Prosper Snow Series

by Shaun Jeffrey

  “Death never is,” Prosper said.

  Lester skewed his lips. “Well it looks as though 431862 was killed by 142345.”

  It took Prosper a couple of seconds to work out who Lester was referring to. “You mean he was killed by the first escaped prisoner, Peter Clarke?”

  Lester nodded.

  Prosper shook his head and sat at a table to get his head around it. “So he’s still around here too?”

  “Sharp, Prosper,” Brundle snapped.

  Prosper let the comment slide. “How do you know it’s him?”

  “It’s more a hunch.”

  “A hunch?”

  “You saw yourself, 431862 was attacked in the same way, his face literally ripped off. It would be unlikely that any two patients would operate the same.”

  “Well that’s just great. Killers hunting killers.”

  “Actually it is.”

  Prosper turned to see Klement standing in the doorway. “So why is it great?”

  “It shows that 142345 has adapted, that he’s now differentiating between easy prey and that which could be perceived as a threat. He’s learning. It’s the old adage about survival of the fittest. In this case, 142345 doesn’t want to lose his place at the top of the tree. He is becoming the ultimate predator.”

  Prosper nodded. It made a warped sort of sense. “Well how did he find this place when he was detained at the hub?”

  Lester shrugged. “He’s obviously very clever. The prisoners were taught to adapt, to learn and he obviously found the details of this facility in the records when he escaped.”

  “Well if he saw the escape, then he must still be in the area, monitoring things. And he might know where the other prisoners are too, so if we find Clarke, then we might find them all.”

  “Good point.” Lester tapped the table. “What are you waiting for?”

  Prosper stood and walked out of the incident van, followed by Brundle and Williams.

  “So where do we start?” Williams asked. “We’ve searched the whole area.”

  Prosper looked around, then walked underneath the archway towards the entrance door. “Let’s go through it step by step.” Once he reached the entrance, he turned and looked around. “It’s night time. Smoke is billowing out of the door. People can’t see properly. Four prisoners see their chance for escape, so they take it.”

  He walked to the archway. “They reach this point; don’t know where they are, which way to go.” He looked along the street. “Despite the dark, they can see well enough. They need to get out of sight, but if they’ve got any sense, they know the local buildings will be searched first, so they’ll avoid them.” The road to the left stretched for about two hundred feet. The road to the right stretched about one hundred feet. “They’ll take the shortest route as they want to get out of sight as fast as they can.”

  Prosper turned right and started walking. Brundle and Williams fell in step beside him. Abandoned buildings lined the road, their windows broken and mortar crumbling from between the brickwork.

  “What are you trying to do?” Williams asked.

  “I’m trying to put myself into their shoes. I’m asking myself where I would have gone.”

  “To the pub if the smell is anything to go by,” Brundle said.

  Prosper ignored the comment. He knew she was only trying to get a rise out of him, and the best way to play it with any sort of bully was to ignore them. Not that she was really bullying, as much as trying to assert her authority. Prosper knew he was the new boy, but that didn’t mean he had to act dumb.

  At the end of the road, he looked right, then left. “I’m thinking they’d have gone left, otherwise they’re doubling back on themselves.”

  “And why wouldn’t they do that?” Brundle asked.

  “They’re probably running scared, pumped up with adrenaline. They want to get far away. Fast.” He turned left.

  Buildings stretched into the distance. To his right there was a chain link fence. Part of it had been demolished, the fence trampled. Prosper considered it; looked beyond it at the two storey building. The door looked secure, but he would have to check it.

  “Wait here a minute.” He hopped over an area of downed fence and walked across the weed-riddled tarmac. When he reached the blue painted wooden door, he turned the handle and pushed, but the door was locked. He stepped back and looked left, then right and then up. There was no exit on either side of the building, and the windows were all quite high, they wouldn’t be easily reachable, so he discounted them and walked back out onto the road.

  “There’s no access there. Let’s carry on.” Prosper continued walking, eyes peeled.

  The buildings varied in size, from two to four storeys. Some were long, others squat, seemingly dumped between their bigger cousins with little concern for aesthetics. Prosper knew that with his artistic eye, Wolfe would hate this. Although he might get a kick out of the dishevelled, run down state. Thinking about Wolfe reminded him that he was going to have to tell him about Rivers.

  Hopefully there was nothing that could tie Wolfe or himself to Rivers, otherwise he’d have a lot of explaining to do, and he could kiss his new job goodbye. And although he had only taken the job to find out what Lester knew about him and what he had done, he realised that deep down, he was getting a macabre kick out of it. The fact that he was working for a clandestine group that operated outside the law appealed to him on a base level, stoking his inner beast.

  And that’s what scared him.

  “Are you listening?” Brundle said.

  “Sorry, what did you say?”

  “I said, ‘how much further are we going to walk?’”

  Prosper stopped and looked around, realised he had been thinking so much that he hadn’t been concentrating on looking at the buildings and he had walked more than half way along the street. About to turn around to retrace his steps, he noticed a security camera on the corner of the building opposite. It was angled in such a way that it looked back along the street.

  “What’s that place?”

  “How should I know?” Brundle snapped.

  “It says above that shutter door that it’s a distribution warehouse,” Williams said.

  Prosper took a piece of chewing gum out of his pocket, unwrapped it and popped it in his mouth. He put the wrapper back in his pocket and started to chew as he looked at the camera.

  “Let’s go check it out.”

  Brundle folded her arms below her chest. “Check it out for what?”

  “There’s a camera. As long as it’s working, this could be the break we need.”

  “Fingers crossed,” Williams said.

  Prosper headed towards a metal door next to the roller shutters. The door was closed, but there was a bell attached to the brickwork. Prosper pushed it and then waited patiently. A few seconds later, the door opened and a middle-aged Asian man with jet black hair and a greasy face stood looking at them.

  “Yeah?”

  Prosper smiled. “I was wondering if you could help me.”

  “Help you with what?”

  Prosper took out his ID card and flashed it in front of the man. The man stared at it, puzzled.

  “I work for the government,” Prosper said.

  The man reared back. “I’ve not done anything wrong. We run a legit business here.”

  “I’m not accusing you otherwise. I just want to ask you about that camera.” He pointed up at the corner of the building.

  “What about it?”

  “Is it working?”

  The man nodded. “Maybe you hadn’t noticed, but this isn’t a classy area. Only reason we’re based here is because the rent’s cheap.”

  “Do you save the recordings?”

  “They’re all on hard drive. We save them for a month or so before they get written over.”

  Prosper felt a quickening of his heart. “Could we look at them?”

  The man looked at Prosper, then at Brundle and Williams. “I guess so.” He stepped back and
Prosper followed him in to find himself in a large warehouse. Racks of merchandise formed aisles. A forklift truck sat near to the roller shutter. Someone was whistling somewhere.

  “What do you distribute?” Williams asked.

  The man shrugged. “Food. Clothes. DVD’s. CD’s. We fulfil orders for lots of companies.” He led them along one of the aisles to a set of metal steps leading up to a glass-fronted office that looked out over the warehouse like a crow’s nest.

  The man jogged up the steps and disappeared through the open door at the top. Prosper followed him up, with Brundle and Williams on his heels.

  Another Asian man in his mid twenties sat with his feet up on a desk cluttered with papers. He was flicking through a wad of banknotes. “Dev, man, what’s happening?” When he saw Prosper, he put his feet down and rocked forwards to sit up straight in his executive chair, snatching at the money and stashing it out of sight. “Who’s this?”

  Dev shrugged. “Government. They need to check the recordings from the camera out front.”

  The man stared at Prosper and his companions, his eyebrows almost meeting in the middle as he narrowed his eyes, then he looked at Dev. “I take it you’ve seen some ID.”

  Dev nodded. “They’re kosher.”

  “Jury’s out on that one. So what time and date you after?”

  Prosper gave him the details and the man tapped at the keyboard. Then he swivelled his chair aside and indicated the computer was all theirs. “Just click the ‘play’ icon on the screen.”

  Prosper walked around the desk and moved the mouse to activate the cursor on the screen. He clicked the ‘play’ icon. Brundle and Williams stood behind him, peering over his shoulder.

  The monitor showed an image that covered the front shutters from the side, but it also allowed them to see a hundred or so feet along the road. A time mark counted up in the corner of the screen. The camera had some sort of image intensifier that allowed it to record in the dark.

  Prosper clicked the arrow for the fast-forward button, speeding up the frame rate to double time. He didn’t realise he was biting his fingernails until the slivers combined with the gum in his mouth. Screwing his nose up, he swallowed the gum and fingernails.

  “This is getting us nowhere.” Brundle started tapping her foot on the floor.

  All of a sudden Prosper saw movement on the screen and he clicked the play button to revert the speed to real time. Two figures in white coveralls ran along the road.

  Prosper’s pulse increased and he licked his lips and swallowed. He watched the figures come to a stop, say something to each other, and then one crouched down and helped hoist the other through the window into the building next door.

  “Bingo,” Prosper said, a warm glow spreading through his stomach. He turned and looked at Brundle, her face pinched, lips sucked in.

  Williams smiled. “Lester was right about you. Well done.”

  “Lucky break,” Brundle mumbled.

  Prosper shrugged. “That’s sometimes all it takes.”

  “Well lucky break or not,” Williams said, “we need to see if they’re still there.”

  Prosper turned to the two Asian men. “What do you know about the place next door?”

  “It’s been empty for as long as we’ve been here, which is about three years. We were actually thinking of seeing if we could rent it as we need more warehouse space.”

  “Have you heard anything from inside there this morning?”

  Dev shook his head. “Why, what’s up?”

  “I’d worry more about your tax returns than what’s happening next door,” Brundle said.

  The two Asian men glanced at each other.

  Prosper rolled his eyes. “Thanks for your help.” He stood and walked out of the room and down the stairs.

  Once back outside, he glanced at the building next door, trying not to be too obvious in case anyone was looking out, then he ducked out of sight and Brundle radioed through to Lester what they had found.

  While they waited for backup to arrive, Brundle said, “Someone will have to go around the back to make sure there’s not another way out, and if there is, that no one escapes. And as Prosper is unarmed …”

  “Then that leaves me,” Williams said.

  Brundle pursed her lips. “Be careful, and radio in when you’re there.”

  Williams nodded and then jogged along the road and disappeared down a side street at the end of the distribution warehouse. Her apparent concern for Williams wasn’t lost on Prosper.

  He leaned against the wall as they waited. “I think we might have gotten off on the wrong foot.”

  Brundle took out her gun and checked the action.

  “I mean, Williams is right, we’ve got to work together.”

  Brundle ejected the clip, examined it, and then rammed it home.

  “I may be new to the job, but I’m obviously not new to investigative work, so I hope I can prove myself.”

  She eventually turned to him, her eyes narrowed. “I’ve read your file, Prosper.”

  He grinned. “I hope it was a good read.”

  “In all honesty, I don’t know what to make of you. There are discrepancies with a lot of your work.” She hesitated, hooked errant strands of hair behind her ear. “You’re unpredictable, and to be honest, I don’t like that.”

  Prosper nodded. “I can see where you’re coming from.”

  “No, I don’t think you can. Step out of line with me, and that’s it. I live by the one strike rule. There are no second chances. Got it?”

  “I’ve got it.”

  “I hope so. Some people attract good luck. Some attract bad luck. You, you attract death, and I don’t want to have to keep looking over my shoulder to see if I’m next in line.”

  Prosper swallowed the lump in his throat. If only she knew that Rivers had been added to an ever growing list, then she’d probably turn that gun on him and pull the trigger.

  “I’m in position. Over,” Williams said through the walkie-talkie.

  “Any sign of movement? Over.”

  “Nothing. Place looks quiet. Over.”

  “Well appearances can be deceptive.” She stared at Prosper as she spoke. “So keep ‘em peeled. Out.”

  Less than a minute later, two vehicles squealed around the corner and came to a stop outside the building.

  Lester jumped out of one vehicle, along with Klement and two more men. The doors of the other vehicle flew open and two women and two men jumped out. Another car spun around the corner. It came to a stop next to the others, but Lester ran across and said something to the driver. Seconds later the vehicle sped off and turned down the side street that Williams had gone down.

  Prosper watched as Lester jogged back across. “Okay, what have we got?”

  “We’ve seen video footage from that camera –” Brundle pointed to the CCTV camera, “–of the escapees entering that building there through a window.” She pointed along the road.

  “When was it taken?”

  “Last night, after the escape.”

  “So we don’t know if they’re still inside.”

  Brundle shook her head.

  Lester turned to Prosper. “As you’ve pinpointed a possible location, perhaps you’d like to help with the search inside.”

  Prosper nodded.

  “Good man.” Lester patted Prosper on the shoulder, and then started barking orders at his employees.

  “I’ll be going in too,” Klement said. “They’re my prisoners and they might respond to me as one of their guards.”

  Lester nodded, and then signalled a man with an Enforcer, which was basically a steel tube with two handles used as a battering ram. He smashed it into the door next to the lock, and after a couple of hits, the door swung in and crashed against the wall.

  Brundle entered first, her gun leading the way. Prosper went through after, followed by a couple more men and women and then Klement.

  The building was a single storey structure, the roof of which was
angled into a point that stretched along the whole of its roughly one hundred or so feet length. Light entered the room by a series of windows and mould covered panels on either side of the roof, which was supported by two rows of girders set equidistantly apart.

  A wooden structure sat at the far end of the building, stretching from one side of the room to the other.

  Prosper stared towards the building and saw movement in one of the windows. “Over there,” he said to Brundle, pointing.

  She nodded.

  Klement stepped forwards. “Prisoners 552456 and 432567,” he barked, his voice echoing through the building, “get the fuck out here now.”

  The men and women assumed different poses as they aimed their weapons.

  “That is a direct order.”

  When he realised he was holding his breath, Prosper gulped in air, his gaze not wavering from the building. He couldn’t see any more movement and it felt as if the very building itself was holding its breath as the seconds ticked by.

  Klement clenched his fists, his eyes narrowed, jaw clenched. “This is your last chance. Get out here. Now.”

  When no one appeared, Brundle started walking forwards. She signalled for everyone to follow. Prosper stayed at the rear. When Brundle reached the building, she pressed herself against the structure and signalled the man with the Enforcer.

  “Right, let’s get inside.”

  The man stepped forwards, braced himself and then attacked the door.

  At the same moment that the door flew in, a figure crashed through the window beside Brundle in an explosive shower of glass.

  The figure rolled across the floor and then sprang to their feet. Shards of glass tinkled to the floor, larger pieces protruding from the figures body like an obscene hedgehog. Blood immediately seeped through the white coverall. Another figure burst out of the door brandishing a length of metal pipe.

  The figure covered in glass turned and leapt at Brundle, fingers clenched like claws. “I’m not going back,” he screamed.

  Brundle fired without hesitation. One shot, the bullet passing through the man’s head and creating a small red miasma. The man crumpled and hit the ground, the guns report fading into memory.

  The other escapee swung the metal bar like a sword, his expression deathly pale, terrified. More gunfire erupted and an onslaught of bullets tore through his body, making him dance like something possessed before he too fell.