Under Cover (Agent 21)

by Chris Ryan

  – He’s bad news. All those identities, could be organized crime. You don’t want to get mixed up in that. Just give him the wallet and get out of here.

  Ricky eased himself to his feet. He removed the wallet from his pocket and handed it over.

  ‘Thank you very much,’ said the man in his deep voice. ‘I’m wondering if you happened to take a look inside?’

  Ricky shook his head.

  ‘Names,’ the man continued, obviously not believing him. ‘Some are more suitable than others for different occasions. What’s your name, by the way?’

  ‘Billy,’ Ricky lied instinctively.

  The man looked delighted. ‘You see how easy it is! Now you have three names – Billy, Coco and whatever your real one is.’

  ‘Right,’ Ricky said. Today was getting weirder by the second. So was this bloke. ‘Er, are you going to tell the police about me?’

  ‘The police? God, no. They can be very tiresome at times.’ He pulled a twenty-pound note from his wallet. ‘Are you hungry?’ he said.

  Ricky couldn’t help but nod.

  ‘Me too. So why don’t I buy you something to eat, and I can tell you where you went wrong?’

  Something to eat. Ricky salivated at the thought.

  – Don’t be stupid, Ziggy told him. This guy’s trouble. Smile sweetly and get out of here.

  Ricky edged along the wall, back towards the steps. The man gave a little shrug and offered him the twenty-pound note anyway. Uncertainly, Ricky took it. But the moment the man released it from his fingers, he grabbed Ricky’s wrist. It was a tight grip, and made Ricky wince.

  ‘Every lie needs an element of truth, Coco,’ the man said. ‘Next time you try the pratfall, make sure there’s some blood. Knee, elbow, anywhere. Use the fake stuff if you have it, it’s pretty good. If I’d seen that, you might have got away with it.’

  ‘Let go of me.’

  ‘And when you know you’re faster than someone, run in a straight line. Otherwise they might out-think you, like I just did. And you’ve got to admit, it’s a bit embarrassing being caught by a man with only one leg.’

  ‘What?’

  The man released his grip and Ricky staggered towards the steps.

  ‘Afraid so,’ the man said. He tapped the lower half of his leg with his stick. It made a dull, clunking sound.

  – Good skills, Ziggy said slyly. Outrun by a bloke with one—

  – Shut up, Ziggy.

  Now Ricky really wanted to get out of there.

  ‘Tell me, Coco.’

  ‘What?’

  The man smiled, once more revealing the teeth of a man who ate more sweets than was good for him. ‘Do you want a job?’

  – A job? What sort of job would a guy like him be offering?

  ‘Course not,’ he said.

  ‘Oh. Shame. But I’ll tell you what – put that twenty-pound note in your shoe. By far the safest place for it.’

  ‘Right.’

  The man made his way up the steps. ‘And, Coco?’

  Ricky stopped and looked back. ‘What?’

  ‘You can call me Felix,’ the man said. ‘One name’s as good as another, and maybe we’ll meet again.’

  In your dreams, Ricky thought as he scrambled up the steps, and away from the weirdo with no hair but many names. In your dreams.

  Home, for Ricky, was a single room in a dilapidated house on the outskirts of Hackney. The other occupants of the house changed from week to week, but Ricky had learned not to talk to them anyway. No normal person would stay there. The whole house stank of rotten wood and mildew and there was the scurrying sound of rodents in the ceiling day and night. The room itself contained nothing but a single bed and a sink in the corner with a tap that never stopped dripping. Nobody ever cleaned the toilet that he had to share with several others, and as a result it was too disgusting for words.

  It cost Ricky £150 a month to stay there. On the first day of each month, his landlord would arrive to collect the money. Baxter was a frightening man – he had a gaunt face and hardly any lips. Whenever Ricky handed over his money, Baxter would carefully count every last note. He’d never asked Ricky his age, and if it worried him that a kid was living in a dump like this, he didn’t show it.

  Ricky had seen what happened when someone failed to pay up. Baxter had a couple of heavies who always waited in the car on rent day. If anyone was even fifty p short, the heavies would kick them out of the house. It usually involved some bruises, and occasionally a cut lip.

  – At least we’ve got another twenty-four hours till rent day, Ricky thought as he tramped, footsore, towards the house.

  – Then what’s Baxter’s Mercedes doing parked in the street?

  Ricky stopped and blinked. The Mercedes was twenty-five metres away, parked right outside the house. There was no doubt that it was Baxter’s. A silver Merc stuck out in this part of town.

  – What does he want?

  Ricky walked past the vehicle. It was empty. That meant Baxter’s heavies were inside the house. And that meant trouble.

  There was a commotion inside the house. Something was happening on the first floor, where Ricky’s bedroom was. He climbed the stairs nervously. Sure enough, there on the landing were Baxter and two thick-set men – square jaws, flat noses, scars all over their faces. Ricky called them the Chuckle Brothers. Just his little joke. They weren’t the type to chuckle.

  – What are the Chuckle Brothers doing outside our room? Ziggy said.

  The heavies were standing on both sides of Ricky’s bedroom door, while Baxter loitered a couple of metres from them.

  ‘Ah, there you are, kid,’ said Baxter. He had the voice of a thousand cigarettes. ‘Been waiting for you.’

  ‘It’s rent day tomorrow, not today,’ Ricky said. He didn’t try to keep the dislike from his voice. His landlord was a scumbag.

  ‘Not for you, kid. You’re out of here.’

  Ricky stopped at the top of the stairs. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You stupid as well as ugly?’ Baxter said. The Chuckle Brothers gave a nasty laugh, just as a woman appeared in the doorway of Ricky’s room. She had three children with her – hungry, pale-faced things. Immediately Ricky understood. Baxter had managed to squeeze more money out of this woman than he could out of Ricky.

  ‘I’ve got nowhere to go,’ Ricky said.

  ‘Anyone bring a violin?’ Baxter asked. He nodded at Chuckle 1, who picked up a bag at his feet and threw it towards Ricky. ‘Your stuff,’ Baxter said. ‘And you owe me money.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘For the damage you’ve done to the room, you thieving little runt. Peeling wallpaper, cigarette burns—’

  ‘They were there when I moved in – I don’t even smoke. And anyway, I haven’t got any money.’

  ‘When did your problems become my problems, kid?’ Baxter looked over his shoulder at Chuckle 1. ‘Turn out his pockets.’

  – You need that money! Run!

  But Ricky didn’t move. His eyes were on the bag. There wouldn’t be much in there. A change of clothes, some toiletries. But it would contain the only two things that meant anything to Ricky: a picture in a frame of him with his mum, dad and sister, before the accident. And a letter, rather dog-eared now, in his sister’s neat handwriting. He wasn’t leaving without them.

  The bag was three metres away. Baxter’s man was four metres beyond it.

  – I can grab it before he gets me, then run down the stairs.

  – No you can’t. Leave it and get out of here.

  But that wasn’t an option. Not if the picture was in the bag. Ricky ran forward and grabbed it – it wasn’t heavy – then spun round and sprinted back towards the top of the stairs. He was just about to make the first step down when he felt a fist in the small of his back. He lost his balance and tumbled. His shin cracked against the corner of one of the steps and his head hit the banister. He called out in pain as he thumped down the stairs, dragging the bag behind him.

  And
when he hit the bottom of the stairs, Chuckle 1 was there, behind him. He pulled Ricky to his feet, then thumped him in the pit of his stomach. Winded, Ricky doubled over, but then felt his attacker pull him up by his shoulders. He knew the punch in the face was coming, but didn’t expect it to be so hard. Chuckle 1’s knuckles connected with his cheek. He felt blood spurt from his nose, and a cracking, pulsing pain on the right side of his face. Chuckle 1 patted him down. He found the money in his back pocket in no time. He waved it up towards Baxter, who was standing at the top of the stairs.

  ‘How much?’ Baxter asked.

  Chuckle 1 flicked through the wad of notes. ‘Hundred and five . . . no, ten . . .’ He sounded like he was having trouble with the adding up.

  Ricky’s winded lungs were still gasping for air, but in the quiet of his mind, Ziggy was feeding him instructions.

  – Run now, while he’s got his hands full of money. The front door’s open – you can feel the air coming in. If you get out of this with just a punch in the stomach, you’ll have done well. You’ve seen what they’ve done to other people . . .

  True enough. These guys thought nothing of breaking a few bones. Ricky gripped the handle of his bag, gulped once more for air and sprinted towards the front door.

  Baxter shouted: ‘Get him!’ But Ricky had found his legs. Seconds later he had burst out of the front door and was sprinting down the road.

  – I seem to have done a lot of running today.

  – Well, don’t stop now, unless you want another fist in your face.

  Ricky’s lungs burned. He looked over his shoulder. Twenty metres behind him, Baxter and his men were at the door of the house. Baxter was gesticulating at them, clearly telling them where to run in order to cut Ricky off.

  – Remember what that weird man said: ‘When you know you’re faster than someone, run in a straight line. Otherwise they might out-think you, like I just did.’

  Good advice. Ricky kept running to the end of the street, across the main road that ran at right angles to it and straight down another street that continued in the same direction. When he looked back over his shoulder five minutes later, Baxter and his heavies were nowhere to be seen.

  He stopped at a children’s playground in an area of open parkland alongside the road. It was empty, which was hardly surprising, since the swings were padlocked and out of order, there were graffiti on the play panels and a heap of litter on the ground. Ricky sat at the bottom of the slide and took a moment to catch his breath.

  With sweaty hands he opened up the bag and rooted around inside it for the precious photograph and the letter. They were still there at the bottom. The glass of the photo frame had cracked, but that didn’t matter. He could still see the photo of him, his mum and his dad sitting on a park bench, his older sister Madeleine between them. They were all laughing at a long-forgotten joke. And the letter was still snugly tucked inside its envelope.

  He carefully put his treasures back into the bag. Then he looked around to check nobody was watching him, before removing his right trainer. Inside, carefully folded up, was the twenty-pound note.

  For the second time in the last few minutes, he felt a moment of gratitude for the advice he had received from that odd-bod with the bald head and bad teeth. This was now the only money he had in the world.

  – And you don’t even have a place to live.

  – Shut up. I’ll think of something.

  But right now, he couldn’t think what that something would be.

  3

  FEEDING TIME

  Even a B & B was out of the question. Too expensive, even if he could nick more money first, and a kid Ricky’s age could never book a room without somebody asking questions.

  He quickly rejected the idea of approaching the Thrownaways. He didn’t need any more fights, or any more scars.

  Ricky bitterly resented the loss of his room. Baxter might have been loathsome, but at least he didn’t care that Ricky was only fourteen years old.

  He needed somewhere to sleep. The thought of being alone on the streets, all night, frightened him. Anything could happen there.

  At first, he felt like he was wandering aimlessly. But as dusk arrived, he found himself walking footsore along the Euston Road. He realized that he had been heading for central London all along. He felt slightly more comfortable there, at least during the day. The bustle and the noise were the closest he ever got to having company. In any case, all the vagrants seemed to congregate there. And he was one of them now.

  – We have to eat, Ziggy said.

  True. Ricky was weak with hunger. Certainly too weak to pick someone’s pocket. You needed your wits about you when you did that, and all he could think about now was his hunger pangs. His stomach groaned as he walked past pizza restaurants and steak houses. As he looked in through the windows, his reflection stared back – his right eye was so swollen it was almost closed up. He touched it gently, then winced. He could forget about pickpocketing for several days. To do that, you needed to be invisible. With a face like this, he was anything but.

  He wondered how little of his twenty pounds he could spend in return for a full belly. Eventually he decided chocolate bars were his best bet – cheap and filling – so he bought two Snickers from a Tesco Metro, then started looking for somewhere to settle down and eat them.

  He chose Bloomsbury Square. He liked it there among the old university buildings. It had a patch of garden in the middle, with several little thickets of trees dotted around. The garden was surrounded by high railings, and there were benches that he could sit on – and, perhaps later, sleep on. He chose a bench on the north side of the garden, where he sat down to eat. He had to stop himself from wolfing down the chocolate bars, savouring each mouthful slowly. Experience told him that food would be in short supply in the days and weeks to come, so he should enjoy it while he had it.

  As he ate, he looked around the gardens. He wasn’t alone. On the far side, two women and one man were sipping from cans of lager. They looked to Ricky like they were homeless. You started to recognize the signs after a while – the old clothes, the long hair, the look of hopelessness. A couple of teenage girls were sitting on another bench, chatting and playing music from their phones. A middle-aged man was walking his dog. Ricky kept his head down and concentrated on his food.

  – They’re watching you.

  – I know. I saw them.

  The homeless trio with the lager were staring at him. No doubt they too recognized a fellow vagrant. But Ricky noticed something else in their stare.

  – They’ve seen you’ve got food. Food means money. They’re thinking, you’re just a kid. You should get out of here before they go for you.

  But Ricky was too exhausted to move. He finished his chocolate, but kept half an eye on the trio who were taking so much interest in him.

  Five minutes passed. It was fully dark now. Another man entered the gardens. He looked official – blazer, peaked cap. He walked up to the two girls listening to music. Ricky couldn’t hear their conversation but he could tell what was happening. They were being asked to leave. He glanced at the big iron gate through which he’d entered the gardens, and realized that it must be locked at night. Clearly nobody wanted homeless people loitering here after dark.

  The girls turned off their music and the park-keeper headed over to the dog-walker.

  The three down-and-outs, however, still had their eyes on Ricky. They stood up, so Ricky did the same. He didn’t really want to leave this square – it would be a good place to stay the night, he had decided, because if he was locked inside he would be protected from the street. But it looked like he needed to get ready to run again.

  The dog-walker was making his way towards the gate. Now the park-keeper was approaching the vagrants. He stood in front of them, blocking their view of Ricky.

  – Hide. Now, while nobody’s watching. You’ll be safe locked inside the square for the night, where nobody can get at you . . .

  The nearest thick
et was about five metres away. Ricky grabbed his bag and stealthily headed towards it. Seconds later, he was hidden among the leaves and low branches. Something scratched his bruised face and he winced, but kept quiet.

  A tiny gap in the foliage gave him a view onto the square. The vagrants were walking towards the exit while the park-keeper looked around to check there was nobody else to kick out. He seemed satisfied, but the same couldn’t be said of the woman holding her can of lager. She had a scary, raddled, pockmarked face. In his time on the streets, Ricky had learned to recognize the features of a drug addict, and he was looking at them now.

  And unlike the park-keeper she seemed to look straight through the foliage at Ricky’s exact position.

  – She knows you’re here.

  – Too right.

  ‘Get a move on!’ the park-keeper shouted. The woman swayed slightly, but then she obediently followed the others to – and through – the gate, which the park-keeper locked behind him with a big iron key.

  Ricky didn’t move. From his hiding place he kept his eyes on the scary woman. Silhouetted in the darkness, she reminded him of a witch in a story book his mum had once read him. The witch was talking to her companions. Ricky held his breath, hoping that they would disappear. But they didn’t. They started to circle the garden.

  He watched, breathlessly, as the scary woman prowled round the railings. ‘I know you’re in there, kid,’ she hissed when she was just a few metres from Ricky’s position. ‘You’d better pass us any money you’ve got, if you don’t want us to be waiting for you in the morning.’

  – Stay still!

  The witch gave a harsh laugh and retreated.

  The darkness deepened. The only light came from the vehicles circling Bloomsbury Square. Ricky started to shiver.

  – Put some more clothes on.

  He pulled a threadbare jumper out of his bag. It helped a bit. He peered towards the railings again. They were about two metres high, with sharp points on the top. Nobody was getting in here tonight. He was safe, until morning.

  Ricky lay on the cold ground and used his bag as a pillow. The earth leached the warmth from his body and he started to shiver and ache. His swollen, painful face felt twice its usual size. He tried to sleep, but sleep wouldn’t come. He soon grew hungry again, and wished he’d saved one of his chocolate bars.