Dead Men's s Boots

None of them so much as glanced at the window of the café: none of them looked as though they were trying to pluck up the courage to step inside.

The waitress was lost in the intricacies of cleaning out the coffee machine’s drip-tray. The bald guy was working on his puzzle. Nobody seemed to want to make contact with me. Probably time to chalk this one up to experience and walk away. Might as well finish my coffee first, though.

And while I did that, I scanned the faces at the bus stop again.

Most of them were new, but one of them had been there the whole time, while half a dozen buses came and went. He was a skinny guy in his late twenties or thereabouts, in an LL Cool J T-shirt, black jacket and jeans. His nose was the size and shape of a rudder, and made the rest of his face look like it had been arranged around it in a space that wasn’t quite wide enough. He had a sallow, unhealthy complexion, and the trailing wires of a pair of headphones dangling from his ears: his crisply ringleted head nodded gently, double four time, as he soaked up the vibrations of whatever was playing on his iPod. He still hadn’t looked at me: or if he had, I hadn’t caught him at it.

The usual place. Maybe I’d jumped to conclusions. Maybe the late Mister Gittings had out-paranoided me yet again. Leave the matchbook, yeah, and the phone number: but don’t quite join the dots, because then everyone else will see the shape of what you’re making.

Maybe the usual place was somewhere you could watch from the Reflections café.

I finished my coffee, paid up at the counter and walked out onto the street. The guy at the bus stop moved off at the same time, still – as far as I could tell – without glancing in my direction. I followed him at a medium-fast stroll, crossing the street as he tacked away to the south, towards Bridge Place.

We were in the maze of bus lanes and bollards in front of Victoria station now, and I thought he might veer off to the right and go inside.

He didn’t, though, and he didn’t look behind him. He just kept ambling along, his head still bobbing slightly in time to his personal soundtrack. I kept pace with him, only ten feet behind now. I slid my hand inside my coat, found my mobile and took it out. Almost out of charge, I noticed: already showing empty, in fact, but there ought to be enough juice for this.