The Chinaman by Stephen Leather Page B

from his lips and smiled. ‘You want me to get it?’
    Fisher nodded. ‘Tonight. I’ll come with you.’
    â€˜I can do it.’
    â€˜I know. But this one is hard to find. You’ll need me there.’
    McCormick coughed. He took a handkerchief from the back pocket of his jeans and sneezed into it. ‘I’m going down with a cold,’ he said, but nobody registered any sympathy. He inspected the contents of the handkerchief and put it back into his pocket. ‘And when we’ve got the stuff, then what?’ he asked.
    Fisher’s eyes sparkled and he looked over at The Bombmaker. ‘Something big,’ he said. ‘Something very, very big.’
    Nguyen took the Tube back to Clapham and stored his purchases in the shed at the back of the yard behind his shop. It was a big metal garage but the main door had long ago been boarded up and now it contained three big chest freezers full of frozen meat and vegetables, sacks of rice and bottles of soy sauce. There was also a long wooden bench and racks of tools along one wall. Nguyen placed his carrier bag on the bench, padlocked the door and then went through the shop to his van which was parked outside. He drove to a large do-it-yourself store in south London and spent more than an hour filling a large trolley. He bought sections of plastic drain-pipe, insulation tape, three large bags of fertilizer, a soldering iron and several packs of solder, and other tools that he knew he’d need which he didn’t already have in his shed. He paid in cash, and on the way back he stopped at a large filling station. He filled the tank and bought two large plastic bottles of antifreeze, three cans of Shell motor oil and half a dozen cans of white spray paint to match the colour of his van, and a can of black paint.
    Pham was washing bean sprouts in the kitchen sink and he grunted a greeting as Nguyen walked by. Pham had agreed to buy the restaurant and had already paid Nguyen in cash. The bank had agreed to transfer the mortgage on the property to him and after a long but good-hearted argument over the value of the kitchen equipment and the food in the fridges Nguyen had agreed to accept thirty thousand pounds. Nguyen didn’t ask where Pham had got the money from, but he had relatives in Manchester who had probably helped out. He was planning to switch to Vietnamese cooking, though Nguyen doubted that it would be a success, so far away from the West End. He and his wife had decided when they first moved to London that they were more likely to make money if they kept to a Chinese menu, even though they personally found the cuisine bland and boring. Still, it was up to Pham now. Nguyen had promised to be out by the end of the week but he knew that Pham was keen for him to go as soon as possible so that he could move into the flat upstairs.
    After putting the rest of his purchases away in the garage, Nguyen sat at his table and crossed off the list everything he’d already bought. There were three items left: two kinds of acid and glycerine. He knew how to make the acid he needed from other quite innocuous and easily available materials. It was messy, but possible, but there was no need because this was England not Vietnam and here there were firms where you could buy chemicals, no questions asked. He took a well-thumbed copy of Yellow Pages and looked up Chemical Manufacturers and Suppliers. After three calls he had found one firm who would supply him with concentrated acids (for etchings, he’d said) and he arranged to collect a gallon of glycerine from another firm. Nguyen thought it prudent not to buy all three from the same supplier.
    Fisher stopped the car and switched off the engine and the lights, allowing the darkness to envelop them like a shroud. He and O’Reilly waited until their eyes became used to the blackness, listening to the clicking noises from the engine as it cooled. They were parked at the end of a lonely