Rat Runners (32 page)

TRYING TO IGNORE the pitched battle that seemed to be taking place in one of the corridors a few hundred meters away, Scope walked towards the door into Move-Easy’s living quarters, slipping the contact lens with the fake iris onto her right eye. She had made it using the photo she’d taken earlier of Easy’s eye. Holding her face up to the iris lock that controlled entry to his living quarters, she allowed it to scan her contact lens. The door lock clicked open, and she stepped inside, leaving the door slightly ajar. Once in the corridor, she let herself into his trophy room, pulling off the empty backpack that hung from her shoulder.

It was not the rat-runners’ plan just to rescue Manikin. Scope was standing in this large room, letting her eyes sweep across its contents, because the plan was to take down Move-Easy altogether, and hopefully take Vapor with him.

The trophy room housed all of the objects Move-Easy prized most: from a selection of works of art that his bands of thieves had stolen over the years, to film and music memorabilia. Some of these things were worthless, but had great sentimental value; others were worth a fortune, but Move-Easy would never allow them to be sold.

Scope crept past a group of manikins wearing old burlesque dance-hall costumes, down an aisle lined with display cases full of antique clocks and compasses. At the end of this aisle stood a red 1969 Mini Cooper S with two black straps over the bonnet and three big fog-lights mounted on the front. She let her fingers stroke its bonnet as she passed. It had been completely taken apart and reassembled to get it in through the doors. Beyond that there were shelves of video cassettes of 1980s movies, and a waist-high Jerzy safe with a hole drilled through the side of it—apparently a souvenir from Easy’s very first armed robbery. Scope bent over the safe, inhaling air over her chemical analyzer, but didn’t get a hit.

Hidden somewhere in this room was Move-Easy’s ‘insurance policy.’ His power over London’s underworld was not merely based on his small army of villains and the fact that he was a clever, violent control freak. Easy had amassed a large stash of dirt on a selection of high-ranking judges and police officers, not to mention many of his gangster competitors. It was this stash of blackmail material that had kept Easy out of the hands of the law for so long. The police would be battering down the doors of the Void by now, but Easy could still get off with little or no sentence.

Scope wanted to ensure he got what was coming to him. And more than that, she wanted to know who Vapor was. Because Easy knew, and that was the kind of information he kept safe for a rainy day.

Without his insurance policy, he was just a cunning thug. But she had no idea where in this room he had hidden the stash, and the room was so full of clutter, even if you had x-ray vision, you could search for hours. Which was why she needed her new technologically enhanced sense of smell. Painfully aware that she had little time, she forced herself to walk slowly up and down the aisles, letting her nose do the searching. If she was caught here, the boss’s fondness for her wouldn’t save her. He might even take her betrayal harder—with consequences she couldn’t bear to think about.

The readout scrolling down across the artificial vision in her right eye told her what kinds of molecules were floating in the air. She was looking for a high concentration of cigar smoke, not suspended in the air around her, but hanging close to some surface in the room.

It was when she was walking down past the rear of the Mini Cooper that she found it. Move-Easy smoked cigars, and they left their pungent smell on his fingertips. Anything he handled regularly also picked up the smell. Scope bent down and put her nose close to the handle of the car’s boot. Bingo.

She opened the boot and discovered most of the interior was taken up with a large, very impressive—looking safe. It had an old-fashioned combination lock. She swore under her breath, lifting her head and looking around. Easy kept a key on a chain around his neck, which she’d always assumed was for his stash. But, of course, Easy knew he was surrounded by criminals.

This wasn’t fair—she should have had FX with her, and possibly even Nimmo. She could pick a fairly simple lock, but this was beyond her.

“Let me have a look,” a voice said from behind her, causing her heart to thump the air out of her lungs.

It was Nimmo. He stood behind her, having approached without her hearing.

She punched him in the arm, hissing at him: “Jesus! You tryin’ to scare the piss out of me?”

“Didn’t want to spoil your concentration,” he replied softly, gesturing towards Easy’s stash. “Sorry if I gave you a start.”

“No, you’re not. Where’s Manikin? Did you break her out?”

“She beat me to it. I figured there was no point wandering around trying to find her, so I came back to help you. Here, stand back.”

Placing his right hand against the door of the safe, he used his x-ray camera to study the tumblers of the lock. Then he spun the dial clockwise, then anti-clockwise, then back clockwise again. The lock clicked open.

The door of the wide, low safe opened and they saw folders full of papers, compact discs, data keys and variously sized boxes arranged neatly inside.

“Grab the discs, keys and as much paper as you can get into your pack,” Nimmo told her. “Don’t take more than you can carry while running.”

She did as he said, and he quickly filled his pockets with whatever he could.

“Not bad, for vermin,” a cold voice grated, making them both jump.

Behind them stood the Turk, leaning against one of the display cases. Scope experienced a horrible sinking feeling, and she could see even Nimmo had gone pale. The bald giant was holding an Uzi sub-machine-gun. He aimed it at them and pulled the trigger. They jumped again as the hammer clicked, but the gun did not go off.

“Out of ammo.” He leered apologetically. Shrugging the strap off his shoulder, he tossed the gun away behind him. “Will have to switch to manual.”

Raising his bunched fists, he held them a few centimeters apart so the rat-runners could see the electricity arcing between his knuckles. He took a step towards them. Even as he did so, there was a whistle from behind him. Swiveling to look around, he grunted as the strap from his Uzi whipped around his wrists, the loop pulling tight. A well-dressed Oriental man jerked the Turk’s arms out straight, wrenching the giant off balance, then twisted the rest of the strap around the Turk’s neck and flipped him head over heels onto his back. The Turk landed with his electrically charged fists tied up under his chin. His body thrashed and twitched for a few seconds and then fell still.

Nimmo and Scope both felt a moment of relief, before it gave way to dread at the sight of the stone-cold assassin who faced them.

Registering both reactions, Coda held up his empty but deadly hands with a modest expression, as if the two kids were an audience showing their appreciation for a performer.

“Great minds think alike,” he chuckled, nodding towards Easy’s stash. “That’s just what I was looking for. I
was
wondering how I was going to open the
safe
—seeing as it was going to be a bit of a rush job. Thanks for sorting that. I’ve been following your progress, actually, ever since I first met Brundle. You’re a bright bunch—you’ve got some moves on you. But these matters you’re meddling in now … well, they’re just not suitable for children.” Scope glared at him. Coda was here, not to protect Easy’s stash, but to steal it for himself. And as she realized this, she knew it wasn’t the first time he had betrayed his boss.

“You killed Brundle,” Scope spoke up. “You knocked him out, then jammed a hazelnut down his throat. That had to be you, right? It’s your style.”

“Yes,” Coda replied simply.

“But Move-Easy didn’t want him dead,” Nimmo said. “Killing him made no sense … unless you’re working for
Vapor
. That’s why you had to kill Brundle—to stop him from giving the seed to Easy. But then what? Vapor thought his guys would just find the implant once he sent them in to search the lab?”

“Yes, well done. We didn’t know Brundle had given the only remaining ones to
you
. Now, just hand that stuff over, and I’ll let you run for your lives. We can worry about the brundleseed later. This place is about to become a war zone, so I’d be very surprised if you got out alive. But as long as you give me the files, I promise I’ll let someone else kill you.”

“Scope, take what you’ve got and go,” Nimmo said firmly, brushing past her left side to stand between her and Coda.

She was about to argue, but knowing Nimmo, there would be little point. He’d made his decision. Besides, he’d just picked her pocket. She closed the flap on the pack, slung it onto her shoulder and backed down the aisle, away from Coda. The hit man watched her leave without any sense of urgency, as if there was nowhere she could possibly go to escape him. Then he put his earbuds in his ears.

“Catch up with you in a minute,” he said, waving to her. Nodding his head to the beat of the music, he added to Nimmo: “Hadn’t figured you for the self-sacrificing type. Thought you were smart.”

“And I thought you didn’t talk much,” Nimmo replied, checking that Scope was on her way out. “You gonna rabbit on all day, or are we goin’ to work?”

Coda drove his elbow down into the display case beside him, smashing the glass top. Picking up a long, triangular piece of glass, he raised his hands and did a little shuffling dance before taking a fighting stance.

“Time someone took you to school, boy.”

“Yeah, I’ve been hearin’ that my whole life.”

Coda came at him fast, gliding like a dancer, striking with frightening speed. Nimmo dodged or deflected the first few blows of the glass blade, stepped inside a kick, but then took a punch to the ribs. A knee to his back caught him in the kidneys, and he staggered. The jagged piece of glass came at his neck and he blocked the strike with his elbow, the glass cutting a bad slash across his upper arm. But he was in close now, and he head-butted Coda on the chin—and then pushed Scope’s brown inhaler into the man’s face and squeezed. Coda gasped as the blinding spray blasted into his nose and mouth. He tried not to breathe it in, but it was too late. A fit of sneezing seized him, and his head rocked with each explosive burst of breath. Cursing and sneezing, he lashed out with both arms, trying to catch Nimmo across the head. Nimmo dropped, spinning as he went down, his swinging leg taking Coda’s feet out from under him.

Coda fell flat on his back, but rolled and tried to get to his feet as soon as he hit the floor. Nimmo grabbed the Mini’s door handle and whipped the door open, slamming it into Coda’s head. He liked the noise it made, so he did it a couple more times.

Then he heard the sounds of battle coming up the corridor outside. Nimmo turned and ran.

SCOPE’S ESCAPE ROUTE was via Move-Easy’s private elevator. Only Easy and his most loyal lieutenants had the means of making it work, but she thought she had a way around that. If it didn’t work, she’d reached the end of the line, literally. The door of the lift was at the bottom of a dead-end corridor. This lift had once been used by the hospital, but most of the doors had been walled up, and now it only opened into the car park where a getaway car was always kept waiting. The door on the car park level was concealed behind a false wall. Nobody else but Move-Easy’s most trusted men used this lift.

Reaching the elevator, Scope pressed the button to open the sliding door and stepped inside. As she did so, she heard running feet coming down the corridor. There was nowhere she could go; she had to hope she could bluff her way past whoever appeared in the doorway.

Manikin peered fearfully in, with FX popping his head around a moment later.

“Going up?” Manikin asked breathlessly.

“That’s the plan,” Scope replied. “But the lift is locked down. We need a code or a key—I don’t know how to get it started.”

“That’s it?” Manikin exclaimed with an expression of disbelief. “Move-Easy and some of his dog-soldiers are about a minute behind us. This is a bloody dead end, and that’s your big escape plan?”

“Sort of,” Scope said, shrugging. “Come on, give us a boost.”

As the door closed behind them, they helped her up onto the bar that ran at waist-height around the walls of the lift, and she opened the maintenance panel in the ceiling. Climbing out onto the roof, she turned to help FX and then Manikin up behind her. Even as they closed the hatch, they could hear voices approaching. Looking up the sheer shaft, they saw there were metal doors blocking the shaft less than three meters above them. There was no way to climb out.

There was a vent in the top of the ceiling panels, and Scope parted the slats slightly so that they could see down into the elevator car.

“Breaker says the coppers have closed down the hospital,” someone said. “But they’re not in the car park yet.”

“We’ve been reesed, lads,” Move-Easy’s voice snarled. “Somebody’s grassed up the whole operation. How could the pigs know where all the doors were? If they know about the lift…”