Burn, p.27
Burn, page 27
part #1 of Vancouver Series
His work here was done.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chendrill made his way across the road, carrying the heavy-duty fire extinguisher he’d picked up at the hardware store. Timing it just right, he entered the building, nipping in just as the door to the lobby closed behind him and Padam Bahadur stepped out. He walked forward toward the elevators, but catching the slightest scent of burned hair and clothing, he stopped and sniffed the air for a moment. Turning, Chendrill looked around to the Asian man, watching as he closed the cab door and disappeared down the road.
Pulling out the card the concierge had given him for the elevator, he made it up to the fourth floor and walked cautiously along its length, the scent of burning stronger now as he neared the corridor’s end. He reached 408, the last apartment on the right as he’d predicted, and stopped outside, listening at the door. If there was someone there waiting to burn him to death with a mini flamethrower, he’d be a sitting duck as soon as the door opened. Lifting the fire extinguisher up with his right hand, he tried the door with his left, slowly turning the handle. As the door opened, Chendrill quickly stepped back and lifted his right leg. In one almighty kick, he blasted the door open at the same time as he hit the trigger to the fire extinguisher, sending a whoosh of white cloud into the apartment’s hallway.
He crept inside and moved silently along the corridor, inhaling the stench of burned air as the cloud of white mist dissipated. Holding the large funnel from the fire extinguisher in front of him like a shield, he reached the end of the hall. Slowly he crept around the corner into the living room, and there he saw Illya there in the center of the room, decapitated and handless, his naked body lying in a pool of his own blood on the floor.
Somewhat relieved, Chendrill walked over, thinking about the small man who’d passed him at the door. He looked at Illya’s torso again, frowning at the guy’s underpants now soaked red in the blood from his gaping stomach, and then to the ceremonial knife at his feet. Tapping the vials of accelerant with his foot, he stared at Illya’s hands and decapitated head lying to the side of his tattoo-covered body, tattoos depicting his life that was now over.
Chendrill moved away, checking the rooms. The suitcase and runners he’d seen only days ago on the convenience store CCTV tapes were there now, sitting by the side of Illya’s bed.
The cheeky fucker, Chendrill thought as he looked back at Illya’s butchered remains. The guy's gall was incredible—to kill a police officer and have the nerve to just walk away as if he was on his way to the airport.
Chendrill made his way to the main bedroom and opened the door. The girl was lying on the bed, out cold, her hair greasy and her clothes in a heap in a corner of the room. Looking up, he saw the thin rope tied to the bedposts and the slight cut marks they had made upon her wrists.
“You deserve to be dead, you fucking monster,” he said aloud.
Carefully, he lifted the girl and tried to bring her around. Whatever she’d been given, she was out, but from what Chendrill could tell from her breathing, she would be okay. Placing her back down gently on the bed, he took his phone from his pocket and called Williams.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Padam Bahadur made his way to the airport in the taxi and thought about what he had just done. It had been a long journey, starting in his family home at the foot of the mountains in Nepal where he’d held the hand of his niece, Sushma, listening as she’d cried.
“This girl Alla from Russia,” she’d told him, “who was so beautiful and gentle and her boyfriend Sergei with his blond hair, so handsome and funny…”
They’d been out for drinks and to a concert, dancing barefoot in the park, and as the weeks went on, their friendship had blossomed. Sushma told him about Alla’s brother, who wore track pants but didn’t run, showing up uninvited, taking off his shirt when he drank, saying things in a way that scared her boyfriend Bernado, and showing off his tattoos of rats and flames. And then one day at Alla’s ex-husband’s house, he’d said to her, “You have to work now.”
“I didn’t know what he meant,” Sushma had told him as Padam sat by the window in his brother’s home in the Himalayan foothills, quietly nodding, understanding everything, watching her tears create small rivers that ran down her beautiful cheeks as she sat in her chair with wheels.
She told him the Russian had followed her inside from the outside patio and had then come into the washroom with his top off. As she’d stood there looking at him, frightened and confused, he’d said, “It’s time to use yourself for what God made you for.”
Her tears continued to flow, and she looked to the floor, saying to her uncle, “He told me it was time for a beautiful girl like me to use my pussy. I didn’t know what he meant. He didn’t look like he wanted sex, not like that. He scared me. I thought about Alla, Sergei, and Bernado outside drinking beer, and I tried to leave, to push past him, but he grabbed me by the hair and dragged me to the bedroom. And I was screaming and screaming, and then he hit me with a big book they use for the telephone. He kept on beating me and shouting at Alla and her boyfriend Sergei, who was holding Bernado back at the door. He kept saying, ‘I’ll make her like you. I’ll make her like you.’ Then Bernado broke free and came rushing in.”
Padam had watched as Sushma cried deep agonizing tears, tormented by the memory of a night that had destroyed her world. She’d looked up, and taking a deep breath, she continued.
“Bernado ran across the bedroom. And Alla’s brother shot flames at him, burning his face as he reached me. Bernado had his hands to his eyes, he was screaming, and Alla’s brother stood above him, spitting flame down, burning him more. Bernado spun around, trying to escape, crawling and screaming in pain to the window. The curtains went up in flames, and they quickly spread across the ceiling. I tried to get up, tried to get off the bed, but I couldn’t move my legs. I laid there helpless, holding my hands up to Alla and her man for help, but they just left me there. I was calling and calling for Alla—and then she came back.”
Sushma looked at the floor, her eyes red and bloodshot from the tears as she cried at the memory of how her Bernado had died and how for the first time she’d realized the Russian man with the tattoos had broken her back.
“She came back,” she said again as she lifted her head and looked into Padam’s eyes. “She came back, and she saved me, Uncle. She dragged me through the flames, down the stairs, and left me by the door, and that’s where the firemen found me.”
******
Padam sat in the rear of the cab, staring at the hairs on the back of the driver’s neck, and knew he had only just survived. All his years as a Gurkha soldier and the special training he’d received from the British Army Special Air Services in Hereford, England could never have prepared him for the speed of the Russian who fought with fire.
It had been a little over a week now since he’d arrived. Finding Illya had been easy. He’d been sitting there at the blackjack table of the casino by the water just as his niece had said he liked to do, his tattoos showing through the white sleeve of his tracksuit top, his eyes the eyes of a man to be feared. But a Ghurkha fears nothing, let alone death. His sister had been next to him, prettier than Sushma had described, living in dread not just of him, but of what she knew she was and was incapable of not being. Her sponging boyfriend leached off of them both, not caring and without repentance.
Killing the blonde freeloader had been easy, for it was clear as he sat there with the others, drinking and eating for free, that he was not strong and had never killed nor harmed a soul himself, but Padam knew he had been there, watching, indifferent to the young lives he knew were being cut short and shattered beyond comprehension.
He’d left the casino that night, passing the man on the bench who was about to end his life. He had walked his girl back through the night air to her apartment where she would suck the cock of a stranger, and had kissed her lips tenderly. Wondering if the beer he’d left on the bar would still be there, he had wandered back. Rounding the corner, he’d felt the pain of Padam’s fist. It had rendered him unconscious, striking his heart with such force that it stopped momentarily. In the darkness, Padam carried him over his shoulder down the gangplank and along the small wooden dock.
He’d had ten minutes to reach Alla’s apartment as he walked away from her boyfriend, who lay unconscious in the boat out there on the creek, his blond hair, designer clothes, and Mauri slow movers shoes covered in fuel, and as Alla stood there naked by the window, waiting for Padam to come to her from behind, Padam waited for the fuses to ignite and torch her man. As the flames rose up into the night, he thought of his niece and her fiancé, robbed of a life so precious, and how this beautiful and perfect woman had watched and done nothing as her brother had destroyed their lives.
As he’d stood and walked toward the naked woman, he’d told her it was her boyfriend out there burning in the boat. She’d looked back at him, confused by his words, and he’d stepped to the right, his clenched fist snapping out like a whip, striking her hard and fast with a blow to her lower back. The bones splintered as the twist of his knuckles recoiled away from her soft skin, and she had fallen, her face pressing hard against the long plate-glass window overlooking the creek. Her hands clung to it, but could not hold. The pain in her lower back took over, slowly rendering her unconscious as she looked out at the burning boat on the water, the flames lighting up the night sky.
******
Many lights had been on in the apartments surrounding the creek as Padam walked back along the seawall toward the casino. Lovers out on moonlit strolls, watching the spectacle of the funeral pyre as it shone across the water, were oblivious to the small Asian who’d just killed a man as he made his way back to the Russian who would be sitting at the bar in the casino, awaiting a similar fate. Bored with drinking beer, and waiting in vain for his blond-haired friend to return, Padam knew Illya would make his exit, wandering home drunk, passing the quiet place under the bridge as he always did, and it would be there where Padam would take him and burn him alive as Illya himself had done to so many.
But it wouldn’t be that night, for when Padam arrived, discreetly slipping into the casino fresh from burning Illya’s friend and destroying his sister’s spine, Illya had gone. And as Padam gave up the wait and walked back along the seawall through the warm night air, he turned away from the fire trucks and police now busy at the water’s edge and headed toward the now empty apartment where the Russian, his sister, and her boyfriend had once slept. He passed through the city streets until he hit Granville Street, where he stopped and listened to the distant sirens only feet from where the Russian now sat after his urge had come again—an urge which had called as it had so many times before. An urge which had unknowingly given Illya a stay of execution, drawing him back to the place where he could find refuge, a place where he could be himself at the back of a sleazy store, locked in a murky booth, drunk and half-naked, listening to the groans of the men around him, hoping and waiting for another man, just as lost as he, to stick his dick through the booth’s jagged wooden hole and put himself at the mercy of the Russian psychopath sitting on the other side.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
The taxi pulled up at the departure gate of the airport, and Padam stepped out, his face burned. Now that the adrenaline from the fight was beginning to dissipate, he could feel the tenderness in his skin with every facial expression.
He walked through the terminal and entered the toilet and looked at himself in the mirror. His clothes were singed. They could be replaced, but his hair was now gone at the front, and he knew from the spray of fire coming from the cans the Russian had so artfully held that the hair on his right eyebrow might never return. Leaning forward, he turned on the cold tap and filled the basin. He placed both hands into the water and splashed his face with the cool water to soothe his hot skin. The burn hurt, and it needed treatment, but despite being a long way from home, he was a soldier, and he was still standing.
After dabbing his face with a towel, Padam left the toilet. He stopped outside and looked up at the sign listing departures. The next flight out was an afternoon flight to London. Going to the States was his best bet, but he didn’t want to have to answer questions with the U.S. Customs stationed here at the airport with regard to his burns. He figured he should keep his head down and get to London, where he could show his status as a special services soldier and whip through.
His training in the army had taught him to get out as quickly as he could, long before the decapitated body was found and while the police were still scratching their heads as they had been since they found Sergei burned to a crisp out on the creek. He looked toward the check-in for the British Airways flight and for the second time that day saw Chendrill staring at him from across the terminal.
******
Chendrill watched as the Asian man who had just decapitated the Russian stared at the departure board, trying to figure out just which way to get out before Ditcon got his act together and had the entire city locked down.
It hadn’t taken long for Chendrill to track the cab after calling the company and telling them he’d left his wallet in the one he’d seen Padam get into. Then he’d ripped the Ferrari as fast as he could toward the airport immediately after he’d made the call. Williams would be there by now, he thought, caring for the girl, calling an ambulance and letting the station know he and Chendrill had tracked down Daltrey's killer all on their own. But what do I do now? Chendrill thought as he looked at the small Asian man standing there, dabbing his burned face with a damp paper towel. The guy—a hero in Chendrill’s eyes, who’d gone in there obviously armed with only a short sword and taken on a guy with a flamethrower and won.
Then Padam looked at him and gave a nod of respect in a way only a fellow warrior could understand. Chendrill watched as the man began to cross the busy terminal. Arriving in front of him, Padam said to him in a quiet voice, “I am a Gurkha, and I have killed many people at war. The Russian and his friend deserved their fate and I have no problem with you, I wish you no harm—Now I ask you, man to man, to let this to continue to be the case!”
Chendrill stared at this little man who showed no fear, and he smiled. “Why’d you come all this way to kill him?” he asked.
Padam shook his head, not taking his eyes off Chendrill for a single second. “The moment he laid a hand on my brother’s only daughter,” he said, “he was as good as dead.”
“You’re referring to Bernado's girlfriend?”
Padam nodded. “The Russian broke her spine as his sister and her boyfriend Sergei watched. Bernado tried to stop him. The girl, Alla, saved my niece’s life, dragging her out of the room when the place caught fire. This is why she is still alive.”
Chendrill relaxed and awkwardly propped himself up on a small glass railing. He stared at the floor, thinking about the young kid struggling to save his girl and how Daltrey and the young man must have felt as this Russian’s flame got the better of them. Then he looked up at Padam and said, “I feel for your niece and her boyfriend, and for my friend, the woman detective who tried to catch him and died in the process.”
Padam nodded. He had heard the sirens that night from the small alcove he’d waited in across from the apartment Illya had walked away from on the night he should have died. He remembered the smell of burning flesh that had filled his nostrils.
“This is my biggest regret,” he said. “I should have taken him out conventionally the first day I arrived instead of making a statement the way I did.”
Turning, Padam looked instinctively through the crowds of people moving to and fro as a tow truck pulled up at the entranceway to the terminal.
“If I had done so,” Padam said, “your friend would still be here, and you’d have been spared your burns and the broken ribs you are now suffering.”
Chendrill laughed. Looking to the floor, he shook his head and said, “No, I got the damaged ribs from a baker.”
He looked up and saw that Ditcon and his guys were entering the building, and the Gurkha who had travelled halfway around the world to avenge his family was gone.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chendrill looked around the terminal. Padam was nowhere to be seen. He had disappeared into the ether of people like a ghost as Ditcon descended on him. Then, through the crowd, Chendrill saw him. Padam raised his hand in thanks from a line of commuters he’d blended into so perfectly before disappearing again like a ghost, the way the Special Air Services in Britain had no doubt trained him to do.
Ditcon arrived at his side. “We’ve been monitoring your car. You’ve been speeding, so it’s being towed.”
Chendrill shook his head. The man’s a fucking idiot, he thought. “Good police work,” he said, “but it’s not my car.”
“Where is he?” Ditcon asked.
“Where’s who?”
“The one who murdered Daltrey—the guy you’re looking for.”
Chendrill looked at the ground again, then discreetly scanned the terminal for Padam, now long gone. Looking up again, he said, “Daltrey's murderer is downtown. One of your police officers by the name of Williams is guarding him. Go see for yourself. He’s all cut up about what he did.”
“Where?”
And with that, Chendrill stood, took a deep breath that pained his ribs, and began to walk away. Turning back, he called out, “You’re supposed to be the detective!”
******
Chendrill walked outside into the sunshine and recognized the smug face of the tow truck driver smiling at him. Slamming the door to his truck, the guy stared back at Chendrill, the Ferrari he’d been searching for now his once again, strung up on the back of his dirty oil-laden tow truck like a prize deer. With a smile that said it all, he pulled the truck away along the airport concourse.
