Dark Winter (25 page)

I left it open for a minute and watched Suzy wiping her eyepieces with the cuff of her fleece. Then, tightening up the valve and brushing back my hair, I put the respirator to my face and adjusted the elastic straps round the back of my head. My nose filled with the smell of new rubber.

The canister was mounted on the left-hand side – so you could get a weapon into your right shoulder. Unscrewing it, I covered the gap with my hand and sucked in hard to make the respirator squash against my face. The seal was good.

Next was the SD. We had three thirty-round magazines each, more than enough. If we needed anywhere near a hundred and eighty rounds on this job we’d be severely in the shit and probably land up dead. We had nowhere to carry the spare mags; for some unknown reason, Packet Oscar didn’t come with mag carriers, or even a chest harness for the weapon. This meant we wouldn’t be able to run round and fight with both hands free; we’d have to put them down and maybe even leave them on target, which was where the Morrisons gloves came in.

I put them on and pressed the on button of the HDS with a rubbery finger. The heads-up sight started to glow. In theory the batteries in these things lasted for days, but I’d had bad experiences with them in the past and switched it off again immediately.

We each pushed a full 10mm mag into the SD’s housing. I listened for the click before giving the mag a shake and pulling on it a bit to make sure it was fully home.

Suzy held her right hand over the cocking piece. ‘Ready? After three. One, two, three.’

We made ready together, both pulling back our cocking pieces, which ran along the side of the chunky barrel, then letting them slide forward so the working parts picked up a round.

I checked chamber by pulling back slightly on the cocking piece once more, then applied safe. Suzy was ahead of me again: she’d already undone her NBC kit and was ripping apart the Velcro that secured the top flaps of the map pockets on her trousers. An SD magazine went into each; it meant they wouldn’t rattle. I copied her, thinking about my Browning. ‘I’m not bothering with the short. Even if I need it, I haven’t got anywhere to put it.’

There was no reply as she placed her pick-and-rake wallet in the chest pocket of the smock, closed the Velcro fastening and checked it was secure. We couldn’t afford for anything to fall out: we didn’t want to make any more noise than we had to, and we didn’t want to leave anything behind. If we weren’t able to pick up our empty cases, then so be it, but that was it.

‘Is that your way of insisting the shorts stay in the car?’

I twisted the bottom off my mini Maglite and reversed the bottom battery so that I had power again – something else I didn’t want to run out on me when on target. ‘Yeah, along with our docs – why risk leaving anything in there?’

‘Done. But this car park of yours had better be safe.’

My MOE wallet stayed in the boot.

She was silent for a moment. ‘Nick, what happens if they do contaminate us – you know, start throwing DW about?’

‘We’ll just have to assume we’re in the shit, and hope the suits work while we wait an hour or so for the stuff to lose its fizz.’

‘Just sit tight and wait?’

‘What else can we do?’ I reached into the back of my jeans. ‘Apart from giving it a bit of help.’ I pressed out four capsules and offered her the card as I felt them make their way down my gullet.

A set of headlights approached from the direction of King’s Lynn, disappearing for a few seconds as the road dipped. We got back inside the Peugeot and I took my respirator with me, cleaning the eyepieces with my sweatshirt as the lights got nearer. For a few seconds we were bathed in a misty glow as the passing headlights cut through our steamed-up windows. I glanced at Suzy. She no longer looked so hyped-up as she polished her eyepieces all over again, with short, distracted strokes. I checked that the pressure valve was screwed up tight for the last time, wondering if maybe she had a capsule stuck in her throat or something.

We collected up all the plastic wrapping and shaving kit and threw them into the boot. Everything we needed on target was now stowed in the ready bags, so I could take off my gloves and shove them into my pockets. Nothing that came out of the car on to the target area would carry our fingerprints: we’d be going in sterile and, with luck, coming out the same.

‘How come you know this place?’ She closed the boot. ‘Family holidays?’

We walked back either side of the car. ‘Very funny,’ I said. I couldn’t see her face in the darkness. ‘We didn’t do holidays.’ The truth was, we didn’t do family either. ‘I used to live a few miles down the coast. Just for a while.’

‘With Kelly?’

The doors opened and the interior light came on as we both got back in. Suzy was waiting for an answer, but she wasn’t going to get one. ‘OK, what about this, then? How much of a coincidence is it that the source is shacked up in King’s Cross?’

‘All I want to do is get this job over and done with so I can get back to the States.’

‘Sort out Kelly?’

‘All kinds of shit.’

32

Both doors closed and the light went out. She turned the ignition, and I rearranged the Browning because the half-cocked hammer was starting to make my stomach sting. The red sore had never gone away after years of carrying one of these things, but it was now starting to weep.

Another couple of cars sped past. The driver of the last punched his horn four or five times and we were treated to a chorus of ribald yells from his passengers.

Suzy was back to her normal hyped-up self. ‘They think we’re shagging.’ She cupped her hands and pretended to shout back at them as they disappeared into the distance. ‘Hey, I’m not that desperate.’

I checked my traser as she wiped a hole in the condensation on the windscreen. ‘You mean that shave was all for nothing?’

As Suzy drove back past the docks the arc lights on the other side of the fenceline were shining like a floodlit stadium. Over to our left, across the darkness of the wasteland, the
Corrie
houses were doing their best to compete. The street-lamps on Walker Street started by the bridge and stretched away from us, but cast no light on the narrow path along the canal. There was a secure triangle of shadow alongside the back walls and fences for us to work in.

Suzy reminded me there was one more thing we had to do before we parked up and headed for the target. ‘You’ve got to call him, Nick. I’d do it but, hey, I’m driving.’

‘Let’s just call him when we’re done and then we keep control.’ The more the Yes Man knew, the more he might want changed – and the more influence he’d have over what we were doing. It wasn’t the way I liked to work.

‘We can’t do that, we’ve got to call him now. I will if you don’t want to, it’s no biggie. He needs a sit rep.’

He needed a kick in the bollocks, but that would have to wait. Reluctantly I opened up the moan-phone and dialled. I hated him knowing what I was up to; it made me feel exposed. The phone rang just once.

‘You should have called earlier.’

‘Well, we’ve done the recces. We should be on target in about an hour. How long after that depends on making entry. We’ve seen no sign of life.’

‘The second you get out, I want to know if you’ve got Dark Winter and how much of it. You will take control of it at all costs.’

‘Yep.’

‘Yep what?’

I took a deep breath. ‘Yep, sir. Is there anything more about the target being flagged?’

‘No. It’s a local issue. The town has a huge South East Asia II [illegal immigrant] problem. Chinese gangs use the derelict housing as a holding tank before spraying them around the country. Nothing to do with us.’

‘Yes, sir.’

The phone went dead from his end. Suzy was all smiles. ‘That went well, I take it?’

The railway station was coming up and Morrisons shone a big yellow welcome at us as we headed for the car park. I bent down into the footwell and unthreaded my bumbag belt from my jeans, shoving it under the seat along with all my Nick Snell cover docs, the Browning and its spare mags.

I got Suzy to stop by the pay-and-display machine. ‘My treat. You park.’ Nine pounds twenty’s worth of coins later, I had a ticket that would see us through till midnight the next day.

The Morrisons and Matalan signs on the other side of the tracks glowed against the sky as Suzy dumped her documents under her seat and I stuck the ticket inside the windscreen. I threw my remaining coins into the glovebox, and joined her as she retrieved her ready bag. The boot went down, and we checked everything was locked and out of sight before she hit the key fob.

We walked past the little tea-cum-newsagent’s shop and into the station. To anyone watching, especially the CCTV that covered the almost empty car park, we were travellers about to catch a train. I just hoped they didn’t follow us all the way through the station because we walked straight out the other side, past six or seven waiting minicabs, and into the Morrisons’ lot. From there we retraced our earlier route.

Nothing had changed, except that it was dark. Lights were on in most of the houses. Some curtains were closed, but through others I could see people watching TV with plates on their laps. Suzy pulled out two of the bricks set into the wall at the DLB, and threw in the car keys, then replaced them. If the shit hit the fan and we had to do a runner, at least one of us would be able to get to the car.

When we got to Loke Road I checked left, down towards the shops. The burger bar was doing a roaring trade, judging by the steam billowing out of the extractor vent. The corner shop next to it was shut, its windows protected by heavy grilles.

We crossed the road at the point we had earlier, just short of the shops. Two Chinese teenagers, a girl and a boy, aged maybe fifteen or sixteen, came out of the alleyway, giggling to each other as they clumsily tried to hold hands and walk at the same time. There was a dark Ford Focus, two-up, parked a bit further along. The driver was as bald as a snooker ball. He turned his head to look at the youngsters as they crossed the road, and studied them a bit too long before he turned back and said something to his mate.

We entered the alleyway to the sound of a lot more TVs on the go. Most downstairs lights were on, and there was the occasional blurred movement behind thin curtains and frosted glass. Suzy changed hands with her bag so she could get closer. ‘You see the Focus?’

‘They were checking out those kids. Could be drug-dealers, could be police. Or just a couple of perves. Fuck it, let’s just get on with it.’

We hit Walker Street and turned left, towards the junction with Sir Lewis and the footbridge. ‘You check the target and I’ll check left.’ As we walked over the crossroads I looked up the other half of Sir Lewis Street. Four kids shot past on bikes with ice-lolly sticks threaded through the spokes, and the headlights of two cars swept towards us. The one further back turned in and parked about half-way down. I knew it was the Focus. They could just have stopped at the chip shop on their way home, but if it was anything to do with us, we’d find out soon enough.

Suzy looked up at me and gave a loving smile. ‘No life on target.’

I smiled back as we approached the bridge. ‘The Focus just parked short of the junction.’

She knew we were now committed. ‘Fuck it, so what?’

We got to the bridge and turned right instead of crossing. There was no other way to do this job except brass it out. No point just hovering around and looking indecisive: we had to look like we belonged, like we had a purpose.

We carried on along the path, in the shadow of the yard walls and fences. Suzy kept a little behind me because the path was too narrow for both of us and the bags. We counted the houses. Three lights, four lights . . . I could see the Q8 tanks in the docks to my half-left, and the street-lamps of the busy main casting a weak shadow over this side of the lumpy wasteground.

We reached the target and still there wasn’t any light from the top windows. Traffic droned along the main behind me and I heard a bath running upstairs in the house next door to the left.

We moved up against the garden wall and stood in its shadow. It was about seven feet high, with access via a wooden door. The general clatter of domestic life filled the night air as we pulled on our gloves. A couple of screams came from the direction of Walker Street, then the rattle of bikes, getting louder. Almost immediately, the kids flew over the bridge, turning right. Suzy and I cuddled into each other as if we were kissing in the shadows. The lights of the main turned them into silhouettes. They were too busy trying not to fall into the river while cutting each other up to pay attention to strangers.

Suzy was taking the performance a little further than I expected: she put her arms around my neck, pulled me down and kissed me hard on the lips. It only lasted a few seconds, not enough time for me to think about what was happening, only that I got a faint hint of strawberry yoghurt and it tasted good.

‘I thought you weren’t that desperate . . .’

She still held my head, and pulled it back down, but this time to talk into my ear. ‘Don’t flatter yourself, Norfolk boy. It’s just if you screw things up that could be the last chance I ever get to kiss a man.’

We waited for the kids to go away, laughing and screaming at each other as they pedalled into the darkness. Suzy and I disentangled ourselves as Bathroom Billy shouted at Maureen to bring him up a towel.