The Evolution of Fear (Claymore Straker #2) - Paul E. Hardisty Page 0,17

stove, decided to trust this man. He didn’t have much choice.

It was just gone seven in the morning, nine in Cyprus.

‘When can I get out to the boat, check her out?’ This was all going to take a lot longer than Clay had hoped.

‘How about some breakfast?’ Punk pulled off his sweater to reveal a still-muscled torso clad in a frayed singlet that looked like it hadn’t been washed in years. His arms were heavily tattooed; a thick gold chain hung from his neck.

Clay nodded. He hadn’t eaten since the previous afternoon. ‘Mind if I use your phone? I can pay.’

Punk swung a cast-iron frying pan from a hook on the wall and pointed to the front door. ‘Phone box on the main road, towards town.’

Clay stood, slung his pack. ‘I’ll be back in a bit.’

‘Breakfast in twenty minutes. You like eggs?’

‘Hundreds,’ said Clay, starting to like this old guy. ‘See you in twenty.’

Outside, the lane was still quiet. Clay started walking towards the main road, a red-and-white blur of streaming lights about half a kilometre distant. About two hundred metres along, a clutch of ragged hawthorn and wild-sown elms sprouted like adolescent fuzz from the side of the warehouse. He stopped alongside the copse, looked back along the lane to Punk’s yard, a part of him expecting Punk to be standing there, watching him, but the lane was empty. Clay pushed through the rain-bent branches and pressed himself into the angle of one of the brickwork buttresses that ran like whale ribs along the building’s Victorian wall. Protected against the rain, hidden from the road, he waited.

It was going to take him at least six days, more like ten, to reach Rania. Nicosia, two weeks ago – that’s all Madame Debret had said. Clay knew the place well, had lived there for almost three years, would still have had an apartment and a business there if he hadn’t died, been resurrected as Declan Greene, been forced to leave that life behind. There were only three or four decent hotels in the city. He had to try.

Fifteen minutes later, satisfied that Punk hadn’t called the cops, Clay pulled his hood around his face, left his hiding place and walked to the intersection. The rain was coming down harder now, slowing the traffic. He stood on the pavement with the cars flying by, peered through the road spray, and scanned the road for the phone box. Nothing. He started walking towards town. This was the last place he wanted to be, in full view of a steady train of eyes, soaked to the skin already, conspicuous. Then he saw it though the traffic, across the road, about a hundred metres away, an old red phone box. He put his head down and trudged along the pavement, checking over his shoulder for a gap in the traffic. After a sprint he was across, into the dry cocoon of the phonebox. He pushed in the phone card and dialled, looking out at the river of cars.

The phone clicked and a female voice answered. His Cyprus accountant’s secretary. He’d known her for years, a sweet old woman with a pure heart. Clay disguised his voice, brought it up half an octave and tried to put on a neutral English accent. Within a few minutes she had read out the phone numbers of the four Nicosia hotels he’d asked for. He jotted down the numbers in his notebook, thanking her in Greek. The traffic had slowed. Clay watched the cars, the people staring ahead through streaked windscreens and flailing wiper blades. He was about to dial the first number, the Holiday Inn near the Green Line, when something he saw made him stop. By the time it registered, the car was past, gone in the rain. It had been more than a glimpse, a good two or three seconds, more than enough to be sure. The Afrikaner from the cottage, the pale-eyed Boer who’d knifed him then escaped, disappeared at the cliff edge. In the passenger seat of a big Mercedes.

Clay thought back, brought up the image. Profile only, the square jaw, the big Dutch forehead, the swollen nose. He was sure he hadn’t been seen, but Jesus Christ, how had they caught up to him so quickly? Was Koevoet guiding them? It had to be that. He still couldn’t believe it, fought against it, this betrayal. But it was Koevoet who had told him not to fly. On the long drive to Cornwall two