Читать книгу The Finish Line - Cliff Ryder - Страница 11

The woman shivered in the chill evening air as she watched the bustling activity around Wyvil Road. The entire area had been secured by police tape, with the street blocked off at both ends by Metropolitan Police Service vehicles and uniformed, armed officers bustling everywhere. Beyond the cordon, media vans swarmed, with perfectly pressed and coiffed reporters jockeying for the best shots and interviews as they scrambled to get on the air. The woman made sure to avoid the roving cameras at all costs.

For the moment, she was safe enough among the crowd of people peering and peeking, everyday, ordinary folk looking for a bit of excitement, their voices overlapping as they tried to find out what was going on:

“Do you know what happened?”

“Probably a drug deal gone wrong. Wankers most likely lit each other up….”

“I saw some of the lodgers around…they seemed like nice enough people….”

“Dear God, what is that smell? Someone been trudging around in the sewers?”

At that last bit, she moved a couple meters away, all too aware that she was the one most likely causing the odor the last person had complained about. Even as she stood there, watching the chaotic scene, a part of her mind repeated that she needed to move, needed to get the hell out of there, just casually turn around and walk away, another spectator who had grown bored with watching the police and was heading for home. But she stayed, waiting to see the proof with her own eyes.

Waiting for the bodies to be removed from the scene.

It had seemed like only moments ago—had it really been an hour?—when she had finished with Harry and sent him on his errand, hiding the few cigarettes left in the pack because, well, by the time he got back, she’d be gone from his life forever.

As soon as she’d heard the front door close, Marlene had slipped out of the bed, grabbed her clothes and run to the bathroom, cleaning up and getting dressed in under three minutes. Pulling her long hair back in a ponytail, she had grabbed her laptop and case, trotted to the door and opened it to reveal her brother about to knock, an impish grin on his face as he sniffed the air.

“You two getting cozy in here?”

“Don’t be gross. Are we done?”

He held up a matching, soft-sided computer case and patted his front jeans pocket. “I finished the final run downstairs while you were—taking care of business. We’re out of here.” He nudged her as they walked to the stairs. “Next time we do a run like this, we need to find a group with a hot woman as the leader. Maybe a blonde.”

“I’ll be sure to put that on my list. Now come on.” She had been about to put her foot on the first step when she heard a noise from downstairs—a noise that shouldn’t have been made in the first place.

Who’s up at this hour? she wondered. None of the cell members should have been moving around—the sedative she had added to their dinner of vegetarian curry would have ensured that. And Harry had been taken care of by her personally. So who’s left?

“What’s the holdup?” Ray peered around her, trying to see into the gloom of the ground floor.

“I heard something—like a footstep,” she whispered.

He frowned. “Probably just the crappy old house settling. Here—” he pressed the flash drive into her hand “—I’ll go have a look. Hang back until I call you.”

She waited on the landing as he crept down the stairs. He had only taken a few steps when the noise sounded again, a bit louder this time. “Hey, who’s down there? Gabe? Aron?”

Marlene peered around him, trying to see in the dimness, her heart suddenly pounding in her chest. She wanted to call Ray back up, tell him not to go down there, but before she could, a black-clad arm extended out from the archway leading to the back hall, with something even darker extending from its fist.

The sneeze of the silenced pistol made her choke on her warning. The gun coughed again, making Ray gasp as each bullet impacted his body. He sagged, clutching the railing, then slid down the rest of the staircase to land in a messy heap on the floor. The arm pointed down at his face, and fired the pistol twice more.

Marlene clapped her hands over her face to keep from screaming. She was frozen with terror, unable to comprehend what she had just seen. The arm moved forward, with a night-clad figure materializing in the dim hallway below her, his face covered in a strange mask with large, eerie goggles over his eyes. The shooter checked her brother’s body, then looked up the stairway as he lifted one foot to begin the climb. The motion shocked the breath from her body, but then the strange, masked head looked down the hall as it and Marlene heard the same noise—a key turning in the lock of the front door.

Leading with the pistol, the intruder stalked down the hallway. Only when he was out of sight did Marlene move, creeping back to the door without making a sound and slipping into the bedroom. After the door was closed and locked, she remembered at last to suck in a breath. She heard a strange, muffled thump from downstairs, and realized what it probably was—Harry had just been shot.

Oh, my god. Marlene went to the window overlooking the street and moved the heavy, dusty curtain back to peek out the window, hearing footsteps pound up the front steps.

The only thought in her mind now was escape. She had no doubt that Ray was dead—his killer was too much of a pro to not make sure of it. She looked around, frantically searching for and discarding options. The windows had been painted shut long ago, and certain death waited outside the door. Her gaze settled on the laundry chute, flashing back to a playful wrestling match Harry had had with her a few days ago as he had threatened to stuff her down it. At the time, it had been in jest, but now it was her only way out. She opened the trapdoor and peered into the square black hole. No one used it anymore, but she was pretty sure it wasn’t blocked by anything. At least she hoped it wasn’t. The only thing worse than facing the killers out there would be having them find her, trapped and helpless, halfway down.

Hopping up onto the ledge, she inserted her legs into the chute and braced herself against the sides, clutching at the trapdoor to make sure it closed after her. Taking a deep breath, she let go, holding the padded laptop case above her head. The fall was claustrophobic and brief—total blackness for a moment, and then she landed in a pile of stiff, moldy sheets she and her brother had seen the last time they had been down in the basement.

Rolling out, she stood and threw the cloth to one side, wiping away grime as she made sure that the laptop case was still secure, then slung it over her shoulder. “So it did work.” She looked up at the square, then jerked back as she heard more firearms going off on the floor above her. Holes suddenly punched through the side of the chute, raining plaster and pieces of wood down on her. Time to get the hell out of here, she thought as she heard a deafening bang from upstairs.

Running to the opposite corner of the basement, brushing webs out of her face—the spiders are just as bad over here as in the States—she pushed aside a grubby, damp tarpaulin, revealing an old, wet and stained manhole cover, left over from one of the innumerable sewer updates during the past century. Taking a small halogen headlamp from a pocket on the computer case, Marlene levered the cover off, nearly wrenching her arms out of their sockets, and disappeared into the small, dank tunnel below, making sure to pull the cover back over the hole before she left.

She splashed through the muck as fast as she dared, the small light only illuminating a few yards ahead of her. The air was hot and moist, and she tried to breathe through her mouth as much as possible. Sounds of night creatures were all around her, with the squeaking and scurrying of rats through the muck, and the buzz of the strange insects that made their home in the filthy surroundings. Although she had watched her brother get gunned down without a sound, she nearly lost it when a large, multilegged insect dropped onto her head. Brushing it off with a stifled scream, she hurled it against the wall and kept moving.

Marlene pushed aside all other thoughts, like whether or not the masked killers were coming after her, and concentrated on the twists and turns in the tunnel that would take her to her ultimate destination and out of this hellhole. Only once did she pause, at an intersection that led to another, cleaner tunnel leading off to the north-northwest that she and Ray had used often during the past few weeks. Brushing away tears, she turned down the smaller, grimier tunnel that led to the northeast.

After several more minutes of trudging through the ankle-deep sludgy water, she saw her goal—a street drain in a seldom-used alley behind an abandoned Pakistani take-away restaurant. She and Ray had made sure the grate could be opened the previous week. Trying to hold back her sobs, she reached the iron grating and shoved it up and out of the way, set the computer case on the ground, then hauled herself up. She gulped in the stale, fried-food smell of the restaurant Dumpster nearby as if it was fresh country air. After replacing the grate, she washed her feet off as best as she could in a nearby puddle of water, but was still all too aware of the stench she had picked up on her journey.

The first thing was to change her appearance. Scanning the street of the run-down neighborhood, she spotted what she needed at the corner—a youth hostel next to a twenty-four-hour shop providing supplies for weary travelers. A quick visit to the latter got her a change of clothes, and payment for a common room ensured the use of a bathroom with a toilet stall for some privacy. Marlene got out her Swiss Army knife, opened the scissors attachment and went to work.

Ten minutes later, her long hair had been cut to a short, spiky bob, and she was dressed in clothes that belonged on the body of a woman a decade younger than her, but were suitable for today’s London—striped black-and-white leggings under a denim miniskirt, an off-the-shoulder, tight-fitting T-shirt and a hoodie sweatshirt to go over the top of that. A ball cap completed her disguise, very useful for keeping her face out of sight of the ever-present cameras. The only thing they couldn’t replace were her shoes, so she rinsed them out in the dirty sink and put them back on, doing her best to ignore the squelching noises they made with each step.

After leaving the hostel, her initial thought was to get to the Tube and figure out a way out of the city at least, and the country if possible. But her steps had led her back to the house on Wyvil Road, and now she smothered a gasp as two white-sheeted forms were carried out on stretchers to waiting ambulances. They were followed by two more, then two more.

Marlene knew that no one she cared about had survived the ambush. Bye, Ray. Bye, Harry. She patted the pocket of her skirt, which held the flash drive that her brother had given her, and walked away from the commotion down the fog-shrouded street.