by Oisin McGann
Rat Runners
Oisín McGann
For Mags, Jenny, Aoife, Patricia, David, Nessa, and all the fantastic book people who make Children’s Books Ireland what it is.
CHAPTER 1
TAKING THE CASE
NIMMO HEARD THE whistles and immediately stopped what he was doing. People on the ground floor of the tenement were warning those above. There was a Safe-Guard in the building. He looked at his watch, noting the time. Six-fifteen—three hours before sundown. He needed to be gone before seven, or he’d have to leave the job for another night. If the Safe-Guard was just here to wander around, it might take half an hour or more to reach Nimmo’s floor. If it had an assignment, it would go straight to the apartment it wanted. There was no way of telling which, without going looking for it. There was no way he was about to do that. In Nimmo’s line of work, it didn’t pay to get noticed.
He had his trainers off, and was fitting one with the kind of raised insole you used for flat feet, the type with a lump under the arch of the foot to support it. Nimmo did not have flat feet. And he only put an insole in the left trainer, leaving the other one as it was. Putting on the shoes, he walked around until he was satisfied that the arch support was having the desired effect. Taking the insole out, he stuffed both of them into the small backpack he kept near the door. Then he put his trainers back on.
Pulling on his scuffed black leather jacket and his gray woolen hat, he slung the pack onto his shoulders and headed for the door of his dingy but well-kept apartment. A kid his age should not have been living alone, but there was no need for the authorities to know. With his lean, somber face, tall wiry build and close-cut red hair, he could pass for older if he needed to. He had several identities to match. He was reaching for the latch when a knock on the door caused him to freeze. A flicker of thoughts went through his head. Had the Safe-Guard somehow been assigned to him, despite the rules? What then? Stay there and look innocent? Try and bluff his way past? Get out now, by the window?
Nimmo shook his head. If it was the Safe-Guard, it could see through the door. It could see his skeleton, hear his elevated heartbeat. If he’d had dental records, it could have identified him by his teeth. There was no point running. The knock sounded again. He opened the door.
Watson Brundle was standing out in the drab, faded yellow corridor. A few inches over six foot, Brundle was a narrow, angular man with wide cheekbones, dark eyes and a curly mop of black hair. He always had a restless manner, moving with a twitchy energy. His large hands held a small flat leather box out in front of him; it was a little over twenty centimeters square, the kind you might use to hold an expensive necklace.
“Hey, Nimmo. I need a favor.”
“I’m going out,” Nimmo replied.
“This is a pretty serious favor. I’d owe you a great big fat one.”
“Gnarly. Ask me when I come back.”
“No. I need you to hide this for me, now.” Brundle was sweating as he thrust the case towards Nimmo.
“You want me to hide something for you with that peeper downstairs? You think I’m a complete gombeen? No way.”
“It’s nothing illegal. Not technically,” Brundle said softly, desperately. “It’s just … questionable. Look, I got a tip-off, all right? The Safe-Guard is here for me. It’s coming to my place, not yours. Just take this thing from me and I’ll let you off a month’s rent, OK?”
Brundle owned the whole building, and rented this small apartment to Nimmo for cash, no questions asked.
“What’s in it?” Nimmo asked.
“I can’t tell you. But they’re not looking for it, and it’s not illegal. Not really. Look, come on, we haven’t much time. That peeper is probably coming up the stairs right now.”
“Six months’ rent,” Nimmo said.
“What? Are you havin’ a laugh? Listen, I need to get out of here for a while, just until it’s gone. And I can’t take this out with me. How about two months, OK?” Brundle looked down the hallway towards the door to the stairwell. The elevator hadn’t worked in over a year. The Safe-Guard would have to climb the stairs.
“How about six?”
“Don’t be a complete sod. Three months off, and you take this right now, all right?”
“I’ll take it right now,” Nimmo told him, “when you give me six months off. I don’t play the shell game with Safe-Guards, Brundle. Nobody does, if they’re smart. So you’re asking me to do something stupid when I know better. You’re up to no good and looking for company. Six months, rent-free.”
Brundle nodded frantically and pushed the box into Nimmo’s hands.
“Bloody hustler! OK. Take it!”
Nimmo took it and closed the door. He heard his landlord stride down the hallway. Brundle was probably hoping to hide in one of the other apartments next floor down and let the Safe-Guard go past, and then leg it out and down the street. That was just dumb—he’d only bring suspicion on himself. Brundle wasn’t normally dumb.
Having saved himself rent for the next six months, Nimmo could afford to give tonight’s job a miss. Dropping his pack on the floor by the door, he slipped off his jacket and hat and hung them on the hook. As he did these things, his mind was searching the apartment for somewhere to hide the box. He tried to open it, but it was locked, and the edge was sealed with some kind of plastic resin. If he forced it, Brundle would know. That wasn’t enough to stop him—he didn’t normally handle something if he didn’t know what it was—but there wasn’t time to start trying to crack it open now.
The flat was a small two-bed place, though one of the rooms was little more than a box room. There was a living room with a kitchenette at the back, one large window looking out on the enclosed courtyard six stories below that boasted a run-down playground and a basketball court. The bedrooms were both off to the right, with a large cupboard just to the left of the front door. All the walls were painted an anonymous beige. There wasn’t much in the way of decoration—a few film and band posters, some black-and-white framed photos of London landmarks, a few ornaments lying on the sideboard and the mantelpiece. Nothing that would have told you much about the owner’s personality. There was no television. The battered Weinbach piano might have come with the flat, but anyone who tried it would have found it perfectly in tune.
Nimmo looked at the box again. There are two main ways of concealing something. Either hide it where it cannot be seen, or put it somewhere it can be seen, but cannot be recognized. If you want to hide something from someone with x-ray vision, the first option is extremely difficult. He flipped the box over, looked at the underside, which was almost exactly like the top, and then turned it back. It didn’t look like anything else in his apartment.
Brundle had a number of boxes like this in his laboratory next door. They held various scientific instruments that he used. This was where he spent all his time, although his living quarters were across the corridor. Pulling on a pair of latex gloves, Nimmo wiped any trace of fingerprints off the box with a soft cloth. Then he took a pair of sunglasses from the pocket of his leather jacket, which hung on the hook by the door. Nimmo opened the front door and walked along the hallway. The scientist had knocked through the walls of three apartments on this floor to build himself a large laboratory, and had sealed off two of the doors. The third door looked normal, but Nimmo knew it had a solid steel core. The two locks were pretty standard, however, which Nimmo had always thought was a bit careless. He unhooked the legs of his sunglasses from their frame. This simple disguise was a handy way of hiding and carrying two of his lock-picks.
The two locks took him less than a minute to open, and then he was inside. He had figured out Brundle’s alarm code some time ago—the date
of his daughter’s Bat Mitzvah—and tapped the six-digit number into the keypad hidden in one of the cupboards, disarming the security system.
As he passed one of Brundle’s office desks, the sound of a dog barking right next to him nearly made him jump out of his skin. He spun around to find a life-size pug dog toy sitting on the desk. It was the type that could make sounds, triggered by one of those infra-red sensors that detected people walking past. Its head was nodding idiotically.
“Little git,” Nimmo muttered, with a grim smile as his heart settled down again.
Brundle loved his gadgets, but this one was new. Nimmo quickly found some variously sized cases of scientific instruments piled on a worktable, coated in a thin layer of dust. He slipped the leather box in amongst the pile, wiped some dust off one of the windowsills and sprinkled it over the leather- covered box to hide its polished sheen. It looked completely at home.
This was the best place for Brundle’s ‘technically-not-illegal’ box. It didn’t look as if somebody was trying to hide it, and yet the mixture of metal and plastic parts in the other boxes would help conceal its contents from a Safe-Guard’s x-ray vision, unless the thing inside was a shape the watcher was specifically looking for. And this way, Nimmo wasn’t taking the risk of hiding it in his own apartment.
This lab consisted of a long room, taking up about half of the footprint of the three original apartments. It was filled with computer equipment and workbenches; electronics tools such as soldering irons and phase testers lay among the clutter, along with circuit boards and other bits and pieces. Different types of microscopes stood along one table. Through an airlock door system was a smaller room. It was a ‘clean room,’ where Brundle did his micro- technology work. No dirt or dust could be allowed in there. You had to wear a coverall ‘bunny suit’ and a mask to keep the air clear of contaminants. There was an electron microscope in there, and a lot of other expensive gear.
A picture of Veronica, Brundle’s daughter, stood in an attractive walnut frame on the desk in the center of one wall. ‘Nica,’ she preferred to be called. She was dark-haired, dark-eyed and coffee-skinned, like her father, and pretty in an offbeat kind of way. But her looks were marred by the port-wine birthmark over her left eye and the top of her cheek. Her father was devoted to her, but separated from her mother. Nica lived with the mother.
Nimmo only knew a little bit about Brundle’s work—the scientist’s research was legitimate, carried out for some private client, or so he’d said. It had something to do with RFIDs—Radio Frequency ID tags—those multi-purpose micro-transmitters that were on everything nowadays, from clothes to cargo containers. They had replaced barcodes and added many other functions into the bargain. They were everywhere, and Brundle was working on some way of using them in skin implants or something. That was as much as Nimmo knew.
Quickly resetting the alarm, he had barely slipped back out of the lab and locked the door again, when he heard footsteps on the stairs. Seconds later, he was back inside his own apartment, with the door closed. He recognized Brundle’s tread, and someone with him who took shorter, quieter strides. It seemed the scientist had failed to evade the Safe-Guard.
Sitting down on the worn but comfortable armchair in the small living room, Nimmo closed his eyes, and listened carefully as Watson Brundle unlocked the door to the lab, and let the Safe-Guard in.
CHAPTER 2
THE CATERPILLAR JOB
MANIKIN SAT ON a black-painted steel park bench, facing a litter bin ribbed with wood that stood on the far side of the path. Her eyes were on the book she held in her hands, but she kept her attention on the tarmac path that passed in front of her, following the perimeter of the small green area that offered shelter from the rush of the city beyond. The small park was surrounded by tall mature trees, and a dense hedge. A gate opened into the park thirty-five meters up on her left. The mark would come in that way. He would exit the park through the gate at the other end of the lane, off to her right. There was another gate behind her, just visible over her left shoulder. Outside that gate, in the shadow of a multi-story car park, her two partners waited for her signal.
The patch of green was one of the few public spaces in the city center that were almost entirely obscured from security cameras. Only one camera, on the wall of the car park behind her, watched over this space. Manikin knew that camera would not be working. Her brother would see to that.
She looked at her watch. The guy they were waiting for was late. Manikin realized that she hadn’t turned a page of her book in several minutes and did so now. It was at that moment that she saw a Safe-Guard walking down the lane on the far side of the park. Her blood ran cold—if the mark appeared now, they would have to let him pass. Just as she always did when she saw a Safe-Guard, she ran through a check of what she had on her person, in case the peeper looked over at her. Nothing too suspicious. She was wearing a strawberry-blonde wig, but the watcher wouldn’t spot that unless it was very close. The same went for the tinted contact lenses that made her eyes look blue instead of green. The pockets of her khaki-colored mac were empty—so that the coat could be cast off in a hurry if need be. Beneath the coat she wore a pair of unremarkable black jeans and a gray wool sweater. Nothing too distinctive. She carried nothing illegal—except for her fake ID, which was of an extremely high quality. She was always careful about that when she was on a job. The work was dangerous enough without doing something stupid like carrying a weapon or some stolen property.
Even so, she felt a chill as the blue-gray, cloaked figure turned the glass visor of its helmet in her direction. She hated the way they moved. They were trained to glide, walking slowly and smoothly. She never saw one looking hurried or agitated. They were taught to show as few human qualities as possible, to be walking surveillance posts and nothing more. They couldn’t even talk to you without permission from their Controllers. It didn’t look at her for very long, but she still felt that disturbing sense they always gave you—that they could see through you, see anything you were hiding. The stare that said they could tell when you were up to no good.
Then it was gone, leaving through a gate on the far side of the park. That wasn’t gone enough for her liking, but at that moment a boy her age appeared through the gate on her left, swerving onto the lane on a skateboard. His lank brown hair hung over a spotty, petulant face, much as his baggy jeans hung off his backside. His tense expression and watchful eyes gave him away. This guy was on duty. He was carrying a cuddly toy under his left arm, a rather hungry-looking caterpillar with a meter-long skinny green body, a large red head and multi-colored legs. It was time to go to work.
Manikin tapped the top of the bench with her right hand. As the skateboarder sped towards her, two people on roller-blades swept out from the gate behind her, coming up on her left. They were going too fast to stop. The skateboarder twisted to avoid them, but the guy with the bleached-blond hair and the ox-blood leather jacket hit the skater hard enough to knock him off the path. The spotty kid might have stayed on his feet if the red-headed girl hadn’t fallen over her boyfriend’s sprawling legs and slammed right into the unfortunate skateboarder. He collided with the litter bin, dropped his cuddly caterpillar and tumbled onto the grass. The redhead staggered up into a standing position, wobbled on her roller- blades, and stood on the side of the skater’s knee. He let out a yell. She fell over onto him again, her elbow hitting him in the face.
“What are you doin’?” he protested. “You muggin’ me or do you, like, normally skate like a drunk baby? Get off me!”
Manikin was already on her feet, as the guy in the leather jacket stood up on his roller-blades, his face contorted into a snarl. His name was Punkin, and he was a short fifteen-year-old, with a pale, pinched face, premature bags under his eyes and cropped, bleached-blond hair. He stood over the spotty kid, his right hand clenched into a fist.
“Watch where you’re goin’, you little scrote!” he barked. “You skatin’ with your eyes open, or a
re you, like…usin’ the Force? Hey, I’m talkin’ to you, arse-face!”
The skater was distracted for a moment by Punkin as Manikin picked up the caterpillar. She reached for the litter bin as she walked behind Punkin, who stood between the bin and the skater. The spotty kid stretched to the side, looking past Punkin and focusing his entire attention on the cuddly toy in Manikin’s hands.
“Hey, that’s mine! Let go of that! Let it go!” he cried, his voice a little too shrill.
“Sure, sure,” she said, handing it over as he stood up. “I saw what happened. You OK? It was all their fault, they ran right into you. I’ll testify to that if you need to make a claim. Are you hurt? Is the caterpillar OK?”
“Yes! No! Just…just leave me alone,” the skater said, obviously shaken, and holding onto the cuddly toy like a toddler meeting strange relatives. “I just need to go.”
“Hey, this isn’t over!” the bleached-blond guy snapped. “You run into me, you’re gonna apologize! You and your caterpillar both!”
“Apologize for what? You got a whole park to roll through and you hit the only other person in it? I gotta apologize ’cos you can’t steer straight? That what you’re tellin’ me?”
“Yeah, let’s ’ave it!” his girlfriend backed her man up. “You an’ that bug gonna show us some respec’.”
The girl, whose name was Bunny, was a manic-faced strip of a thing, with a wild mop of ginger hair and near-permanent look of frustration. The same age as her boyfriend, she was slightly more stupid, and just a little bit more of a psycho. She always spoke as if her knickers were painfully tight. Manikin would not have been working with either of them if she hadn’t been desperate. Bunny moved forward as if to push the guy, and Manikin stepped into the way. Manikin felt a hard shape under the girl’s jacket and frowned. Looking down, she saw the butt of a black plastic handle sticking out of Bunny’s waistband. Manikin hid her shock well. Turning back to look at Punkin, she noted the way he held his right hand down near his waist. He was carrying as well, the idiot.
