Flat on his back in the freezer compartment, Jack braced, counted silently to three, and lurched upright.
The man in the suit was crouching down below the freezer’s fascia. He started up at Jack’s surprise appearance.
‘Hi there,’ said Jack.
Dean Simms reached into his briefcase.
Jack pounced on him.
They went down together in a bundle of limbs. Dean’s briefcase fell out of his grasp and slapped onto the lino. Magazine inserts and a rather nice pen spilled out of it, along with a small, greasy beige lump that looked like a not-so-vital internal organ, the sort of thing that was hard to recognise in a quiz once you’d discounted liver, kidneys and spleen.
It flopped onto the hard floor and pulsed gently.
Struggling under Jack’s weight, Dean yelled something. Securing Dean’s arms, Jack gave him a slap that cowed him. Jack hoisted him up by the tie and leant him against the nearest freezer (summer puddings, freezer-to-oven apple pies, sorbets).
‘OK, you’re done,’ Jack told him. ‘Behave yourself.’ He glanced down at the pulsing lump.
‘Eeuww,’ he said. ‘You cough that up?’
Dean said nothing. His eyes blazed.
‘Listen to me,’ Jack began, ‘here’s what’s going to happen. We-’
His phone began to ring.
Jack looked away for a second. All his life, Dean had listened to his old man’s advice, keen to learn from him. Retail wasn’t the only thing his dad had known about. Dean’s old man had been an amateur welter-weight. Tough old bird, his dad.
Dean threw the jab, just the way his old man had taught him.
Distracted by his phone, Jack caught the fist square on the jaw. He reeled away, flailing, and hit the wall-freezers opposite (Ben and Jerry’s, soft scoop vanilla, Cornish dairy cream, triple fudge sundaes). The glass door cracked with his impact.
Jack tried to right himself, his hand to his mouth. ‘Jesus!’ he exclaimed.
Dean had picked up the beige lump. He aimed it at Jack and squeezed it.
Jack blinked. He took a step back. He got a sudden, strong smell of bourbon and willow.
‘I…’ he said. He glanced around. He leant back against the cracked glass door and shook his head.
Dean started running, the lump in his hands. He headed for the checkout. Shoppers screamed as they saw him coming. Dean pushed through them, trying to work his way out via one of the narrow checkout lanes. A potbellied man was blocking his exit with a trolley heavy with crates of beer. A bulk purchase.
‘Out of my way!’ Dean yelled. He halted.
James was standing on the far side of the checkout, facing him. James said nothing. He stared at Dean, right in the eyes. The meaning was clear.
Dean roared and drove the crate-laden trolley at James. With the bulk purchases on board, the thing weighed fifty kilos.
Dean rammed it into James’s legs.
‘Bastard!’ James yelped. He grabbed the wire cage of the ramming trolley, and threw it sideways. It flew the entire length of the shop front and crashed down on its side near the exit, castors spinning.
James turned, deftly ducking the punch Dean threw at him, and landed a punch of his own.
Dean hurtled backwards onto the checkout, breaking the code reader. He flopped unconscious. The checkout display flashed ‘UNKNOWN BAR CODE’.
The shoppers and the checkout girls gave James a spontaneous round of applause. James stepped forward, and looked at the beige lump sliding towards him on the packing conveyer.
He pulled one of the crumpled serviettes out of his pocket and gathered the thing up. It was unpleasantly warm.
Gwen appeared behind him. ‘Hello,’ she said. ‘Having fun?’
‘Loads,’ James replied.
‘How did that happen?’ she asked, pointing.
At the far end of the shop front, a broken trolley full of slumping beer crates was making the automatic exit open and close and open and close.
‘No idea,’ said James.
Jack’s phone rang again. He straightened himself up on the edge of the nearest chest freezer.
‘You all right, honey?’ the big black woman cooed at him, peering under the eye-levels.
‘Yeah, I’m fine. Thanks,’ Jack replied. Who the hell was she?
He opened his phone.
‘This is Jack.’
‘Jack, for God’s sake!’ said Owen’s voice. ‘In answer to your question, twenty-bloody-seven!’
‘On a scale of one to ten?’
‘Yes!’
‘Owen, why the hell didn’t you call me earlier?’
TWENTY
‘We’ll meet you there,’ said Owen.
Jack hung up. ‘Owen says they’ll meet us there.’
‘Uh-huh,’ said James. He was driving. ‘Lunchtime rush. Cathays is going to be fifteen minutes minimum from here.’
‘Punch it,’ said Jack.
‘You two OK?’ James called back.
‘We’re fine,’ said Jack.
‘He got you both. Both of you,’ James said.
‘So you say. I don’t remember,’ said Jack.
‘Oh, come on!’
‘OK, OK, I’ll take your word for it,’ Jack looked at James in the driving mirror. ‘How come he didn’t get you?’
‘I didn’t give him the chance. You’ve got it bagged?’
‘Bagged and stowed in a box,’ said Gwen. ‘Horrible thing, it was. Like an organ. Like a swollen appendix.’
‘Looked like a sentient gland to me,’ said Jack.
‘And you’d have seen plenty of those,’ said Gwen.
‘One or two. Owen can give us a full slice and dice later.’
‘If there is a later,’ said James. He braked hard. ‘Where are you going? Where are you going?’ he yelled impatiently at a drifting taxi.
‘Calm down,’ said Gwen.
‘I hate that we had to leave him there,’ James complained, hauling on the wheel as they went over a roundabout.
‘He’s nothing without his mojo,’ said Jack. ‘We shut him down. Who’s he gonna complain to? Who’d believe him?’
‘I suppose,’ said James.
‘Besides, this is more important,’ said Jack.
Gwen nudged Jack. ‘James?’ said Jack.
‘Yeah?’
‘Back there, did you throw a shopping cart full of crated beer the length of the store?’
‘Yes, I did.’
‘OK.’
‘Because I have superpowers, obviously. What the hell are you asking me?’
‘You didn’t then?’ asked Jack.
‘Of course I didn’t. I couldn’t.’
‘OK, then.’
‘Why are you asking me?’
‘Well, a cart got tossed-’
‘Arsehole!’ James shouted, and leant on the horn.
‘Excuse me,’ said Jack.
‘Not you, that van. Look, the cart rolled and fell over. That’s all it was.’
‘The cart rolled and fell over,’ Jack said to Gwen. ‘So, you see, that’s what it was.’
James glanced up and looked at himself in the mirror. He was sweating. It wasn’t just the stress of hard-nosed driving.
He was a little bit scared.
And he couldn’t tell anyone why.
‘Where are we going again?’ he asked.
Jack consulted the GPS. ‘Wrigley Street. The open ground behind it.’
‘Guess we’re going to find out what happened to all those missing pets,’ said James. He parped the horn. ‘Get in lane! Get in lane, you idiot!’
Wrigley Street, Cathays. Noon. Grey clouds shooting spots of rain. Back-to-back tenements, front-and-backs, a relic of labourer’s housing.
A blue Honda sports drew up with an ostentatious squeal of disc brakes.