There was a pub across the street. Even though it was early, when he entered the dark lounge there were fifteen, sixteen drinkers inside. Hard looks followed him as he carried his Coke to a corner and sat at a small sticky table. He got to work on his phone, following his subversion ware's progress as it mapped the network's topology. The system architecture was big, and so was the hardware net it ran on, far too extensive for a simple corner shop. Got it.
The shop was an end of terrace, a converted house, and one of four houses in a row that were conjoined: a single building inside, while from the street you could not tell.
They're watching me.
Shit. This was attention he did not need, as two of the men on barstools were staring at him. Pressing a bead into his left ear, he tapped the phone then leaned back against the wall, eyes almost shut as though listening to music. Then, with an idle motion, he sipped from his Coke. In his phone, a surveillance image moved, overlaid with a transcript pane, showing their conversation as text, in time with the audio in his earbead. unknown#1: "So who's this?" unknown#2: " This is Richie, Mr Khan."
/** ‹‹conditional match››unknown#3="R"**/
/** ‹‹conditional match››unknown#1="K"**/
K: "You're not local, are you, Richie?"
R: "Er, no, sir."
K: "You know your way around?" unknown#2: "I could help him, Mr Khan."
K: "Why would you do that, Jayce?" unknown#2: "Look after a mate, like."
His software had identified Richard Broomhall and Khan, conditionally rather than absolutely, but Josh had no doubts: this was who he was looking for. He noted the other youth's use of Richie rather than Richard. Plus, the image of Khan was clear – there would be no mistaking him.
Now the guys at the bar were returning their attention to him. This was not good. He checked the other drinkers. Most remained focused on their drinks or their inner thoughts, whatever they were, while at a small table like his, a heavy woman was pushing two empty glasses away from her. Her makeup formed strata, emphasising, not hiding, the fault lines and general crumbling.
When she realised Josh was staring at her, she raised her eyebrows.
"Don't tell me" – Josh pointed at the two empty glasses – "you drank two at once."
"Nah. My mate Sylvia was with me."
"Well, do you need another?"
"Got a cake in the oven, going to burn. Need to get home."
Good. He had thought she was about to leave.
"I shouldn't either," he said. "Have another, I mean."
"Mind, I went to the offie last night, brought back some lagers, need finishing off."
"That sounds tempting."
Flakes of mascara moved when she batted her eyes.
"Wouldn't want to drink alone." She wiggled her soft mass. "Don't seem right."
"Damn straight. I'm Joe."
"I'm Azure."
"Nice name."
"Well. Come on then."
They left, shoulder pressed to shoulder, while the guys at the bar watched. This close to Azure, Josh kept his breathing shallow. In the Regiment, he had been through desensitisation training, able to function in heavier and heavier concentrations of tear gas; it served him well now, coping with the thickness of Azure's perfume. No doubt made from the finest ingredients in a bathtub just down the road, and flogged off a market stall.
As she made a joke and laughed, he turned to smile, checking back. In the pub doorway, both men were watching. Josh slipped an arm around Azure's massive waist.
"Up here," she said. "This door, see?"
They went into a small entrance hall. A former townhouse, now flats, and she clearly lived upstairs. Her buttocks heaved as she started the climb, starting to puff; then Josh helped push her up. By the time they reached the top, they were both laughing. They almost fell inside, then Azure lumbered into the kitchen, looking for her lagers.
From the sitting room, a window opened out back, almost without sound. Josh swung through in one motion, pushed the thing shut – it would remain unlocked, but she might not notice for a while – then crimped his fingertips into the gap between bricks, made a shuffling traverse above a twenty-foot drop, then caught hold of a drainpipe, tested it with a tug, and descended most of the way. Overstuffed, split rubbish bags littered the ground, but from the wall he leaped over them and landed, crouching. Then he went over the back wall, and into a lane running behind the houses.
Poor Azure.
But another disappointment in her life might save a fourteen year-old boy, and that was the only consolation Josh could find for acting like a bastard, using sneaky avoidance in a way that would make his old instructors proud.
An hour and twenty minutes later, he was about to resume his sneakiness. From another back lane, he had watched the row of houses until all was quiet, while his phone displayed diagrams and images of the interior. The terrace was eight houses long – clearly, buying the whole row was too much even for Khan – and Josh's chosen entrance point was the fifth house along, owned by a law-abiding widower (according to a quick scan on the Web) who had nothing to do with any of Khan's enterprises, and had on occasion complained to police and council services about the noise from next door.
The house in question was number 39, and there was no sign of the owner moving about. In an ideal penetration exercise, Josh would prepare for longer, take additional equipment, and if possible three of his highly trained mates. But sometimes you had to act quickly or not bother, so he crossed the alley, jumped up, and clamped his hands onto brick. Then he was in a kind of vertical sprinter's crouch, pushing off with one foot, swinging out then jerking in with his arms, making full use of the myotatic reflex for fast power; and he was over. Tumbling sideways, he dropped like a cat, and remained on all fours at the rear of a tidy lawn.
A check of his phone revealed his subversion ware at work, altering the logged images from four different spycams over the last few seconds. Then he slipped across the lawn, just as his phone cracked the house system, and the back door's lock clicked open. He listened, then entered, taking in controlled large breaths, knowing that the reptile brain inside every human can respond to subliminal airborne molecules, communicating with the civilised mind in the form of intuition.
Nothing. He smiled, partly because it was the same old thrilclass="underline" breaking the rules for a definite good; but he no longer had the Regiment behind him if things went tits up. Then he moved through the tidy house, climbing the stairs to the upper hallway, and finding the loft door in the ceiling. Standing on the banister, he reached up to push the door aside; then he grabbed hold, palms in, and swung his feet up, jack-knifing upward through the opening.
He shone a thin white beam from his phone, then gekkotagged the phone to his shoulder, freeing his hands. Looking around the darkened loft space, he saw neat transparent boxes, all labelled. Old comics – here, an X-Men run from the 1970s, artwork by Neal Adams – and hardcore fitness books: Pavel Tsatsouline, Scott Sonnon, Ross Enamait, Matt Furey. Josh smiled, then turned his attention to the chipboard wall that separated this place from Khan's enterprise next door.
From his belt, he twisted free his buckle, then pressed hard. A memory-steel blade uncurled, then snapped into stiffness. It was sawtooth, and just what he needed. He pressed the blade against the chipboard, increased pressure, then doubled it. The point went through.