Another Life Read Free Page B

old-fashioned pistol that he seemed to prefer to anything modern. And it was also apparent that he was unable to take clear aim at the fleeing figure of Wildman. Too many early evening pedestrians were wandering these side streets. A group of girls from a private school, incongruous in their expensive blazers, formed a buzzing crowd outside a clothes shop. Two business men walked in parallel but were oblivious to each other in their separate mobile phone calls.
    A couple of dusty construction workers laughed as they began to secure a makeshift door in the chipboard wall around a building site. Their appearance and manner told Gwen that it was the end of their shift. Their yellow hard hats were clipped to their belts and their fluorescent jackets were off their shoulders and hanging behind them from the waist. So they were unprepared for Wildman to barge straight at them. One he smacked with his shoulder, and the other caught a solid blow when Wildman swung the side of his briefcase into the man’s head. They stumbled aside, and Wildman pulled the door open again.
    The workmen staggered back to their feet and cursed him with the fluency of long practice. The younger man, a crew-cut teenager with a cauliflower ear, had taken the blow from the briefcase. He was attempting to seize Wildman by grabbing onto his beige raincoat when Jack approached at full pelt and yelled at him to step aside.
    Wildman struggled at the door, fumbling with the latch and open padlock. He glared at Jack, and seemed to convulse. From her perspective, still halfway down the alleyway from him, it looked to Gwen as though Wildman was going to be violently sick. She heard a plopping sound, and Wildman regurgitated a green-grey bolus at Jack. Jack stepped aside with a surprised yell, bumping into the two construction workers. Wildman took his chance in the confusion. He almost wrenched the door off its rusty hinges, and dived into the building site.
    The construction workers were staring at whatever Wildman had sicked up. It hadn’t splattered as it hit the ground. It just lay there, pulsing slightly. Jack reached out one foot, trod the thing into the dusty pavement. Then he kicked it through the door. He was briefly prevented from following it, as the two workmen grasped him by the arms. Jack shucked them off with a swift, violent shake of his shoulders. That’s when they saw his pistol, and they backed off, raising their hands.
    ‘Good choice,’ said Jack, and disappeared into the building site, still in pursuit of Wildman.
    Gwen pounded up the street to the door, and brandished her ID card.
    The older of the two workers stared at her. His wide round eyes were pale in the dirty brown leather of his face. Now he’d seen the ID, his manner was wary, less confrontational. ‘What’s going on here? That bloke’s not well. He was throwing up… what was that thing?’ The door was slightly ajar, and he was about to open it for a look, but Gwen pushed it shut again.
    ‘Well, this site isn’t safe to go wandering around in,’ persisted the workman. ‘I’ll have to let the gaffer know about—’
    Gwen dismissed his objections. ‘I don’t need your gaffer’s permission. I just need you to get out of the way. Anyone else in there? Anyone else arriving for another shift?’
    ‘We’re the last. All done for the day. Just locking up,’ said the younger man, eager to sound helpful.
    ‘But the floors aren’t all in yet,’ protested his older mate. ‘Not beyond the fifth, at any rate. And the external sheeting doesn’t go beyond that, either.’
    Gwen leaned right back, and stared up into the early evening sky. The building construction loomed over her, a vertiginous cliff of scaffolding and grey concrete. Far above, a dirty orange crane poked out above the top floor. Green fabric netting flapped in the breeze around the unfinished office block, a rippling sign announcing that it was a Levall-Mellon development.
    ‘The site manager’ll have my