Dark Winter (24 page)

She pulled gently on my jacket arm. ‘Don’t forget to count.’

I nodded, and groaned to myself. I hated the counting bit, but it had to be done. Eighty-eight was coming up. It was pebbledashed and had a solid white door. To the right of it was a single bare aluminium double-glazed window, a sealed unit with a smaller skylight at the top, which opened outwards. There was an identical unit on the floor above.

Three cars were parked more or less outside: a red Volvo, P reg; a green Toyota, C reg; and a black Fiesta whose plate I couldn’t see, but it had a VDM of two red go-faster stripes down the offside.

No immediate signs of life. The curtains were drawn behind nets. There was no smoke from the chimney, no milk outside, no post or newspaper sticking out of the mail-box, and both skylights were closed.

As we got closer I took Suzy’s hand and we crossed at an angle, not looking at the target, just meandering. The nearside of the Fiesta had stripes too. A couple of small house fronts later, we were passing the door. There was no noise, no light, nothing. The windows were grimy, the net curtains knackered. The window lock was a simple handle. The door paint was peeling, and the lock was just a dull brass Chubb lever with an ancient B&Q-type imitation brass handle above it – though who was to say there weren’t a couple of dead bolts thrown on the other side?

We passed the door and I started to count. One, two, three . . . each house we passed, I pressed one of my digits into the palm of my hand . . . eight, nine, ten, and then I started again . . . eleven, twelve . . .

We got to the junction with Walker, turned right, and were walking over the little footbridge almost immediately. The stream two metres below us was muddy and rainbowed with oil. We turned right again the other side, on to a worn mud path. I put my arm round her and smiled. ‘I’ve got seventeen. You?’

‘Yep.’

‘Looks empty.’

‘Yep – shut up.’ She was counting again and I joined her. One, two, three . . .

The stream was about two metres wide, its steep bank the other side almost right up against the backyards of the houses, with just a narrow well-trodden path between them. By the looks of it, it was pretty popular with people coming out to toss their garbage into the river. Old cigarette packets and butts, drinks cans and bits of paper were scattered everywhere. The place was a shit-hole.

It looked as if the wasteground between us and the main drag was being cleared for redevelopment. A chipboard fence, painted white, had been erected to keep people out, but it was already covered in graffiti and mostly pushed over.

Nine, ten, eleven . . . The front of a house might bear no resemblance to the back; the front might be well looked after and painted green, the back neglected and painted red. Terraces can be a special nightmare. Some of these had the same aluminium units as at the front, others still had their old sash windows.

Twelve, thirteen, fourteen . . . We got level with a brown wooden door, set into a crumbling red-brick wall; there was no washing hanging up the other side because there wasn’t a line. Old net curtains covered filthy windows.

Suzy jerked her head. ‘The one without the washing, with the brown window frames and back door. That’s my seventeen.’

‘Me too.’ We carried on. There were no lights, no steamed-up or open windows, no fresh bin-liners strewn down the bank of the stream.

The door was fastened with a latch, but like the front door there could have been some bolts the other side. The wall was climbable; there’d be no problems with that. I studied the wasteground, trying to get a marker from the docks. At night everything was going to look totally different. ‘It’s in line with the Q8 oil tanks.’

We continued down the path, the walk-past now finished whether we liked it or not. An OAP was cycling towards us on a very new, shiny mountain bike. We just carried on chatting about nothing until he, and the target, was well behind us and the terraced houses had been replaced by bungalows, then houses.

My head was full of a hundred different things as she put her hand into mine and we walked in silence, following the path. The first consideration is always the enemy, in this case the ASU. Chances were, they were going to be in the house; for now, concealment was their best weapon.

What were their aims and intentions? We knew their objective, but we knew nothing about their training, their leadership, their morale. These people weren’t fighters: third wave had brains the size of Gibraltar. But all the same, what sort of people were we going up against? We didn’t even know if they were armed. All the source had said was that they were fundamentalists, more eager to go to Paradise than we were to leave King’s Lynn. But what did that mean? Would they fight? I hoped not.

Next priority was ground. Going in on white would be a nightmare because, apart from the sealed window units, there were only the skylights and the front and back doors. Even if one of the skylights was left open, we couldn’t get through, so that left the doors – and that could mean waiting for darkness so that the Yale could be attacked on the front. But there was a high risk of compromise with so many curtains to be twitched.

Suzy was coming to the same conclusion. ‘It’s got to be on black, hasn’t it?’

Target zones are colour coded to make them easier to identify. The front elevation is always called white, the right-hand side red, the left green, and the back is black. This being a terraced house, all we had to work with was black and white.

‘Yeah, unless the Golf Club gets us a Packet Echo and we blow our way through from one of the neighbours’ walls.’

She played with her gum between her teeth and couldn’t help a fleeting smile at the thought. ‘All we have to do is get into the yard. After that we get plenty of cover to get the NBC kit on and attack the lock.’

I nodded. It was a simple plan because we had very little information.

She grinned, taking big exaggerated chews now. ‘Shit, sometimes I’m so good it scares me.’

‘First we need to get out of town somewhere and prepare the NBC kit so we’re not opening all the bags and stuff on target. Then we can walk back on to target with the ready bags, get over the wall and Bob’s your uncle – kit on, make entry and get on with it.’

‘The only refinement I’ve got to that is I want to buy some rubber gloves. I don’t want the NBC ones. It’s really hard to manipulate the trigger, especially with the inners on as well.’

I nodded. ‘Good thinking. And once we’re inside you can have a crack at the washing-up.’

We got back to the car park with just over two hours to go before last light. ‘Fancy a brew?’

She nodded enthusiastically, and we went into Morrisons’ café and got a couple of teas, sandwiches and biscuits. I kept checking my traser.

‘Relax, Nick.’

The Best of Janet Jackson
banged out of the loudspeakers at us, interrupted now and again by a member of staff explaining all the wonderful deals they had in-store.

Suzy looked at her watch too. ‘I’m going to go and get those gloves. You want some?’

‘Madness not to. Get us a can of foam and some razors too, will you?’

She rubbed my face. ‘No worries. Who knows? If you took a bit more care of yourself, you might get lucky.’

She left me to the biscuits she hadn’t touched, and I pulled out my phone. I got Josh’s answering-machine again; it was still only about midday on Friday for them. I cut the call and redialled.

‘Hello?’

‘Carmen. Is Kelly there?’

‘I’ll get her.’ I heard the noise of the TV as she walked from the kitchen, and then, ‘It’s Nick.’

I heard a weepy ‘Hello?’

‘Hi, Kelly, listen – I just wanted to phone you up because we didn’t have a lot of time to talk. I’m so sorry I can’t come and say goodbye, but I’m up north now. Carlisle.’

‘Where’s that?’

‘Almost in Scotland. Listen, I’m sorry—’

‘Is Josh back?’

‘Not yet. Some time tonight, his time.’

I looked up and Suzy was in one of the checkout queues with her basket of stuff. ‘Listen, I’ve got to go. I’ll call you again, maybe not tonight because I’m going to be travelling. I’ll try in the morning, OK? Have they fixed your flight?’

‘I’m not sure.’

‘Look, I’d better have a quick word with Granny – is she there?’

I heard her call out, then the phone being shuffled over to Carmen.

‘Did you manage the flight?’

‘No, it cost a hundred pounds to change the ticket and they wouldn’t wait for you to call. They wanted the money now and you know how much it costs to use a credit card, when we paid—’

‘Look, just pay it, please – I’ll send the money off, whatever it costs.’

I powered the phone down and got it back into my bumbag just as Suzy finished paying.

31

It was good to be in the non-smoking area with her for once. We ordered up a plate of sandwiches, a couple of bananas and a yoghurt, then drank tea and spun the shit like every other couple seemed to be doing. The café stopped serving at six p.m., but we’d nursed our food and drink for an hour beyond that. Now the cleaning woman was doing her best to mop round us and it was time to go.

We took the main drag out of the town, via the docks and towards the bypass, Suzy still at the wheel. I took off the interior light cover and felt around in the door pocket. ‘Where are the bulbs?’

‘In the glove thingy.’

I screwed them back in, then plugged my phone into the charger dangling from the lighter socket. I got the shaving kit out of the carrier-bag, flipped open the visor mirror and worked a handful of foam into my stubble.

To our right, beyond the wasteland, lights glinted in the back rooms of the houses in Sir Lewis, but not in the one that, from this distance, we thought was the target. The odd figure walked or cycled along the river path, and a couple of chimneys were spewing smoke. Suzy was already getting herself worked up about going back in there. ‘They’d better not be boiling cabbages.’

I was making quite a bad job of shaving as Suzy drove past estate after estate of flats and houses set back from the road, then a fire station with its strike posters still stuck to the doors. Finally we hit the new steel-and-glass trading estates, where shiny new Audis and Citroëns were on display in the showrooms, just waiting to be delivered to the detached houses nearby; the ones in their own grounds with stone lions standing guard over the gateways. I wiped my blood-nicked face clean with tissue paper from my Next bags, and was left reeking of menthol.

We eventually hit a major roundabout on the bypass. The second left looked the darker option, and Suzy took it as I ripped open the packaging on our smart new Morrisons washing-up gloves. She turned right into a B road and finally pulled up in a dried-mud layby next to a field.

Instead of reflecting quietly on what we could be getting involved with in the next few hours, Suzy seemed to be getting increasingly revved up about it. She picked up her gloves and gave me a flick. ‘You into rubber?’ She laughed. Her door opened and the interior light came on as she held out her hand for the boot bulb. ‘I’ll get the kit.’

I heard the back open and her rummaging about inside. It wasn’t long before six packs of NBC kit were tossed on to the back seat. Large white cards beneath the Cellophane simply said, ‘Trousers’, or ‘Smocks’. We would prepare one bit of kit at a time, leaving everything else packed in the back. If someone was out walking their dog or another vehicle stopped alongside, it would be easier to hide.

I peeled back the outer covering, then ripped at the thick, airtight plastic packaging with my teeth. There was a rush of air as the pressures equalized. The NBC suit inside was made of a dark grey-green cotton shell, laminated to layers of tiny carbon spheres. Fingers crossed, it would absorb any biological or chemical agents before they made contact with the clothing worn underneath and, more importantly, my skin.

To cut noise, Suzy let the back down gently so that it locked only on the first click, before getting back into the driving seat and gripping one of the trouser packs. We each had three packs in all: the trousers, a hooded smock, and rubber boots. The trouser legs felt as if they’d been over-starched in a Chinese laundry; I had to push my arms through to unstick them. Suzy pulled apart her smock the same way. She was still on a high. ‘This is great,’ she whispered. ‘It feels like we’re on our way to a fetish party.’

Once we’d dealt with the smocks and trousers, we rolled them up and unwrapped the black overboots. They were one-size-fits-all and had to be laced up like Roman sandals. We threaded the strips of rubber through the loops round the sides of the soles, and that was the NBC kit ready to go.

The windows were misting up. We wrapped our suits round the boots, then got out to pack them back into the ready bags. I pulled apart the Velcro at the top of a green nylon bag and removed my standard British Army S6 respirator. It was a black-rubber job with two eyepieces, and a canister already attached. No spares had been provided but that wasn’t necessarily a problem; a single canister should last for days. It just would have been good to know whether this was a new one.

I checked that the rubber bladder that formed a seal round the side of the respirator was properly adjusted so no bad stuff could get inside. Forward of where my chin was soon going to be there was a small valve: I twisted anticlockwise to let the air pressure in the bladder equalize with the ambient air pressure to form a tight seal. That was why I’d had to have a shave; stubble got in the way. Short hair is an advantage for the same reason: you don’t want bits of your fringe getting in the way of the seal either.