Underlife by Robert Finn (different e readers txt) 📕

and Clipper had more stubble on his chin than either of them had on what he could see of their heads. SO19 maybe? The Met’s Armed Response group. Or maybe something lower profile?

Clipper was more than a little bit torn now. Part of him, the part he was doing his best to ignore, wanted to rush back to the girl, to ask her, “What just happened between us?” But he wasn’t planning to act on that particular impulse. The rest of his brain was trying to decide how to react to these coppers. If there was any chance that they could be after him, or if the area was about to be sealed off, he needed to scarper. But these blokes had to be some sort of anti-terrorism outfit, which let him off the hook, didn’t it? Besides which he just ate up that stuff. He wanted to know why they were here, what they were planning to do. Maybe something was going on.

Gary would have dragged him away, of course — he was all for the low-key, better part of valour stuff — but Gary was gone. And Clipper thought he’d like to get a slightly better look at what they were up to. With that in mind, he peeled off from the city gent he was now following, and began to loop slowly around so that the SWAT-looking guys could lead the way. If he got behind them instead of letting them bear down on him, he’d feel a lot happier about sticking around.

While he split off to the side, pretending he wanted to take a quick look at the quayside, he watched them out of the corner of his eye. They didn’t talk, didn’t use their radios, didn’t even glance towards each other, but they moved together in a way that made Clipper yearn to be part of some organisation like that. Watching them walk, it was like a Tarantino thing, only they weren’t in slow motion.

It reminded him of a daydream he had where he was recruited as an undercover member of some tactical unit like that. In the daydream they’d been watching him for a while, could see he was a bright guy and they were prepared to clean his record if he’d come and work for them… undercover. Which he didn’t consider completely farfetched. Clipper knew what was what and boxed a little and liked to think he was in shape; all he’d need to get him ready for some special forces job was a little specialist training. Mind you, these lads in front of him looked like they’d had more than a little training. They were just about the toughest pair he’d ever seen. Try as he might, he couldn’t see himself getting in their way for a second. Couldn’t picture it.

Fascinated, he let them get on the down escalator, hung back as a stream of ordinary punters stepped on behind them and then, some distance back, he followed them down into the cavern of the station and the relative warmth below.

Every day, Clipper’s first job was always to boost a travelcard and he had one in his pocket right now, but the spook-force guys were stalled up ahead, flashing badges and saying something to the trog on the ticket barriers (‘trog’ was what Gary called the underground staff) so Clipper busied himself with a ticket machine for a minute to make sure he didn’t end up ahead of them again.

The transport bloke was looking very unhappy to see them, like they’d just offered to demonstrate some of their excellent specialist training on him. Right away the man was sweating. He was shaking his head and holding up his hands too, which they obviously didn’t care for. Then one of the badge-flashing coppers took a step towards him. Simultaneously his partner laid a finger on his arm, halting him, but the transport bloke looked like he was about to lose some sphincter control. He fumbled a gate open for them and they pushed through leaving the trog standing there, looking all around for guidance, clearly not sure what he was supposed to do next.

Whatever this was about, Clipper was lapping it up. It was a treat to see a trog sweating for a change. They were always recognising him, making his life difficult, throwing their weight around. Now one of them was on the receiving end for once. Yeah, thought Clipper, looking at the rattled transport bloke and revelling in the way he’d been brushed aside, back off.

Moving through the gates and onto the escalator, leaving the flustered trog behind, Clipper lost sight of the cops for a minute. Maybe they’d double-timed it on ahead. Clipper thought about running to catch up, but he knew Gary would have had a fit at the thought if he’d been there. Sprinting after coppers being perhaps the stupidest idea ever. The whole point of working the underground was that it made you anonymous, impossible to remember, one of ten million faceless faces. What you didn’t do — what you didn’t ever do — was stand out. Because not only did it mess up whatever angle you were working at that moment, it risked messing up the next one and so on down the line. Pretty soon they’d be spotting your face on CCTV and passing out your photo and everyone knew what happened next. And in Gary’s case what had happened next was prison. This was before Clipper had met him and it had only been an eighteen month sentence, which never sounded that bad to Clipper, but he tended to keep his mouth shut on that point on account of how Gary knew his real name was Matthew and he had a mum living in Bromley who liked to make him beans on toast on the rare occasions he dropped in and he’d never been ‘inside’ or even in a cell overnight and so any view he might have on prison would be based on sitting in a nice cosy flat eating his tea and watching it on telly.

Clipper tried to cut off that line of thought because the truth was that he was thinking about Gary the whole time. He missed him. Not only did Gary keep him out of trouble, and dispense these little gems of wisdom the whole time, but he was the one who made the whole thing fun. Without him it wasn’t an adventure any more; it was just stealing things and trying not to get caught.

Gary, who’d read a lot of books — especially inside — was always making genius stuff up, like how he and Clipper were the Marxist Vanguard. Clipper never really knew what that meant, but Gary would quote the phrase ‘all property is theft’, which Clipper really liked, and it had become like a catchphrase for them both.

Sometimes when Clipper thought about Gary’s disappearance, an unwelcome thought crept into his head; he worried that Gary had disappeared on purpose.

The first few times Gary had gone on errands for the mysterious Warren, and left Clipper to fend for himself, it had seemed like the beginning of the end. Whatever Warren had Gary doing, it was obviously a lot more fun than dipping for wallets and phones and such on the tube. Clipper had the sense that Gary was moving up in the world without him, like some sort of underworld promotion that Clipper had been passed over for.

That hadn’t lasted long though. After the third job — and Gary would never say what the jobs actually involved — his mood had changed and it no longer seemed like Gary was off having fun. He was very subdued and he said even less about what he did for Warren, but Clipper got the distinct impression it wasn’t for the fainthearted.

Clipper had seen Warren a few times, always from a distance. And the last time had also been the last time he’d seen Gary.

He and Gary had gone to a club that was supposedly part-owned by Warren. It really wasn’t Gary’s scene, though Clipper was quite into it, being a few years younger and a little less awkward when it came to being around loud music and girls dancing.

Gary had left Clipper talking to a couple of nurses from Hatfield and gone back behind the bar with a flunky who’d come to fetch him, saying that Warren was ready to see him now. Clipper kept up a bit of patter with the nurses, doing his best not to get distracted, but all the time he was watching out for any glimpse of Gary returning.

Because Clipper was with Gary, and Gary was with Warren, the bar was comping their drinks. So when Clipper finally did get a glimpse of Gary an hour or so later, it was after several more bottles of very tasty imported beer and he was no longer at his most lucid — over-refreshed was how he liked to think of it. The nurses were packing up, Clipper having got a little too Mr Grabby with one of them, when he saw Gary at the back of the club near one of the exits. Gary was nodding to an imposing looking bloke with a scarred face who stood nearby. Gary looked like he was trying to reassure him he was on the case. Clipper was pretty sure it was the same man he’d glimpsed before, and there was clearly a boss/employee vibe involved, so it had to be Warren. Clipper tried to get a proper look at the man, but the club lighting didn’t help with that. Warren was dressed pretty sharply, though he wore some sort of tight skull-cap. It was difficult to tell whether it was the latest Hollywood fad or some religious thing. Despite looking pretty weird, it also looked sort of natural too. So much so that Clipper wondered about getting one too.

Gary had given a final nod, this one meaning goodbye, and strode away towards one of the exits without even a glance towards Clipper. Then out of nowhere, a Slavic looking guy was stepping up behind Warren and smacking him across the back of the head with an empty beer bottle.

Fragments of green glass sprayed across the nearest table, hitting some girl in the face, and triggering a scream that Clipper could hear from across the room. It cut through the pounding of a Sasha remix like a gunshot at a funeral.

Warren didn’t go down though, he twisted round to place one hand over the spot where the bottle had hit, and then everything went peculiar.

What Clipper thought he saw was the Slavic guy ramming the shattered bottle in a twisting motion towards Warren’s throat and the glass teeth grinding themselves to pieces all by themselves. For an eerie second he appeared to be holding the bottle steady a foot or so from Warren’s throat. But at the same time, it seemed like he was leaning into it. It wasn’t an image that made a lot of sense.

Then Warren straightened and pushed out with his palm, like an open-hand punch, which to Clipper never seemed to connect, but the Slavic guy went down with a snap, almost like a convulsion, as though he’d been bitten by the world’s deadliest snake.

That done, Warren snatched a fresh cloth from the bar, pressed it to his bleeding head and leaned across to say something in the ear of a bouncer who’d rushed over. He didn’t appear to be bothered by the damage done to his scalp or to notice the blood running out from under his skull-cap and down the back of his neck. A moment later, two other bouncers were carrying the fallen man into a back room and Warren was staring at the girl with the cut face, coldly assessing