Doctor Who_ Cat's Cradle_ Warhead - Andrew Cartmel [98]
Mancuso and Breen moved between the shelves of products, crouching low, moving quietly. The only noise was the sound of the fluorescents buzzing and the asthmatic gulping of air filters somewhere. They passed a deserted credit point. No sign of the staff and any late‐night customers seemed to have fled. Mancuso scanned on either side of her.
The shelves stretching ahead were stacked with brightly coloured containers for dozens of competing brands of popular medicines. Vitamins, ginseng, herbs. Further back in the store, on the mezzanine, was the secure section. That’s where they had the bottle shop and kept the tobacco and different brands of diamorphine and bitter alkaloid. It was the most likely target for a robbery.
Mancuso turned a corner into the skincare department and instantly swept her gun up to shoulder level, clicking the safety off. On the scuffed tile floor she registered another security guard, a woman. With figures standing above her.
As Mancuso’s finger tightened she felt resistance on the trigger. The gun’s scan was reading no danger. The guard was lying motionless on the stained marble floor with three other women standing over her. Beautiful women in culottes and vests. Milky‐skinned, grinning. They flickered a bit as they smiled down at the woman on the floor. A display for blocker cream. Cheap Korean holograms. Mancuso stepped past the imaginary women and over the real one on the floor. She didn’t bother with a BT stick this time. The top of the guard’s head was gone. She checked that Breen was following and moved deeper into the drugstore.
Mancuso was ready for the next set of holograms. Which was just as well because they were a Hallowe’en display. A pumpkin‐head creature with a long knife and two multicoloured grinning hags. They were imaginary mass murderers with a huge popular following. She recognized them from Saturday morning kids’ cartoons. Beyond the holograms was a wall full of squat orange canisters. Glow‐in‐the‐dark paint in jack o’lantern spraybombs. Beyond that was the girl.
The girl was moving casually enough, backing away down the aisle. But she was the first real, living person they’d seen since entering the store. That was automatically suspicious. And something about her caught Mancuso’s eye. She was dressed conservatively, the way Mancuso herself had dressed, twenty years ago, when she’d run with a gang. Black bomber jacket, black leggings, DMs. The girl was young, maybe teens, maybe early twenties. Hair tied back. The jacket open. Not obviously carrying any weapons. But something wasn’t right. Breen thought so, too. He came silently out of an aisle at the girl’s side and put his handgun to her head. Polite hand on her shoulder and he was escorting her back down the aisle. Towards the main entrance. As she turned to follow him, Mancuso saw the back of the girl’s jacket. A big red letter ‘A’. Then a sound came from a few metres away and Mancuso was sprinting, not even thinking about it, gun held braced to her body and ready for use.
Under a Hallowe’en banner was a shelf of seasonal herbs and preparations. Cinchona bark, butcher’s broom, tannis. Below the shelf a small man was crouching over something. Another body. The body was a girl, a white kid with dreadlocks and beads in her hair. There were no obvious external wounds but Mancuso could see the kid was dead. The little guy bending over her didn’t appear to be the assailant. He seemed to be examining the kid the way a paramedic would. He stirred from his inspection as Mancuso closed in on him.
When the little guy began to look up from the dead girl Mancuso was looking directly at him, looking at his face. A faulty fluorescent tube overhead buzzed, flickering