The Evolution of Fear (Claymore Straker #2) - Paul E. Hardisty Page 0,140

now – with his daughter, or if he too would keep it all hidden away, and if he might be around long enough to try.

He found them on the second floor, in a grand room with sweeping views of the sea and the coast, a fire dying in a huge stone fireplace. Two bodyguards lay face-down by the door. Furniture was strewn across the room, upended. Broken glass sharded oriental rugs, shimmered on polished marble tile.

Clay knelt, turned one of the bodyguards over. It was Hum, his face still swollen from Clay’s strike of a few days ago. There was a deep gash over his right eye, fresh, weeping blood, but no other visible wounds. He was still breathing. Clay moved to the other body, a woman: Ho. She groaned as he turned her over. Her jaw was wired up. She opened her eyes a moment, just a flutter, and mumbled something that Clay could not make out. She’d been shot in the thigh. Clay cradled her, examined the gash in the back of her head, the brush-cut hair beaded with blood. Like Hum, she was alive and breathing.

Clay threaded off his pack and pulled out his water bottle. He cut Ho’s trouser leg open and exposed the wound. It was low down, close to the knee, in the fleshy part of the quadricep. Blood leaked from the hole. He couldn’t see an exit wound. Clay irrigated the area then pushed a compress down onto the wound and tied it in place. He was applying a tourniquet to the leg and winding it tight when something hard jabbed into the back of his head.

‘Don’t move.’

He didn’t.

‘Turn around. Slowly.’

It was Erkan. He was bleeding from a deep gash in his lower lip. There were abrasions around both eyes. His nose was swollen to twice its normal size. His right arm hung limp from the shoulder. A .357 Magnum revolver shook in his meaty left hand. ‘You,’ he said, voice hollow, constricted. ‘What do you want?’

Clay kept his hand open, in plain view. ‘She’s bleeding.’

Erkan motioned for him to continue.

Clay tied off the tourniquet, laid her down. ‘Call an ambulance,’ he said.

‘I already have,’ said Erkan. ‘The police, too.’

Clay stood. He figured he had ten, maybe fifteen minutes until the cops arrived. Assuming the old man hadn’t already fled. ‘What happened?’ he asked. ‘I saw them leave.’

‘You can see very well what happened.’

Clay glanced at Erkan’s shoulder. ‘That’s broken.’

‘Compassion does not suit you.’

‘Let me set it.’

Erkan laughed, waved the pistol at him. It was a good effort at bravado, considering the pain he must be in. ‘What do you want?’

‘How about lowering that gun?’ said Clay.

‘I would rather not, under the circumstances. Say what you have to say and leave.’

Clay filled his lungs, held it then exhaled slowly. ‘We need you to testify at the commission on coastal development.’

Erkan shifted his feet, grimaced in pain. ‘I have already given my answer to the commission.’

‘If you don’t help us, Chrisostomedes is going to walk away blameless from this. He’ll probably win the election, too.’

Erkan shook his head. ‘Help you? Your friend Moulinbecq has spent the last month trying to destroy me. Judging by what she has written, Chrisostomedes is a saint.’

‘Chrisostomedes was coercing her. But that’s over.’

Erkan was quiet a moment. ‘Look around you,’ he said. ‘This was a warning. Even if I wanted to help, I cannot.’

And suddenly, it all made sense: Erkan’s cornering of the illegal market in religious antiquities; his apparent desire to share the Alassou dossier with Rania, ‘off the record’; his chauffeur’s attempt to capture them shortly afterwards; the fiery murders that night in Karpasia; the cable Clay had pulled up with Flame’s anchor as they fled, the burns on his face not yet blistered. All of it.

‘Rania – Lise – told me what happened to your wife and son. Those were warnings, too, weren’t they?’

Erkan called over his shoulder. A woman emerged from behind one of the couches that hadn’t been overturned. She was tall and slim, with thick black hair. Her face was horribly disfigured, the skin stretched in angry pink ridges across her lovely cheekbones, the eyes inert, glass.

‘Gel,’ he said to her. Come.

The woman approached, found Erkan with her hands and tucked herself in beside him.

‘My wife.’

‘I am very sorry for what happened,’ said Clay.

Erkan’s wife inclined her head.

‘The interview,’ said Clay. ‘You were trying to help us.’

‘The only way I could.’

Erkan’s wife gripped her husband’s arm, put her lips to his ear, whispered