Spook Street полностью

Louisa was gone in a flash, sprinting for the road, hoping to get into that alleyway before Sam Chapman disappeared out the other end. Marcus was slower, pausing to click the car locked: it was his vehicle, damn it, and they were south of the river, and the family was already one set of wheels down. Dying at his desk would look the softer option if anything happened to this one. So by the time he reached the road Louisa was just barely leaping to safety on the other side, a bus-horn blaring her home. The surface was slick with rain, and hurling yourself out into traffic, assuming it would stop, worked fine in the movies, but Marcus had seen people hit by cars, and didn’t fancy pissing sitting down for the rest of his life. Louisa was weaving in and out of people wielding umbrellas, and Marcus, running parallel with her, nearly crashed into a crowd gathered in a passage to his right: it was clustered round a large man lying in a puddle of glass and books. Noting the uniform, Marcus thought, Well you won’t be handing out tickets, but his follow-up was more to the point: Who put you through a window, mate? Someone more aggravated than a ticketed driver; he must weigh eighteen stone. And nobody tossed eighteen stone through a window without practice, or a trebuchet.

He looked across the road. Louisa was gone. He grabbed the nearest onlooker. “Who did this?”

“Are you police?”

“Who?”

The onlooker, scrawny, dandruffed, damp, said, “He was just a bloke, know what I mean? Didn’t look like he could throw a dart, let alone—”

A pro, thought Marcus. “Where’d he go?”

“Didn’t see, know what I mean?”

Marcus could just about work it out.

He scanned the area, but raining like this, most people hurrying, nobody stood out.

There was a gap in the traffic, though, so he took the chance and ran across the road.

When you flushed a bird, all you needed to know was which direction the sky was. Men were trickier, more devious.

But Patrice had studied maps, and knew that the alleyway the target had gone down led nowhere.

Which might mean the target was unlucky, and that was like finding money in the street. Hunting someone unlucky, you could just pick your spot and wait. But the target was a former spook, and while spooks made mistakes like everybody else, they didn’t run down blind alleys two hundred yards from home. Patrice moved past the entrance without pausing; just another Londoner caught in the rain. A little further on he took the next left, and looked back to see a woman following the target’s route.

There was hardly anyone on this street. The pavement was narrow, the kerbs flooded; parked cars lined the opposite side. To his left, a chain-link fence sealed off a space where a house had stood. From behind him came the growing wail of a siren, but this didn’t worry him. Add ten minutes for witness statements, and Patrice could be on the other side of London. Meanwhile, the target appeared from a doorway ahead and hurried up the road without looking round. Good tradecraft, thought Patrice, but in this case a mistake. He quickened his pace, and consulted the map in his head. Chapman would weave his way in and out of this tapestry of backstreets, trying to zigzag himself invisible, a common ambition when you knew you were prey. And in the attempt he’d pass through somewhere dark and lonely, maybe underneath one of the railway bridges which spanned the roads in this area. All Patrice would need was a second or two. He ran a hand through his hair. The rain was getting harder.

Ho watched the screen, lips moving. Behind him, Shirley said, “What happened there? Is he going through a building? He’s going through a building!”

She said into her phone, “He’s going through a building,” though Marcus had already gathered as much, twice.

Louisa emerged from the alleyway as he reached it. “Dead end.”

“He’s gone through a—”

“Building, yeah, I worked that out.”

“You got that map?” Marcus said, not to Louisa.

Into his earpiece, Shirley said, “Left, then left again.”

Bad Sam knew he’d been flushed by the breaking glass; that he’d fallen for the automatic escape principle, the one that said Fly. Now. But knew, too, that he’d bought himself a tiny advantage, one he could keep hold of provided he didn’t look behind.

He doesn’t know you know he’s there.

That in his mind, Bad Sam headed further into the maze of streets that looped round Corporation housing, dog-legged past schools, and threaded under bridges. In the rain he heard no following footsteps; just a steady patter on the pavements and, distantly, a police car’s plaintive wail. Don’t look round.

Louisa would have been off already, but Marcus caught her by the arm. Anyone else and she’d have broken his elbow—she was in the mood. But Marcus didn’t break easily, and had a message to impart.

“There’s someone else. After Chapman.”

“Who?”

“A pro.”

He released her.