The Heights by Parker Bilal

Author:Parker Bilal [Bilal, Parker]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781448303700
Publisher: Severn House Publishers
Published: 2019-11-28T00:00:00+00:00

28

Drake got back to the car in Soho only to find a fine waiting for him on the windscreen. It was to be expected. He did what he should have done earlier and drove around the corner to the NCP car park in Brewer Street. He backed into a space and then changed into the old set of clothes he had brought with him.

The evening got off to a bad start. Coming round the corner onto Trafalgar Square he bumped into a group of men wearing yellow hi-vis jackets and waving union flags. As he tried to make his way through he found his path blocked. The men surrounded him, closing in as he turned in a circle trying to find a way out. As they jostled him, they began chanting, blowing beery breath into his face.

‘We are the people! We are the people!’

Drake was already sizing them up, trying to work out a tactic, quickly picking out the biggest of them as the first one to go for. The odds were bad and he didn’t want a confrontation, but he knew he had to be ready if it came to that. There were ten or fifteen of them. His only hope was that taking two or three of them down might cause the others to reconsider their actions, or scarper.

One of them reared up into his face. ‘What’s the matter, don’t you speak English?’

‘Traitor!’ Spitting and shouting in his face, they pushed by. ‘Go back to where you came from!’

He watched them move on, blocking the traffic and shoving their placards in the faces of anyone they came across. Drake picked up his belongings, the carrier bags stuffed with old sweaters and socks. Anything, really, that wasn’t of any value. Stuff he’d been meaning to throw out but never got around to. He was a walking jumble sale. A couple of them had been kicked across the pavement. Not that they contained anything.

‘Crazy, what this country is coming to.’

Drake looked up to see a young man. In his late twenties, his tattered clothes and unlaced boots told their own story. He stepped forwards to hand Drake the fat purple caterpillar that was his sleeping bag.

‘They’re angry,’ muttered Drake.

‘Yes, but not at us. I mean, we didn’t do this.’

‘You’ve got a point there.’

There was something about his manner that was slightly off, as if he was trying to remember something. He stuck out his hand.

‘Spike.’

‘Nash.’ For some reason, Drake was sticking to the alias he had used four years ago when he was undercover. It was easy to remember. Perhaps that was it, or maybe it was the sense that this whole episode was leading him back into his past. Spike told him that he was ex-service too.

‘Never settled down,’ the man said, shaking his head. ‘I know blokes who came home and fitted right back in, as if they had never left. I mean, they were working, taking care of their families. I don’t know how they do it. Me, I wasn’t the same person.

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