BooksBarbecue
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Chapters (46)
  1. Cover
  2. CONTACTS
  3. Dedication
  4. PART ONE
  5. 1
  6. 2
  7. 3
  8. 4
  9. 5
  10. 6
  11. 7
  12. 8
  13. 9
  14. 10
  15. PART TWO
  16. 11
  17. 12
  18. 13
  19. 14
  20. 15
  21. 16
  22. PART THREE
  23. 17
  24. 18
  25. 19
  26. 20
  27. 21
  28. 22
  29. 23
  30. 24
  31. 25
  32. 26
  33. 27
  34. 28
  35. 29
  36. 30
  37. 31
  38. 32
  39. 33
  40. 34
  41. EPILOGUE
  42. AUTHOR NOTE
  43. Keep Reading …
  44. About the Author
  45. Also by Mark Watson
  46. About the Publisher

He started the car up as smoothly as he could, waiting for a gap to rejoin the motorway. He still had to get this guy to Newcastle, keep him asleep, finish the job, insane as all these goals seemed now. He had to knock the job off as fast as possible, drive like Lewis fucking Hamilton, except also be ready to stop any time a message came in which might be about James. And not get done speeding, of course. Karl’s hands moistened on the wheel. His stomach felt like a bag of cement. There was absolutely nothing he could do but keep driving. That was what he always told himself, when he was halfway through a job and starting to hate it. What are you going to do, start going in reverse? It was the way he approached all of life, you might say. You kept moving, didn’t get bogged down. You kept on in a straight line.

But the passing of the motorway, at seventy miles an hour beneath him, didn’t even feel like forward motion in the light of what Karl had learned. He felt, instead, stuck. Stuck in a cage he’d built for himself: in the car, driving some prick up the motorway, powerless to stop his friend from doing something that would destroy both of them.

15

LONDON, 02:48

Steffi didn’t remind Emil of a woodland creature any more. The calculating way she was looking at the screen was more like a NASA operative, in one of those movies where everyone wore horn-rimmed spectacles and ended up hugging and whooping. He realized that he’d underestimated her. It was easy to do that when someone was a waiter, when most of your interactions were just them bringing a scrap of paper to you, so that you could perform whatever thirty-second wizardry the latest cover demanded. And wizardry it was. Emil, without wanting to be big-headed about it, was like fucking Gandalf with a skillet. He could achieve things with a courgette that were not of this world. It was only because Juno was an idiot that Emil wasn’t already further up the hierarchy. And because of Emil’s English, maybe. So inasmuch as he’d thought about their relative statuses at all – like when he recommended that game to Steffi – he’d assumed that she might be quite into him, if anything.