Mind the Gap Read Free Page A

they’re right behind you.
    Jazz was afraid that if she did start running, she’d brain herself on a lamppost. She was doing her best not to cry—that would draw attention—but the pressure and heat behind her face was immense.
    For a minute or two, she had considered calling the police from Mr. Barker’s house and waiting until they arrived. But she had known that if she paused any longer, she would never move again. So she had left the way she arrived, walking the length of Barker’s garden, hurrying along the alleyway, emerging out onto the street, and putting more distance between her and her mother with every step she took.
    She hated blinking, because whenever her eyes closed she saw the blood and that twisted, splayed body that had once been her mother.
    That woman slit her throat. Cut her and left her to bleed to death!
And they had been waiting for Jazz to come home.
    To do the same to her?
    She walked past a coffee shop and glanced in the window. A man and woman sat turned to face the street. The woman was sipping from a cup, but the man stared straight out at Jazz. He wore a smart dark suit and sunglasses, and his lips twitched into what might have been a smile.
    Jazz hurried on, turning into the next side road she came to, rushing through a lane between gardens and emerging onto another street. She passed an old woman walking her dog. The dog watched her go by.
    It took Jazz ten minutes to realize she had no idea where she was going. Where could she hide? And how could she just leave her mother?
    She emerged onto a busy shopping street. It was noisy and bustling and smelled of exhaust fumes and fast food. A cab pulled up just along the street and a tall, elegant woman stepped out. She brushed an errant strand of hair from her eyes, paid the cabbie, and walked away with her mobile phone glued to her ear.
    And Jazz’s mother was dead.
    She was dead, murdered, and now Jazz was more alone than she had ever been before.
    They’ll be on the street
s, she thought, and the idea bore her mother’s voice.
Once they know you’re not coming home, they’ll be on the streets looking for you.
    She stepped into the doorway of a music shop and scanned the sidewalk and the road. No big black Beamers, but that meant nothing. Maybe they’d be on foot. Maybe, like her mother had been telling her for the last couple of years, they had so many fingers in so many pies that none of them knew the true extent of their reach.
    She wiped her eyes and looked both ways. A dozen people turned their heads away just as she looked at them. A dozen more looked up. In a crowd such as this, there was always someone watching her.
    “Oh shit, oh fuck. What the hell am I going to do?” she whispered.
    A black BMW cruised around the corner. Jazz pressed back into the door but it was locked, the damn shop was shut, and then the BMW passed and continued along the street.
    She hurried back out onto the pavement, resisting the temptation to keep her head down. She had to watch, had to know what was going on.
    A tall man emerged from a fast-food joint, carrying something that looked like steaming road kill in a napkin. He was dressed in a sharp black suit, and as she paused six steps from him, he adjusted a lump beneath his jacket.
    Gun,
Jazz thought.
    He looked up, glanced around at her, and smiled. “Too hot to eat,” he said, raising the food toward her.
    She ran. The man called after her, and even though he sounded friendly and alarmed, she could not afford to stop, not now that she’d started running, because she was drawing attention to herself. And if and when she did stop, she’d collapse into a heap, and the white-hot grief would start tearing her up.
    The grief, and the loneliness.
    She ducked into a Tube station, grateful for the shadows closing around her. The smell of the Underground seemed to welcome her in.

Jazz flew down the stairs two at a time, sure that she would trip and break an ankle but unable to stop herself. Images of