Dark Market

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Fifteen

Savage took up position in a coffee house opposite the main entrance of the building. It could have been the eighteenth century, business at high speed over the black liquid drug, gin houses replaced by gastro-pubs and food chains. The Brits over-compensated for their poor food reputation now, hence the pregnant bellies on all the men.

Or maybe it was beer and football. He'd once been the same. Slightly pudgy. He flexed a fist just to feel some sinew.

They all shaved their heads too as if, somehow, hair displayed weakness. The anti-Samsons' girlfriends all read the same articles he supposed: if it's thinning, shave it. The British male took his lashes from the whip and off it came.

Funny how trends and rumours got started. Like the one about him killing Michael. His younger self was still whining about it, but he'd have to get over it, there was work to do. And if the surveillance wouldn't come to Mohammed, then Mohammed would get off his holy backside and do it himself.

He picked up another one of the advert-driven free papers that littered the city, identical press release stories rehashed across a deluge of boiler-plate publications.

Some celebrities he'd never heard of made pronouncements about the world, or their love lives. Politicians lied. Footballers kicked balls. If that was keeping abreast of current affairs, Savage thought, you could keep it.

He checked out the men on the tables around him. Were any of them on surveillance? How could you tell? Everyone read papers on the Wharf.

A man with a light salmon-coloured Financial Times drew the eye. With an ill fitting blue suit and strained squint at the paper, how could he not?

Savage zoned him out and checked all his devices were working. No hits yet. But all he had to do was wait. With feathers suitably ruffled the birds would soon fly from the party. Whoever came out first, that's who he'd follow.

He didn't wait long. Armstrong barrelled through the doors, head down, and sped up the street.

Savage tried not to look obvious and got up to follow. Going grey as the spooks liked to call it.

You never did surveillance on your own. But, he had no choice. There were two other golden rules: don't allow multiple sightings and don't act out of the ordinary.

Nigh on impossible when the mark already knows your face and you've just embarrassed him in front of his boss.

With Thomson's resources Savage would have had four working a box system, mobiles on standby in car or on bike. The watchers would change over regularly and have radio-clickers up their sleeves to communicate without having to speak – no secret servicemen ear pieces like on TV.

Needs must.

Savage tracked Armstrong from the opposite side of the main street, a towering corridor of granite and glass, towards One Canada Square. Armstrong ducked around a corner quickly and down some stairs, pushed past a man walking in the same direction, in, wait for it, a brown pinstripe – a man clearly pushing the corporate fashion envelope.

The steps led down to one of the Wharf's Open Spaces. Note the capital letters. They weren't just parks, they were Open Spaces, it's wasn't all work and money on the Isle of Dogs.

Armstrong strode across the grass. A jazz band played to an audience of six people, official guests stood under a canopy sipping wine, looking at the sky and hoping it wouldn't rain.

After three long years in the desert Savage hoped it would.

Armstrong picked up the pace and skipped through the tube station's double doors.