7

Melody checked the creased scrap of paper Aaron slid into her possession almost two weeks earlier. No mistake, this was definitely the address scribbled in faded pencil.

   Danny. 34 Snowdrop Street. Poplar. 8pm. Mon-Fri

   Except it wasn’t. Sure, there was a Number 32. There was a Number 36. But where Number 34 Snowdrop Street should be situated — on an overgrown, litter-strewn empty lot — there was a fenced off, burned-out shell of a house. A local estate agents sign had an additional under offer banner running diagonally across it.

   Bollocks. What a waste of effing time.

   It was eight-thirty, and the street lights had flickered into life while Melody was silently fuming at Aaron. It was a quiet suburban street. She couldn’t see anyone else around. A small car drove past. Not too fast. Not too slow. Not too suspicious.

   As the Yaris continued on its way, she clocked the Range Rover parked about fifty yards ahead. As the Yaris cleared it, the Range Rover’s lights flashed once. What did that mean? Maybe it meant nothing. They flashed again, twice. She was already half way towards it when they flashed three times.

   The front passenger side door opened as Melody reached the vehicle. The windows were tinted so she had no idea who was flashing her as she approached. She presumed and hoped it was the mysterious Danny.

   Melody gripped the ribbed handle of the Fairburn-Sykes Royal Marines fighting knife: a modern copy of the classic killing tool designed back in the 1940s. She was holding the 7-lethal inches of double-sided, scalpel-sharp blade inside the canvas satchel.

   Saul’s English dad was a Royal Marine in the 1950s before he took his family to Israel. Despite many fine Israeli alternatives, Saul swore by it as the most lethal close-quarter fighting knife ever devised. Even in relatively unskilled hands, it was the world’s finest stabbing and slashing weapon, having been designed by the legendary RMC Colonel Fairbairn for maximum silent penetration. Saul had taught Melody a few tricks since that first Shabbat together.

   Ven push come to shove it in, ya gotta be vicked to ya bones. Then you live Princess and the meshugenah creep dies. Better that vay, right?

   Melody sidled around the door which stretched open over the pavement. She looked in. A well-dressed black guy, sitting behind the wheel, stared back at her. Melody warily assessed him for threats, as Saul had taught her. Yeah, this bloke looked like he handled himself well—about six two, sixteen stone, early-thirties, short dreads.

   ‘Get in.’

   ‘You Danny?’

   ‘Don’t be daft love. There is no Danny.’

   Melody mentally tensed herself, ready for flight or fight. The knife ready in case it was fight.

   ‘Relax doll. Name’s Frankie Bishop. Mister Fuchs sent me. So just get in already.’

   Melody got in already.

They had been driving silently for about twenty minutes. Melody started to ask Frankie something, but he simply put up his left hand to indicate don’t talk. So she didn’t. Instead she gazed out of the passenger side window, her mind drifting as the unfamiliar London suburbs south of the Thames flashed by. Thoughts of how she got here, in the car, at this time. About to do something she wondered if she could ever go through with in the end, when shove comes to push.

—THWACK—

   The well-muscled man smashed the woman on the side of her head with his right fist. It was a brutal, vicious attack, and hardly a fair fight. She was toned herself, and at five-foot ten, no shrinking violet. But he was six-one.

   Tumbling a few feet backwards, she landed on her backside, almost side-on to him. He grinned. She was helpless. He liked that. This was going better and faster than expected. Time to finish her off.

   Moving in for the kill, he nonchalantly tossed the knife from left to right hand, before rushing her. Blade thrust forward—aiming at her throat for a slash and gouge frenzy finish. Dead easy.

   Or it would have been if, in a blink, the girl hadn’t spun her floor-seated body one hundred and eighty degrees. As her right leg hooked around the man’s calf, she pulled hard. His own undisciplined momentum catapulted him high into the air, before he clattered loud and hard in a vertebrae dislodging crash onto the fight mat.

   Ouch.

   The knife flew from his hand. But the girl didn’t need to pick it up for herself. Already up, in mid-air, she dropped from height, knee first into his groin.

   Excruciating.

    Ignoring his pitiful scream—she pulled back her arm so as to better rocket-thrust her balled fist into his windpipe. The kill shot.

   ‘Enough.’

   Saul’s bellowed command ricocheted off the bare brick walls of the former factory in Neasden, North London. It stopped her dead in her tracks. The ground-floor space had been converted into a training facility. Saul had named it the All Fight Club. While he preferred Krav Maga, he respected all fighting forms, and the people willing to learn through dedication and practice.

   There was a makeshift boxing ring dead centre. Two young men were sparing under the watchful eye of Saul’s friend Errol Saunders, former British and Commonwealth Featherweight Champ.

   Laid out in a grid pattern were six twenty-foot square, cushioned fight mats. Saul prowled around his area of expertise keeping his eyes fixed on the various fight activities from the six trainees in today.

   ‘Let him be Melody, y’vicked girl.’

   ‘Wasn’t going to follow through.’

   Saul fixed her with his he who must be obeyed eyes. ‘And don’t pouty dem lips at me missy, dis mensch’s immune.’

   First rule of All Fight Club was to obey Saul without thinking. Melody had learned that in two years of training in Krav Maga: the deadly street-fighting martial art developed by the Israeli special forces. Unlike the more formalized fighting techniques from Japan and China, the sole purpose of Krav Maga is to disable your opponent as fast as possible, using the deadliest of force. In the right hands it is killer lethal. Though now her friend, the former Special Forces colonel, and Krav Maga expert, was a man not to annoy.

   The pout disappeared instantly and she withdrew from clobbering Patrick, still sprawled at her feet on one of the mats. He wasn’t pouting either.

   ‘How comes this durkshnit gets drop on you anyvays?’

   Melody laughed. ‘Durkshnit? No idea what that’s Yiddish for, but it can’t be good.’

   The peeved Patrick, who had just been physically humiliated by a girl four stone lighter and seven years older, was even more peeved at the easy banter. ‘Yeah thanks a bunch guys. Still here you know. Humiliated.’

   ‘Answer the kvestion Princess.’

   ‘Last night was Kevin’s fortieth, which you missed. There was drinking, eating, dancing and other human activities into the wee small hours of the morning.’

   ‘Ah, you think vicked fuckers gonna ask ya nicely before they attack—’

   Before Saul finished he was on Melody: In one sweep of his leg she was sprawled on her back, his hand gripping her throat. A human octopus wrapping all his limbs around her so she was unable to move, or even squirm.

   His mouth an inch from her ear as she tried frantically to turn her head. ‘You finks some meshugenah creep’s gonna give a shit ’bout your party life. Ooo, don’t be too rough, I vas out last night? Alvays anticipate vorld’s full of vicked bastards Princess. I tell her this all time. Vill she listen? No she vill not.’

   As quickly as he had attacked, Saul was off Melody, extending his hand to pull her up. ‘One final lesson before you abandon old Sau—’

   —CRACK—

   The sound of Saul’s head hitting the mat reverberated across the brick walls. The other Krav Maga students stopped their exercises and watched open-mouthed. She had grabbed his wrist hard, pulling him downwards savagely. Lifting her legs fast, she used Saul’s own forward and downwards momentum to flip him over her head, crashing him behind her, hard and flat on his back.

   Executing a physically demanding roll back flip, she was up and at him in a blink. She thrust the heel of her left foot down at Saul’s fully exposed tracheae and windpipe, stopping the assault a half inch above the crush blow.

   Despite the pain to his concrete hard head, Saul smiled like a father letting his child go, and watching her walk unaided for the very first time.

   ‘Gooder, Princess. Much gooder.’