Thicker Than Water

Actually, maybe that’s where the place gets its name from: anyone you pass on the footbridge you’re going to get to know quite well, so maybe love has been known to blossom there.

I didn’t have love in mind: I just wanted me and my shadow to meet up in a place where there was nowhere to hide and where even turning around was going to be problematic. Then we’d see what we’d see.

Still walking briskly, I got to the wooden steps and went on up them at a jog. It was important that he shouldn’t get too much time to think about this: I wanted him to commit himself right at the outset and then repent at leisure.

I walked out across the wooden footbridge, my footsteps echoing loudly. Overhead was an arched tunnel made out of steel loops and torn wire mesh. Once upon a time it had been there to stop suicidal passers-by from ending it all, or at least to move them along a little way and make them someone else’s problem: now there were so many gaps and rents in it that it couldn’t even do that. I made as much noise as I could, bringing my feet down heavily on the wooden planks. All part of the show: I wanted my tail to feel safe closing the gap, under cover of the racket.

Casting a furtive glance back and down through the gaps between the heat-warped planks, I caught a glimpse of his grey jacket and the top of his head as he climbed the steps in a hurry, trying to match my pace because he’d lost the line of sight. Great stuff."

"At the far end of the walkway I scooted down a second, identical set of steps. Then I just ducked to the side, behind a narrow parapet wall maybe three inches taller than my head, and waited. Now I could hear him coming, because he was out on the bridge and there was no way to cross those echoing boards both quickly and quietly: and by the same token I was hoping that, because the noise he was making drowned out the noise I wasn’t, he didn’t know that I’d stopped.

I tensed, getting ready to jump him. He hadn’t looked too hefty, but it was probably still better to hit hard and ask questions afterwards. I had plenty of questions I wanted to ask.

But the sound of footsteps died away above me, just as they reached the top of the stairs. Had I blown my cover somehow? I glanced up, saw nothing between the slats.

The moment stretched, way past the point where it could have been explained by the guy tying a shoelace or pausing to catch his breath. From where he was, he presumably had a good view both up and down the street: maybe he’d waited up there to see s this which way I went: in which case he had to have twigged by now that I hadn’t come back into view, so unless he was a peerless moron my pathetic ambush stood revealed. I was just about ready to jump out of hiding, sprint back up the steps and see if I could catch the guy before he bolted. But before I could, the sound of footsteps resumed. Someone was coming down the steps towards me: coming down slowly, with long pauses for thought or reconnaissance.

Reverting to Plan A, I got myself into a tackling crouch. The steps at my head height creaked one by one, in descending sequence - an arpeggio of protesting wood.

But maybe on some level I’d already registered that there was something wrong with the footsteps. At any rate, when the old man came out at the foot of the steps, sighing audibly as he paused to get his breath back, I was able to check my forward lunge in time and I didn’t actually punch him in the head. He walked on down the road, weighed down by two bulging bags in Sainsbury’s livery: he hadn’t seen me at all, which might have seemed odd if he hadn’t been wearing glasses as thick as the portholes on a bathysphere.

Stifling an obscene oath, I went back up the steps at a run, but I was locking the stable door when the horse was already at the airport with a false passport. The walkway was empty: my tail must have waited for the next pedestrian to come along, lingered just long enough to watch me from above as I stepped out of cover, and then - having verified beyond any doubt that I’d made him - done a quick fade back the other way. The old gent’s footsteps coming down the stairs would have covered his heading back the way he’d come.

I was chagrined - and frustrated. I’m too constitutionally lazy for real detective work, and I’d found the prospect of leaning on someone else for information very attractive.

But there was nothing doing, clearly. Next time, I promised myself, I’d move a little faster and give the slick bastard the benefit of one less doubt.

I was still thinking that when I caught a sudden movement off to my left. Honed reflexes made me turn right into it, and something hard and heavy smacked against the side of my head. The zombie had been clinging to the outside of the suicide netting, having crawled through one of the many gaps in its mesh.