"You wouldn't." A chime sounded: an attachment arriving in his phone. "But if you did, he'd be there."
"Take it easy."
"You too. Don't let him sell you a car."
The phone went blank.
Perhaps fifty used cars were parked in front of the single-storey building. Red, white, and blue pennants fluttered, while moving posters scrolled through hyperbole – Prices slashed! Lifetime bargains here! – and cheerful music played from outdoor speakers. Josh drove past the customer parking slots, circling round to the back. Inside a cavernous garage, mechanics were at work. A welding torch was incandescent. Several men paused as Josh parked, climbed out, and walked towards them, phone in hand.
"Hey, guys. I need to talk to Mr Kolchek."
A bulky man came forward, his skin grease-stained, his hair incongruously bleached.
"Don't know no Mr Kolchek."
"Sure you don't. Take this." Josh held out his phone. "Show that to the guy you've never heard of."
"Huh?"
"I'll wait here while you do it."
The guy with the bleached hair took the phone, weighed it in his hand, then carried it inside the main building. His colleagues stopped working – apart from the welder, who perhaps had not noticed – folding their arms and forming a semicircle focused on Josh.
"You all training to be salesmen? You've got the charm thing down, big time."
"Just try us, pal."
"You mean, like a test drive?"
Jaw muscles clenched, but no one lost control. That was just as well. Josh had not taken any guns off Khan's men – he wanted the weapons to remain as evidence – but he had his own weapon now, holstered at the small of his back: a Browning PulseCloud, able to drop three or four guys at a time.
There was a bustle at the back, then a large man with a scarred face came forward, with a smaller guy behind him.
"Who the fuck are you?" said the big man.
"The man who found your daughter, if you're Vinnie. Otherwise, I'm the man who found his daughter."
"All right," said the smaller man. "Where's Angie?"
So this was Vinnie Kolchek. He should have known by the eyes.
"Safe by now." Josh held up his hands. "The police should be raiding the place about now. They'll have medics with them. Your Angie isn't the only kid Khan's people had."
"Khan." Kolchek paled, still clenching Josh's phone. "That piece of shit did this?"
"That's the man."
"So what do you want?"
"The police are raiding Khan's place, but they're not going to find him."
"Fuck that. He got away?"
"Not exactly." Josh reached out for his phone. "You mind?"
After a hesitation: "All right."
"Thanks." Josh took the phone back, then pointed it at his car. "And Merry Christmas."
The lid popped open. Inside, Khan was awake, snarling and thrashing against his bonds. Before the others could move, Josh strode to the car, pulling out the Browning.
"One chance." He aimed at Khan's head. "Either I leave you here with Vinnie boy, or you tell me what I need to know. Then I drive fast and drop you someplace, your choice."
"Motherfucker," said Kolchek.
"Shut up, Vinnie. This is my play."
"What do you want?" Khan looked up. "I'll tell you, all right?"
Left-handed, Josh brought up Richard Broomhall's image on the phone, and turned it towards Khan. It was a surveillance still from the corner shop: Richard and his unknown friend.
"Who are these two? One of them ran an errand for you the other night."
Khan's eyes narrowed. That was fast, he had already figured that Maxwell had talked.
"Strange kid, first time I used him. Don't know him."
"And the other?"
"That's Jayce. Just Jayce, no other name that I know."
Behind Josh, Kolchek's men were fanning out.
"Where does he hang out, Khan? Give me something, quick."
"Shit, these kids are on the street, you know? He could be anywhere."
"Uh-huh. You know, I am kind of outnumbered here."
"There's a shelter at Zenith Place."
"Where you found him, is it?"
Khan shook his head.
"So where else?" Josh went on. "Other haunts? People he hangs around with?"
"Had friends. The Spidermen threw him out. Kid was a shit. Loner."
"You call him a shit? You're something, Khan. Gimme something more."
"That's it." Khan shrugged his shoulders. "What do you expect? Just a punk. Now get me out of here."
"Giving orders? Your world changed today, and you still haven't realised."
"Hey, we had a deal."
Josh holstered his Browning. Then he reached inside, hauled Khan out of the boot, and dropped him like a sack. He slammed the boot lid down.
"Too bad I'm a liar."
He nodded once to Vinnie Kolchek, climbed into his car, and put it in drive. There was no need to use his rear-view mirror as he left the dealership. Then he was out on the road, driving steadily, careful not to give in to adrenaline and boost the acceleration; because safety was everything. After all, he was a law-abiding citizen.
[ FIFTEEN ]
The pub was called the Golden Switchblade; Richard tried not to think about blades, the slitting of skin, the revealing of slick intestines. In the small yard out back – the sign read Beer Garden – Opal sat down at a wooden table, while he took a seat opposite. Brian was inside, fetching drinks.
"What did you do today?" Richard asked.
He imagined hours of gekrunning practice, or poring over educationware on screen, though she didn't appear to attend school.
Zajac, with a blade in hand–
"What's up, Richie?"
"Nothing." He should not have thought of school. "Sorry."
"Huh. Well I was helping Ciara in the market, unloading boxes of fruit, stuff like that."
Across the garden, movement made them both look up. Not Brian, but a wide-shouldered man with shaven head and rolled-up sleeves, carrying three pints of beer by their handles. A smaller man had just taken a backward step into his path, at the cost of his own beer sloshing.
"Hoy." He glared at the bigger man, not seeming to notice the guy's size. "What you think you're bleeding doing?"
"I'm really sorry, mate. I hope I didn't spill any of your drink."
"Well, you bleeding did, as it happens."
"Here, have this full one. Pint of best, was it?"
"Er… Yeah."
"There ya go then. Take it easy."
"Well. OK."
The bigger man walked on, deposited his remaining two pints at a table where his friends were waiting. The two looked at him and he shrugged.
"Looks like I lost my own," he told them. "Back in a mo."
"Be careful how you go, delicate bloke like you."
"Yeah, pay attention to where you're walking."
"Do my best."
Opal watched him go back inside, then looked at the smaller man, now laughing with his cronies as he finished off his old drink before commencing on the new one. She shook her head.
"I don't get it," she said. "How can anyone be such a twat? Can't he see?"
Brian arrived, carrying three Cokes, and put them down. Condensation glistened on the glasses.
"See what?"
"That little bloke bumped into Eddie McMullen. Gave Eddie an earful, too."
"Holy Christ."
"Look at him laughing, the twat. Got no idea how lucky he is."
"Mind your language."
Richard sipped from his Coke. It was good, cold and with a kick. No alcohol, because that was for losers – people trying to cheer themselves up with a depressant, where was the sense in that? Father might earn money but his face looked flabbier, blotchier by the week; and whenever he locked himself away in his office at home, he invariably appeared bloodshot next morning, breath stinking, at least until after breakfast, and forty minutes in the master bathroom.
Their home had six bathrooms, five en suite. The squat had one, shared by two dozen people, give or take, and the water that came out was tepid and brownish. Paying no bills, they were lucky to have that much.
"Why's he lucky?" He meant the small guy who'd mouthed off.
"Big Eddie" – Brian gestured with his glass – "trains in four fighting systems, works the doors at Zero Point where he will not" – looking at Opal – "let under-eighteens inside, and he competes in Blade in the Cage. That's like Knifefighter Challenge, a semi-pro circuit that–"
Richard's stomach convulsed, a tsunami of acid inside. He got up and stumbled back from the table.
"Sorry…"
"Bloody hell, Richie."
"I'm sorry."
Hands clutched against his stomach, he moved as if trying not to be sick – as if a blade had pierced – into the pub, but going straight through, holding it all in, staggering through the exit and back into light. No one came after him, so he continued alone, into the hot evening, nothing in mind except to keep going until his eyes stopped burning and the acid inside him died down.
• • •
Maybe an hour later, he was sitting slouched inside a bus shelter at the Elephant & Castle. The fear had seeped away; now his limbs felt soft with tiredness. He listened as two women talked.
"It isn't all bad. Look at this." One of them gestured around the aluminium-and-plastic shelter. "Ten years ago, there'd have been graffiti everywhere."
Some places were still covered in tags, usually where they sprayed the streetcams first.
"Maybe, but with this heat, it's all like falling apart."
"Damn scientists and their global warming. Ozone layer and God knows what else."
Ozone is an allotrope of oxygen, the atoms going around three to a molecule instead of in pairs – "
Like a
saucy ménage-à-trois instead of a couple
" some chemist had said in an online lecture. The live adult audience had laughed. Richard had looked up ménage-à-trois at OEDOnLine; he already knew what an allotrope was.
"Excuse me?" he said.
"Hello, son. What is it?"
He wanted to ask them what sort of person would have been measuring ozone concentrations high over the Antarctic in the previous century, and exactly what kind of people had been warning the world for decades about climate transition. He wanted to say that without science there wouldn't be civilisation, and the average lifespan would be thirty-something or less. That if they didn't get the new reactors built in time, everything would fall apart. He wanted to say all that.
"Er… do you know how long till the bus comes?"
"Says right there, on the display. Seven minutes."
"Oh. Thank you."
Then they were deep in conversation again, this time about taxes and what the Benbow family were up to in
SimEastEnders
. They paid no attention as he slipped out of the bus shelter. How could they be so certain about things, and yet so ignorant? Why couldn't sensible people be in charge of the world?
He thought about Dr Duchesne. She'd been nice, so very calm. Perhaps he could be like her some day, far different from Father. Some day. Right now, an ache was returning to his stomach, this time from lack of food.
Later again, and still hungry, he stood at South Bank, watching from beneath a concrete overhang – out of view of cameras – while gekrunners spun through acrobatic manoeuvres, skating across paving stones, cartwheeling down stairwells, tumbling over obstacles. The interplay of movement was mesmerising, their ability to keep their nerve incredible. Several tourists looked up, and he risked peeking out from cover. On the rooftop, three gekrunners chasing each other in fun, with a series of jumps and rolls to reach the roof's edge, then somersaulting down the wall to ground level, with skilful use of gekkomere gauntlets, lethally dangerous.
"–seen him yet," a man's voice was saying.
"From his profile, he hangs out here sometimes, not every day."
They were checking images on their phones, then glancing up to check out gekrunners and the watching crowd. Could they be police?
Worse, was that his image they were looking at?
"Let's ask. Some of these little bastards might know him."
"Right, and you want them to remember someone asking after their pal Jayce?"
"Oh. See what you mean."
"He ain't around. Let's get the hell out of here."
Richard pulled right back, trying to press into solid stone. Except it wasn't him they were looking for, was it? Nor did they act like police officers; but then, how many officers did he know? I'm a criminal because of Jayce. Because Jayce had taken him to the shop owned by Khan, but maybe that was not it. Maybe if he was helpless then it was his fault, because he was as weak as Father said. And now he could never go back home, not without them coming to drag him into jail.
Laughter sounded from around the corner.
"No, I don't believe it."
The police were gone. He moved out of cover, drawn by sounds of happiness. Seven or eight gekrunners, plus a few other folk, were watching an unfurled screen. Inside the image, a twentysomething man was tearing up a T-shirt.
"He's out of his head. Carlsen will throw him off the team."
"Nah, man. Him and André will have to fight."
"No way. They're on the same team."