The unfinished drink was still sitting on the table. The suitcase still sat next to it on the floor. It couldn't have been there for long before he located it, or Lucia or one of the other bar staff would have noticed it by now.
Kendrick sat down on a seat nearby and glanced around him. What if the owner of the suitcase came back and found him poking through its contents?
The suitcase looked expensive, its leather soft and creamy, the silver clasp glowing brightly under the overhead lights. Feeling like a thief, he leaned down and opened it.
Kendrick found himself gazing down into a jumble of wires and electronic paraphernalia, all bunched around several lumps of putty-like explosive. That this might itself be part of some extended hallucinatory episode crossed his mind.
The best thing to do was to see what someone else thought they saw. He stood up and stepped over to the bar.
'Lucia.'
She glanced over at Kendrick from behind the bar with a nodded greeting. Then she frowned, as if noticing something in his expression. She finished serving her customer, then stepped out from behind the bar. Lucia was tall, imposing; in a previous life she'd been a military engineer, adrift in Cuba with the UN peacekeeper forces there while the unrest back in the US spiralled into civil war. After that some chain of circumstance had brought her here, to the Armoured Saint. Apart from her work as the bar manager she helped Todd take care of any security requirements on behalf of the Saint's owner – who, it so happened, was Malky.
She looked down at Kendrick. 'What's up?' she asked, in a voice deep enough to be baritone.
'I need you to tell me if I'm imagining things.' He gestured at the open suitcase.
Lucia stepped over and glanced inside. Her eyes grew large, almost saucer-like, and her dark Hispanic skin visibly paled. She headed back behind the bar and flipped a switch to shut down the sound system. Customers stopped in mid-conversation as the lights came up.
'Bar's closed,' she yelled. 'Everybody out – now!'
Some regulars merely grinned at her, as if some great jest was being played. Other customers just looked confused. Kendrick glanced down the entire length of the Saint and saw Malky jerk upright, confusion and anger chasing each other across his features.
'Out. Now. Everybody,' she bellowed again, clapping her hands thunderously above her head. Kendrick eyed the open case nervously He could hear Malky yelling something similar, a look of panic on his face as he slammed open the fire doors at the rear.
Malky hurried over to join Kendrick while Lucia chased the rest of the bar staff outside, along with their customers. Grumbling and questioning, they went wandering out into the icy night.
'In the bag.' Kendrick pointed.
Malky stepped up to the table and sat down heavily on a stool. Leaning forward, he looked as if he was about to push his head right inside the case. His angry frown turned to a gasp of horror.
'Oh shit,' he whispered, 'we're going to have to call the cops.' He looked back up at Lucia, who rejoined them. After her efforts the Saint was silent and empty.
'Come on,' said Malky, leading Kendrick away by the arm. 'If I'm calling the cops, you sure as hell can't afford to stick around.'
'But my ID-'
'-Will be safe against most police checks. But there's no reason to tempt fate, is there?' said Malky. 'Once we're out of here I'm phoning the cops so somebody can come round and defuse that thing before it blows my livelihood to bits.'
'If I'm even so much as questioned-'
'I just said, I know. We'll go out the back way. Lucia, get upstairs and check if anyone's there. Get them out into the street if they are.'
Kendrick still had his Euro Citizenship card, of course, but that had been illegally altered to disguise his Labrat past. Otherwise his movements would become severely restricted. Carrying this card wasn't even mandatory; in fact, citizens of the European Legislate were not obliged to carry them at all. But in the right circumstances – like a bomb scare – background checks might go a lot deeper than normal. Even if he'd possessed the LA ID that Malky had been promising him, there were no guarantees that it would survive the full scrutiny of some Legislate investigative committee determined to root out terrorist activity.
As they reached the empty rear of the bar, Malky leaned over the counter-top and grabbed a long broomstick from its mounting on the wall. A hook was attached to one end of the implement. Next he pushed a table and a couple of chairs to one side, till Kendrick could see that there was a trapdoor set in the floor. Malky spun the pole around to insert the hook neatly into an iron ring fitted to one edge of the trapdoor, then, with a clatter, pulled it up and to one side.
'What about cameras?' persisted Kendrick. 'Is there anything the police might be able to use against me?'
'There are, and there is. But as soon as you're out of here I'm going to have Todd alter the security system's memory pronto. Believe it or not, he works fast when he needs to.' The open trapdoor revealed a ladder leading down into darkness.
Malky climbed down rapidly, Kendrick following without hesitation.
They stepped off onto a cellar floor several feet below. Although it was dark here, Kendrick's surroundings instantly became clearer to him as his Labrat-augmented senses compensated. He saw roughly plastered walls, bare floorboards underfoot, and large metal casks piled up against the walls. The smell of stale hops assaulted his senses as Malky unlocked a door at the far end of the cellar.
'Through here.' The pub's owner stepped through, into darkness. Kendrick followed him, traversing a floor that was sticky with rivulets of beer. He passed through the door to find himself in an unkempt garden backing onto a narrow alleyway glistening with frost.
A chill wind sliced at Kendrick's face. Since the Gulf Stream had been cut off a few decades ago the summer in Scotland barely lasted six weeks; global warming had altered the flow of air currents over the tropics so that they no longer carried equatorial warmth towards Northern Europe. Temperatures in the higher northern latitudes had plummeted, and there were people muttering about whether or not they were sliding into a new Ice Age.
Malky stood waiting for him. 'Tell me what just happened there,' he asked, his expression agitated.
'There was a bomb in the bar.'
'How did you know? You didn't put it there yourself, did you?'
'Oh, come on, I…' But what could he possibly tell him? Certainly not the truth. Malky would assume it was a lie, and Kendrick would be the last to blame him.
'I knew the same way any Labrat would,' Kendrick improvised. It was, after all, an entirely valid explanation.
Malky gaped at him with an incredulous expression. 'You're telling me you sensed it – right from the other end of the bar? C'mon, Kendrick, not even a Labrat could do that. Someone must have warned you, yeah?'
'Look, I don't have the time for this. I'm going to get myself out of here before anyone arrives. Okay? Let me know what happens.' Kendrick raised a hand in farewell and hurried away, Malky's suspicious gaze burning between his shoulder blades.
Kendrick didn't see a figure peel away from the shadows near the parked cars, but he knew immediately that he was being followed. He turned a corner at the end of the block and waited there till, a second later, his pursuer appeared. Kendrick grabbed him by the shoulder and spun him around.
'Easy!' said the other man, his accent making it clear that he was an American. 'Easy, I just want to talk to you.'
'What about? Did you leave that bomb in the bar?'
The stranger stared at him, bug-eyed. 'Is that what it was? Christ, I wondered what was going on.'
'You were in there too?'
