Rat Runners

by Oisin McGann

  Even though he couldn’t find what he was here to search for, his thief’s instincts took over, and he began assessing the value of the things around him. On a whim, he had a look under the mattress first, and to his amusement found a diary there, covered in girlie stickers. He left it there for the moment. He could go back to it later. There were plenty of guys who would have had a good laugh to themselves poking around a girl’s bedroom, but Nimmo was working. A quick search through the wardrobe beside the door turned up nothing of interest. There were no hidden spaces that he could find. Her jewelry was mostly of the cheap student variety, with a few more valuable pieces that were probably presents. They lay in and scattered around two open jewelry boxes on the small dressing table. After checking under the bed, he looked through the various drawers, bags and boxes tucked out of the way around the edges of the room.

  He poked about, looking for hidden panels in the walls, floor, ceiling and in the furniture. Nothing. If she had a place for hiding her secret things, it wasn’t here. Nimmo had to be thorough—the story he told Move-Easy might depend on it.

  The computer was now up and online. FX would probably be rooting around in it right now, but Nimmo took a data key from his pocket anyway, connected by wireless signal to the computer, and set the PC to copying all of its more recent documents, photos and other files onto the key. That would take a while. He’d come back to it.

  He was flicking a last look across the bookshelves over the computer desk, when his eyes caught on the title of one of the books. Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury. He tilted his head, gazing at the spine. It was a dangerous book. He was surprised her mother let her keep it. Veronica shouldn’t leave it sitting out where someone might see it.

  Leaving her bedroom, he tackled the rest of their home. It wasn’t even eleven o’clock, but the longer he was here, the more chance there was of somebody walking in on him. Just because the two who lived here were accounted for, he couldn’t be sure they didn’t have a cleaner, or a friend or neighbor who had the run of the house. Nimmo normally didn’t do break-ins without studying the target for at least a few days, but he was on the clock now. Again, he could imagine his parents’ dismay if they knew how sloppy he was being. His mother, in particular, would be muttering curses under her breath. The risk of being caught always gave Nimmo a buzz, but it knuckled the pit of his stomach too, and he was getting it worse than normal.

  He searched Veronica’s mother’s bedroom next; a more mature, yummy-mummy style with lots of cushions on the bed, interesting fabrics, driftwood ornaments and abstract artwork in box frames. There were lots of ethnic-craft boxes from Eastern and African cultures for her bohemian jewelry. There was every chance the ex-Mrs. Brundle would have known about the case, and could have hidden it herself, so he looked here too. No joy, of course. The living room and dining room were decorated to the mother’s tastes, but offered little in the way of hiding places. There was no attic or basement.

  The small cupboards in the bathroom held only the mass of toiletry and cosmetic bottles, facial packs, make-up pads and other bits and pieces you’d expect with a teenage girl and her mother competing for space in the apartment. There was a slight give in the teak bath panel when he pushed against it, and he noticed there were faint scrapes on the tiles near the base of the panel, and those at right angles to it.

  He pulled at the bottom and the panel came off. It seemed Veronica, and possibly her mother, had their own little Void going on. In the space under the bath, wrapped in plastic bundles, were more dangerous books. Nimmo noted some of the titles: Brave New World, A Clockwork Orange, Catch 22, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. All books that the publishers had voluntarily pulled off the market because of the risk they posed to society. He sat back on his hunkers, regarding this stash with thoughtful eyes. It was a clumsy hiding place, but if Veronica or her mother were going to hide the case anywhere in the house—if they’d had the case—Nimmo would have bet that it would be hidden here.

  He took a couple of pictures with a small camera he kept in his pack, and put the panel back in place, careful to make sure it was just as he’d found it.

  Trotting quietly down the stairs, he checked his watch and turned to go back into Veronica’s room, to have a look at her diary. He was stepping over the mess on the floor towards her bed when he heard a key turn in the lock of the front door.

  CHAPTER 11

  THE OTHER THIEF

  HE COULD TELL by the sound of the tread on the hall floor that it wasn’t the girl or her mother. The steps were careful, but the semi-solid wood floor creaked, as if under a heavy weight. The door was opened and closed quietly. It was the sound of an intruder, and Nimmo had to assume they were here for the same thing he was. They would search the place … and find him.

  The computer was still copying the files onto his data key. He pulled the power cord out of the back of it and the screen went dark. There was a cushioned stool under the dressing table. He pulled it out into the middle of the floor. Grabbing an aerosol deodorant from the table, he moved quickly across to the wardrobe and silently opened the door. It didn’t squeak. Careful not to rattle the hangers on their rail, he slipped in, crouching among the hanging clothes. Closing the door after him, he pulled the clothes together in front of him. He wasn’t kidding himself that he’d be hidden if the wardrobe door opened. But that wasn’t what he was about.

  The guy did a quick recce of the flat first, just as Nimmo had, before beginning his search. When Nimmo heard him go upstairs, he considered making for the front door, but he couldn’t be sure of making it, and besides, this way he’d get more answers.

  Like Nimmo, the intruder began his search in earnest in Veronica’s room. Through the white slatted doors of the wardrobe, Nimmo watched him try and switch on the computer. The guy checked the plug, reconnected the power cable, switched it on, and placed a data key down beside Nimmo’s, linking it to the PC. Then he came over to the wardrobe.

  As he opened the doors, Nimmo was holding the aerosol ready. He sprayed it into the guy’s eyes and lunged forward. The man staggered back with hardly a sound, one hand at his burning eyes, the other raised in defense. Nimmo kicked him hard in the stomach. The man fell backwards, toppled over the stool in the middle of the floor, and cracked the back of his head on the dressing table. It wasn’t enough to knock him out, but he was stunned, flailing around, trying to fend off an attack he couldn’t see coming. He was up on one knee when Nimmo moved in behind him, got a head lock on in one smooth motion, and squeezed, cutting off the blood to the man’s brain. There was a thin line between rendering someone unconscious and killing them with this technique, but Nimmo’s father had taught him well.

  The guy’s body slumped, and Nimmo checked he was unconscious by listening to his breathing. The man had a face like a Mexican gunfighter, complete with horseshoe mustache. He was dressed in the uniform of a security guard—the company that guarded the estate. Nimmo looked for identifying marks on his face, neck or arms and found a tattoo of a cat on the inside of his right forearm. A symbol used in prison by professional thieves. He took a photo of the stranger’s face and his tattoo, then tied the man’s wrists and ankles with two pairs of Veronica’s tights and covered his eyes and mouth with black electrical tape from his own backpack. Then he dragged him out into the hallway. Searching the man’s pockets, he found a single key, one hundred and thirty pounds in notes and change, a multi-tool and a phone.

  Nimmo also found a WatchWorld ID card. But WatchWorld did not employ ex-convicts. The name on the card was Frank Krieger. He put all of the items into his own pockets.

  A small pouch strapped to the man’s belly under his shirt held several tiny bugs in plastic cases; microphones and cameras with miniature transmitters. They were still switched off. No doubt they were to be planted around the apartment. The pouch went into his backpack. Then he went back into the bedroom, clicked out of the crash alert that was displayed in the middle of the computer screen, switched it off properly, and pu
t both data keys in his pocket.

  The man was regaining consciousness, letting out a soft groan, then looking around in alarm as he discovered he was bound, gagged and blindfolded. He struggled until Nimmo started speaking in a near-whisper.

  “You shouldn’t be here, but then, neither should I. I’m gonna leave. I presume you won’t give me answers unless I ask hard, but I don’t have time. I suggest you leave too. You’re in the hall near the door. Your penknife will be on the stairs, on the fifth step. Use it to cut yourself loose, and then get out of here. If you’re smart, you’ll clean up any sign that either of us was here. I’ll give you five minutes before I make a call to security, and send them down here. Don’t bother tryin’ to come after me. By the time you free yourself, I’ll be long gone.”

  He was.

  CHAPTER 12

  NO ONE

  FX HAD A quizzical look on his face as he stared at the central screen on his computer desk. It wasn’t often that he went online and ended up with more questions than answers. He had been working for more than three hours, fueled by mug after mug of milky coffee. There were coffee rings on his desk beside his keyboard, and Scope, who was sitting at a much smaller, less sophisticated PC on the other side of the room, was itching to tell him to wipe them up. Or just clean them herself. To her eyes, his workspace was disgusting.

  There were faint traces of spills and stains everywhere. FX was obviously careful to prevent dust getting into his machines, but she wondered when he had last swept or vacuumed the floor. The room—his ‘Hide’—was equipped with enough servers and screens to run the traffic control for a small airport and, situated in the very center of their film studio home, it had no windows and only one door. Some of the technology was there for online access, but most of it seemed devoted to protecting FX from the perils of the web in general and WatchWorld in particular. Scope was no chimp when it came to computers, but even she could only wonder what half this stuff did.

  FX was the fidgety type. Much like a pigeon whose feet could not walk without making its head bob, he clearly could not use his brain without moving some other part of his body at the same time. Scope was not normally prone to wild displays of emotion, but the constant tapping of FX’s pen on the edge of his desk—possibly due to agitation or caffeine, or both—was threatening to drive her to violence.

  Her own investigation into Brundle’s work wasn’t providing many answers, and she watched FX’s growing state of bewilderment for a while before her curiosity got the better of her. She stood up and came across to him, placing her hand on his improvised drumstick.

  “OK, what?” she asked.

  “I’ve been checking out this guy, Nimmo,” he said. “I just wanted to know who we’re working with, yeah?”

  “Aren’t you supposed to be digging up stuff on Veronica Brundle?”

  “Yeah, I’ll tell you about that in a minute,” he said, waving towards another file he had open on-screen. “That’s a whole other kind o’ strange. But this guy … I mean, the more I look, the more confusing it gets.”

  “This is not the job, FX. We’re not supposed to be digging up dirt on each other.”

  “Yeah, yeah. But me an’ Mani don’t like workin’ with people we don’t know. So I’ve been checkin’ him out. There are loads of hits for ‘Nimmo’ on the web, but nothing to do with him that I could see. I had to get hold of something I could use to check his ID. Like his iris scan.”

  “And how exactly did you scan his eyes?” Scope demanded.

  “Remember in the workshop, I had that laptop? It showed the view from the camera in the alley, over our front door?” FX replied, gesturing towards the laptop that now sat to one side of his desk.

  “I spotted that camera over the door,” Scope said. “You couldn’t have got a scan off that. Nimmo was wearing shades. Besides, he didn’t look straight into it—neither did I. Just reflex.”

  “No, but he did look at the screen of the laptop when he came in. Everybody does, to check out the angle of the camera—at least, if they’re a player. That’s a reflex too. I’ve a camera—an iris scanner—set into the top of that screen.”

  “You mean you have my iris too?” Scope was scowling at him now.

  “It takes the picture automatically, but it’s not like, y’know … we use it for anything.” He shrugged. “We’re just bein’ careful, y’know? Gettin’ reesed is an occupational hazard, Scope. We just like to know who everyone is.”

  Scope felt uneasy about this. They lived in a suspicious world, and even if she didn’t know much about Nimmo, she felt she knew his character. Nimmo was sound. The iris of a person’s eye was unique, like a fingerprint. These were used increasingly for the purposes of identification. Scanning Nimmo’s eye without him knowing was an invasion of his privacy, even if the WatchWorld cameras did it as a matter of routine as you walked along the street. The four members of this team were supposed to be working together.

  “Maybe you should let this go,” she said to FX.

  “No, listen to this,” he said, holding up his hand. “Just listen. I got into the national insurance system and compared his iris scan with the files. Nimmo’s scan came up with an English guy named Charles Ulrich Farley. The photo matches—he’s the right age, right size, right description. I’ve checked Farley’s school records, his membership of sports clubs, his national insurance number and all that, right? Every detail is there, it looks like this is our guy. Except on file, he’s a real underachiever—low IQ, poor academic record, nearly illiterate, no registered address. His parents are dead. I did a pretty thorough search here.”

  “OK, fine. He’s not book-smart, but maybe he’s a natural-born thief. So what?”

  “So most people would stop looking right there,” FX told her. “But I used an analysis of his photo to do a search on databases in other countries …”

  “Jesus, man!”

  “No, listen! I found two more identities that came up a match, both of whom also look like our guy. One Irish and one American. The Irish one lists his age as nineteen, which I’m bettin’ is fake. The weird thing is, his biometric files are different. The fingerprints and iris scans don’t match on the different IDs. He’s got no criminal record, he’s not listed on the WatchWorld database, but he’s got a PPS number from Ireland and a social security number from the States. And he’s got registered addresses and schools for both of the foreign IDs. And I’d bet my back teeth he hasn’t been to school in years.”

  “So, he’s thorough,” Scope said. “That’s good, isn’t it?”

  “You don’t get it,” FX said. “These are just the ones I’ve found in the last hour. If I didn’t know he was connected, I’d have stopped looking when I found the English one. And the deeper I look into each identity, the more I find—school records, summer jobs, social networking sites. These aren’t just false IDs, these are proper legends.”

  “What do you mean? What’s a legend?”

  “A complete false life, covering every recorded detail right back to the birth certificate,” Manikin said from behind them. “It’s how the intelligence services set up the agents they put into deepest undercover. The cops use them too, when they’re infiltrating the mob. Just creating one is hard. You hardly ever hear of someone who can switch between different ones. That’s serious tradecraft. I mean MI6, secret agent level of serious. He can’t have done it on his own.” “Yeah, like … who is this guy?” FX exclaimed. “I mean, he’s our age, isn’t he? He’s too young to have a mysterious past.”

  “I don’t know,” Scope muttered. “That’s the problem with having access to so much information sometimes—if you look hard enough, you can find anything. You’re not focusing properly here. You’re not finding what we’re supposed to be looking for. I think we should—”

  “All I know is, FX has checked this guy out,” Manikin said, “and we still don’t know who we’re working with. And now, because you gave him the thumbs-up, we’ve let him into our home. That makes me nervous. The Ir
ish or American thing would fit with that accent of his—it’s subtle, but the way he rounds his ‘Rs’ is a giveaway. Nimmo … that’s a handle that could suggest lots of things. Could be from ‘pseudonym’—you know, like the false name a writer uses? Or from ‘nemo,’ which means ‘no one’ …”

  “Or it could just be his name,” Scope said firmly. “D’you know what makes me nervous? A psychopath Oompa-Loompa with a bunker full of guys who think with their fists. We’ve got a job to do, and we’re on a deadline. How about we stop pokin’ around Nimmo’s underwear drawer and get back to work?”

  The brother and sister regarded each other for a moment and nodded.

  “You want what I’ve got so far on the girl?” FX asked.

  “Save it until our lord and master returns,” Manikin replied. Her black hair was scraped back over her head and pulled into a tight ponytail. She pulled on a navy suit jacket over a white shirt and a gray skirt that stopped beneath the knees, and put on a small, stylish pair of rectangular spectacles. She had used make-up on her hands and face to give her skin a paler color, and even some freckles on her cheeks. Scope noticed her eyes were now blue. Tinted contact lenses.

  “I’m going out,” she said.

  “Nimmo said to stay here till he got back,” Scope reminded her.