Rat Runners (6 page)

When they got the nudge, Manikin and FX plucked out their blacked-out contacts and handed them to the man who had guided them in. They found themselves standing in the gangster’s audience chamber. He was sitting in the circle of couches, beaming up at them. There was another kid there, about Manikin’s age, with a slightly blank bony face, but intelligent eyes, and a gray woolen hat, which covered hair that was cut close to his scalp. Dressed in trainers, jeans, T-shirt and a weathered black leather jacket, he was tall and looked impressively fit. He did not seem at all nervous in Move-Easy’s presence—unusual for someone his age.

“Manikin, FX, meet Nimmo,” Move-Easy said, waving them over. “I’m puttin’ a crew togevver for a new job, and you’re it.”

The three nodded to each other, but said nothing. FX and Manikin sat down on the couch next to Nimmo and waited. There was one other man in the room, standing by the bar, making himself a Martini. He was an Oriental guy with an expensive hairstyle, a sharp light-gray suit with a cravat instead of a tie, and a set of wireless earphones in his ears. The dapper man had the dead black eyes of a shark. This man’s name was Coda, and he was the most dangerous of Move-Easy’s enforcers. And he was the only one who didn’t wear a piercing in his eyebrow—the means by which the boss monitored his people. Nor did he ever carry anything that could be recognized as a weapon. Rumor had it that Coda only ever killed with his bare hands, or with whatever happened to be lying around. FX eyed the man anxiously. He had heard that Coda had once tortured and killed someone using only a pair of spectacles. FX could only guess how.

Move-Easy stared at the three kids for a minute, with a fatherly smile that didn’t reach his eyes. He had been one of the first gangsters to start using specially trained teenagers for some of his dirty work, and had several on his payroll. The three in front of him were freelancers, but that didn’t make much difference. If you lived in London and Move-Easy wanted you to take on a job, you took it. As you were underage, it was easier for you to operate within the WatchWorld system. The system could watch you, but it was forbidden to assign a Safe-Guard to follow you until you were sixteen, and even then there were limits to what they could watch until you were eighteen.

That was why Move-Easy used kids on a lot of his jobs.

“You owe me money,” he said to Manikin and FX. “This job will wipe the debt clean. That’ll be your payment. Nimmo, you’ll be paid on your usual terms. You’re all good little players, and as of now, you’ve got one very simple task. I want you to find this box.”

He lifted a remote, pressed the touch-screen surface, and an image appeared on the cinema screen. Manikin, who was discreetly watching Nimmo, trying to measure him up, noticed the slightest change of expression in his eyes as he saw the picture. He was hiding something. The image was of a tall, long-limbed man with a mess of black hair and protruding features. The photo had been taken at night at the back of a tall building, with wheelie bins in the background. It was monotone, slightly blurred and a bit grainy, probably taken with a night-vision camera. But they could make out a slim black box in the man’s left hand. It was roughly the size of the kind of presentation box used to hold a necklace.

“So what’s in it?” Manikin asked.

“Ten credit cards,” Move-Easy replied. “Blue and gold in color—you don’t need any more details. Either they’ll be in the box or not. The geezer in the picture is the previous owner. Name’s Watson Brundle, an’ he’s dead. He was a civvie.
A scientist, engineer or summink—had some private project going, workin’ on RFIDs and the like.”

“How’d he die?” Nimmo asked.

“You don’t care,” Move-Easy assured him. “What you care about is that box. We know it was in his lab yesterday, because we saw ’im go in with it, and ’e didn’t come out again before ’e died, which was early this evenin’. Bit of a hermit, he was. The old bill went in about an hour after ’e died, and after they were gone, I sent a couple of boys in to fetch it. It wasn’t there. If the cops’ve got it, I’ll find out through my people. But I don’t think they have. There was some kid who lived up on the same floor as Brundle, ’parently did some work for ’im. We’ve not had a good look at ’is face yet, but he’s the law-abidin’ type. Went runnin’ right up to a peeper when the murder ’appened. ’E was questioned by the bill today, but we can’t find ’im now. We will. That’s not your job either.”

He touched his remote again, and a new picture appeared on the screen. This one showed a teenage girl, possibly about fifteen or sixteen. She was wearing a blue, gray and white school uniform. The picture looked as if it was a still from a surveillance camera in a school corridor. Tanker had probably hacked in and lifted it from the school’s files. The girl’s left hand was running through her dark hair, revealing that her sallow-skinned face was tainted by a port-wine birthmark that went from above her left eye, across her cheek, almost to her ear. Manikin was sure that the girl normally covered as much of that mark as possible with her hair. It spoiled what was otherwise quite a pretty face. With hips like that, she wasn’t exactly model material, but there was something very attractive about her. She had a spirited expression, and the posture of her small figure suggested a confident personality.

“Veronica Brundle, the boffin’s daughter,” Move-Easy announced. “The person he trusted most in the world. He was mad about ’er, but separated from the mother. The girl lives with the mother. She visited ’er dad last night. The handbag she had with ’er could have held the case, but we didn’t ’ave anyone on the buildin’ when she left—there was a Safe-Guard on the street by then—so she could have walked off with the box in her bag without us knowin’.

“Now, her dad told her about us, so if she’d any sense, she’d have brought us that box by now. But she ’asn’t. I want you to suss ’er out, check ’er ’ouse and the school. Is she connected? Is she protected? Does she ’ave the contacts to sell the cards? If she’s gonna try an’ run, I want to know before she does. There’s no guarantee she’s got ’em, but I think she’s our best bet. Tricky bit is, she lives in a two-floor apartment in the Barbican and goes to a private school.”

Manikin rolled her eyes towards the ceiling and FX groaned. The Barbican Estate was a mass of concrete structures containing over two thousand flats, some as part of three massive residential towers. It was a maze, and it was riddled with security cameras. And even though primary and secondary schools could not be observed by the WatchWorld system, they all had their own security measures. Private schools were usually the most paranoid and had higher quality systems.

“I presume these cards are worth a lot of money to someone who can use them,” Manikin spoke up. “Would she leave something like that in school?”

“Might, if she didn’t want her mum findin’ it,” Move-Easy told her. “Leave no stone unturned, that’s what I say. Tanker will give you all the details we ’ave on the girl. You’ve got three days to find out for sure whether she ’as it or not.”

He glanced up at the well-dressed man standing at the bar, who was leaning there with his eyes closed. With those earphones in his ears, it was impossible to tell if Coda was listening to them or not.

“I don’t want to ’ave to send in Coda here, or set any of the boys on ’er and the mother unless there’s no other way,” Move-Easy said. “Let’s keep this quiet and hands-off for now.”

“If it’s OK with you, I’d like to bring Scope in on this as well,” Nimmo said.

Manikin glanced at FX, who shrugged. They both knew Scope and trusted her. She wouldn’t get in the way, but they couldn’t see what they needed her for out on the street.

“What d’you want her for?” Move-Easy asked, frowning. “You’ve got all the skills you need right here.”

“I don’t want to go to all the hassle of doing the job, gettin’ my hands on those cards,” Nimmo told him, “and then find out they’re fakes. That’s one of the jobs she does for you, isn’t it? She spots counterfeit merchandise. Better she do it on the spot than have us bringin’ fake gear back here.”

“Awright, she can go with you. But look after ’er, Nimmo. If summink ’appens to my Little Brain, I’d be most put out. Worth her weight in diamonds, that girl is. She’s like a friend’s daughter to me. Not a hair on ’er ’ead, boy, y’hear me? Not a hair on ’er ’ead.”

“I hear you,” Nimmo said. “It’ll be the safest hair in London.”

The three teenagers were getting to their feet when Move-Easy added to FX and Manikin:

“Oh, last thing. Just so the both of you know, Nimmo’s in charge. What ’e says goes.”

“What?” Manikin looked at Nimmo and then at the gangster. She was pushing her luck and she knew it. But in their business, you couldn’t let yourself be walked all over. “That’s not how we work, Mister Easy. We’re freelance. Nobody’s in charge of us.”

“I’m sorry, darlin’.” The orange-skinned mob boss leveled his cold blue eyes at her and leaned forward. “My ears are a bit funny these days. Gettin’ old, I suppose. Did you say summink?”

Manikin met his gaze for a brief moment, before her nerve failed her. “No. No, sir.”

“Didn’t think so. Go see Tanker. You’ve got three days to dig up everything there is to know about this girl and find that box. If she passes it on or sells it before we can get ’old of it, or if I ’ave to send in the boys to deal with it, so things get loud and messy, I’m not gonna be a happy camper. And we don’t want me losin’ the rag, now do we?”

Nimmo, Manikin and FX all agreed, they didn’t want him losing the rag.

FOUR TEENAGERS WANDERING around in the early hours of the morning could attract the wrong kind of attention, so once they’d checked in with Tanker to be briefed, Nimmo, Scope, Manikin and FX decided to stay in the Void for a few hours and grab some shut-eye until sunrise. After a quick look through the information on Veronica Brundle, they stretched out on some cots and slept until after sunrise. Then it was time to go to work.

Nimmo stayed awake, his mind racing as he struggled to think through all the angles. He’d been hired to search for something he already had in his possession. This was Move-Easy he was dealing with. He should hand the bloody box over as soon as he could lay his hands on it. But he was damned if he would. At least, not until he’d figured out what was going on.

The decision gave him some peace and his mind stopped whirling, allowing his thoughts to find some order. He grew drowsy, eager now for sleep. His mind drifted back to his interview with the police officer, back in his small flat next to Brundle’s lab.

The man, Dibble, was a detective constable, but he fumbled through the questions like someone who hadn’t been in the job very long. As Nimmo had suspected, the police weren’t giving a high priority to Brundle’s murder.

“So, Charles, you were next door when you heard the noise of a falling body,” Dibble muttered.

“Call me Chuck,” Nimmo said in an overly nervous voice. “Everyone calls me Chuck.”

“OK, Chuck. You say you heard a fight. Scraping, thumping, that kind of thing?”

Nimmo nodded. This was the third time they’d been over this, but Nimmo knew that was standard procedure. Ask things a different way each time, see if the story changes. Dibble’s short-fingered hand made notes with a stylus on his web-pad. A pudgy young man, his cheeks were already sinking into jowls, and there were wrinkles around the small black eyes that perched close to each other over a sharp, pointed nose. He used the stylus to scratch an itch under his black hair and looked up at Nimmo again.

“Yeah, and then I went out to check on ’im—Doctor Brundle, I mean,” Nimmo said. “And ’e was dead. Or at least, I thought ’e was dead. He was really still. And ’is eyes were open. And ’e never leaves ’is door open.”

As Nimmo kept up the dull-eyed character of Chuck U. Farley, his mind went around the room, ensuring that nothing Dibble could see would make him curious enough to poke about. He had given the place the once-over before the police arrived, but you could never be too careful.

“Right.” Dibble made another note. His tone remained uninterested. “At any point, did he cry out? Cry for help? Did he say anybody’s name?”

“Nothin’ I could hear,” Nimmo said. “I ’eard him let out, like, y’know, a grunt. Like he was in pain? But it was all really quick.”

“Right,” said Dibble, scratching his scalp again.

Nimmo was beginning to wonder how much longer this would take when the detective’s phone rang. Dibble answered it and listened for a minute.

“Yeah?” He sniffed, his eyes darting over to Nimmo. “No. Sure, I’m talking to him now. Charles U. Farley—‘Chuck,’ he says. No, it’s fine. OK. Yeah, I’ll see. OK, cheers.” He ended the call and slipped his phone into his pocket. Doing the same with his web-pad, he stood up.

“Thanks for your assistance, Chuck. Looks like we’ve got things all wrapped up on this one.”

“So, is that it?” Nimmo asked. He didn’t like the detective’s tone. “D’you know who did it?”

“It seems Doctor Brundle didn’t have quite as dramatic an end as you thought, Chuck,” Dibble told him. “The coroner’s made an examination of the body, and believes your friend’s death was accidental—‘misadventure,’ they call it. You probably heard him stagger and fall, and mistook it for a fight. It’d explain why you didn’t see anyone when you came out. I don’t have any more details at the moment, but we’re no longer treating this death as suspicious.”