Where was he heading? In all honesty, he did not know. He stepped into a few shops, browsed, then came out again empty-handed. He crossed the expanse of Green Park with the man still behind him, and in Piccadilly he visited two large stores, taking lifts up, stairs down and back-door exits where possible.
He didn’t know where he was headed, but he knew where he was avoiding going: the offices of the London Herald. Could he face Jilly? What would she say? Would she help him? He tried to rehearse various lines as he walked the streets. They all sounded false. They all were false. What was more important, however, was that he should shake this tail before he tried to contact her. Otherwise he would be drawing her into the nasty little web, and that was the last thing he wanted to do.
Lunchtime approached, and he felt hungry again. Breakfast at Heathrow seemed an eternity ago. He touched the roll of banknotes in his pocket and decided to treat himself to something at Fortnum’s. But the queue for the Fountain restaurant was disheartening, so he left again. Besides, his clothes were looking decidedly shabby and slept in: definitely not the stuff of a Fortnum’s luncheon. One of the floorwalkers had kept a beady eye on him all the way around the ground floor.
He had been expecting a tail, of course. Now that Villiers had found him, he would want to keep tabs on him. But who was Villiers? He appeared to be some not-very-minor official at the Foreign Office. What was all or any of this to him? Hepton didn’t know. But he did know one thing. Like a dog offered a bone, it was time for him to shake his tail.
At Piccadilly Circus there was a large record shop — new since his last visit to London and exactly what he was looking for. He entered the noise and the confusion of aisles. At the main door he had spotted a uniformed security guard, and had passed the alarm system with its warning to potential shoplifters. The place was well protected. He walked up and down the aisles, squeezing past this and that browser. He paused by a display of compact discs and saw, from the corner of his eye, the tail browsing a few aisles further along. He smiled and picked up a disc enclosed in a protective clear plastic sheath. On the back of the packaging was a price label and a barcode. Through the barcode ran a strip of silver. Pleased, he examined the disc again. Barbed Wire Kisses by The Jesus and Mary Chain. Yes, this would do.
He walked casually back along the aisle, towards where the tail was now enthusiastically reading the sleeve notes to an offering by The Dead Milkmen. As he was about to pass the man, he paused and put a hand on his shoulder. The tail flinched, but kept his eyes on the record. Hepton kept his hand where it was and brought his face close to the man’s ear.
‘I’m starving,’ he said. ‘I think I’m going to go to lunch now. Okay?’ Then he moved quickly away towards the main doors. The man hesitated, then put the record back into its rack and followed.
Hepton was already on the pavement and hailing a taxi. Damn: the tail would have to hurry. He’d have to find a taxi too, in order to follow Hepton’s taxi. As he was about to push open the heavy glass door, a sudden high-pitched whine came from behind him. The security guard was upon him immediately, hands on his shoulders, turning him around. The tail protested, but the guard’s hands were patting his jacket, and one of them slipped into the left pocket, bringing out a compact disc.
The tail glared through the glass at Hepton, who was bending to get into his taxi. Hepton waved at him and grinned. Then the door slammed shut and the taxi moved off into the line of traffic.
‘Where to, guv?’ the driver asked.
‘First, a clothes shop,’ ordered Hepton. ‘Nothing too flashy. And somewhere between here and the Isle of Dogs.’
He reckoned he would need a shirt, jacket and casual trousers. He reasoned that he would be less conspicuous dressed smartly, and also that he needed a change of clothes in any event, otherwise his description could be circulated too easily. It was tempting to relax a little, to forget that somewhere out there Harry was waiting, ready to kill him if she must. He would use his credit card to buy the clothes: even if Villiers had access to his credit card record, it would take a little time for the transaction to come to light. Villiers knew he was in London. The least Hepton could do was make it difficult for the man to circulate a description of him. That necessitated a change of clothes. A change of hair colouring would be an idea, too. And, while he was at it, why not a change of height and weight and sex?
Despite the terrors of the past twenty-four hours — or perhaps because of them — Hepton threw back his head and laughed. The cab driver glanced into his rear-view mirror.
‘Glad somebody’s happy,’ he said. ‘Journalist, are you?’
‘What makes you say that?’
‘We get a lot of journalists come into town at twelve o’clock for a drink, then have to get a taxi back half an hour later so they can start work again. Mad, those journalists are. You know the ones I mean, down at that new place in the Isle, where the Herald’s printed.’
‘Oh yes, the Herald,’ said Hepton casually. ‘That’s where I’m headed to, as it happens.’
‘Thought you were,’ the driver called, chuckling. ‘I’ve got a nose for that sort of thing, you see. A real nose. But first off, let’s see about getting you that clobber, eh?’
Part III
18
The Isle of Dogs was everything Hepton had been expecting. It was, in fact, a building site, a hotchpotch of half-completed monoliths and half-demolished houses. The headquarters of the Herald, however, if not what he had hoped to find (he had fond memories of The Front Page and Citizen Kane) was certainly what he had thought he might find. The metal and glass cube that was home to the newspaper was protected by a high security fence. A barrier lay across the road at the entrance to the site, and two security men watched from their little prefabricated building there, while video cameras scanned the perimeter.
‘Checkpoint Charlie, they call it,’ said Hepton’s taxi driver, accepting the fifteen pounds’ fare and a small tip. ‘Cheers then.’ And with that he wheeled the taxi around and away.
Hepton stared again at the construction before him, trying to find some hint of a soul. There was none. He walked towards the barrier. One of the security guards donned a cap and came to meet him.
‘Can I help you, sir?’
‘I’m here to see one of the journalists, a Miss Jilly Watson.’
‘Watson, did you say?’ The guard was already turning back towards his office. ‘Follow me, sir. Expecting you, is she?’
‘No, not really. I’m a friend of hers.’
‘I see, sir.’
The other guard lazily watched several screens, each one showing a corner of the compound. There was a mug of dark brown tea in front of him, proclaiming its owner to be the World’s Best Dad. Another bank of screens showed the interior of the large building behind them, where the workers moved like ants. The first guard looked through a sheaf of A4 printed paper on his desk.
‘Watson, J. Extension three-five-five,’ he said to himself. He punched several numbers into his telephone receiver, and, looking up, saw that Hepton was watching the screens. ‘Good, aren’t they?’
‘Yes,’ Hepton responded. It seemed everyone was a spy these days. And everyone had a camera trained on them.