The Chop Shop

by Heffernan, Christopher

  “Plane crash,” Samantha said. “They said it had just taken off fully loaded with fuel, and then the pilots seemed to lose control.”

  “It loses control and ploughs straight into an expensive research facility, constructing some kind of project for a government contract. That's a very big coincidence. Why are Assurer fire engines at the scene? They aren't contracted for that area.”

  She sat down on the arm of the sofa, one of her bare thighs showing through the split in the gown. “It's a big accident. The reporter said they were bringing in outside contractors because they didn't have enough manpower. You're right, though. It is strange; somebody would have to guide that plane in at the right angle and speed to hit the place. It'd be suicide.”

  “Maybe they didn't do it willingly, or there's something we don't know. How many people were on that plane?”

  Samantha didn't answer. She watched the fire, and the camera zoomed in on a chunk of the aircraft's tail that was still intact. “Full load. Five hundred people.”

  “Jesus.”

  They walked through the main entrance together. Samantha continued on up to administration, but he turned right into the reception area, where some of the police were stood clustered around the television screen. Michael pushed through the outer ranks.

  “Morning, Ward,” Corporal Hill said. “Have you seen this?”

  “Yeah.”

  “They still haven't put the damn thing out. Talk about hitting the bullseye,” Richard said.

  “Aviation fuel burns quickly; the fire would've gone out long ago. It's whatever they have in that facility which is still burning. Makes you wonder what it is,” Hill said.

  “It does, doesn't it? Major, can I have a word?” Michael said.

  Harris kept his eyes on the television. “You can have two: not now. There's a murder I need you to check out. Get going. Richard will fill you in on the details.”

  “Yeah, yeah, we better go,” Richard said, running a hand through his hair.

  They went outside to his car.

  “Want to tell me what's going on?” Michael said, as they drove out of the compound.

  “A guy called Jeremy Miller turned up dead. I know, dead people turn up all the time, but this guy was the son of a respectable businessman. Nothing international or anything like that, but he did have some money and a few connections with members of the government. Hey, what's wrong?”

  “Nothing, just wondering what happened to that other murder case you were on.”

  Richard shrugged. “Pain in the arse. Little evidence except for the body and no witnesses, so I handed it off to detectives from station three at the first opportunity. The bonus wasn't worth the time and effort.”

  “I don't know about you, but it would be nice to get something solved for once. It doesn't look good on our records, and it's bad for the bank account.”

  “Maybe we'll get lucky with this one for once.”

  “Maybe. Where's the body?”

  “Ealing, just off the main high-street. Dead from a slit throat.”

  An armoured personnel carrier was parked across the road, and its occupants had set up a cordon in the street. One policeman stood at the end of the road, redirecting traffic. Michael and Richard got out of the car and showed their identity cards, as they approached the unit.

  The policeman had his visor up, but a balaclava still hid his identity. He sipped from his canteen through a straw. “This way, sir. I'm Corporal Vickers. We had to shoot some wild dogs trying to eat the body, so be careful where you step.”

  He led them twenty meters down the pavement to an alley between two abandoned office buildings. The buildings had once possessed sleek modern façades of plastic, metal and glass. Now the façades lay scattered in chunks across the street.

  They stepped over old rubbish bins, piles of litter and two dead dogs. Jeremy Miller's body lay partially covered by a cardboard box of rancid beef burgers.

  “Burger Bonanza? I went there the other month and got food poisoning. This box of shit was probably what they served me,” Richard said.

  “I'm a vegetarian. Besides, you never know what they might use to make burgers these days. Horse, dog, cat, maybe a bit of human thrown in there as well,” Corporal Vickers said.

  “But you just plugged two animals.”

  “Just because I don't like eating meat doesn't mean I want to turn my flat into fucking Battersea Dogs Home by rehousing rabid filth off the street. Do you know how much disease Fido the friendly plague carrier here harbours? If it ain't rabies, then it's probably something even worse.”

  Richard pointed at the flow of blood. “Yeah, and now he's trickling down the drain. Pity the poor guy that will have to go down there eventually.”

  “How did you find the body?” Michael said.

  “What do you mean?” Vickers said. “I was the one who shot the beasties.”

  “The person, Corporal. The murder victim. This corpse right here by my foot.”

  Corporal Vickers screwed the cap back on his canteen. “We didn't. This homeless guy holed up on the third floor of that office saw it all. Apparently, a white van pulls up on the pavement and two guys drag the victim into this alley, so they can cut his throat.”

  “Well, where is he?” Michael said. “Did you bring him down to your vehicle?”

  “He's still up there.”

  “Why didn't you bring him down?”

  “He's on the third floor. I couldn't be bothered to climb up there, and he wouldn't come down on his own.”

  “Well let's go up there, then.”

  They stepped over the corpses and went back out onto the street, taking a left to enter through the office block's missing front doors. Glass and rubble crunched beneath their feet, and a handful of rats scurried into dark holes.

  Yellow emergency tape covered up the trio of lifts opposite the reception desk, and a number of different gangs had taken turns in spraying over each other's tags on the opposite wall. They climbed the stairs.

  “What do you think, Mike? They could have killed the guy a thousand different ways, but they do it with a knife. It's cheap, I guess, and quiet.”

  Michael nodded. “We'll need more than a tramp in an office cubicle to take this anywhere, though.”

  “You might want to show some respect,” a man shouted down at them. He looked down through the third floor bannister, but darkness hid his face. A single slither of light shone through one of the windows and lit the edge of his silhouette.

  “Sorry. We're detectives from Richmond station. I was hoping you could fill us in on what happened in that alley,” Michael said.

  “Sure, come on up. Maybe we can cut a deal,” the man said.

  They continued their ascent.

  “He's not dangerous or anything, is he? I'm not wearing body armour, and I don't want to get stabbed by some nut job hiding out in this dump,” Richard said.

  “The guy's a cripple. He'd do more damage to himself if he tried to kill you,” Vickers said.

  They reached the third floor and found the man had gone.

  “Hey, where are you?” Michael said.

  “Through here. Come on in and join the party.”

  Michael stepped out of the stairwell and into a corridor. The man called to them again, and he followed the echo of the voice to another ruined reception area for the segment of rented offices.

  A camp fired burned in the middle of the floor. The flames crackled and danced, casting sharp shadows onto a white wall, and wind blew in through the shattered windows overlooking the street below.

  The man leaned closer to his fire, beckoning for them to come and sit. An orange glow lit his weathered old face and wild hair. Crutches lay on the floor beside him, and he had removed his prosthetic leg to adjust the straps on the flesh stump that remained.

  “You live here?” Michael said.

  He grinned. A few teeth were missing from his mouth. “Yeah, I got the biggest house in all of London and nobody can be bothered to
evict me. I can tell you what happened in the alley, but everything has its price.”

  The man spoke in a harsh voice, as though he'd smoked one too many cigarettes over the years.

  “Hey, arsehole. You see this on my belt? This is a stun gun. And you see this? This is a baton. You think life is hard with just one leg? Start talking now or you're going to need another prosthetic,” Vickers said.

  The man snickered at him. He removed the spit from its place above the fire and prodded at the cooked rat, grimacing as he burnt a finger. “You can threaten me all you like, but I don't care. Look at me; sooner or later I'll be dead, and even if I'm not, I've got no way up from here. I think death scares you a lot more than it does me.”

  “Ease up, Corporal. He's not going to be of any use to us if he's dead or crippled. What's it going to take to get you to talk?” Michael said.

  The man rubbed his hands together, and his eyes glinted in the fire as that toothy grin returned. “Well, let's see. Do you know that pizza place on the corner? I want the extra-large meat mash up. It's got to have the stuffed crust as well. Get a pen and paper, you'll need to write it all down.”

  Corporal Vickers pointed his rifle at the man. “Do we look like a fucking delivery service to you? I'm going to waste this guy. Find somebody else to question. He's not worth the hassle.”

  “Look, if you're going to act like a spoilt child, then go and wait outside. I don't need you and your bunch of trigger happy morons complicating our investigation. What station are you guys from? Harrow? Yeah, it's Harrow isn't it? You lot are complete pricks up there.”

  “Fine, if you want to be bitch boys for him, that's your problem.”

  Michael turned back to the tramp. “We'll get you your pizza, but it's going straight out the window if your information is worthless. The dogs can eat it.”

  “I'm not finished. I want six different kinds of drink and a radio. There's a working plug socket in here,” the tramp said.

  “Forget it. We're not waiting our time hunting round for a radio. You get a pizza in trade for information, or we walk and you get nothing.”

  The grin faded from the tramp's face. He hunched forward, shoulders sagging like a deflated balloon. “You can't blame me for trying, can you? I got nothing here. I'll take the pizza, okay? Is that a deal?”

  “Fine, we'll be back in the minute,” Michael said.

  They headed back down to the ground floor.

  “I can't believe you're letting us get our arms twisted by a homeless guy with one leg. Delivering pizza?” Richard said.

  “What are you going to do? Beat it out of him? He looks like he'll be dead in thirty as it is. If he knows something, then I'll take what I can get; we might actually be able to solve this one.”

  They came out in time to see the armoured personnel carrier driving off. An old man pushed his shopping trolley across the road, but the vehicle didn't stop, clipping the corner and wrenching the trolley from his hands. He fell to the ground, as the armoured personnel carrier crushed the metal beneath a caterpillar track.

  A tin of peaches rolled along the pavement until it hit Michael's shoe and stopped.

  “Jesus,” Richard muttered.

  The old man staggered to his feet, and he screamed at the vehicle before breaking into tears. The APC turned the corner and disappeared.

  “I told you Harrow station was full of pricks,” Michael said, bending down to pick up the tin of peaches. The man had vanished when he looked up again, leaving the remains of his shopping scattered across the street.

  “My car, for God's sake. Did you have to piss him off like that? Tossers,” Richard said. The pair of dead dogs lay draped on the bonnet, and their blood was smeared all over the window. “They're probably carrying the plague or something.”

  “Can we clean this off after we're done?”

  Richard grimaced. “Fine.”

  They bought the pizza and went back up to the third floor. Michael lifted the flap on the box. “Special delivery. Six thousands calories of God knows what with stuffed crust. Half the stuff on this doesn't even look edible.”

  A wafting stench filled the air.

  “Treatment for colon cancer not included,” Richard said.

  The man grinned. “I'll be long dead before that will ever kill me. Hand it over and we'll talk.”

  A blinding beam of white light cut into the office, sweeping across each of them in turn.

  “I hate those lights more than my dead wife. They keep me awake all night. Pieces of junk.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Stop being evasive, take your pizza and start talking,” Michael said.

  Richard produced a recording stick from his pocket and hit the button.

  The man snatched the box away from him. “Fine. It's late last night, and I can't sleep because of the lights and the cold, okay? Traffic is normally dead at that hour, but I hear an engine approach. Except it slows down and then stops, so I drag myself to the window.

  “It's a white van. Two blokes get out, open the back and drag out this guy who's bound and gagged. They take him into the alley. He's trying to wriggle his way out, yeah? He tries to talk, but it's just muffles and they don't care, and then they cut open his throat with the biggest knife I've ever seen.”

  “Okay, now we're getting somewhere. Did you take down the number plate? We can check it at the council.”

  The man grinned as he picked up a slice of pizza. Grease dripped from the edges and ran down his hands. He took a massive bite before setting it back down again, and then tossed a slip of paper from his pocket. The paper turned transparent from where his greasy fingers had touched it.

  “How about you read it to me and I write it down. I don't want that stuff all over my hands,” Michael said.

  His continued grinning as he did so. “Seeing as this food is so good, I'll let you in on a little secret; there's a pair of CCTV cameras two buildings down the road, mounted on the second floor. They're still working, 'cause I've seen them move.”

  “Go on,” Richard said.

  “It's a private office rented by some guy. I've seen the lights on in that place, and the cameras would've picked up the van coming down the road and driving away.”

  “Let's go,” Michael said.

  “That pizza stinks like hell. We must have been the first people to walk into that pizza place for days,” Richard said, when they were back out on the street.

  “I don't think environmental health is high up on the list of council priorities. His beard probably has its own ecosystem,” Michael said. He walked down the street and saw one of the cameras on the second floor panning back and forth.

  “Just like the guy said, but no lights on,” Michael said, pointing to it.

  “I don't know about you, Mike, but I'm beginning to find this sudden increase in breaking and entering to be a little disconcerting.”

  “We'll leave the guy an IOU form.”

  “And he'll take it into the station, where it will be filed with all the other claims for property damage and be forgotten about. Ah, screw it, I want the bounty. If he can afford to rent an office, then he can afford to get the front door fixed.”

  “That's the spirit.”

  The front of the building was boarded up with wood and sheets of metal, so they continued on until they found a side alley that went around the back. A rusted fire escape extended down the side of the building, shedding flakes of black paint and covered in pigeon droppings.

  Michael gripped the handrail and gave it a shake, and the metal rattled. He took several steps up the stairs, feeling the fire escape lurch back and forth, as he shifted his weight from foot to foot.

  “Is it safe?” Richard said.

  “Safe as we're going to get. Somebody's dropped a few chips on the stairs and they haven't gone mouldy yet,” Michael said. He continued up to the second floor. Every step he took made a clanking noise, and vibrations ran through the handrail.

  The door's glass panels had been replaced with metal. Mich
ael moved back, and then slammed his foot into the bottom of the wood. It opened an inch before snapping back into place. “Doesn't look too secure. Give me a hand. On three.”

  They kicked the door together, and the lock snapped free of the wood with a thunderous crack. The door slammed against the wall, before ricocheting closed again. Michael unholstered his gun and ventured inside. He walked past several artificial plants.

  The lounge area was filled with sealed cardboard boxes and invoices. Filing cabinets lined the walls, and the main office occupied what had once been a bedroom, with its window overlooking the street below.

  He heard the soft humming of a computer drive. One of the lights flashed on and off, as the computer wrote data to its storage unit. Wires went through the wall to both cameras outside. Michael looked out the window and saw sewage raining down from part of the plate above.

  “Here, let me,” Richard said, holding a screwdriver. He turned the machine off and removed the drives from inside.

  “Have we got a spare machine we can rig those up with at the station?”

  “Yeah, it's no problem. I want to go before another private security team gate-crash this place.”

  Michael scribbled a note for the occupant and left it on the desk.

  “You know, it's really off-putting when you stare at the back of my head like that. I can see your reflection in the monitor,” Richard said.

  Corporal Hill pushed another crisp into his mouth and crunched it. “Lunch break. Nothing else to do.”

  “That makes a change.”

  The room was nearly empty, except for the tables, chairs and computer, and it seemed to have no other purpose than to hold the machine.

  “Have you got the drive plugged in?” Michael said.

  “Yeah, turn it on.”

  He powered up the computer, dropping into the machine's BIOS briefly to enable the new drive, and then let it boot to the operating system. Five minutes later and he had the computer copying the archived recording onto its own drive.

  Hill ate the last of his crisps. He scrunched the plastic wrapper up and tossed it into the bin. Michael filled out the property retrieval form.