Redeemer Read Free Page A

breath.
    ‘Or maybe something else has you concerned.’ Weiss looked at the coffee table, lacerated with knife marks. ‘Is your gang in trouble, my friend?’
    Big Teeth couldn’t take it any more. He stood up and shouted at Weiss. ‘What the fuck does this look like to you, man? We’re just local players. Local, brother. And now you come here asking me about some out-of-town guy? Shit, I don’t even have no fucking passport.’
    Weiss sat on the edge of the opposite sofa, the one with the bitch. She didn’t flinch. Not even the twitch of an eyelid. He stroked her hair.
    ‘Luis. I know this man is with BOPE. There’s only four hundred men in the unit, and I’ll bet you know the names and address of each of them off by heart. And I
know
you’re aware of him. You might think you’re Mr Big Shot these days, with your swimming pool and nice car, but at heart you’re still a
favelano
. You keep your ear close to the ground. So don’t fuck me about.’
    ‘Nestor, I swear—’
    ‘We can do this the easy way or the hard way. I gave you my word I would not kill you today. And I will not. But tomorrow is a new day. Maybe I’ll come again…’ The threat lingered in the air.
    Big Teeth watched out of the corner of his eyes as Weiss ran a hand down the girl’s cheek. He seemed to be weighing something up in his head. ‘OK, OK,’ he said, stubbing out his Marlboro. ‘What’s his name?’
    ‘John Bald. He’s Scottish.’
    ‘Shit. Fuck.’ Big Teeth took a scrap of paper and a ballpen and scribbled something. A barrel-chested goon pressed it into Weiss’s palm. He read a name and address, scrawled in appalling handwriting. Weiss was amazed Big Teeth could even write. He looked him square in his mismatched eyes, one brown, one green.
    ‘This is where I can find him?’
    Big Teeth shook his head. ‘This is someone might know where your guy is. I can’t guarantee shit, though. You know how it plays in the favelas, all kinds of fucked-up stuff happening all the time.’
    ‘I’ll check it out. Pray this does not rebound on you, my friend.’
    ‘It won’t,’ Big Teeth replied, finally going eye to eye with Weiss. ‘But you need to worry about watching your fucking back in Barbosa. Those kids don’t know you like we do. Shit’s all different there.’

5
     
    0930 hours.
     
    His leg muscles throbbed from the intense vibration of the Little Bird. His olive-green T-shirt, drenched with sweat, clung to his back. Thirty minutes since his insertion into the favela, Gardner was breathing out of his arsehole.
    He’d exited the LZ via a maze of walkways so narrow he couldn’t even stretch his arms. A wrong turn almost saw him slip into a crater in the road filled with excrement. Unguarded rectangular holes, the best part of a metre wide and half a metre high, were fixed to the sides of each home and along public walls. From the foul smell wafting out of them, he figured they led directly into the local sewage system.
    Gardner tabbed at a fast pace. He was conscious of the fact that the sooner he got to Bald, the better the chance he had of finding his old mucker in one piece. Five-eight, angular and bony, Bald was tough as old leather and built from the same granite as the houses in his native Aberdeen. With his face locked in a permanent frown, Bald looked stern and cold. Get a few jars of McEwan’s down his neck, though, and he’d soon be scrapping civvies with the best of them. But in a place like Barbosa, Bald would need all of his evasion skills to survive, because he’d stand out like a fake tit.
    Same for you too, mate, Gardner realized.
    He emerged into a market square. Or what once counted as a market round these parts. It wasn’t exactly fucking Lakeside.
    Sunlight razed an area fifty metres deep and thirty wide. In the middle of the street was an abandoned police car, next to a fountain with a stream of clothes floating in it. Flames hissed from the roof of the police car. Gardner counted three