Blackstone and the Endgame Read Free Page B

God’s sake, Sam, be serious,’ Patterson said exasperatedly. ‘You can’t keep on taking everybody else’s responsibilities on your own shoulders. No man can. I know somebody has to be on the firing line – that’s just the way things are – but it doesn’t always have to be you.’
    â€˜I’ve told Brigham that I’ll do it, so there’s no more to be said,’ Blackstone said firmly.
    Patterson shook his head, which was as round as a football and as pink as a peach. ‘Then, if you insist on doing it, at least let me come along and shadow you,’ he said.
    â€˜I appreciate your offer of support, but I’ll be fine on my own,’ Blackstone said.
    â€˜It’s because of my size, isn’t it?’ Patterson said. ‘You don’t want to use me because I’m like a barrel of lard.’
    Blackstone took a step backwards and looked his sergeant up and down. Archie had already been a rather large young man when they’d begun working together, nearly twenty years earlier, but over that time – during which he had married a pleasantly plump wife and produced three pleasantly plump children – he had positively ballooned.
    â€˜You might as well admit that’s the reason, because I can see it in your eyes,’ the sergeant told him.
    Patterson was trying to make him feel guilty, Blackstone realized – using the emotional blackmail of their friendship to persuade his boss to let him tag along.
    â€˜It’s nothing to do with your size,’ Blackstone said.
    â€˜Barrel of lard,’ Patterson repeated.
    â€˜You’re a lot nimbler on your feet than some of the men who are half your weight.’
    â€˜Then why won’t you use me?’
    Because,
Blackstone thought,
however much I need you – and, God knows, I’ve got such a bad feeling about this that I really
do
need you – your plump little family needs you more.
    But aloud, he said, ‘I won’t use you because it isn’t necessary to use you. Brigham thinks it will all go like clockwork – smooth as silk was the term he actually used – and I agree with him.’
    â€˜You’re storing up a lot of trouble for both of us, you know, Sam,’ Patterson said.
    â€˜How can I be storing up trouble for
you
, when you won’t even be involved?’ Blackstone wondered.
    â€˜I don’t know,’ Patterson said ominously. ‘It’s not logical at all, but I can feel it in my gut that what you’re about to do will land both of us in the shit.’

TWO
    L ondon was a city that had conquered the night, just as it had conquered so much else that nature had thrown at it, Blackstone thought with a true Londoner’s pride. When dusk fell there, it did not plunge the city into darkness in the way that it all-but blacked out so many provincial towns. Instead, the lights came on – gas lamps in the poorer areas, the more modern electric street-lighting in the prosperous ones – and London glowed. He’d read somewhere that night-time London could be seen from space, and though he doubted that was true, he nourished the hope that when mankind finally found a way to travel beyond the planet Earth, he’d be proved wrong.
    But London did not glow that night – it hadn’t glowed since early in the war, when fears of German Zeppelin attacks had been raised – and as Blackstone made his way along Denmark Street, he was guided only by the light of a pale moon.
    The four men who were waiting for him on the corner of Denmark Street and Cable Street all had flashlights, and were huddled together like schoolboys hatching a conspiracy against an unpopular master. As Blackstone approached them, both their excitement and nervousness were tangible.
    One of the men raised his flashlight and shone it full into Blackstone’s face.
    â€˜You took your time getting here,’ he said, in a voice that