Vicious Circle (52 page)

Okay, so I was free. But where the hell was I? I set out from the chair in tiny, inching steps, my arms out straight ahead of me, until I found a wall. Then I worked my way along it to the corner. This was no cupboard, obviously: it was a fair-size room, although the roughcast feel of the walls still suggested a storage area of some kind rather than a public space.

I was intending to circumnavigate the room, but a little way along the second wall I found a door—and then its very welcome neighbor, a light switch. I turned it on with a silent prayer, and three strip lights flickered into life over my head, leaving me blinking in a harsh, white radiance.

I’d guessed right: this was a storeroom, high-ceilinged, with deep shelves running the entire length of the far wall. They were all empty, though, except for a few circular drums about a foot and a half in diameter, which were presumably old movie reels. When the standing exhibition went walkabout, they must have taken pretty much everything that wasn’t nailed down. Either that or Gwillam had ordered the room cleared to make sure I didn’t find anything that might help me escape.

But nobody’s perfect. As my gaze came full circle and I looked across at the far side of the door from where I stood, a grim smile spread across my face. Because screwed to the wall, hiding in plain sight, was a small white box with a red cross stenciled on its face. A first aid kit.

My ticket out of here.

T
HE
CONTENTS
OF A
FIRST
AID
KIT
VARY
A
LOT
FROM
PLACE
to place, but the core is always the same—bandages and sticking plasters in a million different shapes and sizes. There’s usually a bottle of disinfectant and some cotton buds; this one even had a few exotics like Savlon spray and vinegar for stings. None of that mattered a damn. I was looking for items that had either a point or an edge.

I got lucky. There was a tiny pair of scissors, a pair of splinter forceps, and a half-dozen safety pins.

The door had a simple mortice deadlock with no lockmaker’s name on the plate. I dropped the forceps back into the box: probably too wide, and certainly not strong enough. I bent back one of the safety pins into a nearly straight line, then using the scissors as a makeshift pair of pliers I twisted the sharp end up and back into a hook. After a hairpin, it’s my favorite kind of improvised lockpick, and it was easily up to a job as straightforward as this.

Five minutes were all it took to work the lock’s three levers around into the release position, the third one falling into place with a very satisfying click. Before I tried the door, I turned the light out and let my eyes adjust to the dark again. There was no light coming from under the door: if there had been, I’d have noticed it before, when the room was still in darkness. Under the circumstances, the goal was to see before I was seen. Otherwise I’d be back to square one.

After about a minute, I eased the door open as silently as I could. Peering out, I waited until the wider darkness outside had started to resolve itself into shapes before I stepped out. I was in another part of the massive main exhibition area, as sepulchral and empty as the part where Gwillam had interrogated me. There should be any number of ways out onto the street from here, or into other parts of the South Bank complex that were still open to the public. All I had to do was to make sure I didn’t bump into any of Gwillam’s merry little band on the way. In the case of Po, though, that meant not just avoiding being seen but also not letting him get my scent.

The level I was on seemed to be entirely deserted, so from that point of view I was doing fine. I thought about resting up for a few minutes here before I moved on; but time was pressing: I didn’t know what I might have said while I was under the drug, or how much Gwillam now knew. There was also the fact that since I was still dressed only in a hospital gown I’d probably get hypothermia if I hung around too long in this frigid air.

After a minute or so of tacking backward and forward across the huge space I found a staircase and headed down, taking it slow in the pitch dark to avoid going arse over tip all the way to the bottom. I was reasoning that at the very least I’d probably hit a door to the car park—which in turn had to connect with the street. Even if there was a security grille and it was locked shut, I was reasonably sure that I’d be able to jimmix it and get out.

But the door at the bottom of the stairwell was a fire door, with a padlock and chain hung over the bar in defiance of law and logic. I retraced my steps to the floor above, tried the door there. It opened when I pushed, so I stopped when the crack was about an inch wide and peered in.

Not quite dark here: there were lights on somewhere ahead—a dull, slightly bluish glow coming around the edge of what looked like a movable partition wall up ahead of me and slightly to my left. I listened: no sound at all, except for the very faint hum of some kind of machinery.

I stepped out and eased the door closed behind me. Sooner or later I had to come out of the stairwell, and the closer to the ground I was the better I’d like it. The South Bank Centre is a spectacular vertical maze even with the lights on. I could waste a quarter of an hour or more just shuffling up and down in the dark.

A few steps brought me to the edge of the partition wall. Moving as slowly and silently as I could, I leaned around it and looked in at the source of the light.

A man was sitting in a cheap plastic bucket chair at a computer terminal. His back was to me, but I recognized the bald spot: it was Sallis. He was scrolling slowly through endless screens of double-columned text, and he seemed absolutely intent. The gun, with the silencer now removed, sat beside him on the desk where the computer had been set up, in between a Republic of Coffee cup and a Styrofoam burger box. The Anathemata might be tooled up for war but they were living like cops on a stakeout.

I considered my options. No one else in sight, and no other islands of light in the immense room. Sallis was deep into something that seemed to have completely cut him off from the world around him. I could sneak on past him, and maybe make it to another exit without him clocking me on the way.

On the other hand, there was the gun. And the clothes. And whatever money he might have in his pockets. Needs must when the devil drives.

I took a step back, then another; and one sideways. Working from memory, that was the best I could do. I charged the partition shoulder first, taking a flying leap at the last moment so that I hit it high and had all my weight on its upper half as it came down and I came down with it.

Sallis didn’t even yell. He did make some kind of a sound, but it’s not one I could do justice to without specialized equipment. His head slammed forward into the desk with a solid smack as he fell, forced down by the weight of the partition and my body; then the legs of the desk gave way and he just vanished from sight under the general wreckage.

I rolled over twice and came up quickly, spinning to face him in case he was still conscious and going for the gun, but I needn’t have worried. He was sprawled on the ground, absolutely still, his head and upper body under the fallen partition. I snatched the gun up myself, tried to work out which end was which, and eventually found the safety catch. With that matter sorted, I levered the near end of the partition wall aside with my foot. Sallis was out cold, a trickle of blood wending its way down his forehead from a shallow cut. He was still breathing, though, and the cut was the only wound I could see. He’d probably get out of this with nothing worse than a headache.

I stripped him quickly, shrugged into his jeans, shirt, and jacket. They fitted me pretty well, all things considered, and the slight stink of his stale sweat was a price I was willing to pay. I searched his pockets. Bingo: a small wad of notes, a card wallet, even a set of car keys on a fancy fob that bore the Mitsubishi logo. I took the gun, too, since there was no way of getting back my weapon of choice.

I was done, and I had places to be, but I hesitated because an idea had struck me. Another one came hard on its heels, way above average, and annoying because it meant going back the way I’d come. I wasn’t sure whether the gain in matériel would offset the loss of time, but either way I didn’t have the luxury of standing here agonizing about it.

First things first. Rooting amidst the wreckage of the desk, I found a few sheets of paper and a black pen. I rested the paper against Sallis’s back and scribbled a brief note. It probably wouldn’t help, but it couldn’t hurt so what the hell. I folded the note and tucked it into the waistband of his underpants, like a fiver into a Chippendale’s jockstrap.

Then I retraced my steps to the storeroom and collected up about half a dozen of those old film canisters, shaking them first to make sure that they were full. They might be blank stock, useless now because the cameras that would take them had gone to rust and scrap decades ago; or alternatively they could be lost masterpieces from the silent era. I purposely didn’t read the labels in any case, because whatever they’d been before, the only attraction they had for me now was because the blast-proof doors over at Nicky’s gaff were still fresh in my mind: film burns like petrol burns.

Time to hit the road, and more than. This time around I wasn’t deterred by the padlock at the bottom of the stairs, because this time around I had Sallis’s gun. I missed with the first shot, blew the chain very effectively with the second, and kicked the doors open.

I was back in the car park, and it was empty. In case the indecently loud noise of the gunshots brought werewolves or security guards running to see what was what, I quickened my steps as I climbed the shallow ramp that led toward what I hoped was the exit. Halfway up there was a motorbike, leaning drunkenly against the wall in a way that suggested a broken kickstand. At the top there was a closed security grille. On the far side of the grille were light and sound and life: theatregoers and late-night revelers walked past, happily oblivious of the dark worlds that glided past theirs on sly, crazy tangents. The same night, or the next? How long had I been out after Gwillam slipped me the truth drug? The answer came pat: if I’d been unconscious for twenty-four hours I’d be a hell of a lot more seriously dehydrated than I was. It was still Thursday, and I was still in with a chance.

For a moment, I almost resented the people filtering past in the unrelenting slipstream of normality—not just for their happy or indifferent faces and their carefree conversations but because their presence right there, right then, meant I couldn’t use the gun again. I tried the grille. It wasn’t locked; it slid up with a stuck-pig squeal as I hauled on it.

Then I did a double take that in other circumstances might have been comic. I went back down to where the bike was parked, and took a closer look at it. The logo above the front headlight was the three-diamonds-making-a-triangle of the Mitsubishi company. The bike also had a pair of panniers at the back like a courier’s bike.

I experienced a momentary qualm of near panic as I fished Sallis’s keys out of the pocket of Sallis’s jacket. If this worked I had to be using up someone else’s luck, because this sure as hell didn’t feel like mine.

Trying to look casual for the benefit of anyone who might glance in from the street, I slid the film canisters into the panniers, three to each side, and climbed on board. There were running footsteps coming up the ramp now, and I heard a shout from behind me. I didn’t turn around; turning around at the sound of a shout just makes you look guilty.

The key fitted, and the engine roared into noisy, overemphatic life on the first turn. Now I did look back, and was on the whole relieved to find that the pursuit was wearing uniform—and flesh that was entirely human.

They were still fifty feet behind, giving me just about enough time to slip the helmet that was dangling from the handlebars—dark red, like the bike, and emblazoned with a winged skull motif—over my head. Safety first. Then I burned rubber, leaving the three yelling security guards to share my exhaust between them.

I wasn’t sure how to go in at the Stanger Care Home. Was I a wanted felon, now? The ram raid on a North London hospital had to have made the news. The question was whether they’d sorted through the debris yet and ascertained that I wasn’t in it—and if so, whether they’d put out any kind of a public warning alongside the inevitable
APB
.

If they had, walking into the Stanger like it was all business as usual might mean walking straight back into police custody. On the other hand, there was something inside that I needed, and I couldn’t see any other way of getting it.

But while I was still sitting astride the bike in the darkened car park, irresolute, providence reached out to me in the shape of Paul. He came lumbering out through the main doors, leaned against the side of the ambulance where we’d had our talk a few days before, and lit up. He blew a plume of smoke out through his nostrils, and it hung in faint lines in the still air like a runic inscription carved into the flesh of the night.

As I got off the bike and walked toward him, he glanced in my direction and then took a longer, harder look. Because of the bike he’d had me pegged as a stranger, but I saw the doubt appear in his face and I saw him tense. By that time I was close enough for him to hear me without me having to raise my voice too much. I took the helmet off and kept on walking.

“Hey, Paul,” I offered.

He thrust out his lower lip in a look of truculent puzzlement. “Hey, Castor. I thought you were meant to be on the run from the police.”

I nodded easily, strolling up beside him and resting one shoulder against the ambulance, the helmet tucked casually under my arm and my free hand thrust into the pocket of Sallis’s leather jacket. “That’s right,” I said, flicking the helmet with the tip of my thumb. “Hence the cunning disguise.”

“Armed and dangerous, is what I heard.”

“Armed, yes.” I showed him the handgun, put it away again fast. “I’d only be dangerous if I was organized. How’s Rafi?”