The Chop Shop (6 page)

Footsteps passed
by as he moved to the window and pulled the blinds apart to look down on the
street below. Searchlights swept back and forth on one of the city pillars in
the distance. He didn't want to go home tonight, but there was nowhere else to
go.

Michael gathered
his stuff and travelled up a floor to administration. The room was nearly
empty, save for a man and a woman, each seated at their desks and muttering on
the phones. He left the reports in Samantha's intake tray.

Outside in the
car park, the air was chilly and the wind strong. Cold crept down the back of
his neck, and his tie flapped violently. He fumbled with his car keys, watching
the place empty car by car as though the world was leaving him behind.

One of the
vehicles exploded. He fell down, as car alarms shrieked. The blast forced the
doors off at the hinges, and orange fire lashed out from the vehicle, dancing,
flickering, sometimes retreating enough to reveal the charred body slumped
against the steering wheel.

His nostrils
twitched at the smell of burning petrol. People ran from the building and there
was a ringing in his ears, growing stronger with every beat of his heart. He
stood up, shaking, and stepped away from the fire. People gathered by the front
doors, watching the vehicle burn with mouths agape.

“Are you hurt?”
Samantha said?

He shook his
head and moved behind the cover of a plastic tree. Samantha looked away from
the carnage. Her face turned pale as a trail of blood leaked from her left
nostril.

“Your nose is
bleeding,” he said.

Samantha pulled
a tissue from her pocket, but she was too slow to stop a drop of blood staining
her white shirt; it left a long, blotted line from collar to breast.

“What the hell
is going on? I knew her, she worked the desk in front of me. Why would somebody
blow her up?”

His mind flashed
back to the memory of his old station disappearing in an explosion. “I don't
know. Somebody will have to find out. There's cameras up there trained on the
car park all day, every day. Either that car came in here rigged, or somebody
planted the bomb in full view.”

“I have to tell
her family.”

She wandered off
in a daze, head bowed, one hand clutching her brow. He watched her go, and then
looked down at his trembling hand; the tremble ran the length of his arm and
down his entire body.

Michael went
back to his car and silenced the alarm. He got down on the ground, produced his
pocket torch and slid underneath the vehicle. He flashed the light about.
Nothing. His mind raced, breathing becoming shallower.

A pair of feet
clad in combat boots stopped by his legs. “You okay?” the man said.

Michael crawled
out into the open. The policeman was dressed in full body armour and combat
gear. He raised the visor on his helmet. “Hey, I asked if you were you okay.”

He stood up.
“I'm fine. You've got tactical mirrors in the armoury, right? For checking
corners?”

“Yeah, we've got
them.”

“You might want
to start handing them out. People will need to check underneath their cars.”

The policeman
looked over his shoulder at the burning wreck.

Michael drove to
Croydon. Concrete buildings rose up all around him, some still scorched and
ruined from the war. The others were empty now the workers had gone home for the
night. Handfuls of people milled about the streets beneath flashing lights and
advertisement displays.

A police fire
team stood watch behind concrete barriers with their armoured personnel
carrier. He turned left at the sign for the Acel Clinique and drove through the
security checkpoint with its electric fence and razor wire. The hospital was
five stories of grey brick and multiple smaller buildings spread across the
interior of the compound, most of them abandoned and in disrepair.

Michael drove
through dozens of vacant parking spaces and parked close to the main building.
He placed his police identity on the dashboard and made it ten meters from the
car before he changed his mind and bought a ticket instead. Dim yellow light
spilled from the hospital's main entrance.

The doors slid
open for him as he approached. Empty seats filled the waiting area, and just
beyond them was the reception desk, where the receptionist had her back turned
so she could watch the television mounted on the wall. The sound of his
footsteps on the hard floor drew her attention.

She pivoted in
her chair and stood up. “Do you have an appointment?

The
receptionist's left arm hung limp from the shoulder. Her hand was the colour of
prosthetic plastic. She looked past him with one wide eye, never blinking, as
the other focused on his face. She must have been about his age.

“Yes, with Nurse
Becker. My appointment was for tomorrow, but I phoned ahead earlier and was
told I could be seen tonight, instead. The name is Michael Ward.”

The receptionist
glanced down at the computer and typed away with her right hand. She paused
every few seconds to hit the backspace key, pressing her lips together, part
frustration, part determination.

“Ah,” she said.
“That will be on-”

“It's okay, I'm
a regular,” Michael said. He walked through empty corridors, listening to his
footsteps echo off the walls. Most of the doors on the right were boarded up
with nails and wood, sealed with orange biohazard stickers and black tape
around the frames.

A lone autocleaner
drove down the corridor, wheels squeaking as it bounced back and forth off the
skirting boards, sucking up debris. Further on was the real cleaner, mopping up
anything the machine had missed with a stooped spine and tired expression on
his face.

Michael stopped
to catch his breath when he reached the second floor. He looked out the window
and saw tendrils of fire and black smoke escaping from the chimneys of a
building by the perimeter fence. Figures in yellow CRBN suits dragged body bags
from the back of a truck and took them inside, returning moments later for
another load.

Patients sat
idle in the waiting rooms as he passed them by. He went to the outpatients
department, checked in at the reception and took a seat in the corner. A few
other professionals sat in the scattered assortment of seats, reading out of
date magazines from the table or newspapers they had brought themselves. A
woman bobbed her head in time to the music playing through her earphones.

One by one, the
waiting area became devoid of life, until he was the last one sitting there. He
glanced at the clock, tapping his fingers on the side of the chair as the hands
passed his appointment time. Brisk footsteps came down the corridor.

“Hello, Mr Ward.
If you'd like to come this way,” Becker said. Her hair was dark, and her accent
still carried a strong trace of German.

He followed her
down the corridor and into one of the rooms.

“How have you
been today? A good day at work? Please, have a seat.”

He put his coat
and jacket aside before rolling up his sleeves. The nurse rifled through
several papers, set them aside and tapped on the computer's keyboard.

“Just a routine
check up for your lungs, I see. Have you had any particular problems?”

“Breathing
difficulties, shortness of breath and stabbing pains in the chest.”

She tapped on
the computer's keyboard again. “All can be normal symptoms of the repairs done
to your lungs. The chemical weapons you were exposed to would have killed many
people in the same situation. Very lucky for you. Have they been severe or
worse than normal?”

“Difficult to
say.”

The nurse
scratched her head and stared at her computer display for a moment. “We have
the scanner up and running at the moment, so I will take a snap shot of your
lungs. This way, please.”

They went into
the next room, decorated with a single chair, desk and computer. The scanner
took up the rest of the space. Mould grew in some of the corners like cobwebs.
He lay down on the scanner's bed, resting on white paper towels that covered
its surface.

The bed began to
retract into the scanner. His heart beat quickened, and his throat became dry.
Saliva collected at the corner of his mouth. He shut his eyes and tried to
forget where he was, but all he saw was German sewers. The bed stopped.

“Your fists are clenched;
you not like small spaces?”

“No.”

“I try to make
it quick. Ten minutes for full scan. Do not move, please.”

Ten minutes felt
like ten hours. His shirt was soaked with sweat when the bed finally emerged
out of the machine. He breathed a sigh and stood on weak legs. “What now?”

“It needs to go
to the doctor for proper analysis. I cannot tell you anything right now, but we
contact you soon for a new appointment, yes?”

Michael nodded.
He collected his jacket and coat from the other room and went home.

Richard glanced
at his watch. “Trust me on this one; I spoke to Harris, and he's going to sort
it all out. We'll have it before lunchtime.”

They were the
only two in the office. Michael shivered. He touched the radiator behind his
chair and found the metal cold. “It better be something good, otherwise we're
going nowhere, and there's more important things to worry about.”

Richard spun in
his chair; he did a three-sixty before stopping himself with a foot. “They're
not going to let us get near the bombings. We're just bottom feeders to them.
The investigation will be run by company headquarters. God knows it got them
all in a real pissy mood.”

“Yeah, and what
do a bunch suits know about this stuff? It's a statistic on a spreadsheet for
them.”

Sam opened the
door with her elbow. She carried a stack of folders which she dropped on his
desk. Her face was overly pale, like she hadn't slept for an age. She blinked
the fatigue away. “From Harris, for your investigation.”

“I told you I'd
get something done,” Richard said, when Sam had gone.

Michael opened
the first folder, thumbing through a few pages. “These are all records from Jim
Belton's home. Half of this stuff doesn't even look official. How did he get
it?”

“He pulled some
strings. A lot of them, I suppose, and he made it clear that I probably
wouldn't have a job to come back to if we waste his time and botch the case.
Let's not dally around, okay?”

Michael passed
two of the folders across the table. “A lot of this doesn't seem relevant; it's
day to day records, finance, etcetera, etcetera. I'm going to start looking for
people he could've pissed off. Tell me if you find anything interesting.”

They finished
skimming the documents two hours later. Nobody else had turned up.

“Where is
everybody? Something has to be up,” Richard said.

“Worry about it
later, let's have a show of hands. I've got two lines of investigation. Count
them, one, two,” he said, sticking his index and middle fingers up at Richard
in reverse. “What have you got?”

“Some bank
statements and financial records... I don't know Harris got these. Probably
best not to ask. I tell you one thing, though, Jim Belton had a lot of money
coming in. These kinds of guys always do, but it's not related to his work.
Tell me you've got something worthwhile.”

“He was dealing
with lobbyists. These are all personal notes from his house. Nothing logged
officially. I've got guys from Eratech and Bouclier named in here. By law, he
was meant to record any dealing with corporate liaisons in government logs, but
you know what these people are like. They've all got something going on under
the table,” Michael said.

The door opened.
Corporal Hill marched in with his rifle slung from his shoulder. He raised his
visor, slipped a finger beneath the balaclava to scratch his cheek and sighed
from exhaustion. “You might want to put the radio on. The news in particular.”

Hill shut the
door behind himself as he left. The draft blew papers from the table,
scattering them across the floor. Static from the radio filled the air; Richard
tuned the dial until they got a female voice.

Michael tidied
up the mess and sank deep into his chair. He shut his eyes momentarily and
grimaced. “Not another one.”

Richard held up
a finger to quiet him. “You hear that? Four dead detectives. Are they who I
think they are? Shit.”

“We don't know
that. Not yet.”

“They really
aren't screwing around, are they? They've bloody well declared war on us,
whoever the hell they are. I've seen all kinds of crap turn up around here, but
this isn't some arsehole with a fertiliser bomb. We're going after the wrong
people. Screw the MP; what did he ever do for us? That bounty is pointless if
you're dead and can't spend it.”

Michael gave a
half-hearted shrug. “I don't like it either, but we've got our orders, okay?
Leave the bombs to whatever circus HQ sends our way.”

“We should start
parking outside the station on the streets. It'll lessen the damage next time
one of those fucking things goes up in smoke. How many other stations do you
think are going to start handing out mirrors to check their cars?”

“After that? All
of them.”

The others
walked in.

“Jesus, where
have you lot been? We thought you had been wasted with plastic explosive and
nails,” Richard said.

“Takes more than
a nail bomb to kill a man like me, son,” David said.

“We just got
reassigned. We're reporting to a special task force running directly under the
department head. He's heading up an investigation on these bombings, and
they're reassigning a whole chunk of the detective force along with us. All
combat units are required to support the task force in any way needed if
trouble arises,” Maria said.

“It's serious
now,” Michael said.

Archibald
nodded. “Very serious. Apparently, investors are getting nervous and company
share prices are dropping. They're worried that this is all going to hit the
other branches of the company and compromise projected profits. Assurer have
their fingers in a lot of pies.”

“I don't like
the sound of that,” Richard said.

“Get in line,”
said Archibald.

They sat down at
their desks. All of them carried metal briefcases with security locks.

“Leads?
Intelligence?” Michael said.

“They're keeping
everything hush hush for now, but you know, the destruction of your old station
doesn't really seem like an isolated incident anymore.”

“Tell me about
it.”

“Hey,” Maria
said. “The two of you won't like this, but there were twenty guys from the
Upper London security forces coming down Richmond pillar with us. They're
poking around the same things you are.”

“God damn it,
this is our jurisdiction. They can't come snooping around like that; it has to
be cleared with us by law. Some courtesy they show us,” Richard said.

“I suppose they
don't really consider it an issue.”

“We need to pay
a visit to Eratech. I've never heard of Bouclier before, so that's one for
another time. Eratech have offices on the plate,” Michael said, “and Jim Belton
served on a number of government defence committees in his time. See where I'm
going with this?”

Richard nodded.

They took the
lift to Upper Richmond and then made their way onto the streets. The endless
grey skies had shifted to a shade of black, and thunder rumbled in the
distance. Electric cars drove beneath flashing signs and giant television
displays.

Michael flagged
one of the taxis down. They hopped in the back and headed for Upper Canary
Wharf. A security checkpoint stopped them just short of the Eratech compound,
where he paid the faire and approached the contractor at the gate.

The man was a
bulging sack of muscle crammed into combat trousers and tactical vest, with a
transparent plastic poncho thrown over the top. His nose was wonky and strapped
down with white tap, and magazines for his carbine poked free of the pouches on
his vest.

“Identify
yourself,” he said in an accent that sounded Danish.

His counterpart
stood watching ten meters down the road, leaning up against a lamp post for
support.

Michael and
Richard produced their identity cards. The contractor snatched Michael's from
his hand, holding it up to the light. Another rumble of thunder. It began to rain
softly. “You policemen?”

“Detectives.”

He tossed the
card back, and Michael stumbled to catch it before it hit the ground. The other
contractor grinned.

“Those things
can be faked. They don't mean nothing to me. You need an appointment if you
want in, but you don't have one of those, do you?”

Michael slipped
the card back in his pocket.

“My colleague
and I phoned ahead,” Richard said.

“No appointment,
no entry, now piss off.”

His words drew
the other contractor forward, and his carbine had a shotgun attachment beneath
the barrel.