by Andy McNab
Someone behind me started boring his girlfriend shitless about the clash of cruelty and high comedy in Twelfth Night. Me and Yorkie both rolled our eyeballs, but I didn’t turn and tell the dickhead that clashes like that were an everyday thing in the battle space, because Mr Leatherman chose that moment to poke his head through the door.
6
Yorkie was also drinking the 1730. I asked him if he fancied the other half, keeping Leatherman at the periphery of my vision. I wanted to take a good look at him, but if I was under surveillance, I didn’t want him to know I was aware.
As the barman pulled the pint, the guy in the doorway couldn’t seem to make up his mind whether to join the party or look for somewhere quiet for dinner. He eventually headed back outside, having given me long enough to clock that he hadn’t just been to the same tailor as my Moldovan pursuers, he’d been to the same gym and barber as well, and his skin was as grey as a sunny day in Transnistria.
Yorkie and I carried on waffling about soldier shit as the guy behind me moved on to the Problem Plays, whatever the fuck they were. I glanced around the room and caught sight of the girlfriend’s expression in the process. That one look told me it was the Shakespeare expert who had the problem: he definitely wasn’t on a result.
I gave it another half-hour before downing the last of my beer, shook Yorkie warmly by the hand and went through to the Southwark Bridge exit. A small crowd had gathered by the Clink Street arch to take photographs of an old boy in a top hat playing ‘Ain’t We Got Fun?’ on a giant flaming tuba. Not many of his admirers seemed to be throwing coins into his collection box.
I joined them for a minute or two, then moved on in the same direction. The posters outside the Clink itself proudly claimed that it was ‘the prison that gave its name to all others!’ It was past closing time, so I was too late to join in ‘the rodent hunt for kids’. Not that I needed to: I had one all of my own.
I stayed at Costa long enough to get a brew down my neck and catch up on the newspaper reports of David Cameron’s recent meeting with President Karzai at Chequers, ‘where they signed an enduring strategic partnership between the UK and Afghanistan’, which must have given both of them a nice warm glow.
Leatherman seemed to have melted away. But then again, he didn’t need to walk past the big plate-glass windows I was stationed beside. He knew which pipe his rat had gone down. Maybe he was just waiting to zap me at the other end of it.
You didn’t have to try too hard to switch into holidaymaker mode along here – this part of Bankside always did it for me. I eased myself to the front of the throng oohing and aahing at the Golden Hinde. No one could pass it without being gobsmacked by how Francis Drake and his crew had sailed around the world, nicking doubloons from Spaniards, in a hunk of timber not much bigger than a stretch limo. And that gave me plenty of opportunity to check for the presence of men in leather jackets from three different approaches.
I took a right immediately after a line of Boris Bikes and a sign that invited me to become part of the London Bridge Experience – London’s Scariest Attraction! There was no sign of a shadow as I walked through the station towards Guy’s Hospital and the Shard, using the construction-site stuff as cover. By the time I emerged on the other side of the medical students’ hall of residence, I had two.
My mate from the wobbly bridge was behind me again, and his cousin was about fifty to my right and closing. He could have been heading for the Leather Exchange on Weston Street – this part of town was Tannery Central – but I doubted it. He was working so hard to ignore me that my internal alarm bells started ringing big-time.
I heard the heli rotors again as I ducked into Southall Place, and glanced up at the blinking light five hundred feet above me. I lengthened my stride, then jinked half-right onto the edge of an estate that was still in the queue for the Tabard Gardens facelift and hadn’t yet tuned into the concept of the motion sensor.
There were no straight lines here, and no security lights to let the Leathermen monitor my progress from the ground. I sprinted down a stretch of pitted tarmac between a row of garages and balconies hung with washing. Satellite dishes sprouted from the brickwork like fungi and TV sets glowed and flickered behind the net curtains.
This was my turf. I’d take them through a series of bottlenecks and see how they liked it. Then, if I couldn’t split them up and take them one by one, I’d disappear.
7
A monster wheelie bin had spewed garbage across the mouth of the alleyway that zigzagged left and right at the end of the row of garages. I took the corner at speed and nearly lost it as my Timberlands hit something slimy that I hoped wasn’t dog shit. I had enough on my plate without the stench of that stuff following me around for the rest of the night.
I bounced off a wall and a stretch of wriggly tin hoarding before I levelled out again, and jarred my right shoulder. It sent my central nervous system an immediate message of complaint and I told it to go fuck itself. These boys weren’t going to wait for me to call for a masseur and a tube of ibuprofen gel. I gave it a quick rub and carried on. I couldn’t hear footsteps behind me, but the wriggly tin had clanged like a gong and I needed to make distance.
I turned right and looped through Empire Square, staying within the shadow of the trees, past the Marlin Apartments, an upmarket development for business and leisure guests, who’d scratch their heads if you mentioned the words ‘Premier’ and ‘Inn’ in the same sentence.
The good news was that if it had been dog shit on the sole of my boot, it wasn’t there any more. The bad news was that the Leathermen were still together, and sticking to me like a cheap suit. The heli had lifted away, but as I left the west side of the development they appeared three hundred behind me, shoulder to shoulder, the far side of the trees.
I legged it across Tabard Street and worked my way around the back of Tabard Gardens, slaloming through a bunch of pub-goers as I went. When I reached the block where me and my mate Gaz had spent what the psychopath-detector shrink would call our formative years, I reckoned I had about a five-hundred-metre lead. I hoped it would be enough.
I hung a left past the refuse bunker by the Audi convertible’s parking space and up the main stairwell, triggering a chain of motion sensors as I went. Too bad. Maybe they’d be on a short time lapse to help save the planet. No such luck. The lights were still blazing away as I belted towards the neat plywood boarding that encased Gaz’s flat while the developers worked their magic, but by then I’d realized they could operate in my favour. If I was stranded on the walkway when the Leathermen turned the corner, I was in the shit. If I’d managed to get up the fire escape, I’d be back in deep shadow.
There was going to be a big difference between a skinny eight-year-old scrambling that final length of cast-iron pipework on a summer afternoon and his older, chunkier self trying to pull the same stunt on a cold winter night, but I didn’t have a choice.
Somewhere nearby I heard a yell, followed by what sounded like a plate smashing. At first I thought it might be some drama on the TV but then a door burst open on the walkway immediately below me and a male voice said the dinner was shit anyway and he was going down the Oak. A female one told him not to bother coming back any time soon.
I couldn’t have asked for a better diversion. I moved Sam’s Browning from my waistband into the right pocket of my bomber jacket, zipped it tight, swung my leg over the rail and started to climb.
8
The metal rungs of the ladder chilled my fingers to the bone. They were also slippery as fuck. When I reached the top one the security lights were still going strong and the Leathermen were either keeping to the shadows beyond them, or hadn’t been putting in enough hours on the treadmill.
Keeping a tight hold on the fire escape I grabbed the far side of the waste stack with my right hand and wedged my right boot on the bracket that strapped it to the wall. I reminded myself that Jesus Christ was here yesterday, today and for ever, and brought my left hand and boot across to j
oin them.
The guttering was cast-iron too, and mounted on the rafter tail fascia eighteen inches above my head. Me and Gaz hadn’t thought twice about swinging from it when we were kids, but the waste stack was the only route I could take now. The thing had put up with sixty-odd years of shit and was still there to tell the tale.
I slid all my fingers behind the pipe and prepared to shimmy up it, a bit like Ken Marabula and his Fijian mates would have climbed a coconut palm when they were kids. The trick was to go hand over hand and place even pressure on the mortared recess above each course of bricks with every upward toehold. If I just scrabbled around and hoped for the best, I’d end up wrenching the whole thing off its anchors.
The pipe left the wall at a 45-degree angle then straightened again once it had cleared the eaves. My shoulder ached and my calf muscles started to burn as I hauled myself past the overhang. I pushed the sole of my right Timberland against the final strap and felt the top of the stink pipe bend even further outwards. The bracket shifted and one of its screws popped out of its fixing.
Flying blind, my left foot managed to find enough purchase on the junction for me to be able to launch first my torso and then my right knee over the edge of the roof. I lay there for a moment, face down, going nowhere, with my left leg and some of my arse hanging into space.
The pantiles were textured, so their surface friction stopped me sliding straight off them, and because they were constructed from interlocking ridges and valleys, I was able to grip them firmly enough to pull my whole body out of sight of the parking area.
When I’d put some space between my feet and the gutter, I slowed my breathing, opened my mouth and listened. A couple of dogs started a barking competition somewhere near the Nature Area. All they needed was for a couple of urban foxes to join the party. Behind me, a police siren whooped its way along the Old Kent Road. In the silence that followed, the cold and damp started to eat through my jeans and bomber jacket and into my flesh.
I couldn’t resist reaching out and testing whether our ridge cap was still loose. It was. But I’d probably never know whether our cache had been disturbed because I couldn’t risk taking a look. I didn’t want to present a silhouette above the crest.
I flattened myself against the pantiles and hoped that the heli I’d spotted earlier hadn’t been in the business of spotting me. A warm body on a cold roof would have glowed big-time on its infrared scanner screen.
The pub crowd started to spill out onto distant pavements. One bunch of mates laughed much more loudly than you’d expect on a Monday night. Car doors slammed and engines fired up. A girl in high heels click-clacked along Tabard Street, shrieking into her mobile. By the time she was out of earshot, her bestie knew more than anyone needed to know about her day, and so did I.
Everything went quiet again. TV sets were switched off and lights dimmed below me. My shoulder throbbed and I felt a twinge of cramp in my right foot. I wasn’t going to sit up and take my Timberland off, so all I could do was flex my toes as much as I could and try to ignore it.
I was about to ease myself across the ridge and down towards the scaffolding tower on the garden elevation when I heard footsteps by the stairwell. Whoever was down there was keeping to the far side of the refuse bunker, because the motion sensors weren’t getting excited. Maybe the lad who hadn’t liked his dinner was about to settle down for a night among the bin bags.
Then the security LEDs flashed on and someone not too light on his feet did his best to tiptoe along the walkway towards Gaz’s boarded-up front door.
9
I told myself that there were any number of reasons why you might want to hang around outside an uninhabited third-floor flat after midnight with the temperature uncomfortably close to freezing.
But I knew that wasn’t true.
He was so close I could hear him breathing.
I visualized Leatherman Two on stag behind the bins while Leatherman One tried to look like he belonged on the walkway ten feet beneath me. Maybe he was wearing the same expression he’d used when he was admiring the view from the wobbly bridge. Maybe he was checking out the top of the waste stack and thinking, Fuck that for a game of soldiers. It’s one screw head away from falling off the wall …
He gave himself five, coughed up a mouthful of phlegm and gobbed it over the railing. Then he swung himself out onto the fire escape and began to climb towards me.
Beyond filling my lungs with oxygen, I didn’t move a muscle. There was still a chance he’d lose his bottle when he saw the stink-pipe bracket close up. Either way, he’d keep his closely cropped head below the parapet for as long as he possibly could in case I was waiting to kick it off his shoulders.
Five more minutes ticked by and the lights cut out.
Ten minutes after that he still hadn’t shifted.
That meant he was coming on up. He just needed to wipe the glare of the LEDs from his retinas and build his night vision first.
I patted the Browning through the outer skin of my bomber jacket, though I knew I could never use it. If I was right in thinking they were mates of Sniper One, a round between the eyes was probably what these lads deserved, but it would take a lot of explaining. Which was going to leave me with a bit of a challenge if the first thing to appear above the guttering was the suppressor of a CZ-99 short.
I heard movement, and the waste stack gave a wobble. I braced myself, still not wanting to raise my head and present a bigger target. The top of the stink pipe leaned further away from the parapet, first by a few inches, then by a foot or more. As Leatherman’s fist appeared, followed swiftly by his face, the second screw popped out of its fixing.
Without an anchor, the segment of the stack that jutted out beneath the overhang headed further south. Whatever his previous plans had been, he was fast running out of choices. He clung to the pipe with his right hand and groped for the guttering with his left.
He might have ended up taking a nosedive into the tarmac without any help from me, but I wasn’t going to leave that to chance. I grabbed the loose ridge cap with both hands, twisted round onto my arse, flexed my knees, arched my back and launched it at him like a missile.
When four kilos of prime Old English terracotta catches you on the nut, it can really spoil your day. Leatherman’s grip didn’t slacken immediately, but I could see his motor functions were well scrambled. He shook his head and flexed his closely knit and increasingly bloody eyebrows, then raised the fingers of his left hand to the wound, gave a low, caveman growl and plummeted into the darkness.
10
I didn’t stick around long enough to see where Leatherman One landed, but it didn’t sound good. I’d never forget the splat a ketchup-filled condom made when it hit the pavement, and this lad’s skull did much the same.
As his mate ran over to say his goodbyes I hotfooted it to the scaffolding and half slid, half clambered down to Tabard Street, vaulted the park railing and ran for the cover of the landscaped mound and the trees beyond. Leatherman Two wasn’t going to wait for the paramedics to arrive, and I didn’t fancy giving him the opportunity to take up where his cousin had left off.
I took the turning to Eastwell House, the block I’d lived in when I wasn’t mortaring the square with Gaz. I thought about lying up behind the dosser’s hoarding for a while, but when the sirens sparked up behind me, I decided to go straight back to the Premier Inn, pick up my gear and get out of there.
The first part of that plan went as smooth as silk: I slid my access-card into the slot by the back entrance and strapped my daysack onto my back. The second didn’t. I crossed Tower Bridge Road and ducked back into Tanner Street. As I followed it round in the direction of Butler’s Wharf I was nearly sideswiped by a black Passat, one up, travelling at speed.
I veered right past the coffee company at the entrance to Rope Walk and the wagon disappeared into the tunnel beneath the railway line. I knew it wouldn’t take the driver much time to reverse up or complete the Tower Bridge Road circuit. The gate
s into Rope Walk were barred and locked, so I sprinted down Maltby Street and took the next left underneath the arches. If I couldn’t make it straight back to the Skoda without a tail I’d aim for the maze of alleyways between here and the river.
The sirens were still going strong on the other side of the tracks. I couldn’t help wondering what the boys in blue would make of Leatherman’s strange decision to climb a waste stack after dark, and how long it would take the forensic crew to connect the traumatic injury he’d sustained from the ridge cap with the fall that killed him. I also wondered whether they’d find a rose-coloured tattoo beneath his collar.
I crossed the road that ran along the north side of the railway and nipped into the Arnold Estate. You’d have to be a genius to navigate through this warren in a wagon, and if you stopped for more than five minutes, day or night, the local lads would have it on a low-loader, heading south, with a For Sale sign on the windscreen. Most of the time they lifted bikes, laptops and smartphones, which they fenced in Brick Lane – if they could be bothered to go over the river. It was the kind of place I needed right now.
I’d zigzagged through a couple of archways and around a play area and got most of the way to the rat run through to Jamaica Road before I heard footsteps in pursuit. I didn’t bother looking over my shoulder. It wasn’t going to be good news.
I switched direction towards a group of teenagers with hoodies and jeans hanging off their arses. They were clustered under a street lamp, next to a beat-up metallic orange Subaru Impreza with the world’s biggest rear spoiler and red flames stencilled above the wheel arches. Their cigarette tips glowed extra brightly as I approached.
