'Ah'm not carrying, Mario,' Impey confessed, sheepishly.
'Christ, are you going out of your way to wind up Bob Skinner?
Did you not hear his instruction at that briefing?'
'Aye, but Ah just dinnae like guns. Ah had a mate once shot himself in the leg with his.'
'I hate to think where the boss'11 shoot you if he finds out you've ignored his order. Okay, Karen's armed and able to back me up, and we're only going after one bloke, but if we'd been after a team, you could have put us all in danger.'
Impey growled. 'Ach you city polis. Yis are all fuckin' cowboys.
Excuse my French, hen.'
'C'est rien,' Neville replied.
In a little under ten minutes they came to the junction which marked the end of the bypass. McGuire drew the Nissan a little closer to the red car, ready to cover his move, whether he headed north or south.
Beside him, his sergeant shifted edgily in her seat.
Their quarry took neither option. Instead he headed straight through the junction and turned into the service area on the other side of the wide Al. 'Going for petrol,' McGuire guessed. He slipped quietly off the roundabout, hanging back as far as he dared, then turned into the narrow access road, slowing to check that the Vauxhall had not turned into the motor lodge car park, but had indeed carried on to the filling station beyond.
There were six pumps on the forecourt, all occupied. The red car stood a little back from them, waiting for one to clear. As he slid quietly behind him, McGuire could see the driver clearly for the first time, in profile as he looked at the pumps. He had lit a cigarette; his right arm was leaning on the open window. 'I can see the likeness right enough, Joe. And yet…' Something gnawed at the back of his mind.
'Mario.' Karen Neville touched his arm, interrupting his search of his memory. 'One of the pumps just cleared. Why isn't he moving up?'
'Maybe he needs diesel?' Impey suggested.
'Unlikely in a hire car. Maybe he's just finishing his fag before he goes to fill up. Whatever, he's off guard and I'm having him. Otherwise I'll have to buy bloody petrol or he'll twig us. Karen, you take the passenger side. Joe, you stay here.'
Mario McGuire was a big, easy-going man, until the action button was pressed. He opened his door and stepped out of the car, his gun in his hand in an instant. Swiftly and noiselessly, he closed the gap to the red car.
The man inside was drawing on his cigarette; he started in surprise as Karen Neville stepped into his line of vision. In the same moment the inspector reached through the Vectra's open side window and pressed the cold muzzle of his Walther to the back of the man's head.
'Good evening, sir,' he said, in a quiet, conversational tone. 'Just in case you're in any doubt, we are police officers and that thing you feel against your skull is not a piece of pipe, or a banana or anything like that. It's a real gun, and they make me nervous, so if you move the wrong muscle you won't move any others, ever again.
'Now, I want you to step out of the car, keeping your hands in the air; then I want you to lie face down on the ground.'
21
'Where is this man Impey now?' said Bob Skinner. He spoke quietly, but there was something in his tone which send a cold shiver running down Mario McGuire's spine.
'On his way back to Dumfries, boss. I told him to get the youknow-what out of Edinburgh before you got your hands on him.'
'Well the bugger can't run fast enough, or far enough. Wherever he surfaces again he's going to find out that my bite is a hell of a lot worse than my bark.'
'Don't be too hard on him, boss. He was showing initiative; he just made an honest mistake.'
'So did the captain of the Titanic. Thanks to that man and his monumental stupidity, I've had the commander of the Interpol task force on counterfeiting moaning down my phone for the last half hour. You were advised of this operation, as was every other Special Branch office in the country, including Dumfries and bloody Galloway.
You were all told that they were watching a major software forgery centre in South Armagh and you were all given photographs of the agents involved.
'In spite of that, because oflmpey's "honest mistake" we've ruined the culmination of the operation. The guy you lifted was following a courier; the purpose of that was to discover the bootleggers' main distribution route and from that to catch their customers with the stuff in their possession. The Interpol people even sent a fax to Impey's office warning him that the man was on the move. I've checked; it's in his in-tray and it was there when he left to check the ferry passengers.'
McGuire scratched his chin. 'Oh shit,' he groaned. 'Poor old Joe.'
'Don't waste your sympathy on the guy, Mario. He should have committed that information to memory, and he should have had that man's face imprinted in his brain. That's standard SB procedure as you know well. If Impey isn't up to following it, he isn't up to the job.
But he won't be in it for much longer.
'He'll have a very embarrassed chief constable waiting for him when he gets back to his office tomorrow morning, and believe me, Archie Deas is not a man anyone wants to embarrass.'
'What'll he do to him?'
'Hang him up by his soft bits until they drop off, probably. Once they have, he'll stick him back in a uniform and post him to Auchencross, or some place like that, with a bike to get around on. At least that's what I've suggested to Archie that he should do.'
He swivelled in his chair. 'What about Mr Steyn, the agent? Have you calmed him down?'
'Just about. I've booked him into the George for the night, on our tab. He'll go back to Ireland in the morning.'
'Take him out to dinner, just to show real contrition. Take Mags along if you like.'
McGuire frowned. 'I can't do that, boss. I've promised to meet Neil tonight. He says he's got something to tell me.' The frown turned into his dazzling smile. 'From the way he sounded, I suspect that Olive's in the club again.'
22
It seemed to Stevie Steele that while Joan Ball couldn't have been more than fifty-five, her hands looked as if they could have been ninety. They hung from her wrists like two claws as she spoke to her visitors, knuckles hugely swollen, fingers twisted cruelly into her palms.
She caught the young detective's glance. 'What do you think of my talons, sergeant?' she asked, holding one up against the light from a table lamp beside her chair.
'I think it's a damn shame. Miss Ball. Don't they make it difficult for you to live out in the country? I mean, you can't drive, can you.'
'No, I can't. But I manage all right. The Social Services are very good; they provide all sorts of support. Home help; someone to do my shopping and so on. Then there are the disabled charity people; they helped me with adapting the house, and in other ways too. I have a brother in North Berwick who takes me about, and a sister in Edinburgh. And of course, Gaynor was a great help to me too, in all sorts of ways. For example she was good with a sewing machine, so she would alter clothes for me. I can't manage buttons or zips any more: too small and fiddly. She would replace them with Velcro fastenings. She was a very kind person, very thoughtful; I'll miss her a great deal.'
Her steady gaze moved from Steele to Rose. 'I take it that you want to ask me more questions about her.'
'You take it right,' the chief inspector replied. 'Did you see much of Mrs Weston in the two weeks before her death?' she asked.
'Quite a bit, really; she was off work all that time.'
'Did she tell you why?'
'She said that she had a little women's trouble, and that she had been ordered to stay at home for a couple of weeks. No gentleman callers.' Her eyes narrowed as she looked at Rose. 'Would I be correct in guessing that it was a little more serious than that?'