Personal (Jack Reacher, #19)- Lee Child Page 0,105
of the same stuff, one for in and one for out. The Rolls-Royce was parked ahead of the chase car, which made logical sense, at least linguistically. Both gates were closed.
There was an 84 per cent chance he would leave home exactly one hour before.
Five minutes.
I looked at the map and said, ‘They’re heading for the North Circular Road. They’ll turn left out of the house. They’ll drive away from us. We need to be at the other end of the street.’
Nice said, ‘Do you want to risk a drive-by, or should we go around the block?’
‘We took a minicab for a reason. We can get away with a slow cruise, like a guy looking for an address, and then turning around and pulling over and waiting for his customer.’
‘These people have drivers of their own.’
‘Not all of them. Only the working-class heroes.’ I backed up a little and made the turn, and drove exactly like a guy looking for an address, slow and obvious, peering out the side window all the time. Charlie’s place was a solid old pile, fairly ornate, built back when bricklayers were cheaper than bricks. The front garden was long gone, replaced by a shallow curving driveway, in one gate and out the other, over flagstone slabs and gravel shapes, between concrete urns and concrete angels, some of them with pans of water held high above their heads, for the birds to drink.
I turned around two houses later, and I pulled into the kerb, and I waited.
Etiquette meant everything. And ten o’clock meant ten o’clock. Therefore exactly one hour before meant nine o’clock. And at eight fifty-nine on the nose Charlie’s front door opened, and he stepped out. He looked just like his photograph. Seventy-seven years old, bulky, round-shouldered, with thin grey hair, and a plain face, and a nose the size of a potato. He was wearing a black suit with a black tie under a black raincoat. Behind him came a shorter old guy, who I assumed was the driver. Behind the short guy came a stream of six younger men, all plainly dressed, all with shaved heads, all a useful size. Four of them headed for the Jaguar, and the other two trailed along towards the Rolls-Royce, now directly behind old Charlie himself, because by that point the driver had hustled on ahead to open his door.
Which was awkward, because it was a suicide door, with the handle at the front, one of a seamless pair with the driver’s door handle, which was on a regular door, and Charlie was approaching from the rear, all of which meant Charlie had to pass by his driver, and then stand and wait until the guy opened up, and then reverse direction, and get in. But between them they got the job done eventually. Charlie settled back, and the driver closed the door on him, and he opened his own regular door, and he slid in, and the two guards got in on the other side, one in the front and one in the rear.
At nine o’clock exactly the gate started to move.
FORTY-SIX
I WAS CLINGING to two crucial assumptions, the first of which was that the short old guy in the Rolls-Royce thought of himself as a bit of an artist. Maybe he was a veteran wheelman from way back, an old pro, adaptable to any circumstance, whether the requirement was for a fast getaway from a bank job, or a silent chauffeur for the top boy, but one who secretly colluded in his boss’s obsessions, such as for precision timekeeping, especially with sensitive destinations ahead. Therefore I expected the guy to touch the gas when the gate was open some exact accustomed distance, such that it would be still wider open when the car actually got there, thereby allowing the car to pass through, fast and neat and fluent, but with only inches to spare, as if the guy’s mechanical precision was somehow a homage or a tribute to his boss’s chronological precision. I figured that was how an artist would play it.
Which meant I had to guess the guy’s hit-the-gas signal, and hit mine about three seconds earlier, because I was still some ways down the street, and I had distance to make up. But I couldn’t afford to arrive either early or late, so I set off at a slow roll, which I thought was acceptable, because a minicab driver might need to make a note or put his pen away, before