Warren? He got the soft sell.
Befriend the local schoolteacher. Low-pressure engagement. Smile, ask questions, assess loyalty and access points. The sort of assignment given to a rookie or a liability. Which, after the last op, was apparently what they thought he was. The latter. Because he had fifteen years under his belt in serious crime. So this was nothing more than a test dressed up as a deployment. See if he still had the edge. If he could follow orders without going off-script.
Or, as they’d called it in the review:“Failure to maintain operational integrity.”
He called itdoing what needed to be done.
It didn’t matter now. He was back in play. And if this was how they wanted to ease him in, fine. He’d play along. And he knew better than most not to underestimate anyone. He’d watched drugs move through church deacons and youth volunteers. Respectable faces didn’t mean clean hands. A schoolteacher who lived for lesson plans and overdue library fines might still be knee deep in something darker. And if he was, Warren would be the one to expose it. Win back a few stripes. Get himself back in the fold.
Properly. Like Naomi already was.
He pulled on running shorts and a tee, pushed his locs back into a band, then thumbed through his phone to map out a looseroute. Then he jogged downstairs, pushed open the front door, and stepped into the sea-salt air of Worthbridge at dusk.
The air outside hit sharp and cool. Sea salt on concrete, gulls wheeling overhead. He crossed the main road and hit the coastal path, shoes thudding in time with the low throb of music in his ears. Worthbridge unfolded around him in layers. Shuttered shops with flaking paint. The old salt baths, long drained and overgrown. A mural of a mermaid half-faded on a brick wall, her eyes staring blankly at the tide. Kids vaped by the seawall. A pub spilled light and low laughter onto the esplanade.
It was a far cry from South London. Slower. Sleepier. But Warren didn’t mistake the stillness for safety. Places like this had their own rules. Quieter currents. He just had to listen. So he took a right at the war memorial, passed the crumbling lido, and let his pace carry him past the high street and through a row of 1940s terraces, front gardens tight and overgrown.
Jude’s street came into view.
Warren slowed, subtly pulling his pace into a light jog as he approached from the far side of the cul-de-sac. The houses here were narrow, their brickwork dulled by the sea wind, most of them with two recycling bins and a porch light flickering from motion sensors.
Jude’s house was the one with a hanging basket and a crooked house number. Warm light spilled from a ground-floor window. Someone moved inside. Silhouetted for a moment, then gone.
Warren kept his distance, watching from the end of the lane.
He didn’t know what he thought he’d feel. Maybe nothing. Maybe curiosity. Maybe a quiet chill at the fact that a teacher with no priors was caught in the web of something this dark. Or maybe he wanted to see if anything looked… off.
So far, nothing did.
Just a man in his house. Lights on. Curtains drawn.
Warren turned back towards the coast, kicked up his pace again, and let the music drown the noise in his head.
Pretending continued tomorrow. But surveillance never stopped.
Not for someone like him.
Chapter FOUR
Back to School
Jude hadn’t always rushed to get to school.
He loved teaching, sure. The classroom was where he belonged. Maps curling at the corners on the noticeboards, timelines half-faded by sunlight, and the soft rasp of pen across a whiteboard when the projector gave up were the things that gave him life. But he’d never lied to himself about the grind. Paperwork piled higher than lesson plans. Safeguarding forms. Bureaucracy thick enough to drown in. Teaching was rewarding, but rarely easy.
Today felt different, though.
The walk along the coast path bit from fresh, salt wind carrying the faint cries of gulls and the hum of the sea. His car was still in the garage—bloody thing spent more time in pieces than on the road—so he should’ve been grumbling about the extra trek. Instead, he caught himself quickening his stride, watching the school roofline emerge through the morning sky with something dangerously close to anticipation.
First day back for the kids. The corridors would come alive again. Year Nines bickering over forgotten homework, Sixth Formers loitering in doorways with coffee cups, staff corrallingthe chaos with registers and warnings. History classrooms filling with students who pretended to hate the subject but still leaned forward when he lost himself in a story—Wars of the Roses, trench letters, the quiet bravery tucked into ordinary lives. That was his world. His ground.
And, okay yeah, maybe his mood had picked up since the staff training yesterday and had less to do with the Tudors and trench warfare and more to do with the new PE teacher. The one with an easy laugh and shoulders belonging in a different century altogether. The one Jude had sort of, maybe, dreamt about last night, though he’d never admit it out loud.
But whatever, he told himself it was the job he was buzzing for. Not the man. Course not. He hadn’t let himself buzz for a man in…well, he didn’t want to be thinking about that this early in the morning. It would prod at those unhealed bruises.
Inside the gates, the first wave of students streamed through, chattering about timetables, holidays, and teachers they’d hoped not to get again. A football skittered across the tarmac, a shouted apology chasing it. Staff drifted in clusters, coffee in hand, lanyards swinging. The air smelled of fresh paint and polish, as it always did at the start of term, as if the building was trying to convince itself it was ready.
Jude stepped into the main corridor, the din wrapping around him, and for the first time in longer than he cared to admit, he felt ready. Even if part of that readiness had nothing to do with history. But he cut straight for the staffroom to get on with it and the second he pushed the door open, a wall of sound hit him. Whoops, clapping, someone giving an over-the-top cheer from the corner sofa.
