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Lost

Across the road a handful of muddy boys spill from a Range Rover with football boots hanging from laces and socks pushed down around their ankles.

Farther along the street, someone is waiting in a car. I wouldn't have noticed except for the flare of a cigarette lighter. It crosses my mind that Keebal has had me followed but almost immediately I consider another explanation. Maybe someone is waiting for Kirsten to come home.

I step out onto the pavement and stretch. The sun is trying to break through but keeps getting swallowed by fat putty-gray clouds. I begin to walk around the square. At first I'm heading away from the suspicious car but at the corner I turn and cross the street. I pause to read the plaque beneath a statue of a bronze horseman.

I turn again and set off. A pigeon takes flight in an awkward flurry. I'm walking toward the car now. I can just make out the silhouette of someone at the wheel.

I stay close to the gutter, keeping the line of vehicles between us. At the last possible moment I step alongside the Audi. Resting on the passenger seat is a photograph of Kirsten Fitzroy.

A burly, gray-haired man, gapes at me dumbfounded. I can see two bloated versions of myself in his sunglasses. I try to open the door. He reaches for the ignition and I yell at him to stop.

At that moment Ali arrives, slewing her car across the road to block his getaway. Finding reverse, he plants his foot and rubber shrieks on pavement. He slams into the car behind and then lurches forward, pushing the cars apart. Tires screech and smoke as he fires into reverse again.

Ali is out of the door with a hand on her holster. The driver sees her first. He raises a pistol, aiming at her chest.

Instinctively, I smash my walking stick across the windshield, where it explodes into shards of lacquered wood. The sound is enough to make him hesitate. Ali drops and rolls into the gutter. I spin the other way, falling fast and nowhere near as gracefully.

In the adjacent house, barely eighteen feet away, the door opens. Two teenage girls appear, one of them pushing a bicycle. The pistol swings toward them.

I yell a warning, but they stop and stare. He won't miss from this range.

I glance across at Ali. She has her feet planted and arms outstretched, with the Glock in her right hand and her left hand cupped underneath.

“I can take him, Sir.”

“Let him go.”

She drops her arms between her thighs. The driver accelerates backward along the road, doing a handbrake turn at the end of the square, before swinging north into Ladbroke Grove.

Ali sits next to me in the gutter. The air stinks of burning clutch and rubber. The teenage girls have gone but curtains have opened and anxious faces are pressed to windows.

Ali wipes a smudge of gun oil from her fingers. “I could have taken him.”

“I know.”

“Why?”

“Because when they teach you how to shoot people, they don't teach you how to live with it.”

She nods and a puff of breeze pushes hair across her eyes. She brushes it away.

“Did you recognize him?”

I shake my head. “He was waiting for Kirsten. Someone wants her very badly.”

A Panda car rounds the corner and cruises slowly up the street. Two kids in uniform peer from side to side, looking for house numbers. Five minutes earlier they would have shat themselves or been shot. Thank heavens for small mercies.

Interviews must be conducted and statements taken. Ali fields most of the questions, giving a description of the car and driver. According to the computer the license plates belong to a builder's van in Newcastle. Someone has either stolen or copied them.

Under normal circumstances, the local CID would label the whole incident as road rage or call it a fail-to-stop accident. By normal circumstances, I mean if ordinary members of the public were involved instead of two police officers.

The Detective Sergeant, Mike Drury, is one of the young Turks from Paddington Green, who cut his teeth interviewing IRA and now Al Qaeda suspects. He looks up and down the street burying both hands in his pockets. His long nose sniffs the air as though he doesn't like the smell of it.

“So tell me again, why did you want to see Kirsten Fitzroy?”

“I'm trying to find a friend of hers—Rachel Carlyle.”

“And why do you want to see her?”

“To catch up on old times.”

He waits for something more. I'm not budging.

“Did you have a warrant?”

“I didn't need one. Her door was open when we arrived.”

“And you went inside?”

“To make sure there wasn't a crime in progress. Miss Fitzroy might have been hurt. There was probable cause.”

I don't like the tone of his questions. This is more like an interrogation than an interview.

Drury scribbles something in his notebook. “So you reported the break-in and then noticed the guy in the car.”

“He seemed out of place.”