Free Shadow Box by Peter Cocks Page A

changed to the Central line and continued to follow from a carriage away. He sat down and appeared to shut his eyes for a while, giving Donnie a chance to move a gnat’s closer to observe better. At Tottenham Court Road, the target opened his eyes and hurriedly stepped off the train, almost wrong-footing Donnie, who scraped between the closing doors. They left the station. Donnie ducked around the roadworks that clogged up the junction of Tottenham Court Road and Oxford Street and followed Eddie along New Oxford Street. The kid was easier to follow now that there were fewer people around, but that made Donnie’s life more difficult. Years on the job had made him light on his toes despite his bulk, and he stuck to shadows and doorways. Then the kid turned left up towards the British Museum and stopped outside a red-brick mansion block. Donnie watched from the doorway of a sandwich bar while he pressed in a security code.
    Donnie could have killed him there and then, he thought. He’d done it before. A few steps across the pavement and a silenced shot to the head would be quickest, or he could have done it with a knife: cut his throat or stabbed him through the ribs. Or he could have strangled him with his bare hands. Save a lot of time and energy, he thought to himself. But that wasn’t the job he’d been given.
    The door buzzed and the kid went inside. Donnie waited long enough to see a light go on three floors up – that narrowed down the options of where the boy lived.
    Donnie walked back along New Oxford Street, looking for a night bus back to New Cross. He took out his mobile and tapped in a message to Dave Slaughter with clumsy fingers.
    D. I no wear he lives. D.

I woke up late.
    Sun was streaming through the blinds and it hurt my eyes. I felt groggy, and realized that I had drunk too much the night before. I pieced together my evening, remembering the pints of Guinness in Kilburn that had given me the Dutch courage to go back with Hannah, probably too soon. That had given me the bravado to go into her room and hack her computer – and nearly get caught.
    I kicked myself for being sloppy; I was out of practice.
    I tried to remember my return journey to the flat: a slightly fuzzy tube ride on a late-night train. I had taken none of the usual precautions coming back, none of the back alleys and side-street swerves that I usually took to disguise my destination.
    Careless.
    I checked around the flat, made sure all my tricks of the trade were in place. I lifted off the bath panel and checked the loose floorboard behind. There were still a couple of automatic pistols and some live rounds under there and a box full of bugging devices. I retrieved a handful of bugs and pocketed them. Then I went back into the living room and fired up my laptop. I cleared the history and changed my password, then changed the entry code on the door to the flat. I was meant to do this every two days or so, but I hadn’t done it for weeks. I’d been letting things slip, and it was time to tighten up.
    My mobile rang at 10. Simon Sharp.
    “Good morning,” he said chirpily. “So you were at Hannah’s last night? Good work.”
    “Eh?” I said. I had almost forgotten that his computer would now be connected with Hannah Connolly’s.
    “
Very
good work,” Sharp said. “I want you to come in.”
    “When?” I asked. “Where?”
    “Come down to Vauxhall at 12. I’ll be having a coffee with Anna in a Portuguese caff next to the bike shop opposite Vauxhall Bridge.”
    The mention of Anna always triggered mixed emotions. She had saved my life when I was shot, and when she became my case officer I had got way too close to her. I felt she had allowed it so that she could manipulate me.
    And she had. More than once.
    I ended the call and jumped in the shower. I still felt rough, so I chucked down a Coke and a couple of paracetamol and pulled on pretty much the same clothes I’d worn the day before, leaving the flats by the back entrance