Brute Force

43

Liverpool Street station

0740 hrs

The cafés and restaurants around the station were heaving with commuters up to their eyes in woolly coats and clutching their coffees. They, too, kept their heads down as they rushed to work over wet pavements under a grey and depressing sky.

I was behind Lynn once more as he headed for the RV. This time I was putting surveillance on him, watching his every move. Maybe he would talk to someone, or slip into a phone box. Maybe he'd think better of throwing in his lot with me, and decide to jump in a cab and head for Vauxhall Cross.

I had no idea if he had the bottle for this sort of thing. Or if he thought he knew which side his bread was buttered – and he thought, wrongly, it wasn't my side.

I bumbled on in the cold, not looking directly through the window of Caffè Nero, but checking things out all the same. If a trigger was on the coffee shop and a weirdo walked past staring hard at the place, it would be a good bet that he was the target. The weather was in my favour. I couldn't see anyone hanging about, but that didn't necessarily mean they weren't.

I walked past another coffee and sandwich shop that was busily helping itself to some City money. People were filling their faces and sharing office gossip. The attraction of the place for me was that Caffè Nero was in line of sight.

I bought a pastry and the biggest available cup of coffee, and sat at a table that gave me a good trigger on the RV.

I watched as people walked past from both directions, on both sides of the street. Everyone wore a coat and trailed a cloud of breath. Were they doing walk-pasts to see if we were in there? This wasn't paranoia, it was attention to detail.

No one went in and came straight out again; no one walked around muttering into their collar. All of which meant they weren't there, or were very good indeed.

If there was one thing I hated more than clearing an area before a meet, it was the meet itself. It was at simple events like this that people got killed, in the way that, these days, a traffic cop stopping a car for jumping a red light might land up getting shot by the driver.

I sat, watched and waited. It wouldn't look abnormal to the staff or anyone else for me to be spending this amount of time in here. They could have been forgiven for thinking I was a dosser paying for temporary shelter with a large coffee. Not that anybody would have cared. The thing about cities is that the slickers and the dossers have no choice but to rub shoulders. It wasn't as if I was the only strange-looking person in town.

I checked around me again, just to be sure that I wasn't sitting next to a trigger. Stranger things have happened.

I watched for another five minutes past the RV time, finished off the coffee and Danish, and walked outside. As I pulled the door of Caffè Nero towards me I saw the back of Lynn's Russian hat in the queue. The flaps were still tied under his chin. He looked even weirder than I did. I walked past him and did my surprised, 'Hi! What are you doing here?'

He turned, smiled that happy, I-haven't-seen-you-for-awhile look, and we shook hands. 'Great to see you, it's been . . . ages.' He beamed.

'Coffee?' I took a look around. All the seats were taken. 'Tell you what, you got time for a Micky D?'

We left the coffee shop and I headed left. He fell into step beside me and shot me a quizzical look. 'What the devil is a Micky D?'

'McDonald's.'

'Is that where we're really going?'

'No. Not yet anyway. Keep your head down.'

I walked backwards to watch the oncoming traffic and flagged down a cab.

'Golden Lane Estate, mate.'

It was only a ten-minute walk, but that was ten minutes more exposure to Big Brother.

'Who are we meeting, Nick?'

'No one. I've got something there for when I'm in the shit. I think this is the moment, don't you?'