by Paul Finch
One of them, by her spinning, tattered skirts and the fact that her veil had come off, allowing a mop of damp red-grey hair to billow free, was Sister Cassie. The other, her assailant, was younger, leaner and wearing what looked like black combat fatigues complete with boots and gloves, and a harness to which weapons were visibly attached.
To Lucy’s incredulity, this second person, who’d snatched the ex-nun by her front collar with one hand and was aiming punches at her with the other, looked female. That was the only impression that could be gleaned from the blonde, sweat-slick hair flying around her head, though it was difficult to be absolutely sure, as she ducked and weaved in her efforts to avoid retaliatory blows from Sister Cassie.
Lucy cut her engine. ‘Police officer!’ she bellowed. ‘What’s going on here?’
The blonde girl responded quickly, jumping ramrod-straight, glaring in Lucy’s direction. She’d clearly noticed when the glow of the headlamp had appeared over the pile of rubble, but perhaps, in the midst of combat, had mistaken it for her confederate’s vehicle. Now the light caught her full-on, revealing what looked like extensive facial injuries. At the same time, it distracted her, and she caught a left-hand swing from Sister Cassie hard on her left cheek, which drew a squawk of rage and pain. She replied with a vicious punch, hacking it into Sister Cassie’s ribs, doubling her down to her knees, and then, after kicking her in the side and sending her sprawling, running towards a distant doorway.
Lucy slammed her visor shut and screeched down the other side of the rubble on her rear wheel. Masonry and grit showered behind her as she raced across the cellar, skidding to a halt alongside the ex-nun, who was looking up again, and indicated with a limp, bloodstained hand that she was okay.
Lucy sped on, passing through the narrow doorway and entering a long, concrete passage that had never been intended for vehicles. Again, it was cluttered with debris, as though part of the ceiling had collapsed, which made it difficult going. A dark shape bobbing ahead of her revealed her fleeing prey, but before she could catch up with it, she reached a junction of passages obstructed by a wheeled cart that was loaded with wooden pallets.
Lucy braked sharply. She heard feet hammering away ahead as she leaped from her seat to shove it all aside. What this place had once been, she couldn’t fathom. Whatever it was, if the rest of the structure was anything to go by, it was likely to be labyrinthine, which was all she needed when her quarry had a head-start like this.
She clambered back onto her bike and accelerated forward at reckless speed. At the next intersection of corridors, she had to slow down to listen. Hearing an echoing clatter of rubble on her right, she swung her machine after it, accelerating again. It was the same at the next junction. Even with her headlamp on full beam, she now saw nothing but endless concrete tunnels telescoping ahead, black elongated nightmares along which her Ducati hopped and skipped as it cleared mound after mound of masonry. Some were so narrow that at times her handlebars all but carved their way along the walls and turned the reverberation of her engine into a barrage of gunfire; it was thunderous even to Lucy, whose ears were padded by the helmet. Though it probably explained why the fugitive, who suddenly came into view some sixty yards ahead, streaked forward with athletic prowess, no doubt galvanised by the racket behind her, and gained ground with every corner she turned because they were too tight for the bike to take quickly.
Lucy swore. She could have overhauled this suspect in any normal circumstances, but it was typical that she’d wound up chasing her in what had to be the only place in Crowley where the speed and power of her Ducati were nullified. At the same time, she found herself having to duck, as missiles came flying back from the fleeing form: bricks, discarded bottles, wooden laths heavy with cement. At least her adrenalin was up, dulling the thudding impacts on her body, the blows of bricks and cans, the crunch of smashing glass on her visor. But Lucy knew that she wasn’t immune to this punishment. If her headlight was taken out, that was it; she’d be marooned in this unlit maze, at the mercy of whoever this maniac was, and with a mountain of mouldering brickwork overhead, there was almost no chance that she’d be able to get a phone or radio signal out.
That didn’t happen, but she was constantly impeded in other ways, the twosome emerging into rooms at such speeds and angles that the bike would lose traction, slewing sideways through tangles of trash and filth, always allowing the fugitive to stay ahead, turning corner after corner, again swooping down to grab more projectiles that she could pitch over her shoulder. Lucy followed stoically, her headlamp reflecting kaleidoscopically from cracked walls, rotted ceilings and stretches of opaque, ankle-deep water that exploded from her tyres as she blasted through.
She’d now lost all sense of direction, but it felt as if she ought to have passed through the entire undercroft of the industrial complex. And as this occurred to her, she sped out into a much larger space, the floor changing from rubble-strewn cement to well-worn timber. There was light in here too, that milky combination of moonlight and streetlight filtering through a row of square apertures high up on a distant wall; some looked like the openings to outdoor chutes, though a taller, broader one was clearly a doorway, possibly for the use of small vehicles like forklift trucks. Lucy wasn’t immediately able to focus on this because she had to evade all kinds of immediate obstacles: boxes, crates, the blackened hulks of skips filled with refuse. She twisted and turned deftly to avoid headlong smashes, and so never even saw the heavy hanging chain with the huge rusty hook at the end come rushing at her head.
It struck the side of her helmet with a BANG! like a hand grenade.
The impact was so forceful that not only did it half dislodge her helmet, the visor breaking loose at one side, it sent her skidding out of control. The shock and concussion were terrific, but she clung to consciousness just sufficiently to attempt a controlled crash, sliding on her side through rivers of rank, desiccated newspaper.
No sooner had she come to a halt than a weird, whinnying laugh filled the dusty air above her. Lucy turned groggily from where she lay and saw the figure of the girl on a high point some twenty yards off. Possibly it was a loading platform of some sort. She’d clearly been crouching there, lying in wait, but now she stood up and was silhouetted against the rays of light penetrating the chute apertures.
Lucy disentangled herself from the fallen bike and scrambled to her feet, only to turn woozy when she stood up. Disoriented, she struggled to rip aside the broken visor but made sure to keep her helmet on. When she glanced up again, she saw that the girl had drawn something from her webbing; Lucy spied the outline of a heavy-bladed knife complete with a medieval-style cross-guard. The girl squatted again, as though to leap down from her perch, and perhaps come gambolling forward through the shadows.
Before she could do this, a car horn blared angrily from a distant corner of the depot. Lucy and her opponent turned to see that a vehicle with green bodywork had pulled up on the other side of the forklift entry doors.
The fugitive gave another hyena-like laugh and made her move – but not to come aggressively forward. Instead, she leaped down from the other side of the platform, and ran across the loading depot at speed, dodging nimbly around obstacles as she headed towards her getaway vehicle. Lucy tried to follow, but turned dizzy again, tilted over and landed on her hands and knees.
As she knelt there, a pair of feet thudded up a wooden ramp, a door opened and closed, and with a noisy crunching of gears the green vehicle revved away into the night.
Chapter 26
‘Fuck!’ the girl spat as she loosened the Velcro at her sweaty throat and yanked down the zip on her combat jacket. ‘Damn Maggie bitch put up more of a fight than I expected.’
The other girl drove the van steadily as they joined the traffic on the main road. ‘I told you she wouldn’t be run-of-the-mill.’
‘Maybe, but if that fucking cop hadn’t intervened …’
The driver, whose name was Ivana, frowned. ‘That guy on the bike was a cop?
’
‘It was a woman.’
There was a brief, contemplative silence, and then Ivana cracked an amused smile. ‘A biker-chick cop? I’ve heard it all now.’
‘Yeah … well, I took care of her too.’
‘What did you do?’
‘Just busted her helmet open. Didn’t actually kill her.’ The passenger, whose name was Alyssa, scowled. ‘Fucking would have done if you hadn’t showed up.’
‘I drove round the back in case the nun came out. Is she dead?’
‘No. Like I say, that fucking cop …’
‘Doesn’t matter.’ Oddly, Ivana seemed relieved. ‘It’s a good thing actually.’
Alyssa glanced around. ‘What’re you talking about?’
‘That cop saw you and the vehicle. If she’d also found a dead body, the whole pig pantomime would show up. We’d be in trouble. But if they think it was just a mugging, they won’t be too worried. The van’ll need to be sprayed again, of course.’
Alyssa acknowledged this with a grunt. It would mean a lot of work, but they changed the van’s colour almost as frequently as they changed its plates. It would have been highly unprofessional to keep on using it in the same unaltered condition. And professionalism was the name of this game.
They drove in silence for a minute.
Ivana and Alyssa were nineteen-year-old twins and they resembled each other closely, though Ivana was slightly more severe-looking, with her spiky, red-tinted hair and athletic aura. In contrast, Alyssa had a softer air, though not by much. Shapelier than her sister, she was still obviously an athlete. She wore her fair hair shoulder-length, though at present it was damp and hanging in strings. Ordinarily, she had similar good looks to Ivana, though they were rounder and smoother, but thanks to her foul-up with Lorna Cunningham she was currently battered and bruised, her left eye black and swollen and only partially open.
‘How badly did you hurt the cop?’ Ivana asked.
‘She got up again,’ Alyssa responded.
‘Fair enough. That works.’
Alyssa was amazed that her sister was being so conciliatory. They’d been looking for the dingbat in the habit and veil for days now, Alyssa hating her more and more because she’d somehow proved so elusive. Ivana, though she was calmer and cooler as a rule, had seemed equally angry.
‘I can’t believe you don’t mind that we’ve fucked this up,’ Alyssa said. ‘You reckoned she was with that old duffer down St Clement’s just before we nabbed him. You said you thought she might have clocked us. If the cops are looking into that one, won’t they link it to this? It was virtually in the same place.’
Ivana shrugged. ‘And who’s their only witness to that other grab? A smackhead scrote who dresses like a nun and sells her cooch to get gear. You think they’ll listen to her … if she’s able to tell them anything sensible? Yeah, there’s a vague possibility they’ll connect the two. But none of our plates are traceable, and like I say, we do another respray and we’re sorted.’
Alyssa wondered if this was a bit of bravado. The last time they’d been down St Clement’s and had grabbed the old guy, Ivana had actually been concerned enough that the fake nun might have seen the vehicle to stipulate that from that point on they’d stop using dummy plates bearing registration numbers that were non-existent, and start using copies – plates mocked up to look like genuine ones belonging to legitimate vans owned by real firms. That way, routine police camera checks wouldn’t throw up anything suspicious.
For her own part, Alyssa was just glad that they hadn’t mentioned to his lordship that the other grab had been witnessed. He’d have gone hopping mad, and would have had them back on Category Cs again.
‘We’ll have to tell him, of course,’ Ivana said, as though she’d been reading her sister’s mind. ‘That we went for a Category B tonight but blew it.’
Alyssa’s jaw dropped. ‘Are you kidding?’
‘Lyssa … you did all right. The plan worked. I never thought the nun’d be dumb enough to go back to the same place where we grabbed the other one, but you were right … she did, eventually. Plus, you’d have got her into the back of the van easy if that cloak thing she was wearing hadn’t ripped off. Okay, she was lighter on her toes than Category Bs usually are, but you still caught up with her in a few yards.’
Alyssa snorted. ‘And then look what happened.’
‘Fucking hell, doll. Even you can’t be blamed for a patrolling copper turning up. How often does that happen these days? When was the last time you even saw a patrolling police officer? Even the old fella’ll be on board with that. Anyway, like I say … it doesn’t matter. We’ll get her at some point.’ She had to suppress an excited grin. ‘For the moment, something else has come up.’
‘What?’
Ivana glanced at her chunky military-style watch, and then nodded at the phone lying on the dash. ‘Look at that text. It arrived just under five minutes ago.’
Alyssa grabbed the device and checked the last message.
Recall. Right away. No buts. Drop everything. Urgent job.
‘Job?’ Alyssa said, mystified. ‘Does he mean like … the real thing?’
Ivana shrugged. ‘He said it’s urgent, didn’t he? Told us to drop everything.’
‘But we haven’t even done a successful Category A yet.’
‘So what was last night?’
Alyssa was puzzled. ‘That meathead from the gym? I was told when we got home that he didn’t count. That you’d spiked his drink, so he was Category B at best.’
Ivana snorted. ‘That’s because his lordship’s still pissed off with you about Cunningham.’
‘I don’t know why,’ Alyssa grumbled. ‘We got her off the streets, we still completed the job.’
‘Yeah, and it was all looking great – our first Category A, done and dusted. But then you insisted on going toe-to-toe with her. And look at the outcome. You letting your face get messed up could’ve set us back weeks. No wonder we got put back on Category B. But last night he was well pleased, trust me. After you’d gone up to bed, he said we’d made a chance out of nothing, thought on our feet, improvised …’
Alyssa couldn’t help feeling miffed about that as well. Okay, it had mainly been Ivana’s improvisation – she herself had only been called in by phone at the last minute. But they’d still pulled it off together. She was the one who’d struck the fatal blow. She was the one who’d come up with the idea to lift one of those eroded stone lids in the Victorian section of the churchyard and lay the meathead and his kit-bag to rest on the bones of some granny from the 1870s. She was the one who’d thought to use the fire-extinguisher from the church porch to wash the blood off the steps and path. And yet she was the one who’d been sent to bed while the old fella called Ivana in to offer his congratulations.
This was often the way of it, though. The two sisters were the same age, their births separated by a single hour, and had shared exactly the same life experience, and yet somehow Ivana had fallen into the role of leader and Alyssa into that of follower. She didn’t like it, but she accepted it because it seemed to be the natural order of things. Plus, Ivana was near enough everything Alyssa wanted to be. The younger-girl-by-one-hour loved her older sibling greatly and admired her even more.
‘And you know what he’s like,’ Ivana continued. ‘He’s especially happy when a plan comes together. And I mean a real plan. Not just brute force and ignorance. He didn’t like the Cunningham cock-up, but last night he reckoned we thought on our feet and basically snatched victory from the jaws of defeat.’
Alyssa pondered this again, the realisation of what it meant, and the subsequent excitement, only dawning on her with gradual, painful slowness. ‘Seriously, Vana? That’s it … we’re done on these practice runs, we’re actually going live?’
Ivana nodded again, still excited. ‘I think we are, doll!’
‘Tonight?’
‘Why else get us back in now?’
‘He can’t wait to retire … that’s all it i
s.’
‘And does that bother you?’
‘Does it bloody hell!’ Alyssa punched the dashboard. ‘I’ve been waiting for this ever since we left school.’
Chapter 27
Dusty and tired, Lucy wheeled her Ducati back through the tunnels underneath the warehouse. Even with her broken helmet removed and hooked over one of the handlebars, this was a far from straightforward exercise. Her right hip ached abominably from where she’d crash-landed on it – by morning, she’d be bruised the entire length of that side of her body – and the bike was heavy. It hadn’t suffered anything more than superficial damage, and could easily be ridden, but she didn’t feel in a fit state. On top of all that, the route back wasn’t particularly easy to trace.
She’d hurtled through the network of passages so quickly that she’d barely had time to register landmarks. A couple of times she went the wrong way and had to double back, which was even more exhausting because it often meant manoeuvring the bike in a three-point turn halfway along corridors so cramped that there was minimal room.
It was a good fifteen minutes before she returned to the main undercroft. This place itself would have been difficult to identify, if it hadn’t been for the fresh air flowing in through the garage-sized entrance at the top of the concrete ramp. There was no longer any sign of Sister Cassie. Frustrated, Lucy climbed onto her bike, kicked it into life and rode it up and over the rubble barricade before mounting the ramp. When she reached the top and emerged onto Canning Crescent, she braked.
The ex-nun was seated on a nearby kerb. She’d replaced her wimple, veil and cloak, and was patiently rearranging the various bits of rubbish that had fallen out of her satchel.
‘There you are, child,’ she said, as Lucy trudged over. ‘Thank Heaven. I thought something bad might have happened to you. If only I had a phone, I could have alerted some of your colleagues.’
