Thicker Than Water

I had plenty of questions I wanted to ask.

But the sound of footsteps died away above me, just as they reached the top of the stairs. Had I blown my cover somehow? I glanced up, saw nothing between the slats.

The moment stretched, way past the point where it could have been explained by the guy tying a shoelace or pausing to catch his breath. From where he was, he presumably had a good view both up and down the street: maybe he’d waited up there to see s this which way I went: in which case he had to have twigged by now that I hadn’t come back into view, so unless he was a peerless moron my pathetic ambush stood revealed.

I was just about ready to jump out of hiding, sprint back up the steps and see if I could catch the guy before he bolted. But before I could, the sound of footsteps resumed. Someone was coming down the steps towards me: coming down slowly, with long pauses for thought or reconnaissance.

Reverting to Plan A, I got myself into a tackling crouch. The steps at my head height creaked one by one, in descending sequence - an arpeggio of protesting wood.

But maybe on some level I’d already registered that there was something wrong with the footsteps. At any rate, when the old man came out at the foot of the steps, sighing audibly as he paused to get his breath back, I was able to check my forward lunge in time and I didn’t actually punch him in the head. He walked on down the road, weighed down by two bulging bags in Sainsbury’s livery: he hadn’t seen me at all, which might have seemed odd if he hadn’t been wearing glasses as thick as the portholes on a bathysphere.

Stifling an obscene oath, I went back up the steps at a run, but I was locking the stable door when the horse was already at the airport with a false passport. The walkway was empty: my tail must have waited for the next pedestrian to come along, lingered just long enough to watch me from above as I stepped out of cover, and then - having verified beyond any doubt that I’d made him - done a quick fade back the other way.

The old gent’s footsteps coming down the stairs would have covered his heading back the way he’d come.

I was chagrined - and frustrated. I’m too constitutionally lazy for real detective work, and I’d found the prospect of leaning on someone else for information very attractive.

But there was nothing doing, clearly. Next time, I promised myself, I’d move a little faster and give the slick bastard the benefit of one less doubt.