Hot Revenge Box Set 2

The car drives into the night, taillights, glowing gold through the exhaust. Ross stands silently by.

“Time for me to go too.”

“Good luck, James. I’ll be listening.” He offers his hand and I shake.

Then, bag in hand, I set off down the dark streets.

*****

Michael

The night is icy, the ground slick with frost and a breeze, slight though it is, bites at fingers and ears, even through the gloves and the woollen caps both Klempner and I are wearing.

Slipping from one shadow to another, we skirt the luridly lit front entrance of Club Electric, moving around the side.

“Don’t slip on the ice,” mutters Klempner. “You’d end up in the canal.”

The water, black and unwelcoming, ripples sluggishly, assorted unsavoury-looking objects bobbing at the surface.

“No, thanks… How are you planning on getting inside? I’m assuming you weren’t planning on the front door.”

“No. He probably has the back covered too.”

“Fire escape?”

Klempner shrugs, noncommittally. “Maybe.”

“So, what then?”

He brandishes the wooden carrycase he’s been toting since he first arrived with his armoury.

“And that is…?”

He kneels, unclipping the case. It opens into two halves, lying flat, to reveal inside what looks like a gun, sort of, and various components, nested into hollows in packing foam.

“A harpoon gun? And you plan to use that how exactly? I know James talked about hunting whales. Not that I wouldn’t be happy to see Finchby with one of those through his chest, but…”

“It’s a line thrower.” Klempner raises eyes to high above.

There, above what would once have been loading access for, what was then, a warehouse, a mix of silhouettes and dull glints mark the rusted remains of ancient winch and pulley systems jutting from the wall.

Klempner strolls to and fro, apparently measuring height or angle by eye. “What are you like at climbing? Ever done any?”

“Klempner, that’s got to be, sixty… seventy feet…”

“Yes. Have you done any climbing?”

“A bit of rock-climbing when I was a teenager and of course some rope work in the gym. But nothing like…” I let my eyes slide upward: a solid wall of smoothly constructed brickwork, damp in the night air, slick in the winter freeze. “… nothing like that.”

“If you can climb a rope in a gym, you can do this. It’s just a longer stretch.” He cranes his neck, looking up. “Which of those looks the most secure, would you say?”

“You have got to be kidding. Trust our weight to one of those? They’re decades old. There can’t be more than rust and hope holding them together.”

“You want to get inside or not? We can’t use the entrances. There’s no windows at all for the first two stories and the ones above that are barred. Oh, and for the avoidance of doubt, we’ll be trusting my weight to it, not yours.”

“Your weight? Why yours?”

“You're heavier than me, by quite a bit. I'll go up first, get the rope anchored to whatever else I can find up there. Then you can follow.”

“Klempner, that’s just not…”

“Got any better ideas?”

“Since you ask, no.”

“Well then.”

“What’s your idea from there? Hoping there’s access from the roof?”

He shrugs. “There usually is for these places. Services shafts, ventilation… Whatever. And if there isn’t any ready-made, we might make an access. Through the roof tiles perhaps.”

He looks up again, sucking at his teeth. “If we’re pushed, I suppose we could tackle the bars on those upper windows, but I don’t much like the idea of dangling sixty feet up for the length of time that would take. Even in the dark, we’d be too visible if anyone came round.”

He extracts the ‘gun’ from the packing, assembling parts. It could be a shotgun except for the unusually short barrel and strapped below the barrel, a canister, loaded with coiled cord.

He glances up. “The projectile…” he explains, without waiting for

watch in some fascination. “You’ve done

huffs. “Once

led an interesting life,

with the cord, smoothing over a kink. Then knotting cord to the loop, he loads the projectile into the front of the barrel where it protrudes, dangling the cord, then snaps fingers at me. “Pass me one

one from its slot. “What is it the Chinese say? May you live in interesting

cartridge into the breech, clicking it home. “… But it’s not as though I’m cut out for afternoon

“True.”

going to tell me what the deal is with you

“One of them.”

seem pretty chummy with her, but no-one blinked. Not even her own husband. And I’d

husbands. I have two wives. We’re a

for long seconds. Then, “And Jenny’s

one of

Just because it spits line instead of bullets it’s no less a firearm

“Why?”

of those brackets so the line will

of the brackets? Why not aim to straddle two or more if you can, then there’s more than a

upwards, sighting along the

its target it flies straight as an arrow, but then overshooting, rises above the roof and abruptly veers off-course,

cranes to see. “Must be a wind blowing up

falls back, the cord misses the

something shifts… a brighter patch

“Someone’s coming.”

the wall, at the last moment, we turn faces away from the betraying

the glare of a torch, accompanied by floating red embers and the scent

think it was? I

Some sort of

“Probably kids or crack-heads.”

they pay us

swings through the darkness, frozen fog a-glitter in the air as it moves, then passes over the

cans flying as it goes. Then darting between the legs of the recoiling

he needs

be better to poison

cigarette butt at the trash, a small red ember arcing through the darkness to fall glowing to the

realise I'd been holding it. There’s a

cord; a fresh cartridge. He stands where he stood before, then eyeing upwards, repositions himself, aims and

unravelling to follow behind. At the top of its arc,

drops squarely over one of

“Not two?”

everything.” Klempner is already taking a coil of rope from his pack. As cord and projectile touch ground, he’s already knotting one end of the cord to the rope, then hauling on the other, up and over the ancient bracket, then down again. In under two minutes, our

hoists himself, his full weight on it. Nothing much

he mutters. “I’ll go up first. Once I’m up, I’ll re-anchor, then you send the

the

one hand over the other, feet

as he

How old are you?

enough to be Charlotte’s

you climb that wall like a

Klempner’s bag of tricks and tug. In a series of jerks, it rises, vanishes into darkness, then the

while since I last did any climbing, several years in fact. The rope feels unfamiliar in my hands as I

I crane upwards, the wall, sheer, vertical, smooth, looms vertiginously

Crap…

voice hisses down. “Michael, move your ass. We don’t have all

He did it…

So can I…

Feet propped up against the wall, knees flexing as I ‘walk’ up, hauling myself, arm-over-arm up and ever up the brick

point, biceps beginning

from above. “Michael, what the fuck are you doing down

Smart bastard…

my right

and my

condensation, but the soles of my boots slide like some

the leather of the glove hot against my palm and my heartbeat accelerates from andante to allegro in the space

Christ!

black pit, is revealed as a mosaic of light

The voice is a hiss from the darkness above. “What’s

iced. Gimme

“I’m coming down…”