Big Boy Did It and Ran Away (51 page)

‘I don’t think you’re gaunny want to see this, but I couldnae get a decent look back there.’

Angelique reached into the drain with both hands and put her foot against the wall, pulling a body out arms‐
first and laying it gently down on the damp floor of the tail‐
race. There was a light clatter on the concrete as she did so, and Ray caught sight of a gun‐
butt strapped around the corpse’s shoulder.

‘Oh Christ,’ he gasped, as Angelique played her torch up and down the body’s gory length. There was a large gap in the lower chest, ribs visible through the ragged flesh, the area ringed in a black scorchmark. Above that, a join‐
the‐
dots trail of bullet holes led from below the left shoulder in a diagonal to what was left of his face; half of his jaw and most of his right cheek having been blown away.

Angelique bent down and pulled the machine gun away from him, revealing the weapon to have enjoyed as good a day as its owner.

‘His gun exploded,’ she said. ‘Looks like he tried to bag somebody then got a big surprise when he pulled the trigger. After that, whoever he was aiming for was a jolly bad sport and finished him off.’

One point deducted for fragging yourself or a teammate, Ray thought.

‘How?’ he asked.

‘Sabotage. Only explanation. Which makes the picture here suddenly a lot more interesting. You’d need to be pretty close to the action to manage a trick like that. It would have to be an inside job.’

‘An infiltrator? Somebody undercover?’

‘No. If there was somebody undercover who’d managed to infiltrate this outfit, then we wouldnae have needed you to suss out what the plan was, and there’d have been a zillion cops waitin’ for them here last night. Maybe all isnae sweetness and harmony among the naughty boys.’

‘A double cross?’

‘Troubled times. If you cannae trust a mass‐
murdering terrorist mercenary these days, who can you trust?’

Angelique unclipped a walkie‐
talkie from the corpse’s belt, transferring it to her own and switching it on.

‘We’re now tuned to Radio Wanker. All this stone won’t help, but we might hear the odd titbit.’

Ray looked again at the face. Now that his attention wasn’t monopolised by what was missing from it, he realised he recognised what was left.

‘This is one of the guys from the bridge.’

‘The budgie‐
murderers. That’s one case closed today, anyway.’

‘What?’

‘Never mind. Help me get him back into the drain. Somebody went to the bother of hidin’ him, presumably so his mates don’t realise they’ve got an enemy in their midst. That goes for us too.’

The radio began showing signs of life, their increasing proximity to the machine hall measurable in bursts of static and semi‐
audible snippets of communication until they were soon receiving complete transmissions. Whoever said eavesdroppers seldom learn anything to their own advantage was probably eavesdropping on the wrong conversations, and definitely didn’t work at GCHQ. It might have been more accurate to say that eavesdroppers seldom learn anything to put their minds at ease.

‘Mercury, this is Matlock. I’m at Turbine Five, base level. There’s a whole lot of blood down here, but no bodies.’

‘I don’t fucking believe this. Where the fuck is Jones?’

‘He’s topside.’

‘No, the other one.’

‘I thought you sent him topside too.’

‘I just spoke to May. He hasn’t seen Jones topside. He wasn’t on the drilling detail.’

‘Which one?’

‘The one I’m fucking looking for. Mick. And not one of you fucking half‐
wits said a fucking thing because everybody just assumed he was with somebody else. Strummer, I thought you were with him at the time.’

‘Strummer, receiving. I found them in a drainage tunnel, but I couldn’t keep up. When I heard Jones had cornered them, I went back out via the tailrace.’

‘So please, one of you, tell me that Jones did not somehow fail to take out two schoolboys from point‐
blank range.’

‘It’s beginning to look like it.’

‘Fuck me. Well if they’re still alive, they’ve still got our radios, so remember: careless talk saves lives. Find them. Mercury out.’

They listened to the exchange standing perfectly still, barely breathing, the volume down as low as was still audible so as not to carry beyond their position. Ray felt his hairs prickle as he heard Simon’s voice for the first time in all those years. The accent was softened and his pronunciation more crisp, like he was speaking to foreigners, but it was unmistakably him. The other voices confirmed that he was speaking to foreigners; though like the assassin on the bridge, this was indicated by a neutrality of accent rather than any stumbling English.

‘Schoolboys,’ Angelique whispered portentously.

‘I was just thinkin’ the same thing. That truck was parked outside Burnbrae Academy while they went in and got me. Schoolboys are inquisitive.’

‘Resourceful too, by the sound of it. It must have been them who sabotaged that gun. And if they’ve sabotaged one …’

‘That sounds like a dangerous assumption,’ Ray warned.

‘You’re right. Just thinkin’ out loud. Hoping out loud. Let’s stick to what we know for sure. Personnel: there’s Darcourt, callin’ himself Mercury. Jones is the dead one, but there’s another Jones as well. There’s also Strummer, May and Matlock. That’s five at least.’

‘Twelve. Minus the stiff.’

‘Twelve?’

‘The codenames: Mercury, May, Strummer, Matlock, two Joneses: Queen, the Sex Pistols and The Clash. Rock bands, all of them four‐
piece.’

‘Yeah, that’s where the code names came from, but it doesnae mean—’

‘You wouldnae have two Joneses if you didnae need all twelve names. There’s eleven still out there, Angelique. Those five plus Taylor and Deacon, Simonon and Headon, Lydon and Cook.’

‘What about Vicious?’

‘Simon thought Sid Vicious was a tit.’

‘But he’s cool with Freddie Mercury?’

‘You’d be surprised.’

‘Okay. Eleven of them out there, and they’re now actively lookin’ for intruders. At least we know the odds. Come on.’

Angelique quickened the pace as they resumed their ascent, then drew to another halt when they reached the surge chamber. She played the torchlight around, picking out platforms either side as the tunnel widened into a hexagon, its walls extending out of sight into the rock above. There was a tall lip where the tailrace met the chamber, meaning that a certain volume was required to accumulate before it would spill over and begin draining down into the loch. On the other side, there was water filling the hexagon two or three feet below the lip, and, according to the leaflet, this was because the tunnel plunged sharply before the chamber, creating a steep upslope to slow the rushing waters exiting the turbines. The shaft overhead took further sting out of it, then it spilled steadily out of the chamber and down into the tailrace.

They climbed the ladder on to the platform on the left, where Angelique found a switch and illuminated the chamber via inset lighting panels. Two doors were now visible on opposite sides of the pool. The one on the right said ‘Machine Hall’; its counterpart ‘Transformer Chambers’.

‘That’s what we want,’ Angelique said, indicating to the left. ‘The cable shaft goes from the transformers to the pylons up top.’

Above the entrance to the tailrace, Ray could also now see a wheel‐
operated valve on one wall. Next to it, a notice warned: ‘Maintenance procedures only. Automatic override during generation. Manual override in Control Room.’

He gazed down at the lip, where there was a rubber‐
lined indentation running the width of the tunnel.

‘What are you looking at?’ Angelique asked, having already gone through the door then stuck her head back out to see what was keeping him.

‘A valve. For sealing off the tunnel, I think.’

‘Why would anybody want to do that?’

‘Maintenance, according to this. And how about if there might be guys with guns coming down here looking for the late Mick Jones?’

‘Good shout. Close it. It’s one fewer angle they can attack us from.’

‘Whereas in the cable shaft, there’ll only be two: above and below.’

‘Just hurry up.’

The wheel moved at a finger‐
blisteringly grudging pace, which Ray at first put down to the initial stiffness that accompanied the turning of any such circular device, from valves to jar‐
lids, but there was no sudden easing, and the whole procedure passed at the same rate until the door was sealed. Fortunately, the only grinding came from Ray’s bones, so at least it didn’t make any noise. He gave his aching shoulders a shake, then walked quickly through the door into a dark and narrow passage, lit only by the rooms it connected.

After the darkness of the tunnel and the low, striplight flicker of the surge chamber, the transformer room made Ray feel like a pit‐
pony, stumbling dazed into the brightness. There were three massive machines housed in the chamber, bare rock on the walls and corrugated aluminium insulating the ceiling, reflecting back lighting already so bright it was easy to believe the entire station’s output was required to power it.

The transformers sat to his right, against one of the rock walls, fed by grey steel pipes and tubes like they were gigantic iron lungs and the patients inside had paid for the gear with their Kensitas coupons. Great red coils, twice his height, jutted upwards from each like defensive spines on metallic dinosaurs, and all around Ray the air hummed with an electric buzz that seemed to vibrate his very bones.

He couldn’t see Angelique, and was about to call out when he remembered how suicidally stupid that could be. Looking up, he observed nine thick, black cables, three from each transformer, threaded through steel guidance loops as they were drawn into a gap in the ceiling. There were three cables on each wall of the overhead shaft, and a ladder on the fourth, but no Angelique. There had to be a stairway somewhere to access the bottom end of the vent, and that was where she’d be.

A door came into view as Ray walked past the first of the transformers, opening outwards as he approached. Thank fuck, he thought, having endured a momentary insecurity unnervingly reminiscent of turning around in a department store and discovering his mum was nowhere to be seen. The memory made him think of Lost in the Supermarket, not a very comforting recollection either, given its immortal rendering by The Bacchae.

‘Machine Hall Access’ was denoted in heavy black type, legible now that Ray had rounded the transformer and the opening door was at a less obtuse angle. Beyond it was a closed second door, at ninety degrees to the first, bearing the legend ‘Cable Shaft Access’, the significance of which hit his brain about half a second before a bullet hit his chest.

Ray fell backwards, grunting with pain, his memory reminding him he was wearing kevlar and his nerve‐
endings loudly disputing the benefits. Two men had come through the passage, the first reflexively responding by drawing a pistol and firing a single shot. By the time Ray opened his eyes, the man had crossed the floor and was standing above him, legs astride, pointing the pistol at his head, a shotgun slung across his back. His eyes were narrowed, finger on the handgun trigger. Nobody had fucked with his weapon, that was painfully sure.

‘Say your prayers, asshole,’ he taunted, before his eyes suddenly widened in incomprehension. ‘Ash?’ he asked, incredulous, the query giving the still reeling Ray time to recognise him as one of the goons who’d abducted and later mock‐
executed him. Boyle, he’d called himself then; but which rock‐
star handle was he going under now?

‘Howdy,’ Ray responded, breathless. The second man moved into view alongside, pointing a machine gun. Ray didn’t recognise him.

‘What the fuck are you doing here?’

‘I missed you guys,’ he replied. He kept his eyes firmly on Boyle because he knew if he looked elsewhere, he’d be bound to look up, and then they’d both be screwed. Both? Everybody.

‘Who is this prick?’ the second gunman asked. ‘Is he a cop or what? May said there was something funny about him, something Mercury was holding back.’

Boyle nodded, bemused. ‘I think we need to get the two of them together and ask a few questions, don’t you, Mr Matlock? Get him on his feet.’

The second gunman hauled Ray upright, grabbing the speargun from him and throwing it to the ground. Boyle looked at it witheringly.

‘Who were you hoping to kill with that? The Little Mermaid? Come on.’

Boyle turned to lead the way, Matlock at Ray’s back, giving him a shove in the shoulder blades like he didn’t know which way was forward. Ray heard a thump, as though somebody had dropped a large cabbage, and felt something spray his wetsuit at the shoulder. He and Boyle turned around simultaneously to see Matlock teeter unsteadily on his feet, eyes expressing confusion. There was a spear jutting through the front of his neck, pointing downwards at an acute angle, blood pouring off the end of it like it was a burst pipe. His right hand reached up in exploratory fashion, as though a fly had landed on his throat, before he collapsed like a suddenly discarded puppet.

Boyle looked upwards for the source just as the source dropped behind him in a flash of black. He spun around to point the pistol, but there was already a foot travelling to meet his wrist. Ray heard a crack of breaking bone as the weapon spun away from Boyle’s hand and skidded on the solid concrete. He then had to dive clear as Boyle’s head jerked backwards and his body was thrown clean off his feet by the force of the next kick. The gunman’s heels flailed at the floor as he tried to regain balance, but he only succeeded in sustaining his momentum a few feet more, slamming the back of his head against one of the transformers with a dampened clang. Boyle slumped down into a sitting position, more by accident of the angle at which he’d landed than any control he was able to exercise. His head rolled to one side, eyes open, blood pouring from his nose into his slack‐
jawed open mouth, enough to drown him if he wasn’t already dead.

Boyle wasn’t the only one gaping. Ray was agog, looking back and forth between the two gunmen and their sole assailant.