Nonetheless a gut instinct was telling Redlaw the unit was not uninhabited. Something was here. And why not? The Isle of Dogs was known for being a place of refuge for Sunless freshly arrived off the boat. Situated at a bend in the Thames, nestling inside a looping curve of river that in a million years’ time would be an oxbow lake, it was the first point on the inland journey when the city began to look like a city rather than an industrial sprawl. Sunless, whether stowed away on a freighter or smuggled in below decks on some trafficker’s yacht, were apt to wade ashore here and hole up in the nearest available dark crevice. A unit like this suited them down to the ground.
Stairs led down into the unit’s main section. Redlaw’s goggles revealed an expanse of rough concrete floor with a rectangular trench at the centre. A car exhaust repair firm used to rent the premises; the trench was an inspection pit. It was also, in Redlaw’s experience, just the kind of dank burrow vampires liked to huddle in when resting.
He approached it cautiously, stepping toe to heel to deaden his footfalls. At the lip of the pit he swung his Cindermaker down, quartering every corner with the barrel. The pit was empty apart from a few congealed puddles of motor oil.
He stepped back and scanned around in every direction. All he saw was bare corrugated steel walls. Shadows were few and far between. There was a dearth of places to hide.
All the evidence pointed to there being no Sunless here.
Yet still Redlaw was sure there were.
Too late, he thought to look upwards.
A shape plunged from the ceiling joists. It would have struck Redlaw squarely if he hadn’t managed to twist aside in the nick of time. It caught him a glancing blow instead, but that was still enough to send him sprawling. He hit the floor beside the inspection pit, knocking the wind from his lungs and the Cindermaker from his grasp. The gun tumbled into the pit, discharging as it landed. The percussion of the gunshot was instantly followed by a stutter of pings and pops as the bullet ricocheted around inside the pit.
Redlaw dived in headlong after his weapon, scrambling across the pit’s greasy floor to where it lay. Behind, there was a thud as his attacker jumped in after him. He snatched up the Cindermaker and whirled around. A vampire was lunging at him, point blank range. No hesitation. He fired.
It was a perfect heart shot, bang on target. The Fraxinus round was already working its magic even as the force of the shot propelled the Sunless through the air to the far end of the pit. Flakes of flash-charred flesh spiralled out from the entry hole as the creature flew, and its chest disintegrated completely when it collided with the side of the pit. Within a few seconds the whole of its body had crumbled to a pile of grey-black powder. It never even had a chance to scream.
Other vampires dropped to the floor from the joists where they had been lying in wait. Redlaw counted five, six, seven of the creatures. He flung back the flaps of his overcoat, exposing his weapons-festooned vest.
“All right, then,” he said. “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.”
They came at him as one, in a snarling mob. He eliminated two of them with his Cindermaker before they reached him, and winged a third. Then he was cornered, his back against the pit wall, the vampires closing in fast. An allium sativum bomb repulsed them long enough for him to clamber out. The pit was six feet deep, so it was a struggle, and no sooner had he hauled himself up on the unit floor than the vampires joined him there, nimbly leaping their own height or more from a standing start. Still flat on his belly, Redlaw shot the nearest of them in the ankle. Then he was up on his feet and running.
He glimpsed figures descending all around him from the ceiling. Damn it, how many of the things were there? One landed directly in his path and he emptied a round into its face. The vampire’s entire head vanished in a detonation like a bag of flour bursting, and the rest of it followed suit as its headless body crumpled to the floor. Redlaw ran straight through the cloud of swirling dust, to find himself confronted on the other side by three more Sunless. He shot the first, at which point the slide on his Cindermaker snapped back.
No time to reload. Holstering the gun, he unclipped an aqua sancta grenade, pulled the pin and lobbed it at the two vampires. It burst, and they screeched and recoiled, their skin blistering and smoking as though splashed with acid.
Two Sunless appeared, one on either side of Redlaw, phosphorescent green blurs in the goggle lenses. They charged, fangs bared, talons outstretched.
Redlaw tugged a pair of stakes from their sheaths on his vest and hurled them right and left. Both vampires were impaled simultaneously. They went down with wails of distress, their chests imploding around the wooden implements and becoming powdery cavities.
Redlaw armed himself with a fresh pair of stakes.
“The old-school method,” he said, hefting them in his hands. “Can’t knock it.”
Vampires converged on him from all sides. Redlaw stabbed out as they came within range. Occasionally he missed. More often he didn’t. He kept turning his head to compensate for the limitation the goggles put on his peripheral vision. He could feel ash coating his hands and face. It clogged his throat, too, almost choking him. The taste was bitter—bonfires and barbecues gone wrong—but he was used to it.
Finally a Sunless got past his guard. He had known this was going to happen sooner or later. There were just too many of them.
The creature pounced, slashing his right shoulder with its talons. The entire arm went numb, the stake falling from useless fingers. Then pain hit, like a charging rhino.
Redlaw, reeling, managed to dust the vampire with his other hand. Blood gushed down his arm, a hot wet sleeve. The remaining vampires, inflamed by the smell of it, cried out in a kind of ecstasy and redoubled their assault. Redlaw staked them one after another with his good arm. He was in bad shape, though, and he knew it. The pain from his shoulder filled his entire torso, constricting his breathing and making him dizzy. All at once the simple act of staying upright seemed a Herculean feat. He fought on, only because that was all he could do. If he stopped, he was dead. It was that simple. The single stake lashed out, but accuracy and control with it became increasingly hard to achieve. It was just a short piece of wood, but seemed to weigh a ton.
Redlaw sagged to one knee, still maintaining his defence. His right hand was slick with blood. A vampire lurched at him and he punctured its ribcage, but lost his grip on the stake. The creature staggered away, losing cohesion, its face becoming all cracks and craters like a parched riverbed. Redlaw tried to pull another stake from his vest, but somehow he couldn’t do it. His fingers would not work. It was as though they’d been replaced with a bunch of bananas. Detaching an aqua sancta grenade was no less an impossible task. He was weaponless. The pain from his shoulder pounded like a gong. He was a sitting duck. The next Sunless that came at him would be the end of him. He bent his head, waiting for the leap, the snarl, the killing blow. So be it. He was ready. Let it happen.
There was only stillness and silence. Redlaw lifted his head. The goggles showed him images of the unit’s interior through a haze of dispersing ash particles, like streaks of green ground mist. No figures loomed. Nothing crouched up among the ceiling joists.
“God...” Redlaw breathed.
He never took the Lord’s name in vain. This was simply an imprecation to the Almighty, gasped out in relief and gratitude.
It was also the last word on his lips as a tide of emptiness rushed up inside him and he keeled over, unconscious.
CHAPTER NINE
Slocock’s opponent circled round the sparring ring, light on his toes and wary. The man had been introduced to him as Abiade or Adebayo, something Nigerian and unpronounceable like that, and he looked tough—tough enough to give Slocock a run for his money, at any rate. Which was how Slocock liked it. Too many of the victories in his life were easy ones. Now and then he relished a challenge. The possibility of defeat, however remote, added an edge to things.
“Don’t hold back,” he told the man. “That’s not what I’m paying
you for. Try and do some serious damage.”
Adebayo—Slocock was pretty certain that was the name—just nodded. No smile. Businesslike.
Good. That meant he was taking the fight seriously. It also meant he didn’t think this white Englishman, who conceded ten years and six inches of height to him, was going to be a pushover. Slocock didn’t mind being underestimated—it enabled him to spring surprises—but he had no problem with being respected either.
From the ringside Khun Sarawong said, “Fighters, when you are ready... chok!”
At the command, Slocock triple-stepped towards Adebayo and landed the first blow, a straight punch to the chin. He followed it up with an elbow thrust, taking power from the shoulder. Adebayo responded with a curving knee strike, which Slocock blocked. The Nigerian then attempted a clinch, but Slocock danced backwards out of reach.
Two decent hits, but Adebayo shrugged them off. He had come with a reputation. Slocock was pleased to see that he lived up to it.
It was midmorning and Slocock had booked out the ring room at the Soho Dojo for his exclusive use. A crowd of onlookers would have been an annoyance, and the last thing he wanted was some idiot with a camera phone uploading footage of the bout onto YouTube. Kickboxing MP In Action. But, more pertinently, they were fighting without pads, gloves, gum shields, head guards, any kind of protection, nor a referee, all of which was illegal.
Adebayo launched a blistering attack, opening with a roundhouse kick to the midsection—which Slocock parried with his shin—then moving in close for some fist and elbow work. Slocock bore the brunt with his forearms, impressed by the power and rapidity with which the hits came. Cobra punch, elbow uppercut, spinning backfist, corkscrew punch—Adebayo was running through the whole repertoire, keeping Slocock on his mettle. Eventually Slocock made a misjudgement and a right cross got through. Though it stunned him, he managed to retaliate with a jumping knee strike which connected with Adebayo’s solar plexus and repelled him enough to allow Slocock to recover.
He aimed a quick glance at Khun Sarawong. His instructor’s face said it all: I thought I taught you better than that. Khun Sarawong was seldom anything but disappointed with a pupil’s prowess. His approval was hard to gain, and all the more desirable for that.
Slocock sprang across the ring and brought an axe heel kick slamming down on Adebayo’s shoulder. Next he went for an angle kick to the ribs, but his opponent deflected it with a sideways foot thrust and answered with an angle kick of his own to the other flank. Slocock got his shin up in time, but a reverse horizontal elbow strike from Adebayo caught him unawares, smack on the temple.
Stars? Slocock saw supernovas.
Adebayo drove home the advantage with a succession of elbow chops and shin kicks, pressing Slocock back towards the ropes. The Nigerian was being paid on a sliding scale: a set fee for taking part in the bout, double that for victory and treble for victory by knockout. He had every incentive, then, for going at Slocock as viciously and relentlessly as he could. No question he was a formidable foe, and it vaguely entered the Member for Chesham and Amersham’s thoughts that there was a chance he might lose here.
That galvanised him. Giles Slocock never lost. The instant his back touched the ropes he thrust Adebayo away with a thip kick—a sharp shunt with the toes—then set about him with a barrage of diagonal kicks and knee strikes, reversing the journey so that now it was Adebayo being propelled backwards across the ring. Each kick required rotational movement of the entire body, but Slocock snapped back to basic stance every time, never allowing himself to be off-balance a millisecond longer than necessary. He was sweating now, and his breathing was getting heavy, but as fit as he was, he could have carried on the assault for several minutes.
With Adebayo hemmed in at one corner of the ring, Slocock went for a clinch. Both hands locked onto the Nigerian’s head while both forearms pressed onto his collarbone. Adebayo tried to get out of the hold by hammering Slocock with his knees, but Slocock kept him close, weakening the force of the counterattacks.
There was a saying in muay thai: “Kick loses to punch, punch loses to knee, knee loses to elbow, elbow loses to kick.” It was the fundamental mantra of the Eight-limbed Science, something that every practitioner was meant to ponder and appreciate. It implied that there was no single all-prevailing form of attack, there was only a perpetual cycle of blow and block, strike and parry.
Khun Sarawong had tried to drum this into Slocock, but Slocock remained unconvinced of its truth. Maybe it had something to do with him being, as Khun Sarawong often called him, a nak muay farang—a foreign boxer—but Slocock had found that once you were the dominant half in a clinch, you had the contest pretty much sewn up. Your opponent could try to “swim” his arm up inside your arms, as Adebayo was doing now, in order to turn the clinch about and establish himself as dominant. But as long as you stopped him from doing it—and it wasn’t all that difficult—then his body was yours to do with as you wished. His fate was literally in your hands.
For Slocock, that meant bringing Adebayo’s head down and his own knee upwards repeatedly. The first dozen times, Adebayo resisted. Slocock had to wrench his head down with some force. After that, though, it got easier. Adebayo’s strength ebbed with each strike. His struggles faded. Slocock’s knee continued to ram into his face.
In a normal bout, the referee would have called “yaek!” by now and broken up the clinch. But of course there was no referee. Soon blood was flowing, and it wasn’t long before the Nigerian had gone completely limp and Slocock was supporting him as much as battering him.
When Slocock at last let Adebayo go, the Nigerian slumped to the mat in a heap. He wasn’t conscious anymore, and he didn’t have much of a face left. What he had was a bulbous mass of contusions and broken flesh that looked like some sort of poorly cooked pudding.
Slocock stepped back, panting, flushed with success. He turned and looked to Khun Sarawong. He resented his need for affirmation from the instructor, but was unable to keep from seeking it.
Khun Sarawong merely put his palms together and gave a curt bow. “Not bad,” he said. “For a nak muay farang.”
It wasn’t much, but given the source, it was high praise indeed. Slocock retired to the showers happy. In the toilets, he helped himself to a quick toot of the old Bolivian marching powder from a golden snuffbox, a family heirloom that had seen his great-grandfather through the First World War and his grandfather through the Second. Muay thai and a prodigious cocaine habit might seem incompatible bedfellows, but in fact the cardiovascular training helped counteract the drug’s harmful effects, while the coke mitigated the post-exertion aches and pains and boosted his depleted energy reserves. It was almost as if the two things were made for each other, a perfect marriage of opposites.
He then spent some time studying himself in a wall mirror. His physique was superb for a man in his mid-thirties. Hell, it was superb full stop. Not an ounce of flab to be seen. The muscles seemed to glide across one another with every movement he made, smooth as cloud shadows on a hillside. The face wasn’t bad, either. A little long, perhaps, a little too pointed at the chin, and the nose was slightly larger than the ideal, but all in all a symmetrical, well-put together face. Slocock looked at it and, as usual, did not fail to like what he saw. Political pundits frequently commented on his appearance, his “public schoolboy good looks,” his “athletic build.” In any number of blogs and online surveys he was rated the handsomest man in Westminster, although that wasn’t saying much, given the troll-like quality of the competition. One website, politiciansidliketofuck.com, placed him in the top three most shaggable elected officials in the world. A rival site, politiciansidliketofuckoff.com, ranked him similarly highly, but that was far less of an accolade.
A bead of blood bulged suddenly from his reflection’s left nostril. Slocock sniffed it back up, but the blood would not be restrained, swelling from the nostril and then dribbling down his upper lip. He stemmed the flow with a twist of toilet paper. Had A
debayo punched him in the nose? Possibly. More likely, though, it was the coke.
The coke, which even now was forming a hard nucleus in his brain, defining his thoughts, sharpening his convictions until they were certainties. Oh, glorious coke, which took a man who was already considerable and made even more of him. Slocock felt his personality expanding until he was no longer merely full of himself, he could barely be contained, like a universe in a bottle.
His mobile trilled. He dug it out of his gym bag and flipped it open.
“Yes?”
“Slocock? Wax.”
“Maurice! Maurice, old mate. How you doing, Maurice, Morrie, the Maurice-meister? What up? ¿Qué pasa?”
“Slocock, are you all right?”
“Don’t I sound all right? I’m all right. I’m fine. Never better. What can I do for you? To what do I owe the thingummy of this call? How can I help my fellow duellist across the dispatch box, my other half, my oppo?” During his few weeks at Sandhurst, before getting booted out for conduct unbecoming, Slocock had managed to pick up a few pieces of military slang, which he liked to drop into the dialogue now and then to suggest the army career he’d not actually had.
“Ah,” said Wax. “I see. You’ve had a little... pharmaceutical assistance, haven’t you?”
“No idea what you’re talking about. Just been working out, that’s all. I’m charged with endorphins. Riding a natural high.” He inhaled hard through his unplugged nostril and hissed the air noisily out through pursed lips. “Pure and undefiled, that’s me. My body is a temple.”
“Yes, well... Listen, Slocock. I’ve got some news for you.”
“Oh yes?”
“Yes. I’ve managed to bring the PM on board.”
“Really? No shitting?”
“He wasn’t having any of it at first, but I talked him round. What swung it was something you said, about all of this looking like an act of benevolence.”
“Well, it is. I mean, let’s be honest, it’s for our own security, and that’s paramount, but the Sunless gain something too. Everybody wins.”
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