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.

to one end… He glances up.

fascination. “You’ve done this

huffs. “Once or

led an interesting

Then knotting cord to the loop, he loads the projectile into the front of the barrel where it protrudes,

its slot. “What is it the Chinese

He pushes the cartridge into the breech, clicking it home. “… But it’s not as though

“True.”

going to tell me what the deal is with you and

“One of them.”

them. But what’s with you and Beth Haswell? You seem pretty chummy with her, but no-one blinked. Not even her

offered it. Charlotte has two husbands. I have two wives. We’re a five-cornered

says nothing for long seconds. Then, “And Jenny’s happy

was one of

closed. “Stand back. Just because it spits line instead of bullets it’s no less a firearm

“Why?”

those brackets so the line will catch. Then we can follow

to straddle two or more if you can, then there’s

upwards, sighting along the

projectile streaks upwards, trailing its cord. As it approaches its target it flies straight as an arrow, but then overshooting, rises above the roof and

to see. “Must be a

misses the brackets and the projectile clatters

vision, something shifts… a brighter patch in

“Someone’s coming.”

moment, we turn faces

torch, accompanied by floating red embers and the scent of cigarette

d’you think it was? I

did. Some sort of

“Probably kids or crack-heads.”

pay us to find out

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

streaks out from between the bins, knocking one of the cans flying as it goes. Then darting between the legs of the recoiling

he

be better to poison

small red ember arcing through the darkness to fall glowing to the ground by the bins.

and then realise I'd been holding it. There’s a distant clunk and

of cord; a fresh cartridge. He stands where he

the cord unravelling to follow behind. At

and this time drops squarely

“Not two?”

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.

hoists himself, his full

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

Be careful. With the freeze, it’s probably

and nods, then, one hand over the other, feet propped against the brickwork, ‘walks’ up the

as

How old are you?

to be

climb that

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

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

the wall, sheer, vertical, smooth, looms vertiginously above

Crap…

voice hisses down. “Michael, move your ass. We

He did it…

So can I…

I grab at the rope. Feet propped up against the wall, knees

half-way point, biceps beginning to burn, I stop

fuck are you doing down there? This

Smart bastard…

my right arm, reaching, and pushing up

and my

if the brickwork is iced or just sheened in condensation, but the soles of my boots slide like some old slips-on-the-banana-skin joke,

For a heart-stopping second, the rope slides, the leather of the glove hot against my palm

Christ!

darkness below me, which I had taken to be a kind of uniformly black pit, is revealed as a mosaic of light and dark and grey which swirls under me alarmingly. All around, the lights of the City draw streaks

voice is a hiss from the darkness above.

Gimme a

“I’m coming down…”