The Scioneer

by Peter Bouvier

  His textabeep sounded as he watched them pull out into the evening traffic and drive away. He strolled lazily to the nearest skypephone box and dialled the number.

  ‘What is going on Vidmar?’ Pechev said, cutting to the chase.

  ‘Well, I’ve just watched Gorski and his woman drive off.’

  ‘You’ve done what?! Why didn’t you stop them? Where is Delić? Why can’t I reach him on his textabeep?’

  ‘I don’t know. He thinks Gorski’s dead. Who cares?’ Vidmar replied petulantly.

  ‘I feel this situation is beyond you both. It is spiralling out of control. I’m... disappointed, to say the least.’

  ‘Lyubomir Pechev,’ said Vidmar, with a sigh, ‘I don’t give a fuck what you think anymore. The deal’s off. I know Gorski has a book, a book containing the recipes for all his scions, and I know where he is. So you can keep your shitty half a mill. I’m looking at the bigger picture.’

  ‘Vidmar, turn your back on me and you will regret it. I have only to say the word and every low-level yellow-bellied street rat from Bow to Battersea will know there’s a price on your head. So, do the smart thing boy. Do your job. I’m going to give you one last chance. Do you understand me? Vidmar? Vidmar?’

  But Vidmar was standing in the middle of the street staring into the distance, the traffic racing past him on either side. The Proto had long gone, but he saw the path it had made through the city streets as clear as the wake of a Thames riverboat. He cupped his hands around his nose, and breathed in the smell of Crystal Purcell and Lek Gorski. He could taste them both on his saliva. The ten minutes he had spent in the underground car-park near Calabas’ club, breaking into the Proto, sniffing its seats, rubbing his fingers in the dust of the foot-wells, and licking the steering wheel had certainly paid off. There was slaver pouring from his mouth and onto the lapels of his scarred suit jacket, and the skin of his cheeks had already lost all its elasticity when he took the near empty vial of Bloodhound from the chain around his neck and snorted it all, right down to the last speck.

  Chapter 22

  Crouching in the carcass of a burnt out Hyundai on the corner of Rattray Road, Dahlia Ortega ran the blade of her flick-knife against her thumb and dreamt of cutting Roma Bruce’s throat. She had yet to make a kill, and there was immense pressure on her to drive her blade into somebody at the rumble that night, but as far as she could see, there was only one person who truly deserved it. Roma had ruled the gang for too long, and Dahlia had grown tired of waiting for Zevon, the natural successor, to do the deed. Ronnie and Reggie, although they had probably notched up a dozen killings between them, were nothing but muscle, and faithful to the last. Their brains were so pickled in Lupinex they had lost virtually all capacity for human thought, and went through the motions of their violent existence like Roma’s trained guard-dogs. But not Dahlia. If the opportunity arose tonight.... Suddenly, Zevon gave the call and instinctively, she was on her feet, running to the join the chase. Roma had sniffed out a kid who had become separated from his flock in the network of streets and was scrambling to get home before he was spotted. The hunt was on.

  Dahlia sprinted across the broken tarmac, her heightened senses acutely aware of Zevon’s movements in a parallel street. In her peripheral vision, she saw him flash past at the cross-section of Talma and Bankton, but she didn’t break her stride. She tore down an opening between the high-rises and cut across the allotments, the long yellowing toenails of her bare feet digging up the soft earth as she smashed through carefully planted rows of cassava and runner-been frameworks. With a clatter which shattered the quiet of the housing estate, she knocked over a recycle-biffa on another side alley, before bursting out onto Dalberg Road, where Ronnie and Reggie were a hundred metres ahead of her. Dahlia was lithe and agile, built for speed, and in the open space she changed gear and outstripped the Twins in a matter of seconds. It was then that she caught her first glimpse of the prey as he darted through a patch of pampas grass growing between two terraced houses. Zevon came thundering down Jeff Road on all fours, and simultaneously Roma appeared on Dahlia’s right – the pack came together and then, without a word, fanned out again: the pace never slackened. Dahlia’s breath came in tight grunts and she felt her lungs burning with the exertion, but the Lupinex forced her body to move faster still, her mind always conscious of the positions of the respective members of the pack. She saw Roma leap over a set of railings on the corner of Morval without breaking her step, leading the pack through the patch of wasteland. The prey, a boy of about thirteen or fourteen, was in her sights now and she saw him scramble under the barbed wire and out onto Brixton Water Lane, where a Datsun Synapse had to screech to a halt to avoid smashing into him. Zevon hurdled the bonnet in a single bound, while Dahlia and Roma shot through the gap between a parked Credibus and a classic Skoda, and took the lead. Before she knew it, Dahlia was out in the open again in the flat scrub of unknown grasslands. In the back of her mind, she knew something wasn’t right. But what? Zevon and the twins were bringing up the rear; she and Roma were neck and neck, gaining on the boy in the darkness, and for an instant, Dahlia considered jumping Roma instead and plunging the knife she was still holding into the bunched muscles between her leader’s shoulder blades. Suddenly it hit her - her female canine intuition told her to pull back. Roma felt it too, just in time, for the boy had disappeared behind a wall of bodies. Roma howled the order to retreat as the pack before them, twenty strong, began to move as a single body in their direction. ‘How could you have been so stupid?’ snarled Dahlia, as they turned and ran, ‘You led us into Hyena-turf!’ Roma’s eyes flashed fire at the slight, but Dahlia saw fear in them as well. Behind, the hyena pack laughed maniacally.

  Delić woke with a start, slumped against the stinking body of a tramp seated next to him on the bench in front of the Smarte Lockers. He was still fighting the ongoing soporific effects of the sloth-extract, but when he sat upright and looked around, he found himself in the middle of a gang of vagabonds, all staring at him with red rat-like eyes. On the floor before him, a tattered man with a beard that reached down to the torn collar of his ragged business suit was spitting the shells of sunflower seeds on the ground. Delić kicked him brutally in the face and sent him reeling backwards. With a chorus of angry shouts and drunken threats, the tramps moved away to gather instead around a burning picket-fire - Starbucks staff members were striking against the new 24–hour coffee laws. Delić wiped the dribble from his chin and gave himself a couple of slaps around the face to try and wake up. Stay alert, he told himself. For all he knew, the locker might have already popped open and revealed its contents to the world, but Delić felt sure the noise would have woken him. He pulled a fresh bag of gojis from his inside pocket, popped a few and threw a couple in the direction of the tramps, making a pistol-shooting gesture with his thumb and forefinger when they looked back. Scum, he thought. The clock in the station read 19:30. One hour to curfew.

  ***

  Roma’s crew sat together in a rat-infested abandoned warehouse on King’s Avenue where they had holed up to hide from the Dulwich Jackals. Dahlia had been needling Roma ever since they had stopped running, pushing her into admitting that she had run them too hard, for too little, and over enemy lines to boot. At first, Roma had said nothing, content to pluck rats from the cracks in the floorboards to prove to herself as much as to the others that her reflexes, if not her judgement, were still as sharp as ever. Eventually she cracked, and with a fluid shifting of her weight, rolled on top of Dahlia and pinned her to the floor in a flash.

  ‘I am tired of your barking, bitch! Challenge me, if you’ve got the balls,’ and she squeezed a clawed hand around Dahlia’s windpipe. ‘What’s that you say?’ she growled, ‘Oh, nothing. Now get the fuck away from me!’ And she stalked off to the corner of the room, where Zevon joined her to lick her palms and give her his last vial of Bad Moon.

  ‘What do you want to do Roma?’ he asked.

  ‘I want full-stress, straining off the c
hain, Zevon - no half measures tonight. I want. I want. I WANT. I want to find some cred, hit Domino for all he’s got and I want to take it to those laughing sons of bitches. And when it’s all over, later on, I want you to help me celebrate, dog.’ With that, she licked his face, her long tongue lapping over his lips.

  Zevon pulled back, ‘Save it for later then. We haven’t even got an hour before lights-out. Best we get moving if we’re going to fit it all in baby. Cash, stash and clash.’

  ‘Cash, stash and clash.’ Roma pulled her lips back in a smile, but the effect was terrifying. Years of prolonged Lupinex abuse had not only transformed Roma’s once petite nose and mouth into a wolfish muzzle, but over time four short canines had forced their way between her teeth and ripped her blackened gums apart. Even Zevon had to stifle his disgust for fear she would notice. He cast a quick glance over to Dahlia, who caught his eye and gave him a piercing look

  ***

  Pechev hung up the receiver and allowed himself the luxury of one more chess move – black bishop takes white knight – before making another call. He leaned back in his chair and waited while the phone rang out.

  ‘Phineas, it’s Lyubomir.’

  If Pechev’s company had been a stationery supplier, a chain of estate agencies, a management consultancy firm, or anything equally dull and above board, then Phineas Gage would have been head of human resources and administration. As it was, Gage carried a set of knives in his briefcase and had been known to kill the employees with them if they didn’t get the job done. On occasion, Pechev had been forced to rein him in, so exacting were his standards. Once, during a business meeting, a low-level dealer had had the temerity to answer one of Gage’s rhetorical questions with a smart remark. Gage had pinned the dealer’s hand to the table with a quartering knife and insisted he remained in the room, bleeding on the carpet, until the meeting was over, fifty minutes later.

  ‘How can I help you, Mr Pechev?’

  ‘This thing with Gorski, the scientist, it is out of control.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘The men I put on him – Vidmar and Delić – it seems they have both turned rogue.’

  ‘Really? I’m surprised. Vidmar has always been a good employee and Delić: stupid but loyal, at least.’

  ‘I get the impression that Vidmar has been sampling the goods. Delić – who knows? They’ve both been sold a story about a recipe book.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘All the formulae for our scions.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘Yes, quite. I’d like you to make the call.’

  ‘Of course. How much?’

  ‘Oh I don’t know. A hundred apiece?’

  ‘For Vidmar, yes, but Delić...? No, you’re right. A hundred each. Nice and simple. I’ll get on it.’

  ‘Thank you Phineas.’

  ‘Anything else Mr Pechev?’

  ‘No, that is all. Give my regards to Marusya and the boys. I will talk to you soon.’

  Gage hung up, went upstairs to his office and consulted the latest version of the company telephone tree. Such a high turnover of staff these days, he thought to himself, enforcing wasn’t what it used to be. He unwound his flexi-specs and placed them on the end of his nose. He had two phone-calls to make initially – Golubev and Kask – who in turn would make two phone-calls – Lebedev and Shehu, and Rebane and Morozov – and so on, until everybody in the tree was aware that there were one hundred thousand cred bounties out for Vidmar and Delić. It was a simple way of controlling the amount of shared information, should the Mets ever decide to poke their noses into Pechev’s business. Gage would have to make sure those branches below the targets were fully aware of the situation. He started punching the numbers into the phone.

  ***

  Lek had insisted that they eat, realising when his stomach began to protest in the beautox parlour that he hadn’t had anything since the Mash-Up hash-brownie at ten o’ clock, before his meeting with the main man. Was that really this morning? he asked himself. It seemed like another world away, another age, when he was still a company man, still a rat on the wheel for Pechev. He was starving and Crystal admitted she was too, never having managed to get the corned beef sandwich she had promised herself at lunchtime. She stared at the cut on her thumb and smiled. They pulled over at Mr Au’s – an all-you-can-take-away-and-eat Vietnamese noodle bar on the Wandsworth Road and filled four poly-boxes with cao lau egg-noodles and crispy dog. In front of them, a Samoan gent had brought his own plastic-lined thermo ‘bag-for-life’ and was lifting tureens of com tam rice and bahn cuon rolls and pouring them straight in, while Mr Au himself looked on disapprovingly and cursed his ill-thought out business plan. Lek and Crystal paid and left, and cruised around the streets before parking up next to The Fallen Googler Monument on the Long Road corner of Clapham Common to dine in the romantic ambience of the Proto’s overhead door-light.

  Retro AM was playing classic love songs from the turn of the Millennium. Crystal plugged in the in-car shisha and they smoked an easy two-apple hookah while they ate their noodles, reminiscing about the times they had spent on the Common in the spring, wondering if they would ever have the chance again to stroll through the fields of daffodils without fear for their lives. They looked forward to making plans for a new life too. Lek spoke of visiting Krakow, ‘perhaps’, although he was sure it was the first place on the mainland that Pechev would look for him.

  ‘I’ve always liked the sound of Prussia,’ said Crystal, and Lek felt a frisson of desire for her as her lips pouted around the place-name. ‘Yes, PRussia,’ she murmured again, with a wicked glint in her eye.

  It may not have been the best meal ever, but they savoured every morsel as though it were their last, and there was an awkward silence when they both realised simultaneously that perhaps it was.

  ‘Whatever happens…’ Crystal began.

  ‘Don’t say that.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Don’t say whatever it is you were about to say.’

  ‘You don’t know what I was about to say.’

  ‘You’re right. I don’t, but I didn’t like where it was going,’ said Lek.

  Crystal ignored him and took his hand in hers. ‘Whatever happens, whether we get to the station, make it to the mainland, whether we make it out alive or not, I want you to know that I love you Lek Gorski. I do love you.’

  She leaned over the gearstick to hold his face in her warm hands and was about to kiss him, when the passenger window exploded behind Lek’s head and showered them both in broken cubes of security glass….

  Chapter 23

  Vidmar wasn’t able to focus on anything but the trail of phosphorescence floating in the warm evening air. He forgot about the Enzyme parked up on double yellows near the beautox clinic and loped down the high streets of the West End, moving almost against his will through the crowds of late-night shoppers, diners and theatre-goers as though he were being dragged along by an invisible force. The Thursday Night Trafalgar Square Bird and Rodent Market was in full swing and crowds of tourists were taking digisnaps of the caged canaries and budgerigars, while thin Asianos picked out the best brown rats for the stock pot. There had been a public hanging at the gates to Downing Street – The Prime Ministers wanted to send a message to Arabia that the UK would not bow to Persian terrorists, and the mossy pavement was littered with half-eaten meat-sticks and empty popcorn bags. Vidmar didn’t see any of this, lost as he was to the scents he had gleaned from the Proto. ‘Gorski, Gorski, Gorski…’ he mumbled to himself over and over again, as he covered the distance between the city centre and Battersea Dogs’ Home at an easy trot, hardly breaking a sweat, drool pouring from his open mouth. Here he stopped, called to his caged cousins to have faith in mankind, and sniffed the air again, before heading south to Clapham.

  ***

  Zevon hefted the empty fire-extinguisher which he had used to break the car-window once more and barrelled it into the shocked face of Lek Gorski, simultaneously breaking his nose and
knocking him unconscious. Crystal screamed and frantically tried to start the Proto, fumbling with the keys and the auto-steering lock. It was no use, for just as she heard the motor kick into life, she saw the brute wheel his arm high above his head as though he were bowling a cricket ball, and bring the extinguisher crashing down on the bonnet. The biorg died with an audible pop and the engine fought to turn over, misfired and gave up the ghost. She screamed again when she saw the gruesome face of Roma Bruce leering at her in the light of the streetlamps, and she cowered beneath the dashboard. Roma calmly opened the unlocked door, reached inside and grabbed a handful of Crystal’s pink bob. She wrenched her upright with a vicious twist of her wrist, and as Crystal tried to pull away, sighed softly in her ear, ‘Make it easy for me, Barbie-doll. You can keep your tat bling, keep your piece of shit car, you can even keep your wannabe-chulo score there,’ she nodded towards Lek, ‘I just want your money.’

  Ronnie had jumped on to the roof of the car and was smashing his fists into the steel, pounding dents above Crystal’s head, while his twin brother went to work on the back doors and the boot with a crowbar. Crystal sobbed, her tears leaving tracks in the fresh face-paint. She tried to say something but no words came out. Roma grabbed her chin and twisted Crystal’s face towards her own. ‘I can’t understand a fucking thing you’re saying,’ she remarked coolly.

  ‘Leave it Roma, look at this! We got plenty,’ said Zevon, holding up the stack of hundred–cred bills he had pulled from Lek’s pocket. ‘There’s got to be at least two grand here,’ unable to disguise the pure joy in his voice.

  ‘Such a pretty face,’ said Roma, and gave Crystal a lick with her long lupine tongue, before drawing back a fist and sucker-punching her in the side of the head.