A Snowball in Hell

by Christopher Brookmyre

  ‘Good luck.’

  From the second she set foot on board, Angelique has felt a sense of dread about this boat so repellent that she could picture Charon refusing to charter it, even in a pinch. It’s dank, gloomy, creaking and cold, but it’s the smell that really chills her. The deeper he leads her into its passageways, the more choking it gets, an unmistakable stench of death and decay. It becomes so thick and enveloping that she fears she’s going to puke. Then, when they reach the source, she does.

  He takes her past an open door to a metal-walled room, the light left on inside to illuminate eight corpses in various states of putrefaction, four of them headless. She figures three of the others for Darren McDade, Nick Foster and Wilson Gartside. No idea about the fourth, but he looks fresher and in better nick than his cellmates, particularly the ex-members of Four Play.

  This hulk is a labyrinth, criss-crossed with walkways and corridors. She knows, then, that he took her this way deliberately, to goad and disgust her. She can’t afford to get squeamish, though. He turns around and smirks as she wipes her mouth. Same old Simon: has to sing when he’s winning. Or when he thinks he is.

  She hears a crackle in her ear: Shaw, now in transmission range.

  ‘Alpha X-Ray, we’re in. Play ball. Make the deal.’

  She had made a show of taking off her earpiece in the police car as they drove away from the Tivoli, but had a second one on the other side, disguised to blend in with her lobe. She’s got a tracking device strapped to her chest, a wire taped to her midriff, and one other surprise lashed to her thigh.

  They pass through into a spacious hold where she sees furniture she recognises from McDade’s ‘hotel room’, the giant amplifier Foster was electrocuted on, McDade’s gallows and the remains of the synths from Four Play’s final video.

  ‘Long as we’re taking the tour, I want to see the prisoners,’ she tells him. ‘My parents first. And they better be alive, Stubs, because you don’t need testicles to work a laptop.’

  ‘I would warn you against doing anything rash, de Xavia, because I promise, I have taken every precaution to ensure that what harms me, harms the hostages.’

  ‘Nevertheless, I want proof they’re alive or I’ve no reason not to shoot you where you stand.’

  ‘Patience, girlfriend. It’s all part of the package, as agreed.’

  They pass out of the hold into another passageway, stopping briefly at a dense iron door with a wheel-operated lock, which Darcourt turns and swings open. Inside she can see the common area with the big TV on one wall, and the sealed doors of the four holding cells around the room.

  ‘Celebrity Rescue,’ he states tiredly.

  Further down the passage, he opens a second wheel-lock, giving on to a small hallway housing several more doors.

  ‘Your parents and the saintly Anika are in these ones,’ he says.

  ‘I want to see them.’

  ‘Then keep following the tour.’

  Darcourt leads her down a narrow flight of stairs to a lower deck. Then they enter the heart of Darcourt’s squalid operation. It is a room full of PCs, monitors, TVs, speakers, mikes, routers, cables and assorted baffling-looking gadgetry that would probably have Meilis spaffing his load. Darcourt hits some switches on a console and several screens flash into life, showing the interiors of each cell. She scans them all, keeping half an eye on Darcourt, but he doesn’t seem to be planning any surprise attacks. Doesn’t fancy the odds; not right this second, anyway.

  ‘Then keep following the tour.’

  ‘How do I know this is live?’ she asks.

  ‘You can talk to them.’

  Darcourt hits some more switches and indicates a microphone.

  She swallows, has to clear her throat just to manage these few words.

  ‘Mum? Dad? It’s Angelique.’

  On the screen, they both rise from their trance-like despond, looking confusedly at each other like they need verification of what they are hearing, barely daring to believe it.

  She’s about to tell them to hang in, she’ll have them out soon, when Darcourt flicks another switch to kill the feed.

  ‘The clock is ticking,’ he reminds her. ‘Twelve minutes until . . .’ he makes a hissing sound to indicate the gas. ‘Plenty of time later for catching up, if our business is successfully concluded.’

  ‘So how do we work this exchange? You were conspicuously hazy about the final details.’

  ‘It will be my enormous pleasure to demonstrate,’ he replies, and she believes him. He pushes a button on the console, causing a cylindrical panel on the wall opposite to rotate inwards, opening up a tube-shaped compartment. It’s big enough for one person to fit inside, just, and its interior is blank but for three devices vertically integrated into one side. These are, in ascending order, a keypad, an LCD screen and a second glass panel, hooded like a microscope.

  ‘This is your guarantee,’ she observes.

  ‘Well, your own conduct tonight has proven I couldn’t possibly trust the police. You even double-cross each other.’

  ‘Time’s wasting, Stubby. I want my hostages. What is this, a teleport?’

  ‘A portal, certainly. The portal to your hostages’ freedom, and to mine, mutually guaranteed. The keypad controls the locks on the cells, but it needs the scanner to authorise it, and the scanner requires the door to be locked before it will power up. In short, I can’t release the hostages until I’m locked in there, clear of you and your gun. And I won’t lie to you, once that door is locked, I won’t be coming back out of it. There’s an escape hatch in the floor, and I will be leaving through that.’

  ‘Albeit handcuffed.’

  ‘Thanks for the concern, darling, but I’ve made provision. I’ve been planning this for...a long time. I’m pretty sure I haven’t overlooked anything.’

  ‘A retinal scanner, did you say?’

  ‘That’s right. No codes and no passwords. Nothing that can be hacked, faked or coerced.’

  ‘And what’s my guarantee that once you’re inside that chamber, you’ll actually release the hostages?’

  ‘It’s in my interest to keep you busy. The timers and the gas canisters are buried in cement. I did that as soon as I set them. Even if you find them, they can’t be stopped. This keypad unlocks the doors, but only for two minutes, and the cells need to be opened from the outside. This was my insurance. I mean, don’t flatter yourself, dear. You did well, but I couldn’t stake my whole plan on your success. Had to make sure the arrangement worked even if I was surrounded by cops, though I wouldn’t have told them about the escape part: they’d have thought they were trading their two minutes with the locks open for my two minutes with a laptop.’

  She hears a burst of static, a prelude to Shaw’s voice in her ear. He will be getting all this via her wire, so presumably he’s about to confirm they’re in position to make Darcourt’s getaway a little trickier than he’s anticipating.

  Except that, on this case, you can’t presume anything good.

  ‘Alpha X-Ray, listen carefully,’ Shaw says, his steady measured tone itself betraying the urgency and panic his voice is trying to conceal. ‘We’ve been below decks and discovered this whole fucking rig is wired to blow. Repeat: this boat is one massive bomb. There’s enough explosive down here to put this hulk into orbit. That’s how he’s planning to cover his getaway. You can’t let him get into that chamber or he’ll kill us all.’

  Angelique feels her eyes popping, hopes Darcourt assumes his own revelations have been remarkable enough to provoke it.

  ‘Any more questions,’ he asks. ‘Or do you actually want these hostages? Six minutes, by the way.’

  ‘Just one,’ she replies. ‘Why are you telling me?’

  He sneers, clearly looking at her with all the anger and disgust he’s been storing up since Dubh Ardrain. She knows that the short answer is because she’s about to die anyway, and he’d like to see her off with one last gloat. However, she indulges him to spunk out the long version while she read
ies herself for what she’ll have to do.

  ‘Because, de Xavia, even now, having betrayed your colleagues and murdered a fellow officer purely for your purposes, you still think you’re a fucking hero, and I want to disabuse you of your delusion that you’re on some kind of superior moral footing.’

  ‘Superior footing? Darcourt, you’re so far down the moral ladder that if you looked up with a telescope, you still wouldn’t be able to see the soles of a paedophile’s feet.’

  ‘Well, let’s just see where you stand on that ladder, shall we? Five minutes to go, time for a new deal. Truth is, I lied about the cancer. I’m not dying, nor planning to any time soon. So here’s a moral conundrum for you, Angelique: you can kill me right now, at the cost of letting your parents and the other hostages die. Or you can save them, knowing it comes at the cost of me living to kill another day. Clock’s ticking. It’s your choice.’

  Angelique raises the Walther.

  Darcourt stares back at her, looking like this is just a bore.

  She lowers the gun.

  ‘No choice at all, was it?’ he says. ‘But don’t beat yourself up too much regards the living-to-kill-again thing. I may just retire, what with that generous government pension to fall back on.’

  ‘History won’t be kind, Simon,’ she warns, slipping her free hand through the split in her dress.

  Darcourt begins walking towards his portal.

  ‘There are names written in her immortal scroll at which Fame

  blushes,’ he tells her airily. ‘William Hazlitt wrote that.’ Angelique watches him turn to enter the chamber, then shoots him in the base of the spine. He flails against the wall and collapses to the floor, face down, bleeding, paralysed.

  She walks across to where he lies, slipping a knife from her thigh. She crouches down, takes hold of his hair and lifts up his head.

  ‘Out, vile jelly,’ she retorts. ‘William Shakespeare wrote that.’

  The inescapable

  Zal considers it might be abusing Shaw’s goodwill to steal his ride, but Hewitt did leave the keys in the ignition, and with there being cop cars, roadblocks and even helicopters everywhere, he figures it’s the least conspicuous way to get out of there. He drives back out through the gap in the fence and on to the main road, then turns left into the adjacent dockyard a hundred and fifty yards before the western roadblock. He’s guessing it won’t look suspicious: just another car covering a part of the perimeter they may have overlooked. The gate is padlocked, which is perhaps why the police didn’t venture in there already just for recon. Takes him about ten seconds, then he’s able to drive on through.

  The dockyard is about as derelict as Darcourt’s place next door. There’s a crane by the waterside, the metalwork so rusteaten that it looks like one attempt to swivel it on its turntable would cause it to disintegrate in a big flaky brown cloud. For company it has three freight containers in only marginally better shape.

  He ditches the car where it won’t be visible from either the road or the dry dock next door, and scrambles his way to the summit of a shored-up embankment topped by the mesh fence separating the two properties. He crouches down and gets comfortable, ready to wait it out. The rain isn’t letting up any and he’ll be soaked pretty soon, but he ain’t leaving until he’s seen her come out of there safe and sound.

  Zal has an elevated perspective upon the container ship and the dry dock, but the darkness and the rain mean there isn’t much to see right now. Then he makes out some movement: a single cop down on the apron of weed-strewn broken concrete, who leans into one of the cars and switches on its headlights. In a matter of seconds, the cop has repeated the operation on all the vehicles arced around the ship, bathing the gangways with light. No issue of stealth any more, so the show must be over. Confirming this, he hears the sound of sirens and sees a quartet of ambulances on the main road, the cars comprising the roadblock reversing out of the way to clear their path. Meanwhile, some more cops are busy busting open Darcourt’s sliding gate to allow direct access for the emergency vehicles.

  Down on the bigger of the gangways, he sees the first figures emerge just as the ambulances reach the arc of police cars. They come out two by two at first, each pair comprising a staggering, enfeebled figure accompanied by a cop. Paramedics jog towards them, wrapping them in blankets and leading them towards the ambulances. He watches one guy emerge alone, shaking off an offer of assistance from a cop but then being urged to let the medics take a look at him. Zal figures him for Dale.

  Still they keep coming, until he’s also accounted for the TV presenter, the soccer player’s wife and the asshole comedian. Then, proceeding more slowly and anxiously than the others, comes the talent-show kid, Anika, who all but collapses when the paramedics reach her. Still no de Xavia, though, nor Shaw; nor Darcourt.

  Then two cops lead a couple of the paramedics forward with a gurney, which they roll up the gangway. Zal feels a brief pang of fear and concern, but only long enough to remind himself who he’s waiting for here. There was only ever going to be one person sure to need carried out of there tonight: the one who fucked with Angelique.

  And yep, there he goes a few minutes later. Hard to tell from this distance, but as they’re holding some kind of pack to one side of his face, it looks like Zal was on the money when he predicted Darcourt would be using a retinal scanner. Yeah, you had your playtime, dude, but I guess your mom never warned you: it’s all fun and games until...

  Darcourt is wheeled into one of the ambulances, which takes off at speed, blue lights and sirens. It’s followed by one of the squad cars, and once it hits the main drag, it picks up two motorcycle outriders who take the vanguard. Adios, motherfucker, you got off easy.

  Zal turns his gaze back to the gangway and now, finally, he sees her. Her mom is in front, being helped along by Shaw, while Angelique herself has her arms around and her head tucked against her daddy. When they reach the bottom of the ramp, Mrs de Xavia ditches Shaw and turns. The three of them coalesce into one tight and tearful hug, from which they don’t look likely to emerge any time soon.

  She’s whole again. They’re all whole again.

  Zal allows himself a sad smile, thinks of what might have been, but he can’t dwell on that. He feels happy for her, and proud of the part he was able to play when she needed him, but he still has work to do, one last gift to give her. The gift of leaving.

  He takes a final look but can’t see her face. She’s still all wrapped up in her parents’ arms, and that kinda says it all. He turns to make his way back down the embankment, but loses his footing on the scree and scrambles the last few yards on his ass. He’s about to pick himself up when a figure emerges from behind one of the freight containers, brandishing a shotgun.

  ‘’Allo again, my son. Long time no see. Real blast from the past, this, innit?’

  ‘Oh, shit.’

  ‘And there was me worryin’ you might not recognise me after all these years.’

  ‘The cockney Bobba Fett. How could I forget?’

  ‘Ah, now, see, I’m not really in that line any more, but I was convinced to pick up Mr Spank one last time by a lady who reckons she has some unfinished business regarding a bank job up in Glasgow.’

  ‘Fuck. Don’t you guys have a statute of limitations in this country?’

  ‘I’m not a lawyer, mate, but I’m bloody sure there’s no loop-hole’s gonna get you off the hook on this one. She’s got very strong feelings regarding this matter. Very motivated, if you catch my drift.’

  ‘Is this you saying I could alter your motivations if I topped her fee?’

  ‘’Fraid not, my son. I’m a man of integrity these days. And you should never break a promise to a lady. Come on. This way.’

  Fleet leads him to a high-sided van, opening the rear doors to reveal a steel loop welded to the ceiling inside. He then produces a set of handcuffs. Zal can guess what’s coming next; unfortunately he doesn’t guess quite all of it.

  ‘Clothes off, matey,’ Fleet o
rders. ‘Down to your drawers. See, I’ve been reading up on your sort. Got your clever little tools squirreled away somewhere, ain’t you? Well, not tonight, my son.’

  Zal peels off the wet clothes. He pleads to be allowed to keep his trousers as a token gesture of defiance, given that his hands will be chained up overhead, but he knows Fleet isn’t for budging. Fleet keeps the gun pointed at him the whole time, carefully observing as Zal puts the cuffs through the loop and fastens them around his wrists.

  Once he is secured, Fleet has a root through Zal’s discarded trousers. He holds up a small wallet full of picks and taps the side of his head, flashing Zal a smug smile.

  Oh yeah, you the man.

  ‘You know, I really should be wearing a seatbelt,’ is Zal’s parting shot as Fleet closes the rear door. ‘Wouldn’t want you to get a ticket.’

  To his credit, Fleet does drive pretty smoothly, and indeed slowly, which ensures that the journey seems to take an interminably long time. Certainly it feels that way when you have to keep your arms above your head the whole time, as Zal does purely for appearances’ sake. He freed himself from the cuffs about half a mile in. The wallet was a decoy for precisely this kind of situation: he’s got another set sewn into his jacket, but his real emergency picks he keeps in his wristwatch. Well, duh. Jesus, what good would something hidden in his trousers be when he’s strung up like this?

  Eventually the van comes to a stop and the engine quits. Sounds like they’re inside: a warehouse or a real big garage. He hears Fleet close his door, then the sound of footsteps walking away. Okay. Zal is deciding whether to try and spring the rear doors or bust his way into the cab and hotwire the engine, when he hears more footsteps, this time coming towards the van.

  Shit. He puts his hands back in position. He’ll need to choose his moment very carefully, wait until Fleet is real close, and when he hits him, it’ll have to be a knockout blow. Can’t afford to take any chances with that shotgun around.

  Zal tenses as he hears the rear handle being pulled. It jams a bit, takes a second creaking tug. The doors swing open and he finds himself looking not at Fleet, but at the woman who hired him to make sure Zal didn’t get away.