Rat Runners (13 page)

“No, thanks. Just a glass of water. I like looking at the bigger picture. We’re messing in something that’s more than just Move-Easy. Whoever these other guys are, they’re serious. And whether they’re players or coppers, we could get out of our depth before we know it, just by looking for a box that somebody else wants.”

He was reading a page of Veronica’s medical records. She’d had laser surgery to treat the port-wine birthmark that covered part of her face. Nimmo’s eyes opened a fraction wider as he studied the before and after photos. The birthmark she had now was still disfiguring, but the surgery had reduced the original mark by nearly half. The file said the doctors had serious doubts of Veronica’s birthmark ever being completely removed without the risk of serious scarring. And the mark would most likely get worse from here on in, thickening, darkening and possibly developing lumps as she aged. Nimmo could only imagine what kind of effect it must be having on her.

Now that he thought about it, he remembered Brundle mentioning something about research he’d once done on repairing scar tissue. Something to do with connecting nerve endings—or disconnecting them. Nimmo wished now that he’d paid more attention.

“One of the neighbors mentioned the guy who lived on the same floor as Brundle,” Manikin told him. “They confirmed what Easy told us: that he was the one who discovered the body. I didn’t get a name, but the neighbors think he was dodgy. They reckon he did some work for Brundle, but nobody knew much about him. He hasn’t been seen since Brundle died. That’s pretty interesting.”

Nimmo said nothing for a moment. If they found out Chuck U. Farley’s name, they’d find a picture, and then he’d have to start answering some awkward questions. But there was nothing he could do about that now.

“We can check him out, but the daughter’s still our best bet,” he muttered. “We need to get into her life—see what she knows.”

“She goes clubbing on a Friday night,” Manikin said. “Or at least she did, when she could crash at her dad’s. I could get in with her that way. And she’s underage, which means she uses a fake ID. Makes her vulnerable. We can use that. Now we just have to find out where she likes to hit the tiles.”

“Club Vega,” FX spoke up from behind them. They looked around to see him standing in the door, a bundle of discs, paper manuals and electrical bits and pieces cradled protectively in his arms. “Didn’t even have to hack it. It’s up on her MyFace page. She thinks that only her friends can see it, but, like most people, she’s got her privacy settings cocked up. It’s up there for anyone to see. Even got pictures from her nights out. If her mother ever saw them, she’d be grounded, like, for ever. She’d be grounded into the afterlife. Girl’s a messy drunk. Vega is her favorite hang-out. No surprise, really—the typical bouncer there wouldn’t know a fake ID if someone drew it on his face with a crayon. She’s going there tomorrow night.”

“That’s our way in,” Manikin said, cupping her hands around the hot mug of coffee. “Veronica’s about to make a new friend.”

“I’m delighted for her,” Scope said, appearing behind FX with a dustpan and brush in her hand. “Nimmo, can you get me into Brundle’s lab? I need to see his work first-hand—I’m getting nowhere here. And I need to get out of this slob’s space before I catch foot-and-mouth disease or something. I found a bloody laundry basket in behind an old set of speakers. The stuff had
mold
on it. I need to see Brundle’s lab, Nimmo. It’s either that or I set fire to this place to prevent an epidemic like the world has never seen.”

“I’ve told you about the goddamned laundry,” Manikin gasped as she handed her brother a mug of coffee and walked out of the door. “She’s right, you’re a pissin’ slob. Come on and show me these pics of the girl—let’s see what she’s into.”

“There is one thing I found in the apartment,” Nimmo said abruptly. “She’s into books. Dodgy ones. There’s a stash of pirate editions of recalled books:
A
Clockwork Orange
,
Catch 22
,
One Flew Over the
Cuckoo’s Nest
.
She even has
Fahrenheit 451
sitting out on a shelf in her room. I don’t know if the mother’s involved, and the books could be for personal use, or the pair of them could be dealing.”

He didn’t say anything more. As the WatchWorld motto went: “If you’ve nothing to hide, you’ve nothing to fear”—but everyone had something to hide. The possession of these kinds of pirate books wasn’t a criminal offense, but it was the kind of behavior that could attract a Life Audit—the kind of investigation and surveillance of every aspect of your life that everyone dreaded. And nobody wanted all their secrets dug up; nobody lived a perfect life.

The other three were looking at each other. Nimmo saw a wariness on their faces. The expression a person wore when they had discovered dirt on someone, and were weighing up whether to use it or not.

“If that’s as serious as she’s got, she’s just dabbling in the game,” FX said, flicking his eyes towards his sister. “But if Move-Easy finds out, that’s a bad habit he could blackmail her with. That’s how he gets a hold on people.”

“And once he’s got his claws in her, he’d drag her into his world,” Manikin sniffed. “That’s how he got us. We thought he was doing us a favor, when we needed help. We did a job for him, and then he had us. He pulls you in, and twists it so that you’re always in debt to him, you’re always working it off. Let him get a piece of you, and you’re a criminal for life.”

Scope nodded, her eyes trained on the floor.

“My family lives in a Void,” she said in a subdued voice. “But they’re not hardcore criminals—they just want to stay out of the way of WatchWorld. They’re pretty organized, but just a bunch of new-age hippies, really, who make their living from selling art. I was home-schooled by my parents and my gran, before she died. Science was more my thing, and Gran used to work in forensics, so she taught me a lot about that side of it.

“What we never knew was that my gran also worked for
Move-Easy
. He could’ve taken over our Void, but he left us alone because she helped his men fool the police forensics teams. Gran also used to fake evidence to put his rivals in prison, or collected real evidence against anybody he wanted to control. Move-Easy has dirt on coppers, judges, WatchWorld officials, but especially other criminals. He’s a master blackmailer—that’s how he’s stayed out of prison so long.

“A few years ago, my gran died. A couple of days after her funeral, some of Move-Easy’s apes showed up. Without Gran working for them, we were going to have to pay protection money. If we didn’t pay, they’d burn the place down. We weren’t criminals—we were terrified of these guys. They knew we wouldn’t go to the police. Right then, my folks knew Easy was going to bleed them dry of all the money they had. I was too big for my boots. I wanted to help.

“I spotted that two of the trolls had contact lenses with fake irises covering their eyes, and like the good girl I was, I explained the flaws in the lenses. Not ones my gran would’ve made. I told them how to make the irises look more real. Shouldn’t have opened my mouth. They checked up on me. Found out some of the stuff I’d done. They picked me up one night, and got me to examine some counterfeit money they’d printed. I found the flaws in that too—I mean, the foil wasn’t even woven through the paper properly. After that, Move-Easy decided I was going to be working for him. As long as I do, he leaves my family alone. When Dad tried to argue, they broke his arm.

“I’m so far in now, I can’t see a way out. I don’t want this to happen to anybody else.” She gazed at Manikin. “You’re right. Give that scumbag any kind of hold on you, and he’ll have you for life.”

“So we’re all agreed?” FX asked, looking pointedly at Nimmo. “We don’t tell Easy about the book thing?”

Nimmo nodded, glad of their decision. And as he did, he wondered if he should just tell Manikin and FX about his connection to Brundle, that he had the case, and that the scientist’s death had most certainly not been accidental. As it was, he was going to have to let Scope in on it. But in his short life, Nimmo had trusted very few people, and half of those were dead or in prison. He had stayed alive and free by keeping his secrets, so he stayed silent now.

“Good,” Manikin said. “Come on, bro’, show me what you’ve got on Veronica. Time to get into character. By tomorrow night, I want to be the best friend she’s never met.”

“What about getting into Brundle’s lab?” Scope asked.

“Let’s see how we do at the club. There’s a lot of eyes on the lab,” Nimmo said. He took the phone and bugs from his bag, the ones he’d taken from the other intruder in Veronica’s flat. Handing them to FX, he said: “I picked these up from one of our competitors. See what you can find out, will you?”

“How the hell did you get these?” FX said, staring at the objects he took from Nimmo.

“I hid in a wardrobe with a can of deodorant,” Nimmo replied. “Get what you can out of them, soon as you can, yeah?”

FX glanced at his sister, who was pretending not to be intrigued. She peered discreetly over her brother’s shoulder, following him as he hurried out of the room towards his workshop.

Nimmo checked to make sure the pair were walking away down the corridor, then he reached down for his backpack, opened the top, and handed Scope a plastic bag containing a bundle of other plastic bags.

“Here’s that stuff from that thing I was telling you about. I’ll talk you through them,” he said. He chewed his lip and cast another look at the kitchen door. “Look … I need to be straight with you here, Scope. This murder I’m looking into? It’s Brundle’s. I knew him. I was the guy who lived on his floor. Apart from his killer, I was the last person to see him alive. I found the body. I reported the death to the police. I’d be the main suspect in their investigation, only they’ve decided that his death was accidental. Which it wasn’t—I heard him die.”

“Holy sh—” Scope began to say.

“I really need you
not
to tell all this to the others—at least until I get to know them better,” Nimmo pleaded. “I’m up to my teeth in this mess, Scope, but I can’t let the coppers brush this death under the carpet. Something’s badly wrong with all this. I need your help.”

“Bloody hell, Nimmo,” she said in a hushed tone, looking down at the package in her hand. “I mean …
bloody hell
.”

“How about it?” he urged her for an answer. “I know I’m asking a lot, but …”

He shrugged, unable to give her a good enough reason to help him. She met his eyes and smiled faintly. There were times when Scope struck Nimmo as being too innocent for this game—but then, when she gave him a look like she did now, he saw the piercing intelligence that gave her that curiosity, and that ability to interpret the smallest details so as to make sense of the world around her.

“You’ve got the case, haven’t you?” she said.

“Yeah,” he replied.

MOVE-EASY’S WAS only one of many Voids in London. And while he ran the most powerful organization, it was Tubby Reach you went to if you needed what couldn’t be got. Reach was the biggest and best getter in London. But like Move-Easy, he was very particular about security. Nimmo was one of very few people outside Reach’s inner circle who could enter the Void without an escort, as the King of the Getters had known him since he was a baby.

One of the entrances into Reach’s Void was through a door marked ‘Staff Only’ in a pedestrian tunnel in Victoria Station. This door was not watched by a camera, but you had to be careful to only use this door when the tunnel was crowded with commuters making their way from the Underground to the main line station.

Mingling with the normal morning crowds on their normal way to their normal jobs, Nimmo opened the door and slipped through as the press of bodies hurried past him. He walked down a steel staircase into a narrow utility tunnel, to another door, flanked by a bank of metal compartments housing electrical breaker switches. Instead of going through this door, Nimmo stopped in front of it and whistled the first few bars of Scott Joplin’s “The Entertainer.”

The bank of aluminum lockers slid aside to reveal a hidden doorway, and a very large Asian man with careful eyes ushered the boy inside. Nimmo made his way along the bare concrete corridor, past several different, discreetly situated scanning devices.

Two more locked doors were opened to him, and he found himself in an ante-chamber that resembled the waiting room of a wealthy doctor, complete with nondescript classical music, modern art prints on the wallpapered walls, and an inoffensive range of reading material on the large coffee table that sat between the two rows of antique cushioned chairs. A closed pair of elevator doors was set into the wall to his right. Half a dozen people of widely varying appearance sat waiting for an audience with Tubby Reach.

There was another door on the far side, this one a teak paneled affair, rather than a heavy-duty steel slab. Entrance through this door was controlled by a lean black guy in a plum-colored designer suit. He sported an impressive Afro and a pair of sunglasses, which looked somewhat incongruous, given that he was several stories underground. A tall, sporty- looking girl was talking at him. She had an Irish accent and hair the color of a stop sign. She was trying to talk her way past the doorman, but wasn’t having much success.