Rat Runners Read online

  “Leave him alone!” Manikin told them. “I saw the whole thing—you weren’t watching where you were going, either of you. You ran him right off the path! I should call the bloody police, although they’ve probably seen everything already.” She pointed at the camera up on the wall of the multi-story car park. “Go on, get the hell out o’ here.”

  But it was the skater who moved first. With one glance up at the security camera, he kicked his skateboard back onto its wheels, jumped on and rode away down the path.

  Manikin spun around, hissing quietly through her teeth: “You could have blown everything, you stupid bloody fools! Guns? You bring guns to a switch? Are you out of your tiny little minds? Get lost, and meet me back at the van. And try not to get arrested on the way.”

  “Mind your tone,” Punkin grunted, showing her the handle of the automatic he had in his waistband. “I know how to use this.”

  “Really? ’Cos the only thing that’s good for is putting us all in prison,” Manikin growled. “FX and me brought you in on this ’cos we thought you had savvy. Now, if it’s not too much trouble, try and get back to the van without bringing every bloody copper in the city down on top of us. I’ll see you there.”

  “Did you get it?” Bunny asked, ignoring Manikin’s expression of disgust.

  Manikin reached into the litter bin, pulling out the black plastic bag that sat within it. This was not a garbage bag—she had placed it in there herself. Inside the bag was the skater’s green caterpillar. The one he was hurrying away with was a dummy, which she had switched for the real one as she passed behind Punkin’s back. She nodded, showing them the toy before closing up the bag and tucking it under her arm.

  “That camera’s about to come back online.” She tilted her head towards the wall of the car park. “Let’s move.”

  As Punkin and Bunny went one way, and she went the other, Manikin was already working over the angles. Her ‘partners’ had not needed the guns for the job. Manikin and her brother had planned it that way. In a city filled with x-ray cameras and the super-senses of the Safe-Guards, even a complete moron would avoid carrying a gun unless they had a really, really good reason. And there was only one reason Manikin could think of.

  She and her brother were about to be reesed.

  CHAPTER 3

  GETTING REESED

  FX FOLDED HIS console as he saw his older sister approaching the minivan. The server controlling the cameras in the underground level of the car park would stay offline for another ten minutes—plenty of time to get out of there. There was a scattering of other cars parked on this level, but it was late in the evening, and very few people were working in the office block attached to the car park. FX had hacked into, and crashed, the surveillance server seven other times in the last two days, to make sure the security guards who monitored the car park were thoroughly sick of the malfunctioning system before the day of the job. Another crash would be unlikely to cause much alarm. He had also knocked out a single camera, on a separate system. It overlooked the park behind the building—and the lane that ran along one side of that park, where his sister had just finished their latest job.

  Now that he could see Manikin coming towards him through the shadowy car park with a black bag slung over her shoulder, he knew it was time to go.

  FX was short for his age—as his sister was always keen to point out—and his round face and the spray of freckles on his brown cheeks did little to relieve his youthful appearance. His curly black hair was gelled into a carefully sculpted mess atop his head and his teeth were a little crooked at the front. And he was becoming doubtful that his wiry build would ever be particularly muscular. But then, FX was never going to be the muscle on any job. He was too useful in other ways.

  Manikin slid open the side door of the metallic-mustard minivan, dumped the large black plastic bag on the seat and whipped off the wig of strawberry-blonde curls. She pulled the pins out of her own straight black hair, letting it fall over the collar of her khaki mac.

  “Gimme the dye pack,” she muttered, as two figures hurried up behind her.

  “Did you get the thing?” he asked.

  “Did you hear me?” she asked back.

  “What happened?” he tried again.

  “Give. Me. The. Bloody. Dye. Pack. You. Wazzock,” she said slowly and softly, in a voice she only used when they were really in trouble.

  He drew a wad of twenty-pound notes from his bag and handed it to her. Inside the hollowed-out wad was a type of anti-theft device used by banks. If Manikin had decided to use it, the job had gone badly wrong. She slipped her hand into the top of the plastic bag and placed the bound lump of notes somewhere inside. FX opened his mouth to ask her what had happened, but she cut him off:

  “The switch went fine. Punkin and Bunny knocked the mark off his feet, just like they were supposed to. Born to fall over, those two were.” She shook her head, color rising under the tanned skin of her face. “While they were all untangling themselves, I switched his caterpillar for the dummy in the litter bin. The courier didn’t cop it, I’m sure of that. He whined a bit, and took off holding onto the dummy like his life depended on it.”

  “So?” FX pressed her. “What’s the problem?”

  Punkin and Bunny rolled up behind her on their roller-blades, and Manikin looked sourly at them.

  “These monkeys brought guns.”

  FX’s jaw sagged open, and he stared at their new partners in disbelief. The arrogant smirk hiding just below the surface of Punkin’s face told FX why Manikin had wanted the dye pack. They were about to be reesed.

  “That’s right,” Punkin said, drawing a nine-millimeter automatic from his ox-blood-colored, Italian leather jacket. The guy figured himself for a Mafia-style gangster. “We’re done bein’ rat-runners. It takes a proper villain to pull off a job like this.”

  He wasn’t pointing the gun at them, but he wasn’t pointing it away from them either.

  “The wheels rather spoil the image,” Manikin said, looking down at his feet. “I imagine they’d spoil your aim too, if you had any to begin with. I can’t believe you’d be so stupid. Even you. Any scan-cam we passed driving in here could have detected those things. And we still have to drive back out. What if we pass a bloody Safe-Guard? They can see right through the van, you tick. If they spot those pieces, we’re all going down.”

  Her face was flushed, but her green eyes were cold. FX could see she was in a spitting rage. He was silently hoping her temper wasn’t about to get them killed.

  “You don’t got no problem then, do yaw?” Bunny said, pulling a snub-nosed six-shot revolver from the waistband around the back of her jeans. She aimed it straight at Manikin’s chest. “’Cos you ain’t goin’ out wiv us. Right, Punkin?”

  “You got that right, Bunny,” Punkin said with a smile. He crossed his arms, laying his pistol across his left bicep. “You two are stayin’ right ’ere. Out of the van, FX. Dolly, hand over the caterpillar.”

  “Don’t call me Dolly!” Manikin snapped at him, as her brother climbed out behind her.

  “What are you shouting at him for?” FX said, thumping her shoulder. “You want to get us shot?”

  “Shut your face! You should be taking my side,” she retorted, pushing him against the door of the van.

  “I’m on whatever side doesn’t get shot!” FX shoved her back, nearly knocking her into Punkin. “You shut your stupid face, yeh windbag!”

  “Both of you, shut up!” Bunny barked, switching her aim from brother to sister and back again. “Somebody’ll hear!”

  “Oh, well shoot us then,” Manikin sneered at her. “That’ll cut right down the noise, won’t it, you wazzock? I can’t believe we got these clowns involved. I mean, how could working with such a pair of pissin’ lobotomy cases be anything other than a complete cock-up?”

  “Will you please stop dissing the morons holding the guns?” FX cried.

  “Who you calling morons?” Punkin snarled. “Knock it off and give us the s
oddin’ caterpillar!”

  “When are you going to grow a pair of balls, ya weedy short-arse?” Manikin exclaimed, pushing her brother against the van again.

  “When you gonna develop higher brain functions?” he roared back at her, shoving her back hard.

  She stumbled, nearly losing her balance, and collided with Punkin. She would have fallen if she hadn’t caught hold of his waist. He twisted and knocked her away. Bunny pointed her gun in the air and let out an incoherent shriek. Then she fired her gun three times into the concrete ceiling, and she was almost knocked off her roller-blades by the weapon’s recoil. The gunshots were deafening in that hard, echoey space, and dust drifted down from the holes in the ceiling. Everyone stood frozen. Bunny was breathing hard, terrified and ecstatic over what she’d done.

  Somewhere nearby, some microphone out on a street would be transmitting that sound to WatchWorld Control. It would be isolated, filtered and analyzed. They would be able to identify the caliber, perhaps even the model of the weapon. And if more than one mike had picked up the sound, they would be able to quickly triangulate, and nail down the location. Seconds from now, a police jump squad would be skidding out into the streets, headed this way.

  “Bunny … honey … pet,” Punkin said softly, reaching out to her. “You’d … you’d best give me the gun.”

  She looked at him in hurt surprise and shook her head. He nodded, raised his eyebrows and stretched out his hand. After a moment’s hesitation, she reluctantly handed over the gun.

  “The bloody caterpillar, now!” he said through gritted teeth, as he pocketed her gun and aimed his own weapon at Manikin’s head.

  She didn’t react immediately, taking the blonde wig from the seat first, and stuffing it into the pocket of her mac. She wrenched the belt tighter around her waist, and reached into the black plastic bag that also lay on the seat. Then she handed over the large cuddly toy. The stuffed, multi-legged creature was over a meter long, and was heavier than it looked. That was because of the wide rubber tube shoved down its body, filled with hundreds of notes in high denominations. Punkin grabbed the toy, gave a grimacing smile, and waved Bunny into the van. FX snatched his console out of the back just before Bunny slammed the sliding door shut. Punkin rolled around the front of the van and got in behind the wheel. He started the engine, over-revved it, spun the boxy vehicle around and headed for the ramp. FX was impressed. It seemed Punkin was well able to drive while wearing roller-blades. Not bad for a guy who was still just a kid. He probably did a lot of joy-riding.

  Manikin was already striding towards the stairwell that led up into the office building beside the car park. Going out the front, onto the street, would be a really dumb move about now. They’d have to find another way out. The police would be here in minutes—she could hear the sirens in the distance, getting steadily closer.

  “Back to square one,” FX said as he caught up with her. “Should have known they were going to reese us. Bloody trolls.”

  “We had to take the chance,” she replied. “We’ve only got a few days before Move-Easy comes looking for us to make our next payment. I just never thought those clatterheads would be thick enough to bring guns. They probably won’t get a hundred meters down the street.”

  Her phone beeped and she took it out of her pocket, looking at the screen.

  “I dunno,” FX grunted. “They’ve managed to stay free so far. Must be blessed with some of that supernatural good luck reserved for fearless idiots.”

  “Yeah, well, we’re not, obviously,” Manikin said as she pushed open the door to the stairwell. She held up her phone so that he could see the screen. It was a spam email, offering excellent deals on a new drug that treated fungal infections. The email would have been received by hundreds of thousands of people, but only those who worked for the gangster known as Move-Easy would recognize the summons for what it was. She gave her brother a bitter grin.

  “Looks like he’s calling us in.”

  “Jeez, we’re just not getting any breaks, are we?”

  “Well, I did manage to pinch Punkin’s wallet when I bumped into him,” Manikin replied, smiling as she held up a fold of leather.

  “Not bad.” FX smirked. “But wait’ll you see what I’m going to do to his MyFace page. You’d be amazed what you can do with imaging software and a few pictures of farm animals …”

  CHAPTER 4

  THE PEEPER

  NIMMO HAD NEVER been tracked by a Safe-Guard—he was too young to be listed on the citizens’ register—but he had heard from enough people who had to know what it was like. Right now, right next door, Brundle was expected to go about whatever he had been doing as if the Safe-Guard wasn’t there. Every action he took, every little movement or decision he made would be recorded by the stranger in his home. Any radio station he listened to, any television program he watched, anything he ate or drank or smoked, any product he used, anyone he spoke to on the phone or contacted online, any website he visited, anything he said out loud or wrote down would be studied by the Safe-Guard and its supervisors in Control. And it would all be analyzed in great detail by the massive surveillance system that was WatchWorld.

  If Brundle wanted to go to the toilet, the peeper had the authority to stand there and watch him doing his business. Once a Safe-Guard was assigned to you, they could observe you until your time was up and then they moved on.

  If you refused to let them into your home, you could face a ‘Life Audit.’ And nobody wanted that. Nimmo listened to Brundle moving about in the lab. It must have grated at the scientist’s nerves to be followed around like that—he was reluctant to talk about his work, and only put up with Nimmo being in the lab from time to time because Nimmo was even more secretive than he was.

  Having a Safe-Guard next door had put Nimmo on edge, and he couldn’t stay still for long. Feeling an urge to get some fresh air, he stood up and opened his front door, stepping out into the hallway and closing it behind him. His apartment was at the end of the corridor, near the door that opened onto the stairs leading to the roof. Opening this door, he started up the steps and then slowed and stopped. His head was just level with the top of the stairs, and he could see the thin line of daylight under the door leading out onto the roof. A shadow passed across the sliver of light. Someone was on the roof.

  There was a way on and off the roof without coming through the building. Nimmo had made sure of this before moving into the apartment. You risked being spotted from the street, but whoever was up there now had not come past his door—he was sure of that. So it had to be someone who was trying to get in without being seen. The door at the top of the steps was solid, but would be no obstacle to anyone who was good with locks…or a team of coppers equipped with a battering ram. Nimmo made his way slowly down the steps and back to his apartment. He’d moved to this building to avoid being noticed. Now, all of a sudden, everyone was taking an interest in the place.

  Closing the door of his apartment, he wondered about the intruder on the roof. Nimmo had enemies, but he was pretty sure none of them knew where he lived. He was very careful about that. Did the intruder know there was a peeper here? Probably. Were they interested in Brundle too? Nimmo would prefer it if they were. It could just be some burglar trying his luck. But if it was Nimmo they were coming for, he could make for the front door, go out one of the two windows in the apartment, or fight it out here if he had to. But he hated fighting if he didn’t need to. He should leave now, while the Safe-Guard was here, before the intruder came down.

  The decision was barely made when he heard Brundle’s lab door open. Nobody spoke, but Nimmo could make out the Safe-Guard’s footsteps heading down the hall. Brundle had got off lightly—the peeper had stayed less than an hour. The lab door closed and locked. Less than a minute later, Nimmo detected the slightest sound of feet in the hallway. He was impressed. He had not heard the intruder come down the squeaky stairs from the roof. There was a knock on Brundle’s door. Nimmo walked across to the adjoining wall in the ap
artment. His blue eyes were expressionless as he held his head close to the beige emulsion surface.

  Both voices were muffled by the wall, but Nimmo could detect the emotions. The visitor was quiet and calm, Brundle louder and distressed. Nimmo heard a question being asked, and Brundle replied aggressively. There was the scrape of a hard object being slid along a table top and Brundle let out a grunt of effort, as if he was swinging something at his visitor. There were only two sounds immediately after that: a short gasp of pain from Brundle, and the unmistakable, dull thud of a body hitting the floor. Then there was silence. Nimmo leaned harder against the wall, his lips pressed together in a thin line. Don’t get involved, he told himself. This is none of your business. Don’t draw attention to yourself.

  His conviction held for about another minute. But then he was swinging open his front door. The door to the lab was standing open. Watson Brundle was lying on his front on the floor just inside. He was deathly still, his head turned to the side; his eyes were half open and vacant, unblinking. Nimmo checked the man’s neck for a pulse and then swore under his breath, gritting his teeth and looking up and down the corridor. Darting towards the stairs leading to the roof, he bounded up them, pushed open the door and jumped out. There was no one out there. Either the murderer was blindingly fast, or they had gone out another way. Nimmo trotted around the parapet encircling the roof, looking down in every direction, trying to spot Brundle’s attacker, but saw no sign of them.

  Perhaps the murderer was playing it cool, taking their time leaving the building. Nimmo raced back down the steps and along the corridor to the main stairwell. He didn’t know what the attacker looked like, but if he found them, he’d see something about them that would give them away, he was sure of it. Descending the steps three at a time, he looked along the fifth-floor corridor and then continued on down. There was no one in any of the hallways, and he didn’t come across a single soul on the stairs. This wasn’t surprising, seeing as a Safe-Guard had passed through only a little while ago. People would be staying out of the way.