All the Empty Places

by Mark Timlin

  I opened the door a crack again and was blinded by lightning that lit up the street and exposed a CCTV camera just opposite. In the afterburn of the flash I saw that its little red light was illuminated. Then the building was rocked again by the second bomb exploding somewhere down in the sewer system and a split second later it felt like a third had gone off, but I realised it was only the sound of thunder following the lightning. But Lucy’s second bomb had done its job, and when I looked up at where the camera was mounted on the wall the red light was out. That was my signal to pull the hood of my sweatshirt over my head and sprint towards the car park where Finbarr had parked his Jag, and for the first time I thought I might just have a chance of getting away clean.

  I got to the car, found the keys under the mat where I’d made him leave them, started it up, put on the full beams, spun it round out of the parking bay and headed for the exit. I tried using the ticket in the machine by the exit to get me a pass out but it was dead, so I reversed the motor as far back as it would go, slammed it into drive and with a scream of rubber sped forward and smashed the gate from its mooring, skidding out into the street and heading back the way I’d come.

  All the way the streets were empty, but I could hear the ghostly screams of emergency vehicles echoing from every building.

  50

  I drove back through the pounding rain and parked, half on, half off the pavement in front of Finbarr’s building. Naughty boy. I could get a ticket for that.

  It had crossed my mind to leave the loot and do a runner, but after all I’d been through I thought that I deserved something for my trouble.

  I opened the boot of the Jag. There was a lot of empty space in there which was handy for all the bags I had to carry, but that wasn’t all. Nestling next to the spare wheel and tool kit was a pump action shotgun, sawn off fore and aft. It was black, short, ugly and frightening.

  Shit, I thought. No wonder Fin had come over all peculiar when we were stopped by that female cop. If she’d asked him to pop the boot lid and seen that sitting there, God alone knows how it would all have worked out.

  I left it, shut the lid and got busy.

  It took four journeys to fill the boot to the brim. The rest would have to go in the back behind the front seats.

  I only had one bad moment, when a crime car came creeping through the storm and slowed down next to me. Christ knows what I must’ve looked like, standing there, soaked to the skin, but as the window rolled slowly down I heard a voice on the car radio bark an order and the motor shot off, blues and twos full on. I can tell you I nearly pissed my pants.

  I thought after that everything would be fine, but that just goes to show how wrong you can be.

  Just as I’d finished loading the last bags and went back to see that I hadn’t forgotten anything, as I was pulling the door shut behind me to leave everything neat and tidy, I saw that an unmarked car had stopped behind the Jag, only sidelights on, the sound of its engine muted by the rain. Two men got out of the front and waited for me at the foot of the short flight of stone steps leading from the front door to the pavement. ‘Good evening, sir. Detective Constable Smart, City Police,’ the one closest to me introduced himself, flashing a badge. ‘Any problems here?’

  ‘No constable,’ I said. ‘No problems at all. We’re moving out.’

  ‘Strange time,’ said the other.

  ‘Last knockings. Bank holiday weekend. Boss called me in. You know how it is.’

  ‘No, sir,’ said Smart. ‘I don’t. Didn’t you hear the explosions?’

  ‘Yes of course. All the lights went out. What happened?’

  ‘We’re not quite sure yet,’ he replied. ‘Bit hard to work in the dark?’

  ‘Not really. It’s just some bags of stuff. I had it all in the foyer.’

  The rain beat down incessantly on our heads and ran down my back so that I shivered. But it wasn’t just the cold water.

  ‘Do you mind if we take a look?’ asked the nameless cop.

  ‘My pleasure,’ I said, walked past them, keyed the lock on the Jaguar’s boot, reached in, hauled out the shotgun and racked a shell into the breech. It would have been a joke on me if the gun had been empty but it wasn’t.

  ‘Turn round, both of you,’ I ordered.

  Their faces literally fell in the lights of their car. ‘What’s all this about?’ said Smart.

  ‘You’ll find out.’ I said. ‘Maybe. If you’re good and live that long. Now turn round. Don’t look at me.’

  They both did as they were told.

  ‘Cuffs,’ I said to their backs.

  ‘What?’ said Smart, half turning.

  ‘Don’t look at me,’ I said. ‘Cuffs and keys. Come on, even you City boys must make an arrest now and then.’

  They did as I ordered, producing a pair of cuffs and a key each.

  ‘Throw the keys away.’

  They did.

  ‘Smart. You handcuff your mate. Inside the railings.’

  There was a tall, black iron fence in front of the building, the railings about six inches apart, joined at the top by another horizontal rail. Looked like it had been there for a hundred years and would last another hundred. The anonymous policeman stuck his hands through the railings and Smart put the bracelets on him so that it would take a metal cutter to free him.

  ‘Put one on your right wrist,’ I told Smart.

  He did.

  ‘Hands through,’ I ordered.

  Once more he obeyed.

  Sticking the barrel of the shotgun under his chin one-handed, I awkwardly slapped the other cuff on his left hand. ‘Don’t look at me or try anything stupid,’ I said as I did it.

  He was as good as gold.

  ‘Cheers chaps,’ I said when they were both shackled. ‘Sorry for the inconvenience.’

  ‘You won’t get away with this,’ said the unnamed cop.

  ‘Whatever it is.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘I think I just did,’ I replied, and as I turned to go the crime car came drifting round the corner again.

  Bloody hell I thought. This is most annoying, don’t these fuckers ever take a tea break? And I walked out into the road and blew the radio aerial off the back of the motor.

  I could see the driver’s pale face through the windscreen, the wipers pushing the water out of the way, and I knew he was going to make a run for it, so I blew out the front tyre nearest to me, racked another shell into the breech and pointed the gun straight at him. ‘No,’ I screamed above the sound of the rain. ‘Don’t.’

  Emotions rushed across his face in the next split second and I prayed I wouldn’t have to shoot.

  And I didn’t. With a look of disgust he raised his hands off the steering wheel.

  ‘Out,’ I yelled, and the two uniforms in the car did so. ‘On the fucking floor, and don’t look at me.’

  They both dropped to the sodden tarmac and raindrops bounced off the backs of their jackets.

  ‘Personal radios,’ I said. ‘Get them off and throw them to me.’

  Wisely, they did as they were told. It was all getting out of hand and could easily end in a bloodbath, which is the last thing I wanted.

  I stamped on the radios until the plastic split and the guts were all over the street.

  God knows how many shells the shotgun held. Could have been as few as three or as many as eight. Whatever. I just had to hope there were enough for what I wanted. I went to the passenger door and shot the shit out of the radio on the dash. Ditto with the plainclothes vehicle. That meant I’d fired four. I hoped I wouldn’t need any more.

  I left the coppers where they were and ran to the Jag, threw the shooter into the well by the passenger seat, jumped in, turned on the engine and sped off.

  As I drove I wondered what the vault looked like after Lucy’s bombs had gone off.

&n
bsp; I reckoned there wasn’t much left of it and as far as I was concerned the less the better.

  I went to my garage and stored the gear in there, picked up a hacksaw, took one bag of cash and goodies up to my flat and stuck it under the bed with the saw on top, changed into some dry clothes that fitted, then took the Jag up to Crystal Palace, smashed it through the gates of an empty building site and set it on fire.

  By then it had stopped raining, the skies had cleared and the sun was rising. I threw the clothes I’d taken from Finbarr’s building into the flames and walked home, the funeral pyre of the car painting the lavender sky black behind me, and I heard the remaining shells in the shotgun give me a salute as they exploded in the heat.

  Once back at the flat I said hello to Teddy, sawed off the handcuffs, showered, got dressed again and waited for the cops to come as the story of what had happened that weekend gradually unfolded on the TV news. Or at least what they think happened.

  Me and Teddy are still waiting.

  EPILOGUE

  Of course they came.

  The cops that is. But not for a while.

  Meantime I watched it all on prime time TV. What a show.

  Lucy’s bombs had decimated a great chunk of the City. The bank building had literally slid into its own foundations. There’d been nothing like it since the IRA bombed Docklands. It was the best free entertainment for years.

  And then they discovered two bodies. Sergeant Lucille Madden of the Birmingham police and a solicitor from south London named Jerry Finbarr. Lucy had drowned and Finbarr had a bullet in his back. As far as I know they never found the weapon that killed him.

  So the Bill rolled up onto my doorstep and asked me what I knew.

  I denied everything, as you do, so they tugged me down to various police stations and I told my story a dozen times.

  As far as I was concerned Lucy must’ve found out that Finbarr had something to do with the death of her sister and taken revenge. Why there, why then, why bombs I had no idea, but I must admit my palms were sweaty for a while.

  Eventually they lost interest.

  But not before they showed me some interesting footage of Finbarr walking through the area with another man on that Sunday. A man who kept his face hidden.

  It could’ve been anyone, I said.

  It could’ve been you, they said.

  Prove it, I said.

  Then they put me up in an ID parade and a pretty young female copper from a little village just outside Colchester took a squint.

  No positive identification.

  Nor from the other four police officers who came for a look. My God, I must’ve looked a state that night.

  So as the summer turned to autumn to winter and the story went away, so did the coppers.

  Eventually I took some of the money and put it into trust for my daughter.

  I fenced a lot of the jewellery with someone I knew out of town. It helps to have friends in low places.

  Then I booked myself a long holiday in a very warm place with no extradition treaty with the UK, and brought Teddy along for the ride.

  It’s very nice here, except for the mosquitoes that come out at night. They call them no-see-ums locally, because you can’t. See them that is. Until it’s too late.

  But apart from that, the bars stay open all night, there’s gambling at the casino, the sand is clean and white, the sea is clear and blue and they get the Telegraph just a few days late. And Teddy is a constant source of comfort.

  Before I left I bought a couple of hundred quids’ worth of red roses and drove them up to the cemetery and put them all around Sheila’s grave, just like I promised I would. I didn’t say much. There wasn’t a lot to say.

  So what do I do next?

  I wish I knew.

  Copyright

  This ebook edition first published in 2016

  by No Exit Press

  an imprint of Oldcastle Books

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  All rights reserved

  © Mark Timlin 2000

  The right of Mark Timlin to be identified as author of this work

  has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright,

  Designs and Patents Act 1988

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  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either

  are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and

  any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies,

  events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  ISBN

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  978-1-84344-807-5 (epub)

  978-1-84344-808-2 (kindle)

  978-1-84344-809-9 (pdf)

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