envied. Ajay had placed a baseball bat behind the counter. If anything should ever kick off, he was relying on his fearsome appearance to be sufficiently intimidating to put anyone off attacking him. In truth, he had no more skill or experience as a fighting man than Maninder. But he too was not prepared to take another backward step.
Both men were reassured by the knowledge that if there was any sign of trouble, they could text the other members of the Self-Help Association and know that they would be on their way.
So far, the Panus had never had to ask for that help. Both cousins prayed that tonight would be no exception.
Bakunin’s operation began shortly after seven o’clock, with a break-in at a refuse-company depot off the Walworth Road, three miles from the Lion Market where Maninder and Ajay Panu were quietly going about their business. Six armed, masked men approached the security guard in his booth by the main gate, and he was gone before they’d even got within thirty metres of him. He didn’t need telling that the guns they were holding weren’t just for show, and he wasn’t going to get himself killed for a job that only paid six quid an hour. The men entered the abandoned booth and opened the steel gates. One of them worked at the depot, and led them to the office where the keys to the trucks were kept. It was empty at this time of night, like the rest of the place.
The six intruders went straight to the two units to which the keys belonged, started them up and drove out of the depot. Before it turned on to the road, one of the trucks paused for long enough to let a passenger get out, go to the abandoned guard’s booth and close the gates behind them. The garbage trucks joined the traffic on the Walworth Road, heading north towards Elephant and Castle, where they turned sharp left, almost doubling back on themselves, down Kennington Lane. They were heading for the industrial estate on Nine Elms, close to the Cringle Dock recycling centre. They planned to park up there for half an hour or so, and keep a low profile till it was time to go to work.
11
FUNNY HOW OLD habits refused to die even when the reason for having them had long gone. As he sat in the cab taking him to his drink with Schultz, Carver was wearing a favourite old jacket, made of heavy, caramel-coloured suede, that was really more like a short coat. He had a zip-up black body warmer under it and a long-sleeved T-shirt that looked like regular cotton but was actually superfine merino wool, a far superior regulator of body temperature.
Carver had no interest whatever in fashion, but he had always paid very great attention to detail when it came to the function and quality of everything in his life. When the slightest malfunction could make the difference between life and death these things mattered. So he’d long been as picky with his clothes as he was with his weapons, and when he found something that worked, he stuck with it. Even so, he was having a hard time understanding why the same old money-belt was still wrapped around his waist. Its pouches contained passports and credit cards in three different identities; a selection of random IDs picked up on various previous jobs ; half a dozen anonymous, prepaid SIM cards; and two thick wads of hundred-dollar US bills. He’d worn it every day for the past twenty years and for much of that time it had been an essential insurance policy. Wherever he was, there’d always been the chance that he’d have to get out fast, and the belt gave him the means to do so.
But why now? The secret store in his Geneva apartment where he kept all the gear he’d used to create fatal, unattributable ‘accidents’ hadn’t been opened in more than two years. He’d not even picked up a gun in that time, let alone fired one in anger. But his weapons were all still there; he still spent a fortune every year on the increasingly complicated systems required to keep the location of any phone he was using
Both men were reassured by the knowledge that if there was any sign of trouble, they could text the other members of the Self-Help Association and know that they would be on their way.
So far, the Panus had never had to ask for that help. Both cousins prayed that tonight would be no exception.
Bakunin’s operation began shortly after seven o’clock, with a break-in at a refuse-company depot off the Walworth Road, three miles from the Lion Market where Maninder and Ajay Panu were quietly going about their business. Six armed, masked men approached the security guard in his booth by the main gate, and he was gone before they’d even got within thirty metres of him. He didn’t need telling that the guns they were holding weren’t just for show, and he wasn’t going to get himself killed for a job that only paid six quid an hour. The men entered the abandoned booth and opened the steel gates. One of them worked at the depot, and led them to the office where the keys to the trucks were kept. It was empty at this time of night, like the rest of the place.
The six intruders went straight to the two units to which the keys belonged, started them up and drove out of the depot. Before it turned on to the road, one of the trucks paused for long enough to let a passenger get out, go to the abandoned guard’s booth and close the gates behind them. The garbage trucks joined the traffic on the Walworth Road, heading north towards Elephant and Castle, where they turned sharp left, almost doubling back on themselves, down Kennington Lane. They were heading for the industrial estate on Nine Elms, close to the Cringle Dock recycling centre. They planned to park up there for half an hour or so, and keep a low profile till it was time to go to work.
11
FUNNY HOW OLD habits refused to die even when the reason for having them had long gone. As he sat in the cab taking him to his drink with Schultz, Carver was wearing a favourite old jacket, made of heavy, caramel-coloured suede, that was really more like a short coat. He had a zip-up black body warmer under it and a long-sleeved T-shirt that looked like regular cotton but was actually superfine merino wool, a far superior regulator of body temperature.
Carver had no interest whatever in fashion, but he had always paid very great attention to detail when it came to the function and quality of everything in his life. When the slightest malfunction could make the difference between life and death these things mattered. So he’d long been as picky with his clothes as he was with his weapons, and when he found something that worked, he stuck with it. Even so, he was having a hard time understanding why the same old money-belt was still wrapped around his waist. Its pouches contained passports and credit cards in three different identities; a selection of random IDs picked up on various previous jobs ; half a dozen anonymous, prepaid SIM cards; and two thick wads of hundred-dollar US bills. He’d worn it every day for the past twenty years and for much of that time it had been an essential insurance policy. Wherever he was, there’d always been the chance that he’d have to get out fast, and the belt gave him the means to do so.
But why now? The secret store in his Geneva apartment where he kept all the gear he’d used to create fatal, unattributable ‘accidents’ hadn’t been opened in more than two years. He’d not even picked up a gun in that time, let alone fired one in anger. But his weapons were all still there; he still spent a fortune every year on the increasingly complicated systems required to keep the location of any phone he was using
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