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.

long brass pole, with a loop to one end… He glances up.

some fascination. “You’ve done

huffs. “Once or

an interesting life,

the loop, he loads the projectile into the front of the barrel where it protrudes, dangling

it the Chinese say? May you live

home. “… But it’s not as though I’m cut

“True.”

me what the deal is with you and the Haswell woman? You’re supposed

“One of them.”

one of 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

has two husbands. I

long seconds. Then,

was one

gun closed. “Stand back. Just because it spits line instead of bullets

“Why?”

have to get it up and over one of those brackets so the line will catch. Then we can follow on with a rope to take real weight. This stuff’s good to one-twenty pounds.

straddle two or more if you can, then there’s more than a single support if

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

upwards, trailing its cord. As it approaches its target it flies straight as an arrow, but then

Klempner cranes to see. “Must be a wind blowing up

cord misses the brackets and the projectile

shifts… a

“Someone’s coming.”

moment, we turn faces away

figures… Matched silhouettes, behind the glare of a torch, accompanied by floating red embers and

think it was? I didn’t

I did. Some sort

“Probably kids or crack-heads.”

they pay us to find out

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

cans flying

vermin. I’ll tell Finchby he needs to

to poison

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

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

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

upwards, the cord unravelling to follow behind. At the top of its

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. In under two minutes, our climbing rope is

tugs experimentally, then hoists himself, his

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

With the

other, feet propped against the

as he

How old are you?

to be

that wall like a

series of jerks, it rises, vanishes into darkness, then the rope

years in fact.

I crane upwards, the wall,

Crap…

your

He did it…

So can I…

the wall, knees flexing as I

point, biceps beginning to

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

Smart bastard…

again, I pull up from my right arm, reaching,

and my

but the soles of my boots slide like some old slips-on-the-banana-skin joke, lose contact with the wall

the leather of the glove hot against my palm and my heartbeat accelerates from andante

Christ!

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 around, the lights of the City draw streaks of red and amber and white across my

is a hiss from

Gimme

“I’m coming down…”