Secrets of State by Peter Driscoll

Author:Peter Driscoll [Driscoll, Peter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Silvertail Books
Published: 2024-01-18T00:00:00+00:00

12

For what seemed an impossible time they stood and looked at each other along the hallway, their mutual surprise held in perfect balance. Then Dimitri started forward.

‘Mama! Mama mou!’ he exclaimed, going down on one knee beside Olga. He studied her empty face for a few moments and then looked up at Garvey. He still didn’t comprehend. ‘She is died,’ he said blankly. ‘What is happened?’

Garvey had recovered his wits. He was edging his way around the body to block the route to the front door, his brain making a series of rapid but bewildering connections. He would never have come remotely near to guessing that the disgruntled manager of Chez Andreas was the son of its owner; still less that he would choose tonight of all nights to accompany her home. He hadn’t seen the life being choked out of her, though; for the first few moments he had been misled by Garvey’s vaguely familiar look into taking him for a neighbour or a visitor, bending over Olga in apparent concern. Now something else came into his eyes, a bright blazing of fear and anger that made them gleam in the dimly lit hall.

‘What you have done her?’ he demanded. ‘What?’

Garvey said nothing. He was still backing towards the open front door when Dimitri gave a howl of rage, lowered his head and charged at him like a bull.

The attack caught Garvey slightly off guard. The Greek’s head butted him in the ribs and knocked him sideways, against the jamb of the kitchen door. He felt fists pummelling him in the stomach and he twisted to one side, getting hold of Dimitri’s coat collar, dragging him into the kitchen and propelling him head-first into the refrigerator on the far side.

The impact sent the fridge rocking back on its feet and jarred its door open, but had no visible effect on Dimitri. Still roaring with anger, he lurched to his right and grabbed at something on an adjacent worktop. As he swung round again, the feeble light from the open fridge glinted off the eight-inch blade of a butcher knife he had wrenched from a wooden block. He lunged with it at Garvey.

Without a weapon, with his instincts urging him only to get away, Garvey would have turned and run if there’d been time and room to manoeuvre. But as Dimitri came at him with the knife held low and close to his body in the streetfighter’s way, going for an underarm stab to the belly, Garvey’s flutter of panic was overtaken by his more familiar aggressive reflexes. He went into a crouch with his hands out in front of him, the fingers stiffly extended, and before Dimitri’s thrust could gather momentum he closed in and slashed sideways, striking his attacker’s forearm, deflecting the knife and making a grab for the fist that held it.

His hand closed instead over the blade, its sharp edge slitting his cotton glove and the inner surfaces of his fingers as Dimitri tried to pull it free.

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