The Game by Martin Kemp

Author:Martin Kemp [Kemp, Martin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-10-04T12:00:00+00:00

15

RIGHT ACROSS TOWN

Thursday

The sky was dark and overbearing, and Johnny felt a strange pressure pushing down on top of his head as he raced towards the end of Jackie’s road. It had started to rain, and despite the fact he was running down Pete’s five hundred quid at a rate of knots, he knew there was no other way he could get across London without getting back on the tube again, a prospect he couldn’t face. He pulled up the collar of his jacket as a black cab stopped just up ahead of him and a woman got out. Johnny ran across the road and before she closed the door to the cab, he was at the driver’s window.

‘Take me to Canary Wharf, the Reuters building …’

The driver nodded and Johnny got in. His head was feeling like it was about to explode; all he wanted to do was sit in silence and stare out of the window like everyone else was allowed to, to try and get a grip over what had just happened, but he wasn’t like anyone else.

The driver’s intercom crackled to life. ‘It is, innit?’

Johnny didn’t respond. Bollocks.

‘I saw you back in the day. Wembley arena, great show it was, I was there with my missus; first date.’ There was no avoiding the cabbie, whose eyes met his own in the rear-view mirror. ‘I’ll tell you what, lot of water has passed under the bridge since then, Johnny-boy. I had your mate in here the other day, what’s his name – it’ll come to me, Lee something.’

‘Lee Giles, our keyboard player.’ Johnny replied, blankly.

‘Yeah that’s him. He’s doing all right for himself, ain’t he – nice bit of Armani he was wearing.’

Lee Giles had kicked the hard stuff and ended up marrying the heir to a giant clothing brand in the early Nineties; the brand went public and they had made millions. Lee had made all the right choices in life.

‘Yeah, I dropped him at his gaff in Holland Park. Tell you what, you don’t get many of them in a pound! Anyway, he gave me a twenty-quid tip, lovely job!’

The driver prattled on for the journey; Johnny nodded and smiled robotically, adding the odd oh and ah where he thought it was needed, but the cabbie didn’t seem to care.

It gave Johnny time to mull over what had gone on that morning. If Jackie’s stalker was living next door, was she walking past him every day and not realising it? Hopefully he’d done enough for her to talk to the police, but he couldn’t understand why she didn’t want to. She couldn’t expect him to solve the problem, he could barely work out what day of the week it was.

By the time the driver had finished his speech on how well Lee Giles had done for himself, and how he’d once had that Liam Gallagher in his cab, and how Joan Collins had once tipped him a oner after he dropped her at the Savoy, the journey across town had come to an end and they had reached Canada Square.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.