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‘Aye. I’m fine.’
‘Katie?’
Max nodded, but didn’t elaborate. Now wasn’t the time.
A voice came from outside, and Steve appeared at the door, a touch of a grin on his face.
‘Max, you’d best come. Lassie has just reversed her Beemer into your Volvo.’
‘What?’ said Janie, her face suddenly hard. Janie had a particular obsession with cars being clean and serviceable, and Max knew that this would be a major stress for her.
‘Settle down, constable. It’s just a car.’
‘Aye, I know, but it’s just been bloody serviced. This means it’ll have to go in again and we’ll get that shite Ford. Honestly, it’s such a pile of bloody junk, and it smells.’ She stood up and followed the sergeant out of the door at almost a jog.
It wasn’t much of an accident. Devlin’s car was a compact BMW and the rear bumper had crashed with the much bigger Volvo’s rear end. The Volvo was barely marked, but one of the BMW’s rear wheel arch plastics had bent and cracked inwards, and a shard was pressing against the tyre. Max pulled out a penlight from his pocket and shone it on the damage.
Ms Devlin looked suitably chastened. ‘Sorry, it’s just so bloody dark up here, and your car’s black. I just didn’t see it. Is my car driveable?’
‘Ach, it’s fine. I can just pull the plastic away, and you’ll be okay.’ Max reached down and pulled the shard away from the tyre, whereupon it cracked and sprang back. Max gave it a shake, and the plastic snapped clean off, a piece of it falling to the ground. ‘Oops. Sorry, it just came away in my hand, but it would probably have needed replacing anyway. It’s clear, though. You can drive it.’
Max shone his torch where the piece had fallen. A small oblong box lay on the rough tarmac. About the size and shape of a tobacco tin, but made out of hard plastic. Max picked it up, and turned it over in his hands.
It had a magnet on the base. He’d seen something like this before in the past. Something almost identical had been attached to his motorbike by a corrupt ex-cop.
It was a tracker.
A tracker that had been attached to Frankie Hardie’s solicitor’s car that was displaying precise coordinates to someone, right now.
Max felt the blood in his veins turn to ice as he turned the hard plastic device in his hands.
‘Janie, we have a problem.’
57
‘WHO THE HELLput a tracker under my car, and more importantly, why me?’ said Devlin, her eyes wide with alarm, and her face ghostly white.
‘We can’t be sure, but we suspect that it’s someone who’s being employed to take out Frankie to stop him talking to us.’
‘But why me? I’m just a bloody solicitor, I didn’t sign up for this, I’m just here to represent the interests of my client.’ She ran a quivering hand through her hair. All her earlier spiky demeanour had gone, replaced by something else. Fear. She looked utterly terrified.
‘Because they couldn’t get this location any other way. What we know now is that they know where we are, so we can’t stay here,’ said Janie.
‘But this has nothing to do with me. I haven’t even taken instructions from Frankie, yet. I should just go,’ she said, her voice several octaves higher than it had been a while earlier.
‘I wouldn’t advise that, Ms Devlin. Whoever’s after Frankie won’t know what you do or don’t know, and we know they aren’t averse to targeting lawyers.’ Janie’s voice was gentle, but there was certainty in her delivery.
‘Oh, Jesus. This is bad, this is really bad.’ She sat heavily in one of the chairs in the room and buried her face in her hands.
‘No need to panic yet, what we don’t know is where they are, or what they’re planning, and we have four highly trained armed officers here ready to protect us. Right, Danny, can you get two of your guys out, armed up and in positions front and rear whilst we make a plan.’
‘On it, I’ve called it in, but the nearest NCA armed support is three hours away. I’ll call into Police Scotland control to see what they have, but I suspect there won’t be an ARV closer than Inverness.’ Danny began issuing instructions to his team, as they were strapping on body armour and checking their pistols and carbines. The picture was one of practised efficiency of cops whose job was protecting people under threat.
‘Ms Devlin, we’ll get you to your guesthouse as soon as we can, but we need some info. Janie, you’ve been liaising with Norma, what’s happening with the phones?’
‘Urgent live-trace has gone in on the handset we know Droopy has been using. As soon as we have a new number the phone will be pinged. Should be imminent, I’ll call her back now for an update.’ Janie pulled her phone from her pocket and dialled, moving to the corridor.
‘Ms Devlin, who knew you had been instructed in this case?’ said Max.
