Dark Winter ns-6 Read online

  Minutes went by. Voices moved along the bank of the stream. A car door was slammed, then Billy’s front door got the same treatment. Suzy was right, it was like West Belfast. I was beginning to get concerned, but then she laid out her wallet on the concrete, replaced her tools, and tucked it into the end of her vomit-filled ready bag.

  Leaving her to sort herself out, I moved to the door and sank on to my knees, slowly putting down the SD. I felt her standing behind me now, bringing her SD slowly into the firing position above my head, butt into the shoulder, leaning into the weapon.

  Sweat started to run down my face as I grasped the handle with my right hand and applied pressure to the door with my left. It held firm. I gave another push, and this time it gave way silently, enough for me to get my head through and, more importantly, Suzy’s SD.

  At the end of the kitchen there was an Artexed archway, beyond which I could see dull street-light leak into the hallway from the front room and spill across the bottom few steps of the staircase.

  Still on my knees, with Suzy hovering above me, weapon up, I listened as carefully as the hood and respirator allowed. I heard nothing.

  I opened the door a fraction more, enough for Suzy to slip past me, weapon still in the shoulder. She moved carefully across the floor, exaggerating every step so she didn’t trip over anything as she focused her attention on the hall. I picked up my weapon to back her, standing up slowly and easing the butt into my shoulder, safety to single shot. I rested my index finger gently on the trigger, feeling the first pressure. Both eyes open, I crossed the threshold, getting behind and slightly to the right of her before going static.

  We would clear the house covertly, room by room, and have a rolling startline – if we found the ASU and it went noisy, we wouldn’t worry about adding to it with a little of our own.

  She moved through the arch, her boots squeaking on the lino, then turned and pointed the muzzle of her SD upwards as she leant back against the wall and covered up the staircase.

  I was through the arch, weapon up, concentrating on the doorway into the front room, the sight display in front of me. My throat was starting to dry. I passed Suzy and had four or five paces to go when I heard a noise ahead of me.

  34

  The lock turned, the door opened.

  Street-light flooded in.

  A silhouette stood on the threshold, a bag in one hand and keys in the other, then took a few steps inside before noticing me.

  It spun to run back through the open door. There was no time to think, just do. Bending down and dropping my SD, I ran towards the shape and jumped on its back. My canister hit the back of its skull and I felt a nose through my gloves as our combined momentum carried us both down on to the pavement and into the street.

  The head turned. It was a woman. She kicked out, trying to escape. Suzy grabbed one of her legs, trying to drag both of us back into the house. I jumped up and grabbed the other leg as she kicked and bucked, not letting go of the carrier.

  The moment we were inside I got my hands round her mouth and collapsed on top of her. She wasn’t coming quietly: she tried to bite me, and drummed her feet against the wall.

  Suzy ran back for her SD.

  ‘No! The door, the door!’

  She grabbed her weapon, moved over me and kicked the door closed. We were plunged into semi-darkness as she leant into us. ‘Keep her still, keep her still!’

  ‘No! She—’

  Thud thud thud.

  The three-round burst tore off the side of her head, and blood splattered over my respirator lenses. I kicked myself away from the lifeless body. ‘Upstairs!’

  Trying to wipe the blood off my lenses, I ran for my SD and started up the stairs. Suzy stayed where she was and covered me. It had definitely gone noisy.

  It was a lot darker when I reached the landing. All I could hear was my laboured breathing. The bathroom door was open: it was clear. Two others were closed. Suzy started up behind me as I went through the first one left. The bedroom was clear, no bodies – but there had been. Two cheap nylon sleeping-bags were unrolled on the floor, food wrappers were strewn among gravy-stained plastic trays filled with dog ends. Jeans and shirts lay in a pile. A blanket had been tacked across the window.

  Suzy came out of the other room and made her way back downstairs. I glanced in – it was in the same shit state, with another two sleeping-bags – then turned to go and give her a bollocking. It had been outrageously stupid to drop her: she might just have been an illegal, or another source of information if she’d been part of the ASU.

  A male voice drifted up towards me, confused, frightened. I heard Suzy respond, calmly but firmly: ‘Stand still, stand still.’

  I stumbled and nearly fell down the stairs. Suzy was kneeling in the pool of blood, weapon up, aiming down the hallway. ‘Close the door, now!’

  Everything went darker but I could still make out two of them, both white. One was Baldilocks from the Focus.

  They stared open-mouthed at the weapons. This was not a good day out. Suzy was straight in there: she grabbed Baldilocks, pulled him over the dead body and into the front room, kicking the backs of his knees to get him down on to the carpet.

  I gestured to the other one with my SD. ‘Follow him. On your knees, now.’

  I hit the light switch as Suzy passed me on her way back into the hallway, and could hear the rasp of her respirator as she fought to suck air and speak. ‘I’ll check what we’re here for.’

  The drawn curtains were cheap and unlined, but they protected us from the real world.

  Both men stayed on their knees, heads down at the carpet, their faces contorted in fear rather than pain. My own was cold and clammy, like a dead fish, rivulets of sweat collecting in the chin-piece of my respirator. I heard her throw the front-door bolt and go upstairs.

  They were dressed in jeans. Baldilocks had a brown leather bomber jacket like mine; his mate, a tattered old black thing with lapels. Their eyes had shifted, though not towards me: they were too busy looking through the doorway at the blood-soaked corpse. She was very dark-skinned, more Indonesian than Malay, in jeans, trainers and a cheap green nylon jacket. What was left of her face looked university age.

  Sweat ran down the long-haired guy’s cheeks and dripped off his chin on to the threadbare flowery carpet. The floorboards creaked above us. We heard the scrape of a chair, then the sound of metal hitting the floor and a glass smashing.

  ‘Get your coats off. One at a time.’ I kicked Baldilocks and the woman’s blood flicked from my boot on to his leg. ‘You first, Baldy.’

  He started to take off his bomber jacket, still on his knees, his eyes never leaving the carpet. When he was half-way, I could see that he was clear – he wasn’t carrying.

  Suzy came down and went straight into the kitchen.

  ‘OK, Baldy, that’s enough. You with the hair, get yours off too, then pull up your T-shirt and show me your guts.’ He did as he was told, unveiling the start of a beer belly. He, too, was unarmed.

  ‘Now on the floor, both of you. Spread your hands and legs.’

  A couple walked past the front of the house, talking and giggling, just feet away.

  Suzy came to the door and shook her head, then turned to the dead girl. The carrier-bag rustled as she placed it to one side, then started going through her pockets. I went back to the two live ones. Baldilocks watched as Suzy turned the girl over in her own pool of blood so she could rip through the rear jeans pockets. He looked as though he was about to pass out.

  I gave him a kick. ‘Who are you?’

  ‘Immigration. We’re—’

  ‘Why are you here?’

  ‘Just a routine check, that’s all. We saw something going on outside, that’s why we came in. We’re not armed, we’re just doing our job.’ He was flapping big-time.

  Both of them had wedding rings – and, no doubt, a nice big mortgage to go with them. I jerked my head at the brown-haired one. ‘You got kids?’

  ‘Two.’
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  I nudged Baldilocks. ‘What about you?’

  He nodded.

  ‘How many?’

  ‘Just the one – she’s two months now.’

  ‘Well, just do as I say if you want to see them again. Got it?’

  They both nodded enthusiastically. I knew they wouldn’t do anything to fuck up their chances of seeing their families again because that was who they were thinking about this very second. ‘You, Baldy, show me your ID. Stay on your front, just use one hand.’

  He reached back into his jeans pocket and held out a worn black leather wallet towards me. ‘Open it up and put it on the carpet in front of you.’ He did, and I saw that Russell George was indeed an employee of Her Majesty’s Home Office.

  ‘Now you.’ The long-haired one turned awkwardly to get a hand inside his jacket and Mr Warren Stacey produced his warrant card or whatever they were called.

  Suzy had finished emptying the woman’s pockets and was shoving her stuff into her own, along with the three empty brass cases she’d picked up in the hall.

  ‘One more time?’

  She didn’t even bother to turn and acknowledge: I just heard her feet hitting the staircase again.

  Warren was lying flat on his stomach with the right side of his face flat against the carpet, his eyes fixed on my rubber overboots. He raised his head a few inches and the eyes that made contact with mine were very scared. Who wouldn’t have been? But tough shit: if you don’t like the job, don’t take the money.

  ‘No worries, mate. We’re on the same side, you just don’t know it. But if you fuck up here, we’re going to turn into your worst nightmare. Get it?’

  He nodded and his eyes went back to my boots.

  ‘What about you, Russell?’

  He was facing the other way. ‘We don’t want any trouble.’ The back of his smooth head rippled as it moved. ‘I know what you’re wearing. I reckon you’re in the job. We just want to come out of this alive, OK? You’ll get no drama from us.’

  Suzy came downstairs and headed for the kitchen.

  ‘That’s good to hear. Just accept you’re in the shit, OK? It happens to everybody some time. Just do what I say and you’ll get out of here safely. We’re going to tie you up now, and then we’re going to leave. Someone will be here later to release you – it could be an hour, it could be tomorrow. OK, so far?’

  Both heads agreed.

  ‘Good. Do everything they say, and you’ll keep your jobs. But fuck it up, and you might not get to see your kids grow up. The people that we all work for can be nasty bastards sometimes.’

  I knelt down, placed the SD beside me, untied my rubber-boot laces, and used them to tie their hands behind their backs and then together. ‘Just hold on, OK? Don’t fuck up.’

  I put their IDs into my chest pocket. Warren’s shoulders were bobbing up and down as he fought back the tears, not understanding how lucky he was.

  I checked the time by his sporty diving watch. It was just before ten.

  35

  I turned off the light and closed the door on them, then headed for the kitchen, my boots adding to the trail of blood prints and bone splinters already left by Suzy.

  She shone her Maglite over the woman’s belongings on the kitchen table. I moved up close. ‘Why the fuck did you drop her? What if she wasn’t even—’

  The carrier-bag rustled as she held it up and I could see hard cylindrical shapes pressing against the plastic. ‘Would you have given her the chance?’

  I took the bag from her and put it on the table, pulling out three large spray cans of what I hoped was still red car paint. I put it next to the rest of the kit on the table, eighty pounds in notes and some change, a return ticket from King’s Cross, and a receipt for a cheese baguette. There was also a mobile phone and a lone lever key for the front door.

  I picked the phone up and switched it on with a rubber-gloved thumb just as Billy and Maureen’s lights came back on next door. Maureen hadn’t had a good night out. ‘You bleedin’ spoil everything, you do!’ The TV went on as her shrill voice disappeared upstairs. ‘Karaoke’s my only night out and you’ve fucking ruined it!’ And whoever Cheryl was she was a big fat slag anyway and he was welcome to her.

  The Motorola’s back light came on, then the display, asking for a PIN code. I tried 1234. Nothing. 4321. Nothing. That gave me just one last shot. I tried a random sequence, but the thing closed down. Shit.

  I reached across and shoved the side of Suzy’s head to my mouthpiece. ‘We’ve got to go. Get the ready bags in here. We’ll keep out the way of next door.’

  She moved my head then, so my ear was next to her mouthpiece. ‘What if this place is contaminated? Even when we’re out we should wait an hour.’

  I shoved the woman’s belongings into the carrier. ‘Another hour isn’t going to change anything . . .’

  The row next door escalated as we played musical heads.

  ‘No, now – we can’t wait and I’m not wasting time explaining. Change outside if it makes you feel better. We’re taking the pills, aren’t we?’

  I picked up the carrier and headed outside. Doors were being slammed over at Billy’s and the TV was turned up. I pulled down on the toggle and pushed my hood back before ripping off the respirator. The cool air brushed against my wet face. I got the rest of the kit off as quickly and quietly as I could and into the ready bag. Suzy followed after closing the back door. She took her hood down and pulled off her respirator as well. ‘Fuck it.’

  We finished packing and checked the yard to see if we’d left anything. We exited by the back gate and headed for the bridge, turning left up Walker Street, ready bags over our shoulders.

  A queue had formed outside the chip shop on Loke. The pub was rocking to a bad karaoke singer murdering ‘Like A Virgin’.

  Suzy had been striding along beside me, waiting for an explanation. When we were well out of any possible earshot she got what she wanted. ‘We could be in the shit here. What if those cans are DW? What if the rest of those fuckers have already been spraying this shit about today? Or what if they’ve split up, and are waiting to press the button? Look, let’s get the cell to the Yes Man – he finds the numbers, he finds the location, and we get these fuckers.’

  Virtually running now, we got to the brick in the wall, retrieved the keys and carried on back to the Peugeot.

  I got the Yes Man on the moan-phone.

  ‘You get it?’

  ‘Maybe, but only some. Listen in.’ I told him about the Immigration guys, and that the ASU could have been living there. ‘If the cans contain DW, what’s to say the attack couldn’t already have happened? It’s Saturday night, pubs are packed, there’s been football matches, the list goes on. But, look, we have her cell. I can’t open it and we’ll have to be quick in case she has report times and they’ve actions-on if she misses any. The good thing is, it’s closed down – chances are she wasn’t expecting any incoming.’

  ‘Get moving.’ I could hear a lot of people talking in the background and phones ringing and getting answered around the Yes Man. ‘I want that mobile, and the canisters.’

  Suzy was silently mouthing to me, ‘Immigration.’

  I said, ‘Are the plates blocked?’ I wanted to know if we could speed without being chased by the police, if the registration number was on their computers as one to be left alone.

  ‘Of course. Just get your foot down.’

  ‘What about the Immigration people?’

  ‘Fuck Immigration. A clean-up team will take care of them.’

  There was more background chaos in my earpiece and a bleep from the fill before he closed down.

  ‘London. We’ve got blocked plates.’

  The engine revved and we started to fly out of King’s Lynn.

  I was shaking my head. ‘That’s the first time I’ve heard him swear. You?’

  ‘Never. He must be flapping big-time.’

  She went straight across a raised roundabout on the edge of town, showing off the fas
t-driving skills she’d probably learned in the Det. I checked traser. It was nearly eleven – just before six at Josh’s.

  The ops phone rang. It made me jump, but Suzy’s eyes never left the road.

  ‘Change of plan. Go to Fakenham racecourse – repeat, Fakenham racecourse. Call me when you get there. Have you got that?’

  ‘Fakenham racecourse.’

  ‘There’ll be a heli arriving within thirty minutes. Hand the phone to the technician. I want you back in London and ready to move once we find out where these scum are. The situation has moved on now that the agent could already be aerosolized. If they are not found tonight we will have to go to government, and that must not happen. Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes.’

  The phone went dead and I turned round to drag the mapbook off the back seat. ‘We have a heli pickup at Fakenham racecourse.’

  ‘And where exactly is Fakenham, Norfolk boy?’

  I turned my Maglite on and flicked over a few pages. ‘Not the way we’re going.’

  She braked and threw the car into the side of the road.

  ‘We need to get back towards King’s Lynn. Fakenham is about forty Ks east of us, further into Norfolk. The racecourse is south of the town. Better get your foot down.’

  She turned the wheel and spun the car round.

  ‘Why does he always makes me feel as if we’re the guilty party here?’

  She changed straight from fifth to third before overtaking a line of three cars. ‘We’re not, I am. You were right about getting out of there early.’

  ‘No drama. Anyway, he told me that a cleanup team will be on target tonight to sort out the Immigration boys. They’ll be having breakfast with Simon for the next few days. I hope they thank us for the overtime.’