The Burning Man

by Paul Finch

  The problem was that access along here was again restricted: more sacks of beer cans, more crates filled with empty bottles. Lots of gateways on the right opened into service yards behind the club, many overflowing with rubbish. He stumbled past them all, still hearing voices behind. Yet now they sounded further away; the railway had hampered them significantly.

  The Iron Bridge came up on his left. He turned thankfully onto it and slogged his way over. It was only eighty yards to the other side. He’d be across in no time. It barely mattered that his feet loudly clomped the riveted steel.

  Until he realised there was someone ahead.

  Heck slid to a halt, sodden hair prickling as he realised that what he’d first thought were echoes was the sound of another crew advancing onto the bridge from the far side. Then he spotted them: a pack of figures emerging along the footway through the gloom, though clearly they hadn’t yet seen him. He backed slowly away, dumbfounded as to how this was possible. He’d assumed they’d lack local knowledge. They were a Manchester crew with a contingent of Russians. Though, on reflection, that wouldn’t have stopped them scoping out the district while he was sharing drinks and a joke with Kayla. It wouldn’t have been difficult for them to acquire a street-map of Bradburn – every newsstand sold one.

  Sweat spraying off him, Heck clambered the bridge’s iron-slatted side and peered down over its parapet onto the car park below. There were only one or two vehicles down there, the main spread of the bare tarmac lying empty. But it was a seventy-foot drop at least.

  He clambered down onto the footway and leaned against the slats, chest heaving. The mob were still approaching, heavy feet tramping the metal. He had no option but to hurry back the way he’d come, which he duly did. He reached the passage behind the Uptown and headed left. They might have put a guard at the front of the club to prevent him circling round, but then again they might not – there was no guarantee either way. But no more than five or six yards along, he found that this option was closed too – there were more voices ahead.

  They had completely boxed him in.

  No other avenues of escape remained – apart, possibly, from one.

  A crazy idea wormed through his panic-stricken skull. Circa 1991, when he and his rugby mates had first been lads around town but still weren’t old enough to legally enter nightclubs, they’d found a way to access the Uptown Emporium by an exterior dumbwaiter.

  Heart racing, Heck ran into the nearest service yard.

  It was small and wallowing in trash. But he groped his way forward. He didn’t know if the ancient, creaking mechanism was still here, but now a tall, squared-off structure built against the nightclub wall, a brick chimney-like annexe to the main building, emerged from the blackness.

  It was here. The next question was: did it still work?

  The dumbwaiter had been operated manually by a rope-and-pulley system. Nightclub staff had used it to lower empty bottles and cans down the shaft to a car park-level yard, where most of the bins and dumpsters were kept. All those years ago, Heck and his mates had been able to climb inside this thing, one by one, and lower themselves down the shaft to a midway point where there was an aperture connecting with a flue, which led down to the Gents toilets on the Uptown’s basement floor. Once there, they would climb through into the main club, merging with the regular clientele while none of the door staff were any the wiser.

  The club was closed at present, but he’d still be safer inside it than out here.

  His desperate, sweaty hands roved over the bricks – and yes, there were still two wooden, cupboard-like doors. Slimy and rotten, but with handles attached. He pulled them apart. The hinges squealed, but it hardly mattered as there was now so much noise from the passage behind: feet drumming on the bridge’s metal footway, guttural voices shouting.

  Foul air exhaled into Heck’s face as he leaned into the void.

  First he had to check that the platform was intact. The last thing he wanted was to plunge seventy feet down a brick shaft. He prodded around with his fingers. It was still there, albeit damp. He leaned on it. It wasn’t just damp; it was sodden – the whole thing had rotted through. Behind him, voices filled the night. Heck glanced back, and saw slashing beams of torchlight beyond the yard.

  With torches, they’d find the dumbwaiter. So he couldn’t just hide inside it, he would have to go down.

  He clambered through, shuffling on his knees onto mildewed woodwork. It groaned; there was a dull creaking of ropes. He ignored this as he closed the doors behind, enfolding himself in rank blackness. He felt around. If memory served, the rope passed up and down again through corresponding holes somewhere on the right side of the shaft, looping around a pulley high overhead. It had never been a completely straightforward process descending by this method. First, you needed to kick at a braking-peg somewhere on the left, levering it out of the shaft-side groove underneath. The dumbwaiter would then descend under its own weight. You could control its speed by manipulating the ropes and, when you wanted to stop, you kicked the brake back into place. It sounded easier than it was, especially in the dark.

  He found the ropes first – they were stiff and greasy with disuse, but still intact, still taut.

  But now a vertical line of light split the blackness in front of him.

  Heck froze, ice sprouting on his sweat-drenched form.

  They had caught the doors to the dumbwaiter in the glare of their torchlight.

  That didn’t mean they’d noticed it, or even would figure out what it was. But he couldn’t afford to make a sound. He heard them talking, a weird polyglot of Russian and Mancunian.

  ‘Nayka!’ a Manc voice said. ‘What the fuck’re you playing at? You said you’d chased him round here!’

  ‘Goddamn it, we did!’ a Russian voice replied. Heck recognised it as the spider web guy.

  ‘He wasn’t on the bridge. We’d have met him. You lost him somewhere … fucking idiot!’

  There were more grunts, more foul-mouthed curses.

  ‘Fuck it … Kemp, you English fuck!’ Nayka replied. ‘He’s here. All of you … the bastard finds him fucking lives!’

  ‘Whoa … what’s that?’ a different Manc voice blurted. ‘Meter cupboard or something?’

  Heart pounding, Heck kicked into the blackness on his left. The sole of his shoe jarred against brickwork, sending an agonising jolt into his hip.

  ‘Fuck was that?’

  Heck kicked out again, wildly.

  With a crunch of wood, an aged peg broke – and the platform dropped, taking Heck down with it. At first slowly; ancient cogs and wheels groaned through layers of rust and debris. But then faster and faster, soot and filth showering on top of him as reams of clag were torn from the encircling walls. The double doors above burst open, light flooded in.

  ‘Fuck is this?’ Nayka’s voice boomed.

  The rate of descent accelerated until Heck was in freefall. And of course the brake-peg had broken. He grabbed for the ropes, catching hold and reopening the burns already stinging his palms, and even then only slowed his descent slightly, the aged hemp sliding in sweat and blood.

  ‘Fucking rope’s moving!’ the Manc called Kemp bellowed.

  Heck clamped the rope to his body. It still slithered upwards; he still descended, albeit more slowly.

  ‘Fucker’s climbing down! Here, grab it, boys, grab it! Pull him back up!’

  Black shadows roiled in the torchlight overhead as they grappled with the rope, bringing the dumbwaiter to a standstill. Again, Heck clawed around the inside of the shaft, fingers finding flat, wet bricks – until on the nightclub side they detected a jagged-edged cavity.

  It was the same as it always had been – that old aperture was still there.

  Heck was larger now than in his teenage days. It wouldn’t be easy forcing his body down that black, airless rabbit-hole. The alternative might be worse, but it was still horrendous, snaking backwards into a steel tube that enclosed him to the contours.

  ‘Up!’
he heard Kemp shouting. ‘Pull the fucking thing up!’

  ‘Het!’ Nayka replied. ‘Fuck that – this goes on too long!’ A metallic snap and slick. A firearm being cocked. ‘Enough derr’mo!’

  Three thudding reports followed, all aimed down the shaft. With careening impacts, the slugs hit the sides and made explosive contact with the dumbwaiter platform, reducing it to a mass of falling scraps.

  Silence ensued in that tall, dark chamber, amid twists of smoke and dust.

  If anyone alive had been looking up it, they’d have seen the silhouetted head and shoulders of a figure against the torchlight as it leaned over and looked down.

  ‘Vic will shit!’ Kemp croaked.

  ‘Let him fuck his shit!’ Nayka retorted. ‘How much this fucking son-bitch cop know, uh? Maybe everything, maybe nothing. Now he say nothing. Where this fucking thing lead?’

  ‘Car park, I suppose.’

  ‘Go. All you – get your fucking asses down! Find his fucking body. If nothing else, we take back to Vic … show we do our fucking job!’

  Heck had been so busy sliding down the flue that he hadn’t heard the first two shots, though he couldn’t avoid the third – it had ricocheted from the edge of the aperture, the slug caroming inward, punching a fist-sized hole through the metal skin only a couple of feet in front of him.

  He lay in the tube, heart thumping, sweat pumping. Only when the voices had fallen silent, the gang presumably making their way down to the car park, did he allow himself to breathe. He now had only one real option: make his way through the nightclub and force an exit somewhere at its front. If he didn’t activate an alarm while crossing the interior, he certainly would when he started kicking and throwing his shoulder at doors. That would send these bastards running.

  He slithered on down, catching his knees and elbows on riveted edges – just as he had all those years ago when he was a teen chasing skirt and beer. However, it was ancient and corroded now, snags of it plucking not just at his clothes but at his flesh. He’d be a mess by the time he got out of this place, but he couldn’t afford to dally. When Ship’s mob reached the bottom of the dumbwaiter shaft, they’d wonder why his body wasn’t there. They’d think that he was clinging on somewhere. They might fire a few more shots, but worse still they might climb up themselves, at which point they’d discover the aperture. Of course, it all depended on how much time they were prepared to give themselves; they were on foreign soil here, so they wouldn’t want to hang around indefinitely, especially if there was a chance their target had evaded them. He was a cop, after all. If he’d got away, how long before he came back with reinforcements?

  At the bottom of the flue, Heck kicked an aged iron grid, which in the past he and his mates had to manually shift out of the way, though now it fell apart like melted chocolate. He inched his way out through another tiny gap, before dropping several feet into the dank black chamber that had once been the Gents toilets. The air in there was stale, malodorous, and it dripped with damp.

  The door leading out into the access passage was again stiff with disuse. Heck had to batter it with his shoulder, loosening it in its frame, before he could grate it open. On the other side, the passage was filled with builders’ rubble. It was still too dark to see anything, but he knew piled bricks, shattered masonry and an overturned cement-mixer when he tripped and stumbled over them. He blundered to his right for several yards – this had been the route into the main body of the nightclub – only to discover a brand-new wall barring further access.

  He stepped away, panting in the blackness. The Uptown Emporium was still open for business; he’d seen that for himself when driving past the other day. But clearly not this lower section. This part was now derelict and closed off – which meant that he was trapped again.

  He backtracked, passing the toilet door and heading in the other direction. There was progressively less rubble along here. Soon it was just a bare passage; paved floor, decayed plaster on the walls. If he remembered rightly, there was a flight of steps just ahead, descending to a fire-escape door. He slowed, located it with his toe and made his way down cautiously. It was so dark that his eyes still hadn’t attuned. There was no light at all – until a few yards beyond the foot of the stair, when a faint yellow radiance appeared on the left. This would be the old fire-door, the light seeping in around its edges from the sodium lamps covering the car park. As Heck approached it, he heard multiple screeches of car brakes behind it.

  He threw himself to the side of the passage, listening intently.

  Several doors thudded open and closed, and then came the rattle and crash of boots impacting on what sounded like rusty metal. Heck remembered there’d been a wrought-iron fence along the boundary of the car park separating it from the Uptown.

  He sucked in a breath so tight it was almost painful as several of those feet came clumping up to the fire-door – only to divert sideways towards the foot of the dumbwaiter. Again he heard voices, though they were too muffled for him to make sense of what they were saying. He slid forward along the wall, ears pricked. Moans of anger and bewilderment were followed by swearing and shouting. Heck pressed his ear to the door.

  ‘Where – where the fuck is that bastard?’ This was Nayka.

  ‘You must’ve only winged him,’ Kemp said.

  ‘What – and he survive this fall? You fucking kid me?’

  ‘I don’t see any blood, Nayk,’ a different voice replied. ‘Look … there’s a bit of the dumbwaiter tray here, but I don’t see nothing else.’

  ‘This cannot be. I skin that cop bastard alive when I catch him.’

  Trails of sweat snaked down Heck’s body as he listened.

  ‘Look, now … search. He can’t be far! I skin him and salt his wounds.’

  Heck glanced back towards the passage stair. He supposed he could retreat up there, and try to insinuate himself into the builders’ rubble. Yeah, like they wouldn’t find him there. He wondered if he could scramble back into the flue and make his way up to the shaft. But how was he going to get up it – by using the rope?

  Yeah, course, he thought. It’s not so old and slippery that you won’t fall straight down it, break your legs, your hips. And then have that Russian headcase to deal with.

  However, the tone of the conversation on the other side of the door had now changed.

  Cooler heads were having their say.

  ‘Nayka, we’ve got to go, mate.’ This wasn’t Kemp, but another Manc.

  Kemp agreed. ‘Yeah … if you wounded him, or missed him, and he got away – or even if he wasn’t in that shaft to start with – he’s still on his toes. And he’s a copper, remember. That means the first phone he gets to, he’ll call a fucking army. We’ve got to shift.’

  ‘Chush’ sobach’ya! Pizdayob!’

  ‘Nayka, I can square this with Vic. I’ve known him all my life. He’s not going to post my body-parts to my wife and kids like your fucking nutters would.’

  ‘Son of a bitch!’ the Russian spat. ‘For this, I rip his fucking guts while he breathes! Make us look like dolboeb!’

  There was another clatter of metal as they moved back to the car park. Still Heck listened. From outside, the fire-escape door would be a solid rectangle of black-painted wood, with no handles or bells. If they’d noticed it, they’d presumed no one could have got in that way.

  ‘Nayka, you and me, we go and see Vic personal,’ Kemp said. ‘The rest of you – kick it!’

  Engines growled to life, tyres screeching as vehicles rocketed away into the night. Soon there was only a single voice. It sounded like Kemp, and seemed as if he was on a phone. ‘Yeah … yeah,’ he said. ‘We’re coming in now. No worries, Vic …’

  Heck leaned on the escape-bar. It depressed easily, and the door clicked open. He’d gambled there’d be no alarm connected to a section of the club that was now abandoned. It was a serious gamble – there was no guarantee the rest of the gangsters had gone yet – but he knew he had to do more than skulk in the darkness when a
n opportunity like this had presented itself. If absolutely nothing else, he had to figure out who he was dealing with.

  He opened the door an inch or so, exposing deep weeds and thorns, and a flattened section of fencing. On the other side of that, a car roared past, heading off the car park at speed. About fifty yards away, he saw the cobweb-tattooed form of Nayka climbing into a BMW. In the immediate foreground, only one other vehicle remained, an Audi A3 soft-top. A stunted, rat-like figure stood alongside its open driver’s door, a mop of tar-black hair hanging shoulder-length over a tan leather jacket. He was busy inserting a phone into his back pocket. Beyond him, Nayka’s BMW blazed away, aiming for the far end of the car park, where there was a turning circle.

  It was now or never.

  Heck scampered across the trampled vegetation and broken fence, snatching up a length of rusted pipe as he did. The rat guy, Kemp, spun around, his ugly, nobbled face stretched lengthways in disbelief – but he was too late to prevent the pipe crashing down on his cranium. He slumped to the ground, senseless.

  Heck rifled the guy’s pockets, finding his phone and keys, and felt under his jacket, where a Makarov pistol was slotted into a shoulder-holster. Keeping as low as he could – that Russian lunatic was only at the far end of the car park, swinging his BMW around 360 degrees – Heck shoved all of these into his own pockets, took out his cuffs and fastened the guy’s hands behind his back, before dragging him up and bundling him into the soft-top’s rear footwell. Heck leaped behind the wheel himself, just as the BMW came growling back. It slowed, but Heck flashed his headlights, and Nayka, apparently suspecting nothing, drove on.

  Sweating anew, Heck pulled out behind him.

  As he did, he grabbed Kemp’s phone and tapped in a number. It went straight to voicemail.

  ‘This is Detective Superintendent Piper. I can’t take your call right now, but please leave a message and I’ll get back to you ASAP.’

  ‘Ma’am, it’s Heck,’ he said. ‘Just thought I’d let you know … looks like I’m on my way to Manchester for a meeting with Vic Ship. Seems he’s been looking for me. The only difference now is we’re doing it on my terms. I’ll try and keep you clued in. But if something happens to me tonight … say, if I disappear without trace, at least you’ll know who’s responsible.’