of indignation; charging up a pale-blue staircase. He looked round as he ran, and saw the two shaven-headed men, now joined by the shooters from the restaurant, pointing in his direction. Carver reached the outdoor landing at the top of the stairs. Immediately to his right a pair of shuttered French windows led into the house. He looked left, across the street. Another staircase ran up the building opposite. Its landing was barely a couple of metres away. Beyond it the doors into the interior of the building were open. Carver scrambled up on to the wooden balustrade that surrounded the staircase and landing, perched there for a second on the balls of his feet, and then, as the first shots rang out from down below, sprang across the gap to the far building. He cleared the far balustrade, landed on the planking, then curled straight into a roll that took him through the open doorway into a room beyond.

A grey-haired man was lying there, on a large brass bed, taking his midday rest. He grunted an indignant but sleepy protest, then slumped back on to the