Mind the Gap (16 page)

She moved quickly, dodging around display pedestals, careful not to nudge them as she passed but unable to tear her eyes away from the sword. There was something about it…something almost familiar, yet alien and unsettling. As she reached out and grabbed it with both hands, she knew what that feeling was.

Here was something powerful, something calling to her like whatever lay behind that metal door and the blocked-in doorway belowground. There was intense mystery here and the threat of more things she could not possibly hope to understand. And there was also the promise of many revelations. It was as if there were a hundred ghosts crowding her, unseen and unheard yet struggling to communicate, and it was all she could to do to prevent herself from talking to them there and then.
Yes,
she thought,
I want to hear you, but not here and not now.

She lifted the sword from its rack. It came easily, almost gratefully, and she turned and hurried back across the room to the staircase.

Jazz didn’t stop to think about what she had done. She had come into this house to thieve, and she was now leaving with two great mysteries; the photos in her backpack, and this thing nestled in her arms.

She reached the staircase, glanced back at the door the man had disappeared through, and headed down.

He’s still in there,
she thought.
I might really get away with this.

Down the stairs, onto the landing, and then she heard a sound from above her. A gasp perhaps, closely followed by one muttered word: “No.”

She did not wait to see if he had anything else to say. She ran, all pretense of secrecy thrown to the wind, holding the sword in both hands as she trotted down the curving staircase. Soon he would be there at the corner of her eye, emerging onto the landing and shouting at her to stop, to give him what he had come for.

When she reached the hallway, she saw the paintings and vases, but any idea she’d had to smash and slash them now seemed puerile and ineffective. She had the definite feeling that the loss of what she carried from this house would hurt Mort much more than a shattered pot and a ripped painting.

“Stop,” a voice said. She froze in her tracks halfway across the hall to the basement door. The voice was so refined, calm, and commanding that she could do nothing else.

Her heart thumped, pulsing in her ears.

She turned around.

“That’s mine,” the man said. He was standing up on the landing, leaning on the handrail and looking down at her with soft, mournful eyes.

Basement?
Jazz thought. Then she had a better idea. Risky, but it would give her more of a chance to get away. There’d be lots of running, lots of trouble, but she thought if she went out the front door, things might still go her way.

“It’s mine now,” she said. Then she ran for the door.

She searched for the alarm box and found it next to a row of coat hooks, one of them bearing a smart jacket. A small gadget hung below it, suspended by stripped wires protruding from a break in the bottom of the unit. She reached out with the sword and pulled the wires free, and as the deafening shriek of the alarm cut in, she heard the man shouting one more time.

“
No!”

His voice was suddenly filled with agony, as though he’d just seen his nearest and dearest killed.

Jazz glanced back one more time to see him running for the stairs. Then she unlocked the front door, flung it wide, and ran out into the blazing sunlight.

The burglar alarm wailed like an air-raid signal. Jazz flew down the front steps, desperation mixing with a strange euphoria as she tucked the blade into her rucksack. She heard the thief shouting after her, but if he thought a harsh word would stop her, he was a fool. A black taxi cruised by and a courier scooter whipped past, but the streets around Willow Park had little traffic this time of day. That didn’t mean there were no witnesses, though. An old woman out walking her dog stopped to stare. Two mothers picnicked in the park, one with a little girl playing on the grass beside her and the other with a baby sleeping in a pram.

The alarm woke the baby, who started to cry.

A well-dressed man stood on the far corner, a mobile phone clapped to his ear. He turned his back and covered his other ear, far too intent upon his conversation to be distracted by something as mundane as daylight robbery.

Jazz glanced back as she crossed the street. The thief shrugged on his jacket and stuffed something—gloves, perhaps—into his shoulder bag as he trotted along the sidewalk, appearing for all the world like a businessman in a hurry, no less ordinary than the self-important fool on his mobile half a block away. He’d shut the door behind him. The alarm still blared and he cast a casual, almost annoyed look back at the house he’d just tried to rob. Other than the handful of people who must have seen him emerge, no one would have thought him responsible.

“Fuck,” Jazz whispered. One glance around revealed that everyone in the park and on the street had their eyes on her. Even the old woman’s yappy dog focused on her, barking madly.

She ought to have played it cool until she was out of sight, like the suave bastard stepping briskly along the sidewalk parallel to her as she reached the other side of the street. But it was too late for subtlety. She leaped onto the sidewalk and kept running past a posh restaurant. Most of Mayfair consisted of luxury hotels, office space, and residences that had once housed nobility or ministry officials. Some still did. But London was a rat’s warren of alleys, even in Mayfair. She had to vanish as quickly as possible, before the police arrived.

A familiar whistle drew her attention. Jazz looked up and saw Hattie coming toward her, head adorned with a pink felt hat with fake flowers pinned to the brim. She ducked into a dress shop and Jazz followed.

“Annie, there you are, love!” Hattie said excitedly, embracing her for the benefit of the shopgirls. Her hand clutched the strap of Jazz’s bag, which was heavy with the strange blade and the other shiny bits she’d taken from Uncle Mort’s house. “Give us the bag,” she whispered.

“Lovely hat,” Jazz said in reply. She snatched it off Hattie’s head and plopped it on her own, then slipped out of her sweatshirt and handed it over. “Leave me the bag, go.”

Hattie might have suffered a certain amount of brain slippage, but she wasn’t daft. The girl nodded, pulled on the sweatshirt and zipped it, then hurried out of the shop. She turned back the way Jazz had come.

From inside, Jazz peered out of the shop windows. The thief had been marching toward the door, but now he altered course toward Hattie. Even as he reached her, another figure hurried along the sidewalk—Mr. Stevie Sharpe. As the thief reached for Hattie, Stevie purposely collided with him. The man ought to have fallen, but he spun away from the impact, reached out and grabbed Stevie by the wrist, and then cuffed him in the temple.

Stevie staggered backward. The thief—looking like a stockbroker or barrister—tried again to get hold of Hattie. This time Stevie didn’t bother trying to make it look like an accident. He tackled the man, and the two of them spilled into the street. A screech of tires followed as a taxi skidded to a halt, slewing sideways.

“Can I help you, miss?” one of the shopgirls asked.

Jazz did not even glance at them, hoping they wouldn’t be able to recognize her face if she managed to get nicked for this.

She went out the door, turned right, and hurried along past a jeweler’s and a men’s clothing store. When she reached the corner, she turned right again and broke into a run, darted diagonally across the street, and slipped into the service alley behind the Grand Jubilee Hotel. Her trainers were nearly silent on the pavement. An enormous black Dumpster sat by the hotel’s loading dock, and she had to fight the temptation to toss away Hattie’s pink bonnet. The girl would never forgive her.

After the hotel, the alley went behind a pair of older buildings, lovely Georgian structures transformed into offices. The alley narrowed here, but she hurried on. Her temples throbbed and her heart pounded, but a grin began to spread across her face as she switched her bag from one shoulder to the other. Things had not gone as planned. Things had, in fact, been completely bollixed by the arrival of that handsome thief. Now that she was away and the terror of capture had passed, she almost felt giddy. The bloke had been startlingly good-looking. Some of the girls she knew had been attracted to their teachers, but older men had never done a thing for her, save the occasional actor. This one, though…She’d liked the way his eyes flashed with anger.

Not that she wanted him to catch her. That was the very last thing she wanted. From the way he’d sought the sword that she now carried, and the fury in his voice when she’d stolen it right from under his nose, she thought he might do anything to get it back. That made him a very dangerous man, indeed.

She’d been damn lucky. Setting off the alarm hadn’t bought her the head start she’d hoped. Stevie, Hattie, Gob, and Switch had been meant to take turns looking out for her with some of the others, but Jazz wasn’t supposed to leave the house until the mark returned home in the early evening. If Hattie and Stevie hadn’t been alert when the whole thing went tits up, she never would’ve gotten away from the guy.

Hope they’re all right,
she thought. Particularly, she hoped Stevie was all right. By now the police would have responded to the alarm. The thief wouldn’t have stayed behind to turn in her friends for fear of witnesses reporting him fleeing from the house. One way or another, they’d all be away by now.

The question was, how much damage had the thief done Stevie before taking off?

The alley ended ahead. Jazz clutched the strap of the bag tightly and stepped onto the street, turned right, and dropped into a brisk walk. Now would be a terrible time to draw attention to herself—though the pink flowered hat would be conspicuous enough.

No shouts greeted her emergence and no sirens blared.

At the next corner she crossed the street into a narrow arcade of trendy boutiques and gift shops. A small Italian restaurant and an antiquarian bookstore stood at the end of the arcade, where a fruit-seller had set up a cart on one side and another bloke sold flowers on the other. The arcade let out on a main road where traffic roared past in both directions, belching exhaust fumes and snatches of music.

Jazz joined the bustle on the sidewalk and made her way to the light at the corner. Across the street was Green Park. Jazz caught a glimpse of a man in the crowd waiting to cross. Thin and dapperly dressed, he carried a shoulder bag much like the thief’s. She hesitated, but then the light changed and the throng began to move, and she saw that this was a much older man with pug Irish features and glasses.

“Silly girl,” she whispered, and swept across the street.

The trees of Green Park cast long fingers of shade across the lawns. She spied an empty bench and recalled sitting with Stevie yesterday, pretending to be more than just his mate. Pretending to be a normal seventeen-year-old girl who fancied an entirely ordinary boy. Much as the upside world had its terrors for her, the memory of those hours made her strangely sad.

Without another glance at the trees, she grabbed the railing and hurried down the stairs into Green Park Tube station. The bag over her shoulder felt heavier with every step and she shifted to accommodate it. Jazz moved past a cluster of tourists trying to figure out the map of the Underground and reached into her pocket for her Travelcard. Her flight from Willow Square to Green Park had taken less than four minutes; her heart still raced. She cast a quick look around but saw no familiar faces—neither friend nor foe. Then she slipped through the turnstile and hurried down a tiled corridor toward the platform.

From the tunnels came the rumble of an approaching train and the squeal as it began to brake. Jazz held the bag against her, still feeling the weight of that strange blade, and picked up her pace. The train arrived as she joined the crowd on the platform. Out of habit and the instinct Harry had worked to instill in her, she plunged into the thickest part of the crowd as though heading for a door in the center, then cut across toward the next car. She stepped onto the train and immediately began walking. Jazz unzipped the bag, stuffed the pink hat into it, then zipped it closed again, moving as unobtrusively as possible.

People jostled one another, a few taking the open seats but most standing, holding on wherever they could. Jazz stood beside the doors between cars and put her back to the wall. She kept her head forward so her hair veiled her face. The train pulled away and she exhaled, willing herself to calm down.

Like some amusement-park ride, the cars rattled over the tracks, twisted through the Underground, and soon began to slow for the next stop. Just before they pulled into the illuminated area of the station, she glanced out the window and saw the flicker of motion, the luminescent outline of one of the ghosts of old London. Jazz blinked, startled to see a specter beyond the limits of the abandoned parts of the Underground. But then she saw the top hat and the way the magician shot his cuffs just before a trick. She bent to peer out the window, and just before she lost sight of him, he produced a phantom dove from thin air. It flapped white silk wings and flew up into the darkness of the tunnel.

The train hissed as it slowed, crawling into the station.

“Piccadilly Circus,” a recorded voice said. “Next stop, Leicester Square.”

The doors slid open.

“Mind the gap,” said the voice.

People flooded off the train. Piccadilly was a major stop. Jazz took an empty seat in the corner and kept her head down. Someone settled into the next seat, bumping her, and another crowd began to fill the car.

The man beside her set down his shoulder bag.

“You’re very good, you know,” he said. “Stealthy and quick, with a deft touch. I’d no idea anyone else was in the house.”

Jazz froze. The doors closed and the train began to pull out of the station. Leicester Square seemed a thousand miles away. The other people in the car loomed up around her. To them, she might as well have been invisible. She’d done that much correctly. No one had noticed her—or the well-dressed man seated beside her. But with the people packed in, she had nowhere to run.

“On the street, though, you could use some work,” he went on. “You were watching for pursuit by foot, never considering an alternative. The taxi that nearly struck your little friend and me? I hired it. Once you came out of the alley and crossed to that arcade, it was obvious you were headed for Green Park. Had you hired a taxi of your own, it would have made things difficult. And I suppose if I’d been unfamiliar with this part of the city, you might have lost me when you first entered the alley. That much was intuition on my part, I confess. Where else could you have gone so quickly? A shop or restaurant wouldn’t guarantee you a rear exit unless you’d planned that in advance, and your friends’ clumsiness made clear that you had not considered your retreat carefully enough. So, the alley.

“From there, it was easier than you’d imagine to avoid detection while following you down into the Tube station. And so, here we are.”

Jazz gripped the strap of her bag so tightly that she felt her fingernails cutting crescents into the flesh of her palm. She forced herself to lift her head and look at the man. Only inches separated his face from hers. She inhaled slowly, steadying her nerves, and when she did she breathed in the warmth of his own exhaled breath. The intimacy of the moment startled her.

She closed her eyes and cleared her head. When she opened them, she thought she would find anger on his face. She’d thought his words were mockery. But he studied her with open fascination, his eyes an intense icy blue that she could not turn away from. He carried himself like an older man, but could not have been more than thirty-five. The game of cat and mouse that had begun back in that house in Willow Square had just come to a conclusion. For a moment, she nearly apologized for stealing the treasure he had gone there seeking. To her it was nothing more than an artifact, something to sell, or for Harry Fowler to put on a shelf or in a box with his collection of trinkets and oddities the others had brought home for him over the years. Jazz had stolen it on a whim, but it had been this man’s only goal.

But she would not apologize. She would simply deny it, play the encounter as coyly as possible, and look for an opportunity to flee. With Stevie, she’d rehearsed a number of things a young woman might scream to make onlookers think she was being accosted.