less fond of mine, though, and our conversations have a habit of disintegrating into name-calling before we even get past the small talk.
Because I was thinking about Matthew, and because thinking about Matthew tends to trigger a whole lot of other, darker thoughts, I was more or less oblivious of my surroundings. So it was a while before I noticed I was being followed. I wasn?t even sure where the realization came from: I just caught sight of a movement in my peripheral vision, and on some level almost below consciousness I turned up a pattern match. I had to fight the urge to turn around. Instead I crossed to a shop window and used it as a mirror?a hoary-whiskered trick that works one time out of three, tops.
This time it half-worked: I saw a tall man in a heavy black overcoat about twenty yards behind me, there for a second as the crowds parted and then gone again. He had his shoulders hunched and his head down, so I couldn?t tell who he was, and the steep reverse angle of the window meant that in that split second he?d already moved outside of my field of vision.
I stepped into the shop and took a quick look around. More or less the same range of goods as all the other shops I?d passed, at least to my untutored eye: horse brasses abounded, along with heavy wooden furniture that it would be generous to describe as distressed, old pub signs, and wrought-iron boot-scrapers. No other customers in there; the shop assistant, a guy in his twenties with the odd combination of a street-legal razor cut and a silk Nehru jacket, was reading
?Is there a back door out of this place?? I asked.
The smile faded to an affronted deadpan. ?The workrooms aren?t open to customers, I?m afraid.?
?I?m being followed.? I decided to elaborate, and I reached for a story that would press the right buttons for an up-market rag-and bone-man. ?Loan shark muscle. They want to beat the shit out of me. I?d rather they didn?t do it at all, and you?d probably rather they didn?t do it in here. Please yourself, though.?
The assistant looked both shaken and disgusted. Fixing me with a hard stare, he picked up his cellphone from behind the counter and gripped it tight as though it were the cure for all the world?s ills. ?Yeah,? I agreed, ?you could call the police. And while we?re waiting you can tell me what not to bleed on.?
The workrooms were impressive, and they had a potent smell compounded of beeswax and shellac, but I didn?t have time to take the guided tour. The assistant led the way, glancing back at me every other step to make sure I was still there. We went along a corridor lined with wooden crates into a room dominated by a single massive workbench, chairs, and occasional tables hanging on racks above it like some torture chamber for sinful furniture. Then through there into a storeroom stacked with cans of varnish, bales of wire wool, plate-size tubs of Brasso.
At the far end of the storeroom there was a door that he had to unlock with a key from his pocket, and then unbolt at top and bottom. He threw it open and held it for me, glaring at me as though this might still be some kind of fiendish trick. I examined the pass-not ward on the lintel of the back door as I stepped through it: hazel. ?This is out of date,? I told him, flicking it with the tip of my index finger. ?It?s almost June. If you don?t want poltergeists, get a sprig of myrtle.?
He didn?t answer. The door slammed shut behind me and I was alone in an alley wide enough to take a delivery van. Not much cover, and it obviously opened right back out onto the street again. Still, we?d see what we?d see.
I went cautiously to the corner and looked out. There were enough people walking past in both directions so that unless anyone was looking for me to emerge at exactly that point they?d take a while to notice me. So I had the luxury of being able to look up and down the length of the street without having to watch my back at the same time.
Nobody lurking around the doorway of the shop I?d gone into. Nobody browsing the windows of the shops to either side of it. I looked across to the other side of the street, bearing in mind that if this guy was any good he?d have chosen a place where a casual glance wouldn?t pick him out.
A casual glance didn?t, but on the second sweep, bingo, there he was. Just opposite the shop I?d gone into, there was a stand selling roasted nuts?the kind of thing that American tourists get their picture taken with, mistaking it for part of London?s rich cultural heritage because it involves both bland food and a cheeky, cheerful Cockney. The man in the black coat had positioned himself close to the back of the stand where he?d be hidden from two sides, and from the other two would most likely look like someone patiently waiting to have his nuts roasted. He was a quarter onto me, so I was mostly seeing the back of his neck and I still couldn?t tell whether I?d ever met him before.
Just then, as I was staring at him and willing him to turn around, my phone started to squirm in my pocket like a living thing. There was no noise: I?d set it on vibrate a while ago when for some reason silence had been an issue, and now I kept losing my way in the menus when I tried to turn it back. But noise or no, it came out of nowhere and it made me start. And it was as though that minute movement alerted my stalker even though his eyes were elsewhere. His head jerked up and around, abruptly, triangulating on some cue that beat the hell out of me, and then his body swiveled, too, so that he was facing in my exact direction.
It was eerie and unsettling. So was the face, now that I got a good look at it, because it was Zucker.
Son of a bitch. These guys were tailing me around London with insolent ease. I could understand it if I were wearing a sandwich board like the deranged vegetarian who used to hang out at Oxford Circus (LESS LUST THROUGH LESS PROTEIN) but inconspicuous is my middle name and I pride myself on the hair-trigger accuracy of my professional radar. Did they have the office staked out? Or the
It was a conundrum for a quieter moment. Right now, Zucker was staring directly at me across the width of the street, and even with the surging throng turning this into a game of peep-o there was no way he hadn?t seen me. I turned my back on him and fled.
When you?re playing follow-the-leader in what the military would call a broken ground situation, the leader has all the advantages so long as he keeps his nerve. Weaving in and out of the crowd with my head down, I kept moving fast until I reached another alley, then broke free and sprinted the full length of it, coming out in Brunswick Gardens. The crowds were thicker here if anything, because there was a street market on and the road had been closed to traffic. Tinny music from someone?s wooferless boombox scraped along the air along with scents of almond essence and vanilla pods. The stalls, selling mainly antiques and collectables but also T-shirts, sweets, spices, and bootleg DVDs, crowded the curbs on either side and gave passers-by a lose-lose choice between the narrow, obstacle- strewn pavement and the heaving, shop-or-drop chaos in the center of the road.
Perfect.
I threaded my way between two stalls, crossed the street, and continued on the other side. Then fifty yards farther on I crossed back, legs bent at the knee to keep my head down, squeezing myself skillfully through the mob wherever a gap presented itself, and carried on down to the corner, where Kensington Church Street picks up again after the dogleg. Here I inserted myself back into the more orderly crowd of antique-hunters. Okay, I?d gotten turned around 180 degrees, and I?d have to go home by a different route, but I reckoned that no one on God?s earth could have kept me in sight through that maneuver.
So it was kind of a bitter blow when I got onto an eastbound train at High Street Ken and saw, walking down the steps on the other side of the barriers, that now familiar black coat and slouching, head-down gait. The train was idling, doors open, waiting for a signal to change or for some other, more arcane London Underground augury. Packed in between a whole bunch of other straphangers and their interesting collection of armpits, all I could do was stand and watch. The man slid his ticket through the machine and the barriers opened. He walked on past me without looking up, and without any sense of urgency that I could see. Then, just like on the street, he looked up?first left and then right, finally locking eyes with me just as the doors hissed shut.
Our eyes met. He might have been angry, or embarrassed, or nonplussed, but he wasn?t any of those things. He just smiled, baring teeth that seemed to include a few too many canines. I smiled back, sardonically: then the doors slid open again and the smile slid off my face like lumpy custard.
Zucker took a single step toward me. He didn?t take a second one, because with the strength of panic I grabbed the guy standing next to me?a young Turk from the city, to judge by his splendid suit?by the shoulders and pushed him off the train. He collided with Zucker, who tried to step around him and then, as he staggered and flailed, just flicked him out of the way, one-handed. They were only entangled for a second: then that gorgeous Alfieri homespun was down in the dirt and Zucker was stepping toward me, unencumbered.
But that second had been worth buying. The doors slammed shut again in his face and the train pulled out. A second later the tunnel?s arch slid like a magician?s cloak across the scene, magicking it away.
* * *
I was hunter, and I was hunted. I was missing something. And if these guys were Catholics, I?d eat my tin
