The Chop Shop Read Online Free Page B

camouflage with a different company logo stitched onto the
sleeves. One of them, a lance corporal, opened the fence and waved them
through.
    “We've been
expecting you. This way, the crime scene isn't too far from here.”
    Michael
tightened the collar on his coat. His watch said one-twenty. Their guide led
them through a mess of twisting and turning back alleys formed from buildings
that had been left unfinished for God knows how long.
    Neon displays
flashed, trying to burn advertisements for beauty products onto his retinas.
They gave the world a strange kind of red hue, casting hard shadows that
shifted and changed with every frame of video played. Scores of bicycle bells
rang from a nearby road.
    Their journey
was further than the lance corporal implied. The house stood separate and
detached from the surrounding urban sprawl in Upper Richmond. A private garden
and vegetable allotment was penned in by chain fence and barbed wire. Security
cameras watched the perimeter.
    Further on was a
rectangular hole in the platform, sealed off by construction signs and safety
barriers. He saw down into the streets below. Policemen stood guard outside,
talking to two members of a forensics team clad in white plastic suits. A dead
bodyguard was still slumped against the wall, leaving a trail of blood down the
brickwork where he'd fallen.
    “We'll be
outside,” Corporal Hill said.
    They pulled on
gloves and shoe covers before going inside. The floor was laminated wood and
littered with spent shell casings, so many that the forensics team hadn't even
bothered trying to preserve their location.
    Michael knelt
down, picked one up and held it to the light. “.45, Chinese made.”
    “I expect most
of them ended up in him,” Richard said, gesturing to the bodyguard lying dead.
    Another member
of the forensics team stepped into the hallway. “Don't know why you're wasting
your time coming up here, we can send the reports down to you.”
    “Sometimes it's
better to see things for yourself. Information has a habit of getting lost when
you send it down to us,” Michael said.
    “I love it.
Somebody thinks the killer is in your garden, so you come swarming up here like
flies on shit thinking you're something special,” the man said. He raised his
gloved hands in surrender. “You know what, mate? Be my guest. Check the place
out for yourselves and then go back under whatever rock you crawled out from.”
    He pushed his
way past the detectives.
    “Looks like they
had a small war in here, and the bodyguards did a lot of missing,” Richard
said. He pointed to the holes in the walls.
    “Panic fire. But
what made them panic? They were trained for this kind of stuff,” Michael said.
    They walked into
the foyer. The guard in here was slumped in the corner, missing everything
above the jaw. White wallpaper had been turned red by the contents of his
skull. Little lumps of brain collected on top of the skirting board.
    “Careful, Rich.
Don't step on that eyeball,” Helen said.
    “Shit,” he said,
when he saw it. “That's nasty.”
    “I guess this is
what a late-term abortion looks like,” David said.
    Maria jabbed him
in the arm with her elbow.
    Michael grimaced
and tried not to look at the corpse. He pointed to an empty casing. “Shotgun.
Twelve gauge. The .45s would have come from a submachine gun, so he probably emptied
the entire magazine into the previous two guys. In a place like this, there's
no time to reload, so he swaps to a backup weapon. He must have charged right
in here, no stopping.”
    “Just one guy?
With all these bullets flying about, he was bound to get hit sooner or later,”
Richard said.
    Michael
shrugged. A man from forensics was checking for prints in the lounge under the
watchful stare of another policeman. He turned, adjusting his mask, and pointed
to the two corpses bleeding over the African rug. “The woman was Jim Belton's
wife. That guy there is just another guard.”
    Dark mahogany
shelves held countless