Detonator

I sat him down beside me and brought up the binos again. Nothing had changed. No big lads had emerged to enjoy an early-evening vodka on the balcony. I checked out the various approaches to the rear entrance for concealment and ease of access. A four-metre-wide alleyway separated it from the palaces on either side. They seemed to be empty too.

I wondered about leaping from the slope on to the top of the wall, but bi

I turned to Stefan. He was following my every move, eyes like saucers. ‘We can get in through the back, yeah?’

He nodded.

‘Will there be anyone there? A maid, maybe? A cook? A bodyguard?’

He gave me something halfway between a shake of the head and a shrug.

‘Do you know the entry code?’

He nodded again.

I brought out the UZI pen and lifted my left hand.

He flinched like I was about to hit him. I went down on one knee, so we could get eye to eye. ‘Steady, mate. I just want you to write it here …’ I tapped my palm.

Concentrating hard, his tongue jutting out a fraction between his teeth, he drew a nine-square grid on my very grimy skin. Then he touched six of them in sequence and wrote the numbers below it.

‘Is there an alarm system?’

Another nod. The tongue stayed where it was as he added a second set of figures.

‘OK. Let’s do it.’

I lifted him on to my back. He wrapped his arms around my chest and I threaded my wrists under his knees; this was starting to feel more like teamwork. I shifted the pistol in my waistband so I could still draw down with my right hand.

We were able to stay inside the treeline most of the way, and drop down on to the ski track at the last moment. I kept eyes on the three buildings every step of the way, only stopping a couple of times to glance backwards and forwards along the path.

I put Stefan down and tapped in the code. The locking mechanism clicked. I pushed open the gate, then hid him behind the Jacuzzi before repeating the process at the back entrance. This time the door swung back automatically, on some kind of hydraulic arm.

I stepped across the threshold into a room lined with top-of-the-range skis in a variety of sizes, bright quilted jackets and matching helmets on a row of wooden hooks. The alarm panel was alongside one of those boot-driers with stalks that breathed warm air into your liners after a day on the piste. I brought up my left palm, read the numbers and disarmed it.

I fetched Stefan and pressed the button to shut the door.

We moved through into an entrance hall that was more Manhattan penthouse than rustic mountain lodge. Frank had had a whole lot of fingers in a whole lot of pies, and judging by what was on display there, he’d cornered the market in grey marble as well. I wondered how much of this I’d paid for. He had once laundered a big chunk of money I’d stolen from a Mexican drug baron, and taken twenty-five cents on the dollar.

I felt a big stupid grin spread across my face. If I still knew that, there was hope for me yet.

I stopped and listened. The fact that the alarm had been set meant that no one was likely to be inside, but old habits die hard, even when you’re struggling. That was the whole point of them, after all.

Once I was sure no one was there, I could comb the place for clues to what the fuck was going on, and why I was in the shit.

I walked across the shiniest floor I’d ever seen and Stefan hobbled after me. The huge wooden front door ahead of us was firmly shut. I wanted to keep it that way. Another to our right was far enough ajar for me to get a glimpse of the corner of a brushed-aluminium four-poster bed. No surprises there. Most of these mountain homes were designed to save the best views for the living areas, not waste them on the bits where you shut your eyes.

The room was enormous but minimally furnished – mostly in suede and metal. The bed and a formal portrait of Frank with a dark-haired beauty above it told me this was where the master of the house got his head down. The bed was made, but the slight dip in the mattress told me that for a while only one person had slept in it.

There were two more bedrooms across the hall. One was pink and fluffy and untouched; the other was a shrine to Brindisi football club and Spider-Man. A couple of dinosaurs acted as bookends for yet more homework. There was no mess anywhere. It reminded me of Frank’s love of precision – and the seriousness with which he had been schooling Stefan to take over his empire. I told the boy to wait there until I came back.

A wide glass and steel staircase ran up the centre of the building.

I climbed it soundlessly. The first floor was similarly sleek and minimalist. Immediately ahead there was a panoramic view of lush greenery and snow-capped mountains. A maroon Bentley Continental swept past the front driveway, heading for the centre of town. I kept well back from the window.

A set of huge double doors led right, into a high-ceilinged family room. A very tidy high-ceilinged family room. Tall panelled windows overlooked a lone dog-walker making her way up the path we’d taken through the trees. A corridor opposite led into yet more rooms with views of mountains or trees. One was a dining room, complete with dumb waiter.

The floor above had a couple of giant Velux skylights that opened on to the roof, and an attic filled with the kind of stuff everyone leaves in an attic. Frank probably didn’t even know it existed.

There was a glass and steel lift at the far end. It had been the highlight of the guided tour he’d given me when he’d bought the place. As I drew closer to it I heard his voice: ‘Italian design, German hydraulics. Precision-built houses and Swiss watches – they are very nice things to have, Nick. But there is always someone in more control than you are …’

Keep talking, Frank. Don’t just go on about the fucking lift. Tell me what this shit is all about. Once I know that, I can work out what to do about it – and how to keep me and your boy safe …

As we’d moved smoothly downwards his jaw had tightened, and he’d given me a rare insight into his relationship with the big dog immediately above him in the food chain. ‘Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin. Prime minister of the Russian Federation, chairman of both United Russia and the Council of Ministers of the Union of Russia and Belarus. A truly powerful man …’

I’d asked him who Putin’s boss was.

‘People like me who buy chalets in this village.’ He wasn’t smiling. ‘If he wants to be elected president again.’

I hoped he was right about that.

I wasn’t going to take the lift this time. I preferred the stairs. They gave me the illusion of control.

There were two more storeys below ground. The bottom one contained a swimming-pool, which filled the entire footprint of the building. So I hadn’t been imagining it. Carved out of the mountainside, it looked like a South Pacific rock-pool. The water was crystal clear. I was glad something around here was.

Above it, a two-car garage housed another gleaming black Range Rover alongside a workbench complete with vices and all the tools you could need to keep the motor ru