The Forger & the Traitor by Ian W Sainsbury

Author:Ian W Sainsbury [Sainsbury, Ian W]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-07-08T22:00:00+00:00

Callum Perkins had worked for Transport For London since his mid-twenties, driving buses throughout the capital. He enjoyed the challenge of the constant traffic, the rich soup of nationalities and personalities travelling with him every day. Best job in the world, his dad always said, and he'd driven buses in Northumbria for fifty years.

What Callum didn't enjoy was the aggro. There wasn't much; not as much as the papers would have you believe, but enough that he'd developed a nose for it. The four guys who boarded at Stratford reeked of it. They each boasted a pistol tattoo on the backs of their hands. They didn't pay when they boarded the bus. Three of them walked past while the fourth rested his hand on the Oyster card reader, long enough for Callum to see three bullets on his wrist above the gun tattoo. According to his ink, this kid—eighteen, nineteen years old?—had already murdered three people. Callum let them on without a word.

He drove without the radio after the gang boys boarded. The CCTV system hadn't been working all week, and the camera upstairs was permanently vandalised. He knew which passengers were up there, though. One method of staving off tiredness on late shifts was to keep track of who was aboard. The big shy guy with the bandana had been on since Charing Cross. The two girls from Canary Wharf were on the top deck, too.

At the ping of the stop request bell, Callum pulled over and waited until someone shouted that they'd pressed it by accident. He hoped they were just horsing around. He didn't much like the look of those boys, particularly the leader. Hard-faced, like he hated the world and was looking for an opportunity to prove how much. The eleven passengers downstairs had gone quiet since the gang boarded. Six of them got off when he stopped, deciding to walk despite the rain. Callum couldn't blame them.

When the bell rang again three minutes later, he checked the mirror. None of the remaining five passengers downstairs showed signs of moving.

In the silence, the voice from the top deck rang clear. "I warned you, retard. Should have stayed asleep. Now you're gonna bleed."

Another voice answered, and the sound of it lifted every hair on Callum's arms and up the back of his neck. It was a man's voice. And it was singing.

It's when next I have murdered, the Man-In-The-Moon to powder

His staff I'll break, his dog I'll bake, they'll howl no demon louder

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