* * *
The building looked as if it had once been scheduled for demolition, something that appeared to have partly gone ahead before the council had a change of heart and decided to pardon the half-mangled eyesore. Ivan was lurking in the graffiti-riddled entrance, where somebody called ChikNwings and somebody called what looked like Bumfuzzle had been waging a war of words by tagging as many surfaces as possible. Bumfuzzle appeared to be winning.
Ivan seemed nervous, which made Danny nervous, because anything that made Ivan nervous was almost certainly worth getting nervous about.
“You okay?” said Danny.
“You bring money?” said Ivan, ignoring the question.
Danny flashed him the bills. Ivan nodded.
“You bring weapon?” he said.
“Weapon?”
“You know. Bang-bang. Stab-stab,” said Ivan with accompanying hand gestures.
“No, Ivan, I didn’t bring a weapon. You didn’t ask me to bring a weapon.”
Ivan nodded and checked his watch.
“Why do I get the feeling you’re not telling me something?”
“Is fine. We go.”
Danny followed Ivan into the building. He found himself in a dimly lit lobby that smelled like a well-used urinal cake. Ivan pressed the button for the lift, which seemed to work, much to Danny’s surprise, although the way it clacked and clunked on the way down suggested that it probably wouldn’t be working for much longer.
“Maybe it’s safer if we take the stairs,” said Danny.
“You want to take stairs, take stairs,” said Ivan as the doors rattled open. “I take lift.”
Danny peered into the gloom of the stairwell. It was so dark that only the first five steps were visible, upon which lay a bundle of clothes that on closer inspection turned out to be a person, who might or might not have been breathing. Danny got into the lift.
“So how do you know this guy?” he said.
“I don’t,” said Ivan. “My friend, he knows him. Well, friend of sister of friend. He do business with The Shark one time, he says he get good service.”
“The Shark? That’s his name?”
“Not his real name. Is just what people call him.”
“Thanks for clearing that up,” said Danny. “Why do people call him The Shark?”
“Because he likes water? I don’t know. Why else would he be called The Shark?”
“Because he loans people money with insanely high interest rates? Because he eats people? Because he’s a merciless, dead-eyed predator?”
Ivan thought about this for a second. “Good point,” he said.
The lift lurched. Danny grabbed Ivan’s arm and quickly let go when he realized they weren’t about to plummet to their deaths.
“So did they look genuine?” said Danny.
“Did what look genuine?”
“Whatever your friend’s sister’s friend bought. What was it anyway? Passport? Driving license?”
“Dynamite,” said Ivan.
“Dynamite?!”
“No. Is wrong word. Not dynamite.”
“Thank God for that,” said Danny.
“I mean the hand bomb. You know? You pull the thing and you throw the other thing?”
“A grenade?”
“Grenade,” said Ivan. “Yes. He buy the grenade. Soviet limonka. Very good.”
“What the fuck, Ivan? I thought this guy sold fake documents!”
“He sells many things,” said Ivan, smiling. “He is ‘entrepreneur,’ as you say.”
The lift stopped and the doors opened. Danny stayed close to Ivan as they slowly walked down a long and dingy corridor towards the only door with a light beneath it. Ivan knocked six times: thrice, then twice, then once. The sound of chains being unchained and locks being unlocked came from inside the flat before the pair were greeted by a thickset man in a black leather jacket with slicked-back hair and a bushy mustache.
“We are looking for The Shark,” said Ivan. The man looked him up and down and grunted. He did the same with Danny. After frisking them both with alarming thoroughness, he grunted again, stepped aside, and motioned for them to enter.
The apartment had been completely gutted of anything with purpose or value. Absent carpets exposed rotting floorboards, rusty hinges waited in empty doorways, wires protruded from naked light fittings. Even the windows had gone, their frames now home to ugly tapestries of black bin liners and damp pieces of cardboard. Only a desk and a chair remained, both of which were occupied by a man with a mouthful of shiny gold teeth and a left eye that stared off slightly to the right.
“Mr. Dancing Bear!” said The Shark in an accent that was north of Manchester but south of Newcastle. He stood and spread his arms in welcome.
Danny, being almost as nervous as he was unaccustomed to the etiquette for greeting members of the criminal underworld, thought the man wanted a hug, which was what he gave him, much to the surprise of The Shark and much to the horror of Ivan.
“So,” said the man, awkwardly adjusting his jacket. He sat back down and indicated for Danny and Ivan to do the same despite there being no chairs available. “How many would you gentlemen like?”
“How many?” said Danny. He glanced at Ivan, but Ivan just shrugged. “Well, just the one, please.”
“Just the one, please,” said The Shark in an accent designed to impersonate Danny but which actually sounded like Dick Van Dyke impersonating a poor Dick Van Dyke impersonator. He removed a ziplock bag from his desk drawer and gently placed it in front of him. The bag was full of pinkish pills. “Voilà.”
“What’s this?” said Danny with a nervous laugh.
“What’s this?” said The Shark, imitating Danny again. He gave his friend a get-a-load-of-this-guy look. “It’s what you asked for.”
Danny looked at Ivan, hoping for some kind of explanation, but Ivan looked equally confused.
The Shark opened the bag and removed a handful of pills. He popped one into his mouth and offered them to Danny. “Here,” he said. “Have a try.” He winked at Danny with his dodgy eye.
“I’d really rather not.”
“It’s good stuff, I promise.”
“Thanks, but—”
“Go on.”
“I—”
The Shark pulled a Taser from his jacket pocket and placed it on the desk.
“Don’t mind if I do!” said Danny. He pinched a pill from The Shark’s hand and winced as it crawled down his painfully dry throat. Ivan did the same.
The Shark flashed them a dull metallic grin and swallowed the remaining pills—six or seven at least—in one hungry gulp. Suddenly he twitched and clutched his chest, and for a brief moment Danny thought that the man might be having a heart attack, but before he’d finished trying to recall his first aid training (was it “Nellie the Elephant” or “Little Miss Muffet” he had to sing while doing the chest compressions? and was it fifteen compressions to two breaths, or fifteen breaths to two compressions?), and before he was able to decide whether it was even ethical to use said training to resuscitate somebody who sold drugs and occasionally grenades for a living, The Shark reached into his jacket and pulled out a trembling mobile phone. He answered the call and started chatting to a man called Rodney while Danny attempted to confer with Ivan via several furtive glances.