Underlife by Robert Finn (different e readers txt) 📕

Gary was nowhere to be seen. Numb — both with shock and effects of the beer — Clipper did his best to get out of there quickly. He hunted up and down the street without success, and finally caught up with Gary at a cab place about five minutes later. For a moment he couldn’t think what to say.

“Who is he?” he asked in the end.

Gary looked distracted, wrapped up in his own weary thoughts, and only half aware of Clipper standing there. “They’re all…” he said and tapered off. His eyes weren’t even focussed on Clipper. They were set on the middle-distance, where presumably he could play out and review whatever thoughts were bothering him.

A cab pulled up at the kerb and the dispatcher tapped on the scratched window, caught Gary’s eye, and pointed to it. In something of a daze, Gary wandered towards the idling vehicle.

“Gary?” Clipper said sharply, trying to get his attention.

Gary turned to look at him, finally fixing on his face. “You can’t hurt them,” he said absently and then he was getting into a cab, leaving Clipper standing on the pavement in a shiny shirt that was glued to his back with sweat that got colder every second and did nothing to dispel the feeling that something good had ended.

And that was the last time Clipper had seen Gary. No one knew where he’d gone, but a lot people had suggested it was somewhere unpleasant and permanent. Clipper’s guts knotted at the thought. But at the same time he somehow didn’t like the idea that Gary was alive and well any better — that maybe he’d made a few bob on that last job for Warren and then decided he was better off without Clipper, that he didn’t need him any more. It was a toss-up as to which idea upset him more.

Now, riding down on the escalator, Clipper tried for the millionth time to stop thinking about Gary and what had happened to him. He tried to focus on the present as he stepped off onto the platform, which at Canary Wharf was a great concrete cathedral of hollowed-out space. He looked around, realising with a little jolt that he couldn’t see the spook-force coppers anywhere.

Instinctively he checked out the security cameras. He knew where they all were, but Gary had schooled him to do it anyway in case something changed or he remembered wrong. These days, without even thinking, he was able to face away from their gaze or seek out their blind spots.

Something about the closest camera immediately caught his eye, though it took him a moment to decide what it was. Partly that was on account of how you should never let your gaze stop when you looked at cameras: the staff who watched the monitors picked up on that. The first time Gary had caught Clipper looking right into a camera he’d given him a right bollocking and then asked him if he’d got a watch. “Don’t need it. I use my phone,” Clipper had said.

The next day, Gary had handed him a watch. Nothing too flash because (remember, remember) you didn’t want to stand out, but nice all the same. Gary explained that a watch was like a manacle and you wore one to show that you were one of the workers, a slave to the system, and therefore beneath notice. Then he asked Clipper whether he knew what a ‘manacle’ was. Clipper had felt like a right plum for saying he thought it was like a big sealion or something.

Gary explained, “If you find you’ve been staring at a camera, look at your watch like this,” he made a little surprised face, “and get moving. Or if you want to change direction, ‘cos maybe you’ve spotted someone you want to avoid, look at your watch first. The drones look at their watches constantly because their time belongs to someone else. Do the same and it’s like camouflage: they won’t see you.”

‘Drones’ was another Gary-word; it referred to ordinary working punters. Clipper reckoned it probably came from the way they whined on endlessly about their jobs.

Clipper glanced at his watch now — it was almost a compulsive tic by this point — and then he let his gaze roam as though he was maybe putting together some talking points for the next budget meeting or something. This time as his eyes swept across the camera he realised what was weird. The cable that should run to the back of it ended about ten inches from the case. Had it been like that this morning when he came through? Had he just not noticed before?

He drifted down the platform, looking for the coppers, and interested to see if the other cameras were hooked up properly. If there was some refit going on and there was no surveillance at the moment it was a golden opportunity to get a little bit of a nicking spree going.

One minute now until the next train. From the times of the other trains it looked like the tube network was running slow today. No problem for him, of course, but it meant you had to plan your getaways a little more carefully.

Clipper reached the next camera just as he saw one of the coppers tucked behind a pillar up ahead of him, almost as though he was hiding.

The camera down this end was even more obviously out of action. Well, ‘obvious’ if you bothered to look, which no one ever did. There was a crack across the lens that Clipper could see from thirty feet away.

Gary claimed he’d once paid two kids fifty quid to bust all the cameras in Old Street tube using catapults and ball bearings. And then while the staff chased them round the station, Gary had lifted some designer’s courier bag which contained a Mac laptop, one of the metal-skinned ones with all the extras on it, a PDA, a video iPod stacked with tunes and a touch-screen phone from Japan. Clipper suspected that the haul might have grown a little in the retelling, but still it was a sweet score. He looked around now for any signs that someone was working a similar scam. He didn’t see any little Dennis the Menace types with catapults.

Clipper was also looking for the other copper and was momentarily troubled to see that he’d unknowingly walked past him, because he too was tucked away like the first one. Clipper was now sandwiched between them, which he didn’t like, and what was worse was that the copper in front of him was looking right at him now.

Could they be here for him? Why had they split up and flanked him like that? And why was this first copper staring at him?

The familiar sound of an incoming train grew louder and Clipper tried not to meet the copper’s gaze; he tried to look nonchalant, but it was difficult. He could hardly pretend he hadn’t noticed a bloke in full SWAT regalia eyeballing him. Despite himself he found himself locking eyes with the man.

And a realisation stole over him like a hot flush. He looked totally different without hair. And in bulky tactical gear instead of a Paul Smith suit. And Clipper would have sworn he had a big, angry scar underneath one eye before which was gone now, but it was clearly the same bloke. The bloke he’d seen Gary getting his orders from. Warren. And he hadn’t been a copper then, according to the few snippets Gary had let slip about him. Not unless coppers drove Aston Martins, spoke Chinese on the phone and paid other people to break the law for them. Which sort of suggested, to Clipper’s rapidly whirring brain, if he hadn’t been a copper before then he probably wasn’t one now. Because there was being undercover, and then there was just out and out being a crook who owned a police uniform. Which did sort of beg the question of what was going on here and whether Clipper might be any part of it.

And at that moment the train came rumbling into the station and the men either side of Clipper started to close in on him.

*

Clipper remembered the first time he’d seen Gary in action. It was nine-thirty in the morning and the trains were still packed — all sorts of hold-ups earlier meant lots of people were still on their way to work. A scrum was pressing toward the open door of a stuffed train that had no more room for them inside. Gary was in the thick of it and Clipper saw him take a step back, because he didn’t actually want to board the train, but he tipped his head back with a ‘tut’ as though it was someone else’s fault, like he’d been elbowed aside.

“Can you all move along inside please,” Gary called out, in a firm, pleasant voice that Clipper didn’t recognise. Was there a Gary in some alternative universe somewhere who talked like that all the time? A teacher maybe.

The announcement came: “Stand clear of the doors please. Stand clear of the closing doors. This train is about to depart.”

Gary did it again, allowed himself to be pushed back and let the annoyance register on his face. It was clear that no one else was going to get on board and most of the other punters were pulling back now, positioning themselves for the next train. Gary was still apparently optimistic though, attempting to insert a shoulder into the compressed mass of bodies. But it wasn’t going to work.

The doors began to close and Gary retreated just enough to get out of their way. Then the train started to move and Clipper noticed the expression of one of the blank faces squashed up against the window changing to a look of alarm. And as the carriage moved past him, Clipper saw that something was caught in the rubber seal of the doors. It was about ten inches of thin white cable with a shiny plug at the end.

He looked towards Gary, who raised his eyebrows with a little expression of triumph and let Clipper see the iPod he was concealing in his palm. It was about the sweetest lift Clipper had ever seen.

Gary subtly pocketed the smooth plastic brick and, with an exasperated look at his watch, broke free of the scrum. He came to Clipper’s side. “Telegraph reader,” Gary said, “Might have let him off if I thought he only read the sport. Bastard was eyeing the International News.”

Like a fair percentage of what Gary said, Clipper couldn’t fully decipher the meaning, but he gave an appreciative chuckle. Gary always liked to explain why his marks deserved it.

“That was perfect,” Clipper said, still amazed at how beautifully the whole thing had been executed.

“Not perfect,” corrected Gary. “It’s about time we talked about escape routes. When we’re done, you’ll see how this lift could be even better.”

Then Gary had asked him to imagine what would happen if he stole a trog’s wallet in plain view and then jumped on a train. “Just to make it more interesting,” Gary said, “imagine you’re wearing a t-shirt that says ‘Thief’ on it.”

Clipper didn’t really have to think about it. He said, “Well, they’d radio ahead to the next station, wouldn’t they? Have someone collar me. Have them look out for the t-shirt.”

“But what if you don’t get off at the next station?” Gary asked. “Would they stop the train and search it?”

Clipper thought about the manpower involved and the disruption to the network and shook his head. “They’d probably only do that if it was a bomb or something.”

Gary