The Imposter by Mark Dawson

Author:Mark Dawson [Dawson, Mark]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Crime, Fiction, Gangsters, Mystery, Suspense, Thriller
ISBN: 9781517751432
Google: rD6_jwEACAAJ
Amazon: 1517751438
Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
Published: 2015-10-11T23:00:00+00:00

34

EDWARD TOOK THE UNDERGROUND and emerged at Embankment. By the time he had reached Victoria Gardens he was as confident as he could be that he was safe. He went across the road, past the fruit-hawkers, and into the park. Not many people were sitting on the benches at that time of the morning and he sat down, joining the anonymous and the dispossessed: the old man feeding sparrows; the woman with a brown-paper parcel marked Swan & Edgar’s; the down-and-out blowing a tuneless ditty on a penny whistle. He sat among them with his head bent, staring at his shoes, shivering in cold sweat and trying to regain his breath. He stayed there for ten minutes, watching the grey cumulus passing over the south bank, the eddying throng of people accumulating around the entrance to the underground station. The gulls flew low over the barges and the shot-tower stood black in the cold light among blitzed and ruined warehouses. He thought about what had happened. Their long string of successes had inured him to the prospect of failure, and what that meant, but the consequences were real now.

Joseph had been caught and he had barely escaped. And, if he had been caught, everything would surely have been unravelled. Burglary would be the least of his concerns.

No, he chided himself. No. You’re too smart. Clever and resourceful. You can get out of this, and you can get Joseph out of it, too. He told himself to calm down, and, eventually, he did. He stayed there until the man who had fed the sparrows had gone and then, his confidence returning, he retraced his steps, passed the fruit-sellers and went back down into the Underground.

He caught a train towards Holborn, emerged into the sunlight and walked the short distance to the Hill. Billy Stavropoulos still lived with his mother in a two-up, two-down on one of the better streets in the area, but it was still a stone’s throw from The Rookery and far from pleasant. He walked down the terrace to number seventeen and rapped on the door.

A raddled woman from whose face dried paint and powder were falling in little flakes opened it. “Yes?” she said, uncovering teeth like mildewed fragments of cheese.

“Is Billy here?”

Her eyes narrowed suspiciously. “No-one called Billy here.”

“Please.” Edward put his foot between the door and the jamb before she could close it. “I’m not the police.”

“No? Who are you, then?”

“I’m a friend. It’s about Joseph Costello. It’s important.”

She wrinkled her nose. “You sure? Our Billy hasn’t been up to no good again?”

“No, it’s nothing like that. I just need to see him.”

She turned, leaving the door open. Edward followed her inside.

“Wait in there.”

He followed her instructions, went through into the sitting room and sat on the dusty, unsprung sofa. A goods train rattled and gasped out of a nearby junction and in the distance an engine blew its whistle three times, deliberately. From the street outside came a sudden concert of horns, angry drivers setting off a lugubrious honking that put him in mind of geese.

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