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.

loop to one end… He

some fascination. “You’ve done this

huffs. “Once

led an interesting life, haven’t

could say so.” He fiddles with the cord, smoothing over a kink. Then knotting cord to the loop, he loads the projectile

is it

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

“True.”

deal is

“One of them.”

pretty chummy with her, but no-one blinked. Not even her own husband. And I’d not have thought Richard Haswell was

it. Charlotte has two husbands. I

long seconds. Then, “And Jenny’s happy

one

instead of bullets it’s no less a

“Why?”

the job it was designed for. It’s a line-thrower but it’s intended to be fired horizontally; for sea rescue and similar. I have to get it up and over one of those brackets so the line will catch. Then we can

or more if

“I like that idea.” He aims upwards, sighting along the length of the shaft,

an arrow, but

see. “Must

cord misses the brackets and the projectile clatters onto

something shifts… a brighter patch in

“Someone’s coming.”

turn faces away from the betraying beam as

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

d’you think it was? I didn’t hear

I did. Some

“Probably kids or crack-heads.”

us to

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

knocking one of the cans flying

I’ll tell Finchby he needs to put down

it be better to

tosses his cigarette butt at the trash, a small red ember arcing through the darkness to fall glowing to the ground by the bins. “C’mon,

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

reloading: a fresh canister of cord; a fresh cartridge. He stands where he stood before, then eyeing

follow behind.

squarely over one

“Not two?”

cord to the rope,

experimentally, then hoists himself, his

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

careful. With the freeze, it’s

one hand over the other, feet propped

watch as

How old are you?

enough to

climb that wall

it rises, vanishes into darkness, then

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

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

Crap…

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

He did it…

So can I…

pride stinging, I grab at the rope. Feet propped up against the wall, knees flexing as

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

from above. “Michael, what the fuck are you doing down there? This isn’t a sight-seeing

Smart bastard…

pull up from my right arm, reaching, and pushing up from the feet

my

but the soles of

left arm reaching up, my entire weight drops onto my single right hand. For a heart-stopping second, the rope slides, the leather of the glove hot against my palm and my heartbeat accelerates from andante to allegro in the space of a couple of beats before I

Christ!

I had taken to be a kind of uniformly black pit, is revealed as a mosaic of light

is a hiss from the

Gimme

“I’m coming down…”