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 glances

watch in some fascination. “You’ve done this

huffs. “Once or

led an interesting life, haven’t

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

“What is it the Chinese say? May you live

that...” He pushes the cartridge into the breech, clicking it home. “… But it’s not as though I’m cut out

“True.”

what the deal is with you and the Haswell

“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 own husband. And I’d not have thought Richard Haswell was the type to sit back

husbands. I have two wives. We’re a

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

one of the

the gun closed. “Stand back. Just because it spits line instead of bullets it’s no

“Why?”

get it up and over one of those brackets so the line will catch. Then we can follow on

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

that idea.” He aims upwards, sighting along the length of the

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

“Must be

falls back, the cord misses the brackets and

peripheral vision, something shifts… a brighter patch in

“Someone’s coming.”

hard back against the wall, at the last moment, we turn faces away from the betraying beam as a figure

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

think it was?

Some sort of clanging

“Probably kids or crack-heads.”

pay us to

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

flying as it goes. Then darting between the legs of

tell Finchby he needs to put down

it be better to

the cats too, won’t it.” He tosses his cigarette butt at the trash, a small red ember arcing through the darkness to fall

There’s a distant clunk and all falls quiet again. “Want to give it

cartridge. He stands where he stood before, then eyeing upwards, repositions

unravelling to follow behind. At

squarely over

“Not two?”

ground, he’s already knotting one end of the cord to the rope, then hauling on the other, up and over the ancient

hoists himself, his full weight

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

With the freeze,

the other, feet

as

How old are you?

enough to be Charlotte’s

climb that wall like a

jerks. Quickly I attach Klempner’s bag of tricks and tug. In a series of jerks, it rises, vanishes into darkness, then the rope falls back. My bag next. That too is hauled upwards

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

wall, sheer, vertical, smooth, looms

Crap…

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

He did it…

So can I…

the wall, knees flexing as I ‘walk’ up, hauling myself, arm-over-arm up

beginning

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

Smart bastard…

filling my lungs again, I pull up from my right arm,

my feet

know if the brickwork is iced or just sheened in condensation, but the soles of my boots slide like

my 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 snap my left hand into place and regain my

Christ!

I can do is dangle, spinning. The 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

is a hiss from the darkness

iced. Gimme

“I’m coming down…”