Chapter 30

Klempner

In one hand, I hold a single copper strand. In the other, a thread of brown.

My body freezes as my mind races through the possibilities.

I left my hotel room several hours earlier, slicking a hair into place over the crack between door and
frame as I left. On my return, a hair was still in place and I entered my room assuming all was normal.

Now, however, in my left hand, I hold a hair just plucked from my own scalp: the mousy-brown shade of
my current identity.

In the right hand, I hold the hair which dropped from my hotel room door as I returned, and which on
casual inspection, I had taken to be the one I slicked into place as I left the room earlier.

But the right-hand hair is red.

And now I look at it, I recognise that shade: a deep burnished copper-auburn that many women aspire
to, but few have.

But Mitch has it. Jenny too;

Could it come from one of them?

Probably, yes.

Jenny…

Juliana, or at least her cat’s-paws Baxter and Finchby, had Jenny unconscious as a prisoner for some
while. They even trimmed a lock of her pubic hair and sent it to James along with her underwear.
Plucking a few hairs from her scalp would never have been noticed.



So, this could be Jenny’s hair.

On the other hand, it might just be the hair of some local woman lucky enough to have the shade.

Does it matter? Where it comes from?

Or is it just the message that’s important?

Juliana and her games…

My hand is shaking, the copper hair vibrating between my fingers like a metronome.

Calm down…

Think…

Breathing deliberately deeply, I let out air. Take it in again. And once more.

My hand steadies once more.

How long have I been standing here? Frozen by surprise and indecision…

A minute? Two?

Time to get the hell out of here…

Making a sharp re-entry to my room, I sling essentials in a carry-bag: wallet, tablet, passport, that
useless phone…

Must contact Dakho…

Get a replacement…



A glance around the suite…

… Anything else important?

Clothes, I abandon. Toiletries too. It’s all just stuff. Easily replaced.

I holster my Glock, check my knives are in place in their sheaths, sling the bag over my shoulder…

… That’s it, then…

… And making a u-turn, I head for the door…

On the threshold, I pause.

Would Juliana really have stopped at that?

A hair… A warning to me…

Only that?

It doesn’t ring true.

There’s surely something else.

Torn between the urge to leave and the desire to know… I vacillate. It’s under five minutes since I
made my discovery, and everything inside screams that I should leave…

And Now…

Fuck!

I’ve got to know…



Carry-bag still slung across my shoulder, gun in hand, I pace the lounge…

… then the terrace…

… the bedroom…

… seeking… seeking what?

Whatever my first hasty charge around the apartment might have missed.

I find it in the bathroom.

Juliana… She’s consistent at least. Rigged up in the same way as when she abandoned Baxter, the
lavatory seat is wired.

Hitching my pants at the knees to squat down, I peer in.

It’s an amateur job, the wiring crude, but it would still work. Lifting the seat is the trigger for the
explosion. The technique has long been used as a booby-trap in situations where, typically, the
intention is not to kill, but to maim. A corpse can be buried with honours. But a companion on a
stretcher, carrying what’s left of his genitalia in a paper bag; that’s a drag on resources and morale.

On the other hand, the bowl, or maybe the cistern, could contain enough explosive to blow the room
apart. I’m not about to put it to the test.

Shaking my head, I leave.

I make my way down the rear stairs, calling by the laundries in the basement. Dumping my suit, a
rummage through the baskets produces some sort of uniform; one-piece, plain navy-blue, perhaps for
a plumber or other maintenance man. Checking first that there’s no logo stitched in to link me back to
the hotel, I put it on. It’s a little short in the arm but rolling up the sleeves hides that.



Then, carry-bag back in place, whistling a merry little tune, I exit the hotel via the service entrance.

Following the side-road brings me to an alley, then another alley. Finally, I spot a shady niche. There’s
space for a dozen trash bins, but not all are taken. Ducking into the gap, I’m out of sight. One of the
bins serves as a seat while I grab my breath and assemble my thoughts.

Now what?

Caught with my trousers down…

… like a complete fucking amateur…

I believed I was safely hidden behind my fake ID. Now I’m going to have to change again. When the
hotel discovers ‘Harry Hughes’ has an explosive lavatory, the police are bound to investigate.

I’m still not far from the hotel. I need to get further away than this, but there’s no point running at
random.

Somewhere to stay?

To hide?

To think…

And I’m still faced with the obvious, and unpleasant, question.

How did Juliana know where I was?

Perhaps she made the link to Antonio’s? I was eating there regularly. Was I careless? Building up a
habit I shouldn’t have?



She could have had me followed back from there? After all, I picked up on her messenger boy at the
restaurant, when he was squeezing the old man for protection money.

Sauce for the goose? Sauce for the gander?

It still doesn’t feel right.

Antonio…

She wouldn’t go for him would she?

Just an innocent bystander that sold me a few meals?

Would she…?

My meandering thoughts are cut short…

Shattering noise ricochets down the alleyway, echoing and reverberating. Lids clatter on the bins
around me. The bin I’m sitting on Whumphs! under me with the shockwave and reflexively, I drop to the
ground, hands slamming over my ears, curling in on myself against the explosion,

Then catching up with my thoughts, I coil, springing up to dash back the way I came, towards the
source of the sound.

I’m fighting against a stream of shrieking, panicking, fleeing people. Men and women alike, some
carrying children in their headlong dash for escape. Some stopping to help others. Others simply pelt
away.

And I know what they’re running from.

The blast wasn’t huge on the scale of things. But what was, only minutes ago, my hotel apartment, is
history. So is the next apartment. A brick and plaster hole gapes where my bathroom window once



looked out. The lounge window is the same along with several windows further along.

Broken debris lies scattered all around. Glass shards like daggers, propelled three stories, down into
the unknowing crowd below, slashing and maiming as they went. Bricks, concrete and chunks of
plaster, ejected to rain down on the heads below.

People are screaming and running. Some sit, dazed, cradling wounds where the glass and metal
shrapnel stabbed down. Others cough and choke, trying to clear airways of billowing dust. One woman
lies still, a plastic carrier bag still clutched in her hand, but the contents burst free: tin cans and plastic
bottles roll loose in the blood which pools around her,

A crazed glass jigsaw crunches under my feet, pocked with fragments of brick, cement and twisted
metal. Above me, a plume of smoke, thick and black, chimneys up out of what was my bathroom,
powering skyward, flames licking at its base.

Alarms are madly ringing. People pour out from the hotel, spilling down the steps, some in
businesswear, others in casual holiday clothes. One woman tumbles out from the door with only a
towel clutched around herself. Another sits on the steps, by the prone body of a man. Arms hugged
around herself, her make-up streaked with soot and dust, she rocks to and fro.

I can only watch Hell’s drama unfolding.

I should have disarmed it…

I could have done it. There was nothing sophisticated about the lash up of wiring. A simple tug on a
connection or two, and the explosive would have been so much plasticine. But I was too fucking self-
absorbed to consider the consequences of abandoning a primed bomb behind me.

The column of smoke is growing, flames rising and brightening…



How much fucking explosive did she use?

From somewhere out of sight, sirens are sounding, the wail drawing nearer.

There’s nothing I can do here. I missed my chance to help. As blue lights flash into view, I merge with
the fleeing crowd and run.

*****


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