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Chapters (49)
  1. Cover
  2. About the Book
  3. About the Author
  4. Also by Tony Parsons
  5. Dedication
  6. Epigraph
  7. PROLOGUE
  8. PART ONE
  9. 1
  10. 2
  11. 3
  12. 4
  13. 5
  14. 6
  15. 7
  16. 8
  17. 9
  18. 10
  19. 11
  20. 12
  21. 13
  22. 14
  23. PART TWO
  24. 15
  25. 16
  26. 17
  27. 18
  28. 19
  29. 20
  30. 21
  31. 22
  32. 23
  33. 24
  34. 25
  35. 26
  36. PART THREE
  37. 27
  38. 28
  39. 29
  40. 30
  41. 31
  42. 32
  43. 33
  44. 34
  45. 35
  46. 36
  47. 37
  48. 38
  49. MAX WOLFE RETURNS IN 2018 …

I told her about the ID at the camp, the pursuit through the woods and what had happened on the hard shoulder of the road. I was still struggling to understand why there was one lorry speeding on the hard shoulder. It made no sense. But Whitestone did not care. She whooped with delight when I told her that I had two mobile phones recovered from Mr Click-Click.

‘Good work, the pair of you,’ she said. ‘I’ll see you first thing in the morning.’

So then I had to tell her the other news and why Edie would be coming back later than me.

Silence.

‘One more thing,’ she said finally. ‘The Champagne Room burned down during the night.’

‘It’s got to be an insurance scam,’ I said. ‘Torching buildings for the insurance money is how Steve Warboys started out.’

‘I don’t think so, Max. Because Steve Warboys was inside the Champagne Room when it went up in flames. They’re still bringing the bodies out now and it looks like he was tied to a chair in one of the VIP rooms.’

We hung up and I walked to the service station to pay, suddenly noticing that the car was coated in the mud of northern France. Something about the sight of it sickened me, and I glanced towards the service station’s car wash.

OUT OF ORDER, said a sign, but there was activity there, men were milling about with buckets and brushes, and when they saw me looking they hurried towards me, perhaps a dozen of them and they could have been from Afghanistan or Syria or Iraq, they were so similar to the men that I had seen at the camp on the other side of that narrow sea.

I shook my head and waved them away. I had heard too many horror stories about what these hand-wash merchants use to clean your car. There was a big fleshy Englishman at the till who took my money for the diesel without a smile.

‘What happened to your car wash?’ I asked him.

‘We got shot of it,’ he said, handing me my change. ‘People are cheaper.’

PART TWO

Shadow People

15

It felt like the world was on the move.

As Scout and I walked past the men of Smithfield meat market, there were new languages among the old London voices that I had not heard here before – Korean and Russian and Arabic and Chinese, and not the Hong Kong Cantonese of London’s Chinatown but real mainland Mandarin.