by Adam Maxwell
“Not feeling too well?”
Elias’ cheeks puffed out for a moment as a caustic discharge burned its way up his throat, but he swallowed it down.
Katie gave one final tug and the pen came out, flying loose and spiralling over her shoulder through the air, spattering a cartwheel of blood as it went.
“Fuck’s sake, Katie!” Violet snapped in mock-anger, but as she looked back to Elias, she saw he had a trail of blood streaked diagonally from his chin over the grid of hair plugs on top of his head. His legs continued to shake and a dark patch had formed around the crotch of his trousers. Violet’s nose wrinkled as the smell of urine drifted upwards. “Eew. Have you pissed in your pants? I thought we were dealing with proper gangsters.” She turned to Katie, who had hoisted the damaged guard into her arms before stacking him on top of his colleague, like they were a pair of sofa cushions. “You would have thought he’d be used to this kind of thing?”
The corners of Katie’s mouth turned down and a thoughtful look drifted across her face, before she gave a light shrug.
Violet turned back to Elias. His entire head was pale, his whole body shaking.
“Don’t usually go out without your guards, eh?” asked Violet.
Elias shook his head.
“Wise move. You really never know what could happen to you. Especially when you go around ripping off honest, hard-working criminals.”
“What are you going to do?” Elias asked, the fight drained out of him and soaked into the carpet. “To me,” he added, looking at Katie.
“Glad you asked.” Violet clapped her hands enthusiastically. “I’ve prepared a little song for this bit. Hit it, Katie!” She pointed to her companion and waved a single jazz hand with her other.
“Not…” there was a long pause between Elias’ first word and his second. “Really?”
“Of course not really,” said Violet, dropping her hands back to her sides. “Where was I? Oh yes, I explained the whole funny money payback, didn’t I?”
He nodded.
“Good. Well the second thing was... I want Zenker’s ashes back. I’m not in the habit of stealing things for free and I’ve lined up a new buyer. I should thank you for that, though.”
Elias frowned in confusion.
“That was the whole point of our little charade. I mean, we could have found where you had hidden the urn eventually and bypassed the thumbprint scanner but it seemed like overkill when we could just… let Katie flex her muscles.”
“Is she—”
Katie cracked her knuckles and Elias stopped talking.
“Where was I?” Violet pretended to ask Katie. “Ah yes, so funny money placed, arrest arranged, urn retrieved…” She pretended to look around the room. “Wait a minute. Silly me. I haven’t retrieved the urn. Not yet.”
Elias stared at her in fear and incomprehension.
“Press the button and give me the urn or Katie will pull off your arms and beat you to death with the wet ends.”
Katie stopped what she was doing to give Elias a sad little nod.
“I believe she will,” he whispered, almost to himself, before squelching a couple of steps to the mantelpiece. Reluctantly, Elias pressed his thumb against the single plastic tile embedded into the wood under the painting. The pristine pile of neatly chopped logs masquerading as a fire in the hearth slid out of sight, revealing a hidden compartment.
Elias reached inside, but hesitated when he heard Katie sucking air through her teeth.
“She’s right,” said Violet. “How do we know there’s not a gun or something in there. You go back to your patch of piss, where we can see you, and I’ll—” Violet was interrupted by Katie putting her hand on her arm.
She pointed at her own chest then towards the hearth. Violet nodded in return, acknowledging the superior skill of her friend in dealing with weapons and traps, should there be any.
Inside the hearth was a box covered with black silk, the material held in place with studs that were most likely actual gold rather than simply gold in colour. Katie held one of her huge hands under its base, the other holding the side so it didn’t tip over, and placed the box on the desk before unfastening the matching gold clasp. Contained within was an item they both recognised; the urn containing the ashes of Zenker. Katie lifted the lid and poked her finger inside, stirring the gritty contents absent-mindedly. Violet gave a little cough and her friend withdrew her disrespectful digit, screwing the urn’s lid on tightly. Katie pulled a ‘sorry’ face, before putting the urn in their backpack and handing a couple more bundles of notes to Violet.
“Ah yes,” said Violet. She moved towards Elias but stopped as she reached the damp patch he was standing in. “If you were a puppy I’d probably get her to rub your nose in that.” She walked around to his side, finding a dry patch and leaning over to place the bundles in his pocket. “The thing is… I’m very much aware that here, right now, we hold the cards. I’m also perfectly aware that once we leave you’ll get… ideas.”
Elias’ face had flushed with anger once more.
“And I’m willing to bet that those ideas would centre around doing awful things to me and her. And that’s why I decided to kill your only source of income. Kill it with fire.”
“The club?” he whispered. “The fire was… you?”
Violet nodded.
“I should—” Elias began, the fight starting to light inside him once more.
“You should be thankful we didn’t burn down your house with you inside of it.”
He pouted and then, slowly, a smile crept onto his face.
Violet watched it. Waiting for the thoughts to form in his head before she plucked them out and crushed them.
“You’re thinking about the insurance, aren’t you?” Violet asked.
The smile paused, frozen on his face. “How did you—”
“It’s like you don’t know me at all,” she said and then, turning to Katie she continued. “I honestly feel a little insulted as to how underestimated I’m feeling right now.”
Katie shrugged innocently.
“Actually, we increased your insurance,” said Violet.
“You did what?” Elias wasn’t following and Violet was loving it.
“Yeah we called the insurers up, pretended to be you and increased your coverage. But only on fire damage. You were pretty worried about you club burning down. Your office too as I recall.”
He squinted at her in confusion.
“Buuuut…” said Violet before he could think any more thoughts. “We also hacked your CCTV. So you left this office five minutes before the fire started. Were seen on camera in the places where the fire started at the time it started and then you came back in here to pretend you didn’t know anything about it.”
“But how…” he trailed off.
“How? Like I said before. By being cleverer than you. It’s really not hard. We just spliced footage of you from yesterday. My team is very, very good.”
Katie pretended to grab an imaginary pair of lapels and gave a smile of appreciation.
“If it spreads into this building—”
“And it will.”
“—I’ll lose everything”
“Yep.”
“I’ll—”
“You’ll what? When you wake up, you won’t have the money to bribe your way out of anything. And with no club, there’ll be no coming back.”
“Wake up?”
“Yeah, sorry about that,” said Violet. “The next part of the plan sort of requires you to be unconscious.”
“Un—”
Katie’s fist slammed into Elias’ cheekbone. He was unconscious before his eyelids closed, his body limp and lifeless. He might have dropped to the ground like a bowel-full of elephant shit, but Katie had really put her back into the blow. As a result, the impact of the punch launched Elias at the door, the other side of his head smashing into it as he collapsed in a heap on the carpet.
Katie looked over to Violet, who gave her a grin
and a little round of applause. “I think our work here is done,” she said, pulling on her backpack. “Now, give me a bunk up, will you? I can’t reach the hatch.”
Katie ignored her for a moment and grabbed the book she had been reading from the desk. She turned to Violet, her eyebrows raised in question.
“You’re asking me if you can take it?” asked Violet.
Katie nodded.
“Katie, we’re criminals. We don’t ask to take stuff. That’s kind of in the job description.”
Katie slipped the book into Violet’s backpack and zipped it closed, then lifted Violet into the air.
twelve
Detective Roach stood still, ear pressed to the door, listening. The initial shouting had subsided and had given way to a conversation, although the office door was too thick for Roach to make out what they were saying.
The lift doors at the other end of the corridor slid open and his partner, Scarfe, strode from the lift and down the corridor in his direction.
“Have any trouble getting in?” asked Roach.
Scarfe shook his head.
“No one on the front desk?”
Scarfe shook his head. “Why?” he asked, suspiciously.
“I pointed out the error of her ways. Explained to her the sort of person she’s working for,” said Roach.
“I’ve… dealt with her before,” Scarfe replied. “She brought your antics to my attention when she saw me outside.”
Roach curled his hand into a fist and dug his nails into his palm. He knew what that meant. It meant that Scarfe had been involved in something dodgy in these premises. It meant that the secretary recognised him as someone the criminals could trust and it meant that Roach was the threat. None of which was a huge surprise, but he couldn’t help the red mist descending at the thought.
He took a breath. This time, tonight, there was a chance he could do something in spite of all that.
“So what’s going on?” asked Scarfe.
Roach took his ear away from the door. “There was someone in there. Maybe more than one person. Elias and two guards interrupted them and now the door’s locked.”
Scarfe reached into his pocket, retreiving his own swipe card and pulled it gently through the card reader. Roach stared at the lights, waiting for Scarfe’s access to outstrip his own. The green light flashed once, twice but the red light followed and the door once more remained resolutely closed.
“It’s—” Roach stopped abruptly at the unmistakable sound of Elias and his two guards shouting. There was a rising panic in the room on the other side of the door.
The slightly smug, condescending look that Scarfe had been wearing fell away and he re-swiped his card. Once, twice, three times he pulled it through the scanner, but each time the red light denied him entry.
There was an explosion of activity in the room and then the unmistakable sound of a grown man sobbing.
“I’m calling in the troops,” said Scarfe, looking more alarmed than Roach had seen him before.
His partner maintained a certain poise, a silent menace. He was part of the boys’ club and Roach was not. He could get what he wanted, could negotiate with criminals and release them without charge. He was part of a system that worked for money, not justice, and yet here he was, unnerved.
Roach wondered whether it was because Elias Croft had something on Scarfe, or whether this was something that would put a future pay day in jeopardy. Whatever it was, the alarm remained even when the uniformed officers piled out of the lift, the man leading them carrying a bright red battering ram. Down the side, scrawled in white paint, were the words ‘knock knock’.
“Sir, we need to be quick,” said the lead officer. “The fire’s spread to the ground floor of this building. The whole place is gonna burn, according to the water fairies.”
“Well we need to get in here,” said Scarfe, standing to one side. “There are civilians.”
The officer with the battering ram raised an eyebrow to Roach at the mention of the word ‘civilians’. He knew as well as anyone what the score was. Elias was a fully paid-up member of the untouchable gang, so his door was not to be kicked in without a bloody good reason.
The gathered detectives and officers stood back to give him room and the officer swung the ram into the door. One blow sent the lock mechanism splintering through the wooden door frame. The door swung open and the two detectives stepped through.
Inside, a strange tableau presented itself. Elias’ unconscious body was neatly stacked on top of his two guards against the wall. Thousands of pounds of banknotes were spilling from the pockets of the three of them. The safe door was open and inside more stacks of notes were clumsily heaped. Roach whipped out his mobile and took photos, documenting the scene. Ensuring that the less-scrupulous of his colleagues wouldn't go home with a five-finger bonus.
He quickly snapped the pile of unconscious bodies, zoomed in on a couple of the injuries that were immediately obvious. One guy’s hand looked particularly nasty. Next he snapped around the room, the bookcase, the fireplace and finally he approached the safe. He snapped away and then one of the notes, caught by some unseen breeze, fluttered out and landed by his foot.
Roach titled his head to one side, looking down at it. And then it struck him. It was the same serial number as the fakes that little shitehawk Lucas had given him. If he wasn’t in this up to his neck then Roach would be amazed…
He approach the safe and examined the notes more closely. They all had an identical serial number. Turning around, he caught one of the other officers reaching in to a guard’s pocket about to take a handful.
“Fake,” he said.
Scarfe took a step forward and was about to say something when the carpet squelched under his shoe. “What the—?”
“There was a woman,” said Roach. “I heard a woman’s voice. So either she was a victim or she’s somehow managed to take out two armed men and our friendly, neighbourhood crime boss. With her bare hands. And then vanished into thin air.”
“Could have been speakerphone?” said Scarfe.
Roach shook his head. “Nah, she was definitely here.”
He scanned the room, his eyes creeping from nook to cranny. Apart from under the desk, there was nowhere anyone could hide. Elias groaned and Roach walked over to check on him. Scarfe dropped to one knee, inspecting the damp stain on the ground. He dipped his fingers in it and raised them to his mouth, his tongue darting out to taste it, when…
“No!” Roach barked, seeing the damp patch around Elias’ crotch.
Scarfe stopped just in time and growled. “Who did this?” he demanded.
The two detectives stalked the room, moving furniture, paintings, looking for hatches, hiding places, perhaps even the possibility of a panic room. The office was big. But not that big.
“Look,” Scarfe gestured to the compartment that had contained the Zenka’s ashes in the fireplace.
Roach nodded in agreement. Something had been there. Something other than the counterfeit notes. But it was gone. And so was she.
Finally, Roach looked up.
The loft hatch.
He tapped his finger on his partner’s shoulder before raising it to his lips, motioning him to silence.
Scarfe’s face was still collapsed in an angry frown, but he did as he was told. Roach pointed up to the hatch.
His partner nodded and, with great difficulty, the two of them dragged the desk so that a corner of it was under the opening. Roach motioned for Scarfe to take the lead, but his partner just sneered at him. Pulling a small flashlight from his coat, Roach hopped up onto the desk.
He took a breath. He didn’t know what he would find up there, but judging by the havoc that whoever it was had left behind, they wouldn’t be friendly. He reached up and pushed the hatch out of the way.
There was no response, no kickback, no noise of a gun being cocked, and so Roach moved the flashlight to his mouth, gripping it between clenched teeth, and hauled himself up so the top half
of his body was in the loft space. The flashlight illuminated a patch of blank wall but nothing else. As quickly as he was able, he hoisted himself further so he was sitting on the edge of the loft hatch and then took the flashlight from his mouth, flicking it around the accumulated detritus. Nothing but Christmas decorations and…
With an almighty bang an explosion cracked through the darkened corners, the shock waves hitting Roach. For a moment, time slowed down. He panicked, his hands grabbing at anything that might be in front of him, looking for purchase and finding nothing but thin air. In an instant he was thrown against the wall and fell back through the hatch, hitting Scarfe and the desk as he dropped back into the room.
“What the fuck is going on?” Scarfe screamed. “What the fuck was that? Are you shot?”
Roach staggered slightly as he got to his feet. “Bomb,” was all he could manage to say. As the ringing in his ears subsided, he added, “Next door. She’s covering her tracks. She’s going to try to escape through the nightclub.”
“Or burn to death trying,” said Scarfe.
“I’m going after her,” replied Roach. “And don’t even think about trying to hide the money. I’ve got photos.”
Scarfe raised a long middle finger at Roach. “Careful you don’t get killed,” he said, unconvincingly.
Roach shrugged and ran for the lift. There was no way he would let this slippery bugger get away.
thirteen
So this was it, thought Katie. They were going to die. Well, Violet was going to die. Katie had put her firefighter’s uniform on again, replete with mask and breathing apparatus. Violet’s outfit was a little lighter on protection from a painful, fiery death.
Katie nudged an empty smoke grenade canister. It had long since stopped spewing smoke, but its emissions still hung in the air, adding a dreamlike quality to the surroundings. There must have been ventilation somewhere, because she could see her hand in front of her face, but it hadn’t dispersed the smoke entirely.
There was a huge bang and the door to the manager’s office opened and slammed itself. She peered through the glass to the staircase beyond. It didn’t look too bad, the fire hadn’t reached this floor yet. Katie ran the timeline in her head, calculating how far it might have spread.