while the driver wheezed and choked. It was a small Cold War era Soviet pistol. A Makarov. Outdated, inaccurate, but still deadly in the right hands. The gun bore none of the marks or scratches of a long life of use. He released the magazine and checked the load. It was filled with eight 9x18 mm copper-cased rounds. The chamber was empty and the safety was on. It was a backup weapon – for protection, not aggressive use.
The woman made a continuous coughing, spluttering noise as she struggled and suffocated. The fingers of her right hand were still wedged between the strap and her throat in an effort to relieve the constriction, but any benefit would be minimal. It might keep her alive an extra twenty seconds, but it was only delaying the inevitable and extending the pain. Her left hand was reaching up and behind her head in an attempt to unhook the clasp, but it was an impossible feat with one hand. She could have freed herself in seconds by employing both sets of fingers, but she was terrified and panicking and full of adrenaline and in agony.
She had no longer than a minute before she passed out. She would be dead soon after that.
Victor shuffled across on the back seat so he could lean sideways between the front seats to reach for the woman’s taxi licence. She batted him with her left hand, but the blows weren’t hard enough for him to counter. She had no leverage and was weak from oxygen deprivation.
The licence was in a plastic sleeve fixed to the dash with a clip. He ripped the sleeve away from the clip, used a knuckle to silence the radio, and sat back in his seat to examine the licence.
The driver’s movements were growing increasingly sluggish and her wheezing was quieter.
He pulled the licence from the plastic sleeve. It was the size of a credit card and he dug a nail under a corner of the photograph of the woman driver that had been glued to its surface. He then peeled it away to reveal the real Varina Theodorakis’s face. She had a big smile that showed almost every tooth in her mouth. She was about the same age as the woman in the Saab’s driver’s seat, but she had olive skin and curly black hair cut short, and from the plumpness of her cheeks and double chin weighed fifty pounds more.
In the rear view mirror the driver’s face was turning from red to purple.
Victor pocketed the licence and the photograph. He gripped the seatbelt near the reel and pulled it slowly outwards to slacken the tension on her windpipe.
She gasped and sucked in air before coughing violently. He kept his grip on the belt for the minute it took before her coughs subsided and the sound of her breathing approached normal.
Victor met her reflected eyes with his own. ‘You have exactly ten seconds to convince me not to let go of this strap.’
‘Please…’ she gasped, ‘I’m only here… to… drive.’
Victor held up the Makarov. ‘Yet you were armed with this.’
She swallowed and rubbed her throat. ‘I only had it… to defend myself.’ She grimaced and swallowed again.
‘How’s that working out for you?’
‘I’m just a driver. I—’
A fit of coughs cut off her words.
‘Who am I going to meet?’ Victor asked.
‘I can’t tell you that.’
Victor released his grip on the seatbelt. Immediately the inertia reel sucked the slack from the strap and it tightened around her neck. This time she didn’t try to ease the pressure with her fingers or unhook the clasp. She went straight for the strap protruding from the reel housing, to mimic Victor and create slack. He didn’t let her. He grabbed her wrist and pulled her hand away.
‘Nod when you’re ready to tell me everything you know. It’s worth remembering that I can wait longer than you can.’
She didn’t hesitate and nodded as much as the belt around her neck would let her.
Victor released her wrist and she tugged on the strap, too hard, and it didn’t reel out. She panicked and pulled and jerked on it, panicking more and more when the strap didn’t slacken.
He prised her hand away and did it himself. ‘Slowly, remember.’
‘Robert Leeson,’ she spluttered out between heavy breaths. ‘My boss is Robert Leeson… That’s all I know about him. Please…’
‘And what’s your name?’
‘Francesca Leone.’
‘Well, Francesca Leone, stay still for a moment.’
Victor unwrapped the belt strap from around her neck and she collapsed forward, coughing and wheezing,