Why We Die by Mick Herron

that’s who it was: the man was a woman. A six-foot barrel-built woman, with arms like branches and a voice like David Beckham on helium.
    ‘Is there any of that you didn’t understand?’
    Zoë pulled her left arm free and swatted backwards at the woman-thing’s head. This had the effect it would have had on a concrete bollard. So she did it again, and found herself squeezed harder: black balloons were bursting all around now, and more words floated into her ears: ‘I can keep this up all day. How about you?’
    How about her was, she was trying to loosen the woman’s grip on her neck: like trying to prise roots from the ground with bare fingers. Zoë’s lungs were aching. She might not be smoking any more, but she hadn’t planned on giving up breathing . . . And what difference did it make this was a woman? Zoë slapped an elbow: feebly perhaps, like a dangled fish; but the intent, she thought, was clear: loosen up. I ’ m ready to talk .
    Maybe a man would have taken two slaps to get the message. Maybe that was the difference.
    Zoë’s hand dipped into her pocket.
    ‘Okay. I’m going to let you speak now.’
    The woman’s grip tightened round Zoë’s waist and loosened round her throat. Air rushed back into her system and the world flushed red for a second, her vision clearing so swiftly it struck her this woman knew exactly what she was doing – had held her in that chokehold not a moment too long.
    ‘Who are you?’ the voice said again. ‘And what do you want?’
    ‘I just want to know,’ said Zoë – her voice a dull rasp – ’I just want to know if you want to keep your ear?’
    Because she’d taken the nail scissors from her pocket, and was holding them to the woman’s left lobe: nipping just sharply enough to remind her what slice meant.
    The silence that followed lasted seven of the longer seconds Zoë remembered . . .
    And then she felt the ground beneath her feet again, and the other arm unwrapped her: she took a quick step away, and turned to face her new enemy.
    Who was a woman, of course, but it wasn’t that surprising Zoë hadn’t noticed earlier. From behind, with the cap on, she’d have gone with the odds nine times out of ten, and called this male. But face-to-face told a different story: the woman’s skin was pale and babysoft; her lips full roses; her eyes brown and damp. Her uncapped hair, cropped to a buzz, was so blond it was colourless. This wasn’t beauty, quite – the effect was startlingly like an inflatable come to life – but it wasn’t masculine. In the moment it took Zoë to register those damp brown eyes, the other factors – the broad shoulders, the branchlike arms, the thick columns of legs; all cased in black leather, like an implausible S&M fantasy – faded to insignificance, but only for that moment. And then the woman’s weight and thickness reasserted itself, reminding Zoë that whatever gender she espoused, she was solid and dangerous.
    Though the voice remained a bit of a hoot.
    Heavy or not, she moved quietly, and even standing still looked ready as a dancer. Which was exactly what Zoë wanted: to get in a rumble with somebody bigger than her, who’d put some training in. She must have been six foot easy. Her reach – Zoë didn’t want to think about her reach. She already knew the important bit: that she wasn’t far enough away.
    But she looked troubled, as if she were having similar thoughts about Zoë. Or maybe she was just aware that this was a little public: barely twenty yards from a main road. Anybody could be watching from any of a hundred windows.
    When things stall, push them. Zoë pushed. ‘Are we going to fight?’
    The woman thought about it. ‘Were you really going to cut my ear off?’
    ‘Yes. Well, probably.’
    She was still holding the scissors, and didn’t think there was any harm in carrying on doing so.
    ‘You were following me, weren’t you?’
    ‘I was following your boss.’
    ‘You’re not too good at