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.

brass pole, with a loop to one end… He glances up. “The projectile…” he explains, without waiting for my

fascination. “You’ve

huffs. “Once

led an interesting life, haven’t

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

its slot. “What is it the Chinese say?

“… But it’s not as though I’m cut out for afternoon tea

“True.”

“You going to tell me what the deal is with you and the Haswell woman? You’re supposed to be Jenny’s

“One of them.”

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

offered it. Charlotte has two husbands. I have two wives. We’re

long seconds. Then,

was one of the

instead of bullets it’s no less

“Why?”

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

if you can, then there’s more than a

He aims upwards, sighting along the length of the shaft, then

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

to see. “Must be a wind blowing

cord misses the brackets and

my peripheral vision, something shifts…

“Someone’s coming.”

turn faces away from the betraying beam as a figure

behind the glare of a torch, accompanied by floating

it was? I

did. Some sort

“Probably kids or crack-heads.”

they pay us to

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

tell Finchby he needs to put down

be better to poison the rats

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 by the bins. “C’mon,

holding it. There’s a distant clunk and all falls quiet

a fresh canister of cord; a fresh cartridge. He stands where he stood

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

time drops squarely over one of the

“Not two?”

have everything.” Klempner is 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

tugs experimentally, then hoists himself, his full weight

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

Be careful. With the

sniffs and nods, then, one hand over the other, feet propped

as he

How old are you?

to be

that

jerks, it rises, vanishes into darkness, then the rope falls back. My bag

did any climbing, several years in fact. The rope feels unfamiliar in my hands as I haul myself

I crane upwards, the wall, sheer, vertical, smooth, looms vertiginously above

Crap…

“Michael, move your

He did it…

So can I…

up against the wall, knees

biceps beginning to burn, I

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

Smart bastard…

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

and my

of my boots slide like some old slips-on-the-banana-skin joke, lose contact with the wall and abruptly, I'm

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

Christ!

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

The voice is a hiss

iced. Gimme

“I’m coming down…”