side of the street. I finished my call and fell in behind her.
Rule One of surveillance is the same as that for beekeeping: Remain calm. Attitude is all, when it comes to disguise. If one does not emanate tension—rather, if one only emanates the diffuse tension of any ordinary city-dweller—even a suspicious eye will not snag upon one’s figure. I kept pace with my apprentice, a street’s width apart, my slumping shoulders not only serving to reduce my distinctive height, but telegraphing the message that here was but a tired night worker on his way to a hot meal and bed.
I had two distinct advantages. First, I was at home here: Apart from the odd newcomer, such as the telephone kiosk, I knew London in the way my tongue knew my teeth, automatically, easily, and without hesitation. And second, my quarry was not only an infrequent visitor to the city, she was all but untutored in the ways of surveillance.
I was grateful for my neglect of her skills, because it meant that she made the mistakes of an amateur. When she glanced back, it was to her own side of the street first, permitting me a split second to slow or speed my gait. She made for a major road, where the ‘buses plied—and where other pedestrians offered concealment, even at that hour. She took a direct route, which not only enabled my telephonically summoned Irregulars to locate me, but allowed me to jog-trot through an ill-marked alley, over a low wall and around a newsagent’s shed to rejoin the hunt in a different position. She waited for a bus, rather than summon a taxi and force me—us—into risking a giveaway leap to do the same.
That last might have had to do with finances rather than inexperience.
When her ’bus pulled to the kerb, I was down the street in a taxicab, strengthened by two Irregulars. A third hurried to join the queue behind Russell. None of them was Miss White—she had remained with me until the laden taxicab found us, then went back to question the Vicissitude staff.
Our cab-driver was—a sight to which my eyes had not grown accustomed—a woman. This was no phlegmatic member of London’s usual cab-driving fraternity. Indeed, she was finding it hard to maintain a simulacrum of insouciance; she had the taxicab’s clutch poised to leap.
“Do not start until I tell you,” I reminded our modern Boadicea. “And when you do, drive at a normal speed.”
I was pleased that my apprentice had not chosen to travel via the Underground, although I was not certain why. Her route also seemed to be taking us towards the source of the previous night’s devastation—which might explain it, that she had been warned of a possible disruption to the trains. In any event, the smell came first, the reek of burning homes, followed soon after by the sight of filthy, exhausted rescue crews and fire brigade equipment, returning from a terrible night’s work. And, unusually enough, the farther east we went, the thicker the pedestrian traffic grew.
“Gawkers,” our driver commented in disapproval.
The young man at my side responded with a question as to the disaster, to which she readily gave answer, although before the end of the first sentence, I could see that she did not actually know what had happened here, but was merely repeating rumours.
She was right about the sight-seers, though. A few of those shoving along the pavements betrayed the eagerness of desperate family members; most were merely eager.
In no time, traffic was at a stand-still. Three black rooftops lay between us and Russell’s ’bus; heads began to crane to ascertain what lay ahead.
When Russell came down from the ’bus, our driver was alone in her taxicab, marooned and bereft of the day’s excitement.
My three Irregulars and I worked as a team, taking turns walking close behind her, then falling back to change hat, spectacles, or outer garment before moving up again. She had a goal, that much was clear. At first, I thought it might be the Liverpool Street