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.

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

in some fascination. “You’ve done this

“Once or

led an interesting life, haven’t

a kink. Then knotting cord to the loop, he loads the projectile into

one from its slot. “What is it the Chinese

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

“True.”

eyes rise to mine. “You going to tell me what the deal is with

“One of them.”

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

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

says nothing for long seconds. Then, “And

was one of

snaps the gun closed. “Stand back. Just because it spits line instead of bullets it’s no less a firearm and it’s going to

“Why?”

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 follow on with a rope to take real weight. This stuff’s good to one-twenty pounds. Not enough to take me and certainly not

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

aims upwards, sighting along the length of the shaft,

target it flies straight as an arrow, but then overshooting,

cranes to see. “Must be a wind blowing up

misses the brackets and the projectile clatters onto

vision, something shifts… a brighter patch in

“Someone’s coming.”

back against the wall, at the last moment, we turn faces away from

accompanied by floating red embers and the scent of

was? I didn’t hear

did. Some sort of

“Probably kids or crack-heads.”

pay us to find out isn’t

darkness, frozen fog a-glitter in the air as

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

he needs to

it be better to poison

cigarette butt at the trash, a small red ember arcing

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

fresh canister of cord; a fresh cartridge. He stands

whistles upwards, the cord unravelling to follow behind. At the

and this time drops squarely over one of

“Not two?”

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

tugs experimentally, then hoists himself, his full weight on it. Nothing much

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

careful. With the freeze,

over the other, feet propped

as he

How old are you?

to be

that wall like

then 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 and the end of the

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

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

Crap…

down. “Michael, move your ass. We

He did it…

So can I…

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

half-way point, biceps beginning to burn,

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

Smart bastard…

my lungs again, I pull up from my right

and my feet

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, lose contact with the

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

Christ!

as a mosaic of light and dark and grey which swirls under me alarmingly. All around, the lights of the City

is a hiss

iced. Gimme

“I’m coming down…”