As the escorting bobby marched him to the elevators, Nick carefully oriented a metal shiv and pressed it into one of the two locks on the plastic cuffs. His simplistic confession in the interrogation room had nothing to do with making a statement of innocence and everything to do with removing the clip from the pen cap he held in his lap. He could have written War and Peace, and would have, if it had taken that long to work the little metal stick free.
Once Nick got the shiv between the teeth and the catches inside the lock, one cuff would slide right out. Unfortunately, the clip was too wide. He had to wiggle it back and forth to grind through the plastic. If he couldn’t make it work before the bobby got him back to his cell, there would be no point. He needed to stall.
When the bell rang and the elevator door opened, Nick suddenly squatted down and then thrust up and back with his shoulder, hitting the bobby in the chest and knocking him to the floor. By the time the constable regained his feet, the doors had closed and the elevator had moved on.
The bobby gave a frustrated huff. He punched the button again and then turned to face Nick, shaking a Taser at him. “Listen, mate. I like you. That Mercer is a total git, and you get under his skin nicely, but don’t think for a second that I won’t use this.” The bell rang and the doors opened a second time. The bobby roughly pushed Nick inside. “Now, let’s you and me go nice and quiet the rest of the way, shall we?”
The stall tactic worked. Four floors later, as the elevator doors opened onto the cell level, Nick’s shiv slid home. His right cuff went loose.
The constable never saw it coming. As they passed the restrooms, Nick shot an elbow up under the man’s chin, snapping his head back and throwing him off balance. Then he stepped behind and wrapped an arm around his neck for a rear choke. The poor man let out a long, pitiful rasp as Nick dragged him through the men’s room door. Then he went limp.
Checking over his shoulder, Nick saw an open janitor’s closet at the back of the restroom, with a utility basin and faucet. “You’re in luck Constable… Gale,” he said, reading the bobby’s name tag. “I don’t have to give you a concussion.”
After stripping off Constable Gale’s jacket and gear, Nick sat him in the basin and secured his ankles and wrists to the faucet with flex-cuffs. Then he glanced down at the constable’s worn loafers and grimaced. Next came the unpleasant part.
The smell was pungent, a little cheesy. Nick scrunched his nose as he pulled off the bobby’s sock. “There are powders and sprays for this sort of thing,” he said, admonishing the unconscious policeman. “You should try them.” Then he stuffed the sock into Gale’s mouth until only the double-stitched toe remained.
Nick was cinching down a belt to keep the sock in place when Gale finally woke up. He let out a low moan and bobbled his head. Then his eyes zeroed in on Nick and flared wide. He drew in a breath to shout out and started to choke.
“Settle down! Breathe through your nose,” Nick ordered, grabbing the man by the lapels and giving him a shake. “Do it, or you’re going to suck down that sock and die.”
The constable started breathing again. Fear gave way to anger. He struggled, but he could hardly move with all his limbs secured to the pipe. Nick lightly smacked him on the cheek. “Hey! Quit it! Pay attention. Number one: I’m sorry about the sock. It couldn’t be helped.” He paused and checked the light at the base of the bathroom door before continuing. No signs of movement outside. That wouldn’t last forever. “Number two: you have to keep quiet. If you try to scream, you’ll work that sock deeper until it blocks your nasal airway. Do that and you’ll die.”
The bobby stopped struggling and gave Nick an accusatory glare. Nick winced. “I know, you don’t deserve this,” he said as he gathered up Gale’s gear. “I promise I’ll make it up to you someday.” Then he backed out of the closet and closed the door.
CHAPTER 41
Nick came out of the restroom wearing Constable Gale’s black coat and his nylon utility belt with all its gear. As he placed a CLOSED FOR CLEANING sign outside the door, he spied the bobby’s checkered wheel hat, still lying where it had fallen during the struggle. He dusted it off, seated it on his head, and reactivated his comm piece. “Nightmare Four, I’m loose in the building. Where’s Two?”
If the engineer was surprised to hear Nick on comms, he didn’t show it. “Stand by, let me call up his tracker.”
Nick suddenly slowed his pace. Another uniform had come around the corner from the cell block. Both nodded curtly as they passed each other. Then, two steps later, both stopped cold.
“Nightmare Four, I found him.” Nick reversed course and looked up at Drake’s usual grin, shadowed beneath a checkered wheel hat that matched his own. The name on the police coat read MCCORMICK. “Pen clip?” he asked the big operative, starting back toward the elevators.
Drake fell in step beside him. “You’d think Scotland Yard would know that trick by now. Where’d you stash your guard?”
“Janitor’s closet in the men’s room. You?”
“In my cell, against the front wall in the camera’s blind spot. Someone is going to find these guys. We need to get out of here.”
Nick stopped at the elevators and pressed the down button, instead of up for the street level. “Not yet. There’s one more stop I want to make.”
According to Scott, the New Scotland Yard evidence lockup was on the third sublevel, two floors down from the holding cells. “The design looks like a pass-through system. That means nothing but an examining table and a wall of two-way lockers with a clerk behind bulletproof glass. It’s totally secure. The clerk puts the evidence in the locker and closes and locks the door on his side and then unlocks the door on your side so you can take it to the examining table.”
Nick shook his head. “That kind of setup will have a digital ID sign-out system too, and we don’t look anything like Constables McCormick and Gale. Can you hack their ID files?”
“Negative. Scotland Yard’s security system is completely internal, unhackable from off-site.”
“Maybe we should cut our losses, boss,” said Drake as the elevator jerked to a stop.
The doors opened and Nick stepped out into an empty hall. “No. I want my stuff back.”
Nick’s key fob got them into the evidence receiving room. It was exactly as Scott predicted, with one small difference: the clerk behind bulletproof glass was a she, not a he. She was a brunette, midthirties, slightly plump but not fat by any stretch — and she was reading a romance novel.
“Things are looking up,” whispered Drake.
Seconds later, the big operative was leaning on the short counter below the window, wearing his most charming smile. The clerk never saw it. Her eyes went straight from the book to the computer as she clicked it to life. “Depositing or checking out?”
Drake’s charming smile faded. “Uh… checking out,” he said, his accent a deflated Sean Connery.
Nick kept his face out of view behind Drake’s broad shoulders. He gauged the distance to the exit.
The clerk pecked at her keyboard for a few seconds and then, with her eyes still focused on the monitor, gestured to a gray interrogator pad on the counter. “Identification, please.”
If Drake scanned his key fob, a picture of the real Constable McCormick would come up on her screen. Nick took a step toward the door, but Drake grabbed his sleeve and held him fast. He winked.
Instead of swiping the fob across the pad, Drake unhooked it from his jacket, fumbled it, and dropped it into the receipt slot at the base of the window. “What a klutz,” he said. “I’m terribly sorry.” His Sean Connery showed renewed confidence.