Dead Man's Gift 02 - Last Night by Simon Kernick Read Free Book Online

silent ever since.
    Scope was a patient man. It was a virtue he’d learned in the army, where there was always a great deal more watching and waiting than there ever was actual fighting, but even so the pressure was beginning to tell. If Frank Bale didn’t come out of the police station soon, then he was going to have to get inside the building somehow.
    But how? He wasn’t Superman. There was only so much he could do. If the bomb was going to be detonated remotely by mobile phone, then he was sure that Bale would be the man detonating it. The huge problem was that he could do this anywhere. All it took was a phone call to the handset attached to the bomb and it would set the thing off.
    The laptop bleeped.
    ‘The car’s moving,’ said Orla excitedly. ‘He’s turning onto Uxbridge Road, heading east back towards Hangar Lane.’
    Scope was on a back street parallel to the main road but the wrong side of the police station. He did a quick U-turn, overtook a car moving slowly ahead of him, and two minutes later he was back on the Uxbridge Road. This time he was far less subtle in his driving, overtaking two cars in front and having to cut back in fast to avoid a van coming the other way.
    ‘Slow down. He’s only fifty metres ahead. He’ll see us.’
    Scope forced himself to drop the pace as they drove past Ealing Common, keeping well back, aware that he could blow this very easily, but even more aware of the clock on the dashboard telling him it was 10.20 a.m. He had the Jaguar in his sights a dozen cars in front, but at the North Circular junction traffic lights Bale got through and Scope didn’t.
    Within five minutes, though, Scope was back within a dozen cars of him as they passed through the Hangar Lane junction. The problem was there were still far too many people about for Scope to do anything without drawing attention to himself, and the traffic was moving too quickly for him to jump inside the Jaguar even if he was prepared to take that risk.
    Bale temporarily disappeared from view as Scope came to a halt behind a lorry.
    ‘Okay, he’s turning right up ahead,’ announced Orla, still staring at the screen. ‘He’s turned.’
    Scope stuck his nose out behind the lorry, but there was no way through and he was forced to wait until the traffic started moving again.
    ‘Okay, right down here,’ she said, pointing at a turning into a residential street on the other side of the road.
    Scope pulled into the middle of the road but was forced to wait precious seconds for a big enough gap in the oncoming cars before he pulled across in a screech of tyres. There was no sign of the Jaguar, but Orla was doing a good job of telling Scope which route to follow, making him glad that he’d brought her.
    ‘You’re on the road parallel to him now,’ she said, ‘and we’re almost level. There’s a junction up ahead. Turn left there and we can cut him off.’
    The street – two long rows of 1950s terraces – was quiet, and there was no traffic up ahead, so Scope accelerated, the dial picking up towards fifty. A young Asian woman pushing a pram gave him an angry look and gestured for him to slow down, but he ignored her. The dashboard clock said 10.28.
    The junction loomed up ahead and Scope slammed on the brakes before yanking the wheel hard left and almost hitting a dustcart sitting in the middle of the road. The car squealed to a halt just behind it and two dustmen unloading rubbish into the back both turned and scowled at him. There was no way past them as the dustcart crawled further along the road, and Scope’s only hope was that it would block the road that Frank Bale was travelling down and force him to a halt.
    Except it didn’t. Up ahead, Scope saw the Jaguar pull up at the junction and dart across in front of the dustcart.
    He cursed, slamming his fist down on the horn, hoping he could speed it up. But still it crawled slowly forward as the various bins were collected.
    A gap finally appeared as the