glossy carpet.
She showed no emotion as she stared down at him. I got up and took the weapon off her. She looked at me. ‘He tried to kill you.’
There was no time for waffle. We had to get out of there.
I dropped the shotgun on the floor. I didn’t need it. And the rounds I hadn’t used for the IED were at the bottom of the bay.
I pulled off Angeles’s trainers and handed them to Lily. Then I took the cash from the back pocket of her jeans. I couldn’t bear to look at her face.
I had the notes in my hand when someone gave the front door a good pounding and a megaphone sparked up outside.
24
‘Wait here!’
Crouching low, I scuttled into the middle office and took up position at my Bradley-spotting vantage-point. I wasn’t about to stand there and wave. Blue lights flashed all over our bit of Noord 5; uniforms, police cars, guys taking cover behind ballistic shields. A four-man team with an enforcer were hammering away at the door.
I ran back into the mailroom, grabbed my docs from behind the pigeonhole and climbed the ladder to the roof hatch.
I wrestled with the bolts. She appeared at my feet.
‘Get up here,
I jiggled the bolts up and down and tried to pull them back at the same time. The more I struggled, the less purchase I had with my sweat-covered fingers. I pulled my sleeve as far down as I could, and used it as a glove.
The front door caved in. Shouts surged up the stairs.
The bolts shifted and I pushed open the hatch into the night sky. Cold air hit me as I climbed out. I pulled Lily up behind me before dropping it back.
Keeping low on the roof, we scrambled towards the rear of the building. Blue flashing lights were piling in front and back. Headlamps bounced across the wasteground. The air was full of radio squawks and shouts.
‘Just stay with me, OK?’ I gave her arm an encouraging squeeze. I didn’t want her to flap any more than she already was and fuck up.
We aimed for the three-metre wall that would take us across the top of the next-door office block. There’d be no second attempt.
My throat was parched and I couldn’t get enough oxygen. Adrenalin took over. I sprang up and my hands gripped the edge of the parapet. My legs scrabbled against the brickwork. I repeated the elbow trick. I heaved and kicked until my stomach reached tar and gravel. I clawed my way a couple of feet further, then swivelled round and stretched my hands over the edge.
‘Come on.’
She jumped and I grabbed her hands. She slipped from my grasp.
‘Again!’
This time I gripped her with my right hand and flailed around with my left, hoping for something to grab. I got a fistful of sweatshirt and heaved her up onto the lip. She swung her legs sideways and came the rest of the way.
More shouts drifted up from the street. More loudspeakers barked either side of the building. Blue lights sped down from Distelweg.
I didn’t bother checking the entrance to the central stairwell. Even if we could get in, we couldn’t stay there. We had to make distance. We needed one big straight line out of the immediate danger area.
We ran past it to the far edge of the roof. FilmNoord XXX shone like a beacon. I knew Lily was behind me; she coughed and I felt her breath on my sweat-soaked neck. I edged along the parapet until I was directly above the galvanized-steel platform I’d seen the last time I was up there, slid my legs over and dropped. I landed with a clang like a bass gong, but noise wasn’t a problem. They were making enough of their own.
Her feet dangled above my head. I cupped my hands beneath them to give her some support.
More sirens and blue lights swept down Papaverhoek and screamed to a halt. They were throwing up a road-block. Why else would they stop so close to the main?
We hit the ground and headed right. I wanted us to be able to lose ourselves among the maze of brick walls and wooden fences that surrounded those back gardens. We found a muddy track that ran between them and crossed a strip of rough land. Brick walls reared up in front of us, but there was always a way round. I didn’t have a clue what lay the other side of them. I just wanted to get within reach of the roundabout and then the estate.
I caught a glimpse of the main at the far end of a narrow alleyway. I moved swiftly along it and glanced left. I couldn’t see the police cars but I knew where the road-block was. Blue lights strobed all around the incident area, bouncing off the low cloud, but up here it was as dark as any other night.
‘We slow down now, Lily.’
Her shoulders were heaving, her eyes wide. She leant forward and rested her elbows on her thighs.
‘Deep breaths - come on now, calm down, sort yourself out.’
I wanted her looking as normal as possible. I put my hand on her shoulder. ‘You OK? We’ve got to go.’
She was still gulping air, but she nodded. I hooked out my arm for her to take. ‘Girlfriend and boyfriend?’
She raised the skin where there had once been an eyebrow.
‘OK, daughter and dad …’
That earned me my first smile. It gave me a bit of a lump in my throat. I pictured another little girl who’d trusted me and died. I was fucked if I was going to let it happen this time around.
We stepped out and followed the pedestrian crossing to the right of the market into the warren of streets behind the parade of shops. We hadn’t gone more than a hundred metres when I had to pull her into a doorway as yet another blue-and-white zoomed towards the incident.
And in that moment, from about a K and a half behind us, came a loud, dull bang. A jet of flame shot into the sky like the gas flare above an oilrig. It only burnt briefly. After that, the raging inferno would be contained by the silo walls.
25
I looked at the glow in the sky above Noord 5.
Lily tugged at my arm. ‘What is it?’
‘I don’t know. Let’s keep going.’
The less she knew about everything the better. But Lily stayed still, watching the flames, then turned back to me. I knew she wanted an explanation. She wasn’t getting one. That job was done. I was already thinking about my next one.
We passed the Islamic centre. Checking left at the junction, I could see the girls standing in a huddle with two police cars holding them together. They, too, were staring towards the site of the explosion. The police must have been all over them as quickly as they had been with me. They were the victims; it didn’t matter. The reason the police had come calling at the safe-house also didn’t matter right now. Thinking about it didn’t achieve anything. The only thing that did was making distance from them.
In the meantime, I’d put that whole side of things on the back burner. It was getting more crowded by the moment.
We walked for another thirty minutes. We crossed wider waterways and parks, and under elevated dual carriageways. Our surroundings became increasingly residential. Trendy apartment blocks sprang up, with cycle lanes and neatly parked cars. We were back in civilization but there was no way I was taking trams, buses or taxis.
