Money Run

by Jack Heath

  He opened the closet. It was a woman’s apartment. Shoes that looked like miniature tangled-up power boards, jackets the size of handkerchiefs. A few narrow grey suits. He thought he smelled lavender. No one behind the coat rack, no one under the stack of winter garments. He stepped back out and closed the door.

  There was no sign that anyone was in here other than him. Nothing was keeping him here other than the fact that if he was hiding, this is where he would be. He would have hidden in the janitor’s closet when he saw the lift was coming. He would have doubled back to this apartment when he heard the floor was being searched, in the hope that it was the one place that wouldn’t be checked.

  Wright approached the bathroom door. He hadn’t really looked in there before; he had listened, but then decided that he should check under the bed first. If he had entered the bathroom while there were still unexplored places in the bedroom, the driver could have left the apartment while his back was turned.

  He stepped into the bathroom and clicked on the light. Cream tiles, a big mirror surrounded by light bulbs. Tiny soaps scattered around the bath as if a giant block of soap had shattered when someone threw it into the tub. A mop propped against the wall – someone had been cleaning recently, unless it belonged there. If it did, that meant the occupant lived alone. Exposed cleaning items were the hallmark of a solitary life.

  The shower door was closed, and not quite transparent. Wright pulled it open.

  There was a scream from inside, and he stepped back, astonished. A teenage girl was cowering in the corner, looking up at him through a cage of fingers. She was wearing a white blouse, blue jeans and a jacket – neither having a shower nor cleaning it. Tears were dribbling from her pine-needle coloured eyes.

  “Please don’t kill me,” she said.

  Wright reached into his jacket for his badge. She whimpered and pressed herself against the wall.

  “My name is Damien Wright,” he said. “I’m a policeman.” He held up his badge, but she was trembling as if she was trying to melt and escape down the drain.

  “Please,” she said again.

  “I’m not going to hurt you,” he said. “What’s your name?”

  “Ash,” she said. “Ash Redgrave.” She sniffed. “I live here with my mum.”

  Wright held out his hand to help her up. She ignored it, staring at him with suspicion.

  “Are you really a policeman?” she asked.

  “A detective,” Wright said. “You want to tell me what you’re doing here?”

  “I live here,” she said. “I already said that.”

  “I meant in the shower.”

  After a moment, she took his hand and stood up. Her fingers were cold.

  “I heard a noise,” she said. “Like a thunderclap, or an explosion. I could feel it through the wall. And I got scared, so I listened for a while, but I couldn’t hear anything. So I went to the window—”

  “Why wasn’t your mother home?”

  “She left a couple of hours ago; she works nights. Then someone broke down my door, so I ducked behind the bed, and then I heard people talking and moving, and then they broke down another door outside and then I hid in the bathroom…”

  Wright led her out into the bedroom again. She stood by the bed and tugged at the sheets, straightening them. She looked nervous, confused. A hint of uncertainty. Exactly what you’d expect from a girl who’d had to hide in her bathroom while her door was broken down by police.

  “Why are there people outside?” she asked. “In the street, with the roadblocks and stuff? Was that noise…you know, an explosion? Like a terrorist attack?”

  Exactly what you’d expect her to assume.

  Wright lunged forwards and shoved her against the wall. She yelped – not fear, but surprise. She tried to step aside as he kept coming, but he slammed a hand against the wall, trapping her between him and the bedpost. He put his forearm against her chest and held her in place.

  “You’re lying to me,” he said.

  She looked uncomprehending and confused.

  “You don’t live here,” he said. “One bed, one bathroom. Expensive suits in the closet. Your mum’s rich, but she makes you sleep on the couch instead of buying a bed? You don’t go outside to investigate when there’s an explosion next door? You don’t close the door when it’s kicked down? No. Only one person belongs in this apartment, and it isn’t you.”

  To her credit, the girl kept it up. She struggled against his arm, staring at him like he was crazy. He almost doubted himself.

  “You don’t live here,” he continued. “Redgrave isn’t your real name. You drove a Bugatti Veyron off the roof of HBS because you were being shot at. You landed in the apartment next door. You climbed out and went to the lifts, but we were already on our way up, so you hid in the janitor’s closet. Then you waited for us to leave the crime scene. When we started searching for you, you doubled back and came in here, hoping we wouldn’t find you. And now that I have, you’re going to tell me everything. You know why?”

  The girl said nothing.

  “Because you lied to me. And because you were so good at it. That means there was no legitimate reason for you to be on that roof with that car. That means you’re up to your neck in this. It means that your only chance is to cooperate with me. Then you might get immunity when your testimony indicts someone in deeper than you.”

  He stepped back, releasing her. She looked at him for a long moment. Then she sat down on the bed.

  Wright folded his arms. Spill it, he thought. Come on. Tell me what’s going on.

  “Ash is my real name,” she said finally. “And I’m the last person you should be worried about.”

  Peachey was in a service corridor, following Buckland, and gradually gaining on him. There was a cafeteria for employees on the second floor, and a large chunk of the same floor was taken up by the kitchens – a sprawling maze of black and white ceramic walls, steel benches, neon energy-saver bulbs. Gnarled plastic utensils dangled from hooks on every wall, and leafy ingredients overflowed from every fridge. Woven through the mess of fryers and ovens and hotplates and sinks there was a network of narrow corridors, designed to enable the service staff to move quickly and invisibly around the floor.

  Why Buckland was down here, Peachey had no idea. But this was too good an opportunity to miss. The whole place was deserted. De Totth was on the top floor. Peachey was armed; he still had half a clip in his Beretta. As soon as he got close enough to Buckland, he could put three bullets in him, torso left, torso right, skull, then get the hell out of here and go home.

  Buckland turned left. Peachey turned left. Buckland turned right. Peachey turned right.

  Peachey was almost within range now. But he wanted no mistakes. He’d worked too hard today to screw up now. He wanted to take the shot from close up, standing still, with Buckland walking down a long and straight stretch of corridor so there was no chance he would miss. He wasn’t like Alex de Totth – his aim was good, but it wasn’t superhuman.

  Peachey found himself wondering why exactly the government wanted Buckland dead. Roughly six out of every ten jobs he took were for OCGs – organized crime groups, either gangs or corporations – who needed a witness taken care of before a trial. Another two would be for private citizens who stood to inherit something in a will. Another one would be for people who wanted revenge for one thing or another. Peachey liked those – they were often exciting and challenging, because the client usually wanted the mark to die in a certain way. And the last one would be the government, who invariably needed a secret kept. These jobs were either really easy or really hard, depending on whether or not the person knew the value of their information.

  Peachey couldn’t imagine Buckland knowing anything that could damage the government. He had never worked for, with or against them. None of his products had anything to do with defence or immigration, which were the hot topics at the moment.

  And it was something important, that was for sure. Walker had offere
d Peachey a huge sum to do the job. Peachey normally charged a third of the value of the victim’s life insurance. That wasn’t a policy, it was just the way things usually worked out. If the victim was insured for $1 million, then his life was worth $333,333.33 to Peachey. Plus expenses, of course – including weaponry, surveillance equipment, travel and accommodation. And meals. No one ever complained when he presented a receipt for the shellfish, wine and tiramisu he’d consumed at the hotel. Not after they’d seen how casually he ended the lives of the people in his way.

  Without breaking stride, Buckland picked up a mop that had been leaning against the wall and rounded a corner into one of the kitchens. Peachey frowned. What the hell was he up to now? He tightened his grip on the gun and kept moving. If Buckland was nearing the end of his mysterious journey, Peachey might not have much time to catch up to him and get a clear shot.

  Peachey rounded the corner into the kitchen. He had time to take in the rows of oil vats and draining trays and hotplates before losing his footing and slipping over. He threw his hands back to try and break his fall and land in a crab-like crouch, but they slid out from under him as they touched the same greasy substance he’d stepped in. He saw Buckland standing over him, holding a mop that was still dripping oil onto the ground. Peachey raised his pistol.

  Buckland brought the handle of the mop down on Peachey’s skull with a sharp crack, and Peachey felt like his eyeballs were going to burst. He held his arms above his head, warding off a second blow, but Buckland slammed the mop handle into his abdomen instead, point first. Peachey gasped as the air was forced out of him. He couldn’t see, or breathe, or hear. Two of his five senses were gone, and his body wasn’t responding to the commands of his brain. Defying his assassin’s instinct to fire only when he had a clear shot, he pulled the trigger of the Beretta, firing a few shots into the ceiling, hoping to hit Buckland.

  Something hit his face, either the mop handle or a fist, and then he was lifted up into the air and dropped.

  Sploonk. The sound he made as he plunged into the oil vat was like a foot into a bowl of jelly. The cold, greasy substance flooded into his nose, his eyes, and his open wheezing mouth. It writhed up his arms and legs, pushing under his shirt-cuffs and down his collar. He coughed into the oil, and more flooded into his lungs to fill the vacuum. He thrashed around, trying to rise, trying to figure out which wall was the floor so he could jump up out of the vat. His head broke the surface of the oil, and he tried to stand.

  Fireworks of pain sparked across his skull as it clanked against something above him. Peachey slipped and fell back into the slimy goop, sitting neck deep in it. Buckland had put the lid on the vat, he realized. Over the dull splashing his arms made as he reached up to try and push the lid up, he heard the crunch of a lock engaging above him.

  Peachey screamed, a long, desperate roar of panic. Oil flooded down his face, drizzling down from his nose and chin. He slammed his feet against the walls of the vat until he thought his ankles would break. The noise reverberated around the darkness of the chamber. There was no room to build momentum. The vat was too solid.

  Click. Click. Clack. Beep.

  Peachey tried to stop his breathing and listen. The oil lapped at the steel walls and tickled under his chin. What the hell was that?

  A humming came from below, and Peachey’s butt suddenly started to get uncomfortably hot. He screamed louder than before once he realized what had happened.

  Buckland had switched on the frying mechanism under the oil vat.

  Peachey threw his fists against the lid above his head. His knuckles broke against the steel, not even rattling it. He crouched, getting as much of his body out of the oil as he could, pressing his back against the lid. The soles of his feet were on fire, even through his shoes. The skin of his shins stung, and his face burned as the air temperature in the confined space rose.

  Most deep fryers heat up to roughly 290 degrees Celsius. Enough to vaporize 60 per cent of Peachey’s body. Enough to turn his hair into charcoal. Enough to cook his skin into a hard brown seal that would splinter apart as his blood boiled beneath it.

  The oil didn’t bubble, but Peachey heard a horrible hissing from everywhere it was touching his flesh. He braced his feet against the floor and shoved against the lid, but now the metal singed his fingers. The air fried his chest from the inside. He kept his eyes squeezed shut. His nostrils felt like they were filling up with acid.

  Crunch. Clank.

  The lid opened above him, and light poured into the vat. Peachey wiped the grease out of his eyes with the back of his greasy gun hand, and stared up. The golden glow of the oil illuminated Alex de Totth’s face as she stared down at Peachey.

  He tried to rise to his feet, but she shoved him back. He splashed back down into the oil.

  I’ll kill you, he screamed inside his brain. I’ll kill—

  De Totth raised her gun, pointed it at his heart, and pulled the trigger.

  Peachey barely heard the shot before the world was sucked away, like a TV screen someone had switched off.

  “You don’t know his name?”

  Ash shook her head. She had told him the whole story, with two little exceptions. One, she had left out the part where she was a thief – she had told Wright that she was at HBS as part of a high school work-experience programme. And two, she hadn’t told him about the anthrax. She figured she’d have better luck breaking into the TRA truck than sitting around in a quarantine waiting to die.

  She was going to have to play this delicately. Wright was smart. She needed to convince him that her crimes were minor compared to those of the guy who’d shot at her on the HBS roof, so Wright would go after him instead of her. But she couldn’t imply that she knew too much, or she’d immediately be taken into custody as a witness. And she had to talk him into letting her go quickly, before it was too late to get the anti-anthrax medication from the TRA van.

  “All I know for sure is that he’s a guy with a gun who tried to kill me,” she said. “I didn’t stick around to find out who he was or why. I just jumped in an unlocked car and drove.”

  “A car that was parked on the roof,” Wright said doubtfully.

  “It’s not my business where Mr. Buckland keeps his car, or why.”

  “With the keys in it.”

  “Well, why would there be car thieves on the roof?” Ash said.

  “Back to the shooter. Did he say anything to you?”

  “No. At first I thought he was a thief, but now I think it’s something much worse.”

  “It is much worse,” Wright said. “If you’re telling the truth, he was probably the guy who killed the window cleaner we found in the dumpster this morning. What I need to find out is why.”

  “I’ve got a theory about that,” Ash said. “Means to an end. And even if I tell you my theory, there’s nothing you can do about it.”

  “Yes I can. I’m with the police. We can arrest him.”

  “No you can’t. He’s protected.”

  “By who?” Wright demanded.

  “His employers.”

  “I can arrest them too.”

  “No you can’t,” Ash said. “I think they’re the government.”

  Wright frowned. “That doesn’t make any sense,” he said.

  “Buckland told me that the government was trying to stop him from spending his money because they planned to inherit it once he died. He also said he was leaving the country tomorrow to get out from under their control. I don’t think the guy was a thief at all. I think he was a hit man working for the government, who wanted Buckland killed before he had a chance to leave.”

  “That doesn’t explain the terrorist threat inside the building, and the TRA showing up.”

  “Yes it does,” Ash said. “I saw the hit man go into Buckland’s office at 5 p.m., and Buckland was definitely inside. But an hour later I saw Buckland wandering around the corridors of floor 23. Therefore, the first attempt was aborted or unsuccessful. The government decides their assassi
n needs backup, so they send in the TRA – the one department that answers to no one, under the guise of national security. The threat was faked as an excuse to get more government agents inside that building, all with the job of killing Hammond Buckland.”

  An explosion of coughs rattled her chest. Her nose was running again.

  She hoped her version of the story would make sense to him. Because as far as she could tell, the truth made no sense at all.

  “It still doesn’t add up,” Wright said, leaning forward confidentially. “And I’ll tell you why. The body we found in the dumpster? It belonged to a federal agent.”

  Ash gaped. What?

  “Why would a government assassin kill a government agent on the scene?” Wright continued. “Why would the agent even be there?”

  “For surveillance,” Ash guessed, desperate. “They were monitoring Buckland undercover in the weeks leading up to the job. When the hit man arrived, maybe he didn’t know they were on his side.”

  “I think it’s much more likely,” Wright said, “that the terrorist threat is real, and that the guy who shot at you is working with the terrorists. Which leads me back to the question of who you really are and what you were really doing at HBS in the first place.”

  If she mentioned the essay competition, he would find out her real name. Instead, Ash said, “I want a lawyer.”

  Wright shrugged and stood up. “Fine.”

  Ash started to rise, but Wright pushed her back down against the bed. He forced her wrist against the bedpost, and snicked his handcuffs around it. “I’m arresting you for suspicion of grand theft auto and destruction of property,” he said. “You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you do not mention, when questioned, something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.”

  He walked towards the door. “I’ll take you to the station once the quarantine is lifted,” he said without turning around. “There’ll be a lawyer there.” And he closed the door behind him.