Where had Paul Wire gone? He was nowhere to be seen.
Had he gone for a train?
Caught a taxi? Headed back to the Precinct?
Danny had to choose. Use his intuition.
If Wire had taken a train there was no way Danny would find him in the hundreds of people walking in and out of shopping arcades and from the station.
If he’d gone for a taxi or to the other pub he’d have turned left and out into City Square. That meant that it was a two in three chance he’d gone that way. It was Danny’s best bet: the most likely explanation. So he ran. Out of the station. Into the city.
He looked across City Square towards the Precinct pub. He saw the backs of a hundred heads. Half of them could have been Wire. He looked back at the taxi queue. There was no one there. No taxis.
Danny stamped his foot. He’d lost Wire.
He swore under his breath. Wire was his only decent lead and it was nearly the end of the school holidays. When school was back on Danny would have far less time to do stuff like this.
Maybe he’d just lost his best chance of solving this crime.
He stared out across City Square until his view was broken by a car. A taxi. And in the taxi, talking heatedly into a mobile phone, was Paul Wire. Wearing his hoody jacket, half-hiding his face.
How had that happened?
Danny looked back at the taxi rank. A second taxi had just arrived. He made a quick decision. He’d get a cab too. He’d taken out money to do Holt’s surveillance, so he could afford it. He looked for Wire’s taxi. It was stuck in traffic around City Square. Still catchable.
Danny ran to the second taxi and jumped in. He’d read several books where detectives had jumped into cabs in New York – or somewhere like that – and had said, ‘Follow that cab!’ It was something he’d always dreamed of doing.
‘Where to, son?’ the taxi driver said. She was a middle-aged woman with short blonde hair.
‘Follow that cab!’ Danny said, grinning.
‘You a joker?’ she said, smiling.
‘No. Please. Follow it. Will you?’
The woman smiled. ‘It’s not dangerous, is it?’
‘No,’ Danny said. ‘Course not.’
The taxi ride was not a breakneck chase of squealing tyres and minor collisions. It was carried out at a maximum of 15 miles an hour, stop-start through the congested city centre. Danny wondered if he would have been better to walk.
But then the traffic left the centre and headed north. Past rows and rows of terraced houses. Towards the city park, the way he’d come the day before on the bus.
It had started to rain.
After a few minutes Wire’s taxi took a left and headed along the side of some playing fields – football and rugby posts casting shadows across muddy grass. The fields were known as Soldiers’ Fields. Danny’s dad had told him that during the First World War, the army had trained soldiers here. This was only a mile or so from the City FC training facility. Right where Danny had to be later to watch Kofi play.
His taxi followed Wire’s.
‘Shall I stay back a bit, love?’ the driver asked.
‘Yes please,’ Danny said.
And it was good they did, because Wire’s taxi stopped suddenly, out in the open, hundreds of metres from any buildings. Danny saw Wire climbing out, his hoody still up.
He wondered what to do next. Drive past, he thought. Go on, then double back, so Wire doesn’t sense he’s being followed.
‘What now?’
‘Can you go past them, please?’ Danny said. ‘Then stop around the corner?’
‘You’re the boss,’ the taxi driver said.
Danny turned his head away from Wire as they passed. In case he recognized him from the day before.
A few seconds later his taxi turned a corner and stopped. Danny paid and got out.
‘Be careful, love,’ the driver said, handing him a blank receipt.
‘I will, thanks.’
Danny looked back at the fields in the light rain. There was Wire, walking across a football pitch. Danny followed by walking along the path that led around Soldiers’ Fields. He would have to walk quickly. But he was only 300 metres from Wire. Not too far. Not too near.
Wire seemed to be heading towards some houses on the far side of the fields. The houses here were posh. Seriously posh. Danny estimated they’d have at least six bedrooms. They were all detached and made of old stone.
When Wire reached the first house he picked up his speed, cutting up a road. Danny had to jog to keep the former player in his sights.
But he had to be careful. Wire was glancing around all the time, seeing who was near him.
Danny followed Wire down two streets of the big houses. He wondered where he was going. To another pub? To a friend’s house? Home? Did Wire live round here? Danny tried to keep his mind open. He didn’t want to assume anything.
And then Wire disappeared into a hedge. At least that’s what it looked like.
Danny picked up his speed and – remembering one of his surveillance tricks – crossed to the other side of the road. There was a chance Wire had spotted him, and was hiding in the hedge, ready to jump out at him.
As Danny passed the spot where Wire had disappeared, he glanced nervously to his right.
Allotments. He had gone into some allotments, a grid of small gardens for local people to grow vegetables.
Except he wasn’t there. No one was. Danny was stumped again.
And then he saw Wire, pulling at a fence at the far end of the allotments.
Danny found a place to hide and watched.
Wire struggled at first, the fence too strong to get through. Finally, he managed to prise a piece of the wood outwards to allow him to slip in between two fence posts and into a garden.
So whose house is that? Danny thought. Another footballer’s? And how did Wire know it was empty? Maybe he’d been told. City were still playing at Spurs. If it was a City player’s house, then he would be away. But would his family?
These thoughts ran through Danny’s mind as he walked around the edges of the allotments, pleased there was no one there to watch him.
He soon found the gap that Wire had made in the fence. He peeped through. There was a long garden, very overgrown, not looked after at all – it didn’t seem like the garden of a footballer. But the back door of the house was wide open, the lock smashed.
Wire had to be inside.
This was proof: Wire was the burglar.
So now what?
What would a detective from one of Danny’s dad’s books do?
Follow him into the house?
Call the police, to get them to arrest him?
Just watch?
Film some evidence?
Danny was confused. Again. He wished he could be more decisive.
But then his decision was made for him.
Two men had arrived at the allotments.
Gardeners.
Danny slipped into the garden of the house, allowing the fence to close behind him. Now he was trespassing, like Wire. He looked up at the window of the big house. The paint on the window frames was peeling. The satellite dish was hanging loose on the chimney. And the state of the house set his mind thinking. Why was it so unkempt? Clearly no one was using the garden. It could mean something.
Then Danny was distracted by a figure at one of the windows. Wire. Danny could see him from behind as he searched the house. And there was Danny standing in the garden. All Wire had to do was look round and he’d see him.
Danny couldn’t go back into the allotments. And there was no way around the side of the house. So, to avoid being seen by Wire and with no other thought about what to do in his head, he rushed towards the house.
He went inside.
What was he going to do now?