street.
‘Y-? What-w-?’ she said. She turned around, then looked back at them. ‘Where are you going?’ she shouted. She paused. ‘Why am I standing here?’ she asked herself.
‘Why am I talking to myself?’ she added.
She started off after them. They’d all but disappeared, and she was only jogging half-heartedly. She took out her phone and dialled. It answered after three rings.
‘James?’
The line was distorted and choppy with breathing noises. ‘Running,’ he replied, with effort.
‘About that. Why are you and Jack running away from me?’
‘We’re not. We’re. Running after. The Guy.’
‘OK. What guy?’
‘The guy. We’re looking. For. He hyp. Notised you.’
‘No, honestly? I don’t remember that.’
‘Well. You would. N’t. Can’t talk. Gotta puke.’
He hung up.
‘Hypnotised?’ Gwen said to herself, jogging to a halt. She brushed hair out of her eyes and frowned with the effort of thinking.
Her eyes widened. ‘Ooooooooh,’ she said, nodding.
She started to run.
‘Is it my imagination, or is that getting worse?’ Owen asked.
Toshiko’s hands ran across her keyboard. ‘It’s not your imagination. That’s really getting hot. How could it just pop out of nowhere?’
‘Same way everything else does,’ said Owen. ‘Got a fix yet?’
‘Area only. Cathays, I think. I’m narrowing the search focus. Should have a street name or a GPS fix in about three minutes. Less, if it keeps getting hotter.’
‘Jack needs to know about this,’ Owen said.
‘Oh, absolutely,’ she agreed.
‘Ianto!’ Owen yelled. ‘Get Jack on the blower!’
Ianto picked up a cordless and pressed auto-dial.
‘It’s ringing,’ he said.
Jack and James came around the street corner almost neck and neck. They had to break formation to go either side of a pillar box.
‘There!’ James yelled, pointing.
This street was busier than the residential roads they had come out of. Some shops, some traffic, a muddle of people. Ahead of them, they could see the fugitive.
Dean had been forced to slow down, simply in order to duck and weave around the pedestrians in his path. He’d already bumped into one old lady. He risked a glance backwards.
The two men were still on his tail: the big, dark-haired guy in the long coat, and the leaner blond who’d challenged him. What were they? CID? He’d juiced the girl well enough, even though it had been off the cuff and desperate, but the blond guy hadn’t even flinched.
How the bloody hell had he resisted?
‘He got to Gwen,’ James yelled, leaping a toddler on reins.
‘That much was obvious,’ replied Jack, turning his body sidelong to fit between two bewildered Bengali women.
Jack’s phone started to ring. Still running, he hooked on his Bluetooth.
‘This is Jack.’
‘Owen for you,’ said Ianto’s voice.
‘Jack-’ Owen began.
‘Kinda busy, Owen!’ Jack replied, grunting as he barely avoided colliding with an opening car door.
‘That’s great. We’ve got a situation.’
‘Gee, so have we. Call me back.’
In the Hub, Owen lowered the phone from his ear and made ‘can you believe that?’ eyes at Ianto.
‘I swear, he never takes me seriously,’ he said.
‘Getting hotter!’ Toshiko sang out from her station.
Owen stabbed redial.
Jack heard a crash and some squawking. He glanced over his shoulder. James had piled into an ageing hippy on a skateboard and they’d both gone over. Tin cans and potatoes clattered and rolled out of the hippy’s split shopping bags. The skateboard shot out into the road.
‘Sorry! Sorry!’ said James, picking himself up.
‘You’re a bloody menace, mister!’ the hippy yelled. James was running again. He’d lost ground. Jack had the lead, but the crowd was getting thicker. For a split second, the devil in him considered drawing his Webley and waving it around.
‘Coming through! One side!’ Jack roared, hoping his accent and gleaming grin would do instead.
His phone rang again.
‘Seriously, Owen, it’ll have to wait.’
‘Don’t hang up! Don’t hang up!’ Owen gabbled.
‘Owen-’
‘We’ve got a thing. A big thing.’
‘Scale of one to ten?’
‘Er…’
Jack hung up. He shoved through a crowd of teenagers outside a video shop. He saw the guy, ten yards away, stumbling over a dog lead. The guy looked back, saw Jack, and hurled himself in through the automatic doors of a mini-mart, banging against them when they opened too slowly.
Jack ran up to the doors, allowed them to reopen, and walked inside. His phone rang. He ignored it.
Bright strip lights. Soulless magnolia lino with trolley scuffs. Aisles of produce shelves and humming freezers. The smell of plastic, soap powder and vegetables. There were a few dozen people inside, most queuing at the tills, some pushing trolleys around the aisles. Everyone had come to a halt and was looking around, even the checkout girls. Muzak played.
Everybody stared at Jack. He walked past the stack of empty wire baskets to the chrome turnstile. It was still spinning.
He slid through it. ‘Looking for a guy,’ Jack called out. ‘He came in here a second ago. I know you all saw him.’
The shoppers and the checkout girls gazed at Jack uncomfortably. They were thinking cops and robbers, they were thinking some dangerous nut with a weapon.
‘Everything’s OK,’ Jack smiled, holding up his hands. ‘There’s no danger. I just need to know where he went.’
He looked at a football mum, who averted her eyes, then at an OAP, who shook her head in a
‘Come on, help a guy out,’ said Jack. ‘Somebody knows where he is. Anybody?’
He caught the eye of the floor manager, a small, slope-shouldered, scrawny man in late middle age. The floor manager’s supermarket uniform was ill-fitting. He was standing at the price-check post behind the checkouts. He said something inaudible.
‘I’m sorry?’ said Jack, cupping a hand to his ear.
The manager coughed, and slowly picked up the stand mic on the price-check post. He thumbed the ‘on’ button and cleared his throat, which caused a brief burp of amplified feedback.
‘Uh,’ the floor manager’s voice came over the speakers, interrupting the Muzak. ‘Aisle five. Frozen goods.’
‘Thank you,’ said Jack, with an honest nod.
‘Uh, happy to be of service,’ the floor manager replied over the speakers. He took his thumb off the button
