All the Empty Places

by Mark Timlin

  I shook the aforementioned noggin.

  She kept on frisking me, just making a faint sound of disgust when she touched my blood soaked shirt. ‘Good,’ she said when she was satisfied I was unarmed. ‘Now, Nick, I hope you’re not going to try anything else funny.’

  ‘I won’t.’

  ‘I’d ask for your word but that’s such a quaint, old-fashioned notion.’

  ‘Look,’ I said. ‘I want to get out of here as much as you do. Let’s get on with it.’

  She stepped away and said, ‘OK, let’s do it.’

  ‘Can I stand up straight now?’ I asked.

  ‘Sure.’

  I caught my balance and turned. Her face was spooky in the light from the upturned torch. She still reminded me of Sheila but I no longer felt any attraction. I put my hand on the back of my head and in the light from the torch I saw blood.

  ‘Put on that lantern,’ she ordered.

  I did as I was told using my lighter, and in the glow we could see the loot scattered about the floor, and the four bodies lying there with it. ‘Jesus,’ she said. ‘Will you look at this.’

  It certainly was a sight. Money and precious stones were scattered everywhere. ‘Millions,’ she whispered. ‘Sodding millions.’

  She was probably right. ‘Let’s have a look at that wound,’ she said. ‘I want you strong.’

  I pulled up my blood-soaked sweatshirt and she had a squint. The blood was beginning to crust. I’d survive the wound to fight another day if the lovely Lucy let me. But the damned thing still hurt. ‘Not too bad,’ she said. ‘Georgie’s bag is by the hole. Fetch it.’

  I did as I was told again and found a nylon bag just inside the entrance Morris had blown in the floor. ‘Open it,’ she said, and when I did I found all sorts of medical gear including field dressings. She made me slap one on the crease over my ribs and that helped. Once it was done, by the light of the lantern she collected the stray weapons, including my Detonics, and dropped them into Georgie’s bag, which she stashed at the back of the vault.

  ‘Right,’ she said when she was done. ‘Start packing up what’s out in the open. Forget about the other boxes. There’s enough here for us.’

  I found a roll of the heavy duty garbage bags, split off one then another, folded the first into the second for extra strength, and started loading them with money and jewellery. Lucy hitched her backside on a pile of security drawers and sat and watched me work, her gun loose in her hand.

  It took me almost an hour to pack up six bags of loot and stack them by the hole in the floor. There was no conversation as I worked, she just stayed sitting with the gun in her hand watching me, and the four dead bodies seemed to be watching me too.

  45

  Eventually she said, ‘Now, the question is, can I trust you to take these bags out to Finbarr’s office building?’

  ‘So you know about that too,’ I interrupted.

  ‘I know about everything thanks to you,’ she replied. ‘Now as I was saying, can I trust you? Or foolish as it might be, would you just keep on going. Either to steal what’s in the bags you take with you, or to go find a nice policeman and try to get me into trouble. And I don’t mean land me with an unwanted baby. What do you say?’

  I shrugged. ‘Try me,’ I said.

  ‘That’s precisely what I intend to do. I think you’re more like me than you care to admit, Nick. And any other ways would be just too tiresome, like keeping you covered all the time or killing you. And I don’t want to kill you. And besides, getting all the stuff out would be too hard on my body and clothes.’ She looked down at her ruined jeans, muddy and torn, like mine from the journey in. ‘But it’ll be Prada from now on. Now that I don’t have to rely on police wages. Anyway, enough of that. Let’s not count our chickens. Where was I? Oh yes. So I’m just going to have to take a chance.’ And with that she let down the hammer of her pistol and tucked it into the waistband of her jeans, this time at the front. ‘Now how many bags can you manage at once, a big strong boy like you?’

  ‘Four I suppose,’ I replied. ‘But that first tunnel’s narrow, so the best thing for me to do is to take them through one at a time, pile them up at the other side and then carry them to the ladder.’

  ‘I believe you’re getting into the spirit of the thing, Nick,’ she said. ‘But before we do anything I have to make a few preparations.’

  She sat me with my back against the wall, moved about twenty yards away, then said, as if I hadn’t worked it out for myself, ‘If you try and run at me, I’ll have plenty of time to get my gun out and shoot you. And you know I’m a good shot. Do you get me?’

  ‘I do,’ I said, and watched as she busied herself with some equipment.

  ‘What are you doing?’ I asked.

  ‘This lot brought enough high explosive and bomb-making gear to start World War Three. I’m just borrowing it.’

  ‘Do you know what you’re doing?’

  ‘In the army I worked in bomb disposal and then they sent me to demolition school. I know exactly what I’m doing.’

  ‘A woman of many parts.’

  ‘And most of them private, but yes, I’ve always thought it was advisable to have more than one string to my bow.’

  When she was satisfied with her work she came back to join me. ‘I’ll explain exactly what’s going to happen, Nick. I’ve prepared two bombs. One stays here and one comes with us. Both are on timers, the one coming with us will be set an hour after the first one. Like I said, there’s a whole lot of HE in here. Far more than they needed, and when we’re ready to go there’ll be two big bangs that will seal the vault and the sewers.

  ‘You’re crazy.’

  ‘Maybe. But they’re just the kind of diversions we need to get away.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘And then we ride away into the sunset together.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Really. It’ll be good to have someone around to share this good fortune with.’

  ‘And you’ve picked me.’

  ‘You’re big, not bad looking, you can satisfy me in bed if I decide to swing that way. You’re quite amusing and you’ll keep boring men away. Yes I think you’ll do.’

  ‘And what happens when you get tired of me?’

  ‘I’m sure that will never happen.’

  Who do you think you’re kidding, I thought. You’ll keep me around for just as long as it takes to get the loot away. Then it’ll be shake ‘n’ bake time and you’ll kill me.

  But not if I kill you first.

  46

  But before any of that happened, I did as I’d been told yet again and pushed and pulled the bags of loot through the narrow tunnel, past the dead body of the bloke I’d stabbed, out into the main sewer, collecting the other bags as I went. It was awkward and it took time, but eventually I had the dozen bags of loot stacked neat as you please next to the river of dirty water where Finbarr still floated face down, and Lucy saved her manicure, although I can tell you it didn’t do much for mine. By the time I was finished I was sweating like a pig and covered in muck from head to toe, and the sweat wasn’t making my various wounds feel any better. ‘You look a picture,’ she said when I was done, and checked her watch. ‘Look lively now, there’s a bomb inside that vault, and it’ll go off soon, and believe me we don’t want to be down here when it does.’

  ‘How long?’ I asked.

  ‘Long enough if you’re quick.’

  I said nothing in reply, just eased my aching muscles and wiped the sweat out of my eyes with the tail of my shirt.

  ‘Right,’ she said. ‘Onward and upward. Grab as much as you can carry and let’s get back to base.’

  It took three trips, four bags a trip, bent almost double as the roof of the sewer dipped, but able to stand upright for the last part of each journey. Lucy kept me company but didn’t lift as much as a
diamond tiara, just kept hold of the second bomb she was carrying in Georgie’s holdall.

  ‘Up you go,’ she said when everything was in place under the building where Finbarr had leased an office. ‘Just push the bags through, no need to go through yourself.’

  I did as I was ordered, taking a bag on each journey up the iron ladder and pushing it through the manhole at the top. It was dark in the corridor, and I thought I could smell moisture in the air.

  Eventually my task was done and Lucy said, ‘I’m going to set the timer on the second bomb.’

  ‘Why bother to blow all this up too?’ I asked.

  ‘It’ll cause another diversion,’ she replied. ‘They’ll think the Irish are back in business.’ She squatted down, pulled the bomb out of the bag and set to work. ‘Shit,’ she said after a minute. ‘This timer’s fucked. I’ll have to go back.’

  ‘Have we got time?’ I asked.

  ‘Plenty. Now do I have to handcuff you to that ladder?’ she asked. ‘Or are you going to wait here like a good boy?’

  ‘I’ll wait,’ I said. After all the hard work I’d done I felt I was entitled to some reward. ‘By the way, how do you figure to get all this stuff out of the area? There’s a pretty big police presence outside you know.’ And she should if anyone should, I thought. ‘And plenty more once you start blowing holes in the landscape.’

  ‘That’s all taken care of. There’s a van parked round the corner.’

  ‘They let you park a van here? I thought the cops were all over parked vehicles like a rash.’

  ‘It’s a police van, love,’ she replied sweetly.

  ‘You think of everything.’

  ‘I try.’

  ‘I don’t know, Nick,’ she said, drawing her pistol. ‘Something tells me you’re being too helpful. I think maybe I should just make sure you don’t make a run for it.’ She took a set of cuffs from her pocket and under the gaze of the round mouth of the gun she cuffed me to one of the stanchions that held the ladder in place against the brick wall of the sewer, and with a cheerful wave made off back down the walkway, the light from her torch bobbing as she went.

  I stood in the dark for what seemed like hours but in fact was only twenty minutes or so, with just the dim light from the open manhole above me bleeding into the blackness of the sewer. I tugged at the handcuff, but wobbly as the ladder was, it wouldn’t give, so like a fool I left it.

  Then I saw a light far away and eventually I recognised her. But something was different, the sewer was starting to run faster, and then from the opposite direction of Lucy’s light I heard a strange sound that I couldn’t immediately identify. Then I saw them. Loping down the far walkway were half a dozen skinny, mangy looking foxes who hardly paid me any attention as they ran past. Strange I thought.

  Then there was another sound from the same direction that the foxes had come from. It was a patter, and a rustle, and a squeak that grew louder and louder and I squinted into the darkness trying to make out what it was, as a dark mass pinpricked with dots of red rushed towards me.

  ‘What the fu –’ I said, and the mass was upon me, and I realised it was a phalanx of rats streaming down the walkways on both sides of the sewer, rushing as fast as their little legs would carry them, away from I knew not what. It was a flesh and blood cohesion, as solid as a runaway truck, some of the rodents tumbling and turning somersaults in their panic to get away from what nameless terror was behind them. And as they hit me like a massive, furry fist, I turned away, and saw Lucy’s terrified face just a few feet from mine, and then the rats were upon us, and I couldn’t see anything for the multitude of them.

  47

  ‘Nick,’ she screamed, and reached out her right hand which I grabbed with my left, my right being otherwise engaged with a pair of handcuffs, as the furry horde engulfed us. Her eyes were as full of fear as those of the rats that had come hopping and skipping down the sewer past us and heading in the direction that she’d arrived from, destination unknown. It seemed like hours that we were covered in them, their little feet catching on our clothes, their needle teeth nibbling at our extremities and their frightened squeals filling our ears, but in fact it could only have been a few seconds before they were gone. But the worst was yet to come. From the same direction as the rats I heard a roaring sound that was getting louder with every second, and I suddenly realised what was happening. Why the sewer water was running faster, and why the foxes and rats had fled. The weather forecast I’d heard on Finbarr’s car radio on the way over had promised torrential storms in the London area, and if I was any judge, that was what was happening up top, and the sewers were filling. And filling bloody fast by the sound of it.

  ‘The key,’ I yelled to Lucy. ‘Give me the key to the cuffs.’

  ‘What?’ she said.

  ‘The bloody key. It’s a flood.’

  Recognition dawned on her face as the noise got louder, until my ears were almost filled with it, and she put down the bomb she was carrying and reached into her pocket for the slim piece of metal that would free me, but it was too late. The sewer echoed with the noise of rushing water, and the smell of moisture almost drowned out the smell of sewage, and as she pulled the handcuff key from her pocket a solid wall of water came round the bend in the sewer and hit us like a hammer.

  I still had her hand in mine as we were both picked up by the roiling waters and I could see the fear on her face once more as her hand was torn from mine and she disappeared in the torrent. ‘Lucy,’ I cried, but the words were plucked from my mouth as the raging tide smashed me against the wall, and all that I could think of was that if I got through this I would be trapped down here cuffed neatly to the ladder waiting for the cops to come pick me up.

  That was if I survived the bombs she’d set.

  48

  The torrent of water seemed to grow stronger rather than decrease, and I was bodily lifted by the flow to a ninety degree angle, my nose, ears, eyes and mouth filling with liquid containing Christ knows what. I felt that my hand was about to be ripped from my arm as the cuff tightened, and I would have screamed with pain if I could have got my vocal chords to work. Jesus, I thought, I’m going to die here, but instead of my life flashing in front of my eyes, as I’ve heard happens, I could only imagine what the people who found me after the water had ebbed would make of a man dead by drowning, handcuffed to a stanchion in what would then be a dry sewer. Another bloody conundrum amongst so many recently. But then, just as I was beginning to lose consciousness, finally something on the rusty old ladder snapped and I was free and almost swept away by the flood as Lucy had been. The surprise shocked me back into the land of the living and luckily my fingers caught onto the vertical support of the ladder. I held on for dear life as gradually the current waned and I found my footing again, hardly able to breathe as I vomited water and muck from my nose and mouth.

  After a minute I was able to let go of the ladder and kneel, bent almost double as I coughed up the last of the shit I’d swallowed and gradually got my breath back.

  How long I stayed there on my knees I don’t know, but the sewer water was still running fast when I eventually regained my feet and called out Lucy’s name in a hoarse voice that didn’t sound like my own.

  But of her and the bomb she’d been carrying in Georgie’s bag there was neither sight nor sound.

  The bomb, I thought. Jesus. How long had she set the detonator for? Not long I’d bet my life, and I didn’t want to be inside the sewer when it went off.

  So, abandoning her to her fate, as she had abandoned her sister and her girlfriend, I climbed the rickety ladder for the last time and dropped the manhole cover back in its grooves.

  Bye bye Lucy I thought as it clanged shut. I hope you rot in hell.

  49

  Istood dripping water like I’d just stepped out of a cold shower and looked round the corridor I was standing in, illuminated only by the dim glow fro
m the lamps set in the ceiling, surrounded by the dozen bags of swag that I’d dragged from the vault, through the sewer and up the ladder. Now what the hell do I do with you lot? I thought. Outside there were cops and CCTV cameras everywhere and I didn’t have the advantage of being able to use a police van as cover, as its exact whereabouts and ignition key had been washed away with Lucy. I looked at my watch. It said ten to three, but after all I’d been through I couldn’t work out if it was morning or afternoon, or even exactly what day it was. I almost hit myself in the head to remember. Eventually I realised it must be Monday, but was it just starting or already half gone?

  I shivered in the chill air, then kicked open the door to Finbarr’s store room. The pile of clothes covered with dried mud was still where I remembered inside the windowless cube, and I sorted out a pair of trousers that were too big in the waist and too short in the leg, and a hooded sweatshirt that was far too small but would have to do. I pulled off my wet clothes and replaced them with the dry ones. The handcuffs were still hanging from my wrist and they could be a problem. I was never any good at picking locks, so I just took the free end and shoved it up the arm of the shirt. I could deal with that later. I took my wet clothes back into the corridor and dumped them in one of the bags.

  I was standing there deciding what to do next when the first of Lucy’s bombs went off. I heard a muffled boom, the whole building shook, the manhole cover danced a jig and the lights went out. ‘Fire in the hole,’ I whispered to myself.

  I stood in the pitch dark so dense that I could almost hold it in my hand, and in the pocket of my leather jacket found my mini Maglite, which miraculously still worked after the soaking it had had. I said a silent thank you for American workmanship and headed up to the ground floor.

  It was night, and I said another thank you for its cloak as I stumbled across the pitch black foyer of the building. The door was fastened by only a single Yale and I realised why Finbarr had chosen such an old building. The last thing he would’ve wanted was some modern job with a glass front and up-to-date security. I slipped the lock and pulled the door ajar and was immediately deafened by burglar alarms that had been set off by the explosion, and the roar of black rain onto the street. The roof of the world had slammed down like a trap door whilst I’d been underground. It was pouring, the heatwave had broken as promised and London was ground zero for a monsoon-like rainstorm. No wonder the sewers below had filled. It was dark outside also. Too dark, and for a second I couldn’t work out why and then I realised. Not only had the building lights gone out, but the street lights were dead too. Lucy’s bomb had blown the main electricity supply. Then from around a corner, blue lights and headlamps flashing, came a police car with its siren wailing. Gently I closed the front door but the cops went flying by. At least they weren’t interested in me – yet.