Free A Dark Place to Die by Ed Chatterton Page A

mobile and calls the container details in to the other members of the MIT team. Siobhan McDonald takes the call and tells him the SOC unit has already buzzed the news in.
    'It's here,' Keane tells McDonald. 'I'd bet my left nut. Get Corner and Rose started on tracing access to the Freeport.' Even as he's giving the order, Keane knows this line of inquiry will be unlikely to produce results. But it has to be done. The Freeport must have CCTV, gate logs, something. Corner and Rose can start digging into who had access. He signs off and pockets his phone.
    'What did you get?' he says to Em, pointing at the plastic bag in her hand with his chin.
    Harris, her equilibrium restored but her face grim, holds it up to Keane's eye level. In the bag is a small lens cap of the kind you'd find on a video camera. The word 'Sony' is etched into the plastic. It looks new.
    'Sweet Jesus,' says Keane, the penny dropping. 'The fuckers taped it.'

11
    Macksym Kolomiets, known as Max by all who fear and love him (and the former group far outnumbers the latter), has no idea this is to be his last hour. Very few people ever do. For most, the time of their death must always be at some far distant point and Max is no different. If someone had told him he was about to die, and soon, he'd have laughed. What could possibly harm him, the under-14s coach, on this perfect Gold Coast evening, out in the centre of the paddock surrounded by fifteen excited boys kicking footballs?
    A lightning strike?
    It would have to be something cataclysmic, because anything less wouldn't get past Anton Bytchkov, waiting in the car as always. Very few dangerous things in Max's life get past Anton Bytchkov.
    In the unlikely event that anyone or anything did somehow manage that prodigious feat, they would then have to face up to Max Kolomiets himself. The Russian – although Max would have beaten anyone who called him that to his face, proudly hailing as he does from Ukraine – is a man with a big reputation up and down the Goldie. Developer. Party contributor. Criminal.
    No, Max would not have believed his time had come, not even if the devil himself arrived, the Grim Reaper in tow.
    He swats away a mosquito, glad he sprayed himself before coming out, blows his whistle and begins to organise the team into two shooting drills. One of the boys, Mitch Barnes, the captain of the team, trots across to Max and begins talking about the upcoming game. The season proper is over but the summer league is starting this Saturday.
    In the car, Anton sits bolt upright as always, his eyes fixed on the field and his beefy forearm resting on the sill of the Beemer. He looks every inch the attentive bodyguard.
    Apart from the neat hole in his temple from which dribbles a thick line of blood showing black against his lifeless Ukrainian skin.
    He hadn't known a thing, thinks Jimmy Gelagotis, working up a head of steam. Fucking Russians think they're fucking invincible. Not so invincible now, eh, Anton,
malaka?
    Gelagotis puts the gun inside his zipper jacket with some difficulty, the silencer bulking out the weapon's snout. Jimmy Gelagotis fucking hates Russians. Or Ukrainians, or whatever the fuck snow-bound fucking hell-hole wasteland they fucking crawled the fuck out of. Especially fucking Russians who have the fucking cheek to fuck about with his fucking business.
    Fifteen years as a card-carrying nasty bastard has taught Jimmy Gelagotis that people never expect those they are in business with to go directly for the nuclear option in the event of a dispute.
    With Jimmy, the nuclear option is the favourite option. He's been brought up to believe in hitting first, hittingfucking hard, and making sure it fucking counts, in that order, and it hasn't let him, or those who depend on him, down yet. Work with Jimmy and you get the benefits: girls, cars, money, the usual shit. Cross Jimmy Gelagotis and what you get is what Anton has just discovered. The motherfucking nuclear option, baby, all the