Doctor Who_ Cat's Cradle_ Warhead - Andrew Cartmel [99]
She forced herself to look back at the little guy, look at him directly. She moved towards him, keeping him in the sweep of her weapon. On top of the situation. Doing the job. Mancuso could bust the little guy. Shoot him if it came to that. No problem. She just didn’t want to look him in the eye when he was angry.
* * *
‘Nice, eh?’ The girl was looking at Jack Blood, Heather and Hetty as they walked past. The long curved knife suddenly switched from one of Jack’s twig‐fingered hands to the other. The girl flinched. Breen didn’t blame her. He still got the creeps if he was standing beside an ordinary store dummy. The hologram’s gouged‐out pumpkin eyes rotated to follow them, a glint of ruby in the darkness of the vegetable head.
‘That’s Jack Blood,’ said Breen. ‘That’s who my kid wants to be when he grows up.’ The hags grinned, mouths opening to show realistic threads of saliva.
‘Bloody hell. Kids,’ said the girl. She had an accent that Breen couldn’t quite identify. She hadn’t offered any resistance but Breen hadn’t holstered his handgun yet. Breen and the girl walked past a display of cardboard cats, witch hats and ghosts. Dayglo orange vests with ‘Trick or Treat’ screen‐printed on them, so your kids wouldn’t get run over by a car when they were out collecting poisoned candy. Breen would be happy to get back into the saner parts of the drugstore. Hallowe’en was the worst, in all sorts of ways.
* * *
‘There’s something I’d like you to see.’ The little guy looked as if he was about to move towards Mancuso, get close and have a friendly conversation.
‘Take it nice and easy,’ she said. She was holding her gun steadily on the little guy but keeping her attention all around them. The little guy hadn’t killed the girl with dreadlocks, Mancuso was pretty sure of that. And she still hadn’t found any sign of the robbery in progress that had triggered the alarm call. She looked across the tops of the aisles, up towards the secure section of the store.
‘That’s an interesting weapon,’ said the little guy.
‘It will blow your interesting ass into the next street,’ said Mancuso, studying the mezzanine level. ‘Now back away please.’
The little guy moved back from the body of the girl and Mancuso moved forward. ‘The upper cylinder is obviously the muzzle and a cooling unit,’ said the little guy. ‘Now what about the other cylinder? Control system? Have you wondered about that?’
Mancuso bent to the corpse, checking for weapons in the girl’s jacket. ‘Control and scanning,’ she said, keeping the little guy covered. She heard movement, a shuffling sound from deeper in the store.
‘There’s something I really think you should see,’ said the little guy.
‘Just shut up,’ said Mancuso, concentrating on the sound. It was coming from above. Something big, being dragged. The sound stopped and Mancuso’s full attention returned to the little guy. ‘Turn around and spread your arms. I’m going to do a body search. While I do it you read your rights off this card. Do you read Spanish, Portuguese, English, Gujarati or Patois?’ Mancuso took a card out of her jacket pocket.
‘Yes,’ said the little guy, turning and spreading his arms. Mancuso flicked her wrist, sending the card skimming across the shiny stone floor. It was sliding towards the little guy’s feet when the explosion came.
Mancuso spun. The noise was coming from above again, from the secure section. A vast shattering and crashing. Too extended to be an explosion. Like a ton of glass breaking. Even as Mancuso was turning she saw movement out of the corner of her eye.
The little guy was making a break. She