Holloway Falls by Neil Cross Read Free Book Online

rendered life-threatening by darkened, curling carpets that dated to the late 1960s.
    Three stairs behind Lenny, Shepherd observed the gnarls of his spine, an ambulatory diagram beneath the washed-out fabric of his T-shirt.
    Lenny ducked through the doorway, more through impulse than necessity. Shepherd bent almost double. Inside, he straightened. It smelled, mysteriously, exactly as an attic room should. Shepherd took this as an omen. The centre of the room was high-ceilinged, descending into the eaves, much of which had been converted into crawl-space storage.
    Shepherd looked through the window. On the horizon he could see Canary Wharf tower, glittering silver through a white haze of pollution like the distant object of a knightly quest.
    He offered six months’ rent in advance, cash, with an additional month’s deposit. He was not invited to sign a tenancy agreement. He checked out of the hotel the same day, transporting what few belongings he had accumulated in two cardboard boxes that fitted easily into a black cab.
    Lenny helped him upstairs with one of the boxes, gave him a set of keys. Then he went back to his reading, leaving Shepherd alone to unpack and settle in.
    Shepherd set a box on the bed and wrestled open a sash window. It squeaked. He looked out. Breathed in.
    Held.
    Breathed out.
    II
    He spent a few weeks consolidating his new identity, then making it permanent and semi-official. The brochures from the classified advertisements in the Fortean Times had advised him to start at the bottom and work up, and this is exactly what he did.
    He had not chosen the name Jack Oliver Shepherd at random. Andrew Winston Taylor had been surprised to read in one pamphlet that a legerdemain he’d learned of many years before (in The Day of the Jackal ) was still available to him.
    Long before he vanished, he made a single research trip to the Bristol Central Library, off College Green. A quick scroll through microfiche allowed him to find a child with the same approximate birth date as his own, who had died before its first birthday. There followed a trip to Bristol Register Office, where—because it was merely lawful proof that a birth has taken place, not that it was his own—he was legally able to obtain a copy of the baby Shepherd’s birth certificate. In the name of caution he claimed genealogical research, and paid the required fee in cash.
    Thus, many months later, Shepherd now had both a permanent residence and a birth certificate. With this he applied for a provisional driver’s licence. He then arranged to take an intensive course of driving lessons over ten days at a local driving school.
    He passed the second time (too many ingrained bad habits). Although Shepherd waited a long time before asking him, Lenny proved happy to endorse his driving licence fraudulently, effortlessly faking the signatures of his GP and Eloise’s father. One name he signed in ballpoint, the other with a Mont Blanc ink pen he retrieved from his office.
    While he awaited dispatch of the licence, Shepherd also applied for membership to as many institutions as he was able: the local library, the video shop, the sports club. He arranged it so that each of these had a reason to write to him.
    Soon, with a driver’s licence, a birth certificate and other sundry proofs of identity, he was able to open a bank account in his new name. He did so with a deposit of £1,000 in cash.
    Ten working days later a cash-point card and chequebook arrived in the post.
    For several weeks, he was out of the house most of the day. But he spent the evenings with Lenny and Eloise.
    Often they shared takeaways and watched a video. Sometimes they played Trivial Pursuit around the kitchen table. Usually, Shepherd and Eloise shared a bottle of wine, taking it in turns to pay. Now and again, she rolled a joint. Lenny drank draught Guinness from a can with a widget.
    Eloise’s parents were old money, but they disapproved of her lifestyle (by which he assumed