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

she was walking over to the man watching her. A man who now looked incredibly embarrassed to be caught.

‘What the hell are you doing here?’ she hissed.

‘I thought you might need backup,’ Nasir explained.

‘How did you know that I’d be meeting Gladwell here?’

‘You mentioned it to me.’

Kendis stared at her photographer. ’This is the first time we’ve ever done this,’ she replied. ‘So how the hell would I tell you that?’

‘I don’t know!’ Nasir snapped. ‘Maybe you mentioned it when you were working it out! I came here to help you, Kendis. If you don’t need me, then just tell me!’

‘Did you at least ensure that you weren’t followed?’ Kendis snapped back, already looking around the park more carefully this time, her paranoia levels rising. ‘You ensured you didn’t use your credit card, didn’t use your Oyster, didn’t make sure that anyone could bloody follow you electronically and find not only you, but me?’

Nasir didn’t reply, his silence answering the question.

‘Christ, you’re an idiot,’ Kendis sighed. ‘Go somewhere. Anywhere. Use the same card. Make it look like you’re following me elsewhere. Lead them away from me.’

‘But what will you do?’ Nasir was apologetic, his tone nervous as he spoke. ‘You could get hurt.’

‘I’ve been hurt before,’ Kendis replied. ‘I’m a big girl. I’ve got a lead I need to check out in a graveyard and then I’ll disappear.’ She patted Nasir on the shoulder.

‘Just like you should.’

And before Nasir could reply, Kendis was gone, running out of the park and back up Page Street, towards Victoria.

Nasir stood alone for a moment, taking in the park's silence.

And then he checked the photos he’d taken on his phone, deleted the ones that weren’t relevant, and left.

Jessica Walsh wasn’t a child anymore. She was almost sixteen. You could join the army and be trained to kill people at sixteen. You could get married at sixteen. Ride a scooter or even fly a glider at sixteen.

But Jessica Walsh was almost sixteen. And that meant that she still had to ask her mother’s permission for things. Like, for example, going out with her friends that evening to a local board game cafe.

‘I don’t know,’ Lizzie Walsh pondered. ‘Will that Owen boy be there?’

‘Doesn’t matter,’ Jessica replied. ‘We’re not dating anymore.’

‘One date doesn’t equal dating, young lady.’

‘You know what I mean,’ Jessica slumped into the sofa. ‘I’m not going with him. I’m going with Florence and Bianca.’

‘Until what time?’ Lizzie asked. Jessica shrugged.

‘About nine thirty?’

‘It’s a school night.’

‘Come on, mum. I’m distraught,’ Jessica did her best sad face. ‘My break up with Owen was traumatic, and I need cheering up.’

‘I thought you said that you weren’t dating him?’ Lizzie raised an eyebrow. Jessica sighed. It was a loud ha-rumph, and audibly annoyed sigh.

‘Nine,’ Lizzie countered. Leaping from the sofa, Jessica ran to the door, grabbing her jacket.

‘Nine fifteen?’ she suggested, opening the door.

‘Nine!’ Lizzie shouted back. Jessica smiled back at her.

‘You got it, mum!’ She said. ‘See you at nine fifteen!’ And with that, the door slammed shut. Lizzie made a loud sigh of her own now, reaching for her half-finished glass of wine.

Still, at least Jessica wasn’t as bad as she was at fifteen.

Chuckling, Lizzie finished the glass.

Outside, Jessica was so busy texting on her phone that she didn’t notice the grey Audi across the road. She didn’t see the man inside, cleaning his rimless glasses with a lens cloth before placing them back on, watching her as she walked off.

The man with the rimless glasses noted the time down in a notepad. And then, once he saw Jessica turn the corner, he started the car and slowly pulled out into the street, following her. He couldn’t help it; he gave a brief smile as he thought about what he was about to do to Jessica Walsh.

8

Raise A Glass

‘You look like a man who won the lottery but lost the ticket,’ Anjli said as Billy sat down at the table opposite her. They were in the wine bar that they’d visited earlier that day, but now, out of work hours, they’d grabbed a drink to discuss the case rather than continue in the office.

It still felt too real in the office.

‘Got some news,’ Billy said, gratefully accepting the gin and tonic that Anjli passed over to him. ‘It’s not good news.’

‘Go on.’

Billy sipped at the drink, as if delaying the conversation.

‘Declan’s car, the Audi,’ he started. ‘The tracker wasn’t on last night.’

‘Why not?’ Anjli frowned. Billy looked to the table, as if ashamed to look her in the eyes right now.

‘Because I might have turned it off,’ he muttered.

‘Why the hell would you have done that?’ Anjli exclaimed, her voice so loud now that several of the other drinkers at their respective tables turned and glared at her. Billy, ignoring this, shrugged.

‘I was trying to help,’ he said. ‘Declan was being set up by Derek Salmon, and I knew that if he drove anywhere they’d find him with the tracker. So I hacked in and put a twenty-four-hour block on it.’

He sighed. ‘I didn’t know that Farrow would tell him to take the train.’

‘And of course the lock carried on until this morning,’ Anjli nodded. ‘What time did it restart?’

‘About nine.’

‘And he was back in London by then.’

Billy looked up to face Anjli. ‘I can find a way of tracking his phone,’ he said. ‘I might triangulate where he was—‘

‘He was with Kendis,’ Anjli replied. ‘He said he stayed overnight in Tottenham, but when he turned up this morning, you could tell that he hadn’t showered, and he had the slightest traces of women’s perfume on him.’

Billy’s eyes widened. ‘Bloody hell,’ he said. ‘No wonder he got so pissed when we said that Kendis was a potential terrorist.’

Anjli took a sip of her own drink. ‘Your friend,’ she said, ‘the one that gave you the tip about Baker gunning for us. Do you trust him?’

‘God, no.’

‘Do you think he told you everything?’

‘Probably not,’ Billy looked around the bar,