Hunter Hunted by Jack Gatland (best value ebook reader .TXT) 📗

Monroe before he started playing spies with his possible-terrorist, newspaper journalist mistress. Anjli, however, was already grabbing her coat.

‘Everything okay?’ she asked. Declan forced a smile.

‘She saw me on the news,’ he replied. ‘Suddenly I’m the cool one.’

Anjli shook her head. ‘It’s hard to believe that twenty-four hours ago we were bringing down crime syndicates,’ she laughed. The laughter stopped though when she stared back into the side room, and the unconscious Alexander Monroe.

‘You sure you can stay?’ she asked. ‘It’s just that I could do with a shower.’

Declan nodded. ‘If I need to go anywhere, I’ll call a uniform in,’ he said. ‘I’ll catch you later.’

As Anjli walked out of the ward, Declan wandered into the side room, sitting beside the unconscious Monroe. His head was bandaged, most likely from when it had been slammed through the glass, and a wicked looking black eye was already forming around his left orbital bone. Declan couldn’t help it; he laughed.

‘You’ve never looked more Glaswegian, boss,’ he said as he picked up his lukewarm coffee from the floor beside the chair and sipped at it.

He would deal with Kendis later.

4

Walking the Dead

Declan had taken the message that Kendis had sent him to heart; he understood why she didn’t want him to use the Audi as it would have had a tracker installed in it, as per all police cars. Which meant that if he’d driven to Brompton, there would have been a record of the journey. What he couldn’t understand was why she needed to have Declan do this off the grid, avoiding CCTV and in disguise. He guessed that this was possibly to do with ensuring that Peter didn’t find out somehow, although he didn’t know how that could ever happen, and he dutifully waited in the ward room with Monroe until two pm, called in a uniform to take over his shift and made his way out of the Royal London Hospital through the basement exit, passing through the staff changing rooms and the locker areas; doctors and nurses needed a place to change out of dirty scrubs, after all. Here he acquired a pair of cheap looking aviator glasses and a baseball cap for some American team out of open lockers as he passed through; he felt bad for taking them, but had ensured he took nothing that looked expensive. Eventually, stopping at his car and swapping his coat, jacket and tie for a pale grey hoodie and a black bomber jacket that he’d found on the back seat when he’d inherited the car on his first day, adding the baseball cap and the stolen sunglasses, now covering the top half of his face.

He felt a buzzing in his pocket and pulled out his phone; it was a message from Billy. Apparently the fonts on the watermarked file matched ones used by private security companies Hamilton Securities, Dowson and Rattlestone. Firing off a reply of thanks, he left his phone in the car's boot, locking the vehicle before he made his way out of the car park and north to Whitechapel Underground station.

Once there, and paying for a Travelcard by cash from the machine, Declan found he was warming to this spy nonsense. He didn’t look up at any cameras, keeping his head and cap down and his hands in his pockets. He could have been anyone. He was everyone.

It took over thirty minutes to get to Earls Court, and from there it was a half-mile walk down to Brompton Cemetery, arriving just shy of three pm. Stopping at the North entrance, he took a moment to look around, pulling the hoodie up around his neck. Kendis wasn’t anywhere to be seen.

Declan had never been to Brompton Cemetery before; it was very much a Chelsea place. Even both the founder and the first manager of Chelsea Football Club were buried here, among a multitude of equally famous people. Declan didn’t know who, and the sign beside him didn’t give any more light on the situation, instead informing him only that Brompton Cemetery was the burial home for over two hundred thousand people, with over thirty-five thousand gravestones and monuments held within. Doing the maths here, Declan already knew that there were therefore a lot of unmarked graves within the walls. Tens of thousands of unmarked graves, most likely common people who’d been buried on top of each other, the coffins piled high, their names never shown.

He didn’t know why, but the simple thought of this, to be buried in an unmarked grave terrified him.

As he idly read about a volunteer organisation called the Friends of Brompton Cemetery, there was a buzz in his pocket. Pulling out the burner phone, he read the message that had just arrived.

Passing you in a moment. Count to twenty then follow.

Looking up, Declan saw Kendis walking towards him from the left, most likely from West Brompton station. If she recognised him she gave no sign, strolling casually past Declan and through the narrow, high arch of the stone gatehouse that provided entrance to the cemetery. Declan placed the phone back into his pocket and slowly counted to twenty. He’d reached fifteen before he decided that he’d had enough. There was nobody following her, and he was tiring of the cloak and dagger games. Heading through the arch himself, he found himself in the cemetery itself; a long, south-facing, tree-lined tarmac avenue was laid out in front of him, with mausoleums and gravestones on either side. There were paths off to the east and west, likely to other areas of the cemetery, but his target was continuing down the primary route, and so Declan started following, speeding up his pace to catch up with Kendis.

He knew from the map at the entrance that this was The Avenue, and led to a more public area known as The Grand Circle, but he didn’t expect Kendis to stay in the public areas. And when they reached the first crossroads, she turned left, heading eastwards