‘That’s heavy,’ said Harper.
‘Yeah, well, like I said, it packs a punch.’
‘Maybe something a bit more traditional.’
T-Bone nodded and bent over one of the trunks. He released two catches and opened the lid to reveal several dozen packages in see-through Ziploc plastic bags. ‘How about a Smith & Wesson Model 629?’ he said, rooting through the packages. ‘It’s a .44 Magnum. It only holds six rounds but it has a three-inch barrel.’ He passed a package over to Harper and straightened up with a grunt. ‘I’ve got some Model 627s as well. They take eight rounds but the barrel is an inch longer.’
Harper unzipped the bag and took out the gun. It was wrapped in oiled cloth and looked brand new. ‘It weighs forty-two ounces,’ said T-Bone. ‘You won’t get much lighter than that, not without losing a lot of stopping power.’
Harper weighed the gun in his palm. ‘This feels OK,’ he said. He looked down the sights and then flicked the cylinder open and closed. ‘Yeah, I like this. You’ve got two?’
T-Bone bent down, rooted through a package and pulled one out. ‘There you go.’
‘Price?’
‘A grand and a half.’
‘For the pair?’
‘Each.’
‘Three grand?’
‘Maths is clearly your strong suit, yeah?’
‘Three grand for two guns?’
‘They’re mint. Never been fired. They were stolen from a gun shop in LA last year. Absolutely untraceable. Take them away for three grand and if you don’t fire them I’ll pay you fifteen hundred to take them back.’
‘Rounds?’
‘What do you want?’
‘A box’ll be fine.’
‘Box of twenty? You can have that for free. We got a deal?’
Harper nodded. ‘Yeah, we’ve got a deal.’ He put down the gun and took a envelope from the inside pocket of his parka. He rippled his finger over the fifty-pound notes it contained until he had counted out sixty of them. He handed them over to T-Bone. ‘I need something else, ammo-wise,’ he said. ‘I need rounds for a Makarov.’
‘You’ve got a thing for Russian guns?’ said T-Bone, pocketing the cash.
‘For this particular gun, yeah. I just need a box of ammo.’
‘Small gun, right? Nine-mill?’ He closed the lid of the trunk and opened another. It was full of boxes of ammunition.
‘It’s more complicated than that,’ said Harper. ‘They talk about the Makarov being a nine-millimetre but the round is actually 9.22. The Russkies did that deliberately so the NATO forces couldn’t use captured Soviet ammunition.’
‘Smart.’ T-Bone picked up a box of shells and tossed them to Harper.
‘Paranoid, more like. Plus it meant they wouldn’t be able to use any ammo they took from NATO soldiers. So six of one, really.’
‘But what you’re saying is that it needs special ammo?’ He closed the lid of the trunk.
‘Yeah. Have you got any?’
T-Bone shook his head. ‘Nah, but I can probably get some. Let me make a call.’
He took out his flashlight and switched it on, then switched off the fluorescent light. Harper pulled the door up and they both slipped underneath it and out into the alley. T-Bone locked the door. ‘You get in the car,’ he said to Harper. ‘I’ll make that call.’
T-Bone drove to Shepherd’s Bush. The Porsche’s satnav told them that they were arriving at their destination and Harper shook his head in disgust. ‘You’ve got to be careful with those things, T-Bone,’ he said. ‘The cops can use them to find out wherever you’ve been.’ They were heading for a supermarket with a large car park. The supermarket was open twenty-four hours a day but it was almost eleven o’clock and there were only a few cars there.
‘Don’t see how else I’d have found this place, it’s well out of my comfort zone,’ said T-Bone.
‘I’m just saying, it stores every location you’ve ever been to and the route you used.’ He gestured at the screen. ‘And here’s the thing, it does that even if it’s switched off.’
‘Bullshit,’ growled T-Bone.
‘I kid you not. You think the thing’s off but it’s not. And it’s all in there. Same as your mobile. Switching it off makes no difference. And the spooks, man, they can listen in to a phone even when it’s off.’
‘Says who?’
‘Says me, and I know people. People who know. The only way to silence a phone is to take out the battery. It used to be that you could get away with just changing SIM cards, but now it’s the phone itself they use. Once they’ve got the IMEI number, they’ve got you.’
‘IMEI?’
‘International Mobile Station Equipment Identity. Every phone has one. You can check yours by tapping in star hash zero six hash. Now in the good old days they tracked the IMSI number which is stored on the SIM. But now they go after the IMEI. And like I said, switching off the phone doesn’t help.’
‘So what do you do, Harpic?’
‘Me? I buy cheap phones and chuck them every couple of weeks.’
They saw a grey Range Rover parked at the far end of the supermarket car park with its lights off. ‘That’s them,’ said T-Bone.
‘They’ve come all the way out here for a box of ammo?’
‘We do a lot of business with them and I’m due a favour or two,’ said T-Bone. He brought the car to a halt about fifty feet away from the Range Rover.
‘How much do I owe you?’
T-Bone laughed. ‘It’s on me,’ he said. ‘I overcharged you on the guns.’ He switched off his lights.
‘I know,’ said Harper. ‘But as I was paying with counterfeit notes, I figured what the hell.’
T-Bone’s hand was halfway inside his Puffa jacket when he realised that Harper was joking. ‘You stay here. They’re not great with new faces.’ T-Bone climbed out of the SUV, flexed his shoulders, and walked slowly and purposefully over to the Range Rover.
Harper looked around. A young woman walked out of the store pushing a trolley laden with carrier bags. A bearded old man in a cheap cloth coat and a piece of rope for a belt spoke to her, presumably asking for a handout, but she hurried past. A white van pulled into the car park and stopped in a handicapped space. The fat man in blue overalls who climbed out of the van didn’t appear to have any disabilities as he strode into the supermarket.
Harper looked back at the Range Rover. T-Bone was still walking slowly towards it, his hands swinging freely, his gloved hands clenching and unclenching like those of a cowboy preparing for a fast draw. For the first time the vulnerability of his situation struck home. He was in someone else’s car, in a place he wasn’t familiar with, while a drug-dealing gangster walked towards a car full of people he didn’t know who were almost certainly armed. Harper trusted T-Bone but he didn’t know the men in the Range Rover. Plus T-Bone had three thousand pounds in his pocket. Harper fumbled one of the packages out of his pocket. He unzipped the plastic bag and unwrapped the cloth to reveal the chromed revolver. The box of rounds was in his inside pocket and he pulled it open. The box was sealed and he used his teeth to rip off the plastic wrapping before pulling it open. He flicked out the cylinder and quickly slotted in six rounds. He clicked the cylinder back into place and slid the box back into his inside pocket. He sat with the gun between his legs, his finger outside the trigger guard, as he watched T-Bone walk up to the Range Rover. The window wound down and Harper tensed. His brain went into overdrive as he breathed slowly and evenly, his mind running through all the options. T-Bone had left the keys in the Porsche so if push came to shove he could jump over into the driving seat and drive off. But T-Bone was a friend, and a good one, so if it did all turn to shit Harper would have no choice other than to get out of the car and start shooting. And he was all too aware of how few rounds he had in the revolver. Six shots were more than enough to put down a man, but they wouldn’t be much use against a sturdy vehicle like a Range Rover.