Chapter Seventeen: "Women are like teabags. We don't show our strength until we're in hot water!" ~ Eleanor Roosevelt
Dimitri looks frankly curious when he comes in, answering Sacha's summons. His impossibly blue eyes narrow in speculation at me, perched calmly on the armchair in front of the massive desk. I do my Mona Lisa impression whilst Sacha instructs him to take me back to the exact spot where he found me. "Yes, pakhan," the ginger nods.
The smile that Sacha Doreshchenko gives me as he tells me it was a pleasure doing business is fairly slimy; the smile that I give him as I say the same is not even remotely sincere. Still, I got what I came here for, a few more pieces of the puzzle.
Dimitri escorts me back to the car, texting on his phone the whole time. I'm distracted as well, mulling over what I've learned. Oh, god, Steen! I really wanted to believe that Mycroft was exaggerating about Steen's involvement in drug-running, I really wanted to think that he was just an innocent bystander in all this, but he obviously was up to his little pink ears in it. No wonder he didn't want me to go to the police!
The little black two-door is still parked down by the loading dock, and we both get in silently. Dimitri finally puts his phone away, and we sit there for a moment looking at each other. He breaks the silence hesitantly. "Is anyone expecting you this evening? Would it matter if we went straight back, or could we take a more scenic way?" And he smiles at me shyly. Oh, help me, the man has dimples. Really adorable dimples. And he gives me a conspiratorial wink.
I knew it! I knew he fancied me, I could feel the vibe. Damn it, though, I really shouldn't. I mean, I am under contract, and it's obvious that it matters to Mycroft that I honor that. What I did with Doreshchenko doesn't really count - I don't know if Mycroft would agree, but in my world, a hand-job doesn't even count as sex. I'd still charge for it, of course, but it's not really sex. Besides, it wasn't for fun, it was necessary, and the information I got in return was definitely worth it.
But a romp with Dimitri would be purely for fun ... and I can't believe that I'm lusting after someone who just a little while ago threatened me with a gun and kidnapped me, and who might be my friend's murderer; I wonder sometimes what is wrong with me.
Slowly, I shake my head. "Dimitri, I - I'm ... not really available..."
He looks disappointed, and starts up the car. "Well, couldn't you just go with me for dinner? I'd like for us to talk some more."
Talk some more? That counts as doing more research, doesn't it? Like, I might be able to gain some useful information from him, and at least find out if he had anything to do with what happened to Steen. And I'm sure I can at least go out to a restaurant without Mycroft getting miffed. "You know, I would like that, and I'm sure it would be fine to just have dinner. It would have to be just dinner, though, you understand? Nothing more."
I expect that he will ask me what the deal is, but he doesn't. Maybe he already knows, or maybe he doesn't care. He just nods and says, "That's fine. I'll take you someplace nice, to make up for being not so nice earlier, eh? We just have to stop in and see a friend of mine for a minute first, though, okay? I have parcel for him."
I agree, then settle back in my seat and we chat away; Dimitri is quite talkative now, and so I work the conversation around to his job. I ask how he likes working in this bratva. He keeps his eyes glued to the road, since we are driving in heavy traffic, but I'm taken aback by the vehemence of his reply. "It bloody sucks! They're a pack of idiots, and not one of us gets paid enough. London is fucking expensive place to live, you know? It's not Moskva. We should get more pay for living abroad, but no -" he cuts himself off mid-rant, and glances over at me out of the corner of his eye.
"Hey," I reassure him, "it's okay to vent. Everybody has to bitch about their job sometimes, nothing is perfect." But Dimitri just shakes his head and won't say anything more, and we drive on in silence. This is one moody bloke! I guess he's just living up to the stereotype.
I don't recognize the exit we take off the motorway, and I forgot to look at the signs, so I really don't know which derelict neighborhood we are cruising through when we stop behind some huge falling-down brick building. The alleyway is dim, the late afternoon sun leaving long shadows from the buildings crowding either side. Dimitri gives me a dimpled grin and gets out, telling me to wait here, he'll be right back. After he's gone, flip down the visor to check myself in the mirror, fussing with a stray bit of fringe that won't behave. I also sternly remind myself that I have to behave, and not let myself get carried away ...
A few minutes later, I flip up the visor to see Dimitri leaving the shabby brick building, followed by two men. He points to the car - to me!- and the two men walk purposefully toward me. What the hell? One of them reaches for the door handle - so I lock the door before he can open it. As he pounds on the window, shouting, the other one runs toward the other side of the car. I reach across and lock that door as well, and start digging in my handbag frantically for my phone. I unlock the screen as Dimitri jams in the key to open the door beside me, and I shove my elbow down on the knob, preventing it from popping up and unlocking the door. Dimitri tries a few times, then shouts at me, pounding the glass with his fist.
My hands are shaking so badly that it takes a few tries, but finally I've got my contacts screen up, and hit the entry that I put in for MH, the number Mycroft left me last night on my other phone. One of the other men yells to Dimitri from the driver's side to toss him the key, and I have to juggle my phone as I flop my body across the seats to jam the lock on that side. The phone rings and rings. I'm almost sobbing with fear, and I know I should have called Inspector Lestrade instead. Mycroft won't pick it up, he doesn't even know what number this is! I keep hitting redial anyway.
It goes on like some crazy game of keep-away, with them tossing the keys back and forth, until they fake me out by not tossing, and Dimitri manages to get the passenger door unlocked and open. As he is grabbing for my legs to pull me out, I think I hear my phone click like it's been answered, although I can't tell for certain. I start screaming my head off anyway, kicking like a mule. I feel the chunky heel of my boot contact something with a satisfying wet crunch, and there's a blood-curdling scream to match my own.
Then, two more sets of strong, rough hands grab my ankles, dragging me out of the car, and I instinctively grab onto anything and everything to keep from being pulled out; my phone goes helter-skelter as I hang on for dear life, but all the kicking and twisting only delays the inevitable; I land with a painful thump on the ground, and the whack as the back of my head hits the asphalt stuns me for a few breaths.
One of the men reaches down and grabs me by the hair on the top of my head, sinking his fist into it to haul me up, and I lunge onto my feet. His grip hurts like hell, and I scream like a banshee, standing slightly bowed down because I'm taller than the miserable little sawed-off bastard can reach. The other two men capture my flailing arms and savagely pin them behind me, and I feel the thin band of a plastic zip tie being jerked tight around my wrists, binding them together and cutting painfully into my skin.
I'm still slightly stunned by the impact of hitting the ground, so I still myself for a moment to catch my breath and my bearings. The runt still has hold of my hair, although now that I'm not struggling it doesn't hurt so much, and I can at least think straight.
I turn my head sideways to see what's going on around me, and there's Dimitri in front of the car, holding a bloody rag to his streaming nose, with the other man counting out money to him. They haggle over something for a moment, then Dimitri gets one more bill. He takes the rag away from his swelling nose and looks at the amount of blood soaking it, gives a venomous look towards me, then he climbs into the black coupe and roars off.
Bloody dirty double-dealing bastard. I hope I shattered his face, but he didn't seem to be in enough pain for that, unfortunately. The man who paid Dimitri comes over, and I size him and the other one up, deciding that there is very little chance that I could take on both of them at once with any hope of winning. They are both broad and muscular - and my hands are tied.
Calculating, I stop struggling, in order to save my energy and keep from getting hurt. The one who has my hair lets go of it when his mate takes hold of my arm, and takes hold of my other arm instead. Secured between them, the two thugs frog-march me inside the shabby brick building.
Hair-puller, the shorter one, huffs in Russian as they drag me in, "That was something, seeing Dimitri get bashed in the face! You sure this one is really a girl? What use is she, anyway?"
The other just laughs, "The same use as any whore, fool, although if Mica were only wanting her for that, I don't think he would've paid so much. Dimitri said she knows important people, she might have good information, something Mica can use." I guess I've been sold to a rival gang, and dimpled Dimitri is a traitorous swine. I hope to hell that Doreshchenko finds out and kills him very unpleasantly; if I survive this, I might ask to help.
The inside of the building is the same as the outside, only it's smellier; I don't think everyone who works here is house-broken. We go through a small maze of hallways festooned with peeling paint and water-stains, and up several flights of stairs to finally stop before a guarded door - only one guard here, though. Smaller payroll.
One of the thugs holding me raps on the door, and a man's voice inside rumbles out something affirmative. The guard opens it, and the two men holding me drag me into their boss's office, much smaller and far shabbier than the one I just left. Lestrade said that each bratva specializes as a way to avoid competition; Doreshchenko supposedly specialized in transportation, and now I wonder what this one specializes in? Whatever it is, they either haven't been at it as long, or they're not as good. This bunch doesn't seem to be as prosperous, or maybe they're just lower down on the food chain.
The leader, I think they called him Mica, is also sitting behind a desk when I'm brought in, but there the resemblance to Sacha ends. It's a small desk, cluttered to overflowing with piles of papers and file folders. This man is a little younger than Doreshchenko, and he wears his dark hair quite a lot longer, his face sporting a sparse and carefully groomed little beard just on his chin. He's thin to the point of being weedy, with a tense, nervous air about him.
He looks up at me, tapping a pencil on the dirty blotter on his desk as he slowly closes an open folder, and the muscles under one eye twitch a little. "Govoretya po russky?" he abruptly asks, standing up. Do you speak Russian, he's asked. What a stupid question. Why would anyone answer that honestly? I shrug, and say "What? I don't know what you're saying. Listen to me, I don't know what you want, but I have friends who will notice that I've gone missing and come looking for me! You really want to be letting me go!"
Mica laughs with a distinct lack of humor, and tells me in English, "I don't think we have anything to worry about, not really. Who are your friends, anyway?"
I stop and think a moment. I don't think that naming Mycroft to these people would be any help at all, but there are others. "Detective Chief Inspector Lestrade. He's a close friend."
"A detective? With the mighty Met?" Mica looks at the thugs holding me and they share a laugh. "No, I don't think it will worry me. Not at all." He steps in front of me, crossing his arms and leaning his hip casually against the desk behind him. He is dressed in a cheap navy-blue suit, no tie, and his shirt is open at the collar to spill out the abundant brown curls on his chest. Tacky.
He looks me up and down, then reaches out and off-handedly squeezes one of my breasts, like he's checking for ripeness. "Nice. The fat old bastard does have good taste, I'll grant you that. But he didn't have you brought just to help him find his dick, did he?"
I make no answer, or movement at all. I'm trying furiously to figure out my best strategy for staying alive and getting out of here that way. If Mycroft got a fix on my phone, then help might be on the way, or it might not. In any case, I have to act as if I am on my own.
This bloke is much less well-established than Doreshchenko, but probably ambitious, and clever enough to plant one of his men in a rival organization...and I realize with a shock that they are not planning to let me out of here alive. If they did, they would compromise the safety of their well-placed agent, Dimitri; they would be crazy to let me go. Every choice I make now, every word I say, is life-or-death. This is for real, and the terror of it squeezes me so hard I almost can't breathe.
The silence stretches out a little, and I realize that they're waiting for me to say something. "He wanted to talk to me," I blurt out.
"About what?"
"I'd been asking questions about him ... asking the wrong people, and he got nervous, needed to make sure I was harmless -" I have to stop, because I'm on the verge of breaking down and begging him to please not hurt me, I don't know anything, I'm nobody. That would just be humiliating, and probably not help at all. I swallow the lump in my throat, and carry on. "Look, I knew somebody who mentioned the Pigman, and so I was at Verge the other night and asked Evan McCutcheon who that was, because it was such a funny name, right? And McCutcheon got all paranoid and told Doreshchenko that I had been asking questions ...so Doreshchenko wanted to see what I was about. So he talked to me. So that's all. What ...why am I here? What do you want?" I do break down a little bit there and it's not an act. I sniffle mightily, wishing I could wipe my nose, but my hands are behind my back in that damned uncomfortable zip tie.
Mica nods in mock sympathy, and speaks over my choked-back sobs. "You must be very scared right now, eh? Strange men dragging you out of cars ...I understand. If you tell me everything I want to know, then we'll put you on the next bus home tonight. If not, well ..." he shrugs, and contrives to look very sad. "Your friend the policeman will be very unhappy and miss you very much. So it's better if you tell us everything."
"But I don't know anything, about anybody! I just heard a name, that's all, and asked ..."
Mica starts to reply, but there is a chime from his pocket. He pulls out a phone and looks at it, frowning, then answers and listens intently to an excited voice on the other end for a moment. His face contorts in anger and he replies in rapid-fire Russian that I can't follow at all, but he's clearly annoyed. He ends the call and turns to the men still holding my arms. He points to Hair-puller, and tells him, "You, come with me. You," he points to the other one, "Yuri, you stay with her, here. I'll be back as soon as I get this little problem straightened out. Won't take long."
Yuri closes the door behind them and pushes me down into a chair, taking another one beside it, and settles in to wait. I glance over at him, wondering how I can turn this to my advantage. This Yuri is the larger of the two who dragged me from the car, and he looks and acts tough. I don't think I could take him on, especially with my hands tied behind my back. There are other ways to handle a man, though. I lick my lips.
"Yuri," I say in a low, intimate voice, "That's the Slavic version of George, isn't it? But I like the sound of it better than George." I pause, and Yuri slowly turns his head to look at me, but there's no expression at all on his face. I have nothing to lose, so I keep going. "I'm called Angel. You know, this is going to sound crazy, but this just reminds me so much of a fantasy I always have, you know, where I'm kind of tied up and a really good-looking guy takes advantage of me, like, I don't know, like makes me give him a blow-job or something." I give him my best lips-parted porn-star look, and writhe subtly.
Yuri just shakes his head. "I'd sooner stick my khuy in a rat-hole, it'd be safer! Besides, my wife wouldn't like it." He snorts a laugh and turns away again.
Damn. I shift my arms around to ease the pressure on my wrists, and look around the room for anything at all that I can use. There is a window over there, covered with tattered drapes and the remains of some mini-blinds; we only went up two flights of stairs - would I survive a drop out of a second-storey window? How far down is that, anyway? But the window is obviously closed, and Yuri could definitely stop me before I managed to get it open.
I sigh, and keep looking. The desk that we are sitting in front of is actually pretty intriguing, because of the heaps of files and papers cluttering it up. I can see receipts, and photographs, and one thing that looks like a handwritten note that has been torn up and taped back together again. I'm itching to have a snoop through that midden and see what I might find...
There is a commotion outside the door, loud and almost hysterical. Yuri gets an alarmed look on his scarred face, rises and opens the door. Outside, it looks like the guard is arguing with another man, and Yuri joins in. They are so excited and talking so fast, though, that I can hardly tell what they are saying. There is a fight of some sort, and the men are debating if they should stay or run. Is it my cavalry arriving? I feel a burst of hope. God, I hope Mycroft sent some help! I have a momentary vision of an umbrella-wielding Mycroft leading a charge on Russian gangsters, but then I realize how silly that is. He's not that kind of bad-ass.
Whatever the source of the disturbance, it's got all three of them totally spooked. One gets a text message, and reads it to the others; it sounds like they are under attack by a rival gang, retaliation in an ongoing war. I'm not being rescued, then; my stomach sinks in disappointment.
One of the thugs finally throws his hands into the air and storms off. Yuri and the remaining man look at each other, and Yuri seems to reach a decision; he takes one last look at me, sitting there with my hands behind me, and he shuts the door without another word. I hear footsteps retreating down the hall.
I don't know for sure what's going on, but I'm not going to waste this opportunity. I immediately kneel down on the floor and work my arms down over my hips and legs until my bound wrists are in front of me, and not behind. Now I'm just a tiny bit less helpless, and I go to the desk and start rummaging through drawers as best I can for a scissors or a knife or anything that I can use to cut the zip tie binding my wrists.
Nothing. I do find a letter opener, obviously a souvenir from somebody's travels in Canada because it's got "Discover Quebec!" written in large letters on the metal handle, but it's duller than a butter-knife, and it's useless against the tough plastic of the zip tie.
My search for something to free my hands halts when I notice a photo spilling out of a fat folder amidst the other clutter on the desk. It's a very interesting photo, with tangle of naked bodies in some very interesting positions ...that's some pretty kinky stuff, there, even by my standards ... I pull the photo further out, and get quite a surprise. That's Calypso! I have to admire her ability to look classy and self-contained, even in that undignified of a pose. She was a consummate pro, that woman. There's a man's face clearly visible too, and I know that man from somewhere, but I'm not sure where ... I pull the photo the rest of the way out, and when I see the whole scene a wave of sick washes over me; there's a young girl in the middle of all that, too young, and Calypso and the man are ...
Stop it, Angelica, no time to waste in snooping. I've got to break this damn zip tie. I try gnawing it with my teeth, but it's going to take forever to get through that plastic. I have a brain-wave then, remembering something that I saw on the internet once about escaping from one of these.
I can't believe that I'm going to trust my life to something I read once on the internet, but what have I got to lose? I run through the steps in my head, and reality-test them for a moment. The theory seems sound, and won't leave me much worse off if it doesn't work. Sitting down again in the chair, I take the loose end of the zip in my teeth and pull the thing as tight as it can go, digging painfully into the skin of my wrists and just about cutting off the circulation. Then, I start banging my wrists on the point of my knee, at the boniest part. I bring the zip tie down as hard as I can, over and over, in hopes of breaking off the strong but brittle tab that holds the thing together.
My wrists are on fire, and my hands are starting to go numb before I get just the right angle and force, and the zip pops open! I pull it the rest of the way off, and massage my poor wrists for a moment. Free! Now to get the hell out of here before they come back. And then it slams into my mind where I've seen that bloke in the photo with Calypso and ... the other one. Him! Oh, that cannot be good.
I slide back behind the desk and riffle through the folder. There are a few more photos of naked bodies, which I refuse to look at closely, and some very interesting copies of letters and emails. Mycroft needs to see this, in the worst way. I grab what I can, shoving the photos and papers into my pockets and inside my shirt.
I grab several more random handfuls of paperwork and documents from other piles that look interesting for good measure, then I force myself to leave off snooping and start looking for a way out. I run to the window, but when I push the half-broken mini-blinds aside to have a look, it's clear that the filthy glass panes have been painted shut and won't slide for love nor money. No exit that way - breaking the glass would bring the guard, if there still is one. Better to take him by surprise, on my own terms. I go to the door, and press my ear against it. No sound, but that doesn't mean a thing.
Well, no time like the present. Before I can lose my nerve, I yank open the door, stepping through it in a fighting stance just in case there are any takers.
There are, but fortunately only one. He spins around when the door opens, and lunges toward me in an instinctive grab, but I'm ready for it; I capture his forward wrist with a hard jerk, helping him to go further off-balance, and smash him in the face with an inelegant but effective knee to the nose on his way down.
He's out cold in a spreading pool of blood, and possibly dead from that hard of a facial blow, but I'm surprised to realize that I really could care less. Which way is out? I know that I'm not thinking with a very clear head - the adrenaline is making my head pound and my stomach churn in rhythm - so I trust in my instincts and just go.
Just going lands me in a stairwell, going down. Down is good, because we we went up to go in. Exit here? No, I can faintly hear sounds of men shouting, and pops of what might be gunfire. Not good. Down more.
Another two flights of stairs, and I know I'm lower than ground floor, but it's quiet out there. I come out of the stairwell, sticking my head out cautiously. No sound. Okay, there's nobody around, but now what? I don't even have the subconscious memory of passing this way, so how the hell am I supposed to know which way to safety? It's not well-lit down here, the fluorescent strips in the ceiling are spotty, with tubes either flickering or completely dark, and it smells dank and mouldy. I step slowly and try to keep my footfalls from echoing on the bare concrete floor.
I hear a voice then, murmuring like a man talking to himself; someone talking on a phone, obviously. It's coming from ahead of me, and I look around for someplace to hide. There's a doorway beside me that's recessed into the wall a little, and under a dead lighting strip; I duck into it, feeling behind me for the door-handle, but finding it locked I just press myself as far into the shadows as possible, and hold my breath. The man's voice comes louder, and closer, his brisk footsteps echoing all around me.
"Da! Da, okay! Paka."
One man, alone, and he's looking down at his mobile and either thumbing another call or a text; either way, he's not looking at me yet, but all he has to do is glance up and he's going to see me. So I strike first, with a quick, vicious kick and a blow to the head - and I'm horrified to realize as I'm doing it that I involuntarily give a loud kiai that echoes through the corridors! Bugger it, this is not the bloody dojo, Angelica! I can't afford to be yelling like that.
Loud or quiet, my attack drops the man flat on the floor, and I give him another hard boot to the back of the head to make sure he's going to stay that way a bit longer. Not very sporting, kicking a down man, but this is not a game of honor; I have no doubt that I'm fighting for my life here.
Looking at him in the dim light, I realize that this is Hair-puller, so I check in his pockets and, sure enough, find a small fistful of zip ties - ha, revenge! I zip his hands behind him, and his ankles as well for good measure, and pocket his phone.
Now, where to? I need to call for help, but I think I need to get out of here first. Back the way that Hair-puller came from might mean running into more searchers, so I go the opposite way.
Finally, turning a corner I spot a familiar green sign with the running stick-man and an arrow pointing up. That doorway leads to a small side exit, and an outside sunken stairwell up to street level. The relief I feel when I swing the door open and stagger out of that rank building brings tears to my eyes. I close the door quietly behind me and cautiously go up one step at a time.
It's later than I thought it would be, although it's not dark yet. This side of the building is deserted - actually, the whole lane here looks deserted, although I have no idea where I am in relation to the door that Dimitri delivered me to. It's quiet, too. No shouting or activity, no police cars or CO19 squad ... I'm on my own, just as I thought. Either my attempt to call Mycroft didn't go through, or he didn't take it seriously. Never mind.
I lean against the building, still in the shelter of the stairwell, and catch my breath. I need to get clear of this place, in case they start looking for me outside, and I need to put in a call to Lestrade. At the very least, I need a ride back home. I just want to go home.
Staying in the growing shadows, I skirt around the derelict buildings and pick my way down the back-alley around mounds of trash and fallen brick rubble. I am so incredibly grateful that I wore these boots with their sturdy square heels today, and not something with wobbly little spikes. I would either be running barefoot by now, or laid up with a broken ankle.
When I get to the end of the block of buildings, I cut over on a cross-alley toward the main road where I see a bit of traffic passing by. I stop in a sheltered doorway under a street lamp that is just flickering on, and pull out Hair-puller's phone to place a call to Lestrade - but then a police car cruises by slowly, and I run out to flag them down instead.
I identify myself to the constables inside, and, when they flash each other a triumphant grin I suddenly feel a spasm of doubt, remembering how it went the last time I went to the police for refuge! But I remind myself that this is different, and calmly get in the back seat when they ask me to. The constable who's driving checks in with me to see if I need medical attention; when I answer no, she tells me that they've been looking for me, and they're very pleased to find me safe. The whole time the other one is talking quietly on the radio, receiving instructions of some kind.
I'm still a little nervous. "Where are you taking me now?" I ask as they fire up the lights on the roof and pull out into traffic.
"We've been instructed to meet your transport at the police station in Bromley, and they will take you to your debriefing," the constable who was on the radio tells me. He looks over back of his seat and gives me a genuine smile. "It's an honor, Miss. It's not often we get to rub elbows with you Secret Service types. We're glad to help out."
Whoo-hoo, Secret Service types. Looks like maybe Mycroft got my phone call after all, but his people weren't exactly much help in getting me out of there, were they?
I wonder where the debriefing will be - at Mycroft's Whitehall offices? Someplace else? I have a flutter in the pit of my stomach when I think about it; how angry is he going to be at me for getting into all this trouble today? For any of it to make sense, I'm going to have to tell him about the book and giving it to Lestrade - and about the trips to the hospital to talk to Sherlock, too. Maybe all that will be balanced out when I tell him what I learned from Doreshchenko, and show him the stuff that I nicked from Mica's office. I hope.
Meanwhile, the two constables are genuinely pleased to be the ones to have found and extracted me; they keep asking questions about "the operation" followed quickly by, "Of course, you probably can't talk about that, can you?" So I just smile a lot and shake my head in a "no comment" sort of way, and try to look glamorous and mysterious instead of how I feel, grimy and exhausted. Basking in their admiration, it occurs to me that I could get used to this.
The Bromley station of the Metropolitan Police is a shiny new building on a quiet dead-end; there is a jet-black Jaguar saloon parked out front, and it doesn't take any guesses to know who it's for. The constable pulls us up behind it, and as I get out, the door opens on the Jag and Arm-hauler gets out! I've never been so glad to see one of Mycroft's suited goons, ever. I have to restrain the urge to run over and hug him.
Getting out of the squad car, I give my thanks again to the two constables that picked me up, and the driver says again that she is very pleased that they found me safe, and good luck. I saunter over to the Jag.
"Well, I never thought that I would be so glad to see you as I am right now! Let's go."
Without a word, Arm-hauler opens the back door of the car for me, so that's where I get in, although he's the only other person in it. Even though I have a million questions, I don't feel like trying to pry answers out of this bloke, so we ride in silence toward the city centre. It takes a while to get to the government district. By the time we do, I'm actually dozing off a little.
Where we pull up is not on Whitehall, although it's still in the district; it's a very posh, pillared establishment. I am suddenly very aware that I must look a sight - I'm wearing rumpled and dirty clothes from this morning, my makeup is probably smeared across my face, and my hair is a rat's nest. I have blood -not mine! - on my knee, and I smell like sweat and fear.
"Umm, is there any place that I could freshen up?" I ask Arm-hauler. He doesn't take the car to the front entrance, but wheels around to the side, parking behind another, identical black car in front of an unmarked fire-exit door.
"There's a loo in the entry," he remarks as we get out; I follow him to the plain metal door, and realize that it's got a card-reader installed beside it, with a tiny red light flashing. The man takes a security card out of his breast pocket, swipes it, the light flashes green with a click someplace, and he opens the door for me, pocketing his card again.
This is so cool I can hardly stand it - I'm going into a secret government installation of some sort! The inside is sleek and modern, and screams efficiency. Just inside, Arm-hauler waves me toward a plain wooden door with the expected label on it, and I gratefully dodge inside to tidy myself up.
The lights flicker on as I enter, to reveal more sleek-and-modern decor, if you could call such utilitarian effect decor. I stare at myself in the mirror above the stainless-steel sink and gasp. Oh, my god. The last time I looked this bad was when I went to a fancy-dress party as a zombie - and it took two hours of makeup and a whole can of hairspray to get the effect. I can't believe I was walking around and smiling at people looking like this. How embarrassing!
I stopper the sink and run the hot tap, taking a quick wee whilst the water fills the basin. No paper towels, so I have to use toilet paper as a washcloth, and god only knows what that hand soap is going to do to my skin, but finally the raccoon-rings are scrubbed from around my eyes and cheeks. After I blow my hands dry under the air-dryer, I use my fingers to comb and fluff my hair, since my toilet kit is lost along with my handbag - and my wallet, bugger it! All that was in the car that Dimitri took off in.
I pause a moment in exasperation. I hadn't thought about that. Bloody hell. My e-reader was in there, too, and my charge cards. I'm going to have to straighten it all out tomorrow, although I should call in the credit card as soon as I can, god only knows what that ginger wanker will do with it. He's probably maxxed it out already and considered it an additional tip! Son of a bitch. I hope his nose is really, really ugly now, and heals crooked.
Well, nothing for it at the moment. I tidy up my clothes as best I can; I can't help the fact that I desperately need a shower, but I can at least tuck my shirt in properly and straighten my leather skirt. All the photos and documents I nicked from Mica's desk make quite a wad, so I make a little parcel of it to carry instead of keeping it stuffed in my clothes.
There. That's as good as it gets. As I come out, Arm-hauler glances at his wristwatch and raises an eyebrow at me. I give him a big smile. "Thank you for waiting. It was worse than I thought!"
He just shakes his head, looking a little amused, and says, "This way, please." As I follow him down the narrow, brightly-lit corridor, I wonder what he and Mycroft's other PAs think of me. They have to know that I'm an escort, their boss's little indiscretion on the side, but now, fetching me from Bromley, taking me here - doesn't he wonder? I would, in his position. I'd be desperate to know what was really going on, just because. But Arm-hauler shows no sign of curiosity, or anything other than bland professionalism.
The door we stop in front of looks identical to all the others we've just passed; there's no name on it, just a number: 9. It's opened for me, then closed behind me, and I'm alone, facing another door, one of thick metal that looks like it belongs on a bomb shelter or something, with this little square window in it. Peering in I can see a big, modern wooden desk, and the figure of a man in an impeccable grey suit casually leaning his hip against it, his arms crossed. I can't see the face, but I know who it is. I raise my hand to knock, and I hear him say, like he always does, "Come in, Angel."