Walking with Ghosts

somehow mechanical, leaving her with a sense closer to division than to consummation.
    This morning Marie had wanted to be on the job by eight, but J.D. couldn’t get out of bed. He wasn’t a morning person. ‘Why such a rush?’ he said. ‘We’re only going to be sitting outside the guy’s office.’
    ‘This is how we work,’ Marie told him. ‘The early bird gets the worm.’
    ’Mornings. Christ,’ he muttered. ‘Fucking mornings. The early worm gets eaten alive.’
    They’d arrived at eight-thirty, and hadn’t seen Edward . j p took a walk round the car park and found the ’s car, so they assumed he was in the office. And they’d spent the whole morning talking about five card draw.
    JD had slowly woken up. ‘What you have to know,’ he said. ‘You have to know the odds. Be able to calculate them. There are over two and a half million possible hands every time you deal the cards.’
    ‘So you have to be a mathematician?’
    ‘No. The game’s exciting because, although there’s all those possible hands, you’re only going to end up with one of them. And to win the pot your hand doesn’t have to be the best one. It wins if all the others round the table think it’s better than theirs.’
    ‘So it’s a confidence trick?’
    ‘Yeah. Everyone in the game is a con-man. You can’t be sure of anything. Nothing is what it appears to be.’
    ‘Sounds like hell,’ she told him.
    But he laughed. ‘No. It’s like life.’
    It was good to be with him. Except when she was working. Marie loved the feeling she got from the job, the buzz. Even on a long surveillance it was always there, the anticipation, the expectation of a pay-off. Geordie and Sam complained about surveillance jobs; they couldn’t stand the hanging around, the boredom. But Marie didn’t mind the negatives. She loved every aspect of the job.
    Edward Blake came through the front entrance and walked to his Beemer. Pin-striped suit, incongruous looking sky-blue satin tie. He used a remote to deactivate the alarm and open the driver’s door, and he was inside and heading out of the car park within a couple of minutes of his appearance.
    Marie looked around, but there was no sign of J.D. Her heart seemed to slip sideways at the thought of leaving him behind, but it didn’t stop her. She moved into first and joined the stream of traffic a couple of vehicles behind Blake’s car. They crawled forward, pedestrians passing them and disappearing into the distance.
    She glanced at her watch as they joined the inner ring road, and spoke into her small Sanyo voice-activated system ‘Twelve thirty-eight. Blake left his office ten minutes back and is travelling from Museum Street along St Leonard’s Place. Traffic bloody slow as usual.’ She put the recorder down, then picked it up, and spoke again: ‘Lost J.D. along the way. Which means he’s got twice as many sandwiches as he needs, and I haven’t got any.’
    The Beemer indicated left in Gillygate and turned into Portland Street. Marie followed it into the cul-de-sac, reckoning that if she stayed with the traffic in Gillygate she might be in the Montego for several weeks. Not a pleasant prospect. Next time she came this way she’d remember to pack a camp stove and a chemical toilet.
    Blake took the only parking space in the street. Marie drove down to the end and watched through her mirror while he found a key and opened the door of a house which appeared to be rented out as flats.
    While she was backing out of the cul-de-sac, she saw Blake standing at an upstairs window. He was alone, framed by shabby curtains, and obviously at odds with the environment. He consulted his watch and looked out along the street. Then he had another go at the watch, but must have got the same time again, unless he was counting the seconds.
    Marie reversed up to the junction and was attempting an illegal three point turn, when she was stopped in the middle of the road by a girl running in front of her. The girl could not yet have seen her twentieth birthday, she was loaded down with three supermarket carrier bags, and in a hurry-Blond hair with dark roots to match her black eye, a V-necked white woollen sweater, and tight jeans cut off just below the knee. An expanse of gooseflesh calf, then black plastic high-heeled sandals. When she got to the house she looked up and attempted a wave at the window where Blake had consulted his watch. Then she put her bags down on the step, opened the door with a key,