The Hunt Read Free Page A

A madness had taken her. A blazing fury and a smothering grief. It was incomprehensible how quickly she had changed from a family woman with a good job and a nice house to
…
someone else. And so she had cut her hair, dyed what was left, and submerged herself in the chaos of the capital. It was ironic that she went to so much effort disguising herself when in truth she was already lost.
    Those shadowy places were more about the people than the locations – lost, dispossessed, cast adrift by society, or fallen by the wayside of their own volition. No one had seemed interested in her, and she had taken notice of no one. Occasionally she worried about being recognised, though in truth grief had changed her more than a haircut and new clothes ever could. She was a hollow person, and her body projected that physically. Sunken cheeks, stick-like limbs, deep eyes like pools of dark ink.
    London had been an ideal place to hide, and to drink. Every day, every night, alcohol absorbed and obsessed her, becoming her whole world. When the memories threatened to surface she drank some more to smother them, and if she ever approached sobriety, another bottle of cheap vodka swept her away again. Abandoned buildings and squats had provided places for her to sleep, and if in a drunken haze she lost her way, there were always the shadowy spaces beneath bridges or in rubbish-strewn alleyways. She was one woman in a city whose lifeblood was anonymity, and time and place lost all meaning. The moment of change when she’d found her family was a deep, wide chasm in her life. Sometimes she stood on the edge and tried to look back, but it was too far to see clearly. So she remained on the other side, wallowing in the guilt of survival and letting alcohol smother her across this new, barren land.
    Seeing a member of the Trail had changed everything.
    Rose had stumbled into the woman outside the Apollo Theatre one rainy, cold November evening. She’d been wandering through Soho searching for one of her familiar sleeping places, a deserted, boarded-up pub accessed through a broken back window. Many of the dispossessed knew that place. It stank of piss and booze, echoed with drug-fuelled mumblings and occasional cries of wretchedness, pleasure or pain. But that night Rose’s befuddled sense of direction had failed her, and she’d emerged into the bright lights and bustle of Shaftesbury Avenue.
    The lights had been blinding. Disorientated, she’d turned to make her way back into the shadows. People had parted to let her by, protecting themselves with space and muttered words of distaste. All but this woman. Rose had walked right into her, and many times since she’d wondered whether it had been orchestrated. Had the woman recognised her in that instant and engineered their collision? Had she been looking for her?
    The last time Rose had seen her, she’d been standing beside a Range Rover somewhere in London’s Docklands smiling broadly as a man told Rose to run.
    As the heat of recognition grew quickly in Rose’s mind, she saw that it had already settled in the woman’s eyes.
Grin
, Rose thought, because that’s how she had thought of the woman since that first meeting, in nightmares and booze-fuelled fantasies of revenge.
Grin, you’re Grin, and I’ll wipe that name from your face
.
    Grin was smartly dressed, short and thin, strong. Her auburn hair was cut in an attractive bob, her skin smooth and relatively unlined even though she was perhaps fifty years old. She looked
nice
, like anyone’s mother. But Rose knew her secret.
    Grin had smiled and reached slowly, casually into her raincoat pocket.
    Rose still had no idea how she had reacted so quickly. Her hand snapped out, fingers closing around the object in Grin’s hand, snatching, and then she ran. Losing herself in those rainswept streets had been easy, and the shouts and pursuit she’d expected never came.
    The phone had worked for seven minutes before its connection was cancelled.