Mind the Gap (27 page)

Jazz laughed softly. But she was not foolish enough to believe that the antagonism between these two had anything to do with her.

“Here,” Stevie said a few minutes later. “Follow me.”

They approached the mayor’s residence. It was a huge house, quite modern in London brick but built in an attempt to give it the gravitas of age. The architect had mostly succeeded, but even from the street they could see the shiny reflections and sharp edges of technology. There were cameras fixed on the house itself and also to several poles placed strategically around its grounds. Its six-foot-high boundary wall was topped with a wicked-looking metallic structure, too short to be a fence but spiked and sharp enough to deter any but the most determined invaders. It also had an entry system at its gate, though Jazz tried not to stare too hard. As they passed by the wrought-iron gates, she saw movement from the corner of her eye, and she risked one glance.

There were two black cars parked in front of the house. Several people milled about the stepped entrance, though they were too far away to make out properly. They all wore dark suits.

“Might be them, might not,” Terence said cheerily. He was smiling, and Jazz copied the act.

“Whoever it is, let’s hope they leave soon,” Stevie said. He was already past the gate and striding along beside the wall.

“They will,” Terence said. “Your friend Harry will see to that.”

Harry’s idea of a distraction was as simple as it was audacious. Underground, the mayor’s men were shielded from the world, their action witnessed only by rats and the human rats they believed the United Kingdom to be. But up here…

“When does he start?” Jazz asked. She and Terence passed before the gates, and she risked one final glance as they did so. People were already climbing into the cars to leave.
Election time,
she thought.
They could be anyone sucking up to the mayor’s ass.

Stevie stopped so sharply that Jazz and Terence almost walked into him. The long-haired boy turned around and grinned, and Jazz saw just how dangerous he could be. His eyes were dark but glinting with the excitement to come.
Keep your cool,
she wanted to say. But she was afraid how he would react.

Stevie looked past them and the grin grew wider. “Right about now.”

Jazz turned around just in time to see Harry and the rest of the United Kingdom emerging from a side street a couple of hundred yards away. Harry led the way, and behind him the kids carried furled banners and flags, along with bags of eggs, flour, and rotten fruit.

“Let’s go,” Terence said. “We’ve got three minutes at best.”

Jazz, Terence, and Stevie hurried away from the main entrance, and if anyone saw them they were simply three people trying to get away from potential trouble.

“Bromwell
out
!” Harry’s voice called, and Jazz smiled at the venom there. “Bromwell
out
!” The kids took up the call as well. They reached the front gates, unfurling the banners and waving them, lobbing eggs over and through the iron railings, throwing torn bags of flour and overripe fruit to explode across the drive.

“Here,” Stevie said. He’d reached the corner of the mayor’s property and turned without sparing a single glance back the way they’d come. Jazz paused, forcing Terence to wait as well, and watched Harry and her friends.

The police would have been called already. They’d be here in minutes, though not as quickly as for a midday disturbance. Rush hour would slow them down. Harry and the others shouted their slogans, threw their soft missiles, and not one of them glanced along the street at Jazz and Terence. True professionals.

“Come
on
!” Stevie hissed.

There was a British Telecom junction box against the wall here, giving them a vital three-foot start. Stevie took one quick glance around, then hoisted himself up. He took off his heavy leather jacket and, holding one sleeve, threw it up and over the vicious metal blades atop the wall. He gave one experimental tug, then used the snagged jacket to haul himself up.

Jazz held her breath as Stevie carefully stepped on, then over, the low, dangerous metal fence. He looked down at her and smiled quickly, then jumped out of sight.

They heard him land, and Terence looked at her for a loaded moment. This was when they would find out whether the nick was on or not. If they heard the noise of barking dogs, running men, or Stevie involved in a struggle, they would know to run. If there was no sound at all, they would climb.

“Bromwell out!” they heard from around the corner, the chants intermingled with some colorfully obscene language. From over the wall, nothing.

“Go,” Terence said.

Jazz leaped nimbly onto the BT box, grabbed the trailing sleeve of Stevie’s jacket, and hauled herself up. She stepped over the low fence atop the wall and jumped, landing with knees bent, rolling to the right and coming up in a crouch. She scanned the area quickly. They’d landed among some trees, just as planned, and she saw Stevie’s shadow beneath the canopy a dozen feet away. He was staring through the undergrowth and across a wide well-maintained lawn at the house.

Terence landed lightly beside her. He’d held on to the jacket sleeve as he jumped, bringing it over to this side of the wall. This was just one of their potential escape routes.

There was a plastic box fitted to the wall here, a thick black cable duct protruding from its base and sinking into the ground. Terence gave it one good kick and the cover broke and fell away. There was a spaghetti of colored wires inside, junction points and circuit boards, and a knot of wires almost as thick as Jazz’s wrist snaked through a hole in the wall to the Telecom unit outside.

Terence took a pair of heavy pliers from the small bag over his shoulder.

“How do you know which ones to cut?” Jazz asked.

“Only one.” He snipped a white wire, then took out a small device from his pocket. He checked its batteries, turned it on, and nodded in satisfaction when it emitted a short beep. There was a forest of wires protruding from the device, each ending in a small crocodile clip. Terence stripped the cut wire, connected both ends into the unit, and began stripping plastic and attaching clips to other wires in the bundle. He worked quickly, almost randomly, but Jazz knew there was nothing random about this. She could see the concentration on his face as he worked.

“There,” he said after a minute. “Should give us a bit of time.”

He and Jazz knelt beside Stevie. From beneath the trees they had a good view of the side of the large house. To the left were the two black cars, but the people who’d been milling around were now down closer to the front gate, still out of range of the eggs and fruit but forming a protective semicircle in case one of the protesters climbed in. To their right, at the rear of the house, stood a large conservatory with timber decking built all around. The double glass doors were open and there was no movement inside.

Between them and the house, the garden was spotted with several large flower beds, mostly planted with mature roses growing on frames. Plenty of cover.

“No dogs,” Terence said.

“Not that we can see,” Stevie replied.

“They’d have let them out by now,” Jazz said.

“Conservatory?” Stevie looked from Jazz to Terence, then back at the house.

“There’ll be other entrances around the back,” Terence said. “Let’s see when we get there.”

“Harry should be knocking off now,” Jazz said, looking at her watch. It had been over three minutes since he and the United Kingdom started their distraction, and if they were not careful they’d still be there when the police arrived. Last thing anyone wanted was for them to be caught. But this was a dangerous job—the most dangerous they’d ever pulled—and that called for extreme risks.

“I can just see them from here,” Stevie said. “Harry’s right at the gate. Think he’s smiling. Maybe he sees the punks that beat him up.”

“And killed Cadge,” Jazz said.

“Yeah, Cadge.” Stevie did not turn around, but Jazz heard the break in his voice.

“So let’s get our own back,” Terence said. He was the first to move, breaking cover and running crouched over to the first planting bed. He glanced back quickly, looked around the shrubs, and ran on. Stevie followed, and Jazz brought up the rear.

They had considered breaking in at night, but then all the security measures this house employed would be in place. Floodlights in the garden, maybe patrolling security guards and dogs, contact alarms on all the windows and doors, motion and heat detectors inside, panic alarms, tripwire alarms perhaps, and every one of them would be linked directly to the local police station. And, perhaps, to the homes of the BMW men. Weighing those risks against breaking in when the mayor was up and about, there had been little choice.

Terence reached the timber decking, vaulted the low fence, and lay along the conservatory’s dwarf wall. He stretched to look in through the open doors, signaling back that the coast was clear.

Harry and the kids let out a final roar, then their voices died out quickly as they left.
Be safe,
Jazz thought. There were sirens wailing in the distance, but she knew that the United Kingdom was expert at avoiding capture.

She broke cover first, dashing across the lawn and stepping lightly through the open doors. No alarm sounded, no shouts erupted, and no dogs barked.

Stevie was beside her then, crouched down low, and through the glass walls of the large conservatory they saw Terence skirt around toward another door farther along the rear of the house.

“Take care,” Stevie said. He gave her a quick smile that reminded her of how it used to be, and for a second she wanted to reach out and touch him. But then he was gone, so light on his feet that she heard nothing, just saw him disappear quickly into the house.

This was the most dangerous part of the operation. They hoped that the people around the cars would be leaving now, instead of coming back inside. They suspected that the mayor’s staff would be relaxed, many of them preparing to go home for the day. Maybe the mayor himself was even having a snooze after a hard day’s campaign planning. But they could rely on nothing other than their own stealth and talent to get them through the next half hour.

Jazz took a quick look around the conservatory and thought,
We don’t even know what the hell we’re looking for!

The battery,
Terence had said.
Something strange and out of place. Something unusual that doesn’t belong. You’ll know it when you see it.

There were several huge pots in the conservatory, home to various exotic cacti, thorns long and cruel. A bit of furniture, a table with a few empty cups and a spread of paperwork, nothing unusual.

Room by room,
Jazz thought.
So here we go.

She slipped into the huge kitchen. There were three doors in here, and she knew that Stevie must have taken the one on the right. Jazz headed left, crouched low and listening all the time for approaching footsteps. The air smelled of old food. As she passed one work surface, she saw the detritus of a meal: bread crumbs, meat scraps, shreds of browning salad. There were a few plates piled up beside the double sink, and on an island unit in the center of the kitchen sat several full shopping bags.

She opened the first door she reached, still crouched down low. She winced as the hinges creaked, stared through the narrow gap, squinted against the bad light. It was a walk-in larder, at least eight feet per side. The walls were lined with shelves stacked with all manner of canned and bagged goods. The entire rear wall was taken up by a wine rack, at least two-thirds of it filled with bottles. There were built-in cupboards at floor level, all of them shut with padlocks.

Weird,
Jazz thought.
So what’s in there? Posh food?
She closed the door gently behind her and switched on the light.

The cupboards were solid, and when she tapped the first door it sounded heavy. Metal lined with wood laminate, perhaps? She jiggled the padlock, but the hasp and eye were bolted firmly into the door. If she had a crowbar, perhaps she could pull it off, given time. But she had neither.

Last place to look,
she thought.
If we don’t find it anywhere else…

She turned off the light, opened the door slowly, peeked out, and exited back into the kitchen.

The final door from the kitchen led along a short corridor to a large dining room. This was a grand place, with a table that seated at least twenty being the only item of furniture. The walls were paneled with dark wood from floor to ceiling, and a portrait held pride of place in each separate bay. At first Jazz thought they would be pictures of the Blackwood Club and that the accusing eyes of her father would soon bear down upon her. But then she recognized one of the paintings as the previous mayor of London, and from the end wall Mayor Bromwell stared at her. She smiled and gave him the finger.

Jazz hurried through the dining room. It didn’t seem to be a place that was used very much; there was a film of dust on the table, and the air was musty and old.
They should air this place,
she thought.
Get rid of the stink.
There was a pair of doors at the far end, and she opened them just a crack.

Then froze.

The doors opened inward, and beyond was the mansion’s main hallway. To her left she could see the spill of light where the main entrance doors still stood open. Directly across from her, another set of doors stood closed, and just to her right was the stairway, eight feet wide and climbing to a balcony that overlooked the hallway on three sides. On the first stair stood two men. One of them wore an eye patch.

Philip,
Jazz thought. The BMW man she’d seen batter Cadge to death.

“Fuckin’ tunnel rats!” Philip hissed.

“He’s got guts, coming up here,” the second man said.

“Yeah, well, I’ll happily open his guts to the air.” Philip’s face seemed twisted into a permanent grimace, and a twitch pulled at the corner of his lip as though someone had a hook in him.

“Don’t like being reminded—” the second man said, but Philip cut him off.