Lifting the Lid(33)

‘All I’m saying is that they don’t seem to be making any effort to hide the fact.’

‘I don’t know. Perhaps they’re not very good at their job.’

‘But who are they and what exactly is their job?’

Sandra counted to five before she replied. ‘What do you want to do? Stop and ask them? – Excuse me, gents, but we’ve noticed you’ve been behind us for quite some time now and we were wondering if you were following us and, if so, whether your intentions are honourable or otherwise.’ She ended the sentence with a contemptuous sneer.

Trevor said nothing.

She glanced across at him and saw he was chewing on his bottom lip. Even though she was seriously hacked off with the guy, Sandra realised she had offended him and felt an unaccountable twinge of guilt.

‘Look,’ she said in a stern tone of voice to disguise any trace of sympathy she might have had for him. ‘As far as I’m concerned, this was going to be a nice straightforward little earner until you came along and made a total bollocks of the whole thing. I don’t know if you’re telling me the truth or not, and I sure as hell don’t know who the good guys are and who the bad guys are. Shit, I don’t even know if there are any good guys in all this. What I do know is that I don’t intend to hang around to find out which is which. Okay?’

Trevor merely grunted in response.

God, what was it with men and sulking? She closed her eyes but opened them again immediately as she felt a wave of tiredness rolling her towards a sleep she could ill afford. She yawned and rubbed her face with both hands to try to bring some life back to her flagging consciousness. Peering at her reflection in the wing mirror, she recoiled at the dark rings under her eyes, the furrowed brow, the blotchy skin, the – Shit, what was that? Surely she wasn’t getting a double chin? She raised her head up and down a few times, closely observing the area in question and prodding the flesh with the tips of her fingers.

Right, that settles it, she thought. It’s diet time for you, my girl. But what about the baggy eyes, the lines, the strawberries and cream complexion but with all the strawberries in the wrong place? A diet wasn’t going to cure those. Maybe it was the job. She was certain she hadn’t looked this rough when she’d first set up in business. All those long nights sat in her car outside some house or other waiting to get a photograph of an errant husband or wayward wife were bound to take their toll, not to mention the endless succession of hastily grabbed burgers and doner kebabs. Stress had a big part to play in it too, and this current job was turning out to be a severe test of what little composure she had left. Hell, it should have been one of the simplest and most lucrative cases she’d had yet.

This last thought prompted her to adjust her focus in the mirror.

‘Aha,’ she said aloud and leaned forward to get a better view.

‘What?’ said Trevor.

‘I do believe they’ve finally…’ Her voice tailed off as she watched even more intently. The Mondeo seemed to be falling behind and lurching as if it was being driven by a novice who’d barely begun to master clutch control.

‘At bloody last,’ she said, seeing the reflected image of the car grow ever smaller. She sat back in her seat. ‘I was beginning to think they’d never run out.’

‘So now what?’

‘You drive me back to the festival so I can pick up my car. You drop me off. I never see you again as long as I live.’

‘The festival? But we’ve been driving for hours.’

‘Yes, but we’ve been going pretty much in a circle. I’d say it’s no more than thirty miles away.’

Trevor shifted his position and flexed his fingers.

‘Okay,’ he said, ‘but I’ll have to have a break first. Everything aches, and I’ve hardly eaten a thing since yesterday lunchtime.’

‘Fair enough. We’ll stop at the next services or whatever. I’m feeling a bit peckish myself.’

There was a faint whimper from the back seat of the van. Milly was sound asleep and dreaming that she was chasing an enormous chicken nugget on legs.



* * *



Patterson was sitting bolt upright in the passenger seat of a green Skoda Octavia, rigid with fury.

‘How the hell did you manage to lose a beat-up old camper van?’ he yelled into the onboard radio.

‘Ran out of petrol, guv,’ came the crackled reply.

‘Oh terrific.’

‘Yeah, they must have seen the film about that Irish bloke – IRA I think he was. Anyway, he knew he was going to be followed by the police so he’d got a spare can of petrol in the boot of his car, and when they—’