SEVERANCE KILL by Tim Stevens

through bribes or threats before, but weren’t satisfied. Wanted him out of the picture entirely.
    It didn’t explain what had happened on the tram. Who the armed men were who hijacked it, why there’d been gunfire. Were they accomplices of Calvary’s, joining him on board and helping him kidnap Gaines? It didn’t fit.
    She’d pulled strings at the airports, Prague’s and the others, to get Calvary’s name and face on the danger lists. But the Czech Republic was a landlocked country with porous borders and an almost infinite number of escape routes. She’d never stop him leaving.
    And yet… something in her, something nagging, told her he hadn’t left. Hadn’t completed his business here in the city. Might not, in fact, have got his man at all.
    She could muster little excitement at the prospect of the chase. Hanging over everything was the fact of Oleg’s death. No goodbyes, just a life terminated in a semi-random act of violence.
    One of the best espions she’d ever known. The phrase came back to her.
    And... something else.
    That was what had been nagging at her.
    She turned and began the nearly kilometre-long journey back to the office at close to a trot, fumbling out her phone as she did so.
     
    *
     
    ‘You’re doing what?’
    ‘Burning it.’
    Calvary put his lips around the end of the hose and drew deep, feeling the heavy warmth spread down the rubber. He pulled his face away in time to avoid a mouthful, angled the hose end into the cut-off plastic milk bottle. The petrol began to course out.
    The young man and the woman – a few years older, but still young, perhaps in her late twenties – had been peering round the lip of the alley, watching for police. The sirens sped by in both directions but there’d been no interest shown in this dark passageway between tall blocks.
    She’d ridden on the rim of the wheel until the front tyre had begun to howl in sympathy. Calvary said, ‘Down there,’ jabbing his finger at the alley’s mouth. She spun the wheel and the van rocked into the blackness, one side scraping sparks off the wall.
    While they were looking out – not that it would do them any good – Calvary rummaged in the bins at the end of the alley for what he wanted. A container, in this case a two-litre plastic bottle, and a length of hose. He used the jagged edge of a tin can lid to trim the hose and saw off the neck of the bottle.
    ‘It’s my van.’ The kid ran a hand through his sprawling mop of black curls. He was spare, hip-looking in skinny jeans and T-shirt.
    ‘No it’s not.’ Calvary wielded the bottle like a chainsaw, shaking petrol over the van, inside and out. Using what he had sparingly. ‘It’s now the property of the city of Prague, specifically its police department. Along with all the DNA inside. Yours, hers and mine.’
    He held out his hand without looking at the boy. ‘Give me a light.’
    ‘What? I don’t –’
    ‘The van stank of weed. Come on.’
    ‘Jeez...’ But the kid handed over a lighter, decorated with a bas-relief of cannabis leaves.
    ‘Back,’ said Calvary, and flicked the roller. He dropped the lighter and herded them towards the street. The heat licked at their backs, and Calvary heard the crackle of blistering paint an instant after they turned into the low afternoon sunlight.
    He let them take the lead, matching their pace.
    ‘How far are we going?’
    ‘Twenty minute walk,’ said the woman.
    Calvary said to the man, ‘You said it was your van?’
    ‘Yeah.’
    ‘How come she was driving?’
    The woman cut in: ‘Because she is the better driver.’ Her English was good but with a Czech accent. She was tall, nearly Calvary’s height. Dark hair hanging loose, dressed in a suede jacket, jeans and boots. There was a slight resemblance between her and the boy, Calvary thought; something in the nose, the mouth.
    To the boy Calvary said, ‘The number plate will have been caught by every security camera we passed. The police will be looking