Ned Beauman - Glow

‘We’ll also mention that my rave is now down to six quid on the door.’

As they cross the road, Raf catches sight of the old gasometer in the distance, the sunset-coloured cylinder today pushed most of the way up inside its steel foreskin. At the council block, they get into the lift with Raf’s keys and go up to the fifth floor. Raf dials the mobile phone number that’s supposed to get him inside, but there’s no response. Even before Theo disappeared, this sometimes used to happen in the evenings when Dickson was so stoned he couldn’t be bothered to come to the door, and Raf wonders if discipline here has relaxed even further now. He tries the number a second time and then a third.

‘We should find a radio and check they’re at least on air,’ says Isaac.

But at that moment they hear bolts sliding back. As the door opens Raf is planning to whine about how long this took so he can avoid explaining why he’s turned up here without Rose on a Saturday morning.

The seven-foot Lacebark soldier in the doorway looks back at the two of them and frowns. At some point his big nose has been broken and reset so awkwardly that he now resembles a cartoon character trying to smell his own ear.

Raf, who isn’t quite as scared as he was last time, is hoping to stay calm and try to bluff their way out of this. But then Isaac bolts. And if one of them bolts then both of them have to.

The soldier was slow to react but by the time they get back around the corner and into the lift he’s not far behind. Raf punches the ground-floor button and then, frantically, again and again, the door-close button, trying to remember whether it’s a myth that those buttons do anything or whether it’s a myth that they don’t. Either way, as the doors begin to thrum shut, the soldier lunges forward with an outstretched hand. But instead of the safety sensor activating, the doors just keep closing, and as the soldier whips his hand back Raf gives thanks for poorly maintained social housing infrastructure.

‘Jesus!’ says Isaac as they begin to descend. ‘That was one of them? That’s what they look like?’

‘Yeah.’

‘What the fuck was he doing there?’ says Isaac.

‘Lacebark must be locking everything down.’

The soldier’s probably taking the stairs, so when the doors open on the ground floor they start running again. They get to the bus stop outside the carwash in time to follow three teenage girls in hijabs on to a westbound bus, and when they look back from the rear window of the top deck they can’t see anyone following.

‘You still have the keys to the roof, right?’ says Isaac.

‘Yeah.’

‘We should go up there, cut the infra-red link and plug a mic right into the transmitter. We can work out how. I spent yesterday setting up the world’s dodgiest PA system.’

‘No, Theo put glue in all the ports on the transmitter that he wasn’t planning to use. The wily cunt.’ They both smile sadly. ‘Anyway, if Lacebark are guarding the studio now they’re probably guarding the transmitter too. We should give it to the Serbians.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘The transmitter and the aerial together have got to be worth, what, at least ten grand? We go to Jesnik, give him the keys to the roof, and tell him his uncle can have all the gear for free. If he wants he can start a station playing Serbian wedding music.’ The Mexican drug cartels, Theo once told him, have built their own military-grade radio networks in parts of the desert where mobile phone coverage is unreliable or insecure, but perhaps that wouldn’t be so much use in south London.

‘What would the point be?’

‘To steal Myth back from Lacebark before they find any more uses for it. We’ve got to start thinking like Cherish. Anything that distracts their attention is a good thing.’

The other option is to tip off Ofcom, who until all this started were the only bastards driving around London in unmarked surveillance vehicles that Raf ever had to worry about, but the thought of helping them out is just too sickening.

‘Don’t you remember when Barky got mixed up with the Serbians?’ says Isaac. ‘Maybe Jesnik’s OK but some of them are really fucking scary guys. If we’re going to give away the transmitter, we should at least give it to someone like Jonk. He’s been wanting to start his own station since we were kids.’

‘He won’t be able to get past Lacebark if they’re on the roof. But the Serbians must have guns.’ The sweaty bald guy in the seat in front of them has been in the process of mixing a milkshake in a Thermos flask with a bag of strawberry-flavoured protein powder and a carton of semi-skimmed, hugging all three receptacles to himself every time the bus brakes.

‘If we give up on the radio broadcast, how are we going to warn everyone about the raids?’

‘We can’t. So we have to make sure they don’t happen.’

‘But the only way to do that is to make sure Lacebark don’t catch Fourpetal today.’

The bald guy downs the milkshake and burps.

‘Yeah,’ says Raf.

‘And we have absolutely no clue where he might be. Absolutely no clue.’ Isaac looks at Raf. ‘Right?’

12.13 p.m.

By the time he gets near the climbing gym Rose is straining anxiously at her leash as if she can already guess that something important is about to happen. The noon sky’s such a steely blue that every dull mass in the foreground seems to spark at the edges like the flint in a lighter as your retina struggles to arbitrate the contrast. If Raf is right, Fourpetal will be watching the entrance of the warehouse, but he has to make sure that he sees Fourpetal before Fourpetal sees him, so he does a bit of rough mental trigonometry with the sightlines to decide on his route. After that, he pendulums back and forth from point to point, moving a bit closer each time, feeling like an authentic vengeful ghost now. The place he saves for last, even though he thinks it’s the likeliest, is the yard of the builders’ merchant, which he enters hoping he looks as if he might be on his way inside to buy some joist hangers. And maybe it’s because he deserves some good luck today but that’s where he finds Fourpetal, crouched behind one of those pallets of breeze-blocks, eating from a bag of prawn crackers.

‘Hey,’ he says. Fourpetal looks round. Raf knows that Fourpetal is going to run, because Fourpetal always runs, so he’s not obliged to await that formality before he lets Rose at him. Just as he does so, Fourpetal hurls Lacunosities like a brick, but the book misses by several inches and the dog has her jaws around Fourpetal’s left calf before the handle of her nylon leash has even slapped the tarmac. Fourpetal starts howling, and Raf calls Rose back. He’s always liked to imagine that she knows a total prick when she sees one, although in this case the enmity might simply be class-based.

‘I should let her really fuck you up but I’m not going to,’ he says. Fourpetal is now holding on to his leg with both hands and rocking back and forth but Raf can see that Rose didn’t even break the fabric of his trousers.

‘You followed me?’ Fourpetal says.

‘No. I just worked out what you’d probably try next. You thought taking one of Nollic’s kids hostage would be easier than getting Nollic himself.’

‘Yes.’

‘What were you going to do when they came out? Punch the nanny and then run off with one of the kids?’

‘I was going to find some way of distracting the nanny. Only if that didn’t work was I going to punch her. The trouble is, they haven’t arrived yet, and I don’t even know if this is the gym they go to. I think there’s one in London Bridge. Still, I wonder if Martin only started coming here as a way of sucking up to Nollic.’