Breathless Sin by J. B. Coke

Author:J. B. Coke
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Publish on Demand Global LLC

Chapter 11

By midnight, I had stepped through the looking glass and we were on our way north. I was never a Boy Scout but I spent part of my younger life in the Army, where you learn, above all things, the value of being prepared. ‘Prior planning prevents piss poor performance’ is what they say in the British Army. It is known as the six pees. They didn’t have the six pees in the Legion but they taught you the same stuff.

The two sets of keys I had taken from the oilskin wrapper fitted a lock-up in Islington and the fifteen year old Landrover I keep there for a rainy day. It was as I was lifting Prowler down from the snow-covered slates of the Annex roof that I had decided to go to ground. The violence was closing in on us and had to be dealt with. Prowler, Anita and I had all been lucky that day. The penthouse was adequate testimony to what might have been and could be again. I had an overpowering longing for a safe base, where we could sleep easy at nights and I could, should it become necessary, leave Anita alone, knowing that Messrs. Dean and Hoffman couldn’t find her.

Anita and Prowler had both been difficult to persuade. Prowler because it meant going and staying with Dave for a few days, where he would be subjected to the adoring attentions of Dave’s wife and twin daughters, all of which and all of whom, he hated. Anita because it meant dropping out of life as she knew it and effectively playing hooky from work. Despite all she had been through, she thought I was exaggerating the danger and overreacting.

Those who have never lived close to violence do not understand that there is no answer to a knife in the guts. Every victim believes it can never happen to them - until it does. I hadn’t had time for long arguments or histrionics, so, in the end, I had thrown her stuff into her bag and pretty much frog-marched her down to the tube station. She was still sulking.

The locks and hinges to the garage door were well oiled and silent. The Landrover’s battery on a trickle charge and ready to go. The lock-up and Landrover both belong to a Mr. George Stubbs of Hendon who has, in fact, been dead this past five years. A passport with the same name and my photograph is sewn into the bottom of the driver’s seat in a leather pouch, which also contains three bankbooks and a modest sum in cash. A set of French plates and papers for both car and driver are screwed into the left rear wheel arch under two coats of anti corrosive underseal. Under a tarp, between the sideways facing rear seats, are a fair selection of survival gear and one or two other items you would rather not know about.

The Landrover slid around alarmingly on the icy motorway but settled into its own as we approached our destination and the roads became progressively narrower and less used.

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