Rat Runners

by Oisin McGann

  “There’s no bugs inside,” FX told them. “At least, there’s none here any time we leave. You never know when a peeper’s gonna walk in, or when WatchWorld might send in one of those rats with a pinhole camera on its back. We sweep the inner rooms for signals every time we get home. I’m serious about the rats, by the way. If you see any of our cats, don’t bloody feed them anything. Lazy buggers are supposed to be earning their keep.”

  All four entered, and Manikin locked the door behind them. They all took off their shades and Nimmo followed the others into a large open space that stretched all the way up to the roof. There were old stage-lights on frames mounted below the ceiling. Looking around, Nimmo saw the remains of sound stages: film sets for a medieval castle, a city street, a submarine’s interior, a space station. A camera crane stood in one corner, and one entire end of the room was taken up with lighting stands, tripods and sound booms.

  “This was a film studio?” he asked.

  “What gave it away?” Manikin snorted, as she carried on across the room to another steel door.

  “Their parents tried to restore the place and make it work, back when everything was moving towards using CGI in live-action films,” Scope explained to him in a low voice, gesturing for him to follow Manikin. “You know, using computer graphics to do all the sets and stuff? They wanted to use old-fashioned sets and staging. It didn’t work out, especially after WatchWorld came online. Their folks died a few years ago. Not sure what happened. FX was barely eight years old, Manikin was ten. They were left the building and some money in the parents’ will, and placed in the custody of a guardian. Turned out the guardian was a treacherous, two-faced witch. She took the money and did a runner. They’ve been living here on their own, avoiding the peepers, ever since.”

  “Hiding from the cameras in a film studio,” Nimmo said, smiling slightly.

  “They were bein’ raised for a life in the movies,” Scope commented. “Turns out everyone else ended up on-screen too, so they stepped out of the light. They dropped out of school … right off the grid. FX sorted it so that nobody in the system knows there are two kids living alone in a warehouse. Officially, they don’t exist.”

  Walking through the second door, Nimmo and Scope found themselves in a much smaller room, but still large by the standards of a normal house. This was a workshop, filled with benches, angle-poise lamps, computers and other electronic equipment. Everything from robotic arms to children’s gadgets lay in various states of dissection around the room. “This is my space,” FX said, picking up a radio signal scanner and switching it on. “Manikin’s is over there. You don’t go in hers if you don’t want your eyes scratched out.”

  One screen showed the view over the door they had just come in. Nimmo glanced quickly at the image. FX might like avoiding WatchWorld, but he clearly had no problems doing a spot of peeping with his own cameras. The younger boy pointed at the door his sister was disappearing through. The door slammed shut behind her.

  “Sorry, she’s not mad about anybody telling her what to do,” he said sheepishly, casting his eyes towards Nimmo. “Especially someone she doesn’t know.”

  “I can understand that.” Nimmo sniffed. “I don’t want to be anyone’s boss. But we’ve a job to do, and I want to get it done without any pissing contests. So let’s hope she understands that everything I do while I’m with you is about the job.”

  “She’ll be fine,” FX assured him, as he began to walk around the room with the scanner. “Probably already working up a play to get us close to the mark. Don’t be fooled by the moods. Girl’s harder to read than a stone playin’ poker.” He turned away and muttered under his breath, “Besides, in a pissing contest? She’d win.”

  “All right, let’s get started then,” Nimmo declared. “FX, see what you can find out about Veronica online. Scope, is there anything else you know about these credit cards we’re supposed to find?”

  “No,” Scope said. “I don’t know any more than you.”

  “OK, then I want you to find out more about what Brundle was working on. See if he’s ever published any of his research. Dig up whatever you can.”

  “How’s that going to help us find the case?”

  “It’s not—not directly, anyway. I’m thinking self-preservation,” Nimmo told her. “This guy, Brundle, got his hands on something Move-Easy seems to think is worth a packet. Brundle’s a researcher, right? That’s not normally a money-spinner, unless you’re with some big firm. So where’d he get these cards? Was he given them? Did he steal them? Did he make them? My guess is they’re payment for something. If they are, I’m betting it’s something that wasn’t legal—only reason he’d be paid that way. Probably meant to be anonymous—untraceable. Move-Easy seems pretty sure he was a civvie, so what did he do for this payment? Who did he do it for? That kind of info won’t be online, but if we knew what he worked on, it might get us looking in the right direction.”

  “You think he was mixed up in somethin’ naughty?” FX asked.

  “A case filled with some weird credit cards? Sound like a normal way of paying someone? And who is it likes to keep big payments a secret?”

  “The mob,” FX muttered, as Scope nodded. “Damn. D’you think we could be messing with one of Easy’s rivals?”

  “If we are, wouldn’t you like to know?”

  “Bloody right. Last thing we need is to run into some psycho hit man looking for the same thing. What are you going to be doing while we’re doing that?”

  Nimmo looked at his watch. Tanker had given them an encrypted data key with Veronica Brundle’s details on it. Nimmo switched on the key’s wireless signal and connected to it from a computer sitting on one of the desks. He checked the girl’s address, then handed the key to FX.

  “The mother works during the day and the girl will be at school. I’m going to break into their flat and look for that box.”

  “Right. Well…good luck with that. Maybe you can wrap this up for us before we even get started. My kind of job. And if her computer’s not switched on, crank it up for a few minutes, so I can have a look-see. Want me to knock out the security cameras for you?”

  “No, thanks. I should be able to get past them. I need the rest of you to stay here for now—let me scout things out in the real world first, while you do the same online. Get a trace on Veronica’s phone—and her mother’s—as soon as you can. If they’re coming home early, I want to know. Don’t want to find out Little Miss Brundle’s pulled a sickie by having her open the door while I’m looking under her mattress.”

  “Do people actually hide stuff under their mattress?” Scope inquired.

  “No—at least, nothing I’ve ever wanted to find.”

  He told FX his mobile number. FX didn’t bother writing it down, confident that it was already logged into his mental filing system.

  “You can let yourself out the door,” he said to Nimmo. “Don’t get spotted goin’ out, yeah?”

  “I’ll try ever so hard,” Nimmo replied.

  Rubbing his hands, FX waved at Scope to follow him out into a corridor.

  “OK, come on. The computers in the workshop aren’t linked to the web. That’s a can of worms I only open when I’m in the Hide.”

  “The Hide?” Scope frowned, starting after him. “You haven’t mentioned that to me before.”

  “You never needed to use the web here before. We don’t have our own connection, I prefer to hitch-hike on other people’s wireless signals. Come on.”

  He went out into the hallway, and Scope was walking after him when Nimmo stopped her.

  “I need a favor,” he whispered. “It’s a bit dodgy, but it’s something I think you’d be into.”

  “Yeah?” She raised her eyebrows. “What is it?”

  “I need your help with a murder.”

  “Jesus, Nimmo!” she exclaimed in disgust. “You know I don’t—”

  “No, no! I mean, I’m trying to solve a murder. I need you to look over some forensic evidence I too
k from the scene.”

  “Oh.” Her face brightened. “OK, sure, cool.”

  “Thanks. I’ll get the stuff while I’m out. I’ll be back this afternoon.”

  She waved to him and strode off after FX. Nimmo watched her go, then turned to leave. He liked Scope, and trusted her. But he was reluctant to involve her more than he needed to. He’d have to explain to her how he was mixed up in Brundle’s death, but he couldn’t tell her that he had the case they had been instructed to find. And he was sure it was the same case. A case that now rightfully belonged to Brundle’s daughter, but was being sought by the most dangerous gangster in London. And the longer Nimmo kept hold of it without telling Move-Easy, the more likely the orange-skinned mob boss was to send some seriously violent people out to look for it. Once that happened, Veronica and her mother could easily end up in one of Move-Easy’s ‘guest rooms.’ Bare concrete rooms with steel rings in the walls, tiled floors and excellent sound-proofing. Nimmo’s thoughts turned to his parting image of the scientist—a cooling corpse, lying just inside the doorway of his lab.

  “This is what I get for doing favors for the neighbors,” Nimmo murmured, as he opened the outer door. “What the hell were you up to, Brundle?”

  CHAPTER 10

  BREAKING AND ENTERING

  NIMMO NEEDED TO get to the Barbican as fast as he could. Rather than walk and run all the way from the Docklands, he found a quiet spot and sat down to take off his left trainer. The sunglasses and hat would make his face harder to identify, without making him look overly suspicious, but the scan-cams had other ways of picking you out of a crowd. Gait-recognition software could literally analyze the way you walked, and compare it with people it had on file. Nimmo made a point of not getting recorded by the eyeballs too often, but sometimes there was no avoiding it. So it paid to vary your appearance, or even the way you walked, so that the system couldn’t easily track your movements. Sometimes it was better to be anonymous and out in the open than hiding in the shadows.

  He found the pair of insoles he’d put in his bag the day before—the ones with the arch supports for flat feet—and put the left one into his left trainer. Putting the other one back in his bag, he pulled his trainer on again and stood up, taking a few steps. The arch support under his left foot caused him to limp slightly. It was better than trying to fake a limp, and hopefully was enough to disguise the way he walked.

  Canary Wharf tube station was a short walk away. He paid for a ticket with cash and took the Docklands Light Rail train to Bank. While he was on the train, he went online on his phone and looked up the layout of the Barbican Estate. A text from FX confirmed to him that Veronica was in school and her mother was at work. Nimmo turned off his phone and took out the battery. Mobile phones were a pathetically easy way of tracking a person’s movements.

  Switching to the Northern Line at Bank, he got off at Moorgate. From there, he walked to the Barbican, stopping to take the insole out of his shoe along the way. Flexing his left foot to ease the cramp caused by the arch support, he put his trainer back on and set off again. He was more careful of the eyeballs now, and passed two Safe-Guards along the way, making himself inconspicuous as their surveillance rigs took in everything around them.

  As he came into view of the concrete towers that dominated the estate, he walked briskly, looking as if he had somewhere to be and he was late. Standing staring at a building, or even walking around slowly looked more suspicious. As he walked, he casually noted the positions of the cameras. He had been here a couple of times before and it looked like there hadn’t been any changes.

  He had, of course, considered not breaking into the girl’s home at all. He knew exactly where the missing case was—tucked into the vent on the roof of Watson Brundle’s building, right where Nimmo had left it. Nobody was getting that damned box until he discovered who had killed Brundle and why. But he knew Move-Easy would be checking on him, perhaps even having him followed—though Nimmo doubted any of the villain’s people could do it without him spotting them. Nimmo had been taught that the best way to lie was to tell as much of the truth as possible, and leave out the bits you didn’t want to tell.

  If Nimmo didn’t search Veronica’s home, and Move-Easy’s heavies went in later and turned the place over, he could be caught in a lie if he was questioned about the place. To keep the truth about the case hidden, he had to pretend he was looking everywhere for it.

  The building he was studying had blind spots. In the block where the two-floor apartments were situated, there were several windows high up on an outer wall that weren’t covered by any of the cameras. One of the windows was open. It wasn’t Veronica’s flat, but it was close enough. The window was four meters above the ground, and the wall was smooth. The security firm probably thought that made it safe enough. Nimmo pulled on a thin pair of skin-color latex gloves.

  There was a small van parked against the curb of the narrow path, a few meters away from the window. It was old, with a sticker for a fake security system on the window. No alarm, but the ignition system on these vans was hard to crack. That was OK, he didn’t need to start the engine. Checking that he was still out of sight of the cameras, Nimmo took a long piece of wire and a steel ruler from his bag. The pack was full of odds and ends, but he kept nothing in it that could get him arrested. He had the driver’s door open in a matter of seconds.

  After another discreet look around, he took the van out of gear, released the handbrake and pushed it forward until it was under the window. Then he put it back in gear and pulled up the brake handle.

  There was a young couple coming up the path towards him. He took out his phone—still disconnected from its battery—and leaned back against the side of the van, pretending to text someone until they had passed. After they rounded the corner, he hopped onto the bonnet, then onto the van’s roof, and jumped from there up to the window, grabbing hold of the sill. After a peek inside to make sure there was no one in the room, he climbed in, dropping to the floor and listening carefully. He was in a bedroom, standing by a double bed covered in a flowery bedspread and scattered with old-fashioned embroidered cushions. There was someone upstairs in the living room—two people, having a lively argument, by the sound of it. He winced, and dropped quietly to the floor. There were times when you just had to go for it.

  He walked across the small, pine-paneled bedroom, down the hall past the bathroom door, and silently let himself out the front door. He put it on the latch, so it wouldn’t click when he closed it. They could wonder about that all they liked.

  Casually coming out of the front door of a flat made him look like a resident. He was on camera out here, but he doubted anyone paid much attention to this part of the building. Coming in the normal way, you had to walk past a bunch of other cameras to get here. He was now on the corridor leading to the Brundles’ apartment. The camera was at the end of the hallway, behind him. Hobbling as if on an old man’s stiff legs, he hunched his shoulders, tilted his head down and made his way slowly to Veronica’s front door, which opened onto the other end of the corridor.

  As he walked along with the camera on his back, his thoughts turned, as they so often did when he was on a job, to his mother and father. He could imagine what they would have said if they saw him now. “You’re taking too many chances, not checking it out enough. Not thinking it through,” his father would say.

  “Acting like a bloody amateur,” his mother would say. “Did we teach you nothin’?”

  They’d made a lot of sacrifices to keep him safe—to hide his existence from their enemies, but they’d still left him alone, hadn’t they? And now Brundle’s death had rattled him more than he wanted to admit, and he was being forced to work with a new crew, just when he needed time on his own to work the angles. He was rushing into this. He’d been in too much of a hurry to get away from the others and do something, anything, to lay out a proper plan. But he was stuck into it now, and had to follow it through.

  People living in apartment blocks suc
h as these tended to mind their own business, but there was no one in the corridor anyway. Peering through the glass in the door, he looked for any sign of a passive volumetric sensor in the hallway—the tell-tale box with a little red light. But he saw nothing. He took the arms off his sunglasses and used the lock-picks to open Veronica’s front door.

  Slipping inside, he heard the faint squeak of a floorboard under his foot. He waited a few seconds with the door open, while listening for any other sound, his eyes searching the doorframe for any sensors. Nothing. A quick look into the first couple of rooms confirmed what he’d suspected. No burglar alarm. The WatchWorld system had reduced casual burglaries, particularly in places like this. That meant fewer people spending money on expensive security systems. There was a silver lining to every cloud. He closed the door.

  This was an apartment laid out over two levels, stretching from the front of the building to the back. Nimmo tucked his sunglasses away and had a quick look around the place before he did any digging. At the entrance level was a hall, with the main bedroom to the right. To the left, past the bathroom, was a second bedroom that looked out the front of the building. The stairs went up from just inside the door. The upper floor had a living room at the front, a kitchen in the middle, and a dining room at the back. After checking these, he came back downstairs. Veronica’s room was the obvious place to search first. This was the smaller of the two rooms, down the hall past the bathroom.

  Most of the apartment was laid with semi-solid beech-wood flooring, with the walls finished in white or pastel colors, but Veronica was clearly at that stage in her life where everything was about making a statement. Two of the walls were bright green, the other two were purple. It wasn’t a big room. Nimmo wondered how she spent much time in here without getting a headache. There were a few posters on the walls—the usual bands and film stars a girl his age would be into. There was a computer on a small desk facing the door, and a dressing table beside it, under the window. A single bed with a deep orange-patterned duvet stood against the wall to the right. A sound dock sat on a sideboard in front of him, beside a small television. Nimmo picked his way across a floor littered with clothes, shoes and books. He made a mental picture of the room. When he left, he wanted to be sure there would be no sign that he’d been there. The computer was switched off. He switched it on, and continued his search while it warmed up.