The evidence he was searching for was right there in front of him when Sergei arrived in the middle of town the next morning. The same two leather jacketed men were loitering about close to the railway station as people arrived for work.

Sergei had seen the target take the train the previous evening, but had been too late to follow her after buying a ticket to Ascot only to find the train pulling away from the platform. He vowed to purchase a ticket the next morning to not make the same mistake again.

‘She’ had arrived in Reading on a train that had originated in London and headed directly for her place of work. Sergei held back at the station entrance and watched. Sure enough, the two men followed her with one on each side of the road. In the general stream of workers heading away from the station, they were next to invisible apart from their clothes. Their black leather jackets were a dead giveaway. Their styles were readily identifiable as originating from eastern Europe to anyone with even a rudimentary knowledge of the subject.

After a suitable delay, Sergei followed the trio. His target didn’t look back or do anything to check her surroundings. That told him that she was more than likely blissfully unaware of the men that were tailing her.

The two men carried on walking after she turned off the street and into the office building where she worked. Sergei watched them while standing at a bus stop. He was doing nothing out of the ordinary as several others were waiting patiently for the next bus.

The men met up about 50 yards past the office where she worked. They had a brief discussion before heading off deeper into the centre of town. Sergei wanted to follow them but decided that getting the bus would make them less liable to see that they had a tail.

A bus arrived with the destination of High Wycombe on the front. He recognised one of the intermediate destinations, Henley upon Thames, so he boarded and purchased a single to the town. His plan was to return by train once rush hour was over.

Back at his hotel in the late morning, Sergei sent the message that he’d saved the previous day before returning to watch the watchers. It was getting close to the end of the working day and Sergei wanted to observe the target on her way home. Even at this early stage, this whole setup just didn’t feel right.

Sergei had been employed to take down a good number of very bad men over the years. These ranged from Drug Lords, People Traffickers and Mob bosses but here was a woman in her mid to late twenties with what seemed to be a perfectly normal job and an even more normal life. A question that had been rattling around in his mind for days now was uppermost in his thoughts. That question was simple. Why did someone want this woman dead? She was very much unaware of any threat to her life which kept his mind returning to the simple word 'Why?'.

That single word, led him to ask himself some other questions such as who wanted her killed, and what had she done to annoy that person so much that her life should be forfeited. It was just not right. The image of him being arrested for attempting to kill her was right there in his mind as was another simple word, ‘Trap’.

Sergei returned to the street and began observing the two watchers for a few minutes when an Estate Agents sign in a first floor Office Window drew his attention. Slowly an idea formed in his mind about a way forward. It was time to purchase another phone from one of the shops in the town. That way, it would be clean of any possible malware that could lead his nemesis to track him in even greater detail than they had been.

Getting a phone and a SIM card was easy thanks to his bolt hole in Peterborough and his being on the electoral roll in that city. With the new device activated, Sergei headed for a small patch of greenery called Forbury Gardens.

A quick search on his phone revealed that the agents were based in the nearby town of Wokingham although they had a Reading phone number. Wokingham was just ten minutes away on the train. If he could obtain a short-term let of residential property in the area as well as office space, then he would be all set to continue his quest. The office space would be a perfect cover for his operations.

The two watchers were still there, but now they were together and were arguing about something. One of them held his phone up as if to say, ‘you make the call’ or words to that effect. Neither of them was particularly happy with something which pleased Sergei. It appeared that his email had been received and acted upon.

The two men seemed to run out of things to say about something and they walked off towards the Railway Station. Sergei afforded himself a small smile.

---

Not long after 4 pm, people started to leave the office building and head towards their homes. 'She' came out about five minutes after the first wave. There was a definite purpose to her walk. That told Sergei that she knew where she was going. Sergei followed her towards the Railway Station.

To his surprise, she didn’t go into the station but joined a queue of about ten others who were waiting for a bus at a stop about 50 yards from the old entrance to the station.

A No 4 bus turned up less than a minute later so Sergei followed her onto the bus. That short wait was the reason for her urgency. She’d shown a season ticket or some sort of bus pass to the driver so he was no wiser about her ultimate destination. He purchased a ticket to the end of the route in Bracknell and followed her onto the top deck of the bus.

More people arrived and the bus was about 2/3rds full when it left. Unlike most other passengers, she wasn’t glued to her phone for the entire journey. Sergei played a game of Solitaire on his phone which, he’d returned to flight mode, but with one eye on his target. At every stop, he looked out of the window. It was clear to him that they were leaving the town and going into the suburbs. It was difficult to read the road signs due to the condensation on the inside of the windows and the approaching darkness outside.

There was a display at the front of the bus that told everyone where the next stop would be. When the words ‘Winnersh Crossroads’ came up on the display, several people including ‘her’ got up and went downstairs. Sergei was tempted to follow her but this was enough for the first day. He remained in his seat but was able to observe her crossing the road and going into a relatively small supermarket that occupied one corner of the crossroads. It seemed highly likely that this was her local store. This was all good background information for him.

A few minutes later, he realised that the bus was entering the town of Wokingham. He saw the offices of the Estate Agents that were handling the letting of the office that was for rent in Reading. That spurred him into action. He got off the bus and after collecting his thoughts, he went into the Agents even if it was after 5:00 pm on a Friday.

---

Twenty minutes later, Sergei emerged from the offices with details of the office as well as several prospective short-term residential lets in the area. He'd sweet-talked the agent, a very stunning young lady by the name of Yvonne Forester, into showing him the office the next day. She'd bought his story about being an HR consultant who was going to help with the downsizing of a business in the area. His lies had at least a modicum of truth in them that if he carried out the mission then the company that she worked for, would be one person down.

He took the train from the nearby station back to Reading, and his work for the day was done.

Sergei left his hotel a little after seven thirty that evening and headed towards a pub that also made their own pies. The name of the place, ‘Sweeny Todd’ had caught his eye when he was on his wanderings around the town earlier that day. He fancied a ‘Steak and Oyster Pie’ and a glass of beer. Just like in Mallorca, he preferred the simple food to the complicated and often overly fancy dishes that were served in many restaurants in the 21st century.

As he sampled the food and the excellent beer, his thoughts turned to the future. It was even clearer in his mind that whichever way this job turned out, the activities of ‘The Chameleon’ were soon going to be a thing of the past.

---

That evening Sergei relaxed in his hotel room doing what he called ‘doing a Fagin’. That saying came about from a song in the musical ‘Oliver’ where Fagin sings about ‘reviewing the situation’.

The leather jacketed men were more of a nuisance than anything else. If Uncle Vanya did as he wanted, they would be gone but he suspected that they would not be that far away from the action.

His mind went onto the subject. As far as he knew at that moment, ‘she’ was just a normal late twenty something who wasn’t married or engaged. At least, that was what the lack of rings on her fingers told him. He’d passed close by her as she waited to get into the pub with her work colleagues. She was wearing Opium. His nose told him that it was not the version that was available on the high street in the UK of That struck him rather strange but one that was only available from one shop in Paris. That meant it cost a lot more money than the normal version. He could thank a previous contract in the French capital for discovering that there were two versions of this very popular perfume.

Why would someone apparently so young and working in an office 9-to-5, wear such an expensive and rare perfume to work? That was a question that didn’t need answering right away but it was interesting to him. Then again, if ‘she’ was just a normal office worker perhaps a boyfriend had bought it for her. Then he dismissed that idea. It would take a really special friend to know about the perfume.

There was nothing in the details that Uncle Vanya had sent him about her background and what her job was. The mystery deepened.

It wasn’t until Sergei was preparing for bed that something else came into his mind.

When he’d visited the Estate Agents in Wokingham, it was very much a spur of the moment thing. In the activity of arranging to view two properties, he’d seen a few things that didn’t register at the time. The first was that on a shelf behind her desk were a number books of Chekov plays. Second, a notice on the window was publicising a forthcoming performance of ‘The Seagull’ at the local theatre.

No matter how hard Sergei tried, he could not recall if one of the volumes on the shelf was ‘Uncle Vanya’. That was filed away to be answered at a later date.

His last thought before drifting off to sleep was about the very delectable Ms Forrester. If he wasn’t in the middle of a fight for his life, he could imagine himself trying to have a relationship with her. She’d even laughed at his feeble jokes. While that was to be expected for an agent trying to make a deal, he could see that there was a lot about her character that was being crushed to death in such a job.

---

Sergei was shown the office space the next day by the attractive Ms Forester. The place fitted his purpose perfectly and he agreed to rent it for three months on the spot. Stating that he’d pay the full amount in advance swung the deal as well as tempting the estate agent with the prospect of letting an apartment for the same period probably helped seal the first part of the business.
“I’ll transfer the full amount for the office space first thing Monday morning,” said Sergei after they’d done the deal.
“Normally, we’d run credit checks and ask for references but as you have agreed to pay for the whole lease and not contest any eviction should it come to that, I think that we can forego those checks. I’ll make sure that the requisite paperwork is ready for your signature.”

“That is nice to know.”

“But there is one check that I have to make and that is your proof of residency.”

Sergei smiled and produced his UK passport.
“I am on the electoral roll in Peterborough which should be good enough for you.”

The agent didn’t bat an eyelid as she took down the details.
“That will be fine but you should be aware that your passport expires in seven months.”

That surprised Sergei. He looked at the passport and smiled.
“Thanks for that. I’ll make sure that I get it renewed before I head back to sunnier climes.”

“Don’t forget to bring it to the office as I’ll need a copy for the records. We have to show that the renter has either residency or a valid work visa. Things are only going to get worse when we get around to leaving the EU,” she said with a distinct sadness in her voice.

“That vote was a bad more all around. If I ever meet the chinless wonder, Nigel Farage or Boris in a pub, I’ll gladly buy them a pint and pour it over their head.”

She laughed.
“I’m sure that there are a lot of people who would like to do the same.”

“In general, most people don’t like change being forced on them,” remarked Sergei.

“Yet… your job is to downsize businesses… Isn’t that a kind of forced change?”

“Downsizing is only part of my job. Most of it involves high level executive reorganisation which is a different kind of change and one that can take those concerned to a different level? Sometimes, using someone from outside the organisation can see things in the business that those at the coal face don’t see simply because they are too close. A few years ago, I looked at a business and all it needed for that company to start growing was the removal of one person from the workforce. Today, that company is worth six times what it was when I was engaged to do my thing. They also have more than double the number of employees than when I finished my work.”

“Touche!”

Sergei was growing to like this woman. She had a brain and a good wit.

As he watched her drive away, Sergei, wondered… ‘What if…’

He shook his head and tried to concentrate on the real job at hand.

[to be continued]