Graft (27 page)

T
he morning wears
down under low cloud scudding fast. A thick grey band moves over, getting heavier, murkier, all the while.

Sol manages to push the Audi fully into the ditch. Though its rear quarter juts out a touch, the incline means you'd have to know exactly where the car is to glimpse it from the carriageway, harder still if you're passing at speed.

In his head, Sol tells himself he'll come back later to move Sandy properly. With dignity. Clean her face; wipe down the spray of dark liquid she's coughed against the windscreen.

Back from the verge, he finds Roy inspecting his injury; winding and rewinding the rag. “It'll fall off if you keep fiddling,” Sol says.

Roy smiles at him drowsily.

“I'm done pushing anyway,” Sol tells him, “so now you can tell me what she said.”

Roy shrugs. “Didn't I already? She didn't know much, and she wasn't in a place to blag. She did pickups, drops – they do work in chains, like I thought.”

“Like you thought? How many?”

“How many what?”

“How many did she move?”

Roy shrugs again.

“Did you tell her about Y?”

“Are you a total bellend, Solomon?”

“Then what about the hazmat suit – you ask about that?”

“Nope.” Roy holds up his bad hand. “Is this taking the mick or what? I can't get it tight enough.”

“Maybe she didn't know better,” Sol says. “And with that thing sticking out of her you'd have to guess…”

“So let's go up there and have a nose about,” Roy says, still fiddling. Presently the knot seems to hold. He clenches his fingers over the wrap to test its stretch.

“What's up there?”

Roy nods. “Enough. Sounds like a hub for a right load of miscreants. Stopoff for her, though. She got her time, turned up, left again. Like a courier. But get this: I mention Sellafield and she goes silent and pouts at me. I ask if there's a network – if they pay her a salary – and she cracks up laughing. She worked down south, she said, for some guy or other. Couldn't be doing with northerners like me. And here, well it's the gateway to the north, isn't it? I already knew there were Wilbers working out of here – their runners and that. Packed so full of nasty bastards you'll stay a nobody if you just keep your head down.”

Sol thinks:
You'll fit right in.
He says, “And you still believe your fairy tales about this tech?”

Another shrug. “I know people usually tell me the truth when there's a gun in play.”

Sol glowers.

“You're driving us,” Roy says. “I need a piss too badly.”

Sol looks at Sandy's Audi in the ditch and resigns himself to it. They get back in the Sierra without argument. He still feels bilious – adrenaline constantly on and off. Y's peaceful deathmask in his mirror as they head for the turn-off – the shell of a faded green bridge spanning the lanes – and up the sliproad.

Welcome to Knutsford Services
.

“Steady it,” Roy says. “Nice and steady.”

The main car park's mostly bare – lorries by the water pumps and fuel depot, and a cluster of cars and personnel vehicles near the old service station. Its diesel pumps are frontless, their fuel lines crudely delimited to make sure drivers can fill up their tanks as quickly as possible. From behind the main pavilion rises the telltale black smoke of burning rubbish. Tendrils of grill smoke, white, mix in, and through the Sierra's dash blowers comes the unmistakeable stink of tyres melting. Further away, behind all this, a row of long black bags swings from the street furniture. Despite the implications, Sol tries not to dwell on them. Kangaroo courts were common enough during the riot years, but their evidence has always unsettled him to the point of wilful ignorance.

It starts to rain. Roy points out a set of truck trailers with dozens of crates stacked on the ground beside them. “Bet that's how they're moving them,” he says. “Look – what's up the side of it –
IN
?”

“Yeah. And the one in the Audi said out.”

“Mad,” Roy says. “Can't get my head round it.”

Sol swallows. Blood from Roy's wound has crept up to his elbow. Things feel fragile, and Sol's shoulders and ribcage are heavy. Are they really moving people around like this? It seems so brazen. “It can't be that many,” Sol says. “It can't. Someone'd do something. The drones.”

Roy yawns. “I told you. Plenty happens on this backwards island we'll never understand.”

The main pavilion is hollowed, ad hoardings empty. On its roof a squad of privateers locked into their sweeps.

“Security?” Sol asks. By this he also means the truck full of privateers looking for all the world like they've staged a coup on a Mardi Gras float. From their chanting – old football songs, at a guess – he'd say they're drinking.

“Keep going,” Roy tells him. Sol decides he doesn't seem to mind Sol driving – would sooner have the Luger to hand. But he's clearly on edge.

“Sol,” Roy says.

Sol's going too quickly for the car park. Too fast not to get them noticed.

“Sol.”

And sure enough, two privateers break away from the main building to intercept them.

“Bastard,” Roy whispers.

Sol's too fixated on the men crossing the apron to notice the halo of barriers that's risen up to cordon off the service station. Luckily, Roy has. He touches Sol's forearm to get his attention, then taps his forehead. “Keep driving like that and they'll only shoot the sky once. The rest'll come through that big shiny fod of yours. Leave the chatting to me, and don't do anything daft. Those bollards can stop tanks.”

One of the privateers raises a hand.

“Slow off,” Roy says.

Sol brakes, his tongue a fat worm. He swallows and wipes his hands down his front.

“Roy–”

“Shut up,” Roy hisses, and waves the first privateer to his window. Sol listens to the idling engine, hears every catastrophic failure waiting to happen–

“We're on a drop,” Roy tells the privateer.

The privateer snorts, pulls off his helmet. He can't be more than eighteen. Sol looks over his gear: state uniform with patches and tags ripped off. “Pickup only,” the man says, a thick accent that doesn't waver from a single flat note. “Drop, no. Here is pickup only. Who do you run for?”

“Can't say,” Roy tells him, tapping his nose. “But it's high priority.”

The privateer dead-eyes Sol. “And the black friend?”

“Guard and driver. All-round good 'un. English is a bit ropey, mind – fresh off the boat. But you know you need protection round here.” Roy winks at the second privateer's rifle.

“You see only his eyes,” the man says. “Until he opens the mouth.” He laughs at himself, then over at the second privateer. Then he squats to look into the back. “And her?”

Roy sucks his teeth. Sol's confident on how fast Roy can pull the Luger, but he doesn't want him to have to.

“Wait…” Sol whispers.

Roy gets out. Slow, deliberate movement, his injured hand held in one pocket. Sol keeps Y's reflection in sight. He wants to be back there, next to her. A hand on her chin. Hers on his –

Roy asks Sol to unlock the rear door.

Sol carefully extends the lock pin. The privateers circle the Sierra from both directions. They gesture towards the bonnet, and Roy moves there.

The first privateer opens the passenger door. The second stands away, cradling his rifle. In the mirror, Sol follows the movement of the man's camo collar, dreary light playing on his neck stubble. He watches the privateer's hands move over Y. Her blankets coming away like onion peel. Her tracksuit top pulled at, unzipped.

The privateer says something. Sol can't make it out – possibly another language. He glances out at Roy. Not for the first time, Roy seems rattled – a look that intensifies Sol's panic.

Helpless, he watches the young privateer push on Y's scalp, not far from the churn of her crown. His hand moves to the back of her neck, where he picks at the wires in an unpleasant approximation of affection. Sol fights the impulse to impede him, to distract him. Anything to stop him interfering with her.

But instead he witnesses Y's eyes flicker –

Focus –

And hold his gaze in the mirror. Her irises seem to expand and contract.

“Why make her off?” the young privateer says to Roy. “She's bootlegged?”

Roy looks at Sol. But Roy can't see Y. And Sol can't breathe, can't speak, can't anything –

“What?” Roy asks. “High calibre, this one. You interested? Let us through and we'll talk decisions with someone more important than you.”

The young privateer thinks about that. He says, “If I get to play,” and raises his finger towards the pavilion.

“Ta,” Roy says. He gets back in the car and, through one side of his mouth, says, “Move.”

Sol edges over the car park markings. The bollards lower as they draw closer. “Y,” he whispers. “Can you hear me? Can you – oh Christ, Y – can you move?”

Y blinks at him. Her eyes have a dewy quality, and their colour's changed. At the border of her left iris, a corona of vivid green leeches into her whites. Her pupils have contracted to pinheads.

“What you on about?” Roy asks.

Sol puts a hand behind the chair, squeezes her knee. “It's me. It's me, Sol. You remember, don't you? You know me, don't you?”

“Sol?”

“Look at her,” Sol manages. “Look at her.”

“Bloody nora,” Roy says, manic excitement rising in his voice. “Fucking hell. Is she–”

“She's awake, isn't she? I'm not just making it up? Oh shit, Roy. What are we doing?”

“How, though?”

“That guy faffed around with the back of her head. Her eyes came on–”

“Shit,” Roy says. “Shit. There's not a bastard switch is there? Jesus, that's insane. Keep up – you've got to keep it up. Look, that guy's directing us through.”

“Now what?” Sol whispers.

“She's awake,” Roy says. “She really is.”

“What do we do? Tell me! Is she in pain?”

“Wait…”

“I'm turning. We're going, right now–”

“No!” Roy snaps. “They're right behind us.”

“But she's
awake
,” Sol shouts, speeding up. They cut a right angle away from the pavilion. Hearing the Sierra's dodgy exhaust, a nearby crowd divides, like a cell, into two smaller groups.

“No, Sol –
no!
” Roy urges. “We're doing this. Just get past them, past them. You can loop back on yourself. The sliproad's only there.”

But Sol is concentrating on the escape at all costs; too frightened, too distracted by Y's laser eyes. He takes them through the gap in the crowd. People in down puffer jackets, others in next to nothing. Huddles of dealers, pushers, wads of cash changing hands. They pass a woman, older, thick fringe, and in her Sol sees Mel for an instant; relives in rapid flashes her long descent to that bed in Salford General; the marks in her arms, the looseness of her back skin when he held her; the spots and sores she endured.

Beyond the Mel-woman, he sees a man and teenaged boy emerge from behind a row of portable toilets.

“Stop the car,” a piercing voice says. “In the Ford, stop the car.” It's coming through a loudhailer. A woman holding it. She repeats herself, and a breath is sucked from Sol's mouth. The massed crowd stares at the Sierra.

The sky's fully black. The rain's getting heavier.

“Here we go,” Roy says. His wrapped hand is held against his face, and the blood's started welling up through the material.

Sol stops the car.

“This vehicle isn't on our list,” the woman says. Her English is tart, flawless, but there's a certain lumpiness to her voice, like she needs to clear her throat.

“Stop fretting,” Roy says to Sol. “I can feel you shaking.”

“Transporting broken assets in an unlisted vehicle,” the woman goes on, “is a crime.”

Roy undoes his seatbelt and cups his mouth to throw his voice. “We found her,” he shouts. “In a skip. She's pretty beaten up, and we thought… We heard of you. A friend of a friend. We thought you'd want a look.”

Sol can't tell what Roy is thinking.

The woman steps out of the crowd: tall, white-haired, leather-skinned, and wrapped in a decadent shawl.

Roy gets out of the car.

“I'm Leila,” the woman says. She lowers the megaphone in a slow, elegant arc, then raises it to add something: “Not that it matters.” Sol gets the impression her megaphone follows the exact same path each time.

“Roy,” he shouts back. “And this is Solomon – my detail.”

Sol's toes are starting to cramp with the tension. Again he seeks Y in the mirror, again finds her staring. He squeezes her leg; more reassuring for him, he realizes, than for her.

“Let's stop pontificating,” Leila says. “What do you want for her?”

Roy leers in at Y as if to estimate her value. He looks at Sol and quickly away again. Nothing can derail the act.

If it's an act at all –

“Including repairs?”

Leila waves a walkie-talkie. “The boy says impact damage, wetware reset, and unlocking. Even before we know what else is wrong, that's a lot of work. Of course you've then got shipping… risk pay… extra to keep things under the table…”

A vague thought pops in Sol's mind:
Strip it all down and put it back together again.

“
Give me a figure,” Roy says.

Sol blanches. What did he just say?

Across the car park, through the rain, Leila taps twice at her side. Movement in the crowd – the young privateer at her beck and call. He gives her what looks like a tablet. “Take a stroll,” she says to Roy, beckoning. “The chauffeur can stay put.”