A Snowball in Hell

by Christopher Brookmyre

  He asks if she wants to grab a bite. They both know it means all kinds of other things. She knows he could just be looking for a soft place to land after today, but then right now maybe she is too.

  She’s about to assent and finish her drink when her phone sounds, signalling a text. She glances at the screen, sees the hypnotic, compelling sight of an unrecognised number. Amoment after luxuriating in off-duty thoughts of going off with Dale and ‘seeing what happens’, she is reminded that she’s never really off-duty. She has to take every call, read every message.

  She opens the text.

  If you are not alone, excuse yourself. You are about to receive a message that will elicit a strong emotional response, which you will not wish to have witnessed by anyone who knows you, in particular the police.

  Angelique has got to her feet automatically, feeling her pulse increase, her adrenaline begin to flow. She looks at Dale. ‘I have to make a call, gotta go outside,’ she says. ‘Too noisy,’ she adds, unnecessarily proffering an explanation.

  Dale nods acknowledgement and gestures that he’s off to the gents.

  Angelique hears the phone chime again as she walks through the pub’s outside door on to the Soho pavement. This time there’s a picture attachment.

  This photo of your parents was taken half an hour ago. There was no holiday. Understand this: your parents will die in unimaginable pain – they will be literally tortured to death, which we will record and send to you as proof – unless you deliver to us, alive and untainted by the authorities, our mutual quarry, Mr Simon Darcourt.

  Angelique opens her mouth, but no words issue.

  If the police learn of your predicament, they will take you off the case. You cannot tell anyone. Do not be naive enough to believe there is anybody you can trust to share this. We have sources who do not even know they are sources. You are our agent now: understand this. Accept it. Deliver Darcourt or your parents will die screaming.

  Angelique stands staring at the handset, facing the tiny but devastating image of her mum and dad, mouths gagged, eyes fearful.

  There isn’t even time to reel from this, because through the pub window she can see Dale emerging from the gents and looking for her at their table. She runs to the edge of the pavement, hails a passing Hackney and climbs in, telling the guy to just drive. He’s about to query this until he catches the look on her face, and pulls away. It takes her a hundred yards or so to compose herself sufficiently to tell him the address of the serviced apartments, and she has no sooner done so than she has to tell him to pull over again. She opens the door of the cab and is sick into the gutter.

  The driver mutters something about ‘one too many’ and thanks her for not spewing up in his cab. He sounds miles away, in some other world, the parallel dimension she was living in five minutes ago but to which she can now never return.

  She feels both instantly sober and instantly accelerated into hangover symptoms: she can just about think straight, but every thought makes her head spin and makes her feel she might be sick again. She’s rationalising, triaging the threats.

  Dale: she was on the verge of leaving with him, now he’s the last person she can afford to make suspicious of her behaviour. She can discount her exit tonight, at least, given the circumstances. He’ll think she just bailed: suddenly decided what they were about to get into was a bad idea. There would be no questions probing further into that.

  Whoever did this knows nobody will report her parents missing. They’ve told everyone they’re off round the world for three months. There’s James, though. How often did he speak to Mum and Dad when they were on holiday? She had no idea. She’d have to make something up, tell him they’d called her to say they’d had their phones pinched. She had to protect him from the truth.

  Like the text said, there was no-one she could tell, especially not her fellow cops. She had to conceal her predicament, as her best chance of keeping her parents alive was to stay on the case. And if she could somehow manage that, all she then had to do was unilaterally apprehend a target the police’s massed efforts had thus far been unable to even locate, before betraying all of her colleagues and delivering her prize into the hands of some anonymous but highly organised and evidently well-informed criminal conspiracy.

  Impossible.

  That’s the word that keeps sounding in her mind as the taxi weaves its way through the Soho streets.

  Impossible.

  She feels the well of coming tears, knows she has to stem it. Has to fend off approaching despair, a collapse she might never pick herself up from.

  She takes refuge in cold logic. Whoever has her parents isn’t buying a fucking raffle ticket here: they wouldn’t go to this bother if they didn’t think she could pull it off. Unless, of course, her inevitable failure is part of some greater strategy, but she can’t afford to consider that. It was daunting enough just attempting to contemplate what kind of elaborate human-beingsized version of the cup-and-balls trick she’d have to effect in order to deliver Darcourt and ensure that whoever was behind this didn’t simply kill her and her parents once they had him. And this, of course, would only be after she had accomplished the magical feat of making Darcourt, if he was ever found, vanish from under the noses of everyone else who was looking for him.

  This wasn’t a job for a cop, it was a job for a conjuror.

  West End neon flashes past outside the windows. She recalls another late-night cab journey in a different city, and remembers the man who was secretly waiting for her at the end of it.

  ‘Alakazammy,’ she whispers to herself.

  Bar act (ii)

  Albert’s got a seat near the front: got in early and was rewarded with a little table off to the right of the stage. Let the waitress sort him out with a serviceable Martini and got himself comfy to enjoy the show. Eyes on the prize, that’s the first thing to remember. The second, and only microscopically less crucial, is to make sure the prize doesn’t have eyes on you. It’s a right weird feeling, when you’re surveilling somebody who doesn’t have an earthly that he’s being watched: it’s like you’re looking at them through a two-way mirror, they’re right in front of you and yet utterly oblivious. But you need to keep your nerve, which is harder than some folks might think, because some little cautious part of you just can’t fucking believe they ain’t tumbled you, can’t believe they don’t know you’re there and aren’t seeing you as clearly as you’re seeing them. That’s when you can get jumpy and give yourself away, and it don’t take much. It’s amazing how the slightest extra effort to be inconspicuous can be the single most conspicuous act. Nah. You gotta believe in yourself, have faith in the craftsmanship with which you constructed that imaginary mirror.

  Back in Palma, he had been watching that Innez bastard for days without the cunt having any inkling he was there. Sat in his bar, observed him like a specimen under a bloody slide. First he knew about it was when he walloped him with Mr Spank. Fat lot of fucking good it had done Albert in the end, but you live and learn, don’t you? And the better you learn, the better you live. Had to be more careful this time, had to apply a bit of the old subtlety and finesse, now that the quarry knew what he looked like. Hence the mufti: the fake Barnet, the Gregories, the face-fuzz and the middle-aged clobber. His own mother wouldn’t recognise him. Well, actually, truth be told, she might detect a certain unnerving familiarity, given that when he’d clocked himself in the mirror before leaving the cabin, the image in the frame was disquietingly reminiscent of his late uncle Vic, as captured forever in his pulling attire in a photo that had pride of place on his dear departed Nan’s mantelpiece. Point was, though, Innez, who’d only glimpsed him for a matter of minutes, wouldn’t know him from Adam, hence he could sit sipping his Martini less than ten feet from the stage with the same invisibility and thorough impunity he had enjoyed watching the lad’s smaller-scale magic act back in that boozer in Palma.

  Oh yeah, Innez has gone up in the world, rapid ascent too. A few weeks back, he’s turning bar-top
card tricks in between pouring beers and washing bottles. Now he’s got himself a proper stage and, by the looks of it, pretty bloody close to a full house.

  The houselights go down and the stage is lit with a single spot, picking out a four-legged table close to the front. A voice over the speakers asks the audience to welcome ‘Maximilian’ and Innez walks on. Got a round of applause already and the geezer hasn’t done nothing yet. He’s scrubbed up, got himself a jacket and a top hat and he’s carrying a suitcase. Looks like some Edwardian doctor paying a house call, apart from the peroxide job visible just under the headgear. He sticks the case on top of the table and flips it open, pulling out an oversize black die, also unsettlingly reminiscent of Albert’s uncle Vic in that he used to have two such matching items dangling from the inside rear window of his much-cherished conveyance, the superseded but never truly replaced Ford Cortina.

  He holds the die up in one hand for a minute and parks the case out of the way on the floor in front of the table. It’s just occurred to Albert that a stage magician in this classic get-up is usually accompanied by a nice piece of crumpet dressed in something that would threaten imminent arrest or possibly just hypothermia if worn outdoors, when Innez, or Maximilian, announces that his assistant has only taken the hump and hidden herself inside the die. He gives it a little shake and holds it up to his ear, doesn’t hear nothing but says he’d best not shake it again in case he really burns his bridges. Albert can’t see where this is going. Gotta be a distraction for something else. He’s going to throw it across the stage and she’ll appear from the wings suddenly to catch it, something like that. Fuck knows.

  But then the thing starts to grow, like some speeded-up time-lapse film of a plant. Soon enough it’s so big he needs both hands to hold it, and it’s still bloody growing. He’s struggling under the weight, so he rests it on the table, where it continues to expand, all of this accompanied by weird, hypnotic music on the speakers. The music stops and the die seems to have ceased its metamorphosis too, though it gives a little shiver when Innez goes to touch it, which makes everybody laugh. He backs off, then makes to approach it once again, more cautiously this time. His hands are just about to touch either side when Albert, like half the bleeding room, jumps in his seat as the aforementioned crumpet bursts out the top of the thing where it sits on the table. Albert is a little disappointed to observe that she’s in a suit very similar to Innez’s (except for it being covered in white spots, like the die), as opposed to some item of bathing attire you could comfortably fit inside a cigar tube and still have room for the cigar, but that aside, like everyone else in the lounge, he’s impressed.

  Innez is a clever bastard and no mistake. Found that out the hard way. But he’s not as smart as he thinks he is; or rather, he makes the common assumption on the part of clever bastards that everyone else is fucking stupid. A lot of the time he’s probably on the money with that, let’s be honest, but not when it’s Albert Samuel Fleet. Just because he pulled a right nifty move on him once before didn’t mean all future engagements were a foregone conclusion. You live and learn. Case in point being the very reason Albert is here on this tub. Oh yeah. Innez knew a thing or two about misdirection, give him that, but short-term gambits could have a nasty habit of backfiring if you used them against those who were used to playing the long game. Innez had sold him a nice little dummy the way he’d emptied his cash, made him think he’d no interest in the other contents of Albert’s wallet. It was only when the statement came in that he discovered he was actually lighter to the tune of just north of a grand, paid out as a one-off to some travel firm in Palma. Slippy bastard hadn’t sunk the boot in hooligan-style, though: that one single item was all he’d charged. Probably wanted clean away first and foremost, rather than risk triggering an authorisation request that would put Albert back on his tail sharpish. And he would have gotten away clean if he’d just hopped on a plane, but the charge to Albert’s credit card was for a berth on board a cruise-liner.

  Could have been another bit of misdirection, of course: send Albert chasing a bloody boat to the Canaries while he has it away on his toes somewhere else entirely. Geezer knew that he’d seen the air ticket to Paris in his bedroom, didn’t he? Could have been another cheeky little play that Albert would have needed to weigh up before making his next, potentially expensive move. Yeah, could have, if it weren’t for the fact that he only discovered this lead after ten days of fruitless pissing about in naffing Paris.

  Nah, something about this cruise thing just smelled right. The guy wanted to lie low, drop right off the map for a while now he knew someone was on to him. According to the travel outfit, that boat sailed the very morning he’d escaped from Albert’s handcuffs. Innez had mumbled something about it being tricky getting him off an island. How much harder did Innez perhaps reckon it would be to get him off his own little moving island?

  Not as tricky as you might think, my son, especially with the able assistance of Mr Spank’s soft-footed little cousin, Dr Rohypnol. Don’t you worry about that. Maximilian’s would be a limited engagement, shame to say, but as befits the man of mystery, he would finish with a vanishing act and leave them wanting more. Bit of a comedown for a VIP to be disembarking via the luggage ramp rather than the gangway, but he wouldn’t be the first star to require an incognito departure route.

  He’s on to card tricks now. Same ones he was doing in the bar in Palma, mostly, but they’re going down just as well. Geezer’s got the front for it, and that’s half the battle. The thought of the boozer in Palma reminds Albert his glass is empty, and he don’t half fancy a refill. There’s waitresses working the lounge but he can’t get anyone’s attention: seems his choice of a table so near the stage has its downside, as they don’t want to be moving back and forth right in front of the show. Bollocks. He can’t get up and go to the bar; same as the waitresses, he doesn’t want to draw attention to himself, though for a very different reason.

  Then it turns out Maximilian only reads naffing minds as well, don’t he?

  He walks across to the left-hand side of the stage, where there’s an area curtained off, and pulls a cord. The curtain swishes clear to reveal a narrow cocktail bar, padded with studded leather and bearing a row of stemmed glasses along the top, as well as a translucent cylinder. It’s a lot like the ones every nouveau-riche punter used to have in their living room, intending to create the impression of upper-class sophistication but paradoxically serving instead to reinforce the fact that they was one generation out of a room-and-kitchen in the East End. Needless to say, Uncle Vic had one. If the cylinder turns out to be a lava lamp, then that would just put the tin lid on it and he’d be right back at Vic’s place in Ilford. Albert remembers he raided Vic’s bar one curious Sunday afternoon at the age of nine and got his first taste of gin, with the result that his next taste of the stuff was close to two decades later. Quite likes it these days, mind, and would sincerely like another Martini right now. Fat chance of that though, he reckons, and he ain’t the only one sitting there thirsty.

  Maximilian reaches into the bar and pulls out a bottle of vino, which he then lobs over his head, letting it spin a couple of full rotations before catching it behind his back in his other hand. He twists off the screwtop, saying, ‘Thank God for the Australians – kinda slowed the pace of the trick when I had to uncork it,’ and grabs a glass from the top of the bar, holding it by the stem. He pours out a glass of vin rouge and has a sniff before sampling a brief taste, then wrinkles his hooter like he ain’t impressed.

  ‘It’s chilled,’ he says. ‘Really ought to be room temperature.’

  He holds the glass in front, about eye-level, then waves his other hand, wiggling his fingers like he’s casting a spell. The wine bursts into flames: seriously, real fire, not just a little blue tickle like on top of a Sambuca.

  ‘Sorry, overdid that a little,’ he says. He goes back to the bar and places the bottle back down out of sight, lifting a chrome cocktail shaker in its place and pouring the still f
laming wine into it. He holds it up in one hand and gives it a bit of a swirl. Meanwhile the assistant has entered from the other side with this huge glass tankard, supporting it in both hands, as it looks like it must hold two pints at least.

  ‘Maybe something cooler, huh? How about a Margarita,’ he suggests, and pours the contents of the shaker into the tankard. Instead of red wine, it’s a clear green liquid that pours from the shaker. And pours, and pours, until the tankard is close to full, despite the shaker being less than half the size of the thing. He places the shaker back behind the bar and takes the tankard from the assistant.

  ‘Kind of overdid it again. Who’s thirsty?’ he asks, to plenty of giggles and not a few raised hands in the audience. ‘No, wait a second, it’s pretty dark down there. Better make sure I can see what I’m doing.’ With this, he flips a switch and the translucent cylinder reveals itself to be a white lamp. ‘That’s better. Wouldn’t want to spill this,’ he says, picking up the shaker again and carefully pouring the contents of the tankard into it. Once again, it appears he bought it from whoever built the TARDIS.

  ‘This is a phenomenon which you’ll encounter in any bar,’ Innez tells his audience as the Margarita continues to implausibly flow into the shaker. ‘Usually applying to the optics, so that what looks like a lot of booze as it’s pouring out, somehow becomes that tiny measure at the bottom of your shot glass.’ Everyone laughs, Albert especially. It’s bloody true of every boozer he’s drunk in.