Anger sizzled like a starburst inside her head. She took two rapid strides and launched, hitting Yana in the chest and bowling her straight off her feet. The BlackBerry spun out of her hand and clattered under a low sofa against the wall, shedding half its casing and the battery en route.

If Kelly hoped the shock of the attack would keep Yana from fighting back she was soon disappointed. The Russian woman bucked and clawed like a beast under her, howling.

Kelly jerked her face away. She levered her upper body upright, keeping her knees wedged either side of Yana’s waist and tried to pin the flailing arms. Inevitably, one got loose and caught Kelly a stinging blow to the cheek, drawing blood.

“OK,” Kelly muttered. “You want to play dirty . . .?”

She began to punch, hard and fast, pounding her fists into the other woman’s face. It was the way she’d learned to survive in prison—never to start a fight but always to finish it. As fast and brutal as possible. Less time to get hurt herself and it never did her rep any harm to be known for outbursts of absolute violence.

By the end of her sentence nobody had wanted to take her on because they knew if they didn’t put her down quickly there would be no respite until she was forcibly dragged away.

McCarron didn’t have the strength in his current state to force her to do anything, but his shouts finally penetrated the toxic mist of rage.

“Kelly love.” His hands were on her shoulders, his voice hoarse and desperate. “For God’s sake, you’ll kill her!”

“We’ll be all square then,” Kelly said gasping for breath. But she unclamped her hands from Yana’s dress and let the woman’s unresisting head drop back to the floor. It landed with a hollow clunk. Yana groaned through split lips. Her nose was busted, possibly a cheekbone too, Kelly noted with satisfaction—she was not going to look alluring to anyone without weeks of recuperation and probably a skilled cosmetic surgeon.

Kelly got to her feet, shaky from the adrenaline hangover. Her knuckles were already beginning to swell and tighten. She could hardly make a fist although most of the blood, she reflected, was not hers. She thought of Tyrone and her only immediate regret was that McCarron had pulled her away from Yana too soon.

It’s not enough Ty. It will never be enough.

She heard another groan. Dmitry was showing signs of coming round. He rolled onto his hands and knees, spitting blood and what might have been a tooth onto the polished floor.

Kelly twisted out of McCarron’s grasp and booted the Russian solidly under the chin and then again in the ribs as he started to drop. She only realised afterwards that she’d done it in the wrong order.

Should have gone for the ribs first—made the bastard feel it.

Then the world settled and her narrowed-down field of vision widened out. The breeze was cool against her sweating skin and the commentary on the race that blared in from outside was growing in pitch and tension.

“Saved me the trouble,” Grogan said calmly moving past her.

“Yeah well,” Kelly said. “You didn’t have a shovel on you.”

Grogan didn’t reply. He stepped over Dmitry’s outstretched legs and went to the window, just close enough to the gap to look down onto the course.

“Christ Almighty,” he yelped. Kelly and McCarron hurried alongside him. “I’ve missed half the bloody race!”

Below them a close-grouped herd of thoroughbreds swept through the final turn and stretched for the finish, the combined thunder of their hooves rolled up from the turf like distant gunfire. Kelly could see the only grey in the race was two back from the leader and bunched in next to the rails. It was impossible not to watch the final stages of the battle unfold.

“Come on, come on,” Grogan growled beneath his breath. “Put your bloody foot down . . .”

As if hearing the command the crouching jockey began to wave his whip. The colt flattened, barging his way forwards. The finish line flashed nearer. The second horse fell away, drifting outwards, his burst of acceleration spent.

One remained. The colt went after him with furious pace, utterly focused. As they crossed the line Kelly could not have said which was in front.

“Bloody hell,” Grogan said, his voice a growl. “If he’s lost it on a photo I’ll skin that jockey—”

“I skin you all first!”

They whirled. Yana, forgotten in her injury, was back on her feet and clutching the gun dropped by Dmitry. She held it with the competent grip of someone who has handled firearms before and knows how. Her face was a mess of blood and venom.

151

The short harsh smack of the gunshot echoed high above the racecourse, audible even over the bellowed roars of the betting public, just as the last of twelve runners in the Lytton-Warwick Cup crossed the finish line.

A moment later the woman’s body fell from the open box above the stands. With such a nail-biting climax to the day’s big race, nobody saw the beginning of her fatal plunge but they heard her screaming all the way down.

There wasn’t time for her to reach terminal velocity nor for the weight of her head to invert her in flight to the classic head-down dive. So she was in an almost supine position, back arched and limbs trailing, when she hit the rail of the walkway above the parade ring in a clean line at the waist.

The nearest witnesses later claimed they heard her spine shatter like dry kindling in a fire.

The impact cut off her cries like a guillotine. Spectators who’d ventured back onto the walkway for a better view of the course, despite the crunch of glass fragments under foot, fled in renewed panic.

From there the woman cartwheeled limp and broken down into the parade ring itself. She landed not neat and together, the way such deaths are usually portrayed, but face down in a buckled nightmare of dislocation and distortion.

There was a brief pause then the screaming started again. And this time it came from many voices.

152

O’Neill arrived at the doorway to the private box out of breath, having just run up six flights of stairs from the basement level. Dempsey was at his elbow and the DI was vaguely irritated to note his skinny sidekick had not even broken a sweat.

O’Neill muscled through the doorway knowing that if he didn’t get in there fast after shots fired Cheever was liable to turn the whole thing into a long drawn-out negotiation.

Inside the room were three men, two of whom he recognised, and one who was lying face-down on the floor and not easy to place. O’Neill glanced at the inert form and decided there’d be time to get to him later.