Chronicle: The Grey Umbrella — Two Amateurs on His Tail

Nigel spotted the tail right at the bus stop — not through any supernatural instinct, but simply because two grown adults, one of them wearing a jacket so deliberately unremarkable it became conspicuous purely by trying too hard, and the other in a bright yellow coat visible from the opposite end of the street, rarely go unnoticed by anyone paying even the mildest attention to their surroundings.

His first reaction was alarm — the specific, professional alarm that instantly runs through the possibilities: Grimshaw's people, a rival, journalists, a disgruntled former insurance client nursing a grudge over a rejected claim. He quickened his pace, turned in at the bus stop not because he'd planned to, but to test whether the pair behind him would follow.

They followed. With an enthusiasm that bordered on self-sacrifice: the man in the dark jacket nearly knocked over an elderly woman with his umbrella, sprinting to catch the doors a second before they closed.

Nigel sat down, keeping his composure outwardly, and quietly pulled out his phone, switching on the rear camera — a small trick he'd picked up in his first year of practice — to get a proper look at his pursuers without turning around.

Having got a proper look, he had to fight down a laugh.

One of his pursuers was taking photographs of the back of his head — an entire series, judging by the frequency of the shutter clicks, which Nigel could pick out even over the engine noise — while the second, a woman in a yellow coat, was clearly lecturing him under her breath, judging by the first man's expression, which flickered between stubbornness and embarrassment.

These were not Grimshaw's people. Grimshaw's people moved more quietly, more professionally, and would certainly never photograph a stranger's head fifteen times in a row on public transport. This was something else entirely — something less dangerous, but potentially far more troublesome in the long run.

He got off at his usual stop, bought a chocolate bar at the kiosk — a habit left over from childhood, something of a ritual before every outing — and, turning round, very nearly walked straight into the man in the dark jacket, who spun away at the last second, hauling his companion off towards the nearest shop window with a haste that unmistakably marked him out as an amateur.

Nigel caught a glimpse of the face. And recognised it.

Dave.

The moment of recognition caught him so off guard he very nearly dropped the chocolate bar he'd just bought. Everything fell into place with painful clarity: the strange questions about the book, about the laundry, about the gym, the odd fretfulness on the landing, the message — "how's your laundry going, all okay?" — which he'd shrugged off so lightly at the time. Dave wasn't simply a curious neighbour. Dave was running his own investigation, and, judging by the determination with which he'd just sprinted for a bus, that investigation had already progressed to a full stakeout.

His first instinct was to turn round, walk over, and ask outright what on earth was going on. His second, wiser instinct was to pretend he hadn't noticed a thing and get away as quickly as possible, because the route leading to the alley behind the disused printing works was the last place he wanted Dave to keep tailing him: on the roof of that building, in ten minutes, Jean Ashcroft was waiting for him, for a conversation that most certainly wasn't meant for the eyes of a curious neighbour with a phone full of photos of the back of strangers' heads.

He turned into the alley, made the looping detour past the bins he'd perfected in his very first year of practice specifically for situations like this, and climbed the fire escape to the roof of the printing works, moving fast enough to lose them for good, and quietly enough not to give away the direction.

On the roof, Jean was already waiting, wrapped in her coat, clutching a dictaphone she had an irrational attachment to, despite the fact that phones had long since done the same job just as well.

"You're late," she said, by way of greeting. "And you look like you've been chased."

"I have been chased," Nigel admitted, still not quite catching his breath. "Two people. Utterly hopeless at surveillance, but remarkably persistent."

"Grimshaw's men?"

"Worse," he said, with the particular irony of a man who had just realised his own neighbour posed a more immediate threat to his secret than an entire organisation of professional extortionists. "My neighbour. And his colleague."

Jean raised an eyebrow, the expression she reserved specifically for moments when reality turned out to be more entertaining than anything she'd planned to record that evening.

"Tell me more," she said, switching on the dictaphone, "because this sounds like a rather more amusing story than the discrepancies in Grimshaw's accounts."

Nigel sighed, looked down into the alley, where — he could have sworn — two indistinct figures were still lingering in the dark, one of them clearly still glancing around like a man who'd just lost the only thread of his investigation, and decided that, perhaps, it really was time to start thinking not only about Grimshaw, but about what to do about Dave, before Dave accidentally got himself hurt.