The Chop Shop (11 page)

Michael swallowed
the lump in his throat, checked his watch and then walked on. The hordes of
people slowed his pace. He clenched his teeth as an old lady with too much
jewellery on stopped right in front of him, too sudden for him to slow down in
time, and he crashed right into the back of her.

She turned
around and scowled at him, as she straightened her bearskin coat.

“Watch it,
beggar,” she said with all the menace of a vicious dog.

Her bodyguard
pushed him away, and they traded stares for a moment. Michael felt the rage
building inside of himself, and the smug, superior expressions on both of their
faces only made it worse.

“Go on, try
something. Come on, what are you waiting for?” the bodyguard said in his
African accent.

Michael passed
them by, and brisk footsteps followed after him, pace quickening. He clenched
one hand into a fist.

“Michael, slow
down; I'm here to pick you up,” Samantha said. She was wearing a black coat,
face seeming a little fresher than it had when he last saw her.

He relaxed his
hand and exhaled as she gave him a smile. “I thought Richard was picking me
up.”

Samantha's smile
faded, replaced by a few creases across the brow. “We've got problems. A lot
can happen in a week. What happened to your face?”

“Did you see
what happened on the news over there? The US military were a little overzealous
in their questioning of me. Fighting has broken out between multiple states.
It's another war. They only let me go so quickly because somebody put in a good
word with their commanding officer.”

Her shoulders slumped.
“We should get going. Harris wants you back at the shop tomorrow. My car's
outside.”

They walked
towards the exit.

“What's the
situation on the streets?” Michael said.

“It's calmed
down a bit, for now. Harris is really pissed about something, though. He blew a
fuse at me yesterday because I sent something to the wrong office. It's the
first time I've ever seen him give a damn about something so petty before.”

A young man with
a drooping moustache leapt in front of him, clutching examples of fake identity
cards in his hands. The ink had smudged on some of them until the writing was
illegible. Michael sidestepped and hurried to catch up with Samantha.

“I hate this
place,” she said. “It's worse than Lower London. Every lowlife, criminal and
nutcase trying to ply their trade here. Let's go out this exit; I can't stand
those teenage prostitutes.”

They found the
prostitutes and pimps by the doors. The one with a dark, bushy beard
wolf-whistled at Samantha as she walked past them.

“Hey, you work
for me? I give you lots of money, everything you want. These little bitches are
useless.”

Samantha
swallowed the lump in her throat, and she walked faster, eyes focused straight
ahead, fighting the urge to look back.

“I am here every
day if you change your mind,” the European called after her.

She fumbled with
her keys when they reached her car. Its body was red and possessed a few more
curves on it than the junk he drove, but the paint was scratched, and one
window sported a spider-web crack in the corner.

Michael saw the
pimp coming towards them, grinning with his yellow teeth at Samantha. “Hey, we
got off to a wrong start, yes? You and me, let's go to the pub. I give you
anything you want and more. Ditch this fucker, he nothing compared to me.”

“Piss off back
to Serbia, or whatever shit hole you came from,” Samantha said.

The man's grin
faded. “You fucking whore. I'm not giving you a choice.”

Michael slammed
both palms into the pimp's chest, and then grimaced in pain as it felt as
though he'd hit a brick wall. The man slapped him across the cheek and spun him
hard into the car.

“You little
pussy. I'll break you in like one of my bitches.”

He swung a punch
at the man, but an open palm swallowed his fist. The pimp wrenched his arm
aside, and Michael struggled against his hold until a blow struck him square on
the jaw, opening up his lower lip and splattering his blood over the car
window. The man released him, and Michael sank to the ground.

He reached for
his mouth, trying to stem the flow of blood, but his effort was futile, and the
pimp grabbed Samantha by the scruff of her coat. Michael tried to stand, then
collapsed onto his hands and knees as it felt like his brain was haemorrhaging
from the impact.

The pimp landed
beside him a second later. He shrieked like a woman, clutching at the butterfly
knife buried in his left eyeball. A spasm of pain crippled him, until he worked
up the courage to pull the knife out. His eyeball came out the socket, still
attached to the blade and trailing optic nerve.

He cried tears
from his remaining eye. “You bitch, you fucking bitch. I'll rape you all night
long.”

Michael stood
up. Blood ran down the front of his white shirt. He kicked the pimp in the
groin, and then again and again, losing count of how many blows he planted
there until the man rolled onto his side and puked.

Samantha pulled
him away. “Michael, let's go. Forget him.”

He kicked the
man one more time for good measure, before getting in the passenger seat. Pain
still grieved him, and he buried his face in a hand, feeling the car rumble as
Samantha keyed the engine. She reversed, and the car gave a violent jolt,
followed an instant later by another, as she reversed over him.

Samantha drove
away, and the wheels left a bloody trail in their wake.

“I think you
just killed him,” Michael said.

“And it feels
wonderful. You're still bleeding. Are your teeth okay? There's a packet of
tissues in the glove compartment.”

Michael felt
around his mouth with a finger. “I don't think anything is broken.”

He pulled the
glove compartment open. Two blister packets fell out onto the floor, each one
still holding a few left over pills. Michael picked them up and held them to
the light, eyeing the antidepressant name printed over and over again on the
foil wrapper.

“I forgot they
were in there. Just forget you saw them,” Samantha said. She kept her eyes on
the road.

“This was what
David was ribbing you for?”

“Yeah, but I
don't want to talk about it, okay?”

His head was
still splitting from the pain as well as jet lag. He turned away from her and leaned
his head against the door window, feeling the surface of the road vibrate
through the glass. He watched the white road markings pass him by like a
flat-lined electrocardiogram.

Richard was
waiting for him in the street beside the police compound, just past the entry
checkpoint. He sat on an overturned box, reading a newspaper. Michael
approached him, but he didn't look up, and the only expression on his face was
a frown, as he stared at an interior page of the London News.

“What are you
doing out here?” Michael said.

“I'm in deep
shit, at least, according to this journalist I am. Things have really gone to
hell while you've been gone. Harris kept chucking me on dead end crap that
nobody cares about until you came back,” Richard said. He turned the paper
around so Michael could see.

“That's not a
very flattering picture of you.”

Richard folded
the paper and frowned again. “We wasted some fuckers dealing drugs and stolen
goods from a company warehouse, like you do, and there's three guys in the back
room trying to get out through a window, but the door wouldn't open properly.
Long story short, there's five of us trying to smash the door down until
somebody managed to blow it off the hinges. By the time we get in there, they're
all gone, along with all their drugs and their money.

“You know who's
waiting for us when we come out? Some pencil-necked journalist. He blinds me
with the flash on his camera and then he just vanishes. I hunt that stolen
property down to the building, we waste four of them, recover the property, and
what does the paper run? A story about police incompetence and escaping drug
dealers.”

“They run
stories about fat, bankrupt celebrities indulging in surgery on one page, and
on the next it's stories about pretty young blondes from rich families starving
to death from anorexia. Forget it. Nobody will care in a week. Life goes on,”
Michael said.

Richard tossed
the paper into the bin, as they walked towards the station.

“It's
eight-fifty by my count. Sam said we have to meet Harris at nine. He wants to
see us. Not the way I want to come back to the office today,” Michael said.

They passed
through the main entrance, nodding to the policemen on guard duty.

“You're in luck,
because we're not meeting him in his office. Our investigation is temporarily
suspended. Temporarily is the keyword, though. Don't ask me why, because he's
been all over us like a bad rash about that killing. Hill and his rabble are
going to be there as well,” Richard said.

Michael hit the
lift button harder than he intended. He grimaced.

“You look a
little tense. And bruised. What happened over there? What did Harris have you
do? And don't tell me you were on holiday.”

The lift
arrived. Michael waited until the doors closed behind them. “It was about our
case, so no yabbering to anyone else, okay? God knows how he got the money for
it, but he hooked me up with some people in DC. It was unofficial, but I think
they were probably government or something, doing a little on the side for the
money. I'll tell you more later.

“I got shot at
by armed militia on the way back, and then the US military seized me, put me in
a cell and did the whole waterboarding thing. Somebody must have put a good
word in with the commanding officer, because they let me walk a couple of days
later. There's infighting between different states now, as well as with
Mexico.”

“Shit, they're
really going for another civil war?” Richard said, shaking his head.

They stepped out
of the lift.

“Somebody
assassinated the president. I don't think you'll get a more definitive answer
to your question.”

Richard sighed
and took the lead. “Two thirds of the world is in ruins from the last war, and
now they think it's a good idea to have another one? They're pissing it all
away like a bunch of idiots.”

“My sentiments
exactly.”

Harris and some
of the other policemen were already in the briefing room. The major nodded to
him as they entered. “You made it back in one piece, I see.”

“Just about.
We'll need to talk,” Michael said.

“Later. There
are some pressing matters we need to see to. Take a seat. We're early, but I'm
going to start anyway.”

“Where's Hill?”
Richard said.

“In the
armouries. He's already aware of what's going on. I'll cut right to the chase,
seeing as most of you have heard something about it already. We're not meeting
the crime targets set by the government on our contract, and that applies to
all the other stations as well. With the chaos and rioting going on lately,
we're falling even further behind.”

A few of the men
muttered in discontent to each other.

“Headquarters is
not happy, the company is not happy and you can be assured that it's going to
reflect upon revenue streams. There have been people in the government who have
wanted to ditch Assurer's contract for a while now, so my orders have come
straight from the top, and now I'm giving them straight to you: do whatever you
need to in order to make up lost ground. It'll cost the government a lot of
money they don't have to change up the contract prematurely, so we should be
okay as long as we can give them a bone.

“I don't care if
you lie, trick, frame, forge or kill. You get me some results. We're
short-staffed, I know, so everyone is going to be on the front lines.
Detectives will be generating intelligence, and the rest of you, crack skulls.
Get moving.”

They filtered
through the doorway and took the lift down to the parking area.

“Tell me you've
got some leads on the side we can follow,” Michael said.

“I don't.
Informants, people on the wanted list? Forget it.”

“Great. We can sit
in the car on a street corner and wait for somebody to get mugged.”

“We've been
lagging on this stuff for a while, but it's only become an issue since people
have been opening up on us in the streets. See where I'm going with this?”
Richard said.

“Unfortunately.
It stinks more than a piece of rotten meat.”

Corporal Hill
waited outside by an infantry fighting vehicle. He wore a gas mask and CRBN
suit beneath his combat equipment.

“Nice outfit.
You planning on walking down the catwalk?” Richard said.

Hill stuck a
gloved middle finger up at him. “I've got to go and hit a suspected drug plant.
We've known about it for ages, but never had the time to go after it. If it
isn't there anymore, then we'll make one up and log it anyway.”

“Have fun,”
Richard said.

The corporal
passed them a folded up piece of paper. “Here's a little tip to help get you
lot started. Firearms seizures are one of the biggest things we're falling
behind on. Take a gun from the evidence locker and make him squeal; he's got
some gang banger friends, so make him give up their location. We'll be finished
by the time you get it out of him, so we'll roll them up together.”

Michael pulled
up outside the estate and its tower blocks. Two were demolished ruins, nothing
more than rubble that had been picked at and scavenged from for years. The
other three stood twenty floors high, nearly touching the underside of the
Upper London plate.

Young children
played amongst mud fields covered in rubbish and debris. They wore tattered
rags and sheets for clothes, moving barefooted and bow-legged over splinters,
brick and the odd syringe. Their bellies were bloated, whilst their bones stuck
through paper-thin skin and the flies never seemed to leave them alone.

The smell of
burning human waste met his nose as soon as he stepped out of the car. Black
smoke rose from the fires.

“This doesn't
seem like a good place to leave your car. You should have parked a few streets
back,” Richard said.

“Good luck
trying to walk out of this dump if we get into trouble. He's on the top floor
of that tower.”

They followed
the concrete path to the tower block entrance, stepping over dog faeces and
rotting meat. A Rottweiler darted from the bushes and lunged at them. The chain
leash snapped taut and yanked the beast back, and the dog bared its teeth,
barking, still struggling against its restraint.

Richard kicked a
tin can at the dog. It lunged at them again, continuing to choke itself on the
collar. Yellow plastic tape criss-crossed the lifts. Michael continued up the
stairs. He could smell the scent of cooking in one of the flats. Curry or
kebab, perhaps.

The concrete
floor had been defaced with colourful graffiti and gang tags, just like the
walls and ceilings. Butcher Boys was the most common tag, edging out older ones
that hadn't been touched for longer than he cared to guess.

He was out of
breath by the twelfth floor, and he stopped at the balcony and looked out
across the urban decay.

“What a dump.
Everywhere is a dump these days, but this place manages to take the prize. I
give it a few months before half those children are dead and replaced by the
next lot,” Richard said.

Michael nodded.
“Things are going to get worse, and they'll keep on getting worse for a while
yet. Another decade, perhaps, and maybe things will have stabilised a bit, if
we're even still around to see it. Best not dwell on it, eh?”

Richard looked
over the edge. “That's a long drop down there. It was twice as long for Jim
Belton. I wonder what he was thinking during the fall?”

“I'm more
interested in what he was thinking before the fall. Everything after that is
irrelevant to the shooting at his home. Let's go, we've wasted too much time
already.”

They turned and
found themselves face to face with a tattooed old lady, with a dozen piercings
across her face and ears. She only had one arm. The other had been amputated at
the elbow. She limped forward, scowling at them. “Who are you? I know everyone
here, but I don't know you.”

“We're here to
visit somebody. An old friend,” Michael said.

The old lady
spat at their feet. She reached into her purse and pulled out a revolver with a
barrel twice as long as her index finger.

“You're
corporate scum pretending to be policemen. You don't scare me. A teenager tried
to rob me two weeks ago; I blew his brains out with this, and I'm still finding
chunks in the carpet, after I fed his body to that mutt by the entrance. It
leaves a nasty stain. Where the hell were your sort then? His parents live next
door. They don't even care, because they're too busy needling up. Fucking half-breed
bitch.”

“Half-breed?”
Michael said.

“Mixed-race. You
stupid or what? She put the gun away and forced a cigarette into the corner of
her mouth.

A firework went
off by one of the bins below. The old lady lit her cigarette, inhaled for as
long as she could, and then blew it all in their faces. She hobbled away
towards the stairs.

“Now that's just
charming,” Michael muttered.

They made their
way up the rest of the stairs. Both of them pulled their guns as they
approached the door. Most of its red paint had flaked away and was scattered
across vomit-stained concrete. Loud music blasted from inside an adjacent flat,
as Richard kicked a rat away.

Michael rang the
doorbell, but nobody answered, so he rang it again, and then again. He saw a
silhouette approached through the frosted glass. Richard exchanged a nod with
him.

The door opened
an inch until the security chain was taut. Jason Simons peered through the gap
at them. “Who are you?”

Michael slammed
his foot into the bottom of the door, and splinters erupted, as the chain burst
free of the wood and the door swung wide open. Jason fell backwards. He rolled
over onto his belly and tried to crawl away, shrieking to whoever else was in
the flat with him. Richard kicked him in the groin.

“Shut up,” he
said.

“Watch him,”
Michael said, moving into the flat, gun raised and finger resting on the
trigger guard. Yellowed wallpaper peeled away to reveal mould and grime, and a
strange smell hung in the air. He fought the urge to cover his mouth.

Three pregnant
women sat around the lounge table, whilst the toddler by their feet played with
a plastic action figure missing both legs. An assortment of buckets, chemicals,
cleaning fluids and powders adorned the table. Michael finally relented and
cupped a hand over mouth and nose.

Their flesh was
stretched over brittle bones, cheeks hollowed out and their eyes receding into
sunken sockets. The woman on his right snatched a revolver from the table and
pointed it at him.

“Put it down,”
Michael said, placing her forehead between his weapon's sights.

Her only
response was a dead-eyed stare and a trembling in her hands. Michael trained
the pistol on the bulge in her belly. “Put. It. Down.”

She dropped it.
The weapon hit the side of the table, bounced and landed on the floor beside
the curly-haired toddler. Michael kicked it away before the boy could pick it
up.

“Richard, drag
his sorry arse in here right now.”

Richard hurled
Jason across the room. He crashed through the table, breaking the wooden legs
under his weight, and chemicals spilled across the carpet. Jason's women
remained unmoved by the sight, even as the child began to wail and cry.

“Who's the
mother of the boy?” Michael said.

“Not us,” said
the woman who had pulled the gun.

“Jesus.”

Jason stood up.
“Hey, what the hell is wrong with you? You think you can just barge in here,
beat me down and leave like nothing happened?”

The toddler
cried louder. Jason scooped him up in his arms and hushed him. He rocked the
boy back and forth, holding him close to his chest. “It's okay, son. You don't
need to worry; daddy's going to smoke these motherfuckers. You want to see
daddy smoke them? Yeah, you do, don't you?”

“Jason, the only
thing you've smoked in this shit hole is illicit substances. Do you see this?
This is a police identity card, and it means we can do whatever the fuck we
want, because our employer also runs the tribunals in this area, and they're
going to take one look at your stoned little face before they send you to clean
up nuclear waste in the Midlands.