Ed tried to fit the puzzle pieces together without any success. Like a jigsaw out of its box, figuring out how to help Pash was impossible without a clear picture to work from.
Pasha beingthis quiet was unnatural. He kept his head down all the way out of Paddington, not giving passengers of the Tube trains they shared a chance to make eye contact as they traveled under London. This version of Pasha was unrecognizable—with his hood up and his face in shadow, he could be a complete stranger rather than someone Ed had shared a bed with.
Ed trailed him between platforms and mentally noted the difference one newspaper article and a forestalled conversation had made. He reviewed the time between Pasha’s outburst and now. Pasha hadn’t pretended to sleep for long—he had opened his eyes and apologized like he really meant it. He said he’d decided to go back to theBritPop!house rather than head home based on what Anya had shared. He’d asked Ed to wait until they got back to London to talk.
But there was nothing talkative about the man Ed followed a few steps behind now, taking steep escalators two steps at a time like the devil was on his tail and avoiding eye contact with anyone, even if they might be fans.
Pasha yomped like he’d been through basic training. He kept going, moving steadily forward, stepping onto Tube trains and then disembarking regardless of the crush around them.
Ed lost Pasha for a moment, delayed first when a barrier ate his ticket without opening, then blocked by a huge family with a household-worth of luggage. He pushed past them as fast as he could and struggled through the crowded station entrance before swinging his head in both directions. The faded hoodie Pasha had borrowed was unhelpful. If he’d worn the bright red,white, and blue of their sponsored jackets, he’d be a whole lot easier to track.
Ed caught a glimpse of sandy fabric that stood out against a distant building’s redbrick. It was gone just as he saw Pasha jogging down a side street. Ed ran as soon as he was clear of the congested pavement, but by the time he turned down the same street, Pasha was nowhere in sight.
“Dammit.” Ed turned in a slow circle and paid more attention to his location. The last Tube he’d followed Pasha onto had progressed under the city before rising above ground. He’d caught sight of some landmarks between the commuters crowded around him. While not completely familiar, some bridges and buildings had been recognizable, like seeing an old friend from an unexpected angle.
Okay, this street was definitely familiar. Ed took a couple more bearings—a chapel housing a food bank was on his left, while new-build executive flats towered on his right. This area was on the cusp between rich and poor sectors of the city, divided by a street theBritPop!tour bus drove down daily. But instead of heading right toward the house they’d decided to return to, Pasha had turned left.
Ed reverted to his training. He’d commit his position to memory and then sweep each alley, backstreet, and tower block if that meant finding Pasha. Then he’d shake him hard, just like his mum used to threaten when he was a kid, until the truth fell out of his pockets.
The pavements were much less crowded the farther he got from the main streets, and the buildings clearly run-down. Ed passed a collarless dog sniffing at the spilled contents of a black bin bag. Another mound of rubbish awaiting collection narrowed the pavement outside a small grocery store decked in signs that made him stumble to a halt.
Farsi was a language he hadn’t seen written for over a year. At first glance its loops and curves were as incomprehensible as when he’d walked on Afghan soil for the first time. Ed read words for the fruits and nuts displayed in neat pyramids under the shop’s front awning. Words that the kid who’d died in the same ambush as Steve had taught him.
Ed shook his head to clear it, only realizing he was being observed when a woman in a headscarf waved through the grocery store window at him. She had one arm slung around a younger version of herself whose eyes almost bugged out when she recognized him. He lip-read her “TrueBrit!” as clearly as if she’d yelled it.
His hand rose, and he did what he’d seen Pasha do so often, raising his clenched fist to his chest twice before pointing at her. Then he moved on, already scanning the street ahead.
“I knew it was him!” The younger of the two women had run to the shop doorway. “I told mum, but she didn’t believe that we just saw your Pasha run past.”
“You saw him?” Ed turned back, and closed the distance between them. “You saw Pasha?”
The girl nodded and pointed. “Just a minute ago. He went that way.” She indicated toward an alley across the street. “No one’s going to believe me at school,” she said, but Ed was already running.
The alley was narrow, cluttered with wheelie bins and discarded cardboard boxes that Ed jumped as he ran, splashing through puddles sheened with oily rainbows. He didn’t slow until traffic stopped him at the far end.
He shielded his eyes from suddenly bright sun and examined the three options he could take next. Left led past a run of restaurants fragrancing the air with competing scents of curry and charred lamb. Right led to a 1960s shopping precinct. The paving slabs there had lifted in places, but that didn’t stopthe skateboarders practicing their grinds on the benches at its entrance.
One dark-eyed kid turned, a showy tilt on two wheels defying the laws of physics, and raised his chin as if to ask, “What you lookin’ at, mate?” His friends copied the narrowing of their friend’s eyes.
“Did you see someone in a hoodie run past? Tell me which way he went.”
Their backs turned as if choreographed, like he hadn’t spoken. What the hell had he expected? Could he have sounded more threatening? Fuck, he’d forgotten some very basic training, and now he was on his own. Ed left them to their make-do skate park and looked in the last direction Pasha might have taken.
Ahead lay a canal, its water a wide inky ribbon dotted with floating litter. A man-sized hole had been cut into the wire fence between the road and canal, and something drew Ed toward it and the well-trodden path beyond. He’d slipped through gaps between road and wadi so many times before on patrol, choosing the same routes as locals rather than risk IEDs on the road.
Had Pasha done the same thing? Avoided attracting attention by going off-road as well?
Another glance confirmed that the canal and the towpath next to it was the most direct route to a housing estate made up of familiar-looking buildings. Were those ugly gray blocks of flats the same ones visible from their balconies back at theBritPop!house? They looked like the same buildings Pasha would crane his neck to keep in sight, like he did with Trafalgar Square too, every time they shared a seat on the tour bus.
Ed took the chance that they were. Wire snagged his shoulders, but he shoved his way through and followed the path. He ran, long legs eating up the distance until he saw, just for a fleeting moment, Pasha jogging up some steps no more than a hundred yards ahead.
“Pash!” His shout went unanswered. “Pasha, wait!”
He sprinted up the same steps and ran at full tilt just in time to see Pasha bend to scoop up something from the ground before heading for a staircase.
He was out of view for a moment, until Ed reached the same stained concrete stairwell. He followed the echo of Pasha’s footsteps and came out on an external landing only a dozen or so steps behind him.
Pasha spoke without turning. “You know why I entered the competition?”