Free To Fight For by Phillip Hunter Page B

she said, as if it was obvious.
    And, of course, it was obvious. I even remembered the huge iron safe he’d had there.
    I dropped the papers on the floor and stood, suddenly weary. All the anger had slunk away and left me hollow.
    â€˜Glazer had a girlfriend,’ she said. ‘That’s all I can remember. He used to talk to me about her.’
    â€˜What’s her name?’
    â€˜Mary.’
    â€˜Mary. Is that it?’
    â€˜It’s all I know.’
    I walked out of her flat and up the road to my car. I fell in behind the wheel and started it up and pulled away from the curb, my mind full of nothing thoughts, all crashing into each other, leaving me more confused than ever. I had nowhere to go, nothing to go towards. I drifted, letting the car take me along to wherever it wanted to go. I was weak with it all, sick of it, old. I was dead, but too stupid to know it.
    I couldn’t keep the image of Brenda’s blood-soaked face from my empty mind. It filled my head, torturing me. I saw her blood on my hands. It filled her eyes, her mouth. It was more than a nightmare, more than a dreamed-of horror, more than a memory. It was all of these, and more still because it had been real, and I’d done nothing to stop it. My mind was haunting itself, tormenting me with failure.
    It was then I realized I was being followed.

ELEVEN
    I turned left. The green car was still behind me. I slowed to twenty-five, and the car neared me a bit, then slowed too. I could see the driver, but not clearly. He was a young bloke with short dark hair. That was about all I could make of him.
    It didn’t smell like law, not with just one of them, and not when he was being this obvious. It might’ve been one of Dunham’s mob, but, again, they usually went around in pairs.
    I’d been turning this way and that, trying to decide what to do, and I didn’t know where we were by this time. It was a residential area, quite posh. I was winding through rows of semis, cars parked in driveways, neat front gardens, grass verges.
    I was going to have to find out who he was, what he wanted. That meant I was going to have to lead him into a trap. These suburban streets were fine for taking him into a cul-de-sac, but they were too quiet, I’d be too easily noticed. So, I had to lead him to where I could turn the tables. I had an idea about that.
    I sped up, and drove around until I found a main road. The first shop I saw was a newsagent. That was good enough. I pulled up opposite and went over, all nice and slow, like I was only out to buy some smokes. There was a woman behind the counter, fifty-something with a gut and a thick baggy jumper to try and hide it.
    She said, ‘Can I help you? Excuse me, can I help you?’
    I went through into the back, past the stacks of newspapers and boxes of crisps, and out through the rear door into the loading area.
    To my right was a wall. I stood on the bin next to the wall and climbed over into someone’s back yard. I carried on, crossing a few more back gardens, and then went up the driveway of a house and came back onto the road where I was parked, only about a hundred yards behind my car. I was going to stroll up to this bloke’s motor from behind, take him by surprise.
    But he’d gone. There were cars parked in front of me, and vans, but there was no green car. I looked behind me and saw the same.
    I walked back towards my motor, glancing up and down the street, natural like, so that I didn’t tip him off in case he’d parked up somewhere and was watching me. I didn’t see anything. I thought he must’ve cottoned on to what I was doing and scarpered.
    If he hadn’t changed down a gear, I wouldn’t have looked up. He just had to have that extra acceleration. He just had to smash me to hell. The anger, I suppose. Well, I couldn’t blame him for that. I understood it too well.
    I was just rounding the back of my car, when I heard his