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IT WAS THREEhours later when Max sat down at the meeting point arranged with Bruce Ferguson at the café just inside the entrance of Glasgow Airport. The large chain coffee outlet was bustling with eager travellers and weary returning holidaymakers, with their polar opposite expressions of either excitement at going on holiday, or dismay at coming back to the cold, frigid Scottish morning.
Max sipped his scalding hot Americano and looked at the arrivals gate with interest. Bruce hadn’t specified a flight number, and Max doubted whether it would be a scheduled flight in any case.
He only had to wait a few more minutes before the gates slid open and the wiry form of Bruce Ferguson appeared, casually dressed in jeans and a blue polo shirt, and hauling no luggage beyond a small laptop case, which he wore across his shoulders. He immediately spotted Max and nodded as he approached, extending his hand.
‘Max, good to see you,’ he said, a smile flashing across his deeply tanned and lined face. His eyes were pale blue and creased with crow’s feet and they twinkled with a mixture of intelligence and humour.
Max gripped his hand, which was firm and dry but with none of the macho test of strength. As always, he exuded utter self-confidence that was just softened by his disarming smile.
‘You too. Coffee?’
‘No, I’m good, full of the bloody stuff from the flight. It’s bloody Baltic here, man.’ He shivered as he reached into his bag and pulled out a Rab microfleece, which he put on.
‘Been somewhere warm?’
‘Much warmer than here. This is just a flying visit, as soon as we’re done here, I’m going back through and I’m heading down to London.’
‘So, what’s so important you couldn’t tell me over the phone?’
‘I need to talk to you about Hardie.’
Max opened his mouth, his stomach gripping at the mention of the name. The Hardie family that tried to kill him, twice. A Hardie almost killed his closest friend and terrorised his elderly aunt. Max tried to formulate the correct words, but all he could do was stare at the ex–special forces operator.
‘You okay, Max? You’ve gone a bit pale.’
‘But we all know what happened to Tam Hardie,’ stuttered Max.
‘Aye, we do, but I’m not talking about Tam Hardie.’
‘Who then?’
‘His brother, Davie. You know, I will grab a coffee, you want another?’
Max shook his head, as Bruce made his way up to the counter and stood in the small queue looking at his phone.
Davie Hardie? Max’s mind flared back to his few encounters with the younger Hardie boy. Max almost struggled to picture the man, who was bigger than his late brother, but without the brooding menace. Despite suspicions that Davie had taken part in many acts of unimaginable brutality, he looked softer than Tam Hardie. Max hadn’t attended the trial, preferring to stay in the shadows, but Davie’s lawyer had managed to plea-bargain his way to twelve-year sentences for Davie and Frankie, and everything he’d learned was that the remaining Hardie boys were a spent force.
‘Sure you’re okay, Max? Look like you’ve seen a ghost, or it could be that I’ve been hanging about with tanned people in the Canary Islands for a few weeks.’
‘I just hadn’t expected you to be wanting to talk to me about a Hardie, especially after our last communications about them,’ said Max, referring to the video of Tam Hardie Junior disappearingbeneath the grey waves of the North Sea, having been tossed overboard from a fishing vessel that he’d thought was his rescue vessel. Bruce was certainly not the forgiving sort.
‘Aye, well, that’s as may be. But there are two Hardies left, both in Shotts jail right now, and I tend to keep a watching brief on what’s going on. You know, a few key words here, a little algorithm there and a bit of background metadata surveillance that my boss is happy to help with via his backchannels. I’m convinced something is occurring with Davie Hardie.’
‘How?’ said Max, trying to keep the emotion that was beginning to nip at him from his face.
‘I think he’s doing some kind of a deal. Leastways, he’s trying to convince your firm that he wants a deal.’
‘How are you doing this, Bruce? I wouldn’t be able to get this kind of intel.’
‘Well, the snidey lawyer still has both Hardies as clients, and I know he’s as corrupt as they come, so I focused my attention on him as I can’t get into the prison phones system. Leo Hamilton was receiving plenty of calls from both in jail from their prison accounts, which I can hear if they call in to Hamilton. He gets an automated message first, and then he has to agree to take the call from the jail. I managed to get an alert on his phone which triggers when called by the jail. Well, in reality, it was a while ago, when they were appealing conviction and then sentence, but the calls had mostly dried up. He still has plenty of their cash on account, so he visits every now and again, probably to justify a retainer fee.’ He paused to sip his coffee.
‘Remind me to never piss you off.’
Bruce smiled. ‘Well, as I say, I’ve been listening on the downlow, and something is definitely happening. His slimy lawyer visited the other day, and then made a call to a cop. A senior cop called Wakefield; do you know him?’
‘Possibly,’ said Max, trying to keep his voice even at the name of Chief Superintendent Miles Wakefield.
‘Well, apparently, Hardie is offering to give up a murder facilitated by his late father that was done on behalf of someone who is now a public figure, and things are in motion. It seems a woman called Beata Dabrowski went missing six years ago but was actually murdered. Have you heard about it?’
