‘Score?’ Alex asked, drying his hair vigorously with a towel and leaving it standing up in all directions.
‘Two-one to our boys,’ Maris said, excitement in his voice, one foot pumping up and down in agitation as an evening of the score was narrowly avoided.
‘And only five minutes to full time?’
‘Where are you off to?’ Maris asked. ‘Emilija again?’
‘Yep,’ Alex said, spraying his armpits, wrinkling his nose and waving a hand to disperse the astringent cloud.
‘Again? You’ll be married before you know it.’ Maris laughed.
‘Not me,’ Alex said, slapping his bare chest with one hand and lifting his glass. ‘You don’t marry women like Emilija. Chicks with kids are all right for keeping you warm, but when it comes to the long-term stuff, a man wants a model with not so many miles on the clock.’
‘Solid bodywork? Better upholstery?’
‘Precisely. No dents. Maybe one careful owner.’ Alex grinned and looked up with his glass in front of his face as there was a sharp rap on the door. ‘You expecting someone?’
Maris shrugged. ‘Don’t know. It might be the boys. They were talking about going into town,’ he said, his attention on the screen as the crowd roared again.
Alex opened the door and immediately tried to push it shut. ‘Maris!’ he yelled, as the door ground gradually open in spite of his best efforts to stop it, until it swung back and he was sent flying back into the room with it. He jumped right over the couch and Maris, who looked up bemused as a big man loped into the room and a smaller man with a narrow, lumpy face sauntered after him.
Alex found himself on the balcony, shoeless, shirtless and cold, looking at a long drop into the darkness below as a patter of chilled rain whispered on the concrete.
‘Evening, boys,’ the narrow-faced man said as his burly companion turned the key, locking Alex out on the balcony to shiver and look in through the window, wondering what they were saying. ‘Your pal’s not very friendly tonight, is he?’
Maris looked up in confusion. ‘What’s up? Who are you guys?’
The big man picked Maris up by the front of his shirt, which ripped as he was hauled forward and deposited face down over the table that his feet had been resting on a moment earlier.
‘You’ve not been doing as you’ve been told, have you, Alex?’ the little man asked as the big man planted a foot on his shoulder with all his weight behind it and Maris thrashed in panic. ‘Hush, Alex,’ he said softly. ‘Don’t make a noise. We don’t want to disturb your neighbours, do we?’
‘I’m not Alex,’ Maris pleaded. ‘That’s Alex out there on the balcony. I’m Maris. Maris Leinesars. Alex is out there,’ he gabbled, trying to point towards the balcony. ‘I haven’t done anything, honest.’
The big man grunted and spat on the carpet. ‘Does it matter?’
‘Not really,’ the little man sniffed, taking a hammer from his pocket.
With his face pressed hard to the top of the table, Maris could see nothing of what was going on behind him, while Alex watched in growing horror as everything was played out in eerie silence. It wasn’t a big hammer, a delicate tool of the kind used for fine joinery work and tiny nails, and Alex wanted to be sick as he saw the big man lean down and spread Maris’s hand out over the table top
Maris squirmed and jerked his hand away. The hammer hit the table, leaving a half moon of a dent in the surface.
‘Keep him still, will you?’
This time the hand was splayed on the table, with the big man’s fist planted over the wrist to keep it firmly placed.
In spite of the double glazing, Alex could hear the first half of the screech of pain before the big man grabbed Maris’s face and stopped any more noise. He could see him struggle frantically in the big man’s grip. The little man broke all four fingers of his left hand with the delicate hammer, using deft, sharp taps that shattered bones and joints. Then he looked up and stared into Alex’s eyes for a long moment, winked and nodded to the big man, who slowly released Maris from his grip.
The big man lifted Maris up again and deposited him on the couch, where he sobbed in shock, cradling one ruined hand in the other as his team scored again moments before the whistle and the crowd howled its joy. The two men slipped away into the night and Alex frantically rattled the handle of the balcony door.
Orri had already decided he didn’t like it, but his instructions were clear. He had dressed himself in black, as usual, his balaclava rolled into a hat that nestled just above his eyebrows and his hands thrust deep into the pockets of his black jacket. It was a cold night and even with two extra layers he found himself shivering as he walked in a wide circle.
He didn’t like industrial estates. Far too many businesses were taking security seriously these days, and while alarms were more or less an occupational hazard, it was the unobtrusive cameras that worried him; just like the box of tricks in his backpack.
The building was dark, and the faint glow of street lamps across the road did little to illuminate the dark front. As he had already been past a few times during the day, Orri knew that the building’s sheet steel cladding was painted matt black from ground to eaves. A few years ago it had been the offices and workshops of a company manufacturing machinery for bakeries and pizza shops. The building had then been sold to a charitable body that everyone knew was actually a motorcycle club whose members referred to themselves as the Undertakers, living in uncomfortable rivalry with at least two other similar charitable organizations in the city.
Orri knew it wasn’t a sensible place to be breaking into. If he were to be found, the Undertakers were more likely to live up to their name than call the police, and he reasoned that a job like this should mean danger money.
The back door leading to the old workshop, now converted lovingly into a spick-and-span engineering space, complete with a lathe against one wall, had been left conveniently unlocked. There were no blinking lights anywhere to indicate an intruder alarm and Orri assumed that the Undertakers were simply confident that nobody would dare break into their clubhouse.
He found the office at the top of the creaking stairs. His torch picked out details as its narrow beam swept around the room. A painted emblem filled one wall with the Undertakers’ black and silver crest, and a large black desk with a computer on it sat in the middle of the room surrounded by chairs. The ashtrays, mugs and glasses showed the place was used. A red light on the far side of the room gave him a moment’s disquiet, until the torch’s beam picked out a coffee maker that had been left switched on. He was on the point of switching it off, but thought better of it.
Orri was relieved to see that plastic trunking studded with power, phone and ethernet sockets ran around the wall at waist height, a relic of the room’s former role as the sales manager’s office. Kneeling, he prised open the cover and set to work. He had to admit to himself that it was a clever piece of equipment. The new double power socket looked the same as the old one once he’d installed it, but behind the white plastic of the trunking there lurked a listening device which he guessed was voice activated, along with a slot for an SD card and a small black box clipped to the back of the socket. Orri hoped this was a device that would allow the sound files to be wirelessly transferred, as he had no desire to come back and retrieve the SD card.
He stood back, put the socket he had replaced into his bag and admired his handiwork. There was no outward sign that the socket had been tampered with and there were no marks on the floor. The plastic bags he had pulled on over his shoes had left no prints. Unfortunately the Undertakers weren’t big on housekeeping up here, unlike in the spotless workshop downstairs, and he could see that the dust had been disturbed but hoped that nobody would notice.
As a parting gift, he went to the computer on the desk and took out a flash stick that was in the slot, replacing it with one from his pocket. As instructed, another anonymous flash stick was dropped into a jar of oddments on the desk.