land. The sweatshirt was so cheap it felt like a carrier bag, and my brown padded nylon coat wouldn’t be on the catwalks any time soon. The trainers I’d selected to replace my Timberlands didn’t even have a name, but fifteen euros wasn’t going to take me all the way to Niketown.
The sky was grey. The sun occasionally made it through the clouds, but never for more than a few seconds. I tried to concentrate on the street below but I couldn’t get the girl out of my head. That wasn’t good. I hoped things would turn out OK for her, but this wasn’t helping me with my next task. I was writing a mental list of gear I’d need to put the silo on CNN and the BBC - and how to divvy up that list with Bradley. There were a few things I could ask him to get for me, but one or two others I really had to get hold of myself.
I tried to cover all the options. Best-case scenario was that the girls would be kept in the silo until they were due to be moved. Would the Scousers accelerate the process because their neo mates had been given a malleting and a piece of merchandise had done a runner? These lads were in a tough business. They’d be looking over their shoulders big-time, but I doubted they’d flap every time there was a bit of a drama. And I doubted they’d call the police to report an assault. The burst of lights and siren had puzzled me last night, but now I wondered if the boys in blue had just thought the neos were dossers and given them a quick blast to move them on.
As for the lads in the Passat - fuck knows what was going on there. Fuck knows what Tresillian was up to either. Why destroy the building? Bricks don’t talk. If it was just a plain search-and-destroy job I’d probably have binned it now and done a runner with Anna. But the girls - I couldn’t leave those poor fuckers. Which meant I had two days and two nights left to get the job done.
Bradley saved me from my thoughts. He strolled into view, hands in his pockets, dressed exactly the same as yesterday. He reached the door and I heard the buzzer. I looked as far along the street as I could to make sure no one else was with him.
I headed downstairs in time to watch him step inside.
‘Morning, Mr Smith.’ He gave my new clothes the once-over. ‘I’ve got you a present.’ He undid his jacket to reveal a box of Yorkshire Tea. ‘It’s a great shop. Even sells baked beans.’
His smile disappeared. ‘I have some news. There’s been a change of plan.’
I turned for the stairs. ‘No rush, mate. I know. Tresillian told me last night. We’ll talk in a minute.’
Sometimes people can get so sparked up about putting the information across that they get ahead of themselves. Better a trickle than a torrent.
He went straight to the sink when we reached the top floor. He couldn’t have missed the mountain of aspirin packets on the draining-board. I’d bought three packs from each of four shops. But he eyed the mallet.
I shrugged. ‘It fell down last night.’
He filled the kettle and I ripped the cellophane off the tea.
‘The guy you took the video of? He’s called Michael Flynn.’
‘Who is he?’
Bradley showed me a black-and-white printout on a sheet of A4. I could see this really was a family business. The Flynn gene pool hadn’t been blessed. Both sons had the same fucked-up eyes as their father. Robot looked a year or two older than Bitch Tits, who had put on a few pounds since this was taken.
Bradley stuck a finger on each of the boys’ heads in turn to indicate. ‘Mick Flynn has two sons - Jimmy, the elder, and Ray. Jimmy moves these girls on to the UK and all over mainland Europe. He’s a major player on the drugs scene as well.’ He hesitated.
‘Very nasty people, the Flynns. The police found two girls in a rubbish skip three years ago. They’d been beaten and burnt so badly it took months just to discover who they were. Mick and Jimmy are rumoured to have tortured them for trying to escape from one of their holding houses. It was Ray who’d let them go. He took such a beating from his father that he was in hospital