DARIAN WENT through the blue door and down the dark concrete stairs to the basement. It was cold in there, and there wasn’t much light. He opened the door at the bottom and stepped out into what had been the underground level of the car park. It was a square of bare concrete, flat and empty, no cars allowed in since the collapse. There was one light on, an industrial spotlight that looked like it had been left behind by the engineering team that made the place safe and must have been stealing its electricity from one of the buildings next door.
Viv stood in the circle the light made, dropping the cigarette she had been holding and crunching it under the heel of her boot.
She said, “I’m glad you came, Darian.”
At the mention of his name there was movement. The blue door opened and shut behind him as a man stepped in, blocking his exit, leaning back against the door and crossing his arms. The ramp up to the ground floor was covered by the arrival of a young woman in shadow, something glinting in her hand. It looked like a screwdriver.
It wouldn’t be a gun, possession of one carried a mandatory seven-year prison sentence so only morons, the desperate and the very professional dared carry. Being caught with a knife was a year in The Ganntair, not worth it when you could arm yourself with something else, like a workman’s tool. You could walk down the street with a screwdriver in your pocket and the police would have to prove you weren’t heading home for some DIY. It was a soon-to-be-closed loophole.
The two new arrivals both looked like a fight with Darian would be a small piece of cake to them. And there was Viv, standing facing him in the circle of light, her expression unchanged.
Darian said, “I’m not.”
“No, I thought you might change your mind pretty quickly. You’ve been annoying more people than just me, it seems, and you were bloody annoying for me. Important people are angry with you, and do you know what happens when the VIPs get huffy?”
He looked right and then back over his shoulder. The threats around him, none of them with even a hint of reluctance. It was a question of how far they would go, whether killing a man provided any of them cause for moral concern. It didn’t look awfully likely.
He said, almost in a whisper, “Bad things.”
“Yeah, bad things. It’s a shame, but it’s a shame that you brought on yourself.”
Viv stood and stared at Darian, a long ten seconds of silence before she finally took a step forward. Her people tensed, the one on the right stepped forward and closed the circle around Darian. He looked quickly left and right, searching for an escape to run to. His chance of getting out was slim, but it was no chance at all if he stood where he was.
There was movement behind the woman on his right, someone who had presumably just come down the ramp. Darian looked away, assuming it was another of Viv’s people, looking to the left where he still thought his best chance of escape lay. There probably wasn’t an exit there. Surely Viv would have had someone to cover it if there was, but turning this into a race was his best hope. Then he heard the voice.
“That’s probably enough.”
It was a familiar voice, and when Darian turned he saw a familiar face move into the edge of the light. Sorley stood and looked at the brutal people looking back at him. He didn’t flinch, and didn’t look to have a single drop of the nerves Darian was suffering from. The reason for his calm became clear when the other shadows around him moved into the dim light by the bottom of the ramp. There were two of them, two young men, both as ready and willing to embrace violence as their savior as Viv’s people were. The former wrestler TLM stood on one side of Sorley, both of them looking positively dwarfish beside Gorm MacGilling. Supposing the seven-footer had been the only person Sorley had brought for backup, he would have looked enough to even the odds. There would be no guns there either, but they would be tooled, and they had bulk on their side.
Viv looked at Sorley and said, “I remember when your gang was too small to stand in a fight like this.”
Sorley said, “This isn’t a fight yet, just a get-together that doesn’t know how it’ll end.”
Viv turned to Darian and said, “I told you to remind your brother about the last thing I said to him.”
“I haven’t seen him since we last spoke.”
Sorley, his voice bouncing across the large space, said, “It’s a hell of a thing when me and my wee brother see more of you than we do of each other, isn’t it, Viv? There’s a solution, though. I’m going to need you to give me your word that you’ll leave Darian alone.”
Vivienne moved across the no man’s land to stand in front of Sorley. Gorm flinched when she moved, waiting for someone else to start the defense before he joined in, the sort of hesitation that had marred his basketball career. Viv stood what would have been nose-to-nose with Sorley if she hadn’t been five and a half inches shorter than him. In silhouette they would have looked like lovers, going for a kiss.
She said, “Why would I give you my word?”
“Because I did ignore the last thing you said to me.”
“And why would you trust my word?”
“Because I’ll always enjoy checking up on you.”
She smiled at the idea he would be checking on her instead of the other way around. The smile disappeared and she turned her back on him, walked past Darian and over to the safety of her people. Darian had already taken a couple of short steps toward his brother, and moved a little more quickly now. This could still turn nasty and he didn’t want to be standing halfway between the two sides if it did.
Viv said, “What good timing you have, Sorley. And what wisdom your little brother has, to call you for backup. We’ll see how well that wisdom serves you both.”
She led her people through the blue door and up the stairs. They had come to beat someone up, not to fight. Viv wasn’t going to let this turn into something she might not walk away pristine from, big fights needed planning this did not have. The woman with the screwdriver shot a dirty look in the direction of the ramp, empty hatred for people she wasn’t sure why she despised. The door shut behind them and Gorm breathed out the hurricane he’d been holding in, TLM laughing nervously.
They waited a few minutes to be sure they didn’t bump into Viv’s lot on the way out. Wouldn’t do to dodge battle in the basement only to collide with it at the exit. Sorley’s two went up the ramp first to make sure it was clear and he and Darian walked slowly up behind them.
“You’re gathering an interesting collection of enemies in a short space of time.”
Darian said, “I didn’t upset her that much.”
“You’re right, that wasn’t about Viv, that was about someone else. My guess is you’ve upset someone who’s leaned on Viv to try to scare you off. She’s good at scaring people is Viv.”
“Except she didn’t want to scare me, did she? You turned up just in the nick of time and she tells her colleagues there that I called you for backup. I didn’t, so I’m starting to think she did.”
Sorley smiled and said, “Viv’s a decent person, except for most of the time. Her letting you go doesn’t give you a free ticket; you still have to be wary of her. It just means she didn’t want to do the bidding of the dirty cop, that we’ll call DI Corey for simplicity’s sake, who sent her here in the first place. You be okay to get home in one piece?”
They were out on the street, Sorley’s thugs eager to leave. Darian said, “I’ve got a car, I’ll be fine. Thanks, Sorley.”
“No bother, but, remember, I ain’t the fourth emergency service so don’t expect me to turn up on a rescue mission again.”
Sorley and his gang walked up Letta Road to the corner and disappeared round it. As Darian walked down to the Skoda he heard the sound of a car and a motorbike starting up. His big brother, still looking out for him, and then he thought of Corey. This dark business had moved onto another level, more vicious than before, and while it felt like he’d stepped out of a trap he knew this had to be the endgame. Corey had made a desperation play, a last resort.