He let himself out the back again, into the yard, and got one step before a man held a gun to his head.

Chapter Fourteen

Will didn’t stop and think. (Do you ever? Kim would say.) He dropped low and put his right elbow into his assailant’s groin, connecting hard enough to jar his arm on bone and send the man over, keening. Will jabbed upwards and caught his chin, which took any remaining fight out of the enemy, and added a thump in the stomach to keep him quiet. He wrenched the gun from nerveless fingers and lobbed it away, over the side wall to his left.

If they had men at the back, they’d have them at the front. Will grabbed his bag, chucked it over the wall to his right, and scrambled after it. That brought him into his neighbour Norris’s yard, which was empty except for a couple of stray cats sunning themselves. Will jumped the next wall as well, rapidly scanned his options, scrambled over one more damn wall, and landed in the Black Horse’s yard, among a stack of barrels. A building rose on the far side of the yard, so the only way out was through. He straightened his jacket, brushed his knees off, adjusted his grip on the bag, and let himself in the back door of the pub.

It was empty, which must mean it was past three. Will nodded to the landlord who was wiping tables as he passed, ignored the bewildered, “Mr. Darling?”, and headed out the front.

He risked a glance back down May’s Buildings. There was a black car parked in front of his shop, and a couple of men at the door. Bastards were probably breaking in. He didn’t wait to see if anyone looked his way, but kept going at the fastest walk that didn’t feel conspicuous, heading up to Leicester Square. Once he got on the Tube, he could vanish a lot quicker.

The Underground wasn’t particularly busy, which for once he regretted: he wanted to be lost in a crowd. He went east by instinct, and made himself not get off at Holborn; instead he changed at Liverpool Street, got off at Whitechapel on the grounds that it was a place a man could disappear, and headed in the vague direction of the river, wondering what to do now.

Had he just assaulted a police officer? He bloody hoped not. They very rarely carried guns, and would surely have identified themselves. Not that he’d given anyone a lot of time to do that, though in fairness, he didn’t feel it was on him to hang around when people were pointing guns at him. He wished he’d stopped to take a proper look at his assailant, but his overriding instinct had been to get the hell out of there.