uniform’s eyes widened and he started to turn. Frost didn’t hesitate. He pistol whipped the uniform across the side of the head, dropping him like a stone. It was that or putting a bullet in his temple. He caught the man as his legs buckled and lowered him gently to the floor.
Frost took the stairs two and three at a time, then froze at the bottom, caught by a moment’s indecision. “This is such a bollocks job. That guy saw my face, and my prints are all over this place,” he said, looking at where his left hand still rested on the ornamental acorn-carved knob at the bottom of the balustrade.
“Three choices,” Lethe said in his ear, without missing a beat. “Get the feather duster out, play chemist and burn the place down-it’s easy enough, trust me. There’s a gas main, and there’s enough explosive stuff in the average kitchen to take out a tank. That kills two birds with one stone: no eye witness, no prints to worry about. It’s surprisingly easy. All you need is some lard, the crystallized oven cleaner and the gas hose. Couple of minutes and the blaze will be out of control. Or I can make it look like you never existed. No fingerprints, no military records, nothing. You’ll become a non-person in about twenty seconds flat. Your call.”
Frost saw faces moving in the broken square where the small window had been inset in the front door. They couldn’t see him, but they would in about five seconds. “You’re a scary bastard,” he said. He had no doubt the kid could wipe every trace of him from the face of the world as easily as he claimed.
“Obi Wan taught me well, but you are my Lord and Master, Frosty. And as your faithful servant I feel obliged to remind you it’s time to make like a shepherd and get the flock out of there.”
Ronan Frost knew the kid was right. He turned and started to run. He heard the front door opening behind him. He didn’t risk a backward glance, knowing it could be the difference between making it out of the house and not. He hit the backdoor running. Outside was chaos. Alarms blared, people were shouting, confused, worried. Frost didn’t break his stride as he ran straight across the tiny backyard and launched himself at the painted fence. He hit the Grim Reaper’s grinning wooden teeth right foot first, caught the top with his hands, and boosted himself up over the fence in one fluid motion. He dropped down onto the other side and stood there for a second, back pressed up against the fence, looking left and right.
The Monster was parked streets away.
“All available cars have just been sent your way, boss. In a few minutes the entire area is going to be teaming with the law.”
It didn’t have to be a problem. They had no idea they were even meant to be looking for him. As far as they knew there was a dead body and a lot of alarms ringing. He didn’t have any blood on him, and other than being in the wrong place at the absolutely wrong time, he’d done nothing wrong. Still, there was nothing to be gained from sticking around.
He started to walk toward the far end of the alleyway that ran between the narrow terraces. People had begun to congregate around the alley’s mouth and on the street corners. No one had a clue what was going on. There was a chill to the night that had them permanently moving as they tried to keep themselves warm. Some of them had dressed hastily, pulling coats on over their pajamas. Others were in jeans and jackets and whatever else made up their normal daywear. In less than twenty feet he passed all body types, from the anorexic to the bloated belly hanging out over the waistband of straining pajama bottoms. Lurch tall to Cousin It short. There were more than their fair share of Uncle Festers out there as well. And of course, there was the one staggeringly beautiful Morticia with her died-black hair, piercings and Gothed-up eyeliner, who had no right to be living among this freak show of inner-city life. Frost smiled at her, risking the wrath of her very own Gomez. Charles Addams would have been proud of how his old cartoons captured this slice of dystopian, happy families so well even all these years later. They were all out there on the streets, and none of them loked very happy with their life right then.
“One last trick,” Lethe said in his ear.
Frost had no idea what he meant until the first streetlight exploded in a shower of glass. Each bulb detonated in quick succession, sounding like a series of shotgun blasts. Shards of glass fell like jagged rain. Frost walked down the center of the street, feeling like some dark avenger who had stepped out of a B-movie. Lethe laughed in his ear. Darkness chased down the street, passed him and raced on. In thirty seconds the stars in the sky were suddenly so much brighter because there wasn’t a single streetlight burning in the entire city.
“I don’t want to know how you just did that,” Frost said.
“Liar,” Lethe said. “But don’t worry, I’ll let you in on the secret. All I did was redirect some electricity. It’s amazing what you can do with a computer. I overloaded the transformers and something had to give. The bulbs are built to blow. It’s cheaper than replacing the entire wiring. Looked good though, didn’t it? Give me that much, at least.”
“It looked good,” Ronan Frost agreed.
He saw two policemen getting out of a squad car. He walked across to them, pretending to be a curious resident. “Hey fellas,” Frost called out, “what’s going on?”
“Nothing to concern yourself about, sir,” the shortest of the two uniforms said, slamming the car door. He locked it. Trust in their fellow man, it seemed, had yet to reach the local police force.
“It’s a bit hard, sounds like all hell is breaking loose,” Frost spread his arms wide, taking in the whole cacophony.
“Yeah, some sort of outage in the power grid shorted all the alarm circuits. I don’t pretend to understand, mate. I just do what the gaffer tells me,” the taller uniform said, smiling almost conspiratorially.
“Ahh,” Frost said, as though that made perfect sense. “Well you have a good night, guys.”
“You too.”
“You know the deal, no rest for the wicked.”
He went in search of the Monster.
Finding the warehouse wasn’t difficult. Neither was getting close to it. Getting in was a different matter.
The Canning Docks were one of several along the river. Once upon a time, the river had been the heart of the city. While the river thrived, the city thrived. It was a symbiotic relationship. Every import and every export came in somewhere along the waterfront. Huge cranes still towered over the riverbanks, relics of a bygone age when the men in this country had worked with their hands and industry had been dominated by shipbuilding, coal mining and the old trades. But there wasn’t enough trade coming up the river to keep all eleven of the river’s docks working. The flour mill didn’t grind flour anymore; the side of the building advertised itself as The Oxo Gallery. When Frost was growing up Oxo had made gravy granules. It seemed odd to him that now that it was being rebranded as an arbiter of beauty.
It had been decades since the last ship had been built on the river. Likewise it had been decades since the men of the city walked with their heads up, filled with pride and accomplishment. Now their football teams gave them their identity and sense of self-worth. With the collapse of the traditional industries, too many men, in their forties at the time, had never worked again and had finally died, stripped of dignity, beaten by life. Other industries had risen up, of course, ones where these men needed to be able to answer phones and use computers and do the kinds of things the girls in the office used to do. They weren’t making things. They weren’t creating. And because of that, they weren’t happy.
To the left of the access road the iron gates of the steel mill had closed for the last time fifteen years ago. Now the huge shell of the building was in the process of being converted into luxury apartments for kids with too much money and not enough sense. The bonded warehouses that had been the heart of the import trade were boarded up, windows blinded. Inside, no doubt, the floorboards had been torn up and the lead and copper piping stripped and sold on the black market.
Frost slowed the Ducati to a gentle 15 mph, crawling through the labyrinth of alleys around the docklands. It was as though he had driven into a post-apocalyptic wasteland. None of the buildings had survived intact. Walls had crumbled. Bricks wept dust. The cranes might have been the towering exoskeletons of Martian war machines. The tarmac petered out into hard-packed dirt in places. Weeds had started to grow up through the cracks, nature reclaiming this part of the city for itself. He could hear the crash and retreat of the tidal river. He could see the silhouette of th Nicholls Tobacco Warehouse ahead of him. It must have been an impressive building back in the day. Now there was something tragic about the figure it cut in the night. For all its size, for all of its glorious red brick symmetry and its history, it was every bit as redundant as the men who had worked so hard building the ships, hauling the containers, beating out the sheet metal, and grinding the flour. It was a remnant of another time. So perhaps it was good that it was going to find another life, Frost thought, pulling up alongside the gates.
