Dark Times in the City Read Online Free PDF Page B

black marker pen to write the names
Rowe
and
Warner
in neat block letters and went to stand in Arrivals.
    Rowe had long fair hair in a ponytail. Jeans and a white waistcoat over a light blue T-shirt. Warner wore a dark suit and a white shirt, but no tie. Their only luggage was one overnight bag each. On the way to the hotel the one with the ponytail asked Callaghan what he knew about the nightlife.
    ‘There’s a place or two.’
    ‘Maybe we’ll have time later – you can show us around?’
    ‘My pleasure.’
    It was going to be a late night, then.
    Traffic was light enough on the short drive to the Hilton at Northern Cross. After a brief stop at the hotel, the two gave Callaghan an address in the financial centre. From their conversation, it seemed that Rowe and Warner had something to do with marketing. Apparently some outfit had called them in to try to rescue a new product that was failing to take off. At first, Callaghan thought the product was some kind of food, then Rowe said something that made it sound like a range of clothes. Warner was doubtful that the project was doable, given that the client had spent five years making a balls of securing his customer base. It sounded to Callaghan like maybe he was talking about financial products. When they got to where they were going, the small black lettering on the wide glass door said the company was called 257 Solutions.
    Rowe said the working lunch would tie them up for a couple of hours, then they had a meeting – he read aloud an address, in another part of the financial centre – and they needed to be there by four. Back to the hotel by six, and by then they’d know where they’d be eating, and after that they’d play it by ear. ‘Okay, driver?’
    ‘Sounds good.’ The office building had an underground car parkand Callaghan said he’d get something to eat and be waiting in the lobby within the hour, in case their working lunch ended early.
    After he parked, he sat in the car for a couple of minutes. He wasn’t hungry and as the day went on there’d likely be lots of breaks to grab a sandwich.
    Less than a hundred yards from Hannah’s office
.
    When he got out of the car Callaghan still wasn’t sure what he intended to do.
    Don’t be pathetic
.
    He closed down the thought and began walking.
    ‘If the gun had worked first time,’ Karl Prowse said, ‘we’d have got the job done and been away within thirty seconds.’
    Lar Mackendrick said nothing. In this part of Santry, the houses had narrow streets and shared driveways, and the developers had crammed in as many units as the land would take. Lar might have been focusing on the driving, or he might have been angry. Karl couldn’t tell. Lar had the kind of face that remained the same no matter how he was feeling – like he was trying to remember what it was about you that most pissed him off.
    They turned in to the indoor car park at the Omni shopping centre. Lar pulled in behind a large green SUV and switched off the engine.
    ‘Tell me.’
    There were still moments when Karl Prowse felt a ripple of disbelief – three weeks ago, the thought of chatting to Lar Mackendrick, alone, almost as an equal, would have been fantasy. If he’d got a shot at something like second-string muscle on a minor Mackendrick operation, that would have been the height of his ambition. Then, out of the blue – a phone call, a visit, a blunt offer – and now it was like he was Lar’s right hand.
    In a business dominated by psychos with short tempers and longmemories, you needed luck as well as balls. The most Karl Prowse had imagined for himself was the occasional dangerous job with a reasonable cut of the proceeds, along with an occasional stretch in Mountjoy. Now he had a shot at something that mattered, shoulder to shoulder with Lar Mackendrick, with maybe his own outfit somewhere down the road.
    And the first serious job he got to do went down the toilet and Karl was trying to explain why.
    ‘From the