Dead Ball by Tom Palmer (snow like ashes series .txt) 📕

been a struggle. The roads were so busy it’d been hard to find a place to cross.

But Danny made it eventually.

Red Square was still enormous. A huge ring of concrete bollards surrounded the mausoleum. Groups of people gawped at the weird cathedral, the mausoleum, the Kremlin.

The walls that went along one side of the square were so big – and the square itself so big – that Danny felt tiny. There was something about the scale of the place that was wrong. It was like the people were being made to feel that small.

The mausoleum was a small red building that would have looked quite big if it had not been dwarfed by the walls of the Kremlin. It had the letters Λ Ε Η И Η across it. Several people were having their photographs taken, grinning into the cameras with the building holding their dead former leader inside. Including young children.

Danny frowned. The place gave him the creeps.

But he still wanted to see the body.

He walked towards the entrance. There were two soldiers stood staring blankly out across the square. He thought about asking them if he could go in, but neither would meet his eyes.

He was getting nowhere. And beginning to lose his nerve.

And that was when he saw Matt McGee walk straight in front of him. Less than a hundred metres away. Across the front of the mausoleum. Towards the right of Red Square.

Where was he going? On his own in Moscow centre? Were footballers allowed to do that? Danny looked around him for some FA security people, expecting to see some. But there was no one obvious.

What was McGee doing? Maybe he was just sightseeing like Danny. Maybe he liked to get away from the claustrophobia of the hotel. Footballers could be into cathedrals and things like that. Maybe even mausoleums.

Danny knew what he had to do. Follow. That was the only way to get answers to his questions.

But he had to do it right.

How many times had he read about following people in crime novels? Tailing, it was called. There were several principles. He knew them by heart.

One: stay far back enough not to be seen, but not so far back as to lose your target.

Two: don’t follow the target step by step. Try and cross roads so you’re not just following in his footsteps directly.

Three: be ready to turn up a side road if you’re spotted. But never do it as soon as your target sees you. It would be too obvious.

Danny waited. He let McGee get a hundred metres ahead of him, then he followed.

This was more interesting than looking at a body that had been dead for eighty-five years.

Definitely.

As soon as Danny set off across the square, a man began to follow him. Using the same techniques, he kept a hundred metres behind, talking rapid English into his mobile phone. The man watched Danny as he turned out of the square, then moved in behind him.

THE ATTACK

Danny always stayed at least fifty metres behind McGee – in case his target looked back. Because, after all, McGee did know who Danny was. They’d spoken, briefly, outside the toilet on the plane. And been at the same party the night before.

But McGee did not look back. Sometimes he dawdled, moving suddenly slower. He was walking like a man following someone, not someone being followed himself. Danny looked ahead, but could see no one McGee might be following.

He got his phone out and set it to take a video, his finger over the record button. So he was ready.

Danny followed McGee past some sort of memorial, a flame burning at the foot of the Kremlin wall. It was guarded by three sullen sentries. All with fur hats. Danny had to find his way round several people standing staring at the flame. Then McGee went through an enormous queue of people. All waiting, Danny assumed, to get into the Kremlin. Danny took his time edging past the people. He didn’t want to get too close to McGee. This crowd was the perfect cover.

But, next, they headed away from the crowds, down the side of a major road, heavy traffic coming alongside them. If Danny needed to cross the road now, to avoid being seen, he would have had no chance. That tactic was not available to him. All he had was turning to walk the other way. And that would look really obvious. If McGee stopped, Danny would be stuffed.

But McGee was not stopping. He seemed to be heading back to the river. They’d walked around three sides of the Kremlin. Danny wondered where McGee was going. He could hardly be doing this for exercise. The air was so polluted and dirty that it was the last thing a sportsman should be doing the day before a big game. It’d be as bad as smoking.

Something had to happen soon. Danny could feel it. But what?

McGee approached a crossing. There was a policeman in the middle of the road. He’d stopped one stream of traffic – five lanes of it – just at the right time, holding up a black-and-white stick authoritatively, allowing McGee and a figure fifty metres ahead of him to cross. McGee sprinted across the road. But Danny held back. He had to. He couldn’t just go after McGee. Not so soon. They’d be too close. So he waited. And that’s why, when the policeman started the traffic again, Danny was left on one side of the busy road, McGee on the other.

Danny watched impatiently as McGee walked along the side of the river, then down what he assumed were stone steps leading to the waterside.

Hundreds of cars had come past already. The traffic was endless. Danny was stranded.

Eventually the policeman stopped the traffic and waved at Danny to cross.

Danny walked sensibly until he was past the policeman. Then he ran across the rest of the road. In front of a large black people-carrier that skidded to a halt, missing him by metres. But