Christopher Brookmyre - Parlabane 04 (45 page)

Spectators of Suicide

Perhaps it was just an effect of the torchlight, but Rory reckoned Max looked sicker at the mention of the word 'Shiach' than he had when he discovered what he'd eaten for dinner. Max was sitting next to Joanna on the halfway landing, his legs resting a couple of stairs down, swords lying either side. There was a small window in the wall beside him, still open from Parlabane's earlier sortie to the roof. It would offer one last chance if the door was breached or the fire spread.

The tower accommodated a broad staircase leading up to a split-level honeymoon/VIP suite. It didn't offer a lot of floorspace, but was presumably intended to make up for it in privacy and the views afforded in daylight from windows looking out on four sides. There was a bathroom and living area on the lower level, bedroom with four-poster on the upper, from where a trapdoor and a pull-down ladder accessed the turret. All the movable furniture bar the oversize bed (but including the mattress) was piled in front of the door. Rory stood in front of the jumble holding his chainsaw, Emily sitting close by at the foot of the stairs. Kathy and Alison kept watch over the unconscious trio above.

Rory was giving his fellow guards a breakdown of what they'd missed, but it was clear Max could fill in a lot of the blanks himself once that single name had been uttered.

'You were in the TA, weren't you?' Rory put to him pointedly, to let him know he'd filled in a few on Max's behalf.

Max nodded reluctantly. He didn't look in much of a mood to talk.

'Secrets are a luxury we can't afford tonight, Max,' he urged. 'Just give me the bullet points.'

'Okay,' he said, as though coaching himself. 'Okay. I was in the TA. Met Shiach, got talking. You know how he worked it.'

'Only too well.'

Max sighed, pausing again.

'I drove a car, that's all. I only drove a car. He didn't tell me anything else, for my own protection. Just said I had to drive this car somewhere, and that would be enough to start with, to prove my commitment. I had to wear 277

gloves so I left no prints, so I knew it was something dodgy, but there was no getaway, no hit, I just drove this bloody car to where he told me. It was at night, to ensure no-one saw me getting out and into that old white Beetle of his for him to drive me back home. After that, I never saw him again. Never. It was like he disappeared.'

'Where did you leave the car?' Rory asked, a horrible feeling taking hold of his insides. He didn't already know the precise location, but he could have provided a shortlist.

'A carpark next to the Severn Bridge.'

'Oh, Christ,' said Joanna, sounding like Rory felt. The Severn was on his shortlist.

'What?' Max asked.

'It's a suicide spot, Max,' Rory told him. 'People jump off it, and the tides often take their bodies out to sea, so they're never found. I'm sure the car owner's never was, but not because he went off the bridge.'

Rory looked expectantly at Joanna, whose eyes were brimming with tears.

'You know who it was?' he asked.

'Nigel Franklin,' she said, the name causing her to break into sobs. She rested her head on Max's shoulder for a few moments and gradually composed herself, sniffing more tears away before she spoke again. 'He was a lawyer, in Liverpool. That's as much as I knew anyway, until after his death. His obituary said he was involved quite high up in CND, links to Militant too.'

'How did you know him?'

'I slept with him.' She swallowed back another sob. 'I mean I was
paid
to sleep with him.'

Joanna shook her head and sniffed away more tears.

'It's all right,' said Max.

'It's not fucking all right,' she retorted, her voice distorted by her crying. 'I was a student. I was skint. I didn't have a rich mummy and daddy to finance my studies.' She eyed Rory accusingly, which he took on the chin. 'I turned a few tricks. I was very different then: slim, trendy, more outgoing. A friend got me into it. No street-corner stuff, strictly through contacts. I told myself it was easy money, the end would justify the means, all the usual lies. I wanted out of it as soon as I was in, but once you get used to having a few bob, it's hard to let that go, especially when you've got some regulars.'

'Franklin was a regular?'

'No. One of my regulars introduced me to a guy who said he had a business proposition. I had to seduce Franklin, basically, and make him think he had pulled me. He said he was a friend, that it was a favour to give the guy a boost because he was going through a sticky patch in his marriage. Wife was 278

a bitch, making him feel worthless. I'm not sure I bought the story, but it was a lot of money to me, so I went along with it and didn't ask questions.

'Franklin's car was found at the Severn Bridge a couple of weeks later. It was reported that he was thought to have committed suicide because he was being blackmailed over an affair. There were photos sent to his office a few days before, of us going into the hotel where we'd had our one night stand. They'd blanked my face, apparently, so I couldn't be traced. Mind you, that was the least of my worries.
I
was feeling near-suicidal, to have played a part in something that led a man to kill himself. Eventually though, despite my capacity for guilt and paranoia, I had to accept that nobody was going to come looking for me. I got on with my life, but I can't say my self-esteem ever fully recovered. My self-image certainly never did. And now that I know he didn't kill himself over me, I can't say it makes me feel any better.'

'Yeah, well, you think you feel bad?' Rory said to her. 'That plan was
my
fucking idea. It was one of the ones I dreamed up. I ended up killing somebody after all.'

'Come off it, Rory,' Emily appealed. 'You designed the gun, but you didn't pull the trigger.'

'Yeah, but if nobody designed guns, nobody would get
shot
.'

Parlabane, Vale and Ger listened as the raiding party checked every basement room except the blazing one for the hallowed portal they sought, then watched from behind two strategically placed laundry hoppers as the raiders finally made their entrance. The three of them were peeping unseen between gaps in towering piles of fluffy white towels, but Parlabane felt they could have been sitting on the bloody hoppers whistling a tune and still not have been noticed, their visitors intent to the verge of hypnotised by their point of focus now that they'd found it. They approached the trapdoor cautiously, one of them kneeling and wedging it slightly with the tip of a machete while another trained his dart gun on the spot. The door was hauled open on a silent finger-count of three, then a second gunman led the way down, slowly and quietly.

Parlabane listened in with his receiver.

'Nothing so far,' he heard one of them croak.

'They're well inside,' informed Baxter's voice. 'Twenty yards, maybe. The wireframe's got no schematic for down there. Take your time, play it steady. They aren't going anywhere.'

Parlabane looked to Vale, who gave a holding signal.

'Vinnie, bring the axe,' said a whisper. Parlabane removed his receiver because he feared he couldn't suppress a giggle. This was partly due to nerves 279

but mainly due to the fact that these eejits were about to chop down a door that Ger didn't even have the keys to lock.

On the sound of the first axe blow, Vale gave the nod and the three of them ran from behind the hoppers on light feet. Ger closed the trapdoor with the utmost gentility, then they put their collective strength into sliding the huge tumble dryer back against the wall. The dryer in place, they then slid two enormous, concrete-ballasted washing machines tight up against it, making sure no amount of combined effort from below could even rock the thing. Muted banging ensued a few seconds later, suspicions raised by the grinding of metal their efforts had raised. It was entertainingly futile. Parlabane was kind of disappointed nobody shouted: 'Let me out.'

'I counted four,' he said. 'Baxter's still out there. Did you figure any of them for Shiach?'

'Shiach's a wee bald dumpy guy,' Ger said. 'At least, that's who was giving orders out front, and he never went down the hole.'

'Fuck.'

If there'd been one left, it was as good as over, as it would take at least two to shift the machines and free the others. Two kept the game alive, especially two with dart guns.

'Let's see what they're saying,' said Vale, putting a hand to his ear and a finger to his mouth.

'--dio silence from you fucking idiots,' was what they were saying, or Shiach was anyway. 'We need peace to think.'

'Shit, that's. . . ' said Baxter before tailing off, at which it became apparent that it wasn't only the eejits down the trapdoor who'd ceased transmission. The silence lasted a frustratingly long time, easily a minute. Not exactly a marathon endurance, but it felt that way when there were three men standing wordless in a basement, waiting for some kind of clue as to their next move.

'Okay, fuck it,' Baxter resumed. 'It's clean-up time. I'm going to the substation to cut the electricity. A couple of the bastards will be guarding that trapdoor, and the rest must be holed up in the tower: that was their other fallback. You grab your night-sights and head for the basement.'

Parlabane and Vale removed their earpieces again. A certain look from Vale meant he didn't need to verify what each had drawn from the information.

'We know what we have to do,' Parlabane said.

'Indeed.'

'What?' Ger asked.

They told him.

'Sounds pretty risky,' he opined. 'But I cannae suggest an alternative.'

'And time is of the essence,' Vale reminded.

'I need a blade,' said Parlabane.

280

Vale reached behind the hoppers for the rapier he'd received when Rory traded up. Vale's own weapon of choice jutted from his hip pocket.

'Just because they haven't used real guns yet doesn't mean they don't have them, Jack,' he warned. 'And they're definitely down to last resorts.'

'So are we - it's a chance we have to take. I think we should trust each other's proven abilities.'

'I know mine, what are yours?'

'Winding people up until they want to kill me.'

'These people already want to kill you.'

'Then I'm off to a flier.'

'It's not shifting. Whatever's up there weighs a fucking ton. It was a trap, it was a fucking trap.'

'I've found something. Shit. It's the medals. They're all pinned to a sheet.'

'This place is creepy as hell. It's like fucking catacombs or something.'

'Bollocks, one of the bulbs just went.'

'Boss, you need to get us out of here.'

'And I need radio silence from you fucking idiots,' Shiach hissed. 'We need peace to think.'

'Shit, that's. . . ' Fotheringham put a finger to his lips. He removed the receiver from his ear and gestured to Shiach to do the same.

'They're listening,' Fotheringham said quietly, clutching the device inside a balled fist.

'You sure?'

'Definitely. They found out about the medals and they must have picked up at least one of these things too.'

'And you weren't aware of this?'

'It must have been after I left.'

'After you
ran
,' Shiach reminded him. 'You didn't bag any of them and you couldn't warn us that they'd tumbled our transmitters. Remind me again what the hell you were doing in there?'

'What I do best: gather intelligence, listen to people talk. You know that, so don't give me any of your shit. I needed to discover how much they really knew, in case there were any further loose ends we'd overlooked.'

'We haven't tied up these ones yet.'

'Well, it's not my fault you brought in a bunch of fucking no-hopers. I held up my end.'

Shiach bit back a retort: squabbling was the last thing they needed.

'Okay, enough. Let's stay focused, analyse the situation. If they're not in the underground chambers, where are they?'

281

'The tower. That was the other fallback mentioned. Not easy to get into, certainly not with just two of us, but for the time being we can consider the ones up there as out of the equation; some of them are unconscious already. But there must be others on the loose who laid the trap.'

'They'll be guarding it too, to stop us releasing our men. That settles it, then. We hit the basement, take them out, regroup our numbers and then take the tower. We'd better grab spare dart guns to save reloading. It could get hectic down there.'

Fotheringham shook his head.

'I'm not walking into a dead end to face down some bastard with a flamethrower. Who knows what other traps they've set.'

'Well, if that's where they are, what they hell else are we supposed to do?'

'Let's bring the mountain to Mohammed,' he said, popping the sub-vocal back into his ear. 'Okay, fuck it,' he resumed loudly. 'It's clean-up time. . . '

282

Learning How to Smile

Poor Rory. He looked crumpled and almost tearful, like the bad guys could come in right then and he'd just offer himself before their blades because he had it coming to him.

They were alone again, Max having taken Joanna upstairs for a drink of water and some much-needed hankies. Emily looked at the pile of furniture blocking the door: the others would have sufficient notice to get back down here if the enemy arrived outside, and there was definitely no need for Rory to be standing to attention. She beckoned him to come and sit next to her on the stairs.

'It was just a horrible idea, Rory. Who hasn't dreamed up some wicked scheme in their time? In fact, I'm sure you've had even more horrible ideas, like altering the shape of an actress's tits to flog personal loans.'

He smiled a little. She thought for a second he was going to laugh, but it would have been asking too much.

'I should be devising ads for famine-relief campaigns,' he said. 'That's what I'm going to do if I get out of here.'

'If you're making desperate promises like that, maybe it's Liz you should be talking to. She'd be in a position to see you kept them.'

'I'm not saying it out of contrition. I'm saying it because I'm a better man for the job than the charities have been using so far. Never mind TV spots and posters that appeal to bleeding hearts - they'd be coughing up anyway. It's the minted selfish bastards you want to be milking, and I know how they think. I devised one once, still got the storyboard in a drawer somewhere. Handsome black guy in a business suit, briefcase in one hand, his little son holding the other. Their clothes disappear layer by layer as the background changes from outside a semi in the burbs to a mudhut, until they're both standing there in loincloths, swollen bellies, bare feet and the briefcase has been replaced by an empty, cracked bowl. Tagline: Famine is killing your neighbour. Why won't you help?'