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‘Fine, you’re an absolutely garbage, shite, crap, bollocks, incompetent, indecisive, slow and awful driver who makes my teeth itch when I’m forced to be a passenger in any car you’re driving,sergeant,’ Janie retorted, returning his smile.
‘That’s better, constable. A little respect for the rank isn’t hard, eh?’
‘Indeed. I tend to agree with you. Frankie is as shite-scared as a dog in a thunderstorm, how’re we going to play it?’ she said, exaggerating her normally cultured Edinburgh brogue.
‘I need to speak to Ross. I’m a little out of the witness protection loop, but we need an urgent, secure and highly covert debriefpremises. It’s true what he says. They can only protect him for so long. In the Met there were suitable facilities, which I used once for a supergrass. I’m assuming there’s the same up here.’
‘NCA run witness protection now, on a national basis, UK PPS, as in Protected Persons Service. I had some input from them on the last course I did for my accelerated promotion programme, which I’m bloody way, way behind on, mostly thanks to you and Ross not giving me the bloody time to study for the sergeant’s exam,’ said Janie, pulling her seatbelt on.
‘Nonsense, you manage to sleep, don’t you? You’ve plenty of time, but you waste it listening to odd music and playing your trumpet.’
‘Saxophone.’
‘Anyway, we digress, constable, can we get back on topic?’
‘Fine. Yes. NCA manage the process.’
‘Of course, I remember now. NCA, though? With our recent experiences with NCA officers, we need to be careful. This case is so bloody sensitive, maybe I best call Ross and get him to push it up the food chain.’ Max pulled out his phone and dialled, the ring tone audible out of the vehicle speakers that it was connected to.
‘What did the dirty, amoral, evil shite-bag say?’ was Ross’s opening gambit, without preamble.
Max summarised what Hardie had said.
‘Aye, sounds plausible, I’m sorry to say. I’ve already alerted the Chief to the possibility of this, and he’s flagged it up to the NCA. Who the hell is this Droopy character?’
‘No idea, but he must be traceable if Slattery was in contact with him at the time of Beata being murdered. He was obviously an associate of Mitch, Billy and Davie as well. Can you get Norma working on this? We need to get to him urgently. If we can identify him, we’re halfway there to tracing “Ace”.’
‘Fucking hell, “Ace”? What is this,Top Gun?’
‘Ace in the hole, is how Hardie Senior referred to his big asset.’
‘I get the analogy. Shit, this could be big. We’ll need to get intothe Crown Office if he’s looking for any immunity deal, and any reduction in sentence. I’ll flag that up, but the DCC seems to be wanting them to herself. I’ll see what the boss says. What else do you think you’ll need?’
‘A secure debrief facility with accommodation attached and armed protection. We don’t want to be pissing about with moving him back and forth to a jail with armed convoys, it leaves far too big a footprint. A full research package on Droopy and his links. Any phones, cars, addresses, the whole lot. If we get Droopy, we can chuck in an initiating incident, and watch what he does.’
‘I’ll get Norma on it now. Our favourite tactic, eh? Chucking a big bastard stone into a pond and watching the ripples, eh?’
‘Indeed. We can do this, Ross, but we can’t go noisy on it. If it gets widely known, it’ll leak. We need to keep a sterile corridor between us and the MIT team reactive investigation.’
‘I’ll talk to the boss, but he won’t want Miles being in the dark, and I suspect that he won’t want Heather Davies excluded. She’s SIO, after all.’
‘Do we trust Miles? After all it was the slimy solicitor going straight to him that was the problem, don’t you think?’
Ross sighed, his voice through the car’s speakers crackling. ‘I can’t see Miles being bent. He’s too much history, and surely the last time we had Hardies on the rack, he’d have fucked up?’
Max said nothing.
‘Fuck’s sake. I’ll talk to the boss. The PPS may want to handle the debrief, they don’t like sharing their sweeties.’
‘They can’t. For some reason, Frankie trusts me and won’t deal with anyone else. We’ll also need a vetted defence lawyer for him.’
‘On it. What’s the timeframe?’ said Ross, and Max could hear tapping on a keyboard.
‘Yesterday. The big Albanian old geezer got very close to slicing Frankie open. If he could get to him, someone else could. We need to move fast. This is big enough already. We have the murderousDroopy topping people left, right and centre, and seemingly with the ability to get to anyone in jail.’
‘Okay. I’m on it.’
‘Any other news?’ said Max.
