Europe in Winter (The Fractured Europe Sequence)(74)

“Snowy,” Crispin said with an irritable sideways glance. “Let’s keep our minds on the matter in hand, yeah?”

“You dragged me down here,” Forsyth muttered. “I don’t see why you should have a good time.”

Crispin stepped over to the wall of the tunnel, took a multitool from his pocket, and used one of its driver bits to start loosening an inspection panel from a utilities conduit. “I’m not having a good time.”

“Did you ever try it on with Ewa?”

Crispin laughed and carried on unscrewing the panel.

Forsyth put his hands in his pockets and looked first one way then the other along the tunnel. The ribbed walls vanished into the darkness on either side. He whistled a few flat notes.

Crispin lowered the inspection panel to the trackbed and reconfigured the tool as a wrench. He reached inside the inspection hatch and started to unbolt something.

“How did you get into this, anyway?” Forsyth asked.

“Get into what?”

“Mixed up with Babykiller. The Georgians.”

“These things just happen, Snowy.” Crispin gave a little grunt and Forsyth heard something fall and rattle inside the conduit. “Shit.”

“How do you mean?”

“What?”

“How do ‘these things just happen’?”

“Oh, I dunno.” Crispin was up on tiptoes now, both arms and his head and shoulders inside the inspection hatch. He had the torch inside as well, and his body was blocking most of the light. His voice sounded flat and dull inside the conduit. “Word gets about, the stuff comes down to me, I find a buyer, the money goes back up to Babykiller. That’s how these things just happen.”

Forsyth looked at his watch, pushed the light button. He had to tilt it to make out the digits. “It’s getting late, Crispin.”

“Are you charging me by the hour?”

“Very funny.” Forsyth tapped his toes and whistled another couple of notes. “It’s taking a bloody long time, though.”

“Jesus Christ, Snowy,” Crispin sighed from inside the conduit. “I think I preferred it when you were bitching about your women.”

Forsyth went for a little walk. Half a dozen paces out, half a dozen paces back. “Did I tell you I saw Jens the other day?”

“Yeah, I think so. How is the old bastard?”

“Same as ever.” How much longer was this going to take?

“Ever worry that it might happen to you?”

“What might happen to me?”

By the sound of his voice, Crispin was at full stretch inside the conduit. Occasionally there was a metallic rattle as something fell. “One day you’re working your happy little heart out, the next there’s some snafu and if you’re lucky you wind up in a wheelchair behind a desk.”

Jespersen had had the misfortune to be working on Copenhagen’s metro when the belt of a spoil conveyor tore and one end whistled up the tunnel and broke his back. “Can’t say I ever thought very much about it,” Forsyth said.

“Yeah. Well that’s always been your problem.”

“I thought my problem was that I think with my dick.”

“That too.” The light inside the conduit became stronger and stronger, and Crispin emerged from the hatch. In one hand he held the multitool and the torch. In the other was a small opaque plastic envelope. He grinned triumphantly.

“Excuse me for saying so, but that doesn’t look like an awfully large amount of drugs,” Forsyth observed.

“Who mentioned drugs?” said Crispin. “Did I mention drugs?”

“Well, no. I just sort of –”

“You just sort of assumed, Snowy.” Crispin waved the torch at him. “You just sort of assumed that because Good Old Crispin was involved it had to be drugs.”

“It seemed a pretty safe bet,” Forsyth agreed.

“Well,” Crispin said, and then Forsyth was lying on the trackbed, his ears ringing, with no clear memory of how he had got there.

He swallowed a couple of times to try and clear his ears, and the ringing diminished slightly. He lay very still, feeling bruised places on his back and legs. The torch was lying a few metres away, and in its beam he could see the plastic envelope wedged under the wheels of a loader. Crispin was gone.

Forsyth sat up very slowly, completely at a loss. One moment Crispin had been talking to him, the next he was lying on the ground. His head and chest hurt and he could taste blood in his mouth, and there was a wet, earthy smell in the air that hadn’t been there earlier.

He got up and went over and picked up the torch. He shone it around, but there was no sign of Crispin, though there were some fresh-looking marks on some of the tunnel lining. He retrieved the envelope and stuffed it in a pocket.

“Crispin?” he called. A bolt of pain went up one side of his neck, making him wince, but he called Crispin’s name again. “You utter bastard!” he shouted, but no reply came. “Crispin!”

He listened, and this time he thought he heard someone moving in the stationward section of tunnel.

“You f*cker, Crispin,” he muttered, starting to walk towards the noise. It was then that he happened to glance down and saw a tiny ruby-red dot dancing on his chest. He was so puzzled by this that he didn’t watch his footing, and he tripped over something and went headlong onto the trackbed, and at the same moment the tunnel exploded with hammering noise and light.