Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
About the Publisher
‘Do you believe?’
In the cold of the early morning, the warmth of the man's breath on Stephen's neck, as he whispered those words, was almost comforting.
Before he could consciously form an answer, a low ‘yes’ slipped from Stephen's mouth.
Stephen turned around to face his questioner but in the busy crowd of human traffic no one stood out among the dark eyes and downcast faces of his fellow wage slaves heading for the heart of Liverpool's business district.
Just a crank, he thought, a further sign of the decay of standards and moral decline of the city. At least it was metaphysical yobbery and not a punch in the face, yet the question had caused Stephen's internal warning system to crank up and send a fizz of adrenaline through his bloodstream that left him feeling uneasy. It took him a second to work out why but when the realisation came it brought on a wave of instant nausea. He didn't recognise the voice but he recognised the question.
Stephen stood there for a moment, an obstacle in the path of the early morning commuters battling their way up the hill. Someone bumped into him and muttered ‘stupid wanker’. Stephen barely noticed the abuse, he was too busy trying to rationalise what he had just heard. It must be a coincidence. He had been suffering from a cold and work had been stressful recently, the councils’ cutbacks had hit the education department especially hard and his workload was becoming unmanageable. The city was in the seventh week of a teachers’ strike and every day brought fresh abuse from the pickets that Stephen had to pass by to get to the council offices. That sort of stress could lead to all sorts of things, maybe even hallucinations?
Yet, Stephen had heard the man ask the question. He stood for a moment, stung by the cold wind full of salt and industrial metal particles that whipped in off the Mersey. He needed a drink.
There was a Starbucks opposite the council offices and although Stephen never went in there due to the possibility of bumping into ex-colleagues or striking teachers, this morning he needed to sit down and make sense of what had just happened. He ordered a double espresso and took a seat in an armchair facing the window. He sipped the bitter liquid hoping it would kick-start his brain, remove the fugue that been responsible for his imagination misfiring.
From here he could see the four teachers who made up the picket line outside the entrance to the council building. They stood around a brazier and carried hand-painted dayglo signs covered with slogans demanding to be paid. Not an unreasonable request, but an impossible one as the city's finances stood.
The pickets looked like PE teachers, thought Stephen, and he bet that was why they were chosen. Every morning they subjected the few remaining council workers who still had jobs to a torrent of verbal abuse.
In the warmth of the coffee house, Stephen began to make sense of what had just happened. Stress was a killer and he knew from past experience that it could make people do the strangest of things. He must have misheard, there was no other explanation other than someone else knew and that was impossible. Stephen made a mental note to speak to his boss, Emma, about his workload when he got into the office.
He let out a breath that he felt he'd been holding for the last ten minutes and took a sip of the coffee. Disgusting, he thought, he even let out a little laugh. He checked his wristwatch. He was late and had to get moving.
He looked across at the picket line. A fifth man had joined the group. He had his back turned to Stephen. The man was wearing a corduroy jacket with patches on the elbows and Stephen decided that the man was probably a Geography teacher.
Stephen took another sip of his coffee and then looked up again.
Fifty yards away, on the opposite side of the street, the man was standing still as office drones flowed around him. Suddenly he turned around and looked directly at Stephen. He wasn't moving, he was watching; watching him. Stephen saw the man move his head slightly to one side and then smile.
Stephen recognised the man instantly.
He felt his sympathetic nervous system go to full thrust, chemicals flooding his muscles and brain, preparing him for action. It was the same feeling that Stephen, a poor flyer, felt seconds before take-off when the plane stood on the edge of the runway and opened its throttles, no turning back.
Stephen's world shrank to one choice: run or die.
He ran.
He jumped out of his chair and ran out of the café. He risked a quick look across the street, the man had vanished but Stephen knew he would be near. He snapped his head left and then right. Right. Towards the docks was the only real option.
He plunged into the crowd of commuters and early morning tourists sending Styrofoam coffee cups flying and eliciting furious insults in a host of different languages. He didn't have a plan; he just had to get away. He ran – legs pumping, muscles burning – focusing only on the narrow tunnel of pavement immediately in front of him.
He passed a policeman holding a submachine gun, guarding the entrance to the James Street train station. The policeman barely gave him a glance as he streaked past: Stephen didn't fit the current profile.
He ran fast and hard, not daring to look back. He knocked a businessman's briefcase flying, papers scattering behind him. As he ran down James Street his legs carved longer strides as the road sloped downhill towards the Mersey and the Pier Head. He turned left, if he could get to the Albert Dock there would be more tourists, people he could hide among, maybe jump in a cab down there and put some real distance between him and the man.
There was no sound of pursuit, just the passing traffic and the howl of the wind. He kept running. He shot across the street and was vaguely aware of the sounds of cars slamming on brakes and swerving, horns blaring, more cosmopolitan insults being flung.
He ran through the wrought iron gates of the Albert Dock. The dock's refurbished and refitted Victorian bonded warehouses now housed apartments, bars, shops, museums and the northern branch of the Tate. It was a perfect place to lose somebody, full of tourists even at this time in the morning.
Stephen was aware of his breathing now he had stopped: long, gasping breaths that racked his body. He took a lungful of the cold salty air and felt the cracking of his alveoli as they struggled to take in oxygen. Stephen pulled back on his heels, the rubber soles of his shoes sliding and then catching on the cobblestones. Wheezing, he dug out his blue inhaler and took a puff, and after a second, the coolness of the chemicals relaxed his lungs.
He looked up and there was the man walking through the gates only fifty yards behind him. The man paused and looked directly at Stephen. For a second Stephen was frozen to the spot, he wanted to give up, throw himself at the man's mercy. Adrenaline saved him, flooding his shaky legs, forcing them to push off and steering him deeper into the dock complex.
The dock warehouses had been built in a square around a deep water dock, a walkway ran around the inside of the square giving access to the various shops and galleries that had replaced slave quarters and grain storage.
Stephen tore along the walkway like it was an Olympic running track.