The Scioneer (15 page)

‘What
should we do now then? Less than three hours to go,’ Lek asked,
curling Crystal’s pink bob behind her ears and holding her face in
his hands. He felt almost invincible in his new disguise and when
Crystal whispered in his ear,

‘Let’
s park up
somewhere quiet and you can try to smudge my
face-paint,’

h
e grinned like
a schoolboy and led her to the car, thinking nothing could possibly
go wrong.

Vidmar
watched them from across the street. He was standing in plain view,
but Gorski and the woman were too wrapped up in their own fantasy
world to notice. Still, there are too many people around to attempt
a snatch, thought Vidmar. It didn’t matter. He saw them jump into
the Proto, like a pair of newlyweds on their honeymoon and for a
moment he wished he could be them, and despised them both for their
good looks and carefree attitude to life and love. His breath
hissed through his teeth.

His
textabeep
sounded as he watched them pull out into the evening traffic and
drive away. He strolled lazily to the nearest skypephone box and
dialled the number.

‘What is going
on Vidmar?’ Pechev said, cutting to the chase.

‘Well, I’ve
just watched Gorski and his woman drive off.’

‘You’ve
done what?
! Why didn’t
you stop them? Where is Delić? Why can’t I reach him on his
textabeep?’

‘I don’t
know. He thinks Gorski’s dead. Who cares?’ Vidmar replied
petulantly.

‘I feel
this situation is beyond you both.
It is spiralling out of control. I’m...
disappointed, to say the least.’

‘Lyubomir
Pechev,’ said Vidmar, with a sigh, ‘I don’t give a fuck what you
think anymore. The deal’s off. I know Gorski has a book, a book
containing the recipes for all his scions, and I know where he is.
So you can keep your shitty half a mill. I’m looking at the bigger
picture.’

‘Vidmar,
turn your back on me and you will regret it. I have only to say the
word and every low-level yellow-bellied street rat from Bow to
Battersea will know there’s a price on your head. So, do the smart
thing boy. Do your job. I’m going to give you one last chance. Do
you understand me? Vidmar? Vidmar?’

But
Vidmar
was standing in
the middle of the street staring into the distance, the traffic
racing past him on either side. The Proto had long gone, but he saw
the path it had made through the city streets as clear as the wake
of a Thames riverboat. He cupped his hands around his nose, and
breathed in the smell of Crystal Purcell and Lek Gorski. He could
taste them both on his saliva. The ten minutes he had spent in the
underground car-park near Calabas’ club, breaking into the Proto,
sniffing its seats, rubbing his fingers in the dust of the
foot-wells, and licking the steering wheel had certainly paid off.
There was slaver pouring from his mouth and onto the lapels of his
scarred suit jacket, and the skin of his cheeks had already lost
all its elasticity when he took the near empty vial of Bloodhound
from the chain around his neck and snorted it all, right down to
the last speck.

Chapter
22

Crouching
in the carcass of a burnt out Hyundai on the corner of Rattray
Road, Dahlia Ortega ran the blade of her flick-knife against her
thumb and dreamt of cutting Roma Bruce’s throat. She had yet to
make a kill, and there was immense pressure on her to drive her
blade into somebody at the rumble that night, but as far as she
could see, there was only one person who truly deserved it. Roma
had ruled the gang for too long, and Dahlia had grown tired of
waiting for Zevon, the natural successor, to do the deed. Ronnie
and Reggie, although they had probably notched up a dozen killings
between them, were nothing but muscle, and faithful to the last.
Their brains were so pickled in Lupinex they had lost virtually all
capacity for human thought, and went through the motions of their
violent existence like Roma’s trained guard-dogs. But not Dahlia.
If the opportunity arose tonight.... Suddenly, Zevon gave the call
and instinctively, she was on her feet, running to the join the
chase. Roma had sniffed out a kid who had become separated from his
flock in the network of streets and was scrambling to get home
before he was spotted. The hunt was on.

Dahlia
sprinted across the broken tarmac, her heightened senses acutely
aware
of Zevon’s
movements in a parallel street. In her peripheral vision, she saw
him flash past at the cross-section of Talma and Bankton, but she
didn’t break her stride. She tore down an opening between the
high-rises and cut across the allotments, the long yellowing
toenails of her bare feet digging up the soft earth as she smashed
through carefully planted rows of cassava and runner-been
frameworks. With a clatter which shattered the quiet of the housing
estate, she knocked over a recycle-biffa on another side alley,
before bursting out onto Dalberg Road, where Ronnie and Reggie were
a hundred metres ahead of her. Dahlia was lithe and agile, built
for speed, and in the open space she changed gear and outstripped
the Twins in a matter of seconds. It was then that she caught her
first glimpse of the prey as he darted through a patch of pampas
grass growing between two terraced houses. Zevon came thundering
down Jeff Road on all fours, and simultaneously Roma appeared on
Dahlia’s right – the pack came together and then, without a word,
fanned out again: the pace never slackened. Dahlia’s breath came in
tight grunts and she felt her lungs burning with the exertion, but
the Lupinex forced her body to move faster still, her mind always
conscious of the positions of the respective members of the pack.
She saw Roma leap over a set of railings on the corner of Morval
without breaking her step, leading the pack through the patch of
wasteland. The prey, a boy of about thirteen or fourteen, was in
her sights now and she saw him scramble under the barbed wire and
out onto Brixton Water Lane, where a Datsun Synapse had to screech
to a halt to avoid smashing into him. Zevon hurdled the bonnet in a
single bound, while Dahlia and Roma shot through the gap between a
parked Credibus and a classic Skoda, and took the lead. Before she
knew it, Dahlia was out in the open again in the flat scrub of
unknown grasslands. In the back of her mind, she knew something
wasn’t right. But what? Zevon and the twins were bringing up the
rear; she and Roma were neck and neck, gaining on the boy in the
darkness, and for an instant, Dahlia considered jumping Roma
instead and plunging the knife she was still holding into the
bunched muscles between her leader’s shoulder blades. Suddenly it
hit her - her female canine intuition told her to pull back. Roma
felt it too, just in time, for the boy had disappeared behind a
wall of bodies. Roma howled the order to retreat as the pack before
them, twenty strong, began to move as a single body in their
direction. ‘How could you have been so stupid?’ snarled Dahlia, as
they turned and ran, ‘You led us into Hyena-turf!’ Roma’s eyes
flashed fire at the slight, but Dahlia saw fear in them as well.
Behind, the hyena pack laughed maniacally.

Delić
woke with
a start, slumped against the stinking body of a tramp seated next
to him on the bench in front of the Smarte Lockers. He was still
fighting the ongoing soporific effects of the sloth-extract, but
when he sat upright and looked around, he found himself in the
middle of a gang of vagabonds, all staring at him with red rat-like
eyes. On the floor before him, a tattered man with a beard that
reached down to the torn collar of his ragged business suit was
spitting the shells of sunflower seeds on the ground. Delić kicked
him brutally in the face and sent him reeling backwards. With a
chorus of angry shouts and drunken threats, the tramps moved away
to gather instead around a burning picket-fire - Starbucks staff
members were striking against the new 24–hour coffee laws. Delić
wiped the dribble from his chin and gave himself a couple of slaps
around the face to try and wake up. Stay alert, he told himself.
For all he knew, the locker might have already popped open and
revealed its contents to the world, but Delić felt sure the noise
would have woken him. He pulled a fresh bag of gojis from his
inside pocket, popped a few and threw a couple in the direction of
the tramps, making a pistol-shooting gesture with his thumb and
forefinger when they looked back. Scum, he thought. The clock in
the station read 19:30. One hour to curfew.

***

Roma’s
crew sat together in a rat-infested abandoned warehouse on King’s
Avenue where they had holed up to hide from the Dulwich
Jackals.
Dahlia had been
needling Roma ever since they had stopped running, pushing her into
admitting that she had run them too hard, for too little, and over
enemy lines to boot. At first, Roma had said nothing, content to
pluck rats from the cracks in the floorboards to prove to herself
as much as to the others that her reflexes, if not her judgement,
were still as sharp as ever. Eventually she cracked, and with a
fluid shifting of her weight, rolled on top of Dahlia and pinned
her to the floor in a flash.

‘I am
tired of your barking, bitch! Challe
nge me, if you’ve got the balls,’ and she squeezed
a clawed hand around Dahlia’s windpipe. ‘What’s that you say?’ she
growled, ‘Oh, nothing. Now get the fuck away from me!’ And she
stalked off to the corner of the room, where Zevon joined her to
lick her palms and give her his last vial of Bad Moon.

‘What
do
you want to do Roma?’
he asked.

‘I want
full-stress, straining off the chain, Zevon - no half measures
tonight. I want. I want. I WANT. I want to find some cred, hit
Domino for all he’s got and I want to take it to those laughing
sons of bitches. And when it’s all over, later on, I want you to
help me celebrate, dog.’ With that, she licked his face, her long
tongue lapping over his lips.

Zevon
pulled
back, ‘Save it for later then. We haven’t even got an hour before
lights-out. Best we get moving if we’re going to fit it all in
baby. Cash, stash and clash.’

‘Cash,
stash and clash.’ Roma pulled her lips back in a smile, but the
effect was terrifying. Years of prolonged Lupinex abuse had not
only transformed Roma’s once petite nose and mouth into a wolfish
muzzle, but over time four short canines had forced their way
between her teeth and ripped her blackened gums apart. Even Zevon
had to stifle his disgust for fear she would notice. He cast a
quick glance over to Dahlia, who caught his eye and gave him a
piercing look

***

Pechev
hung up
the receiver and allowed himself the luxury of one more chess move
– black bishop takes white knight – before making another call. He
leaned back in his chair and waited while the phone rang
out.

‘Phineas, it’s
Lyubomir.’

If
Pechev’s company ha
d
been a stationery supplier, a chain of estate agencies, a
management consultancy firm, or anything equally dull and above
board, then Phineas Gage would have been head of human resources
and administration. As it was, Gage carried a set of knives in his
briefcase and had been known to kill the employees with them if
they didn’t get the job done. On occasion, Pechev had been forced
to rein him in, so exacting were his standards. Once, during a
business meeting, a low-level dealer had had the temerity to answer
one of Gage’s rhetorical questions with a smart remark. Gage had
pinned the dealer’s hand to the table with a quartering knife and
insisted he remained in the room, bleeding on the carpet, until the
meeting was over, fifty minutes later.

‘How can I help
you, Mr Pechev?’

‘This thing
with Gorski, the scientist, it is out of control.’

‘How so?’

‘The men I put
on him – Vidmar and Delić – it seems they have both turned
rogue.’

‘Really?
I’m
surprised. Vidmar has always been a good employee and Delić: stupid
but loyal, at least.’

‘I get the
impression that Vidmar has been sampling the goods. Delić – who
knows? They’ve both been sold a story about a recipe book.’

‘Meaning?’

‘All the
formulae for our scions.’

‘Ah.’

‘Yes,
quite. I’d like you to make the call.’

‘Of course. How
much?’

‘Oh I don’t
know. A hundred apiece?’

‘For
Vidmar, yes, but Delić...? No, you’re right. A hundred each. Nice
and simple. I’ll get on it.’

‘Thank you
Phineas.’

‘Anything
else Mr Pechev?’

‘No, that is
all. Give my regards to Marusya and the boys. I will talk to you
soon.’

Gage hung
up, went upstairs to his office and consulted the latest version of
the company telephone tree. Such a high turnover of staff these
days, he thought to himself, enforcing wasn’t what it used to be.
He unwound his flexi-specs and placed them on the end of his nose.
He had two phone-calls to make initially – Golubev and Kask – who
in turn would make two phone-calls – Lebedev and Shehu, and Rebane
and Morozov – and so on, until everybody in the tree was aware that
there were one hundred thousand cred bounties out for Vidmar and
Delić. It was a simple way of controlling the amount of shared
information, should the Mets ever decide to poke their noses into
Pechev’s business. Gage would have to make sure those branches
below the targets were fully aware of the situation. He started
punching the numbers into the phone.