Shredder

by Niall Leonard

  Zoe stared at me. “Which part of Turkey is he from, do you know?” she said. “Karakurt?”

  “McGovern thought he was Kurdish,” I said. “The bit next door to Russia. But that might have been bullshit.”

  Zoe dived forward and snatched the laptop back. Tapped on the keys again, slid and clicked. This time her eyes widened and her mouth fell open.

  “Shit,” she said. “I was using the wrong character set. Fifty-one twenty-nine…?”

  “What?” I said.

  She showed me the screen. Now the text was in orderly paragraphs, and I could almost make out some words—except the letters weren’t any shape I recognized. The Ns were backwards and the Os had bars across them so they looked like 8s. I checked, twice: it definitely wasn’t just me.

  “I’m an idiot,” said Zoe. “I didn’t try Cyrillic.”

  “You can read this?” I said.

  “No, you pillock. But I can read this.” She pointed to the middle of one line, where I saw a row of figures: 51°29:915″ 0°20:188.″

  “What the hell does that mean?” I said.

  “I think they’re map coordinates,” said Zoe.

  —

  Night was falling again by the time I left the house; I needed darkness for what I had in mind. Zoe was still on the laptop. She’d spent most of her day at it—she thought that fragment we’d decoded might offer a clue to decoding the rest, but we must have been lucky the first time, because none of the others seemed to be text documents.

  While she worried away at the task like a dog working marrow from a bone, I caught up on some urgent sleeping. Around midday I got up and ransacked the cupboards to see what I could use or we could eat, and managed to knock us up a meal of rice and tomatoes and artichokes that was almost edible. Neither of us wanted to leave just to go shopping for groceries, in case our presence was noticed by the neighbors. In a London street like this it was quite possible that none of the inhabitants knew each other well enough even to exchange hellos if they happened to pass on the pavement, but it seemed wiser not to take the risk.

  After we ate I persuaded Zoe to take a nap with me, which didn’t involve much sleeping. We had no idea what lay ahead, and we knew the Turk and his people were probably looking for us, and that the cops might well be looking for me; but for a few hours in that little house we were safe and secluded and we were together, and that was all we wanted or needed.

  I dressed soon after it got dark. She saw me to the door; we kissed goodbye quickly, she wished me good luck in a whisper, and she shut the door softly behind me. I walked briskly down the street, my head high as if I belonged there, but with my hood pulled up all the same to hide my face; at the end I turned west towards the river and the towpath and started to run.

  The towpath wasn’t the straightest route—the river curved and kinked back on itself in places—but it was the least conspicuous, and I fitted in with the other runners pounding along in the dark—almost all of them men, it had to be said. Few women felt comfortable along the river because woods and bushes grew so thickly, and so many stretches were unlit that at times it felt as creepy and menacing as London must have been two hundred years ago, when every shadowy alley teemed with tarts and muggers and the Thames at the Tower of London yielded a nightly harvest of corpses.

  A few sprinters overtook me, and I let them—I wasn’t there to compete and I knew I’d overtake them again anyway a few minutes later, when their pace flagged. It was about two miles to the junction with the canal, and from there another mile north along the towpath before I’d reach my destination. I cleared my mind and just ran, hard and steady. No point in worrying what I’d do when I got there, until I got there.

  Near its junction with the Thames the canal was a mass of chic new waterside apartments overlooking picturesque lines of narrowboats moored semi-permanently. The barges glowed from within; they looked as cozy and warm and welcoming as the house where I’d left Zoe, and I had to block those thoughts from my head and keep running north. Very soon the lights and the life faded away behind me, and the sleek granite paving of the waterfront gave way to the crumbling potholed tarmac of the old towpath. There were no designer apartments anymore, and few narrowboats; one white shape in the water turned out to be an old motor launch that had sunk, and now lay rotting and abandoned, three-quarters submerged in four meters of murky water. There were occasional patches of pinkish-yellow sodium light from the road that ran parallel to the canal, but soon even they died out, and the only light was the glow of London itself to the east, reflected off high thin clouds. Plenty of stars, but no moon yet; another lucky stroke of timing.

  When I came to an arched, narrow iron bridge I knew I was nearing my destination. Zoe and I had entered the coordinates into an online map and even reconnoitered the place online by clicking through to a street-level view, though half the images were obscured by passing trucks. There had been no pictures covering the side I was coming from, but that was an advantage; it was pitch-dark back here, and there would be no traffic to betray my approach.

  The only building at those coordinates was an old industrial unit, standing by itself in the middle of a tarmac yard surrounded by chain-link fencing topped by barbed wire. The unit’s rear perimeter backed onto the canal, about ten meters from the water itself. Between the canal and the fence was a sloping bank overgrown with butterfly bushes, sycamore saplings and brambles. Not so long ago these banks had been regularly trimmed, but then whoever ran the canals decided to let it grow unchecked—as a resource for wildlife, they said, but everyone knew it was to save money. As I ducked down and fought my way on hands and knees into the undergrowth, the only wildlife I encountered was slugs between my fingers, and a stink of foxes so strong it made my eyes water.

  I didn’t know what the Turk was keeping in that place. Maybe more sex slaves? I knew one of his operations involved trafficking girls in from Europe—that beating the other week from Kemal and his pals had been payback for telling the police about their last warehouse—but somehow that didn’t seem likely. The other place had been a mansion miles from anywhere with plenty of rooms; this was a crumbling industrial unit, surrounded by other industrial units. Too many witnesses would have noticed women being dragged in and out in chains, and whatever foreigners might think, the English are not so obsessed with privacy they’d ignore something like that. Then again, maybe his crew drove the cargo in and out in vans? I’d seen that before too. Whatever was in there, the Turk had gone to a lot of trouble to hide it by installing a self-destruct routine on the laptop, and risking the wrath of a mob to carry the machine with him out of a riot. If this place meant that much to him, I had to know what it was.

  It took me ten minutes to crawl the thirty meters up the bank, maybe more—I took a long detour round a vicious bramble bush. As I got closer I saw an old white van with a long wheelbase parked up with its nose against the fencing. Sloppy of them, I thought. Zoe and I had spotted one CCTV security camera on the street side of the building, and we presumed there were more. But with this van in the way no camera would spot an intruder cutting the fence, which is what I proceeded to do, lying facedown on the muddy bank, with wire cutters I’d lifted from Zoe’s aunt’s house. They were lightweight ones, designed for stuff like changing plugs, and they’d be ruined after this, but that didn’t bother me very much. When I’d cut a gap in the fence about half a meter long I threw them away anyhow.

  Pushing the severed fencing aside like a stiff curtain, I crawled through from the mud and thorns of the canal bank onto the greasy gravel of the car park, under the van’s chassis. Its length gave me another four meters of cover; that left roughly another sixteen meters to cross before I reached the side of the unit itself. Moving as slowly as possible, I crawled as close I could to the edge of the shadow cast by the van’s underside; with sodium lights to the right and left—in neighboring yards, not in this one—the pool of shadow was not quite as wide as my body, but it would have to do.

  I lay on my back
and looked up towards the corner of the building ahead, where a CCTV camera slowly swiveled from left to right, and paused. As I watched, it slowly swiveled back again, and paused again, pointed straight towards me. I froze. Whoever was monitoring it, if they saw anything, would see a shadow in a shadow, but the slightest movement would give me away. At first I didn’t even dare to blink, but thinking about blinking made it impossible not to. I blinked—and the camera started to move on again, to the left. I reached up, grabbed the bumper of the van, hauled myself out and dashed across the scarred and pitted car park, trying to keep low until I could flatten myself against the corner of the unit directly underneath the camera. Maybe the operator could tilt it down far enough to see me, but I doubted he would without good reason.

  The redbrick corner of the building bit into my back. There was nothing to my right except the rear of the unit, a vast expanse of more red brick without so much as a window or an emergency exit. To my left, though, was what looked like a fire escape running up the side of the building. At its foot was an annex jutting out, which meant the base of the stairs would only be seen by the camera above my head. I kept looking upwards until the camera swiveled to the right, then dashed for the stairs. Another bloody metal staircase—it was like climbing a ladder made of bells, and no matter how softly I trod, each step still resounded under my tread. But I made it to the top.

  There I encountered a solid, smooth, wooden door that had once been painted yellow, or green or white—it was impossible to tell under the sodium lights. But the lock was brand-new, and when I put my shoulder to the door there was no give—because it opened outwards, towards me, which made it impossible to kick in. Even a police battering ram would have bounced off. I had no time to curse, and I couldn’t retreat—I had to find a way in. Fumbling in my pocket, I found the only other tool I’d managed to find in Zoe’s aunt’s cottage: a cheap and nasty screwdriver of such soft metal the head had already twisted out of shape.

  I forced it into the doorjamb by the lock, and pushed; the wood splintered on the surface, but the door itself didn’t budge. I dug the blade in again, wrenching and twisting, but I could feel the shaft of the screwdriver bending—it was going to snap clean off before I made an impression on this lock. There was no point having a go at the hinged side; that would take a crowbar and I didn’t have one.

  I heard the buzz of the CCTV camera swiveling towards me, flattened myself against the door and froze. The lens was tilted down to cover the car park, and there was a chance the operator wouldn’t be looking for anyone up at this level, but I was still stuck there, with no way in and one way out—and I wasn’t going to run, because then I’d be running for the rest of my life.

  That annex at the foot of the stairs had a flimsy corrugated roof, and I’d fallen through one just like it a few weeks back…could I do that again? It wasn’t exactly a stealthy way of gaining entry, and last time I’d nearly broken my neck. Maybe I could force a window? But the window nearest to me was a meter from the top of the stairs, and two meters above ground level. They glowed faintly, as if the interior was lit by a couple of strip lights kept on permanently for security. The panes were opaque wired glass, nearly impossible to break, and I couldn’t see any sections that opened, assuming I could have reached them. So how was the place ventilated? Were there louvers in the roof I could get through, or an air-conditioning unit I could unscrew? What a bloody stupid idea—as if this dump would have air-con.

  Then I heard something. A scuffle, a footstep. Someone was moving about inside the building—by the sound of it, not far from this door. I checked the windows and caught a flicker on the glass, a shadow that was moving towards the exit where I stood. Were they on to me? If they put a few bullets through this door, the way they had done at the Turk’s flat in Clapham, I’d have no way of dodging them—unless I went back down the stairs. But for some reason I didn’t do that; I just stepped back to clear the door. Maybe it was the way the footsteps sounded as they approached—not urgent, not stealthy, just someone walking.

  I heard one bolt inside pulled back, and held my breath. Then another. I wanted to brace myself to dive through the door as soon as it opened, but there was only enough room on the platform for the door to swing out, and I had to lean back against the railings to make room, praying it wouldn’t fly open so hard it knocked me over. I perched there, completely off-balance and vulnerable, as the lock clicked and the door started to open. The edge of it brushed against my jeans as it swung back.

  The man inside was casually dressed and dark-skinned, with a short, neatly trimmed beard. He wasn’t looking outwards to start with, but fiddling with something in his hand. In a second he’d registered my presence, but he was still too late. I lunged forward through the doorway, slamming my body into his before he could pull the door shut again. He grunted and swore in some language I didn’t understand, and he ducked and writhed and wriggled free of my grasp and tried to dash back along the raised walkway, but I grabbed the hood of his sweatshirt and hauled him backwards.

  He twisted, cursing, and something clicked and flashed in the dark, and I pulled back instinctively—that was a flick knife, with a sleek, razor-sharp blade. Now he crouched, leveling it in his hand, and by the way he held it I was pretty sure he’d done this before, and not just in training. The blade barely wavered in his hand and he kept his eyes locked on me in a way that suggested he was ready for any feint or dodge.

  What was he waiting for? Why didn’t he call out for help? Because he’s the only one here. It took me a couple of heartbeats to realize that, and now I could see why he was holding back—he was weighing up the risk. He wanted to go and raise the alarm, but that meant turning his back on me. He had to finish me off first, and though I was bigger and heavier, I was probably slower, and I wasn’t trained in knife fighting.

  I swallowed nervously and saw a smile flicker on his face, and knew he’d made his decision. I saw him step forward with his right foot but move his weight to the left, and I took a gamble too, and let him make his feint, and came in close. His arm twisted and the knife changed direction but I just managed to grab his wrist with my left, and hold it, the knife’s lethal tip resting on the skin below my ribs. Straining every muscle in my left arm, I grabbed him under the chin with my right and I pushed him backwards. His right arm flailed and snatched at the rail but he was too late. For a few fractions of a second my eyes were inches from his—his pupils were a shining golden brown, the color of chestnuts—and I could smell his sour breath, and then gravity took over. His legs flipped up and he fell twisting in the darkness below, his yell of terror cut off as he hit the concrete floor, headfirst, with a muffled crunch. His knife skittered off into the shadows.

  I stood there feeling my racing pulse calm down, wondering what else I could have done. Taken him prisoner? Knocked him out? Pointless to worry about that now. I was standing on something, I realized. Lifting my foot, I looked down and saw a crushed packet of cigarettes—menthol, low tar. That’s why he’d come to open the door in the first place; he’d been sneaking off for a smoke. But why the hell had he bothered? I could imagine the Turk was a scary employer, but I didn’t think he’d enforce government regulations about smoking in the workplace.

  At the end of the walkway was a cozy office with long windows facing out across the working floor; presumably it had once been used by a manager or foreman. Now it was a security station, where six flat-screen monitors relayed pictures from the CCTV cameras. The images were still moving, the cameras panning back and forth, even though there was no one at the controls. The control panel featured a little silver joystick and an array of backlit buttons, one of which was illuminated right now: the caption on it read AUTO. On the desk beside the control panel was a plastic tub holding a few crumbs of couscous, a cup of juice and a half-read paperback lying facedown. Its cover showed a solitary figure hitchhiking on an empty road leading nowhere. By the looks of things, the bloke lying in a heap below the walkway had been on guard duty but had
slacked off from sheer boredom.

  At the far end of the little office another door led to a steel staircase down to the working floor. I descended as quietly as I could, though I was sure by now there was nobody else here. The unit appeared to be an old transport depot where vehicles had once been maintained; that bitter tang of engine oil takes a long time to die away. There were two troughs in the floor—inspection pits—between hydraulic vehicle lifts, but all the machinery I could see was caked with grease and dust and rust.

  In the furthest bay was parked what looked like a small petrol tanker. Was that why matey had been reluctant to smoke inside? Unlike this building, the tanker was relatively new, with gleaming paintwork. Close up, however, I could see that the headlights were splattered with dried-out bugs; this truck had come on a long journey, quite recently—from the continent. It was left-hand drive, with EU license plates. When I pulled open the driver’s door I saw the keys were still dangling in the ignition. There was no branding or logo on the tanker itself, just a series of colored labels, the sort all trucks carrying chemicals were required to show in case they spilled their load in a collision. I didn’t know what the letters signified, but even an illiterate like me could understand that icon at the end: a hand with a crater burned into it. Corrosive substance.

  Against the far wall stood three oil drums, also plastered with chemical labels—though these were different to the ones on the tanker. Beside them was a long workbench, neatly laid out. At one end shallow trays held reels of colored wire and solder; at the other stood several crates of spring water in glass bottles, swaddled in polythene wrappers; beyond that, a neat stack of boxes that turned out to be cheap pay-as-you-go mobile phones—burners like the Guvnor and his crew used, all brand-new.

  Beneath the workbench was a wheeled plastic crate. Pulling it out, I peered inside and found three cheap backpacks, like you’d pick up in a big supermarket—lots of chunky zippers and webbing straps and pouches, but not waterproof, so no good for serious hiking. This was the sort of budget kit that people took to rock festivals, then left behind. One was bright orange; I lifted it out and looked at it more closely. It smelled new, but it looked slightly scuffed, as if someone had kicked it about the place to age it artificially. And there was something else about it, something familiar, that I couldn’t quite place, something that gnawed at the edge of my mind like a rat.