Season One, Episode Twenty: Riot Runs

Markus walked out of the airport toward the taxi rank. He saw Charlo’ hanging around but he gave her a stern look. She took the first cab up. He boarded the next one and told the driver to follow her.
After she left her cab in a neighborhood he wasn’t familiar with, he told his driver to continue for one block, got out and walked back. From a distance, he saw her enter a renovated building. He brushed past the old lady with all the paper bags stepping out into the street.
There were four floors and he hadn’t seen one familiar name on the bell list of residents. He was about to ring the bell on the third floor with the name C. Gabal on it when he heard a whisper above him. Charlo’ was leaning over the balustrade while waving at him.
‘I live up here,’ she whispered. ‘I thought I had told you the fourth floor.’
‘That was way back, before we went traveling,’ he said.
Inside her apartment, they crashed. He held her and kissed her, ferociously.
‘They let you go,’ she said. A statement of fact.
He didn’t reply but accompanied her to the bed. They fell on the top while extricating themselves from their clothes.

‘What do you think?’ Riot asked as he was observing the blue plastic cup filled with water. He took it and went into the bathroom, putting it next to a tile from Holland that had been worked into the wall.
‘About what?’ the woman asked from the dinner room, where she was eating a raspberry waffle.
‘Our precious guy. I think it’s time I paid him another visit.’ Riot looked at the water from different angles.
‘You won’t betray me, will you?’
‘We’re not there yet. First I want to know what he got out of Asia and what he’s planning on doing about it. I also want to know how far Mondeo has come in understanding all of this.’
He walked up to her and tore a piece off her waffle.

Markus and Charlo’ were resting. In bed. Naked. They didn’t know how long they had been here. The flight from Asia took 12 hours. The interrogation by the black cop. Markus was the first to budge. He took a quick shower, then she joined him.
‘What did you tell them?’
‘Nothing.’
‘They fell for that?’
‘My sister is dead and they blame me because I’m the only link they can find.’
‘They haven’t found out about the Russian you killed at the Brother Hotel, then?’
They went back to bed for another round of horizontal passion.
Two hours later, Markus walked over to the window for a look at the street.
‘Bloody screaming murder.’
‘What?’ She immediately sat up in bed.
‘The guy I told you about, Riot? He’s crossing the street and coming here right now. Get your clothes on, we’re moving out.’
Charlo’ pulled her jeans on.
‘You think he knows this place.’
‘He must have had me followed from the airport.’
‘What does he want?’ she asked as she pulled a yellow T-shirt over her head.
‘I don’t want to be here to find out.’
Markus picked up a sports bag, threw all the stuff in he deemed necessary, and grabbed her hand.
‘You have the car keys?’
She ran back into the bathroom and plucked the keys off the washbasin.
‘What a funny place to keep keys,’ he said.
On the way out, he noticed the name next to her doorbell. Ch. Whiggs.
‘Not there, let’s go out the back.’ He went for the rusty structure outside the hall’s back window. The fire escape. Just as they clambered out the window, he heard doors slam downstairs. Riot was probably on his way up. Markus led the way, but kept Charlo’ close behind him. On the second floor, he heard movement, so he stepped back and pressed her against the wall next to the window. Inside, Riot was on his way up. He looked at the rear window but didn’t stop.
Markus counted to five and continued the run down.
‘Where is your car?’ he whispered at her when they had reached street level.
She didn’t utter a word but pointed at the other side of the street, away from the building. They crossed the street, and that’s when Riot saw them.
‘I just missed the bleeding hearts,’ he told the woman on his cell from the fourth-floor window.
‘Follow them and see where they hang out,’ she said. ‘Don’t show yourself until Markus shows us what he has.’

NEXT: Markus Bentley uses the key from Macau in Episode Twenty-One before May 2.