“Second, these Yardies get wind of my boys taking a beating, especially if they hear it was some skinny suit that did it, that’s gives them a laugh, doesn’t it? They think to try their own luck. A message needs to be sent, Pax.”
Pax exhaled, wishing that at least one step she took would lead to simplifying her life, rather than making it more complicated. “This message…is it something Casaria can walk away from?”
“You want him to?” Jones said, grin returning. Pax gave him an unimpressed look.
“It might’ve been,” Monroe said. “He escalated this situation. We saw his place, we got what we needed. Didn’t even want him to talk. We only needed to return, in kind, what he did for my boys.”
“You got what –” Pax started. They already knew something about the Sunken City?
Bees interrupted, “He’s one of those people you hear about that takes pleasure in bad things, I reckon. Tendency to escalate things unnecessarily.”
“Son of a bitch wanted a fight,” Jones said. “Left us no choice.”
“Wherever that’s left you,” Pax said, “you don’t want to provoke this Ministry.”
“I believe you, Pax,” Monroe said. His eyes hadn’t left Pax, unsettlingly steady. “With this talk of tunnels and things shaking up the city today, we kept a careful eye on the news. Don’t take a genius to see your Ministry pals might actually control a certain amount of power, putting out what, ambiguous explanations at best. No, we didn’t want a part of that party. But we had a little brainstorm about that, didn’t we, boys?”
“Certainly did, boss,” Jones said, proudly. “And Bees came up with a pretty fine idea, if you ask me. Pretty fine indeed.”
Pax gave Bees a concerned look. “Don’t underestimate these people. They have –”
“I always put stock in what you say, Pax,” Bees said, flatly. “I had an idea these people were dangerous. You say it, we’re all listening. Doesn’t have to be a bad thing, though.”
“No?” Pax asked, dreading the answer.
“We’ll kill two birds with one stone,” Monroe said. “We make this man answer for his actions, saving face, and we invite his Ministry to return fire. Only, not in our direction.”
“You want to hurt Casaria and blame the…Yardies?”
The room was quiet, confirming she’d reached the right conclusion. Gravely. Jones put his beer can down, no sign of a smile now. Monroe watched Pax, and she stared back. Looking away showed weakness, Christ knew she’d learnt that enough times in poker games, and here the stakes were much higher than a pot of cash. These people were as bad as Lightgate – did everyone solve problems around Ordshaw by sparking conflict? Pax said, “That’s a hell of a risk. However good you are at covering your tracks, the Ministry could figure it out. They’re thorough, they’ve got ways of…” Killing you that would make you shit kittens came to mind. It didn’t seem appropriate. “They’ll come for you, no matter how well you think you can pin this on someone else. Please tell me you haven’t already gone too far to call this off.”
“How’d you define too far, exactly?” Jones asked.
“The point at which Casaria can’t be convinced to let it go. The only way you walk away from the Ministry is if one of their own says so.”
The silence returned as the men seemed to be questioning whether or not to believe her. It gave Pax a second to appreciate her own statement; she needed Casaria for exactly the same reason, didn’t she?
Bees said, “Their whole purpose is keeping secrets, isn’t it? I’d say we’re well beyond negotiations there.”
“He told you something about the tunnels?” Pax shot him a look, this idea again.
“Didn’t need to,” Monroe offered a proud snigger. “Thank fuck. We got his measure pretty quick, he might never talk. But the moron’s phone was full of GPS locations. A Google Maps history with half a dozen frequently visited back alleys and dead ends.”
“Entrances to your tunnels, right?” Jones clarified.
They already knew. They could go down there, it was already too late.
Pax’s mind was racing. They’d be torn apart at best. At worst, unleash the monsters on the city, encounter the Fae – so many opportunities to cause chaos.
“The beauty is,” Jones continued, “he doesn’t know we know. All the time we’ve spent tenderising him, setting up our story, he’s been thinking it’s because we want him to talk.”
Pax blurted out, “They’re not safe. You can’t go down there.”
Monroe replied slowly, “Come again?”
Pax closed her eyes. Had to come up with something fast. “You want to know everything? I’ll tell you. But you can’t go down there. There is a tunnel network running all over Ordshaw, like a disused train-line. These guys ran experiments down there – in the sixties, seventies, something. Now it’s like – dead, and deadly at the same time. The Ministry contain it, they’re monitoring every access point, hiding all evidence of it. Like an underground Pripyat.”
“A condom?” Jones contributed.
“Pripyat, not prick hat,” Bees said. “The city by Chernobyl.”
“Oh that. Sure, I know it. Evacuated the afternoon of –”
“Alright,” Monroe said. “These tunnels are radioactive?”
“Worse,” Pax said. “I don’t know what it is, and that’s the point. They don’t either, not exactly. It’s totally unmanageable – their best bet is to pretend it doesn’t exist.”
Disappointment set into Monroe’s face. Buying it. He glanced at Jones. “It’s always the same shit with you two. Bloody 28 Hunters Drive all over again.”
“28 Hunters Drive looked stable,” Jones protested. “You got to imagine it with a bit of work, I swear you could’ve –”
“Enough!” Monroe snapped, making Pax jump. He countered the outburst with a much smoother tone. “Hunters Drive was lined with asbestos. Head to toe. The things we did to secure that deal, before I found out. Fucking property investment 101 there. And now it’s nuclear tunnels? Nuclear fucking tunnels?”
“I know a guy,” Bees proffered, “can get us Soviet grade hazmat suits at a discount. Built to withstand anything.”
“It’s not nuclear –” Pax started.
“Save it,” Monroe said. “Nuclear, gaseous, leprous, whatever. I get it. A lesson in the old too good to be true, right?”
“Stay away from them,” Pax asserted, “for your own good. You do that, no one needs to know you’ve had anything to do with the Ministry – you said Casaria doesn’t even know you got those locations. No one will come after you.”
“Love,” Monroe sighed. “I appreciate the warning, but you think I’ve been telling you all this for no good reason? We’re already in motion, we’re not going back.”
“Let me talk to him. Please. If I can persuade Casaria to go along with your story, he could take it to his people himself, it’d be that much more convincing. He’ll do it, if you let me talk to him. If you let him walk away. We all win, don’t we?”
Monroe eyed her warily. He screwed up his face for a moment, the turning cogs behind his eyes practically visible.
She threw in some icing: “All except the Yardies, I guess?”
That got the start of a smile. “Fuck it. You can have a shot.”
22
The lock noisily turned and Casaria struggled in his restraints. Again he was held fast, and again the effort shot pain through his whole body. He twisted his head from side to side, trying to see the doorway as light poured into the room.
“Jesus Christ,” a woman’s voice. Pax? It couldn’t be.
“He’s alright.” The cocky blond guy, with the punchable face. Footsteps came into the room, a big shape blocking Casaria’s vision. “Only a little superficial damage. Not all our doing, even, truth be told.”
“Fucking hell,” she said, suddenly close, breath hot on Casaria’s face. Her hand closed on his shoulder as she looked at him. Her big eyes filled with concern.
She cares.
Of course she cares. He knew she did.
“You came for me,” he tried to croak, but phlegm caught in his throat and made him cough. She reeled back, avoiding the spit.
“Would you look at that,” the blond said. “Is this guy smitten, or what?”
He tried to buck, to curse them. They had no idea who they’d crossed. When he was free, they’d be ashes, he’d take off their heads –
A hand gripped his jaw. “Hey, Furious Fred? You ever give it a fucking rest?”
Something hit him in the temple, his vision pulsing black for a second. He bared his teeth and snarled.
“Enough!” Pax said. Not afraid to stand up for him. “You want this to work or not?”
“Look at him, didn’t I tell you?” The other brute, the ugly ashen one, somewhere way behind the chair. “He loves it. Got a complex of some sort, isn’t it. Not right in the head.”
“He went for us like a goddamned wolverine,” the blond said. “And started bawling his eyes out later. Next minute he’s laughing like a jackal.”
“So now you tell me,” the midget leader said, with an air of finality, “if there’s any chance he’ll walk away?”
Silence.
Casaria slowed his breathing. She was looking down at him, arms folded across her chest. Worry on her face. Worry for him. He smiled, a hint of laughter creeping up.
“Here we go,” the blond said.
“Casaria, you hear me?” she asked.
He nodded.
“I need you to promise me something. Can you do that?”
“I promise.” Casaria tasted the words, spit hissing between his teeth. “I’ll bury these motherfuckers.”
“I need the opposite,” Pax said, levelly. “Keep calm. They’re willing to talk, understand?”
Casaria narrowed his eyes. Keep calm. It was always keep calm. Cowards kept calm. He opened his mouth to say it but Pax went first.
“I need you, Casaria,” she said. “I really fucking need you, so please think before you say something we’re all gonna regret.”
He didn’t speak. His eyes were wide. She needed him. But he had his pride. He had his honour. He growled, “I won’t tell them a damn thing.”
“I know” – Pax hurried it out – “and they know, too. You didn’t talk, you won’t talk, we all get that. But...can you keep this quiet?”
He held her gaze. “Why would I?”
“Because I need you to.”
That was all? He was supposed to walk away from thugs who’d attacked him outside his own home? Chained him to a chair and cut off his damned toe?
“There’s no one else who can help me,” Pax reaffirmed.
Casaria took a deep breath, sending pain through his lower ribs. He grinned into it. “You see what they did to my toe?”
“Jesus. Yes.”
“Actually, the story is, the Seventh Street Regulars did it,” the ugly one said, like it wasn’t him who’d levered those rusty secateurs. Casaria twisted but couldn’t find his face, so turned back to Pax. Surely she wouldn’t believe a lie like that? Her face didn’t shift as the brute continued, “Second toe on the left foot, always. Seventh toe, if you’re counting right to left; that’s the message.”
“You had to go that far?” Pax replied, disgusted. So. They were carving him up to make it look like someone else’s work and she knew about it. She wasn’t happy.
“This particular storybook” – the leader crouched in front of Casaria, looking him dead in the eye – “started before we got him, with that knife wound on his face. We were just completing the picture. The Seventh Street Regulars love their knives almost as much as their guns. Show her one.”
“See this?” The blond again. “This kink in the blade makes it so when you pull it out the wound splits wide. Dead hard to stop the bleeding, you can take my word on that.”
“Filthy weapon used by filthy people,” the leader said. “No honour, not if you measured all their blood from here to Jamaica. And they wouldn’t flinch at making a corpse of a powerful government man. But, Pax, the question is, this man wouldn’t talk for us. You honestly believe he’s gonna talk for you?”
She didn’t say anything. Quietly horrified.
“I know your faces.” Casaria couldn’t help himself. “Your fucking names.”
“He knows our faces,” the leader echoed. “Our names. What about that, love?”
“Give him a chance.” Pax pushed past, to look into Casaria’s eyes. “Look, I don’t know what happened between you guys, but I’m guessing you got the drop on them before, didn’t you? You took that weapon from my place.”
Casaria forced a smile. That was a fond memory at least, taking down these thugs. They’d got lucky the second time, catching up to him after an exhausting night.
“You did that to their faces?” Pax said. He couldn’t see them, but he imagined it well enough. Cut up and bruised, weren’t they? “I’ve never seen anyone hurt these two before.”
“Nutcase,” the ugly one commented. “Came at us both at the same time.”
“That true?” Pax looked into Casaria’s eyes again.
Yeah, it was true. They could cut him, they could take his toe, but they weren’t undoing his victory over them. He said, “I could’ve killed them. Landon got in the way.”
“It’s why you’re here,” Pax said. “Do you even realise that? You shamed them.”
Casaria paused. No. They had been in his apartment, looking for information. They demanded answers. Who did he work for? What did he do? Like hell he’d ever speak.
“They did their homework,” Pax said, reading his face, “to try and explain why some civil servant was able to take down two of their finest. All these two found out” – her eyes locked on his, begging him to go along with this – “is you’re just a dangerous nobody. You’ve been punished, right? This can end, now, if you accept that. They’re satisfied, as long as you’re willing to drop this.”
Casaria couldn’t respond, her face inches from his. Drop this? Whose pride would be more injured, here?
“Fuck!” She slapped the arm of the chair and he flinched. “Say it! You understand, don’t you?”
Casaria nodded quickly.
“Say it!”
“It’s what I do, isn’t it!” He let it out louder than he intended. “Keeping secrets – spreading lies. It’s what I’m good at!” He looked past her to the men. “You think I want anyone knowing about this?”
No one responded, their faces confused. Like it wasn’t obvious how pathetic this was, him cornered, captured, humiliated in this chair. Like they expected him to run crying to the first authority figure he could find. The leader got it first, and his face softened in satisfied smugness. Casaria wanted to tear his skull out.
“This guy’s something else,” the man said.
“And?” Pax stood up straight again.
“I actually believe you, love. This nutter genuinely might not talk. But I didn’t get where I am taking chances. You want him, he comes with the message. Bees, Jones, make the arrangements.”
“What’s that mean?” Pax said, with alarm.
The leader walked away. “Turn him loose in Seventh Street territory. Then he’s your burden. Good luck, Pax. You tell us how this all works out for you. And if he gives you a lick of trouble.”
The blond one moved in front of Casaria, wearing that stupid grin. “Ah hell. Didn’t I always say it? Women are the real torture. Pax, we could put you to work.”
Pax sat squeezed between the two massive men in the bench that formed the front seat of Bees’ van, leaving the warehouse district for ever-more-threatening locations. She recognised some of these streets from when Casaria had first driven her to an MEE hide-out. Either St Alphege’s or the rough neighbourhoods that flanked it.
The men hadn’t said much while tying Casaria and flinging him in the van with her scooter. Jones had given Casaria a stack of photos of dark-skinned faces, telling him to identify them as the ones that hurt him. Casaria
barely registered the instructions, face full of malice. He was a mess, and Pax had no idea if he could be trusted, but this was working. She almost let herself believe she’d performed some kind of miracle, though Monroe clearly wasn’t bothered if Casaria lived or died, as long as the taint was far away from him. But it was clear that Casaria’s anger was mixed with shame. He was likely to keep this quiet for the sake of his pride; Monroe had seen that.
“How much further?” Pax asked, as they drove down an unlit street. She feigned searching for lights in the dead buildings, actually checking for a sign that Letty was nearby.
“Border of West Quay, that’ll do it,” Jones said. “Somewhere along the viaduct. Jerry Rise, maybe? What do you think, Bees, we gonna go as far as Jerry Rise?”
“Sounds good to me. It’s a small jump to the hospital from there.”
“I go to a hospital,” Pax said, “I get picked up.”
“Give them a fake name, say you lost your ID, who’s gonna know,” Jones said. “And do us a solid, get in the A&E screaming, say you fought off some psycho Yardie bear to get this guy safe.”
“I’m not gonna do that.”
Bees gave her an uncertain look. She avoided his gaze. Casaria’s toe was cauterised and, as they’d said, everything else was superficial. Chances were no one was checking the wounds to see what knife had been used to cut them. They could keep their gangland narrative. Her only goal would be to get far away from West Quay. People only passed by its pebble-dash estates and razor-wire-lined storage facilities to catch a boat, and that was limited to industrial-scale shipping.
“You’ll be doing the whole city a solid,” Jones said. “About time the Quay got shaken up. It used to be real cosmopolitan out there. Shipments coming in from the Baltic, the Atlantic, sometimes the Med. I mean, we still get them, but now the docks are staffed by a particular kind of person, real particular.”
“Linked to the Seventh Street Regulars,” Pax guessed.
“Among a few others,” Bees said. “Outsiders. Lowlifes, dragging our whole city down. You know what I read a few weeks back? This article, see, said people are calling Ordshaw Gun City. I never heard anyone say that, did you?”
The Sunken City Trilogy Page 47
