The Thrill of The Chase

Extract

As they neared the town centre and the pavements and roads got busier, Katherine had to work harder to keep Joey in sight. Fortunately, his trademark black leather jacket stuck out like a sore thumb amongst the crop tops and board shorts that everyone else had started sporting as soon as the weather had reached more than twenty degrees. He turned into the busiest street in town and Katherine followed him, but to her dismay she realised that in order to cross the busy street Joey was going to have to wait with a crowd of other people at a pedestrian crossing. The traffic was only just revving up again as Joey reached the crossing and streams of it were heading his way. He was going to be stuck there waiting for at least a minute or two and in that time Katherine would catch up with him. If she hung back and let him cross ahead of her, then she would almost certainly lose sight of him amongst the throngs of people. If she crossed at the same time as him, then he would be very likely to spot her.
In the end, she hung back behind the group of people waiting to cross and kept her head down, pretending to be scrabbling around for something in the bottom of her bag. As the green man flashed up on the crossing, she gave a triumphant “A-ha!” and fished a battered lipstick from one of the side pockets. Nobody paid her the slightest attention and she quickly slipped across the road, making sure to keep at least five metres behind Joey. But then, just as she reached the other side, it happened: she lost him. She had looked down to put the tatty lipstick back in her bag, and when she looked back up a swarm of underdressed girls with sunburned shoulders had blocked her view. She elbowed her way through them, but it was too late. Scanning up and down the crowded shopping street, her heart sank as she saw no sign of a tall, well-built man with a beautiful head of thick, black hair and an unseasonable leather jacket. Defeated, Katherine sat down heavily on the edge of a concrete flower bed and sighed. What was she doing, anyway, a grown woman chasing some man she hardly knew up and down the streets of Sheffield on a beautiful summer’s afternoon? Surely she ought to have something better to do? Gathering her things together, she was about to head home when, among the summer brights she saw a flash of black. She stood up and craned her neck just in time to see Joey, fifty metres or so away, heading into a grotty little pub down a back lane.
Barging through the crowds, she reached the outside of the pub and pressed herself flat against the wall next to its only window. Through the grimy glass she could just make out Joey speaking to another man at the bar. As she watched they took their drinks and moved to a table just out of view. Katherine took a deep breath, but did not move. What should she do? She had come this far. Should she really walk away when this might finally be her chance to find out who Joey was and what he was up to? OK, so she had seen him do nothing more suspicious than speaking on his mobile phone and wearing a heavy jacket on a warm day, but nevertheless she could not shake the feeling that now, finally, she might be on to something. His behaviour whenever she had seen him in the Oak had been a little odd (though not as odd, she was willing to admit, as her own) and Rob was certainly suspicious of him. She owed it to Rob, she told herself, to give this one last shot. And if it turned out that Joey was simply meeting a mate for a drink and a chat about the racing results, and that actually he was nothing more exciting than a sales rep selling anti-static flooring, then, well… then at least she would know.
Amateur she may have been, but even Katherine realised that she could not simply walk into the grotty little pub, take a table near Joey and have a good listen to what he was talking to his friend about. She had made pretty sure over the last few weeks, whether she had intended to or not, that her face was firmly imprinted on Joey’s brain and she got the feeling that any lone woman in that particular pub might stand out from the crowd of shuffling, coughing old men.
She looked into her bags of shopping. A new pair of sunglasses and a sunhat, bought for her and Charlotte’s planned trip to the beach next week. Some make-up. Some cycling gear she had promised to pick up for a friend from work. She was fairly sure she could throw something together from this lot. Keen not to waste any more time and risk Joey getting away once and for all, Katherine made a dash for the nearest big department store and headed straight for the toilets. Unfortunately every other woman in town seemed to have decided she needed the loo at the same time and the queue snaked out the door and into the bed linen department. That was when Katherine had one of her occasional flashes of genius.
“Excuse me,” she called, leaning back on her heels in an exaggerated fashion, one hand supporting her back while the other stroked the huge bump in her midriff – a bump she had swiftly fashioned by stuffing her friend’s new cycling gear up her T-shirt. “I’m sorry,” she cried. “Would anybody mind if I went first? You know what it’s like, ladies! Ha ha ha!”
To her surprise, the crowd parted obediently and a kindly old woman ushered her into a cubicle. “You go on, love,” she said. “I remember what it’s like. My ankles swelled up something terrible too, just like yours have.”
Katherine forced herself not to blow her cover by explaining that sometimes her legs just got a bit puffy in the heat and concentrated instead on shoe-horning on her friend’s Lycra cycling gear, tying back her brown hair without the aid of a mirror, applying as much of the make-up as she dared and topping the lot off with the sunhat and sunglasses. When she emerged from the cubicle and saw herself in the mirror, the effect was more “mad rich lady on a cruise liner about to head off on a scuba diving excursion” than “alluring, mysterious lone female having a drink alone in a city bar”, but she was forced to work with what she’d got.
When she walked into the pub and ordered a glass of lemonade, the barman didn’t raise an eyebrow. Makes sense, Katherine told herself. He’s probably seen odder sights than me twelve times already this morning. Daring to look over her shoulder, she saw Joey deep in conversation with the man she had seen through the window. To her relief there was a spare table next to them and, acting as nonchalantly as a person can when they are dressed head to foot in Lycra a size too small for them and are wearing a floppy-brimmed sunhat indoors, she sauntered over and sat down.
The two men were speaking in low voices, their heads hunched over some pieces of paper. From the sidelong glances Katherine stole from behind her sunglasses, what they were looking at seemed to be computer printouts, and not very exciting ones at that – just reams and reams of text interspersed with complex looking diagrams. Clearly this was not two friends meeting for a quick lunchtime pint, but nor was it a secret assignation between two drug dealers or – and she was surprised to find herself slightly disappointed by this realisation – between two contract killers.