other would be coming in to get me.
From a corner of the power-tool section, I watched Sundance come in, also gulping oxygen as he moved past laden trolleys and men in cement-covered overalls.
There was a gardening area through a big hole in the wall to my right. I ducked into a world of fencing and lawnmowers, pre-packed sheds and stacks of paving stone. I felt immediately better being outside: I could kid myself I had a better chance of escape. A forklift truck vanished through a gap about twenty or thirty metres ahead of me. Maybe a storage area – or, better still, a customer pickup point.
I looked behind me again. No sign of Sundance. I joined the trolley pushers heading for where the forklift had disappeared but, shit, it took me nowhere: it was just another cul-de-sac, blocked off this time by lines of rubber plants and small trees. The sprinklers were working overtime here, and the concrete floor was wet.
I turned to go back out again, but Sundance was on to me, his eyes fixed on mine. I moved towards the corner, edging past a small group of shoppers with unsteerable trolleys. Maybe I’d be able to get through the fence. I didn’t run: on top of everything else, I didn’t want to attract the security guards. I might already be in the shit, but it could only get deeper if the real world got involved.
It wasn’t going to happen. I brushed aside a potted palm and hit the fence, but there was no way out. Sundance was closing in.
I turned to face him, holding up the bag. ‘I’ll throw it.’
‘No, you won’t, boy.’ He opened his jacket to show me a revolver in a hip holster. ‘Give me the bottles or I’ll drop you here and now.’ He took another couple of steps, then stopped as the tannoy announced that assistance was needed in the paint store. I was cornered, my back to the fence. We were no more than three or four paces apart. He held out his hand. ‘Gimme.’
Beads of sweat glistened on his scalp before tumbling down his face. I held the bag even higher. He moved his hand slowly to his short and drew down on me. It was suppressed. He kept the weapon low, his eyes never leaving mine. He brought back the hammer with his thumb. ‘It’s worth the risk . . .’
I couldn’t tell if he meant it or not, but the look on his face worried me. He had Suzy’s kind of excitement in his eyes. I leant back against the galvanized steel with the DW in my right hand, and slid down to place it on the wet floor. The sprinklers pattered on the duty-free bag and I could feel my jeans getting wet. The forklift speeded past, the other side of the row of palms, beeping its hooter to clear some trolley-pushers out of its path.
What next? I knew he wouldn’t want me to move past him so he could pick up the bag. We’d get too close in the narrow aisle, and he couldn’t guarantee we wouldn’t land up fighting. He needed to control me while he took control of the bag.
‘Open your mouth.’
I would have done the same.
As I let my bottom jaw drop, he took a final step and moved the weapon up from his waist towards my face. My eyes were glued to its muzzle, my brain shrinking by the nanosecond. The sounds around me blurred and receded as it neared my mouth.
I didn’t want to take a breath, I didn’t want to move my eyes. The hammer was still back, the pad of his first finger on the trigger, the suppressor almost brushing my face.
I shot my hands up to the point where my eyes were fixed, grabbed the barrel, turning it up and to the left.
He swivelled to punch me with his free hand. I didn’t have time to dodge the blow. Pain exploded in my temple and my eyes blurred.
The weapon was just inches from my face, pointing into the air. I wedged a little finger in front of the hammer and turned him so his back was against the fence. He pulled the trigger and the hammer slammed into my skin. Locking my bent arms tight, I brought his wrist so close to my face that I could feel the fat barrel alongside it, then I collapsed my full bodyweight on to the ground.
The yell I gave as my knees crashed into the concrete was almost as loud as the one he did as his arm was pulled out of its socket.
He went down like a bag of shit. I clung to the weapon, twisting it out of his hands, sticking my finger in front of the hammer once more to squeeze off the action and keep it at half-cock. He grabbed at DW, saliva flying from his mouth. ‘Fuck you, fuck you.’
He knew what was going to happen next, and I wasn’t going to disappoint him. I gave one well-aimed kick to his face, and left him writhing on the floor as he tried to protect his right arm and not breathe too hard through a mouthful of broken teeth.
Pushing his short down the front of my jeans, I picked up the duty-free bag, got back into the store proper and headed for the opposite side. I kept my eyes on the exit, waiting for Trainers to appear.
In he came, moving towards the garden section, shoving his cell back into his pocket. Sundance can’t have been speaking too clearly, but Trainers had certainly got the message. His eyes scanned every aisle.
I started towards the front of the hangar, not running, trying to remain casual. People behind me were starting to mutter about something going on, and they weren’t talking about the offer of the day.
The tannoy sparked up, a young man’s slightly strangulated voice asking for the duty first-aider to go to the garden section.
I left the building, passing an Indian security guy in an oversized shirt collar and a peaked hat balanced on his ears. Thank fuck just one of them had come in after me. If they both had, or if I hadn’t been quick enough with Sundance, it might have been a different story.
57
Kelly’s eyes stared out at me from the Polaroid as rain pounded the tarmac and drummed on the roofs of the parked cars. It looked like the storm was back, and here to stay for the night. I was sheltering in the doorway of an expensive shoe shop just off Sloane Square, surrounded by scaffolding for the building works next door. A row of skips blocked the kerb, laden with sodden plaster and old, very wet bricks.
Traser told me it was eleven sixteen as I slipped the creased photo back into my bumbag, alongside Sundance’s Brazilian Taurus .38 revolver and suppressor. I peered out towards Sloane Square tube station. It was closed. In fact all the tube stations I’d seen on the way here after about eight o’clock had had a couple of bored- looking policemen standing in front of their gated-off entrances. White marker boards told pissed-off travellers that there’d been a power failure affecting the whole system. Something to do with the wrong kind of rain. London Underground was closed until further notice.
I hoped Suzy was around here somewhere, waiting like me, standing off until the RV time. If not, my options in the next fifteen minutes were going to be limited. I’d have to try to use the fact that I didn’t have her two bottles to my advantage: I’d tell the source I was only handing over three, that the other two would come when Kelly was released. Not that it would do me any good. That kind of threat only worked in Hollywood. If I was the source, I’d take my chances with the ones I’d got, and drop both of us anyway.
The foot traffic at this time of night was busier than I’d have expected, maybe because of the tube shutdown. At least the taxis were enjoying themselves. There was a never-shrinking line of umbrellas at the rank on the square.
I was dressed in tracksuit bottoms and a Fila nylon jacket to match the Fila baseball cap that was hiding my face from CCTV. The outfit was rounded off with a new pair of trainers, already wet and dirty after my trudge through the City. The DW was next to me in a Nike daysack, nestling inside my rolled-up leather bomber and jeans. I’d got a no-insurance, no-licence minicab about a quarter of a mile away from B&Q. The driver spoke just enough English for me to direct him south as the ancient Rover’s clapped-out exhaust rattled below us. He’d dropped me off at Bethnal Green, where I’d gone shopping in the Indian discount clothes shops before hitting the tube at around the time the Yes Man must have decided the situation could no longer be contained in-house. I’d only gone two stops before we were all chucked off at Bank and the station was closed.
My eyes were glued on the bus stop, but none of the people waiting under their shiny wet umbrellas, or sheltering against Smith’s windows, looked remotely like her. I checked traser again, and at twenty-six past, head down, daysack over both shoulders in case I had to do a runner, I ventured out into the rain. Two minutes later I
