See Naples and Die by Ray Cleveland Page A

They just kept running. They ran on to Earls Court
Road and into the Tube station. They had daily travel tickets they’d used
earlier to go to the meeting with Roberto’s men, so they went straight down to
the platforms. Destination didn’t matter: it was whichever train came first. It
was the District line to Wimbledon, and they leapt on.
    The train was busy and they had to stand
in the door area, but they huddled together and felt stronger as a group.
    “Where shall we get off?” asked Megan.
    “The end of the line,” proposed Brenda.
    Chrissie laughed. “Bad choice of words,
Bren.”
    Brenda and Megan smiled too. Whether it
was nervous tension, adrenalin, or dead brain cells it was a side of their
character that set them apart. Bruno didn’t smile. Whatever it was he just
didn’t have it.
    Eventually the train arrived at
Wimbledon, and they got off with the rest of the passengers. They were looking
everywhere for possible assassins – but paid killers don’t have signs around
their necks, so what’s the point? There is no point, but you do it anyway.
    Outside the station exit was a coffee
shop, and it was as good a place as any to assess the precarious position they
were in – and their dwindling options of not just getting out of it, but even
surviving the next few days.
    “First things first,” said Chrissie. “We
didn’t even get back to the room, so all we have are the clothes we are
standing in and whatever money we’ve got on us … How much have we got?”
    Megan and Brenda had dropped their bags
when fleeing from the hotel and Chrissie wasn’t carrying one to begin with, so
they emptied their pockets out on to the table. Chrissie counted the bits and
pieces. “Forty-five pounds,” she said.
    This was bad. Chrissie’s face was a
picture of despair. “How much have you got, Bruno?” she whispered, her words
tumbling out like a line of weary coal miners ending their shift.
    Bruno always wore a man satchel, which
he lifted over his head and placed on the table. He unzipped it and showed the
contents. It was crammed full of bundles of £20 notes.
    “Bloody hell, Bruno,” said Chrissie.
“Zip it up, quick.” Surprises like this can instantly lift a person’s spirits,
and now they all felt as if they had been plucked from the abyss and placed on
top of the world.
    This time Bruno did smile. “I wasn’t
leaving this for some chambermaid to find,” and then his smile withered. “If
only we still had the data stick.”
    “Ah, but we have,” said Brenda, and she put
one hand inside her bra, gave a slight tug, and produced the magic red USB data
stick.
    “That’s brilliant,” shouted Chrissie.
“Then we aren’t in any worse position than before. We can book into another
hotel, we can buy whatever we need, and we can still do the meeting with
Roberto tomorrow.”
    They got up to leave, and as they walked
across the room Chrissie mumbled to herself, “I didn’t like that hotel in Earls
Court, anyway.”
     
     
     

Chapter Ten
     
     
    On a one-mile gradual incline near the
Surrey/Hampshire border a single-track road wound its way through the wooded
slopes. With only a handful of passing places it was inhospitable to any form
of motorised transport, but then very few people ever came this way. It wasn’t
a short cut to anywhere, and only three houses were spaced along its entire
length. The last property was the most secluded, and couldn’t even be seen from
the road. Only a shabby green-painted ranch-style gate gave any indication that
something may lie beyond.
    After the gate a gravel path disappeared
around a wide curve of huge rhododendron bushes and then widened out into a
courtyard, with a converted barn dwelling to the right and a stunning
six-bedroomed art deco property to the left. With flat roof and white-painted
facade the house looked decidedly out of place in rural Surrey. It should have
been a stone-built, ivy-covered, Victorian masterpiece with large chimneys, but
was