by G R Jordan
‘I think she’s gone home,’ said Jim. ‘Is this all to do with that business up at the marina?’
Kirsten nodded. ‘Have you got a phone number for her or address even? I could pop round and see her.’
‘Hang on a minute,’ said Jim and reached over into a book, opening it to find the number. As he scanned down, Kirsten looked behind him and saw a coffee machine.
‘Jim, you don’t think you could give us that, could you?’
‘What?’ said Jim.
‘A wee cup of coffee, keep us going at this time of the morning. It’s no wonder you guys have it in here.’ Jim nodded and turned around making his way across the room for the coffee. Kirsten quickly grabbed the book.
‘Do you take sugar?’ asked Jim. Kirsten didn’t but she said, ‘Yes,’ to occupy more time.
‘Milk?’ Kirsten’s finger was scanning down the page and then she found Andrea Lumley.
‘Yes, plenty of it.’ She now was able to see the address, memorising it immediately.
Jim was about to turn around with the cups and Kirsten put the book right back where she had found it. ‘There you go,’ said Jim, handing her a cup through the window. ‘I’ll just get that number for you.’
‘Thanks, Jim,’ said Kirsten and waited patiently while the man wrote down the phone number of Andrea Lumley and handed it to Kirsten.
‘I’d give you her address, but you know I can’t do that.’
‘It’s no problem, Jim. You’ve been very helpful,’ and with that Kirsten downed the coffee, commented to Jim about how divorced life must be suiting him, and then handed the cup back before exiting the police station.
After making her way back to the stolen car, Kirsten took it around to the address she had memorised from the book. It was out on the edge of town towards the war memorial that was set high on a hill above Stornoway. Soon, she turned down a street of detached houses, modest, and she suspected owned mainly by people in managerial positions but certainly nothing spectacular.
Reaching the correct house, Kirsten recognised the alarms on the outside. She located the panel in the hallway that could deactivate the alarms and squinted hard to try and recognise the make. She knew she’d have to get Andrea up quick, pull her downstairs and she wasn’t sure who else could be in the house. She could knock but she wanted to see if the woman was for real. Somebody had given away where they’d been. Was it Richard? Was it a grass at Stornoway Police Station? Kirsten had her own ideas but at the moment, she wasn’t into trusting anybody. She picked the lock on the door, opened it, and heard the alarm start to bleep. Quickly she bounded up the stairs, pushed open the door of the largest bedroom, and saw a man and a woman asleep. She tore across and saw Andrea begin to wake up, her face looking shocked. She grabbed the woman in her nightie, pulling her out of the door, shouting at the husband to shut up and sit down. Kirsten brandished her gun at the same time just for effect and then hauled Andrea all the way down the stairs and told her to kill the alarm placing the gun to her head. The sergeant complied.
‘Call your husband down. Anyone else in the house?’ asked Kirsten.
‘No, no,’ said Andrea quite agitated, and called her husband, Matthew, down.
Kirsten with the point of the gun indicated they both should move into the living room and made sure she closed the curtains while they did so. Kirsten then took a position in front of the pair with the gun trained on them. She still had the safety on because she didn’t want any accidents. After all, she was only scaring the information out of the people.
‘Who did you speak to again?’
‘I told you. When I contacted, they tried to put me through to Anna Hunt. I didn’t get her. I got somebody called Richard, but he said Anna was the one running this. He was just relaying information from her.’
‘Did you believe him?’
‘Why wouldn’t I?’ said Andrea. ‘I had the phone number, I went through the correct processes. That’s where I ended up.’
‘At any point did you speak to Anna Hunt?’ asked Kirsten.
‘Not at all. I don’t even know who the woman is.’
‘What’s this all about?’ asked Andrea’s husband, but Andrea turned, put her hand on his thigh, and told him to be quiet.
‘Look, I don’t know anything other than what you told me. I’ve done it. I tried to get you there securely.’
‘Who knew the location?’ asked Kirsten.
‘No one but your guy Richard, obviously because he told me where to go. Otherwise only I knew it.’
‘Anybody else in the station?’
‘No, but I did get into a van, and then you, so maybe they could have traced it.’
‘Have you ever met Richard before? Ever had anything to do with the services?’ asked Kirsten.
‘No,’ said Andrea. ‘You came to me. I took a bit of flack off the boys above, and I got the job done. I did what you asked. Why are you pointing that gun at me?’
‘In the middle of the night, four men came to take out the Waters girl and her brother. I sniffed it out before it happened. The safe house now has a couple of bodies in it.’
Andrea looked shocked. ‘Where are the other two now?’
‘You don’t get to ask that,’ said Kirsten. ‘That’s on me. Only me. Don’t ask that. If you want to be a friend and be helpful, don’t ask that.’
Andrea’s husband Matthew seemed quite strained. Kirsten thought she could see tears coming to his eyes.
‘Just don’t do anything to us, okay? Andrea is a good officer. She does things by the book. She’s not one of these people that you’re talking about.’
‘I don’t know who I’m talking to at the moment. I’ve never met her, so pardon me, sir, if I seem a little rough-handed, but I’ve been attacked several times. Each time I wasn’t meant to walk away. If your wife can help me get to the bottom of this, she’s going to.’
‘And I will,’ said Andrea. ‘It’s not a problem. Just put the gun down and talk about this.’ Kirsten put her gun in its holster and allowed Andrea to stand. She went through to the kitchen and Kirsten insisted Matthew follow them making sure nobody reached for a phone.
‘Forgive me, it’s not that I don’t trust you, it’s just I don’t trust you,’ said Kirsten. ‘I trust no one. I’ve got two lives on the line and my own, so I’m playing this very coyly.’
‘That I can understand,’ said Andrea. ‘Look, the way I see it is if you trust us down at the station, and I think you do because you know most of them, and it hasn’t been me, it’s got to have been that Richard, hasn’t it?’
‘Why would you say that?’ asked Kirsten.
‘Well, he’s getting all the information, isn’t he?’
‘But it could be Anna. She might be the one doing it.’
‘Then you need to correlate on it, don’t you?’ said Andrea. ‘You need to get contact with her direct, get her to organise the next meet, then you’ll see what’s what.’
‘But if it is her, I might as well give up. We could have the department actually looking to finish them off.’
‘Why? When did my department make deals with criminals like Kyle Collins?’
Kirsten took a cup of coffee from Andrea and sat down opposite her on a large stool in the kitchen. She watched Matthew try to drink, but his hands were too unsteady. He spilled his coffee on the kitchen table. Andrea was compassionate to him taking a cloth wiping up and just telling him to sit there because it will all be done very shortly.
‘Okay,’ said Kirsten. ‘I’m going to go soon. I won’t be back to the station, it’s too risky to you, if you’re telling the truth. Too risky to the people there.’
‘If all the avenues look dodgy,’ said Andrea, ‘you can come to me, we’ll do what we can. They won’t want to be coming to a police station to take people down. Not even your lot surely.’
Kirsten thought about the service. You never put anything past them. If things needed to be done, they did it, regardless of what mess it caused. There was always
a way of covering things up, always a way of doing things. There might be a little bloody nose from stuff, but you had to get the job done.
Kirsten left Andrea and Matthew in the kitchen, made her way out to the car, and drove off. She took one of the smaller roads out of town, stopping when she still knew she had a signal and killed all of the lights. With her mobile, she called in with one of her new SIM cards, getting the direct number of Justin Chivers.
‘What’s the deal?’ asked Justin. ‘Have you got anywhere with this?’
‘Shut up and listen,’ said Kirsten. ‘I need you to go to Anna.’
‘Go to Anna?’ said Justin. ‘Why?’
‘I think Richard’s dodgy. I think he’s the one doing this, but I can’t be sure. I need you to go to Anna direct. Tell her to keep it away from everyone else and organise an extraction for me.’
‘Ooh, what? I just barge in and tell her this?’
‘Basically,’ said Kirsten. ‘You do because how else would I get the information to her? Every time we phone, anyone phones, Richard seems to be picking up.’
‘That’s because Anna’s in with the ministers. She’s been briefing them on and off for ages.’
‘That may be as it is, tell her I need her to meet me. I need to get to her so we can get a proper extraction plan. She can pitch up in Stornoway, wherever. I’ll kill this SIM now, but I’ll put it back in in four hours’ time. You give me the time and the place, and I’ll meet her. Are we understood, Justin?’
‘Of course, but what if Richard catches me on this one?’
‘You keep well clear,’ said Kirsten. ‘You have to. If he catches you, he may well do something to you. He’s out on a limb if we snag him with this, so take care of yourself, Justin. Straight to Anna, nobody else, understood?’
‘It might take me longer than four hours if she’s in with the ministers. I’ve got to go through Richard normally.’
‘Yes, you do but you’re a techie. You know how to work things. You’ll get a message to her. I’m counting on you, Justin. You know that, don’t you?’
‘Just remember, you owe me dinner with this one,’ said Justin, ‘and that nice red top you used to wear.’
‘You’ll get dinner but it’ll be a McDonald’s,’ said Kirsten. ‘Get Anna for me.’ She hung up. Justin was so cheeky. Even at times like this trying to egg a date out of her. Kirsten opened the mobile, pulled the SIM card out and tucked it away. She drove the car back out to Barvas Moor, getting to the caravan about six. Once there, she scoured the surroundings, then went inside and put herself on the front sofa where she started to get into a fitful sleep.
When she awoke she made a short trek out of the caravan, placed a SIM card into the phone, and waited. Thirty seconds later there was a beep on the phone. She checked the text message. Stornoway airport, half-past three.
Chapter 20
Kirsten drove up and down the road at the end of the threshold of the runway of the airport. Anna had said that she was coming on the two o’clock flight, but Kirsten couldn’t find a commercial flight that matched that. Instead, she had a flight radar app open, an internet-based tracking system that was able to pick up the individual squawks of aircraft in the air and give you a rough radar picture of what was going.
Now approaching two o’clock there were no commercial flights, but there was a King Air Beechcraft making its way towards the runway. Rather than sit and wait in the car park, Kirsten continued to drive, until saw the aircraft landing on the northerly runway, coming in low over the road and being photographed by a lone photographer.
There was nothing unusual about this. Most visitors to the island found the closeness of the road and the runway quite spectacular, but to the locals, it was a daily occurrence to have a plane flying over the top of your car. Kirsten watched it taxiing in and parking on the lower apron at Stornoway. This was the smaller apron where the commercial traffic didn’t go.
Kirsten drove up to the car park beside it and saw a small figure climbing out. It was dressed in black, had a rucksack over its shoulder and made its way out through the gate, straight over to Kirsten’s car.
‘It’s good to see you looking so well,’ said Anna Hunt, opening the car door and stepping inside.
‘It hasn’t exactly been a joy ride.’
‘By look well, I mean not dead,’ said Anna. ‘Now drive, we’ve got a lot to talk about.’
Kirsten took the car out of the airport and drove off into Stornoway.
‘We haven’t got long,’ said Anna. ‘Richard caught Justin talking to me, so I had to make up a tale about him. I’m not sure if Richard bought it, so I think he’s following up quite shortly. Now, where have you got them?’
‘I’m not telling you where they are,’ said Kirsten. ‘You’ve got to look at this from my point of view. I don’t know which of you two are dodgy.’
‘And you’re saying that openly to me?’ said Anna. ‘I think that tells you who you think really is the traitor in our midst. I take it the girl’s unharmed?’
‘Shaken up,’ said Kirsten, ‘bit like her brother, a few scrapes with death, you know what I mean? I had to put quite a few down. I hope they’re not from our service.’
‘None of them are from our service, because if they were we’d be onto them, whoever was calling these shots. Either that or you’d have been making a glorious mistake. The bodies are all outside people, but they’re guns for hire. Nothing I can trace back to anyone specifically, but I’m working on it. Trust me.’
Trust me. There was a word Kirsten heard very often in the service, a word that didn’t mean a lot and yet getting the right answer to that ‘trust me’ statement was everything.
‘We need to get them off-island. Different route, something nobody else knows about except yourself, Anna.’
‘You do trust me.’
‘No. If it goes wrong with you at the helm, then I know you’re dodgy as well. If it doesn’t, I know it’s Richard.’
‘What if it goes wrong with me at the helm. What do you think of your Richard then?’
‘Unknown,’ said Kirsten. ‘I wouldn’t have any proof to say that he was dodgy, but I wouldn’t have the proof to say he wasn’t either. He’s too heavily involved in a lot of the decisions made, too heavily involved in what’s gone on. I can’t ignore that. I had to go round him with Justin Chivers. I don’t like doing that, especially with the way Justin is. After all, you always said he’d talk just by looking at a woman.’
‘Might be true. It depends if it was a woman who’d asked him not to,’ said Anna, smiling.
‘Where’s the best place to go?’ said Kirsten. ‘Where’s the best place to get off here and keep them hidden?’
‘Well, we keep out of Stornoway for a start,’ said Anna. ‘Better down near one of the fishing villages or even somewhere like Leverburgh right down the bottom of the island. We can get on a boat there, especially an unmarked one. We can make her disappear.’
‘Into the system. Richard will have tabs into the system surely.’
‘Doesn’t work like that, Kirsten. We don’t get tabs into the system. All we’ve got to do is get them there.’
‘What’s to say there isn’t somebody in the system looking out for them as well?’
‘Stop,’ said Anna. ‘You’re seeing evil at every turn. You’re running wild here. I understand you’ve been shot at, and they’ve tried to kill you several times. You’re reeling because somebody like Richard you used to trust is doing this to you, so much so you now haven’t got a clue if it’s me, it’s him, or a man from Timbuktu. You need to focus. You made the right call. You’ve got me up to organise. If it goes wrong with me at the helm, you know it’s me. If it doesn’t, you’ve got someone you can trust.’
‘I never said I didn’t trust you,’ said Kirsten. ‘I’ve always just thought you were a bit—’ Then she stopped herself, realising this was her boss she was talking to. ‘But it’s Richard,’ said Kirsten. ‘That first time, when I had to put the two men do
wn by the camper van back on my first assignment. That was when Richard talked to me. He looked out for me when you didn’t.’
‘I’m your boss. I’m not your nanny,’ said Anna. ‘I’d be very wary of people who’d take an interest like that. Your problem is Macleod was too good to you.’
Kirsten scowled at the mention of her former boss’s name. ‘Don’t you say a word about him.’
‘Or what?’ said Anna. ‘Of course, I’ll say a word about him. It was his team. It was the place he was over the top and running. You were a little pet favourite of his. I’ll admit it, you had the talent and he used it, but you were also his little pet favourite. I don’t have favourites. I can’t afford to. I can’t afford my judgment impaired because I like someone. When Richard came to you and he’s giving you all the consoling effort, what were you thinking about that? Oh, makes him a nice man? No, that’s not how you judge people in this game. You judge them by what their actions are. Who’s done what and when. You look for the ulterior motive. And sure, that might make me someone who’s suspicious of everyone, but I don’t have an ulterior motive.’
‘Sure, you do,’ said Kirsten. ‘You just want to climb as high as you can, and you’ll use other people to do it.’
Anna put up her hands and smiled. ‘Guilty as charged, but it’s not an ulterior motive that harms the service. With Richard, you’re talking about someone who’s harming our interests, all our interests.’
‘If it’s him.’
‘Oh, I know it’s him,’ said Anna. “Is it only him?” is the question. Does he have somebody higher up protecting— is he running it for them? We’re talking about Collins here. He’s serious. He’s big time in Inverness; he’s big time in Glasgow too. He’s been on the national register as our main target for ages, and we’ve never got near him, and now we do, and we knew he had people in his pocket, but not the service. No, you don’t do it in the service. If you’re one of mine, I’ll put you down,’ said Anna. ‘Without hesitation.’
Kirsten cast a glance. ‘You mean, I’ll put him down.’