Spook Street полностью

Oh yes, grey London.

London was a class-A city, of course, constantly topping those lists which explained the world in bullet points. It had the best clubs, the best restaurants, the best hotels; it threw the best parties, and cobbled together the best Olympics ever. It had the best royal family, the best annual dog show and the best police force, and was basically brilliant except for the parts that weren’t, which were like someone had taken all the worst bits of everywhere else and shored them up against each other. And the traffic was a fucking nightmare.

None of which was news to Patrice.

Who wasn’t Patrice today, but that was hardly news either. His passport proclaimed him Paul Wayne, and this required no mental adjustment: Patrice had been Paul Wayne for as long as he could remember. And Paul Wayne was as much at home in London, even the bad parts, as anywhere in France; could order a drink either side of the river, and nobody would bat an eye. Because Paul Wayne didn’t just speak English, he spoke English English, the same way he spoke French French. He’d have tied Henry Higgins in knots, and if that wasn’t enough to piss Higgins off, Paul Wayne could have gone on to kill him with his bare hands in about fourteen different ways, because that, too, had been part of the training that had been taking place every moment of Patrice’s life. Patrice’s life was about being Paul Wayne. And today Paul Wayne was taking one Sam Chapman off the board.

Yesterday Chapman had spotted him and taken evasive action: ducking into the underground and adopting a sentry post at the end of a platform. Patrice hadn’t enjoyed the two-second report he’d had to make—Nobody at home. Will attempt redelivery—but at least it had given him a clue as to the target. Sam Chapman looked like most other people tramping the streets in lousy weather: pissed off, down-at-heel, in need of a better raincoat. But Chapman was also a pro, or had been, and that stayed in your blood. Responses slowed, but they didn’t disappear. When someone dropped a tray in a crowded restaurant, you looked every which way except towards the noise, hunting down the action it was meant to distract you from. And when you thought someone was tailing you you took evasive action, even if the thought was a secondhand murmur, a butterfly wing. If you felt a fool afterwards, at least you were alive to feel foolish. So Sam Chapman was that kind of target, which meant Patrice knew to prepare the ground this time; to check for escape routes and probable hideaways. A pro never went home with tingles running down his spine. A pro spooked on home territory took wing, and didn’t look back.

So this was today’s plan: spook him deliberately. Spook him, and watch him take flight.

Then bring him down.

Marcus had parked where he’d almost certainly get a ticket.

“Put a note in the window,” Louisa suggested. “Secret agent on call.”

He muttered something, a grumble about being designated driver. His fault for driving an urban tank, though; the only one with a car big enough to carry an unhappy passenger.

They were south of the river, half a mile from the Thames, near one of those busy junctions which rely on the self-preservation instincts of the drivers using it; either a shining example of new-age civic theory, or an old-fashioned failure of town planning. On one of its corners sat a church; on another, earth-moving monsters re-enacted the Battle of the Bulge behind hoardings which shivered with each impact. A tube station squatted on a third, its familiar brick-and-tile façade more than usually grubby in the drizzle. There was a lot of construction work nearby, buildings wrapped in plastic sheeting, some of it gaudily muralled with visions of a bright new future: the gleaming glass, the pristine paving, the straight white lines of premises yet-to-be. Meanwhile, the surviving shops were the usual array of bookmakers, convenience stores and coffee bars, many of them crouching behind scaffolding, and some of them book-ending alleyways which would be either dead-ends where wheelie-bins congregated, or short-cuts to the labyrinth of darker streets beyond. Once upon a time Charles Dickens wandered this area, doubtless taking notes. Nowadays the local citizenry’s stories were recorded by closed-circuit TV, which had less time for sentimental endings.

Up one of those alleys was Elite Enquiries; the private detective agency whose staff of three included Bad Sam Chapman, once of Regent’s Park.