For Valour (17 page)

I couldn’t resist reaching out and testing whether our ridge cap was still loose. It was. But I’d probably never know whether our cache had been disturbed because I couldn’t risk taking a look. I didn’t want to present a silhouette above the crest.

I flattened myself against the pantiles and hoped that the heli I’d spotted earlier hadn’t been in the business of spotting me. A warm body on a cold roof would have glowed big-time on its infrared scanner screen.

The pub crowd started to spill out onto distant pavements. One bunch of mates laughed much more loudly than you’d expect on a Monday night. Car doors slammed and engines fired up. A girl in high heels click-clacked along Tabard Street, shrieking into her mobile. By the time she was out of earshot, her bestie knew more than anyone needed to know about her day, and so did I.

Everything went quiet again. TV sets were switched off and lights dimmed below me. My shoulder throbbed and I felt a twinge of cramp in my right foot. I wasn’t going to sit up and take my Timberland off, so all I could do was flex my toes as much as I could and try to ignore it.

I was about to ease myself across the ridge and down towards the scaffolding tower on the garden elevation when I heard footsteps by the stairwell. Whoever was down there was keeping to the far side of the refuse bunker, because the motion sensors weren’t getting excited. Maybe the lad who hadn’t liked his dinner was about to settle down for a night among the bin bags.

Then the security LEDs flashed on and someone not too light on his feet did his best to tiptoe along the walkway towards Gaz’s boarded-up front door.

9

I told myself that there were any number of reasons why you might want to hang around outside an uninhabited third-floor flat after midnight with the temperature uncomfortably close to freezing.

But I knew that wasn’t true.

He was so close I could hear him breathing.

I visualized Leatherman Two on stag behind the bins while Leatherman One tried to look like he belonged on the walkway ten feet beneath me. Maybe he was wearing the same expression he’d used when he was admiring the view from the wobbly bridge. Maybe he was checking out the top of the waste stack and thinking, Fuck that for a game of soldiers. It’s one screw head away from falling off the wall …

He gave himself five, coughed up a mouthful of phlegm and gobbed it over the railing. Then he swung himself out onto the fire escape and began to climb towards me.

Beyond filling my lungs with oxygen, I didn’t move a muscle. There was still a chance he’d lose his bottle when he saw the stink-pipe bracket close up. Either way, he’d keep his closely cropped head below the parapet for as long as he possibly could in case I was waiting to kick it off his shoulders.

Five more minutes ticked by and the lights cut out.

Ten minutes after that he still hadn’t shifted.

That meant he was coming on up. He just needed to wipe the glare of the LEDs from his retinas and build his night vision first.

I patted the Browning through the outer skin of my bomber jacket, though I knew I could never use it. If I was right in thinking they were mates of Sniper One, a round between the eyes was probably what these lads deserved, but it would take a lot of explaining. Which was going to leave me with a bit of a challenge if the first thing to appear above the guttering was the suppressor of a CZ-99 short.

I heard movement, and the waste stack gave a wobble. I braced myself, still not wanting to raise my head and present a bigger target. The top of the stink pipe leaned further away from the parapet, first by a few inches, then by a foot or more. As Leatherman’s fist appeared, followed swiftly by his face, the second screw popped out of its fixing.

Without an anchor, the segment of the stack that jutted out beneath the overhang headed further south. Whatever his previous plans had been, he was fast running out of choices. He clung to the pipe with his right hand and groped for the guttering with his left.

He might have ended up taking a nosedive into the tarmac without any help from me, but I wasn’t going to leave that to chance. I grabbed the loose ridge cap with both hands, twisted round onto my arse, flexed my knees, arched my back and launched it at him like a missile.

When four kilos of prime Old English terracotta catches you on the nut, it can really spoil your day. Leatherman’s grip didn’t slacken immediately, but I could see his motor functions were well scrambled. He shook his head and flexed his closely knit and increasingly bloody eyebrows, then raised the fingers of his left hand to the wound, gave a low, caveman growl and plummeted into the darkness.

10

I didn’t stick around long enough to see where Leatherman One landed, but it didn’t sound good. I’d never forget the splat a ketchup-filled condom made when it hit the pavement, and this lad’s skull did much the same.

As his mate ran over to say his goodbyes I hotfooted it to the scaffolding and half slid, half clambered down to Tabard Street, vaulted the park railing and ran for the cover of the landscaped mound and the trees beyond. Leatherman Two wasn’t going to wait for the paramedics to arrive, and I didn’t fancy giving him the opportunity to take up where his cousin had left off.

I took the turning to Eastwell House, the block I’d lived in when I wasn’t mortaring the square with Gaz. I thought about lying up behind the dosser’s hoarding for a while, but when the sirens sparked up behind me, I decided to go straight back to the Premier Inn, pick up my gear and get out of there.

The first part of that plan went as smooth as silk: I slid my access-card into the slot by the back entrance and strapped my daysack onto my back. The second didn’t. I crossed Tower Bridge Road and ducked back into Tanner Street. As I followed it round in the direction of Butler’s Wharf I was nearly sideswiped by a black Passat, one up, travelling at speed.

I veered right past the coffee company at the entrance to Rope Walk and the wagon disappeared into the tunnel beneath the railway line. I knew it wouldn’t take the driver much time to reverse up or complete the Tower Bridge Road circuit. The gates into Rope Walk were barred and locked, so I sprinted down Maltby Street and took the next left underneath the arches. If I couldn’t make it straight back to the Skoda without a tail I’d aim for the maze of alleyways between here and the river.

The sirens were still going strong on the other side of the tracks. I couldn’t help wondering what the boys in blue would make of Leatherman’s strange decision to climb a waste stack after dark, and how long it would take the forensic crew to connect the traumatic injury he’d sustained from the ridge cap with the fall that killed him. I also wondered whether they’d find a rose-coloured tattoo beneath his collar.

I crossed the road that ran along the north side of the railway and nipped into the Arnold Estate. You’d have to be a genius to navigate through this warren in a wagon, and if you stopped for more than five minutes, day or night, the local lads would have it on a low-loader, heading south, with a For Sale sign on the windscreen. Most of the time they lifted bikes, laptops and smartphones, which they fenced in Brick Lane – if they could be bothered to go over the river. It was the kind of place I needed right now.

I’d zigzagged through a couple of archways and around a play area and got most of the way to the rat run through to Jamaica Road before I heard footsteps in pursuit. I didn’t bother looking over my shoulder. It wasn’t going to be good news.

I switched direction towards a group of teenagers with hoodies and jeans hanging off their arses. They were clustered under a street lamp, next to a beat-up metallic orange Subaru Impreza with the world’s biggest rear spoiler and red flames stencilled above the wheel arches. Their cigarette tips glowed extra brightly as I approached.

The footsteps slowed behind me, then stopped. I gave the boys my most cheerful grin. ‘Lads, how would you like to earn yourselves fifty quid?’

There was a glimmer of interest, but their expressions told me that these were hard men here, and I shouldn’t forget it. The one with the most zits slid off the Subaru’s bonnet and came over to invade my personal space.

‘How would
you
like to eat shit?’

He was close enough for whatever he’d eaten for dinner to make my eyes water.

I kept the grin in place. ‘I drank shit once. But that was for a bet.’

Even the meanest and ugliest of them was immediately onside.

‘Fuck
off
! You’re kidding, right?’

I shook my head and dug five ten-quid notes out of my jeans. ‘I don’t do kidding.’

‘What’s the catch, wanker?’

‘No catch. See that guy in the leather jacket behind me?’ I flicked a thumb back over my shoulder. ‘He’s really getting on my tits. All I need is for you lot to go and fuck him up a bit.’

‘Easy.’ Zitface took the money, counted it, and put it in his parka. ‘But it’ll cost you a ton.’

I sucked my upper lip to demonstrate that I was no pushover, then fished out another thirty. ‘Here. That makes a tenner each.’

His eyes narrowed. ‘Why don’t we beat the shit out of you instead, and help ourselves to the rest of your money?’

‘I’ll tell you why.’ I took his hand, pressed the other three notes into the palm and closed it for him, firmly and not very gently. Then I took half a pace towards him, so our noses were almost touching, and patted the chunk of metal in the side of my bomber. I wasn’t enjoying the smell of his breath, but I wanted him and his mates to get the message. ‘Because that’s a gun in my pocket. I’m not just pleased to see you.’

To give the kid credit, he stood his ground. ‘Did you really drink shit?’

‘Sure. A turd in a pint glass. And for a whole lot less than you’re getting on this job.’

He gave this some thought. I could almost hear the cogs engage.

He took a drag on his cigarette and let the smoke leak from his mouth and nose. ‘What’s the secret?’

‘The secret?’

He nodded, keen to know.

‘You’ve got to chug, not chew.’

He winced, and screwed up his face almost as much as I must have done when I was in the process of winning the bet. Then he took a couple of steps back, gathered his crew around him, and gave them a note each as he mumbled his battle plan.

They straightened up and brushed me aside as they swaggered past, on their way to the Gunfight at the OK Corral. It was great to watch. When they were five paces away from Leatherman Two, they stopped, flicked back their parkas and loosened their imaginary Colt .45s in their imaginary holsters.

The astonished look on his face was worth every penny. Which was just as well, because fifteen seconds later they pissed off in all directions without laying a finger on him.

Fair one.

At their age, I’d have done exactly the same.

11

At least I’d bought myself a little bit of distance and some time to catch my breath. As my new best mates scattered across the estate, I turned and bolted for the more upmarket labyrinth of designer workspaces and apartment buildings around St Saviour’s Wharf.

When I’d got halfway down Mill Street the footsteps echoed behind me once more. This time I did look round. I couldn’t see him, which made me reasonably sure he couldn’t see me. I clambered over a gate to my left and darted down a passage between two converted warehouses that led to the Devil’s Neckinger.

The Neckinger was one of London’s many underground rivers, and marked the border between Bermondsey and Southwark. It flowed from somewhere near the Imperial War Museum, beneath Elephant and Castle, and joined the Thames at St Saviour’s Dock.

From the moment Fagin had told me about it, I’d always loved the name. It came from the Devil’s Neckerchief, which is what they called the executioner’s noose back in the days when they hanged convicted pirates from the gibbet at the inlet’s mouth and left their corpses on display downstream.

The gibbet no longer took pride of place there, but the yuppies still had the use of a Victorian derrick every fifty metres or so along the shored-up bank of the tributary, in case they needed to hoist their very expensive furniture through the gable windows. The hooks and chains were silhouetted against the night sky to my right, above a walkway I now realized I couldn’t reach via dry land.

When the gate at the entrance to my passageway started to rattle, I knew there was no going back. It was low tide right now. I’d have to take my chances in the mud.

I grabbed a mooring rope and abseiled down the very slimy stonework between two of the oak pillars that lined the bank. As I went, I remembered Fagin saying that this place used to be Cholera Central, and not just because of the pirates’ bloated corpses. Untreated sewage, festering sheep, rotting fish, the eye-watering fluid from the tanning factories – it all used to flow down here. But fuck it: this wasn’t the first time I’d been up Shit Creek without a paddle.

My plan had been to move as soundlessly as possible down the riverbed, keeping as close to the shadow of the oak pillars as possible, until I reached the first of the ladders that would take me up onto the walkway. As the silt gripped my Timberlands and crept up beyond my knees, I knew I had no choice but to stay exactly where I was. The distance between high and low tide was about five metres at this time of year. Maybe I’d be able to wait an hour or three and swim for it.

I raised my hood for a bit of extra warmth and cover, and slowed my breathing.

I heard the scrape of a boot somewhere above me, then a throat being cleared. A gob of phlegm the size of a jellyfish landed in the mud a metre away from me and glistened in the ambient light. I didn’t look up; just leaned in closer to the woodwork and hoped the next wouldn’t land on my head.

12

I watched the river creep up the inlet towards me. I didn’t have much choice. For the last hour Leatherman Two had been sitting on the edge of the dock, swinging his feet above me and smoking an endless chain of foul-smelling cigarettes. I was coated with mud and slime from mid-thigh down, and it was doing its best to infiltrate beneath my jeans and squeeze itself into my boots.