Page 82 of Savage Protector
“What?” A harsh, guttural tone suddenly reverberates around the vehicle.
“Hey, Freddie, where you at, man?” Rome’s false jollity contrasts with the angry response.
“Who the fuck is this?” Fred sounds bemused and is ready to slam the phone down.
“I’m wanting to talk to Shaz. She there?”
“Shaz? Look, who is this?”
“A mate of hers. Put her on, will you, man?”
“Fuck you.” The line goes dead.
Tony is on the phone to Frankie. Moments later it’s confirmed. The call was picked up at a location exactly twenty-seven metres from our current position.
Beck dangles a setof keys before us. “Borrowed these fromCandy Crushman,” he explains. “If we raise the shutter just a foot or so, we can roll underneath, and they may not see us.”
“Maynot?”
Beck shrugs, but we all agree it’s worth a try and a lot better than scrambling across the roof, which would be Plan B. We exit the SUV and approach the building silently.
There’s no sound to be heard immediately on the other side of the reinforced steel door, so now’s as good a chance as any, probably. Beck operates the lock, and we all cross our fingers that someone had the sense to oil the mechanism.
The curtain glides upwards with barely a clank or a scrape. Beck stops it at about eighteen inches, and one by one, we slide underneath. He closes it again behind us and pockets the keys. “Right, I suggest we take a look around.”
We split into pairs. Tony and I head right, the others, left. The space has the proportions of an airport hangar, and we discover that almost all of it is unoccupied. Vast, empty space, our footsteps would echo like a marching band, but we somehow manage to creep about noiselessly, keeping speech to a minimum, too. When we regroup back by the shutter, we’ve concluded that only about twenty percent of the floorspace is in use, and that is an area at the far end which has been screened off with huge, dark-coloured tarpaulins suspended from overhead beams.
The only illumination in the warehouse is provided by the residual glow cast by bright lights, visible above the screens.
At a gesture from Tony, we make our way forward.
The low hum of voices reaches us, a mix of Punjabi and English, with occasional laughter. The sound of pacing feet and the scrape of machinery being moved suggests they’re still setting up.
This is confirmed when we peep through a gap in the screening. From what I can make out, they have two cameramen, and the rest must be sound engineers or digital mixers or whatever. It’s certainly not a labour-intensive endeavour, relying mostly on the technical wizardry set up in the enclosed makeshift ‘studio’.
The two women and the man we saw approach on foot are seated together, but separately from the rest, each wrapped in what appear to be grubby bathrobes and nothing else. Clearly ready to perform, as soon as the kit is in place.
“If Shahida was here, she’d be with them, surely?” Tony suggests.
He’s probably right, which just leaves…
“That could be him.” Rome points out a thickset man strutting back and forth barking out orders at the top of his lungs. The rest scurry to do as he says, the scene one of well-practised chaos.
Rome produces the phone and hits speed-dial again.
Fred scowls at the buzzing device, cancels the call, and shoves it back in his pocket.
“Okay, so that’s him. Now, we just?—”
Before we can make a move to extract our man, Fred grabs a clipboard, studies it for a moment to two, then strides over to where the ‘performers’ are huddled.
“You two, you’re up first. The barn scene, and make it juicy. People are paying good money to be entertained by you pathetic load of shites.”
The two women get to their feet and shrug out of the robes. Naked, they trudge through the tangle of cables and amplifiers towards the central area where some sort of crude theatrical set has been laid out. Actually, that’s a somewhat grandiose term for what amounts to two bales of hay and a few plastic sacks meant to suggest animal feed or similar. All that’s missing is a cardboard cut-out of a sheep.
One of the girls isn’t quite quick enough, earning herself a vicious shove between the shoulder blades which sends her sprawling against the closest bale, much to the merriment of the men watching. She picks herself up and stumbles onto the set.
Give them their due, the production team are efficient. Each man has a role to play, and they all assume their stations at the various bits of equipment. One is in charge of lighting and directs the fierce beams onto the two bodies now reclining across the bales. Another rushes up close, waving one of those furry microphones in their vicinity, while the rest are poised with cameras at the ready to catch the action from every angle.
