by Chris Ryan
‘I don’t work for anyone.’
‘If you say so, Coco.’ Suddenly Felix was maddeningly calm. He looked all around him. ‘Pretty neat pad, this, for someone without a job.’
‘What’s it called, this agency?’
‘I’m not going to tell you. It isn’t important, anyway. Names are just . . . well, never mind. What’s important is that we – you – find Izzy Cole.’
‘Why can’t you just send in your precious Agent 21 if he’s so great?’
‘Because he doesn’t know the streets like you. You’re the better asset for the job. At least, that’s what my superiors think. But they’ve been wrong before,’ he added darkly.
Ricky stood up. He paced the room, fully aware that Felix was staring at him.
– Maybe now is the time to go? To take the money and run.
– But it’s just one girl. We could try to find her. If we manage it, great. If not . . .
– But it’s not our problem . . .
– She’s probably rich. If we find her and bring her back to her family, there might be a reward in it for us.
Ricky turned to Felix. ‘It’s an impossible task,’ he said. ‘The girl could be anywhere. That picture was taken more than twenty-four hours ago.’
Felix gave him a sharp look. ‘How do you know when it was taken?’
‘You must have said.’
But they both knew he hadn’t. Ricky felt himself blushing. He started talking to hide it. ‘She could have travelled to, I don’t know, Scotland in that time.’
‘Unlikely,’ Felix stated. ‘Work like this is all about patterns. When people disappear, they normally don’t move too far from their first destination. I’d bet money that she’s still in London.’
‘London’s a big place.’
‘Then you’d better get started, Coco.’
Ricky paused. His mind was working overtime. How would he do this? Where would he start? He remembered Tommy, the aggressive Thrownaway with the protruding Adam’s apple he’d met on Christmas Eve. Maybe if Ricky could find him again, it would give him a lead on Izzy Cole. But he didn’t like the idea.
‘Those street kids. They don’t talk to just anyone, you know. They have gangs. Some of them are violent.’
‘Then you’d better be persuasive.’
‘And if I can’t be persuasive?’
Felix stared at him. ‘Look at her face, Coco. She’s in a bad way. You know yourself how dangerous it is for a kid to be living on the street. What would have happened to you in Bloomsbury Square if I hadn’t shown up to help you out?’ He got to his feet and limped over to where Ricky was standing. ‘Not everybody has a guardian angel, kid. Are you going to let the streets destroy that girl, just because you’re feeling too selfish to use everything I’ve taught you to help someone who needs it?’
Ricky clenched his jaw and stared fiercely into the middle distance.
– He’s talking you into it. Ignore him. Don’t let him get to you, Ziggy said in his head.
– But he’s right. You saw what she looked like. She was a mess. Maybe I can help . . . And she’s been beaten up. Like Madeleine was. What if she . . . wants to kill herself too? I couldn’t save Madeleine, but maybe I can save this girl?
Ricky felt his mouth turn dry. He knew Felix was using him. But he also felt a twinge of excitement and realized he was up for the challenge. For some reason he didn’t want Felix to see that.
‘What do I do if I find her?’ he asked.
‘When you find her,’ Felix replied, ‘you bring her here and you call me.’ From his pocket he removed a mobile phone. ‘Speed dial one,’ he said. ‘There are no other numbers programmed on it. But you call immediately. Is that understood?’
‘Yeah,’ Ricky said. ‘That’s understood.’ He took the phone, delighted to see it was an up-to-date model. If this all went belly-up, at least he could sell it . . .
Felix had gone. Ricky stood in his bedroom, a bad feeling about what he’d just agreed to do hanging over him like a cloud.
The wardrobe doors were open. He needed to choose his clothes carefully. He found that his mentor’s words were echoing in his head. When you’re following someone, you need to make sure you pay attention to what you’re wearing. Make sure it’s appropriate to where you are. If you’re in a rough, poor area, wearing all the latest designer gear will make you stick out like a sore thumb.
He pulled out a pair of jeans. He’d worn them several times, but they still looked far too new. So he went to the kitchen and found a good, sharp knife, which he used to rip some holes in them. He then spent a good half an hour fraying the rips with his fingertips. He selected the same, slightly smelly, T-shirt he’d worn for the past few days, and a thin jumper into the elbows of which he tore more holes. Then he checked out the whole ensemble in the mirror. Not bad. He tousled his hair a little, and decided that at the very least he looked unremarkable.
Felix had left him a printout of the photo of Izzy Cole, because brandishing an iPad on the dingier streets of London would be a sure way to get mugged. He folded it carefully and put it into his back pocket. He also pocketed the phone Felix had given him. With the press of a few buttons he brought up his own number, and found himself able to memorize it at a glance. Then he stuffed it into a front pocket of his jeans where no nimble fingers would be able to snatch it without his knowing. Then he left the flat.
Outside, the visibility was poor on account of the blizzard. There was more than thirty centimetres of snow piled up on one of the benches, but the ground was carpeted in unpleasant grey-brown slush. Ricky was cold through before he’d even walked twenty metres.
He had also noticed the figure tailing him. For some reason it made him angry that Felix, after all the surveillance training they’d done, should have someone following him in such an unskilled way. As he walked across the plaza, Ricky pretended not to notice. But all the while, his eyes scanned ahead and his brain worked overtime as he searched for a way to lose the tail. In the end, he decided to wait until he had ducked down into Canary Wharf underground station.
He sensed his tail following him down the escalators into the ticket office. They were ten metres behind as he swiped his Oyster card. And as he waited for his train, he could sense the figure standing on the platform, still about ten metres to his left. Ricky didn’t look at him directly, but could tell that the tail was a man wearing jeans and a black raincoat, probably in his twenties.
A train arrived. Ricky stepped in. So did his pursuer. Ricky stood right by the doors.
An announcement came over the tube’s loudspeaker. ‘Stand clear of the doors please.’
A hissing sound from the doors themselves. They started to close. Quick and agile, Ricky slipped back through them and onto the platform. He considered winking at his tail to let him know he had noticed him. But he decided not to rub it in. He just turned his back on the train as it moved away, taking his pursuer with it. Then he headed along the brightly lit corridors of the underground station to find the platform he really wanted.
Ricky took the tube to King’s Cross. He realized that finding a lone girl in London was like looking for a needle in a haystack, but that was definitely the best place to start looking. And if he couldn’t find the girl, well, maybe the boy Tommy would be able to help . . .
Despite the Christmas sales, the snow seemed to have lessened the crowds, so the main road outside the station was not as busy as it had been on Christmas Eve. There were no police officers directing the traffic and Ricky’s visibility through the snow was little more than five or six metres. He crossed the road and headed towards the side street where he’d had his encounter with the Thrownaways.
It looked empty. Snow had drifted heavily to one side. Several cars looked like they would have to wait for a thaw before they could move. With his shoulders hunched and his hands dug deep into his pockets, Ricky tramped up the pavement. He realized that his every sense was on high alert – in a way that it never had been before he met F
elix. He heard a crow cawing from a rooftop on the opposite side of the street. The wind whistled as it gusted between the high buildings on either side. Ricky wiped his numb nose with the back of his sleeve, then noticed a passer-by walking in the opposite direction. Ricky didn’t slow down, or even raise his head. But his eyes were fixed on the pedestrian. A woman. Heavy fur coat. A furry scarf that looked like she had an animal draped over her neck. Expensive clothing. Ricky caught a whiff of perfume, and looked over his shoulder to watch her disappear . . .
‘Spare some change?’
Ricky started. The voice came from just a couple of metres away. He looked to his right to see a man curled up in a doorway, blowing into his hands to keep them warm. He had a grizzled face, cracked, bleeding lips and dark rings under his eyes. Ricky gave himself a silent telling-off for having missed him, but then shoved his hand into his pocket and brought out some change. He dropped the money in the snow on the edge of the pavement, and watched for a moment as the homeless man scrabbled around in the powder to find it. Once the man had collected all the coins, Ricky bent down to look him straight in the eye. ‘You should get a hot drink,’ he said.
The man looked at the change in his trembling hand. ‘With fifty p?’
Ricky fished another handful of change from his pocket, but he didn’t hand it over just yet. Instead, he removed the photograph of Izzy, unfolded it and waved it under the homeless man’s nose. ‘I’m looking for this girl. Have you see her?’
The homeless man stared at the picture for a few seconds. Then he shook his head. Ricky handed over his fistful of change, gave him a nod of thanks and continued walking a few metres up the street.
Suddenly he stopped. He turned round and tramped back to the man in the doorway.
‘There’s this kid I met round here, a couple of days ago. Dark hair, thin, big Adam’s apple. You know him?’
‘Maybe,’ the homeless man wheezed.
‘What’s his name?’
The man made a suggestive shrug. Ricky took more money from his pocket – a ten-pound note this time. He held it out, but just as the man made to grab the money, he whipped it back. ‘His name?’ he said.
‘Tommy. He works this area for . . .’ The man hesitated.
‘For who?’
‘No one.’
Ricky pulled yet another note from his pocket and waved it in front of the man. ‘For who?’ he insisted.
The man’s eyes narrowed. ‘Hunter,’ he breathed.
– You’ve heard that name before. One of the Thrownaways used it on Christmas Eve. And the guy you met was definitely called Tommy.
– Maybe all that Kim’s game stuff wasn’t just a party trick.
‘Who’s Hunter?’
The man licked his cracked lips. ‘Give me the money.’
Ricky handed over the two notes. The man grabbed them greedily.
‘Who’s Hunter?’
‘Someone you should stay clear of, kid.’
‘Where do I find him?’
‘He moves around, doesn’t he? Never stays in one place.’ The homeless man hesitated. ‘Do you know Keeper’s House?’
Ricky shook his head.
‘It’s a derelict building off Berwick Street in Soho. Hunter’s running his kids from there, last I heard.’
‘What do you mean, running his kids?’
‘They steal for him. Pickpocketing, break-ins, sometimes worse. Do yourself a favour, lad. Stay away from Hunter and his crowd. You don’t want to get involved.’
– A Fagin, then, Ricky thought.
– Like in the musical. But this is real life. I’m guessing there’s no singing and dancing . . .
He nodded and thanked the man, then walked back through the snow to Euston Road with the man’s warning ringing in his head: You don’t want to get involved.
Too late, he reminded himself. He already was.
11
KEEPER’S HOUSE
Ricky stood on the corner of Berwick Street and D’Arblay Street, and shivered. He felt like the cold winter air had seeped into his very bones.
He pulled the phone from his pocket and Googled Keeper’s House. It looked just as the homeless man had described it: derelict. The picture he’d found on the internet showed a boarded-up, graffitied house. And according to the map on his phone, it was just fifty metres from where Ricky was standing. He walked along Berwick Street for about thirty seconds, then took a right into a small side street, followed by another left turn ten metres along.
The street that led to Keeper’s House was little more than an alleyway in which the snow was piled thickly. The house itself was at the end of the street. It looked forbidding and disused. Had there been no snow, Ricky would never have imagined it was occupied. But his eyes instantly picked out several trails of footprints in the snow along the street.
He heard Felix’s voice in his mind. You need to see everything.
He zoned in on the footprints. They were all pointing away from Keeper’s House and he reckoned he could make out five separate sets – that meant five people had left the house in the past few hours, and they’d not yet come back.
Decision time. Should Ricky break into Keeper’s House and try to find the young homeless guy who’d called himself Tommy? Should he risk coming face to face with this Hunter character, whoever he was? Or should he wait here for the return of whoever had left Keeper’s House that day?
He decided to wait.
Ricky took up a position in a doorway just opposite the entrance to the side street. He was mostly protected from the snow here, but not from the cold. He crouched down, huddled into a ball, his head bowed but his eyes fixed on the entrance to the side street.
And he waited.
He was numb with cold within half an hour. After an hour, he could barely think straight. It occurred to him that the Ricky who had never met Felix would never have put himself through this. He was too cold even for his teeth to chatter.
– Remind me again why we’re doing this.
– Shut up, Ziggy.
He kept watching.
They arrived after two hours. Ricky’s feet had gone beyond feeling like blocks of ice. Now he couldn’t feel them at all.
There were three of them. They had a dejected air as they tramped through the snow, their hands buried deep in their pockets for warmth. None of them noticed Ricky, huddled in his doorway. Ricky watched them carefully. He examined their clothes: old, threadbare. Glimpses of the side of their faces: wary, aggressive. Their gait: tired. He compared them to his memory of Tommy from Christmas Eve. None of them resembled him.
– What do we do now, Sherlock? Approach them? Ask if any of them know—
– Wait! Who’s that?
Approaching from the opposite direction was a figure Ricky recognized. Lanky. Thin. A protruding Adam’s apple and a scowl on his face.
Tommy.
He looked almost as cold as Ricky, with snow settling on his hunched shoulders. His lips had a faintly blue cast, and Ricky thought he could see a blood stain under his nose and over his upper lip. Last time Ricky had seen him, when they had faced up to each other in the side street by King’s Cross two nights ago, he’d worn a mask of aggression. But now, when he didn’t know he was being watched, Tommy looked like any other lost kid. Before meeting Felix, Ricky had felt slightly scared in the presence of one of these Thrownaways, but right now he just felt a bit sorry for him.
Even so, he remembered Felix’s words: You always want an escape route. He glanced to both ends of the street. If it came to it, he could sprint in either direction . . .
‘Tommy!’
The Thrownaway stopped in his tracks. At first it looked like he hadn’t even seen Ricky. Then Ricky stood up slowly, Tommy peered at him, and a look of recognition slowly dawned on his face. Followed by a look of confusion.
‘What do you want?’ he said.
‘I need your help.’
‘Get out of here, if you know what’s good for you.’
; ‘I hope you enjoyed that food I gave you,’ Ricky said. ‘There’s more where that came from.’
Tommy scowled. ‘What do you think I am, some sort of charity case?’
– That was the wrong thing to say. You need to backtrack quickly.
‘Course not. Look, the other night, I was looking for a girl. She’s lost. I’ve got a picture here . . .’ He held it out, the good picture, the one where Izzy looked blonde and pretty and not beaten up.
A missed beat. Tommy glanced down at the picture, then looked away momentarily.
– He’s seen her. You can tell by looking at him. He doesn’t want you to know.
‘What’s that got to do with me?’
– Flatter him. Use his ego.
‘She was on your turf. I bet you know everything that goes on there.’ Tommy shrugged modestly as Ricky added: ‘You and Hunter.’
Tommy seemed to catch his breath. He looked at Ricky even more warily. ‘How do you know Hunter?’ He narrowed his eyes. ‘If you’re with the police . . .’
‘I’m fourteen, Tommy. Bit young for a copper, don’t you think?’
Tommy narrowed his eyes. ‘Yeah,’ he mumbled. ‘Maybe.’
Ricky walked up to him and smiled his most reasonable smile. ‘Where is she, mate?’
Tommy looked left and right – rather nervously, Ricky thought. ‘You’d better speak to Hunter,’ he said. He pointed towards Keeper’s House. ‘It’s this way.’
They trudged through the snow. Ricky sensed that Tommy wanted to say something, but was holding back. He tried to draw him into conversation.
‘What happened to your nose? Looks like you’ve been bleeding.’
Tommy seemed embarrassed. ‘Tried to snatch a bag,’ he said. ‘The woman chased me. I slipped in the snow and hurt myself.’
‘Blow out,’ Ricky said, and they tramped on in silence.
Only when they were at the front entrance to Keeper’s House – a big arched door covered with graffiti tags – did Tommy speak again.