Liz Carlyle - 05 - Present Danger by Stella Rimington Read Free Book Online Page A

Or we wouldn’t know there was anything going on.’
    ‘If there is,’ said Ted sardonically.
    Ted had decided they would go into the gatehouse in daylight, dressed to look like National Trust visitors, letting themselves in with the key Robinson had provided. So Maureen Hayes had dropped them off in the village and they had walked the mile or so to the house, carrying their equipment in large rucksacks.
    In the office, Ted, the service’s master of all things electronic, didn’t look remotely like an average National Trust member. But now his long black dyed hair was tucked inside a woolly hat with a pom-pom on top, which also hid his gold earring; he had discarded his black leather jacket and biker’s boots in favour of a green anorak; and his costume of walking trousers and knee socks was finished off with brown walking shoes. The whole ensemble looked OK at a distance.
    ‘I wouldn’t mind a few days here,’ said John Forrest as he finished unpacking his drills and looked out of the dining room window at the wide bay. The tide was in now, and the little football-like heads of seals were popping up inquisitively from the ripples.
    ‘Well we haven’t got a few days,’ replied Ted, ‘so let’s get on with it.’
    A couple of hours later, after some muted drilling and hammering, Ted was on the phone to the office at Palace Barracks. ‘There’s a woman with a dog just coming up to the gate now. How’s the focus?’
    ‘Clear as a bell,’ came back the answer. ‘But hang on there till a car comes past – we need to check the angle.’
    A minute or two later a small hatchback came out, driven by a woman with a small child in a car seat at the back. ‘You need to adjust the angle. The number plates are out of the frame. Just a few degrees down and to the left.’ Ted relayed the instruction to John Forrest in the loft, the adjustment was made and the OK given.
    As the team started to pack up they heard the engine of another car coming down the track. Ted stood at the side of the dining room window, half-concealed by the curtain, and watched as a red Vauxhall Vectra with racing tyres slowed as it reached the gate. There were two men sitting in front, and another in the back seat, but from the house he couldn’t see their faces. As the gate clanged shut and the car drove away he thumbed in a number on his phone. ‘Did you get that?’
    ‘Brilliant,’ said the voice at the other end. ‘Front seat, clear enough for Hello magazine. But we’re not going to be able to get the rear seat passengers, I’m afraid.’

9
     
    The camera at the gatehouse had been busy. There were photographs of walkers, and several of a black Toyota hybrid car which came and went and had been identified by Phil Robinson as belonging to the holiday tenants who had taken a fortnight’s let. But Liz was staring at several pictures of a red Vauxhall.
     
    ‘The owner is called Malone,’ said Dave Armstrong, standing behind her and looking over her shoulder. ‘That’s him driving. He has form.’
    ‘What kind of form?’ asked Liz, still looking at the photographs of the car.
    ‘Six years in the eighties for the attempted murder of an RUC officer. He left his fingerprints all over a bomb that didn’t go off underneath the policeman’s car. After that he was more careful. We couldn’t get him on terrorism, but he’s got a list of convictions for violence. A GBH charge when he worked as a doorman in a nightclub in Cookstown, a couple of domestics when his wife got fed up and rang the police. Lately he’s calmed down. He’s middle-aged, like we’ll all be soon.’
    ‘Speak for yourself,’ said Liz.
    She looked again at the photographs. She could see the two figures in the front seat clearly but the back seat passenger was not identifiable.
    ‘Who is the other guy in the front seat?’
    ‘Don’t know,’ said Dave.
    ‘What do you think’s going on down there?’ she asked.
    Dave shrugged. ‘Hard to say. But I doubt