Half Moon Chambers (21 page)

* * *

I hadn't thought much of my chances, but I
failed
so fast and thoroughly it would have made a
cat
laugh. My first stop was with an old snitch of
mine
. All I asked him to do was keep his nose alert
for
any scents that might lead to the new big dog in
town
, a lady by name of Val Foster. Fergy was his
genial
self, nodding agreement, pocketing my
tenner
with his usual lordly grace, as if he'd won it
off
me on the turf at Ascot. And by the time I was
halfway
down the road from his squat, a
black
Ford Mondeo was kerb-crawling me, keeping a
bare
three feet off my heels. I didn't let it worry
me
. Fergy's neighbourhood had been my old beat
patch
. I knew every cracked paving stone and lamp
post
. I let my new friends tail me, keeping an eye
on
their moving reflection in the windows across
the
street. They were trying for inconspicuous.

Nice of me to let them think it had worked. I
passed
one alley, the obvious one to duck up in
time
of need. The next houses had a low wall. It
was
only knee high. Even in my current state I
could
hop up onto it and stroll along, the heedless
junkie
version of myself, hands in my pockets,
whistling
. Probably I had just scored. That was
why
most people visited Fergy. At the end of the
block
the wall rose to meet a fence, a nasty job
with
anti-climb paint and barbed wire along the
top
. It wouldn't be a pretty vault, but the terrace
was
a long one, and provided I landed in one
piece
, at least I'd be rid of the car.

The engine growled. I should have taken that
as
a warning. But this was a public street, albeit a
grim
one, and I thought that might give me a
chance
--
kids and grannies and dogs, and no place to
drive
like a nutcase.

The Mondeo snarled and swept round me,
smashing
its wing and left headlight into the wall.

The cut-off was perfect. Angle, distance, element
of
surprise. I was certainly fucking surprised.

Before I could pivot and try for a retreat, the back
doors
swung open, disgorging two of the lovely
lads
who had cornered me between the alleyway
bins
. The third was behind the wheel. This time I
skipped
the jeers and provocations. I had no exit,
no
nick-of-time mate to save me now. I waded in.

I did some damage going down. Blood
sprayed
the Mondeo's window and one of the
bruisers
fell back, clutching his nose. I spun round
for
my next man, but he'd turned into three. I hadn't
seen
their front-seat passenger. Nice that they'd felt
the
need to bring along an extra. I couldn't imagine
causing
them that much trouble. Maybe I was
wrong
, though
--
two of them seized my arms, and I
was
tugged upright to face the third. He looked at
me
consideringly. "You've given us the runaround,
haven
't you? You and little Rowan."

I thought I'd surrendered. The name made me
lurch
and start to fight again. "Leave him out of
this
," I rasped. "He's clean. He's not gonna talk or
give
you up, any more than he did last time."

The thug pulled a gun. It was a great big
shameless
Walther. Val Foster really didn't give a
shit
, did she? Even Maric wouldn't have tried a
broad
-daylight hit in a residential area. "You don't
have
to worry about Rowan any more."

Sick fear went through me, then a
hopelessness
like nothing I'd ever felt before.

"You'd better get on with it," I said. "I'm not
bothered
. I've been shot by bigger things than that."

He played with me a bit. He rested the muzzle
on
my brow, clicked the safety off. He put his head
on
one side and examined me, and when I stared
mutely
back, gave up the game. He re-set the catch,
but
adjusted his hold so that the base of the grip
became
the weapon, not the tight black muzzle.

"Nothing so easy for you, Vince. You've been
making
waves. My boss doesn't like waves. Now
she
wants to talk to you."

No amateur ideas about holding the gun by the
barrel
, then. Only in bad Westerns did a pistol
-
whipping
work like that. My new friend nodded to
the
lads behind me, and they pushed my head
down
.

The blow came like a hammer-strike. Almost
enough
to put me straight out, but I had a second,
on
hands and knees in the gutter, to see that the first
lad
I'd punched was still sprawled across the kerb.

It gave me an instant's satisfaction. The gun came
down
again, and I dropped into bright scarlet void.

* * *

The light was cool and grey. I knew it well.

Anyone who'd grown up in a river city would
know
it, and I lay for a long time, watching its
dance
on the walls. Water-light on concrete. I
could
smell the river
--
oil and exhaust and tidal
exhalations
, seaweedy and rank. I tried to bring
this
all together, place myself, but a patch of
graffiti
morphed into one of Rowan's painted men,
and
he stepped out of the wall to crouch by me,
stroking
my hair.

The next time I woke I did better. Water and
petrol
meant a riverside car park, and I could just
see
the angle of a ramp, a cracked green exit sign.

The recession had left plenty of these in its wake,
gaunt
concrete multistoreys marked for demolition
then
abandoned as regeneration projects failed.

This couldn't be our ugliest, most famous example,
the
1970s block where they'd filmed
Get Carter
--
that
one finally had come down a couple of
summers
ago, amid a public outcry. I'd almost
missed
the brutal thing myself, not that I'd gone so
far
as to collect a fragment for my mantelpiece.

Still, I wasn't far away. The skyline was right.

The angle told me I was in a basement level. Also
that
I was lying on my side, reaching my
conclusions
through a narrow strip of daylight
between
one floor and the next. My hands and feet
were
bound, my wrists caught painfully behind my
back
in the grip of what felt like gaffer tape. Yes
--
I was having trouble breathing because my nose
had
bled and there was a strip of the same stuff
across
my mouth.

Shit.
I closed my eyes and tried to think. I'd
been
abducted. Val Foster wanted to talk to me.

Yeah, right. She was scared stiff of a broken
small
-town cop and wanted to negotiate. Far more
likely
she'd told the Mondeo Four to give me a
good
fright and dump me some place where I'd
never
be found. Eventually the builders would
knock
down the car park on top of my bones,
and
I'd present a nice find for some thirty-first century
archaeologist
. Shifting, I tested the strength of my
bonds
. Why did nobody ever use rope these days?

The tape was a bitch, thin but strong and hard to
fight
.

I was lost. My stunned indifference melted. I
gritted
my teeth against a rush of fear and sorrow.

Forcibly I calmed my breathing
--
I would
suffocate
, if I let go the panting sobs trying to claw
up
out of my lungs. What the fuck was wrong with
me
? I hadn't even begun my fight to get out of here.

A shard of wire for the tape was where I should
start
--
wire, glass, a ragged edge of concrete,
anything
would do.

But moving would hurt. I didn't care enough
to
try. At last my aching head caught up with its
own
subconscious processes. I wasn't worried
about
having been dumped down here. That was
just
a natural consequence, the fate I'd tempted by
going
out solo after Maric and Foster in turn. No.

What I belatedly cared about was a warm summer
night
six months ago.
You fucking bastard, Jack,
my gagged mouth screamed
,
silenced as completely
now as it had been then by blood loss
and
disbelief.
You ran! Other gunmen, my arse
--
you
lied in your debrief, and you sat by my
hospital
bed and lied some more, and you pissed
off
halfway round the world rather than stop
lying
and just bloody face me. You made me
doubt
my sanity and self-worth until I sought out
my
suicide missions. Until I welcomed the crack
of
a pistol-butt on the back of my skull.

Footsteps scraped on the concrete. I couldn't
sob
or yell but I'd been managing small bestial
noises
, blood running down the back of my throat,
and
I couldn't shut up in time. A boot jabbed hard
into
my spine
--
a boot with a very sharp toe.

"Fuck's sake, Rowan," a female voice said, acid
with
disgust. "I thought you said this one was
tough
."

Chapter Ten

V
al Foster looked quite ordinary. I supposed
if
she'd had horns, a demon tail, and
get your
crack
here
tattooed across her brow, she wouldn't
have
slipped so quietly into my city and taken up
residence
there. She was about thirty, her dark hair
pulled
back in a pony tail. She was small and
slight
but clear-skinned, one of the rare-breed
dealers
who had made their fortunes without ever
touching
the goods. They were the dangerous ones.

A user, no matter how infrequent, would slip up.

Foster looked as if she'd never put a foot wrong in
her
life.

She was a legend. In a way, I couldn't
believe
I was meeting her. I wished to God Bill Hodges
could
be here. I sat bolt upright in the chair
where
I'd been hoisted and dumped by her heavies, trying
to
regulate my breathing. I wouldn't take my eyes
off
her. Snake as she was, I could cope with her.

Not the dark-eyed shadow a few feet behind her
left
shoulder, arms folded miserably over his
chest
, head down. I wouldn't look there.

"Val, you'd better take the gag off him."

She turned to glance at the shadow. "No. I'm
not
done looking at him yet."

I didn't know what there was to see. But her
grey
gaze had been raking me over with as much
interest
as I felt in her.

"His nose is bleeding. He
is
tough. He
wouldn
't tell you if he was suffocating."

She smiled. It was quite a nice smile,
actually
--
I could imagine her deploying it for customs
officials
and passport control. "Go on, then," she
said
. "Well, I'm not touching him! He's a fucking
mess
."

Rowan stood over me. I'd have told him,
had
I been able to speak, that a good rip was the best
way
with gaffer tape. It would take a bit of skin
with
it but slow tender tugs would be agony, and
since
we'd come this far, since he'd crossed the
divide
and sold me out to his buddies, he need not
scruple
about causing me a bit of pain. I couldn't
read
his face. He was like a fading photo of
himself
a thousand miles away. His eyes were
wide
and lost, their focus fixed on some point
disorientingly
just beyond mine. If I hadn't been
trussed
like a chicken, despite everything I'd have
reached
out and taken his hand.

"Hadn't you better explain to him first?"

He started as if he'd forgotten Foster's
presence
. "What?"

"Your little speech. When you came crawling
home
to us, you were adamant that once we
got
Vince you wanted to talk to him. You wanted to
explain
."

I tried to sit back. I tried to convey, by the
tiny
movements allowed to me and a lift of my
eyebrows
, that this would be very interesting, that I
couldn
't wait. But suddenly my airway was too
constricted
with swelling and blood for me to
breathe
past the gag any more, and I convulsed,
choking
. Rowan grabbed my shoulder. He tore off
the
tape in one move: hoisted me far enough
forward
in the chair that I could cough my lungs
clear
. That was nice of him, but his proximity, his
touch
, was like burns from a chemical fire, worse
than
the ripped-up sting across my mouth. I gasped
and
spat blood until I could speak. "Get your hands
off
me, you little shit."

Val Foster laughed. "Told you you should
have
explained first. Give him a minute, Vince. He
really
wants you to know."

I didn't care. There was nothing in the
world
Rowan could tell me that could possibly make any
difference
. He didn't look as if he cared too much
either
. His voice was like dead leaves, and he'd
resumed
his desolate self-embrace, eyes fixed
once
more on the floor. "I wanted to say," he
began
, "I did try. Meeting you made a difference.
But you have to understand
--
I've done all this
before
. Held out against them, I mean, or tried to.
It's no good, Vince. They get you in the end. It's
easier
to run with the wolves than... than be
devoured
by them."

That was the end of the speech. I didn't think
he
expected a reply. I wasn't sure he'd even have
gone
through with it without Foster's prompting: he
was
standing with rag-doll indifference, waiting to
be
sent off-stage. And that was a point. Val Foster
hadn
't brought me here to give me tea and nice
little
cakes on a doily. An ugly scene was in the
offing
. "You bloody idiot," I said, a lot less
harshly
than I'd intended. "They've devoured you
anyway
. And you've fed me to them too." I had to
stop
for a moment. My throat was raw. "Hoi. Your
ladyship
. Val. You want me to talk, don't you? I
know
we're gonna do the thing."

"That's right." She was a nice cool hand at
any
rate. Nothing worse than amateurs... "I moved
into
a peaceful city here, Vince. You had your
problems
, your crack dens and your Goran Marics,
but
nothing much. And all your policing was small
-
scale
to match. I slipped in like a ghost. Everything
was
fine. Then suddenly, no more than forty eight
hours
ago, everything starts to go to shit.

Everywhere I turn, someone's watching. All the
supply
lines I'd been putting in place, all the
runners
... Obstacles, problems. Then your Rowan
turns
up here, and after a bit of persuasion he
admits
he might have mentioned my name to his
new
copper boyfriend." She put her hands on her
hips
and came to stand close to me, her head on
one
side. It was hard to be scared of her, though I
knew
I should be bricking it by now. "So yes, we
have
to do the thing. Unless you want to save us
both
the bother. I'll take whatever you know
--
details
of ops you've got planned, placement of
your
undercover lads, that kind of thing. Also..."

She stretched out one booted foot and dug that
sharp
toe into the concrete, twisting it suggestively.

"Also, I know our Goran Maric's talked. That
wasn
't smart of him. I don't know how much he's
said
, but I bet you do, Detective Sergeant."

I smiled. It hurt like hell. "Go screw
yourself
."

Her cold hand cracked across my face. She
hadn
't intended more than a cuff, a reproof. Her
expression
of mild amusement hadn't altered. "Got
a
bit of a death wish, haven't you?"

"Maybe. Do me a favour
--
get that kid out of
here
."

"Rowan? Why?"

I gritted my teeth. "Treacherous bastard's
already
heard enough."

She broke into laughter. "Oh, nice try. Don't
waste
any pity on him
--
he sold you out. Don't let
him
hide from the results." She turned away from
me
. Far off on my vision's periphery, silhouetted
like
Stonehenge monoliths against the light,
the
Mondeo Four were awaiting their instructions. She
made
a sharp gesture, snapping her fingers. "You
lot
! Come over here."