Dark Winter Read Free Page A

the Tiger beer. They’d just been watching a government commercial during half-time, warning that if you were caught using a pirate satellite card you were liable to a fine of up to the equivalent of five thousand pounds, ten years’ imprisonment, and a whipping. ‘Shit,’ Suzy muttered, ‘you don’t want to mess with Murdoch, do you? It’s almost safer being a drug-dealer.’
    The call to prayer stopped and the electric organ sparked up again, this time announcing the appearance of the Phantom of the Opera.
    ‘Taxi’s here.’ Suzy gave a slight nod in the direction of the workshop area, as a knackered red-and-yellow-topped Proton saloon pulled up. The cracked plastic Teksi sign on its roof disappeared from view now and again as a bus or truck rumbled past. The last four numbers on the plate were 1032, and that was the VDM [visual distinguishing mark] we’d been given. The driver was definitely our man.
    I caught a glimpse of him waving no at a group of tourists in brand-new counterfeit Nike T-shirts. They drive on the left in Malaysia, and the vehicle was parked with the driver at the kerbside, so I couldn’t see his face clearly. In the glow from the neon sign he seemed to be lighter-skinned than the target, but not as light as the locals. Maybe he was Indonesian. He stayed in the cab, reading a newspaper with his arm out of the window, a cigarette in his mouth. He was the source, the one responsible for informing on the target. Perhaps he even knew what the target was up to. Whatever, he was the one who was going to help us.
    We didn’t know the source’s identity, and I didn’t want to. He probably felt the same about us. All he would have been told was that people were going to be waiting out there for him to finish his part of the job so that they could do theirs. Once he was finished, that was it, he was out of the equation.
    Now all three of us were waiting for the target to show his face, while everyone around us was either swigging beer, watching TV or comparing sunburnt shoulders. Suzy got out her guidebook again. It would have looked unnatural for both of us to be looking over there and not saying anything.

3
    Worshippers began to emerge from the mosque and before long there was a frenzy of cars and scooters revving up in the parking lot. The first vehicles tried to edge out into the traffic, but nobody on the road was giving them an inch. The air was filled with the din of horns and screeching brakes.
    Suzy rested her guidebook on the table and I looked up. The target had come out of the door and was soon climbing back over the fence. The source waved, then got out of his cab. In the stronger light I could see he was definitely Indonesian, with high cheekbones, short black hair and a moustache, about the same height as Suzy. His stripy shirt hung out of his jeans, maybe because his massive shoulders were stretching the material so much – he looked as if he’d forgotten to take out the extra-wide coat hanger before putting his shirt on.
    The two men came together without greeting, then went through the same door the target had come out of. Suzy packed her book back into her bag as the Brits eyed up a group of girls walking by, and the organist got a ripple of applause. The source was coming out again, carrying some sort of white box with a handle. As he got nearer to the taxi I could see it was a cardboard gift pack of six bottles of wine, with the sides cut away to make the labels visible. He went round to the passenger door, the side nearest us, and opened it, placed the box carefully in the footwell, then walked back round the front of the cab, climbed in and the vehicle started rolling. It was all over and done with in less than a minute.
    Suzy’s hands were securing the rolled-up top of her bag as the taxi melted into the traffic. ‘So much for Muslims and alcohol, eh? Maybe it’s Ribena.’
    The Brits next door cheered and slapped the table. It wasn’t Suzy’s joke: Leeds had