Christopher Brookmyre - Parlabane 04 (35 page)

'See?' said Vale. 'Bet lost. You're telling us things already.'

211

Recoil

'Only one made it back out. No response from the rest.'

'Yes, I do have eyes and ears myself.'

'First wave was a wipe-out. And they've got a prisoner. Brian, I think. I'm not confident he won't talk.'

'Let him. He can't say anything that can possibly be of practical use. And whatever else they learn won't matter. They'll be too dead to tell anybody.'

'Not if we don't raise our game, they won't. Face facts, we just got a kicking in there. Let's get the second wave in before this shitstorm gets any worse.'

'Calm down, for God's sake. Neither of us came here for a turkey shoot. What would that tell us about anybody? We planned for losses, you know that.'

'Yeah, a few of the fucking try-outs, but we lost Marko, for fuck's sake. He was one of our best.'

Indeed he was, Shiach reflected. Battle permitted no quarter for mourning, but he was acutely aware of what had just been lost, not only to him personally as a friend, but to their undertaking. Marko was a man of initiative, an invaluably distinguishing quality when so many thought that following orders was the most that was expected of them. Marko understood the practical principles of what they were about and could adapt accordingly in the moment. This had been typified earlier in the day when he'd encountered that bloke in the Peugeot, who happened to be driving by when two of them were disabling the vehicles in the carpark at the gates to the estate. Your average grunt would need to be told that the guy had to die. Your above-average one would take it upon himself instinctively. But it took a man of Marko's calibre to interpret the implications of the man's clothing and his car being full of butcher-meat, and thus come up with such a use for the body. If the cops weren't baffled enough by what they would find tomorrow, then the coroner's revelations about the condemned's last meal would put the tin lid on it.

It was a bloody shame. He had sent Marko in to lead the first group because he wanted to get things off to a good start and thus encourage the recruits. Shiach had watched events unfold on his laptop, white icons denoting the guests and black his men within the wireframe model. Moments after Marko 213

went in, the three white ones were on the move, while Marko's black one remained motionless. In its topological simplicity, it was a stark way to watch a friend die. But now was not the time to dwell upon it.

'Keep the head, man,' Shiach told him. 'Marko's a hell of a loss, one we'll feel all the more after the dust's settled, but don't lose perspective. It was bad luck, that's all. He had an accident, and they ended up with a few weapons. We'll deal with it.'

'And you sent in the four try-outs right behind him regardless, so now they've got more weapons.'

'We had to find out what we were up against. Now we know.'

'Yeah, and so do they: idiots, that's what they'll be thinking. Which is why we should go in heavy right now and put them straight.'

'No, it's why we should hold our ground and remember that we control this whole situation. They aren't going anywhere, you know that.'

'Sure, but they're fortifying their positions and working on how they're going to keep us out.'

'Let them. And let time work for us. Right now they're flush with victory, high on relief and endorphins. They got lucky, and at the moment they might even believe this is a fight they can win. Go in now and they'll still be psyched. We've got all the time we need, not to mention a few secret weapons. Let's let the excitement wear off and the self-doubt wash in, give them a while to simmer in their own fears. Then we'll show them what we're really made of.'

214

Information

'We're not seriously going to torture this guy, are we?' Parlabane asked. Vale's face lacked its customary mercurial levity, even the signs that were sometimes presented in wider company for only confidants such as Parlabane to read.

They were standing in the central reception hall again, rapidly established as their base of operations, and, increasingly, as a makeshift field hospital. The small roll of bandages in the reception desk's first aid kit was accounted for by Liz's arm and Sir Lachlan's hand, enforcing a resort to bedsheets for the latter's thigh and Rory's chest. The Dettol hadn't gone very far either, which meant a bottle of Glenfiddich had to be cracked open for a less than celebratory early-hours toast.

Rory, having apparently endured his injury obliviously while pursuing and apprehending their prisoner, must have come close to expelling his own larynx when the single-malt antiseptic was applied. He'd protested resentfully about the cure being worse than the disease, until Vale described the symptoms of a few wound infections he'd witnessed in his time.

Sir Lachlan was more stoical, perhaps assisted by having had the foresight to take some of the antiseptic internally before allowing it to be applied. Kathy affixed all bandaging. She was the only one with a first-aid qualification more recent than a Boy Scout or Girl Guide merit badge, having done a six-month voluntary stint in Sonzola a few years back. She'd gone there, she explained, to help dole out food parcels but ended up, like all her fellow volunteers, helping treat the endless civilian casualties in a state that resumed its ongoing civil war any time it took a break from fighting with its neighbours.

'See, these lefty pacifist types can be quite handy to have around sometimes,' Emily had said to Rory.

'Yeah, it's all the practice you get, patching up bleeding hearts,' he replied. It could have been a nasty and inappropriate echo of the night before, but it sounded more like laughter in the dark than point-scoring. Sir Lachlan insisted on returning to man one of the stairwell barricades, despite the encumbrance of his injuries and Kathy's concern that what she had done would merely stem the blood loss.

215

'You need to get to a hospital,' she told him.

'All the more urgent that we see off these scoundrels, then, isn't it?'

Two guards were posted to man the barricades at either stairwell, Sir Lachlan partnering Toby while Joanna insisted upon doing her bit by joining Max. If anyone was inclined to be old-fashioned or even merely chivalrous regarding traditional gender roles, then Joanna's earlier contribution held their comments in check. Nor was she deterred by sharing a post with the remains of her act of rage, refusing suggestions that they drag the constituent parts out of sight with a stated intention to use the head as a missile if it came down to it.

Their prisoner was seated cross-legged on the floor, his hands tied at the wrist behind his back with ripped bedlinen. Vale had retrieved a wet bartowel from the lounge and used it to wipe away the camouflage paint from the man's face. Without the streaked markings and the scary-macho signals they sent out, he appeared ordinary to the point of frumpy, and the main thing the paint had been camouflaging was fear. He looked early forties, losing it on top, fairly well built but a bit of a pot belly suggesting the pub might be winning out over the outdoors recently. Not exactly a killing machine, as had been adequately demonstrated.

Vale was eyeing him with curious intent, a weighing-up going on inside his head that made Parlabane very apprehensive. He'd known Tim a long time, but he'd never have felt confident about saying he knew him well, or even believing that there was anyone who did. Much like himself, it had been Vale's life to know about other people, particularly the parts they didn't want anyone else finding out; but while Parlabane had merely negotiated whatever obstacles lay between him and what he needed to know, Vale had been engaged with the very science of secrecy. As such, he was far better equipped, and definitely far more inclined, to protect what he wanted to keep back about himself.

They had frequently joked about Vale's past: mainly, Parlabane thought, as a means of two otherwise close friends skirting around an area that one of them was not prepared to open up about; even as a means of skirting around the acknowledgement of that. Parlabane knew very little for certain, but there had been hints enough to understand that Vale had been in some very serious situations and had doubtless done some horrible things in the name of survival. The most he'd ever said about it was to confess he had

'done things I wish I hadn't had to; wished it had been someone else doing them; wished they hadn't been necessary'.

The sole such circumstance he'd discussed at any length was his involvement with the disaster aboard that Floating Paradise oil-rig place, whatever it was called. Vale had taken out a number of hijackers in what was a pretty 216

morally straightforward kill-or-be-killed scenario. Parlabane had once killed a man himself in similarly non-negotiable circumstances, and knew he wouldn't flinch tonight if he had to do it again. He too wished it hadn't been necessary, and he too knew that horrible things sometimes had to be done in the name of survival. But looking at Vale as he surveyed their captive wretch with intent, he couldn't help doubting whether this poor clown could tell them something that was so valuable as to be worth tainting their collective conscience with something the self-defence stain remover couldn't be applied to. That said, the guy
was
only here because he wanted to play his part in killing everyone in the room. It could be argued that he owed them a reason more than they owed him any mercy. It could be argued, but Parlabane wasn't sure he wanted to.

'Rory,' Vale said. 'Give me your sword, I need one that's razor-sharp. In fact, I need more than one. Take this claymore to Lachlan and tell him I need a loan of the other rapier.'

'You got it,' Rory said.

Emily stepped into Rory's path and put a hand out to stop him.

'Hang on,' she said, looking at Vale as well as casting appealing glances towards Kathy and Baxter. 'Are you sure about this? I mean, defending ourselves is one thing, but. . . Christ, what can he tell us that'll make a difference?'

'We won't know until we ask.'

'I know, but. . . Jesus. You're not going to torture him, surely.'

'Of course I'm not going to torture him,' Vale replied, sounding hurt, which Parlabane knew to be bollocks: if you wanted to hurt Vale, you'd need more than words. 'I'm not even going to touch him. I'm simply going to engineer a circumstance in which cooperation would serve his best interests.'

Parlabane guessed their prisoner wouldn't have been the first person to consider a Life Fitness FlexDeck treadmill as an instrument of torture, nor was he the first to persevere against the complaints of his tired limbs out of a desire to keep his body in optimum shape. His predecessors, however, would have been more concerned about love handles, cellulite and general cardiovascular well-being than the avoidance of impalement. So far, it was proving a far more fertile means of tapping into those deepest stamina reserves than the prospect of being able to fit into that once favoured frock or in penitence for that sinful second helping of tiramisu.

Vale had nominated himself the fitness instructor from hell by lashing the two rapiers, at head-and stomach height, to the vertical steel support-bars of some weight-resistance apparatus, then manoeuvring the contraption until the twin blades overlapped the rear of the treadmill, upon which their prisoner was standing. With his hands tied behind his back, he had no way of climbing 217

out or interfering with the settings, especially not once Vale had set the thing running, starting at twelve kilometres per hour.

'It's entirely in our visitor's gift to extricate himself from this predicament,'

Vale explained, as if the poor sod wasn't there. 'He talks, I stick the brakes on. So, let's start with an easy one. How many?'

Baxter had joined them in the fitness room, though fortunately not in the proxy Amnesty observer role requested by the squeamish Emily. Parlabane hadn't been entirely comfortable with what they were up to either, but he had confidence enough in Vale's scheme that he could do without someone else's Jiminy Cricket act. He had therefore suggested that Baxter might prefer to join Ger and Alison in searching Campbell's room, but Baxter put him straight regarding his real reason for being in on the interrogation.

'I don't want to know what's in his bedroom: I want to know who the fuck Campbell really is. Six months I've been working with this prick, eating with him, drinking with him, looking him in the eye, and all that time he's actually been planning to kill me. I've got some fucking questions of my own.'

The prisoner was jogging fairly comfortably, probably feeling like he could hold out for a while at that speed, but his face betrayed his awareness that Vale only had to press that circle with the upwards-pointing triangle to accelerate the pace. Nonetheless, he said nothing, a look of compelled determination setting his features. Parlabane read it and so did Vale: he really was more scared of his comrades than he was of them.

Vale upped the speed to fourteen kilometres per hour. The whine of the treadmill got higher, the footfalls quicker, the sharp exhalations more frequent. He still looked compelled and still looked scared, but every footfall was one nearer the point when he'd start thinking of the more immediate danger and the simple way he could avert it. Vale studied his face, looking for a sign, a cue. It came with a grimace, a tell-tale that he was feeling the effort, and Vale responded to it by upping the speed to fifteen. It wasn't a huge increment, but it must have felt like enough. There was a moment of panic in the man's eyes at the initial increase, followed by relief that it wasn't as much as he'd feared, followed in turn by despair in the realisation that this wasn't going to get any slower and there might not be much left in his tank. He looked to Baxter and Parlabane imploringly, hoping one of them would play dove to Vale's hawk. Going by Vale's cold determination and Baxter's seething anger, Parlabane reckoned he was the closest thing present, so merely looked away. Baxter and Vale simply gazed back imperviously, which was when he decided to answer.

'Maybe twenty,' he said, breathing harder. Talking wasn't going to make the running easier, he knew. 'Minus the dead. Don't know exact. Around twenty.'