Border Princes

NINETEEN

They slammed the doors of the SUV. Jack led them across the street, his hands in his coat pockets.

The van had been parked on a meter between a Volvo and a Mondeo. Trees overhung from behind garden walls, and the broad pavement was slick with dead leaves.

‘Mr Swirly,’ Gwen read. The van was old, an old Commer, its paint job fading and peeling in places: decals of ice-cream cones and space-rocket ice lollies pasted over a pink and cream background. James pressed his hand against the back panel grille.

‘Still warm.’

Cupping his hands around his eyes, Jack peered in through the hatch window. The interior was gloomy, but it was reasonable to conclude that Mr Swirly hadn’t dispensed ice-cream products for a fair number of years.

‘Look around,’ Jack instructed, rotating his hand. ‘He’s got to be close.’

Jack went one way, Gwen and James the other. They walked along the damp pathway, past the raw smells of cyanothus and creosote-drenched fencing.

‘Posh houses,’ said Gwen. ‘I hate posh bloody houses with names. Look. Bindreamin’. What the bloody hell is that about?’

James shrugged.

‘Bindreamin’. I ask you. Do you think it’s the home of a retired garbage collector?’

‘That would be Binladen, surely?’

‘Oh, you’re going to hell then,’ she said.

‘You know what Julius Caesar called his house?’ James asked.

She looked at him. ‘This is a joke, isn’t it? Hang on. The Laurels? No, no, wait… Caesar’s Palace?’

‘Dunroman,’ he said.

She winced. ‘I do not believe you actually had the nerve to crack that one,’ she said. Her phone rang.

‘Yeah, hello?’

‘Concentrate. Please,’ said Jack’s voice.

They looked back down the street at Jack, and Gwen gave him a cheery wave.

‘Will do,’ she said into her phone and hung up.

They went past two more driveways.

‘And as for friggin’ gnomes,’ she began.

James touched her arm. She followed his line of sight. Across the street, down a gravel driveway, a young, good-looking man in a suit was standing at a front door with his back to them. He had a briefcase under his arm. He was talking to a middle-aged woman in a housecoat. The house was called Idlewhile.

Gwen pressed a fastkey on her phone. She let it ring once then hung up. Far away, down the street, Jack turned and immediately began making his way back towards them.

James and Gwen started across the road. They approached the gate.

‘Hang back,’ Gwen said quietly. ‘It’ll spook him right off if he sees two of us.’ James obediently stepped back behind a dwarf conifer at the gate post.

Gwen stopped in the open gateway.

‘Excuse me!’ she called.

The man turned and looked at her with a slightly baffled, slightly annoyed expression. The middle-aged woman didn’t react at all.

‘Excuse me,’ Gwen repeated. ‘Is that your van parked back there?’

‘What?’

‘Your van? The ice-cream van?’

‘Who are you?’ the man asked. He was stiff, wary. His briefcase lay in the crook of his arm, like a clipboard. It was unzipped.

‘I’m only asking because I could fancy a Ninety-Nine just now. Any chance?’

The man took a few steps back up the driveway towards her. He stared at her. The woman remained in the doorway of Idlewhile, gazing into space.

‘Are you joking?’ he asked.

‘No. I love Ninety-Nines, me.’

He took another step closer.

‘Are you police?’ he asked.

‘Maybe I am. Maybe I’m here to check your ice-cream permit. Maybe I’m from the cones hotline. Maybe I’ve come to examine your wafer waiver. Geddit?’

‘What?’

‘Now I’m joking. Keep up.’ She fixed him with a bright grin. ‘How d’you do it, then?’

‘How do I do what?’

‘What’ve got in the briefcase? What’s your secret?’

Dean Simms swallowed. He squeezed the soft lump in his briefcase.

Gwen took a step back. She got a sudden, strong smell of cut-grass and vanilla.

She turned and walked away. James stared at her as she went past him.

‘What are you doing?’ he hissed.

‘Oh, there you are,’ she smiled.

‘What are you doing?’

She shrugged. ‘I… I dunno…’

‘Gwen?’

The man with the briefcase came out of the driveway behind her and saw James. His face darkened.

James moved towards him.

‘These aren’t the droids you’re looking for,’ the man said.

‘What?’ asked James. ‘You what?’

Dean Simms gazed at James. ‘These aren’t the… you… you’re supposed to… ‘He squeezed the soft lump again.

‘Give me the briefcase,’ said James.

Dean hesitated, then turned and ran off down the street. A second later, Jack pounded by in pursuit.

‘Come on!’ Jack yelled as he went past.

‘Again with the running?’ James wailed, and set off after them.

Gwen, wrinkling her nose, stood there for a moment. She watched the three running figures recede down the street.

‘Y-? What-w-?’ she said. She turned around, then looked back at them. ‘Where are you going?’ she shouted. She paused. ‘Why am I standing here?’ she asked herself.

‘Why am I talking to myself?’ she added.

She started off after them. They’d all but disappeared, and she was only jogging half-heartedly. She took out her phone and dialled. It answered after three rings.

‘James?’

The line was distorted and choppy with breathing noises. ‘Running,’ he replied, with effort.

‘About that. Why are you and Jack running away from me?’

‘We’re not. We’re. Running after. The Guy.’

‘OK. What guy?’

‘The guy. We’re looking. For. He hyp. Notised you.’

‘No, honestly? I don’t remember that.’

‘Well. You would. N’t. Can’t talk. Gotta puke.’

He hung up.

‘Hypnotised?’ Gwen said to herself, jogging to a halt. She brushed hair out of her eyes and frowned with the effort of thinking.

Her eyes widened. ‘Ooooooooh,’ she said, nodding.

She started to run.

‘Is it my imagination, or is that getting worse?’ Owen asked.

Toshiko’s hands ran across her keyboard. ‘It’s not your imagination. That’s really getting hot. How could it just pop out of nowhere?’

‘Same way everything else does,’ said Owen. ‘Got a fix yet?’

‘Area only. Cathays, I think. I’m narrowing the search focus. Should have a street name or a GPS fix in about three minutes. Less, if it keeps getting hotter.’

‘Jack needs to know about this,’ Owen said.

‘Oh, absolutely,’ she agreed.

‘Ianto!’ Owen yelled. ‘Get Jack on the blower!’

Ianto picked up a cordless and pressed auto-dial.

‘It’s ringing,’ he said.

Jack and James came around the street corner almost neck and neck. They had to break formation to go either side of a pillar box.

‘There!’ James yelled, pointing.

This street was busier than the residential roads they had come out of. Some shops, some traffic, a muddle of people. Ahead of them, they could see the fugitive.

Dean had been forced to slow down, simply in order to duck and weave around the pedestrians in his path. He’d already bumped into one old lady. He risked a glance backwards.

The two men were still on his tail: the big, dark-haired guy in the long coat, and the leaner blond who’d challenged him. What were they? CID? He’d juiced the girl well enough, even though it had been off the cuff and desperate, but the blond guy hadn’t even flinched.

How the bloody hell had he resisted?

‘He got to Gwen,’ James yelled, leaping a toddler on reins.

‘That much was obvious,’ replied Jack, turning his body sidelong to fit between two bewildered Bengali women.

Jack’s phone started to ring. Still running, he hooked on his Bluetooth.

‘This is Jack.’

‘Owen for you,’ said Ianto’s voice.

‘Jack-’ Owen began.

‘Kinda busy, Owen!’ Jack replied, grunting as he barely avoided colliding with an opening car door.

‘That’s great. We’ve got a situation.’

‘Gee, so have we. Call me back.’

In the Hub, Owen lowered the phone from his ear and made ‘can you believe that?’ eyes at Ianto.

‘I swear, he never takes me seriously,’ he said.

‘Getting hotter!’ Toshiko sang out from her station.

Owen stabbed redial.

Jack heard a crash and some squawking. He glanced over his shoulder. James had piled into an ageing hippy on a skateboard and they’d both gone over. Tin cans and potatoes clattered and rolled out of the hippy’s split shopping bags. The skateboard shot out into the road.

‘Sorry! Sorry!’ said James, picking himself up.

‘You’re a bloody menace, mister!’ the hippy yelled. James was running again. He’d lost ground. Jack had the lead, but the crowd was getting thicker. For a split second, the devil in him considered drawing his Webley and waving it around.

‘Coming through! One side!’ Jack roared, hoping his accent and gleaming grin would do instead.

His phone rang again.

‘Seriously, Owen, it’ll have to wait.’

‘Don’t hang up! Don’t hang up!’ Owen gabbled.

‘Owen-’

‘We’ve got a thing. A big thing.’

‘Scale of one to ten?’

‘Er…’

Jack hung up. He shoved through a crowd of teenagers outside a video shop. He saw the guy, ten yards away, stumbling over a dog lead. The guy looked back, saw Jack, and hurled himself in through the automatic doors of a mini-mart, banging against them when they opened too slowly.

Jack ran up to the doors, allowed them to reopen, and walked inside. His phone rang. He ignored it.

Bright strip lights. Soulless magnolia lino with trolley scuffs. Aisles of produce shelves and humming freezers. The smell of plastic, soap powder and vegetables. There were a few dozen people inside, most queuing at the tills, some pushing trolleys around the aisles. Everyone had come to a halt and was looking around, even the checkout girls. Muzak played.

Everybody stared at Jack. He walked past the stack of empty wire baskets to the chrome turnstile. It was still spinning.

He slid through it. ‘Looking for a guy,’ Jack called out. ‘He came in here a second ago. I know you all saw him.’

The shoppers and the checkout girls gazed at Jack uncomfortably. They were thinking cops and robbers, they were thinking some dangerous nut with a weapon.

‘Everything’s OK,’ Jack smiled, holding up his hands. ‘There’s no danger. I just need to know where he went.’

He looked at a football mum, who averted her eyes, then at an OAP, who shook her head in a choose someone else disavowal.

‘Come on, help a guy out,’ said Jack. ‘Somebody knows where he is. Anybody?’

He caught the eye of the floor manager, a small, slope-shouldered, scrawny man in late middle age. The floor manager’s supermarket uniform was ill-fitting. He was standing at the price-check post behind the checkouts. He said something inaudible.

‘I’m sorry?’ said Jack, cupping a hand to his ear.

The manager coughed, and slowly picked up the stand mic on the price-check post. He thumbed the ‘on’ button and cleared his throat, which caused a brief burp of amplified feedback.

‘Uh,’ the floor manager’s voice came over the speakers, interrupting the Muzak. ‘Aisle five. Frozen goods.’

‘Thank you,’ said Jack, with an honest nod.

‘Uh, happy to be of service,’ the floor manager replied over the speakers. He took his thumb off the button and the Muzak resumed.

Jack hurried along the aisle-ends, and then darted up aisle four, watching everywhere for movement. The few shoppers he passed cowered back behind their trolleys or simply stared at him in fascination.

‘Hi,’ he whispered to several of them.

The aisles had mid-length breaks. Jack sidled up to the aisle four break, his back against the shelves (cleaning fluids, bleach, disinfectant), and peered around the corner at the aisle five displays.

No one in sight.

He stepped around into aisle five, feeling the cold aura of the chest freezers. There was no one in the aisle except a huge black woman standing beside her trolley as if she’d been told to make like a statue. Her eyes were wide.

No sign of the guy. Jack hadn’t expected to see him. Everyone in the shop had heard the floor manager rat out his position over the Tannoy.

Jack took a step forwards and leant on the nearest freezer compartment (pizzas, stone-ground, deep pan and thin-n-crispy, budget, double-topping) and bent down to peer under the eye-level ice-boxes at the bank of freezers that backed on to the aisle five units to form aisle six. Nothing.

He stood up again. He looked at the big black woman, and raised his eyebrows quizzically.

Remaining otherwise immobile, her eyes still wide, the big black woman extended her index finger and jabbed it repeatedly in the direction of aisle six.

She winked.

Jack beamed and mouthed a ‘thank you’.

As quietly as he could, Jack climbed into the freezer full of pizzas. He gently rolled himself under the eye-level display and over into the adjacent aisle six freezer (chill-fresh prawns, seafood medley, haddock portions, individual boil-in-the-bag cod in parsley sauce, fish fingers). Frosty packaging crackled softly under his weight. The big black woman’s eyes grew even wider.

Flat on his back in the freezer compartment, Jack braced, counted silently to three, and lurched upright.

The man in the suit was crouching down below the freezer’s fascia. He started up at Jack’s surprise appearance.

‘Hi there,’ said Jack.

Dean Simms reached into his briefcase.

Jack pounced on him.

They went down together in a bundle of limbs. Dean’s briefcase fell out of his grasp and slapped onto the lino. Magazine inserts and a rather nice pen spilled out of it, along with a small, greasy beige lump that looked like a not-so-vital internal organ, the sort of thing that was hard to recognise in a quiz once you’d discounted liver, kidneys and spleen.

It flopped onto the hard floor and pulsed gently.

Struggling under Jack’s weight, Dean yelled something. Securing Dean’s arms, Jack gave him a slap that cowed him. Jack hoisted him up by the tie and leant him against the nearest freezer (summer puddings, freezer-to-oven apple pies, sorbets).

‘OK, you’re done,’ Jack told him. ‘Behave yourself.’ He glanced down at the pulsing lump.

‘Eeuww,’ he said. ‘You cough that up?’

Dean said nothing. His eyes blazed.

‘Listen to me,’ Jack began, ‘here’s what’s going to happen. We-’

His phone began to ring.

Jack looked away for a second. All his life, Dean had listened to his old man’s advice, keen to learn from him. Retail wasn’t the only thing his dad had known about. Dean’s old man had been an amateur welter-weight. Tough old bird, his dad.

Dean threw the jab, just the way his old man had taught him.

Distracted by his phone, Jack caught the fist square on the jaw. He reeled away, flailing, and hit the wall-freezers opposite (Ben and Jerry’s, soft scoop vanilla, Cornish dairy cream, triple fudge sundaes). The glass door cracked with his impact.

Jack tried to right himself, his hand to his mouth. ‘Jesus!’ he exclaimed.

Dean had picked up the beige lump. He aimed it at Jack and squeezed it.

Jack blinked. He took a step back. He got a sudden, strong smell of bourbon and willow.

‘I…’ he said. He glanced around. He leant back against the cracked glass door and shook his head.

Dean started running, the lump in his hands. He headed for the checkout. Shoppers screamed as they saw him coming. Dean pushed through them, trying to work his way out via one of the narrow checkout lanes. A potbellied man was blocking his exit with a trolley heavy with crates of beer. A bulk purchase.

‘Out of my way!’ Dean yelled. He halted.

James was standing on the far side of the checkout, facing him. James said nothing. He stared at Dean, right in the eyes. The meaning was clear.

Dean roared and drove the crate-laden trolley at James. With the bulk purchases on board, the thing weighed fifty kilos.

Dean rammed it into James’s legs.

‘Bastard!’ James yelped. He grabbed the wire cage of the ramming trolley, and threw it sideways. It flew the entire length of the shop front and crashed down on its side near the exit, castors spinning.

James turned, deftly ducking the punch Dean threw at him, and landed a punch of his own.

Dean hurtled backwards onto the checkout, breaking the code reader. He flopped unconscious. The checkout display flashed ‘UNKNOWN BAR CODE’.

The shoppers and the checkout girls gave James a spontaneous round of applause. James stepped forward, and looked at the beige lump sliding towards him on the packing conveyer.

He pulled one of the crumpled serviettes out of his pocket and gathered the thing up. It was unpleasantly warm.

Gwen appeared behind him. ‘Hello,’ she said. ‘Having fun?’

‘Loads,’ James replied.

‘How did that happen?’ she asked, pointing.

At the far end of the shop front, a broken trolley full of slumping beer crates was making the automatic exit open and close and open and close.

‘No idea,’ said James.

Jack’s phone rang again. He straightened himself up on the edge of the nearest chest freezer.

‘You all right, honey?’ the big black woman cooed at him, peering under the eye-levels.

‘Yeah, I’m fine. Thanks,’ Jack replied. Who the hell was she?

He opened his phone.

‘This is Jack.’

‘Jack, for God’s sake!’ said Owen’s voice. ‘In answer to your question, twenty-bloody-seven!’

‘On a scale of one to ten?’

‘Yes!’

‘Owen, why the hell didn’t you call me earlier?’