Rat Runners

by Oisin McGann

  “I’m so far in now, I can’t see a way out. I don’t want this to happen to anybody else.” She gazed at Manikin. “You’re right. Give that scumbag any kind of hold on you, and he’ll have you for life.”

  “So we’re all agreed?” FX asked, looking pointedly at Nimmo. “We don’t tell Easy about the book thing?”

  Nimmo nodded, glad of their decision. And as he did, he wondered if he should just tell Manikin and FX about his connection to Brundle, that he had the case, and that the scientist’s death had most certainly not been accidental. As it was, he was going to have to let Scope in on it. But in his short life, Nimmo had trusted very few people, and half of those were dead or in prison. He had stayed alive and free by keeping his secrets, so he stayed silent now.

  “Good,” Manikin said. “Come on, bro’, show me what you’ve got on Veronica. Time to get into character. By tomorrow night, I want to be the best friend she’s never met.”

  “What about getting into Brundle’s lab?” Scope asked.

  “Let’s see how we do at the club. There’s a lot of eyes on the lab,” Nimmo said. He took the phone and bugs from his bag, the ones he’d taken from the other intruder in Veronica’s flat. Handing them to FX, he said: “I picked these up from one of our competitors. See what you can find out, will you?”

  “How the hell did you get these?” FX said, staring at the objects he took from Nimmo.

  “I hid in a wardrobe with a can of deodorant,” Nimmo replied. “Get what you can out of them, soon as you can, yeah?”

  FX glanced at his sister, who was pretending not to be intrigued. She peered discreetly over her brother’s shoulder, following him as he hurried out of the room towards his workshop.

  Nimmo checked to make sure the pair were walking away down the corridor, then he reached down for his backpack, opened the top, and handed Scope a plastic bag containing a bundle of other plastic bags.

  “Here’s that stuff from that thing I was telling you about. I’ll talk you through them,” he said. He chewed his lip and cast another look at the kitchen door. “Look … I need to be straight with you here, Scope. This murder I’m looking into? It’s Brundle’s. I knew him. I was the guy who lived on his floor. Apart from his killer, I was the last person to see him alive. I found the body. I reported the death to the police. I’d be the main suspect in their investigation, only they’ve decided that his death was accidental. Which it wasn’t—I heard him die.”

  “Holy sh—” Scope began to say.

  “I really need you not to tell all this to the others—at least until I get to know them better,” Nimmo pleaded. “I’m up to my teeth in this mess, Scope, but I can’t let the coppers brush this death under the carpet. Something’s badly wrong with all this. I need your help.”

  “Bloody hell, Nimmo,” she said in a hushed tone, looking down at the package in her hand. “I mean … bloody hell.”

  “How about it?” he urged her for an answer. “I know I’m asking a lot, but …”

  He shrugged, unable to give her a good enough reason to help him. She met his eyes and smiled faintly. There were times when Scope struck Nimmo as being too innocent for this game—but then, when she gave him a look like she did now, he saw the piercing intelligence that gave her that curiosity, and that ability to interpret the smallest details so as to make sense of the world around her.

  “You’ve got the case, haven’t you?” she said.

  “Yeah,” he replied.

  CHAPTER 16

  THE KING OF THE GETTERS

  MOVE-EASY’S WAS only one of many Voids in London. And while he ran the most powerful organization, it was Tubby Reach you went to if you needed what couldn’t be got. Reach was the biggest and best getter in London. But like Move-Easy, he was very particular about security. Nimmo was one of very few people outside Reach’s inner circle who could enter the Void without an escort, as the King of the Getters had known him since he was a baby.

  One of the entrances into Reach’s Void was through a door marked ‘Staff Only’ in a pedestrian tunnel in Victoria Station. This door was not watched by a camera, but you had to be careful to only use this door when the tunnel was crowded with commuters making their way from the Underground to the main line station.

  Mingling with the normal morning crowds on their normal way to their normal jobs, Nimmo opened the door and slipped through as the press of bodies hurried past him. He walked down a steel staircase into a narrow utility tunnel, to another door, flanked by a bank of metal compartments housing electrical breaker switches. Instead of going through this door, Nimmo stopped in front of it and whistled the first few bars of Scott Joplin’s “The Entertainer.”

  The bank of aluminum lockers slid aside to reveal a hidden doorway, and a very large Asian man with careful eyes ushered the boy inside. Nimmo made his way along the bare concrete corridor, past several different, discreetly situated scanning devices.

  Two more locked doors were opened to him, and he found himself in an ante-chamber that resembled the waiting room of a wealthy doctor, complete with nondescript classical music, modern art prints on the wallpapered walls, and an inoffensive range of reading material on the large coffee table that sat between the two rows of antique cushioned chairs. A closed pair of elevator doors was set into the wall to his right. Half a dozen people of widely varying appearance sat waiting for an audience with Tubby Reach.

  There was another door on the far side, this one a teak paneled affair, rather than a heavy-duty steel slab. Entrance through this door was controlled by a lean black guy in a plum-colored designer suit. He sported an impressive Afro and a pair of sunglasses, which looked somewhat incongruous, given that he was several stories underground. A tall, sporty- looking girl was talking at him. She had an Irish accent and hair the color of a stop sign. She was trying to talk her way past the doorman, but wasn’t having much success.

  “But I have an appointment!” she pressed him. “My name’s on the list: Caragh Boland. Check the list!”

  “He’ll see you in good time, Ms. Boland,” the doorman replied in a tone that was polite but firm. “In good time. But you’ve got to wait your turn. Everyone here needs to see Mister Reach, but he’s a busy man.” “But I’ve got those books he wants! He’s still in the market, isn’t he?” “He is—and he’ll get to you eventually. But for now, you need to sit down and wait your turn like everybody else.”

  Nimmo walked up to them, nodding to the doorman, who nodded back and opened the door for him.

  “What? Who the hell was that?” the girl protested, as Nimmo stepped through. “How come he gets in so easy?”

  “That’s nobody you need to worry about,” the doorman assured her as he closed the door again. “Nobody at all.”

  Nimmo found himself in a hallway that led to a room which could have been the members’ area in a high-class nightclub. It was broken into different levels, linked by wide steel and glass staircases, with low, multi-colored lighting around the edges of the space, the odd area picked out by spots. There were comfortable leather seating areas, an array of screens, and a well-stocked bar. The only things that jarred with this club image were the state-of-the-art computer gear occupying one corner of the room, and the enormous, semi-circular office desk that dominated one of the highest platforms. The desk curved around the tremendous girth of the man with the slick businessman’s haircut and carefully manicured nails, who owned the Void. Tubby Reach roared a greeting and waved Nimmo up.

  “Nimmo, my boy,” the massively obese Asian man wheezed in the accent of an Indian who has learned his English from the Cockneys. Slow of speech, but quick of mind, and wise to the ways of London, Reach kept himself surrounded by family, and believed in good hospitality. “You’re just in time for some of Mum’s nahiri. Be ready any minute. She does the beef so tender, it’ll crumble in your mouth.”

  “Thanks, Tub,” Nimmo replied. “But it’s seven o’clock in the morning. Bit early for dinner.”

  Tubby Reach raised his
eyebrows in surprise, rotating his bulbous head towards one of his brothers, who stood to one side. The man—almost as large, but built of muscle instead of fat—nodded to confirm the early hour. Like Move-Easy, Reach was wary of going above ground, although he did venture out on special occasions. Much of his legwork was done by his brothers.

  The youngest, and by far the most dangerous, of those brothers stood to one side of his desk, shoulders, chest and arms bulging inside a black rugby shirt. His eyes were hidden by a pair of sunglasses, his close-cut hair and goatee framed a bulldog face. His name was Gort, and he handled much of Reach’s security, and did a lot of the debt collecting. The rings on his fingers were not just for decoration; they were the controls for the implants that were set beneath Gort’s skin, all over his body. These implants provided him with a range of abilities, from making subtle changes to his skin color to being able to extend needles from his fingertips.

  They were extremely useful, but Nimmo knew they were also a liability. Illegal implants were one of the biggest parts of Reach’s business, and even though Gort’s would be the most advanced on the market, they could still be detected by Safe-Guards. So they could attract an awful lot of unwanted attention. The circuitry in those rings was like flying a flag. Nimmo also knew that Reach and Gort had on-going arguments about the risk of that kind of attention. Deep down, Gort wanted to be famous—a celebrity gangster. Reach wanted nothing of the kind.

  “Sorry, boy,” Reach said to Nimmo, shrugging his wide, sloping shoulders. “We been pullin’ an all- nighter. Lost track o’ time. One of our implant clinics was knocked over last night, and we’re tryin’ to track down who did it. Got a lot of peepers on our turf too, pokin’ around. Havin’ to step lively.”

  Nimmo came up the steps, taking an envelope from his jacket pocket. He handed it to Reach, who nodded his acknowledgement, and then dropped it into a drawer of his desk without giving it a second look.

  “How they doing?” Nimmo asked.

  “About the same.” Reach made a so-so face. “Your money helps, of course, but your mum’s finding it tough. Handling it like a veteran con though—you’d never guess this was the first time she’s been locked up. The worst thing for your dad is that he’s always worrying someone’ll find out his missus was once a copper. Now that he’s settled in a while, he’s got a couple of rackets going, as you’d expect, but he’s missin’ her like crazy.”

  “Shouldn’t have got caught then, should he?” Nimmo sniffed.

  “Look, Nimmo, given your … background, a bit of cynicism is understandable,” Reach cautioned him. “But you should show more respect. They did what they did to keep you safe. Don’t forget that.”

  As if I could, Nimmo thought sourly, thinking of the money he had just handed over. Money that went towards keeping his parents alive and unhurt.

  Eighteen years before, his father had pulled off one of the most famous heists in history. He’d been a target for half the world’s police forces ever since, including that of his native France. Quite a few of the world’s mobsters wanted a piece of him too. An undercover operation run by the Gardaí in Ireland had finally tracked him down—but the woman who’d led it ended up falling in love with him, and helping him escape.

  Twelve years later, they’d been living under new identities in Britain, with their young son. Then they were caught on another job, betrayed by those they were working with. Their true identities were still unknown, but the prisons that held them were no less secure despite this. They’d managed to keep Nimmo’s existence a secret, but that meant they could never have direct contact with him. He’d been on his own in the world ever since.

  “So how you been?” Reach asked in a softer voice.

  “Things’ve been getting a bit complicated lately,” Nimmo told him.

  “Never a good thing, in your line,” Reach grunted. “Somethin’ I can do?”

  “Know this guy?” Nimmo said, taking out his camera and showing Reach the photos of the intruder from Veronica’s apartment—the man’s face and his tattoo.

  “Name’s Krieger—Frank Krieger,” Reach rumbled. “A thief, mainly, and a hustler—a bloody good one. Does a bit of violence too. A real hard case. Steer clear of that one, Nimmo. You take this while he was asleep or something?”

  “Something like that,” Nimmo told him. “He’s done time, right? That’s a prison tattoo. Any way he could work for WatchWorld?”

  Reach raised his eyebrows slowly and then lowered them in a frown.

  “Nah, no way. They wouldn’t touch him. They don’t hire ex-cons. Why do you ask?”

  “I was wondering how he could have got this then,” Nimmo said, handing over the WatchWorld identity card he’d found on Krieger. “I think it could be real.”

  On the surface, the card was a simple design: Krieger’s photo and real name were on it, along with a serial number and the WatchWorld logo—the hands encircling the eye. But the real ID information lay within the slim piece of plastic. A radio frequency ID chip would carry every relevant fact about Krieger’s life, along with an encrypted identification signal that would give him access to WatchWorld facilities. Tubby Reach looked at it in bemusement, and then began rooting around in another drawer. He took out several chocolate bars, some bags of tortilla chips, an antique revolver and a hairbrush.

  When he failed to find what he was looking for, Gort leaned over and pointed at another drawer. Reach waved him away with a snort of annoyance, but then opened the drawer and found a handheld RFID scanner. He held the card up to it and peered at the screen. Then he gave a low whistle, handing the card to his brother for him to see. Gort eyed it through his sunglasses, one of his implants providing him with a heads-up display of the card’s contents on the lenses.

  “A Level Three clearance,” Reach said with an impressed wheeze. “I ain’t seen one o’ those in a while. It’s real, all right. Or as good as real. Don’t know nobody who’s managed to forge one of those, but there’s not a snowflake’s chance in hell the law’d give one to Krieger.”

  “What can it be used for?” Nimmo asked.

  “Get you into any public buildings, police stations, most of the WatchWorld facilities. You could get access to any of their surveillance installations. You could tap into the WatchWorld feed anywhere in the country.”

  Nimmo considered this for a moment. A professional criminal with the resources of WatchWorld at his fingertips.

  “Krieger couldn’t have set this up on his own.” Reach interrupted the boy’s thoughts as if he’d read them, taking the card back from his brother and passing it to Nimmo. “He’s just a tool for a job on this level. This is way out of his league. Man, even I couldn’t get you one of these passes—at least, not one that’s made for you. A stolen one? No problem. A high-grade copy? Yeah, sure. I could even get you a blank one. But a personalized card with all the right ID stuff on it? No, man.”

  He gazed at the card in Nimmo’s hand, and shook his head.

  “I don’t know what you’re into, Nimmo. But you’re up against someone with power—and if they’re usin’ the likes of Krieger, they’re not playin’ by any rules. You won’t do no prison time for messin’ with these—they’ll just rub you out if you get in their way. You wanna get back beneath the radar. Low profile, my boy. Your mum and dad taught you how to work in this world—they’d tell you to read the writin’ on the wall on this one, Nimmo. Walk away. I don’t want to see you come to no violent end.”

  Nimmo didn’t say anything at first. He was staring at the card in his right hand. He thought about the surveillance that would be closing around Veronica Brundle’s life, about the ten blank credit cards that were supposed to be in her father’s box, and Nimmo remembered her father’s body, lying dead on the floor of his lab.

  “Thanks for the concern, Tub,” he said. “But I’m in this one till I’m done.”

  “Yeah, you had that look in your eye,” Reach sighed, then his voice took on a harder edge. “I know better than to try and change
your mind. Chip off the old blocks, intcha? Well, I’m here if you want help … to a point. Don’t go makin’ any more enemies than you can handle. And you know, you start mixin’ it at this level, boy, you can’t trust no one.”

  A hint of bitterness crossed Nimmo’s face, but then it was gone.

  “I never have,” he murmured.

  CHAPTER 17

  CAUGHT ON VIDEO

  FX SAT IN the Hide that Friday morning, watching a video on one of his screens. A window on the screen beside it was scrolling down through hundreds of lines of code. It represented a program of his, looking for weaknesses in a firewall protecting a distant hard drive he wanted access to. On the desk to one side of him sat the phone that Nimmo had given him. The phone that the other boy had somehow taken from one of their ‘competitors.’ FX was not worried that the phone could be traced to this location, as could be done with any mobile phone nowadays. Nimmo had removed the battery when he took it, and once the door of the Hide was closed, no signals could get in or out unless FX wanted them to.

  The owner of the phone had used the PIN number to lock it. It was a simple but very effective means of stopping anybody else from using it, or examining the content of the phone. Five wrong tries at inputting the number—there were ten thousand possible options—and the security settings would erase the content of the phone, making it useless to FX. There were ways around most security systems, but this one would either be really tricky, or really time-consuming.