Ryan was taken aback.
“I was concerned for your welfare. I wanted to be sure that you would come to no harm. Is that so wrong?”
Anna sighed.
“You don’t get it, do you? It would have been so much more meaningful if you had taken the trouble to have a five minute conversation with me about it first, before taking any unilateral decisions.”
“It was my decision to make,” the words were out of his mouth before he could snatch them back.
“I see.”
Those two little words again. A dull throb started behind his eyes, so he closed them and tried to hear only her voice.
“I didn’t mean that to sound so …”
“Officious?” She offered.
He clenched his teeth.
“Listen, all I meant to say is that I had to take a decision in the heat of the moment. The evidence is pointing towards someone with an obsession around me, or cases I’ve worked on. That includes you. I won’t take any chances, Anna. You’re too important.”
She heard the worry and the burden he carried, but this was a question of trust.
“You probably don’t realise this,” she said, “but your boys aren’t quite as good as they think they are. I was aware of someone following me yesterday lunchtime. I’ve been paranoid and scared ever since, which rather defeats the object, doesn’t it?”
There was a lengthy pause at the end of the line.
“Yesterday lunchtime? You’re sure?”
“Yes, of course I’m sure. I ran all the way back to the university, like an idiot.”
“The surveillance team didn’t start until 3 p.m.”
Anna felt an icy chill, like an insect crawling over her back.
“The car sitting outside – what make is it?”
“Ah, a dark blue BMW, I think.” She headed back over to the window.
That settled it, he thought. The department didn’t spring for luxury vehicles and he happened to know that the two-man surveillance team attached to Anna were supposed to be driving a Ford.
“Stay where you are and lock the doors, if you haven’t already.” He hesitated and then continued. “Arm yourself with something hard or sharp. I’m on my way.”
Anna swallowed.
“Ryan, the car outside. It’s gone.”
“Stay put, I’ll be there in thirty minutes,” he said urgently.
“Bollocks to that,” she stopped him dead in his tracks. “I’ll drive over to CID and meet you there. That way, you don’t have to abandon your investigation at a crucial moment but you still get to play Mother Goose. Win, win.”
Ryan wanted to argue, but actually it made damn good sense.
“See you in half an hour. Oh, and Anna?”
“Yep?”
“I’m sorry.”
“Do it again and you will be,” she said smartly.
“Understood.”
As Anna tugged on a pair of jeans and threw some basic necessities into a canvas bag, the two policemen tasked with keeping her under observation were carb-loading in the nearest greasy spoon at the end of a double shift. The order to stand down had come from a well-spoken man quoting Ryan’s pass-code. In fact, with a subtle alteration of dialect, the disembodied voice had sounded just like him.
After speaking with the two men, Ryan ran a standard vehicle check.
And, wouldn’t you know it, a dark blue BMW 3-series was registered to the same person who had taken a call from Colin Hart the previous day.
A few minutes before five, Anna butted through the doors marked with a grubby sign reading, ‘Operation Hadrian’. Her nose was assaulted by the stale fumes of old sandwiches left forgotten on desktops and body odour, which hadn’t quite been disguised by the liberal spraying of air freshener. Outside, the clouds had cleared overhead to make way for temperate summer skies. It was somehow harder to believe that people could kill when the sun was shining.
She saw Ryan gesticulating towards a large map of the region, which bore several bright red pins to indicate points of interest. He looked up as the doors opened, instantly alert. She wondered how he managed to walk through life without having some kind of major coronary incident, because she couldn’t remember a time when he hadn’t been alert. Each morning, he woke and was instantaneously on-the-ball. There was no languorous, lazy awakening with a yawn and a rub of his eyes. Whereas she needed to be coaxed from her bed, Ryan’s rise into consciousness was prompt and he remained watchful and ready-for-action throughout the course of the day.
He smiled across at her and the muscles of his face relaxed slightly, so that he appeared less intimidating and more like the man she had come to know.
Then, he looked at what she held in her hands and struggled between conflicting feelings of gratitude and irritation. He had, after all, instructed her to come straight here and certainly had not sanctioned a stop off at the Pie Van to buy bulk provisions.